Digital Commons Network^™

Actualité De L'Arbitrage, Poej

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

Actualité de l'arbitrage : - Allocution du R.P. Jean Ducruet - Allocution de M. R. Debbas représentant M. Adnan Kassar - Discours d'ouverture de M. Bahige Tabbarah - Introduction par Richard Chémaly - Introduction par Bertrand Moreau

La Réforme Du Droit Des Sociétés : Réforme D'Envergure Ou Simple Toilettage ?, Philippe Merle

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of Communicable Disease Trends In Children: Babylon Governorate, Iraq From 2022 To 2024, Sahar Hassan, Kareem Jebur Dhaidan

Al-Ameed Journal for Medical Research and Health Sciences

Background: Infectious diseases are a great challenge to the health of children globally. This paper provides an epidemiological scenario and patterns of these diseases among children in the Hilla Babylon Governorate, Iraq, and specifically, the re-emergence of meals.

Methods: The retrospective study was carried out on 7851 medical records of children aged below 15 years between the period of January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2024. The registry of Babylon Maternity and Children Hospital was used to extract data. Data were analyzed in terms of trends and distributions by age, sex and time using descriptive statistics and inferential tests.

Results: …

How To Measure A Carnivore: Understanding The Scaling Of Cranial And Postcranial Elements With Body Mass, Marina Casiano Ruiz

Biology ETDs

Body size is a fundamental predictor of ecological function, life history, and population dynamics in mammals. However, direct measurements of body mass remain unavailable for many rare or extinct species, particularly within the order Carnivora. Allometric relationships between skeletal dimensions and body mass provide a tractable solution; however, previous studies have been limited in their taxonomic scope or trait diversity. Here, we quantify the scaling of 82 cranial and postcranial traits across 97 species from 11 carnivoran families spanning four orders of magnitude in body mass (20g to >500kg). Additionally, we examine the influence of phylogenetic relatedness, dietary specialization, and …

Mitigating Cancer Therapy-Related Cognitive Impairment By Targeted Activation Of Undruggable Phosphatase., Zhimeng Yao, Yuhua Meng, Huanyi Li, Yinhui Jiang, Xiaona Lin, Mengyuan Hu, Qing Liu, Xiaofu Qiu, Hongzheng Ren, Yunlong Pan, Bin Pan, Zexiong Guo, Shuyao Zhang, Dianzheng Zhang, Li Yang, Shegan Gao, Weijing Deng, Jianfan Chen, Hao Zhang

PCOM Scholarly Works

Cancer therapy-related cognitive impairment (CTRCI) is a debilitating neurotoxic condition adversely impacting cancer patients during and post-cancer treatments. The cancer treatments linked to CTRCI include chemotherapy, hormone therapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy. Despite CTRCI severely affecting the psychological and social, cognitive functions, and the overall quality of life of cancer survivors, no effective medications are available currently. Our prior studies have indicated hippocampal tyrosine phosphatase protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor type O (PTPRO) as a putative target for CTRCI. However, phosphatase is historically considered undruggable, and delivering drugs across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) is challenging. Here, we developed a novel delivery …

Womanhood On The Veranda: Maternalism And The Expansion Of American Women's Public Life, Abigail J. Swanson

History ETDs

Motherhood and child welfare became central organizing principles for reform during the United States Progressive Era.  From these guiding principles, the government formed the United States Children’s Bureau. It was the country's first governmental agency that focused solely on the welfare of children. Mothers writing to the federal government for motherhood advice was a phenomenon that was completely new to twentieth century mothers. Women took pride in their roles as mothers, particularly when it came to child health matters. To the generation of mothers who came before these early twentieth century letter writers, asking the government for advice on child …

Thermal Sensitivity Of Native And Introduced Crabs: Implications For Reproductive Success, Keria Moritsugu-Vandehey

Dissertations and Theses

Temperature is a major driver of physiological and developmental processes in marine organisms, and continued climate warming is expected to affect reproduction and recruitment in estuarine species. Early life stages are often particularly sensitive to environmental stress, yet relatively little is known about how warming influences embryonic development, hatching success, and larval survival across co-occurring native and introduced crab species.

This study examined the effects of temperature on embryonic development, hatching success, and early larval survival in four estuarine crab species from the Pacific Northwest: the introduced European green crab, Carcinus maenas, and the native shore crabs Hemigrapsus nudus …

Gradients Of Abandonment, William Tatman

Geography ETDs

As urban-rural disparities drive depopulation in rural areas worldwide, local strategies emerge as pathways for resilience. Research on Ojika, a Japanese island that has lost 75% of its population since the 1960s, reveals an Abandonment Gradient: a nuanced pattern of disuse adapted to modern polycrises. Extending the concept of "lying fallow" to homes and infrastructure, this thesis focuses on abandonment practices that reflect complex realities of labor, capital, and climate uncertainty. Rather than viewing depopulating communities as passive victims of out-migration, this paper argues they are critical sites for generating crisis response. Communally crafted attitudes toward unused space and more-than-human …

West Coast Workshop To Southwest Institute, Hannah Marie Cerne

Art & Art History ETDs

This thesis considers Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico (originally established as Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, CA), and its contributions to collaborative printmaking. Originally founded in 1960 by June Wayne with Clinton Adams and Garo Antreasian, Tamarind Lithography Workshop (the precursor to Tamarind Institute) revitalized lithography through structured collaboration between artists and master printers, alongside rigorous training programs. This thesis provides an institutional history of the workshop during its relocation to the University of New Mexico, highlighting its transformation into a university-based institute that integrated education and professional production. Using social and labor-based methodologies, this study analyzes how …

Cbd's Impact On Learning, Memory, And Anxiety: A Dose Response, Audrey Camacho

Psychology ETDs

Cannabidiol (CBD) is widely utilized for its therapeutic properties, yet its impact on an unmanipulated model at baseline behavior remains poorly understood. This study investigates CBD’s dose-dependent behavioral profile on spatial learning, memory, and anxiety using Long-Evans rats. Subjects received a vehicle, 20 mg/kg, or 40 mg/kg CBD dose prior to assessment in the Morris Water Task (MWT) and Elevated Plus Maze (EPM). MWT results indicated consistent Day 1 learning, but the 40 mg/kg dose induced a temporary disruption 24 hours post-treatment. Performance returned to baseline by day 6. On the EPM, traditional anxiety markers remained unchanged. While CBD did …

Assessment And Classification Of Idiosyncratic Behavioral Sequences In Rodent Navigation, Max G. Segal

Psychology ETDs

The Morris Water Task (MWT) has been the gold standard assessment of place learning and memory for over four decades, yet the processes that contribute to successful navigation are not completely understood. It is generally posited that rats learn to navigate directly to a place; however, navigation is not perfectly direct but contains variation in swim speed and trajectory resulting in efficient, yet suboptimal paths. Gonçalves-Garcia et al. (2024) demonstrated that path topography is quantitatively similar across trials within individual rats for a given start location, and dissimilar between rats and different start locations within rat. This suggests rats may …

Elucidation Of Micro/Nanoplastic Signature Of Human And Murine Lung Tissue Utilizing Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry, Aerlin D. Decker

Pharmaceutical Sciences ETDs

Micro-and Nanoplastics (MNPs) are ubiquitous biological pollutants that have been identified throughout a variety of biological samples. MNPs have been detected in several human tissues, such as the brain, kidneys, and liver. Lung tissue remains understudied for MNP accumulation despite the large surface area and clear path for exposure. Using Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (Py-GC/MS), human lung tissue was evaluated for 12 different polymers, enabling quantification of total plastic per gram of tissue to be identified. Further analysis was performed with Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) to investigate heavy metal accumulation in human lung samples and determine whether a …

Assessment Of Anaerobic Co-Digestion Of High Strength Organic Feedstocks Diverted From Landfills, Sumaiya Sharmin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

The increasing generation of high-strength organic wastes such as food waste and fats, oils, and grease (FOG) presents challenges for landfill capacity and waste management. Anaerobic co-digestion offers a sustainable alternative by converting these wastes into renewable energy and nutrient-rich digestate. This study evaluated the co-digestion performance of single fruit waste residuals and mixed food waste with wastewater sludge to identify substrate combinations that maximize methane production while maintaining process stability. Laboratory-scale batch experiments were conducted under mesophilic conditions using thickened waste activated sludge (TWAS) with varying proportions of food waste and co-substrates, including seaweed, aquatic weed, grease trap waste, …

Notch Signaling Regulates The Secretion Of Pro-Metastatic Factors In Extracellular Vesicles In Liposarcoma, Menchus Quan, Yi-Kai Liu, Ying Zhao, Madeline Kay, Kai Sun, Timothy P Gavin, Raphael E Pollock, W Andy Tao, Shihuan Kuang

The Brown Foundation: Institute of Molecular Medicine

Notch signaling is an emerging regulator of liposarcoma (LPS), but its role in mediating communication with the tumor microenvironment (TME) is unclear. Here, we investigate how Notch activation (NICD overexpression) alters the proteomes of LPS-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs). We used quantitative mass spectrometry to profile the EV proteome in multiple contexts: cultured LPS cells, LPS tumor, circulating EVs of LPS-bearing mice, and human LPS samples. We found that Notch signaling increases the secretion of EV proteins that favor tumor progression and metastasis but suppresses immune responses in murine LPS cells. Overlapping murine and human LPS data identifies 18 proteins that …

Impacts Of Agricultural Microplastics On The Growth Of Marine Phytoplankton In Monterey Bay, Olivia A. Pawlyk

Master's Theses

Agricultural plastics are an emerging source of microplastics (MPs) to coastal marine environments, yet their effects on marine phytoplankton remain poorly understood. In coastal regions surrounding Monterey Bay (California, USA), plastic mulch used in agriculture can fragment into MPs during weathering and removal, entering marine waters via runoff and wind transport. This study investigated the effects of environmentally relevant concentrations of agricultural MPs on the growth and physiology of four marine phytoplankton species: two harmful algal bloom (HAB) taxa (Alexandrium sp. and Pseudo-nitzschia multiseries) and two non-HAB taxa (Thalassiosira sp. and Prorocentrum sp.). Each species was cultured independently and exposed …

De Novo Pyrimidine Synthesis Controls Germinal Center B Cell And Plasma Cell Fates And Systemic Autoimmunity, Julia L. Weber, Tien Bui, Keomonyroth Nuon, Adam J. Fike, Sophia M. Crocker, Kristen N. Bricker, Anju Maharjan, Wujuan Zhang, Aaron R. Goldman, Sathi Babu Chodisetti, Ziaur S. M. Rahman

Department of Microbiology and Immunology Faculty Papers

Whether and how pyrimidine metabolites promote systemic autoimmunity is unknown. Here, metabolomics and 15N-amide glutamine tracing show enhanced flux through de novo pyrimidine synthesis in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)-prone B cells. Temporal inhibition of pyrimidine synthesis dampens SLE-prone but not foreign antigen-specific germinal center (GC), plasma cell (PC), and antibody responses. Uridine monophosphate synthase (UMPS) conditional deletion, however, reveals a B cell-intrinsic requirement of de novo pyrimidine synthesis in foreign antigen-driven and SLE-prone GC, PC, and antibody responses and kidney immune complex deposition. Metabolomics, mitochondrial stress test, metabolic flow cytometry, glycolytic rate assay, and RNA sequencing highlight the importance of …

A Waste-To-Fuel Approach: Utilizing Parkia Speciosa Peel Extract For Green Synthesis Of Zno Nanocatalyst, Nurul Zannah Siregar, Vivi Sisca, Isalmi Aziz, Wulandari Wulandari, Dicky Annas

Baghdad Science Journal

Biodiesel can be made by a transesterification reaction using a ZnO catalyst. This research aims to synthesize and characterize the ZnO catalyst and test its activity in producing biodiesel from waste cooking oil. ZnO was synthesized by the one-pot phytosynthesis method by adding petai peel (Parkia speciosa Hassk). ZnO catalyst size 42.9 nm. The resulting surface area and pore size are 7.629 m²/g and 1.693 nm, respectively. The particle size and constituent components of the ZnO catalyst are 93.21 nm with 82.3% (Zn) and 17.7% (O). FTIR spectra confirmed the formation of metal-oxide stretching at wave number 511 …

Reducing Unreliability Of Complex Systems By Numerical Optimization: A Hybrid Approach, Fouad Hamza Abd Alsharify, Ahmed Hasan Alridha, Zahir Al-Khafaji

Baghdad Science Journal

This paper investigates the effectiveness of numerical optimization techniques in enhancing the reliability of complex systems. The main objective of the study is to reduce the unreliability of complex systems by narrowing the range of component unreliability, thereby reducing the probability of system failure and achieving stability and robustness in the reliability of complex systems. The technique for this task involves formulating the problem as a multi-objective numerical optimization problem under specified constraints using Particle Swarm Optimization and Simulated Annealing algorithms, as well as a hybrid approach combining the two algorithms. The multi-objective optimization techniques were applied to a more …

Arts & Literature: Living On The Margins, Bashir Cassimally

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Living on the Margins follows the parallel journey of a mountain gorilla and a Batwa youth in Rwanda against the backdrop of displacement and genocide. The story explores the marginalization of a human community and the bond between people, animals, and land.

K-12 Teachers’ Perspectives On The Adoption Of Virtual Reality And Augmented Reality Technology In Classroom Instruction, Breanna Mckenley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem addressed in this basic qualitative study was that although some K–12 teachers have access to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies, these tools are not widely accepted or adopted for classroom instruction. Guided by the technology acceptance model, the purpose of the study was to explore K–12 teachers’ perspectives on their willingness to incorporate VR/AR, the perceived usefulness and ease of use of these technologies, and the challenges they encounter or anticipate during the adoption process. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 10 K-12 teachers from public, charter, and private schools in the United States who had …

Mapping And Modeling Threat-Evoked Brain States After Early Life Adversity, Taylor W. Uselman

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Early life adversity (ELA) increases lifelong neuropsychiatric vulnerability. Yet how ELA reorganizes brain-wide activity and circuit coordination across later experience remains unclear. This dissertation tests the hypothesis that ELA alters adult brain-wide activity and responses to threat through disrupted coordination among neural systems that regulate emotional experience, including prefrontal-limbic and monoaminergic systems. Longitudinal manganese-enhanced MRI of adult mice exposed to standard or fragmented early care, combined with computational processing and statistical modeling, quantified brain states before, during, and long after innate predator threat. These studies established that acute threat evokes large-scale, distributed brain activity that evolves over time. ELA potentiates …

Prenatal Alcohol Exposure Induces Vulnerability To Mild Stress Through Heightened Limbic Glial Activation And Cytokine Release, Justine R. Zimmerly

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) results from prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) and is linked to development of mood disorders, which in turn are driven by dysregulation of the sympathetic nervous system, the neuroendocrine hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and the central nervous system (CNS) neuroimmune response to stressors. PAE alters brain glial activation and proinflammatory cytokine expression through secondary challenges such as psychological stressors. The goals of the experiments presented in this dissertation were to 1) examine peripheral glucocorticoid receptor function following mild acute stress in adult PAE offspring, 2) characterize a sensitized cytokine stress response in the hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, …

Myeloid Mmp14 Couples Extracellular Proteolysis To Inflammatory And Metabolic Remodeling During Obesity, Long J Shao, Fathima Elizondo, Feng Gao, Elizabeth L Lieu, Bharati Reddi, Maryam Elizondo, Iqbal Mahmud, Kristin Eckel-Mahan, Philipp E Scherer, Xin Ge, Huaizhu Wu, Sean Hartig, Kai Sun

The Brown Foundation: Institute of Molecular Medicine

Macrophages orchestrate tissue remodeling, inflammation, and metabolic dysfunction in obesity, but the role of macrophage-intrinsic extracellular proteolysis in immunometabolic regulation remains unclear. Matrix metalloproteinase-14 (MMP14), a membrane-bound protease, is strongly induced during monocyte-to-macrophage differentiation and further elevated in adipose tissue macrophages from high-fat diet (HFD)-fed mice. Pharmacological inhibition or myeloid-specific deletion of Mmp14 impaired macrophage differentiation, proliferation, migration, phagocytosis, and inflammatory activation in response to obesity-associated adipose tissue signals. Mechanistically, MMP14 promoted inflammatory programming by increasing endotrophin generation and enhancing TLR4-NFκB signaling. MMP14 also reprogrammed macrophage lipid metabolism by suppressing lipolysis and promoting lipid accumulation, altering metabolic communication with neighboring …

You Can't Teach Kids From A Book: Language, Authority And Revitalization In Jicarilla Apache Life, Mariann Skahan

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation examines how Jicarilla Apache is learned, taught, and used across community life, with particular attention to contemporary language revitalization. Based on ethnographic research with elders, educators, language workers, families, and community institutions, it follows language practices across classrooms, culture camps, homes, ceremonial settings, and collaborative archival projects. I show that linguistic knowledge does not carry the same authority or consequences in every setting. Words may be recognized without being taken up, speakers may possess linguistic knowledge without being authorized to teach or correct, and archival texts may preserve linguistic forms without preserving the relations needed to interpret and …

Final 2022 Unreclaimed Sites Sampling: Ur-07 Site Evaluation Summary Report, Pioneer Technical Services, Inc.

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Functionalization Of The Amine Group For Access To 4-Imidazolidinone-Sulfadiazine Hybrid Derivatives And Study Of Their Biological Activities, Sabaa A. Yousif, Rafid S. Dawood

Baghdad Science Journal

The work successfully synthesized twelve novel derivatives of 4-imidazolidinone bearing a sulfadiazine moiety using a one-pot reaction. This was done by condensation of sulfadiazine with twelve different aldehydes to afford the corresponding imines as intermediates, which were then followed by a cyclization reaction with glycine to furnish the desired products 1-12 in 56-85% yields. The structures of these products were identified by FT-IR and ¹H NMR spectroscopy. In addition, a number of the produced compounds demonstrated diverse antibacterial and antioxidant activities. In terms of the antibacterial activity, the compounds 1, 2, 3, 4, …

State Estimation In Indoor Lifi Using Markov Chains: Polar Angle Prediction And Performance Analysis, Mohanad Sarem Almothfar, Alyaa Abdulhussein Al-Joda, Hawraa H. Abbas

Baghdad Science Journal

The reliability of Light-Fidelity (LiFi)-based indoor connectivity depends directly on the device orientation and the non-isotropic nature of the optical wireless communication (OWC) channel. In an actual indoor OWC system, the link quality varies significantly with the receiving orientation of the user equipment (UE). During deep-learning-based tracking, this variability imposes considerable computational overhead on resource-constrained IoT microcontrollers when estimating the user's position and orientation. To solve this problem, we employed a discrete Markov Chain estimator to calculate transition probabilities over 3 × 3 m and 5 × 5 m grids. The simulation and experimental results show that the higher the …

Optimized Fast-Learning Network Model With Smote For University Network Intrusion Detection Systems, Robert Wamusi, Guma Ali, Taban Habibu

Baghdad Science Journal

Traditional Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) tend to have a high false positive detection rate, are time-consuming to train, and lack the flexibility to react quickly to changing cyber threats, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and phishing. Such restrictions decrease the responsiveness and reliability of the IDS services implemented in the university network, both wired and wireless, at the Uganda Christian University (UCU), where network and traffic analysis have become a necessity. This study analyzes the current threat environment of networking at UCU in terms of the type, origin, and target of various attacks to identify gaps in …

A New Numerical Approach For Solving Caputo-Fabrizio Fractional Differential Equations, Manoj Kumar

Baghdad Science Journal

In this paper, we present a novel numerical scheme for solving fractional-order differential equations of the form ^CFD_t^η ψ ( t ) = f( t,ψ ( t ) ),ψ ( 0 ) = ψ ₀,0 < η < 1,t∈[ 0,T ], where ^CFD_t^η denotes the Caputo-Fabrizio derivative operator. Further, we establish the stability and error analysis of the proposed scheme. We also extend this scheme for solving systems of fractional differential equations. Furthermore, we perform the several numerical simulations and present the results graphically. The obtained solutions are compared with those achieved through the well-known methods such as fractional Adams-Bashforth method and a new predictor-corrector method. It has been observed that the proposed method offers greater accuracy than these established methods. Hence, the proposed scheme can be utilized for the simulations of various fractional order differential equations, when the derivatives are considered in the Caputo-Fabrizio sense.

Detecting Http Flood Attacks Using 2d Array Summation, Kamal Alieyan, Belal Sudqi Khater, Ayman Ghaben, Mamoun Abu Helou, Waheeb Abu-Ulbeh, Hani Iwidat

Baghdad Science Journal

One of the popular ways of attaching networks and servers is by adopting DDoS (Distributed denial of service). The preferred sector of hacking targeted are online services and networked area with high traffic. Although innovative and modern methods have been developed to mitigate these threats, there is still a need for more effective techniques to detect DDoS HTTP flooding attacks. This paper aims to address this gap by proposing an advanced mathematical approach capable of efficiently handling, processing, and detecting DDoS HTTP flooding attacks. The paper introduces a unique method based on the summation of rows and columns in a …