Digital Commons Network^™

Cultural Responsiveness: Examining Assessments Of Therapists For Ethical And Clinical Outcomes (Create Clout), Tsotso T. Ablorh

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

The Multicultural Counseling Competencies (MCC) and Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (MSJCC) are well-researched and supported counseling practices for decreasing microaggressions in therapy and consequent attrition, lack of satisfaction, and maltreatment (Ratts et al., 2016; Sue et al., 1982). However, scholars critique existing methods for measuring therapists’ cultural responsiveness for being disconnected from therapeutic process and outcomes (Hays, 2020; Wilcox et al., 2020). This study examined which MSJCC measures associated with variables clinically and ethically relevant to better treatment outcomes and lower microaggressive, neglectful, and stereotypical treatment for hypothetical Black, female clients by White therapists. 62 White psychologists in …

Effect Of Vocational Training Programs On The Mental Health Of Indian Women Living In Contexts Of Urban Poverty (Or Urban Slums), Sriramya Potluri

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Women living in contexts of urban poverty (IWLCUP) experience disproportionately high rates of psychological distress, yet their mental health needs remain largely underrecognized. Beyond individualized explanations, broader ecological perspectives situate these women’s distress within previously underemphasized macrolevel forces and acknowledge the role of inequity and related structural disparities (e.g., economic, sociocultural, political etc.) in their oppression and disempowerment, thereby contributing to increased psychological vulnerability. Such frameworks call for intervention efforts that reduce individual psychological risk by addressing structural determinants proximally and distally impacting the lives of IWLCUP. Specifically, targeting poverty and economic insecurity might drive positive downstream effects that ultimately …

Motor Imagery Eeg Decoding For Brain-Computer Interfaces: Structured Representation, Transfer, And Drift, Yiming Shen

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Motor imagery EEG decoding is often summarized by the accuracy of a final classifier, but the classifier is only the last stage of the pipeline. Before classification, the signal has already been shaped by preprocessing, feature extraction, source-session organization, and adaptation. This dissertation studies how feature representation, source-session transfer, and drift shape reliable MI-EEG decoding for brain-computer interfaces.

It first studies within-session decoding on public MI-EEG datasets using nested validation that keeps preprocessing, feature fitting, and model selection inside the training folds. This analysis separates gains from feature representation from gains due to nonlinear classification, and relates both comparisons to …

Gendered Precarity, Informality And Survival Among Cambodian Women Migrants In Thailand, Sokha Eng

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Migration scholars have long assumed that women migrant laborers move as individuals, leave family behind, are governed by labor migration policies, and are employed full-time. However, in the context of South-South migration, many workers migrate as families, with husbands, wives, and sometimes even children. Some engage in the informal economy, serving as casual and on-call workers. These types of employment fall outside the scope of standard labor migration policies and therefore receive less attention. As a result, migrants’ experiences in such work arrangements remain underexplored. This study examines the experiences of Cambodian migrant women in Thailand by examining the case …

Equitable Access To Literacy Assessment And Instruction For Students With Cerebral/Cortical Visual Impairment, Tammy Reisman

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Students with Cerebral/Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) represent a growing population of learners whose visual difficulties originate in the brain rather than the eyes. As understanding of CVI has evolved, questions have emerged regarding the most appropriate approaches to literacy assessment and instruction. While some educational approaches emphasize maximizing visual functioning, increasing evidence supports the integration of compensatory skills and multiple sensory channels to improve literacy access. Understanding current literacy assessment and instructional practices is essential to ensuring equitable educational opportunities for students with CVI.

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine current literacy assessment and instructional practices for …

Redefined: Understanding The Experience Of Black Joy Among Black Youth, Kaela A. Yamini

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

The study of Black joy is a newer concept and, therefore, reflected in a small but growing body of literature. Many scholars have reflected on the theoretical nature of Black joy and how it can appear across settings, e.g., academically, occupationally, communally, and internally, but very few studies have examined this phenomenon empirically. Several definitions of Black joy have emerged in connection to history and suffering; however, there is still a notable lack of agreement among researchers. Despite that, all conceptualizations acknowledge how this emotional experience is much greater than the pain associated with it and highlight its ability …

The Negotiated Identities Of Refugee-Background Women During Resettlement, Iuliia Fakhrutdinova

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Refugee-background women experience unique challenges while resettling in the U.S. as they navigate complicated transnational gender roles, education gaps, migration trauma, learning a new language, and literacy in the adaptation process during resettlement, which can derail the productive paths they are on. Therefore, ignoring refugee-background women’s unique experiences and failing to understand their identities prevents our society from doing social justice and creating a space for a smooth adaptation to the new context. Language plays a paramount role in identity formation, as it moves away from the belief that identity is an essential concept. For refugee-background women during resettlement, their …

“School’S Not For Me. I Don't Belong In School.”: Students With Dis/Abilities’ Perspectives On Special Education During State Intervention, Leila E. Parks

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study presents the lived experiences of 10 racialized teens with dis/abilities who received special education services in the Boston Public Schools during state intervention. As a youth participatory action research collective, the young people in the study’s Youth with Dis/Abilities Research Group explored issues of inclusion and exclusion, ableism, racism, and safety at school. The project was framed by dis/ability critical race studies, incorporating aspects of critical race theory and disability studies in education. Based on stories expressed through free-writes, poetry, drawings, interviews, and group conversations, the racialized teens with dis/abilities shared negative school experiences overall. Though most …

Innovating A Crustacean Embryo Toxicity (Cet) Assay For Screening Environmental Contaminants, Irina A. Polunina-Proulx

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Environmental pollutants can disrupt normal developmental processes, leading to neurobehavioral and developmental abnormalities. Toxicity tests are important for evaluating environmental contaminants; however, standard assays are often time- and cost-intensive and typically require large numbers of vertebrate animals. These limitations highlight the need to reduce reliance on vertebrate testing and to develop New Approach Methodologies that provide comparable results while improving efficiency and cost-effectiveness. This research utilizes a novel screening assay to evaluate developmental toxicity using Hyalella azteca. H. azteca is a freshwater amphipod widely used as a model organism for sediment toxicity in ecotoxicology, yet its embryos have been minimally …

Understanding Factors Influencing Multiple Tobacco Product Use Among Adolescents In Thailand: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach, Chaowalit Srisoem

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Tobacco use among Thai adolescents is shaped by personal, environmental, and product-related factors. However, the pathways linking these influences to actual behavior remain unclear. This study examined how personal, environmental, and product-related factors, along with intentions to use, relate to tobacco use among Thai adolescents. A cross-sectional secondary analysis was conducted using data from the 2022 Thailand Global Youth Tobacco Survey of 6,235 students aged 13–15 years. Survey weights methods were applied to produce nationally representative estimates. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling assessed latent constructs, and multinomial logistic regression examined predictors of single, dual, and multiple product use. …

Dynamics Of Swimming Microorganisms At Structured Liquid Crystal Interfaces, Vajra Sabhapathy Badha

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Active matter systems are self-driven units that consume energy to generate motion and mechanical stresses, producing non-equilibrium states of broad physical significance. Examples include synthetic microswimmers and migrating cells. Motile bacteria are a widely studied biological example because their self-propelled motion, hydrodynamic interactions, and collective organization are strongly coupled to local environmental conditions. Their swimming is sensitive to interfacial viscoelasticity, ordering, confinement, and hydrodynamic boundary effects, making them useful for investigating how interfaces regulate active biological motion. Because bacterial accumulation and attachment at interfaces are central to colonization and biofilm formation, these interactions are relevant to both active matter physics …

Nihilistic Violence Aesthetics In Public Online Communication, Heath Nicholas Landress

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

Public online communication has increasingly included violence-related content that is meme-based, ironic, visually stylized, multimodal, and only partially ideological. This comprehensive literature review synthesized research on online extremism, extremist memes, toxic multimodal content, dehumanizing digital communication, nihilistic violent extremism, warning behaviors, platform affordances, and youth-facing online environments. The purpose was to clarify what the literature had established; identify where the scholarship remained fragmented; and map research domains relevant to social, behavioral, public safety, and human services scholarship. The review used a structured, comprehensive literature review strategy supported by integrative synthesis procedures. The final corpus contained 34 scholarly sources, including 32 …

Searching The Druggable Genome Using Large Language Models, Lars Schimmelpfennig, Matthew Cannon, Quentin Cody, Joshua Mcmichael, Adam C Coffman, Susanna Kiwala, Kilannin Krysiak, Alex H Wagner, Malachi Griffith, Obi L Griffith

2020-Current year OA Pubs

SUMMARY: The druggable genome encompasses the genes that are known or predicted to interact with drugs. The Drug-Gene Interaction Database (DGIdb) provides an integrated resource for discovering and contextualizing these interactions, supporting a broad range of research and clinical applications. DGIdb is currently accessed through structured web interfaces and API calls, requiring users to translate natural-language questions into database-specific query patterns. To allow for the use of DGIdb through natural language, we developed the DGIdb Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, which allows large language models (LLMs) access to up-to-date information through the DGIdb API. We demonstrate that the MCP server …

The Experience Of Bipoc Participants In Wilderness Therapy, Rachel Esrig

Doctoral Dissertations

Wilderness therapy is an alternative to residential treatment for adolescents and young adults. Although these programs predominantly serve White-identifying individuals, a proportion of participants identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color (BIPOC). Research has shown that race and ethnicity shape individuals’ experiences with mental health treatment; however, no studies to date have specifically explored the experiences of BIPOC individuals in wilderness therapy programs. This qualitative study addresses that gap by examining the experiences of BIPOC individuals who participated in wilderness therapy during adolescence. Using an interpretive phenomenological approach, nine themes emerged from the data. Findings suggest that participants’ levels …

With Students, As A Student: Using Reflexive Autoethnography To Make Sense Of Navigating Student–Researcher Liminality In A Ph.D., Melody Bishop

The Qualitative Report

Postgraduate researchers (PGRs) are increasingly encouraged to practice reflexivity. But there is a lack of PGR-authored literature about what it means to negotiate multiple identities, particularly for student–researchers doing research with students. This paper explores challenges experienced during a longitudinal Ph.D. project involving undergraduate students with long-term health conditions. I present outcomes of a reflexive autoethnographic analysis of a diary kept making sense of research challenges, including holding dual positions as a student–researcher at the same institution. Drawing on the notion of liminality, I argue that the boundaries between my student–researcher identities, and between myself and participants, have been consistently …

A Novel Approach For Evaluating And Comparing Multiple Antipsychotic Polypharmacy In Adults Across Specialist Intellectual Disability Services In England And Wales: A Retrospective Feasibility Cohort Study, Samuel J. Tromans, Helen Neilens, Crispin Musicha, Victoria Allgar, Emily Stanyard, Richard Laugharne, Paula Mcgowan, Angela Hassiotis, Sarah Lennard, Lance V. Watkins, Bhathika Perera, Kiran Purandare, Ashok Roy, Indermeet Sawhney, Sujeet Jaydeokar, Ryan Ashford, Chris Rollinson, Hanna Abraham, Nusra Khodabux, Ogheneochuko Akusu, Samuel Paisley, Georgios Mousailidis, Meera Naran, Rohit Shankar

Peninsula Medical School

Background:In England and Wales, significant numbers of people with intellectual disability (PwID) are prescribed antipsychotics for a range of licensed and non-licensed indications, particularly behaviours that challenge. There is no system to compare antipsychotic prescribing practices across specialist adult intellectual disability (ID) services.Aim:This study aimed to determine whether converting antipsychotics and their doses to equivalent chlorpromazine units enables comparison of licensed (psychosis, etc.) and non-licensed (behaviours that challenge) prescribing between different services.Method:A feasibility retrospective cohort study using convenience sampling captured anonymized data of PwID on ⩾2 antipsychotics across eight specialist England and Wales adult ID services. The doses prescribed across …

Isolation, Structural Characterization, And In Vitro Bioactivity Assessment Of Extracellular Vesicles Derived From Lacticaseibacillus Paracasei, Dwi Liza Ramadiani, Ratika Rahmasari, Tri Wahyuni, Kusmiati Kusmiati, Herman Irawan, Khatarina Meldawati Pasaribu

Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research

The field of study on extracellular vesicles (EVs) has recently focused on probiotic bacteria, due to their ability to exhibit a wide variety of biological activity. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the effect of nutrient modulation during Lacticaseibacillus paracasei cultivation on EVs production and bioactivity. EVs were isolated by ultrafiltration method and were characterized using NTA and cryo-TEM. An in vitro evaluation was used to assess the bioactivities, antioxidant properties, anti-inflammatory potential, and ability to inhibit α-glucosidase activity. The results showed that the 2 LPEV exhibited the characteristics of vesicles with size of 96.04–100.29 nm. Cultivation in 50% MRS …

Gamclust: Identification Of Regulated Metabolic Modules In Bulk, Single Cell And Spatial Gene Expression Data, Anastasiia Gainullina, Evgeniia Chikina, Maxim N Artyomov, Alexey Sergushichev

2020-Current year OA Pubs

MOTIVATION: Metabolism operates as a highly interconnected biochemical network, and its regulation emerges from coordinated changes across many reactions and metabolites. The integration of gene expression profiling data with organism-scale metabolic networks has proven to be a valuable tool for understanding cellular metabolic regulation. However, the increasing complexity of profiling technologies and experimental designs requires the development of specialized tools.

RESULTS: Here, we present GAMclust, an R package implementing and extending the previously published GAM-clustering pipeline for identifying transcriptionally regulated metabolic modules in complex gene expression datasets. GAMclust supports bulk, single-cell, and spatial gene expression profiling. It includes built-in KEGG …

Resilience Ain’T Free: Surviving And Resisting While Navigating Well-Being As Black School Social Workers In California’S Bay Area, Ashley Lynnette Bonton

Doctoral Dissertations

The well-being of school-based mental health professionals is critical to the functioning of educational systems, yet the experiences of Black school social workers remain largely absent from existing research. Black school social workers often navigate complex professional demands while also confronting racialized expectations, systemic inequities, and emotional labor within predominantly white educational institutions. This qualitative study examines how Black school social workers in the San Francisco Bay Area navigate their personal and professional well-being within these conditions. Guided by Ecological Systems Theory and Critical Race Theory, this study explores how multiple environmental contexts and racialized institutional dynamics shape their experiences. …

Law Enforcement In Providing Protection For Revenge Porn Victims On Social Media, Augustha Kwanzaa Rich Samuel Simbolon, Muhammad Rivan Subarna

Jurnal Vokasi Indonesia

Revenge porn, which is the distribution of pornographic material without the victim's consent, is a serious and growing problem online. This practice is usually carried out by ex-partners in revenge, by distributing intimate images or videos of the victim to the internet. This research aims to identify the impact of revenge porn on victims, as well as assess the effectiveness of existing legal protection. The method used is a qualitative approach through literature study. The data collected includes revenge porn cases that occurred in Indonesia, as well as a review of regulations governing the protection of privacy and victims' rights. …

Evaluating The Effects Of Micro And Nano Size Of Silica Filler On Asphalt Cement Properties, Hussein Zghair, Hasan Joni, Maan S. Hassan

Engineering and Technology Journal

This research study examines the practicability of using micro and nano size silica to improve the asphalt characteristics. Asphalt cement penetration grade of (60 /70) was prepared using (0%, 2%, 4% and 6%) of silica filler by weight of asphalt and investigated in terms of the softening point, penetration, and penetration index, viscosity, and ductility values. To modify the asphalt binder, the silica powder was mixed by a mechanical blender set at (2000) rpm at a mixing temperature of 140°C. However, the main challenge is an agglomeration of nano-silica powder which can reduce the ductility of nano silica modified binder. …

Spiritual Energy Of Islamic House In Forming Cotemporary House, Zainab Ra’Ouf, Rana Mahdi

Engineering and Technology Journal

The pace of daily life and its requirements are getting higher and are led by technology with its direct effects on the health of the individual. There is no doubt that its benefits are endless but its negative effects on the health of the user have become clear, to reduce the negative energy accompanying it to the lowest level by facing another positive energy that is superior to restore the balance first, and overcome it to be the dominant feature of space, the house is the most important place where individuals spend most of their time, which imposes on the …

Investigation Of Groundwater Flow Direction In Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Francis Ogbozige, Michael Toko

Engineering and Technology Journal

The lack of reliable municipal water supply in the city of Port Harcourt has led to indiscriminate drilling of boreholes by the residents however, the direction of groundwater flow within the entire city has not been established. Hence, the research investigated the flow direction of groundwater in the study area in order to understand the best location for siting septic tanks and dumpsites with respect to the position of the existing or proposed borehole. This was achieved by determining the hydraulic heads (Hh) of twenty boreholes evenly distributed within the city by subtracting the static water level (SWL) from the …

Visual Depression Diagnosis From Face Based On Various Classification Algorithms, Sana Nasser, Ivan Hashim, Wisam Ali

Engineering and Technology Journal

Most psychologists believe that facial behavior through depression differs from facial behavior in the absence of depression, so facial behavior can be utilized as a dependable indicator for spotting depression. Visual depression diagnosis system (VDD) establishes dependents on expressions of the face that are expense-effective and movable. At this work, the VDD system is designed according to the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to extract features of the face. The key concept of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to explain the whole face behavior utilizing Action Units (AUs), every AU is linked to the motion of unique or maybe …

Design And Implementation Of A Wireless System To Locate A User In Indoor Environments, Amnah Kareem, Wisam Ali, Manal Jasim

Engineering and Technology Journal

The technology of indoor positioning has pulled in the consideration of researchers the expanding capability of smartphones and the advancement of sensor innovation, alongside the increase the time people spend working inside the building or being indoors. Sensor innovation, which is one of the most generally utilized information hotspots for indoor setting, has a favorable position that sensors can receive information from a cell phone without introducing any additional device. The idea of the proposed system is to use the Wi-Fi access points, inside the building, together with a Smartphone Wi-Fi sensor which lets the building administrator locate those carrying …

Application Of Treated Iraqi Rice Husk As Adsorbent For Phosphate Removal From Aqueous Solution, Anaam Sabri, Yaser Hashim

Engineering and Technology Journal

In the present work, agricultural waste, (Iraqi rice husk A’anbar type) was developed with thermal and chemical treatments for using as an adsorbent to remove phosphate anion from aqueous solution and the thermal treatment at 500oC was the best.Batch experiments were conducted to obtain the maximum removal of phosphate via changing the parameters of the process, such as contact time, pH, adsorbent dose, initial solute concentration, and the existence of competitive anions upon the removal of phosphate and was investigated. The adsorbent characterization was performed employing Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), scanning electron microscope (SEM), the BET surface …

Evaluation Of Eutrophication Levels In Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf Lake, Iraq (Biological And Chemical Study), Suhair Al-Sharifi, Salih Al-Bakri, Sataa Al-Bayati

Engineering and Technology Journal

Within Al-Najaf lake, that is one of the important shallow lakes in Iraq, the lake facing tremendous pressure due to encroachments, discharge of untreated domestic and industrial waste, drainage water from cultivated orchards, dumping of solid waste and illegal diversion of water and currently it's still suffering from these problems and neglect. The study aimed to evaluate the eutrophication status. Eutrophication is a grave problem in lakes, a knowledge about the eutrophic state help in providing a make efficient realization of the eutrophic problem.This study conducted to assess the Eutrophication level with a scale 0 – 100 depending on the …

The Solubility Of Phosphogypsum And Recovery Of Heavy And Radioactive Elements, Waleed Rashid, Israa Alkadir, Moayyed Jalhom

Engineering and Technology Journal

The essential purpose of this paper is to illustrate and inspect the leaching characteristics of Iraqi Phosphogypsum (PG). The paper presents the results of the dissolution characteristics of heavy and radioactive elements from PG, which is a by-product result from the industry of phosphate fertilizers. Leachability of heavy and radioactive elements in deionized water that has been inspected under various states of leaching, including solid/liquid ratio (10, 20 and 50 /1g/L) and temperatures (25, 45 and 85 °C), with constant other parameters such as string speed (300 rpm) and contact time (60 minutes). For the most analysis elements, the progressive …

The Effects Of Sunlight On Particle Matter & Radiation Pollution In Baghdad Airport Area, Fatima Hameed, Faris Mohammed, Abdul Hameed Al-Obaidy

Engineering and Technology Journal

The gasses emitted from the various activities, in addition to particle matter (PM10) play a major role in air quality deterioration. Particles matter and radiation are two of the most important parameters that exist in airports and were evaluated considering the variations in sunlight energy. The measured values were collected from eleven sites, which were chosen based on their influence by aviation activities. The measurements were compared to the (Iraqi Regulations and U.S EPA) for particle matter. While for radiation, the measurements were compared with the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH), International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and the …

Numerical And Experimental Modeling Of Indoor Air Quality Inside A Conditioned Space With Mechanical Ventilation And Dx-Air Conditioner, Wisam Mareed, Hasanen Hussen

Engineering and Technology Journal

Elevated CO2 rates in a building affect the health of the occupant. This paper deals with an experimental and numerical analysis conducted in a full-scale test room located in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Technology. The experiments and CFD were conducted for analyzing ventilation performance. It is a study on the effect of the discharge airflow rate of the ceiling type air-conditioner on ventilation performance in the lecture room with the mixing ventilation. Most obtained findings show that database and questionnaires analyzed prefer heights between 0.2 m to 1.2 m in the middle of an occupied …