Digital Commons Network^™

Investigating The Impact Of Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms On Freshwater Bivalves, Destiny Devlin

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) threaten freshwater ecosystems by producing toxins that disrupt aquatic organism functions and pose risks to human health. This study investigated how exposure to toxin-producing cyanobacteria affects the behavior and toxin accumulation of Asian clams (Corbicula fluminea) under controlled laboratory conditions. Asian clams were collected from a freshwater site in New Jersey, maintained in greenhouse bins, and fed either Microcystis novacekii (non-toxin-forming, control N=3) or Microcystis aeruginosa (toxin-forming, experimental N=3) at 100,000 cells/mL for 28 days. Weekly behavioral assays were conducted to track shell opening, burying, clustering, valve closure, foot extension, and time to first opening. Toxin …

Holistic Stormwater Management In The Bound Brook River Basin, New Jersey, Sana Mirza

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This dissertation presents a holistic framework for stormwater management in the Bound Brook River Basin, an urban watershed in central New Jersey that faces chronic nutrient enrichment and climate-driven hydrologic changes. The research integrates water-quality trend analysis, hydrologic modeling, and low-impact development (LID) optimization to assess current and projected watershed responses. By combining empirical monitoring data with downscaled climate simulations and spatial prioritization, the study utilizes a holistic approach for stormwater management planning. The first objective was to characterize nutrient dynamics and hydrologic transport pathways for nitrogen, phosphorus, and total suspended solids (TSS) from 2004 to 2019. Using bi-monthly monitoring …

An Integrated Approach To Groundwater Management In Northern New Jersey Watersheds, Toritseju Oyen

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Groundwater deterioration has emerged as a pressing global concern, with widespread observations of declining water quality in various regions. The predominant cause of this deterioration is attributed to anthropogenic activities, which are deeply intertwined with daily human practices that contaminate water resources. Over the decades, many forested and wetland areas have been converted mainly for increased urbanization and industrialization use in northern New Jersey. The region’s watershed, already characterized as a low-yield aquifer, is facing deterioration because of continuous change in land cover. Anthropogenic activities aimed at providing solutions to problems, such as food scarcity, icy roads during the winter …

Applying History As Law: The Role Of Historical Facts In Implementing Constitutional Doctrine, Joseph Blocher, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Supreme Court has long relied on historical evidence in constitutional cases, but recent years have seen a major change in how it does so: not only to interpret the meaning of constitutional text, but to establish doctrinal tests that call for historical evidence to be used in the application of those tests going forward. Broadly speaking, originalism has moved from the realm of legal interpretation to that of law declaration and then to law application. This transformation in the legal significance of history raises important questions for originalism as a practice of constitutional adjudication, not simply a theory …

Ai And Courts: An International Human Rights Perspective, Veronika Fikfak, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

International human rights courts and treaty bodies are increasingly turning to automated decision-making (ADM) technologies to expedite and improve their review of individual complaints. These tribunals have yet to consider many of the legal, normative, and practical issues raised by the use of different types of automation technologies for these purposes. This chapter offers an initial assessment of the benefits and challenges of introducing ADM into international human rights adjudication. We weigh up the benefits of introducing these tools to improve international human rights adjudication – which include greater speed and efficiency in processing and sorting cases, identifying patterns in …

The Eighth Amendment And Prison Staff-To-Sentenced Prisoner Sexual Violence, Matthew Lyskawa

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I provide the first comprehensive account of lower federal courts’ Eighth Amendment prison conditions jurisprudence regarding prison staff-to-sentenced prisoner sexual violence. I show that lower federal courts are systematically misunderstanding and misapplying Supreme Court case law in this context. The result is that sexually victimized prisoners must meet extremely burdensome doctrinal standards unique to sexual violence claims. Lower federal courts would faithfully follow Supreme Court precedent if they applied the excessive force standard to sexual assault claims and the conditions of confinement standard to sexual harassment claims. However, a faithful application of Supreme Court case law does …

Llm-Assisted Legal Propositions Identification From Party Arguments In The U.S. Supreme Court Briefs, Heng Zheng, Alex Zhang

Faculty Scholarship

Merits briefs are central to U.S. litigation, serving as the primary means for parties to present arguments and persuade judges. Legal propositions in these merits briefs are the atomic units of arguments, whose relationships evolve throughout litigation and inform court decisions and precedent. Large language models (LLMs) have been applied to legal document review, but there is limited evidence on their ability to identify legal propositions in merits briefs. Given the labor-intensive nature of the task, we evaluate a human-AI collaborative approach to identifying legal propositions in the U.S. Supreme Court merits briefs, in which legal annotators review and revise …

Rethinking Behavior - Winter 2026, Midwest Symposium For Leadership In Behavior Disorders

ReThinking Behavior Magazine

A magazine for professionals serving children and youth with behavioral needs.

Winter 2026, Volume 9, Issue 2

Systematic Study On Preparation And Characterizations Of High Performance Bimetallic Pt-Co/Sba-15 Catalyst In N-Heptane Isomerization, Talib M. Albayati, Khalid A. Sukkar, Nisreen S. Ali, Mahir A. Abdulrahman, Basheer A. Abdulhussein, Issam K. Salih, Narges Elmi Fard

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Bimetallic catalysts were prepared by deposition of 1% of loading of (Pt-Co) onto SBA 15 support using heterogeneous reaction for enhancing hydroisomerization and promoting hydrocracking for the decomposition of n-heptane. The catalytic performance of the catalysts was subsequently evaluated thereafter. Characterization of the prepared catalysts was done by various techniques, which include XRD, FTIR, BETBJH, SEM/EDS, and TEM. The temperature range studied for this catalytic activity was 250 to 400 °C, at atmospheric pressure in a plug-flow reactor. The experimental setup kept a very rigorous control over the temperature, flow rate for the reactants, and pressure, while gas chromatographic techniques …

High Potential, Uneven Uptake: Off-Grid Renewables In Agriculture Across The Global South, Muhamad Setyawan Bahari, Destia Mardhotillah

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Reliable energy access is widely recognized as essential for agricultural development, yet adoption of off-grid renewable energy technologies (RETs) in the Global South remains uneven despite their high potential. While RETs are increasingly promoted as solutions to food insecurity and energy poverty, evidence on what enables or constrains their uptake across agricultural contexts remains fragmented. This study systematically reviews 18 peer-reviewed articles published between 2013 and 2025 using the PRISMA framework and synthesizes findings through a PESTEL lens. The literature has expanded in recent years, reflecting growing policy attention to the energy–agriculture nexus, but remains concentrated in Asia and heavily …

Regulatory Design Choices For Ai: The What, The Who And The How, Aziz Z. Huq

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

This chapter identifies three common design choices that must be made in the course of an effort to regulate artificial intelligence “AI”). By isolating the way in which those different sovereign regulators approach these choices in respect to AI, it is possible to evaluate more clearly the likely effects of regulation, and to better understand aspects of regulatory design that to date have been overlooked. First, the “what” of AI regulation is not just a matter of how “AI” is defined, but also which element of the technology stack is targeted by law: compute, data, or models. Second, the “who” …

Why Are Executions Becoming Crueler?, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

Since the modern death penalty era, this country’s six execution methods have become crueler over time. This article details the execution procedures adopted across death penalty states up to the end of 2025, analyzing their societal and cultural underpinnings and explaining how they were implemented, including their shared flaws, unscientific origins and protocols, and reliance on untrained, unqualified, or unknown executioners. While legislatures and courts claim that states move from one technique to the next to enhance greater humaneness, history shows that such switches are primarily propelled by constitutional challenges to a state’s particular technique. In theory, rendering a state’s …

The Surveillance Of System-Adjacent Individuals, Mariam A. Hinds

Faculty Scholarship

Although the Fourth Amendment protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” this right is not enjoyed by all people equally. Supreme Court jurisprudence has curtailed the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of individuals under probation or parole supervision. In this line of cases, the Court concluded that the government’s interest in monitoring supervisees, reducing recidivism, and promoting public safety outweighed their reasonable expectation of privacy.

However, surveillance mechanisms like probation and parole extend the criminal legal system’s carceral gaze beyond the supervisees and peer into the bedrooms and digital lives of their families, roommates, and communities, or who this Article calls system-adjacent …

The Destruction Of The Climate Spending State, Adam D. Orford

Faculty Scholarship

The Biden Administration bet big on spending laws to forward its climate policies, creating a novel “climate spending state”in a field previously approached primarily through regulation. But the second Trump Administration, building on an aggressive theory of Presidential power, with support from bicameral Congressional majorities and a sympathetic Supreme Court, has dismantled the climate spending state with startling ease and speed. Although degradation of the federal workforce and legislative alterations to the tax code have played their part, it is the Trump Administration’s refusal to administer the spending laws enacted by prior Congresses that has had the most disruptive and …

The International Order, International Law, And The Definition Of Security, Harlan G. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

As economic security has seemingly moved to the center of American and European foreign policy, both the United States and the European Union have broadened their interpretation of international law rules governing security, coercion, and intervention. But these interpretations are not exactly new, echoing developing state interpretations of international law that developed states had long ago seemingly rejected. How are these once moribund interpretations of security, force, and coercion being brought back to life?

This article argues that these interpretative shifts highlight the role of the international order as an interpretative mechanism within international law. Borrowing from the work of …

The Law Of For Cause Removal, Jane Manners, Lev Menand

Faculty Scholarship

For the first time in American history, the Supreme Court is poised to decide what it means for the president to remove a principal officer “for cause.” The case — which arises from the attempted removal of Lisa Cook, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System — has major implications for central bank independence in the United States and, more broadly, for the U.S. administrative state. But given how long it has been since such offices were formally contested, courts and commentators have forgotten many aspects of the legal tradition governing “for cause” removal. In …

Silencing As Blackening, I. Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

We are so accustomed to seeing defendants sit silently at criminal trials while their lawyers speak that we hardly question it. Or we tell ourselves this silence is for their own protection, part of their privilege against self-incrimination and the rules we have created for their own benefit. But what if we've gotten everything wrong? What if encouraging defendants to remain silent does not inure to their benefit at all, but to the State's? And what if this silencing is tied to race? "Silencing as Blackening" tells a fuller story about silent defendants. One, that this silence is rarely voluntary, …

Book Review Of Political And Social Control In China: The Consolidation Of Single-Party Rule, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Effect Of Antipsychotic Medication Use And Type On Mortality And Cardiovascular Risks In Nursing Home Patients With Dementia, Hamid R. Okhravi, Fang Fang, Melissa P. Hunter, Brynn E. Sheehan

Glennan Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology Faculty Publications

Introduction

Antipsychotic medication (APM) use in nursing home (NH) patients with dementia is common but carries risks. This study assessed the association between APM use and mortality, stroke, and myocardial infarction (MI) compared to non-use, as well as differences between first- and second-generation APMs.

Methods

A serial cross-sectional study using Medicare data examined outcomes from 2012 to 2015 in a national sample of 328,138 US NH residents aged 50 and older with dementia. Multivariate logistic regressions were used to analyze risk.

Results

APM use was associated with increased mortality in all years (odds ratio [OR] range: 2.39 to 1.23, all …

Medical Image Feature Extraction And Selection Based On Inception V3 And Gini Index For Cervical Cancer Cells Identification, Rachida Assawab, Mounir Ouzir, Badreddine Benyacoub, Abderrahim Electrochemical Sensor For Tenofovir Allati, Ismail El Moudden

Research and Infrastructure Service Enterprise (RISE) Faculty Publications

Background: Cervical cancer remains the fourth most common cancer in women globally, with 604,000 new cases annually. Early detection through cytological screening is critical, but manual interpretation suffers from high false negative rates and requires expert pathologists often unavailable in resource-limited settings.

Methods: We developed a novel hybrid framework combining InceptionV3-based deep feature extraction with Gini Index feature selection for automated cervical cancer cell classification. Using the Herlev dataset (917 Pap smear images: 242 normal, 675 abnormal), we extracted 2048 deep features and applied systematic feature selection to identify optimal discriminative subsets. Comprehensive clustering analysis (K-means, K-medoid, Fuzzy clustering) validated …

Welcome From The Editor, Joshua E. Young

Iowa Journal of Communication

No abstract provided.

Editors Forum: A Call For Collaboration Among Professionals: Opening Dialogues About Our Professional Organizations, Joshua E. Young

Iowa Journal of Communication

No abstract provided.

Promises Fulfilled: 114-Year-Old Alelia Murphy’S Life Of Faith And Resilience, Jacqueline B. Koonce

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Alelia Murphy was the oldest living person in the United States, turning 114 in July 2019 until her death in November 2019. She and her family credit her longevity to her faith in God. This premise is explored through her words as she stated she had not seen everyone she needed to see and compared that statement to Simeon from the Bible who did not die until he saw the Messiah. Alelia Murphy also had not seen everything. She was seeing the relative success of her much admired, former President Barack Obama, and she had just met me, her great …

Master Plan Of Evangelism – Kurdish Version, Robert E. Coleman

Heritage Material

No abstract provided.

Economic Instrumentality Report Of Work & Occc, Manuel A. Rivera, Stephen Pratt, Frank Badu-Baiden, Margaret Zorrilla

Hospitality+™ Center for Innovation and Training

This report presents a comprehensive overview of the workforce supporting the OCCC, based on a research partnership with the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management. The analysis integrates nine interconnected studies examining workforce characteristics, job satisfaction, quality of life, commitment, retention, financial sustainability, and perceptions of meaning in work. Findings are based on 299 valid responses, representing front-line, supervisory, and managerial employees across the Central Florida events and tourism ecosystem.

The Role Of Conjunctive Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy In Decreasing Amputations In Those With Diabetic Foot Ulcers: A Clinical Review, Jazmyne D. Smith

The PA Department Journal of Medical Science

Diabetic Foot Ulcers (DFU) are a common complication of Diabetes Mellitus, which is the most common cause of amputations in the US. The purpose of this clinical review is to analyze the impact of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy on reducing amputations and improving healing rates in DFUs. PubMed was searched using the key terms “Diabetic Foot Ulcer,” “Amputation,” and “Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.” With the addition of filters, Mesh terms, and Boolean operations, 18 results were yielded. The inclusion and exclusion criteria narrowed the search to 6 articles, which were used for this review. The 6 articles included in this study were …

Pharmacologic Therapy Versus Catheter Ablation For Atrial Fibrillation, Jahkarius Hargrove

The PA Department Journal of Medical Science

Introduction- Atrial fibrillation is a common type of cardiac arrythmia that affects many people across the world. Patients with atrial fibrillation are at high risk for complications and poor outcomes. Stroke is the most prominent complication of atrial fibrillation if left untreated. The purpose of this clinical review is to analyze which modality is a better first line treatment, antiarrhythmic drug therapy or catheter ablation for long term management of this arrythmia.

Methods- Pubmed was searched with a specific search strategy using key terms “cardiac”, “Arrythmia”, “Antiarrhythmic agents”, “radiofrequency ablation”, and “surgical operation”. Operators and filters such as …

Comparing Autografts And Bioengineered Skin Equivalents In The Management Of Severe Burns, Madison Hill

The PA Department Journal of Medical Science

INTRODUCTION: Severe burns are associated with high morbidity, mortality, and treatment costs, often requiring surgical intervention to restore the skin barrier and prevent complications like infection and hypothermia. Autologous skin grafting is the current gold standard for burn wound closure but may not be feasible in cases of large TBSA injuries with limited donor sites. Bioengineered skin equivalents, including acellular dermal substitutes and cell-based therapies, offer potential benefits in wound healing and scar quality while reducing donor site morbidity. This review evaluates the effectiveness of autografts compared to bioengineered skin equivalents in severe burn management, with a focus on healing …

Post-Surgical Prognostic Outlook Comparison Of Off-Pump Vs. On-Pump Cabg Procedures, Tanner A. Hendricks

The PA Department Journal of Medical Science

Introduction: Coronary artery disease in the United States had 680,981 deaths in 2023 alone with 400,000 CABG procedures being done. Coronary artery bypass grafting is a procedure in which coronary arteries occluded by fatty plaques are revascularized to restore blood flow to the myocardium. There are two effective options for this procedure, one being the on-pump approach, and the other being off-pump. Both methods carry risks, such as stoke and MI, as well as benefits, but the question of which carries the better outlook on mortality and complications is up for debate. The purpose of this paper is to study …

Efficacy Of Metformin Compared To Insulin In The Management Of Gestational Diabetes, Sarah Mchale

The PA Department Journal of Medical Science

Intro: Gestational diabetes (GDM) is a condition in which pregnant women are unable to use insulin effectively, leading to increased levels of glucose in the body. Although insulin has traditionally been a first-line pharmacologic treatment for GDM, metformin is increasingly being explored as an alternative. The purpose of this clinical review is to analyze whether metformin could be a safe and effective oral antihyperglycemic option compared to insulin in the treatment of GDM.

Methods: PubMed was searched with a specific search strategy using the key terms “insulin,” “metformin,” “gestational diabetes,” and “blood glucose.” Operator and filters narrowed results to 19 …