Digital Commons Network^™

Improving Machine Learning Performance By Eliminating The Influence Of Unclean Data, Murtadha Ressan, Rehab Hassan

Engineering and Technology Journal

Regardless of the data source and type (text, digital, photo group, etc.), they are usually unclean data. The term (unclean) means that data contains some bugs and paradoxes that can strongly impact machine learning processes. The nature of the input data of the dataset is the most important reason for the success of the learning algorithm. More than one factor influences machine learning results in a specific task. The characteristics and the nature of the data are the main reasons for the algorithm's success. This paper generally examines data processing entered into an algorithm to learn machines. The paper explains …

Building Capacity, Changing Teaching Practices: Insights From A Professional Development Program For Educators In A Low-Income Country, Caroline Havery, Mary Kililo, Julie Dopsie, Mary Roroi, Di Brown, Ali Moloney, Lisa Townsend, Amanda Neill, Michele Rumsey, Chris Rossiter, Thelma Ali

Pacific Journal of Health

Background

Building capacity of health professional educators in low- and middle-income countries can improve population health outcomes through upskilling the health workforce. However, education programs must respond to local contexts and challenges including participants’ needs and expectations, language difficulties, and resource limitations. This paper evaluates a program for nursing and community health worker educators in Papua New Guinea.

Methods

This qualitative descriptive study was designed and implemented using a collaborative partnership approach. It comprised six focus groups with 26 educators who were program participants. Thematic analysis examined participants’ perceptions of the program and their implementation of change projects.

Results

Four …

Measuring What Matters: Specifications Grading And Latin* Students’ Mathematics Identity, Luis Miguel Fernández, Mayra Ortiz Galarza, Cristina Villalobos, Martha Asare

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

This study examined Specifications Grading, an alternative grading system emphasizing clearly defined learning outcomes and revision, and mathematics identity among 846 Latin* Calculus I students at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. Mathematics identity, comprising competence/performance, recognition, and interest, was measured at the beginning and end of the semester. Repeated-measures analyses indicated stable competence/performance and recognition alongside declines in interest. Specifications Grading was associated with increased mathematics identity, and multilingual students experienced smaller declines than their peers overall.

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Este estudio examinó la calificación por especificaciones, un sistema de evaluación alternativo que enfatiza resultados de aprendizaje claramente definidos y oportunidades estructuradas de revisión, …

Time Invariant Variables In The Mundlak And Hausman-Taylor Panel Data Models, Badi H. Baltagi, Long Liu

Center for Policy Research

This paper shows that the classic augmented Mundlak (1978) regression yields the between estimator for time-invariant variables. It is well known that the estimates of the time varying variables yield the fixed effects estimates. While the latter are consistent for this correlated random effects model, the between estimates are not. The between estimator is consistent only when the Hausman (1978) test does not reject the null based on between versus fixed effects. An alternative modified Hausman and Taylor (1981) estimator is proposed. Monte Carlo experiments are performed to compare various estimators under a correlated random effects as well as a …

The Collaborative Development Of Core Vocabulary In International English-Medium Early Childhood Teacher Education, Muhammad Qureshi, Kay Gallagher, Michael Bowles, Jenny Eppard

All Works

This paper serves as a guide for the development of contextually relevant word lists and word guides for English-medium early childhood teacher education programs internationally. Such resources are particularly important for English-medium programs in higher education settings where English is typically a second or foreign language for students, and where limited vocabulary knowledge can curtail learning. In the context of an undergraduate early childhood teacher education program at an English-medium university in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a rapidly modernizing Gulf state with a new interest in early childhood education, language, and content teachers co-developed word lists for Arabic-speaking students …

On The Origins Of Modern East Asia: Knowledge And The Economic Transformation Of Japan And China In The Late 19th Century, Debin Ma, Jared Rubin, Weiwen Yin

ESI Working Papers

This paper revisits the old thesis of the contrasting paths of modernization between Japan and China. It develops a new analytical framework regarding the role of knowledge acquisition (propositional vs. prescriptive) and political centralization as the key drivers behind these contrasting paths. Our model and historical data highlight how the introduction of these elements contributed to Meiji Japan’s decisive turn towards the West and Qing China’s lethargic response to Western imperialism. Our analytical framework, developed from a comparative historical narrative and quantitative data, sheds new light on the importance of knowledge acquisition in enabling developing countries to reach the world’s …

Aging In The Shadows: Szekler Cemeteries And The Case For Recognizing Elderly Populations In Bioarchaeology, Katie M. Mcgrath

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The study of aging in past populations lies at the intersection of bioarchaeology and paleodemography, offering insight into both biological processes and lived social experience. Despite this potential, older adults are often rendered “invisible” in skeletal assemblages due to methodological and cultural biases. This thesis addresses this gap through a rare, community-based study of aging among the Székely population of Transylvania. By integrating osteological analysis of individuals (11th–19th centuries) from the archaeological Papdomb church cemetery with demographic data derived from the modern cemetery headstones (ca.1850–present), this research examines patterns of aging, longevity, and elder visibility across a culturally and spatially …

Patient And Healthcare Professionals' Perceptions Of Educational Tools To Reduce Urine Culture Contamination In Outpatient Clinics: A Qualitative Study., Ashley Collazo, Trenton M Haltom, Johanan Luna Rodriguez, Kiara Olmeda, Azalia Mancera, Fabrizia Faustinella, Michael K Paasche-Orlow, Zach Landis-Lewis, Roger Zoorob, Barbara W Trautner, Larissa Grigoryan

2020-Current year OA Pubs

OBJECTIVE: Iteratively develop educational tools (instructional video and flyer) to improve midstream clean catch (MSCC) urine sample collection using patient and healthcare professionals' input.

DESIGN: Multi-method qualitative study.

SETTING: Outpatient clinics in Houston, Texas, United States.

PARTICIPANTS: Adult patients recruited from public and private clinics (

METHODS: Twelve patient interviews and three focus groups with HCPs (May 2024-November 2024). Interviews discussed patient experiences using the educational tools to guide urine specimen collection. Focus groups elicited HCPs' perspectives on the comprehensibility and utility of the tools in their respective clinics. We identified themes using directed content analysis.

RESULTS: We garnered insight …

Reliability Of Chatgpt-Based Essay Scoring: A Teacher–Ai Comparison In Economics Education, Ramadzan Defitri Pratama, Khresna Bayu Sangka, Cicilia Dyah Sulistyaningrum Indrawati

Jurnal Pendidikan: Teori, Penelitian, dan Pengembangan

Essay assessment in economics education plays an important role in measuring students' conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking skills, but is often hampered by subjectivity and teachers' workload. This study aims to analyze the reliability and level of agreement between teacher assessments and the ChatGPT-based automatic essay grading system (EsyGrade). The study uses a quantitative approach with a comparative reliability study design involving 60 high school students in grades 10 and 11. Data were analyzed using the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC), Pearson's correlation, and paired sample t-test. The results show that EsyGrade has a very high level of reliability and is …

The Status Of Terminology Within Legal Studies: In Search Of An Autonomous Discipline, Abdelatif Agnouche

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

This article examines the place of terminology in legal studies within the context of Moroccan university reform. It argues that legal terminology should not be treated as a marginal linguistic exercise, but as a structured field linked to lexicology, etymology, and translation, especially in a bilingual academic environment shaped by both Arabic and French. The author analyzes how terminology can support the scientific formation of law students, improve conceptual precision, and contribute to the development of Arabic legal lexicons. The paper ultimately presents legal terminology as a candidate for relative disciplinary autonomy within legal education and research.

Welsh On Wagons: Tolkien’S Introduction To The Welsh Language, Clive Shergold

Journal of Tolkien Research

This photo-essay explores the history behind Tolkien’s discovery of the Welsh language on coal wagons in Birmingham. It displays typical wagons, and explains the meaning of the Welsh names.

Paul’S Porneia: A Lexical Study Of Sexual Ethics And Communal Boundaries In The Pauline Corpus, Robert G. Flores

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis thoroughly examines the Apostle Paul’s use of the Greek term πορνεία within the Pauline corpus to challenge the normative translation of sexual immorality and the accompanying assumptions connected to this broad phrase. Modern scholarship continually isolates individual occurrences of πορνεία leading to inconsistent and reductionistic interpretations. Rather, through sustained philological analysis of πορνεία and its cognates, this thesis aims to situate Paul’s πορνεία within its contemporary cultural, historical, and lexical milieu with the objective of making Paul’s πορνεία distinct. With this background, it is posited that πορνεία functions as a communal boundary marker used to differentiate between the …

Flisser, Miriam, Philip Chan

Bronx Jewish History Project

Miriam Flisser was born in Europe right after World War II to Jewish partisan parents. They fled danger and arrived in New York as refugees, settling in the Bronx. She grew up in safe, lively neighborhoods like Mott Haven and Pelham Parkway, speaking Yiddish at home until she learned English from kids on the street. Her dad was a skilled kosher butcher who later bought apartment buildings; the family kept a warm, traditional Jewish home.

Miriam excelled in Bronx schools, went to Bronx Science, then NYU’s Bronx campus and Albert Einstein Medical School (graduating a year early). She became a …

Beyond The Sayable: Wittgenstein, Theory Of Mind And Affective Simulation Of Llms, Haomiaomiao Wang, Lili Zhang, Tomás E. Ward

Women+ in Early Career Research Symposium

Wittgenstein’s distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown frames a limit of propositional language. Affect and aesthetic are not primarily matters of correct description but of how expressions function within shared forms of life. Large language models (LLMs), however, increasingly produce fluent language that resembles such understanding by reproducing the patterns through which people ordinarily talk about emotion and perspective.

This paper argues that apparent Theory of Mind (ToM) in LLMs is understood as competence in the publicly shared patterns of mental-state language, rather than as grounded understanding. Using abstract artworks, we show that LLMs …

Functional Neuroarchitecture Of Brain Activation And Network Organization In Bilinguals During Native And Second Language Processing, Onila Rasanjala Narayana Mudalige Don

UM Graduate Student Research Conference (GradCon)

Bilingual language processing requires the coordinated engagement of large-scale brain networks, yet how these networks dynamically reorganize across native (L1) and second language (L2) use—and how this reorganization depends on language proficiency—remains poorly understood. Traditional fMRI studies often characterize brain connectivity as static, overlooking moment-to-moment fluctuations in network interactions that may be critical for successful second-language processing.

In this study, we investigated dynamic brain network organization in Spanish–Basque bilinguals performing a semantic animacy judgment task in their native (Spanish) and second (Basque) language. Using Independent Component Analysis (ICA), we identified large-scale functional networks engaged during L1 and L2 processing and …

Simulating Rewriting Style: Algorithmic Reproduction Of Camus’S Literary Voice In Machine-Generated Texts, Peter Akongfeh Agwu Ph.D

Department of French Studies Graduate Student Association Conference

Virtual Presentation

There Is No Intonation Rule For Yes-No Questions In Blackfoot, Chance Lockwood

UM Graduate Student Research Conference (GradCon)

Cross-linguistically, the intonation of questions differs from the intonation of their declarative counterparts. For example, the intonation of an English question is normally raised at the end of the sentence, while the intonation of a statement is not. Also, in some languages the range of pitch is greater in questions than in statements. However, to my knowledge there are no intonation studies on Blackfoot that focus on questions, only on other elements of intonation, such as pitch movement, stress predictability, and rhythm. Using Praat, a program designed for acoustic speech analysis, I examined the intonation patterns of 19 statement-question pairs …

Engaging Underrepresented 11- To 14-Year-Olds In Music: An Autoethnographic Case Study Of A New Inner-City Afterschool Group Piano Program, Eden A. Brown

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Research in music education has documented the underrepresentation of Black students in formal music study in the United States, shaped by economic and cultural barriers (Elpus & Abril, 2024; Alegrado & Winsler, 2020). Access to piano instruction is often limited by the high cost of lessons and instruments, inequitable school funding, and the absence of culturally responsive curricula that reflect the experiences of minority students and families. Traditional piano pedagogy rarely addresses this absence, leaving the piano both symbolically and practically distant for many potential musicians in the United States. This autoethnographic case study chronicles the development, launch, and first …

Strategic Theory And Clausewitz’S Trinitarian Test, Lukas Milevski

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Carl von Clausewitz’s trinity represents a qualitative test for strategy in both theory and practice. With the trinity, Clausewitz transforms competing influences into a mark of theoretical quality. Synthesizing several translations of Clausewitz’s On War and interpretations by experts such as Hew Strachan, Antulio J. Echevarria II, and Frank G. Hoffman, this article suggests that Clausewitz believed that good theory encompasses and accounts for all fundamental forces of war, whereas bad theory emphasizes the extremes of one force. The trinity compels mandatory considerations for students of theory, war planners, and practitioners.

Ai-Driven Mental Health Support For Caregivers Of Individuals With Alzheimer Disease: Systematic Literature Review And Development Of A Conceptual Framework, Sweta Sneha, Chandra Renduchintala, Isa Siddique, Evelina Sterling, Sweta Sneha, Nazmus Sakib

Faculty Articles

Background:Caregivers supporting individuals with Alzheimer disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD) frequently encounter prolonged emotional strain, psychological distress, and social isolation, yet their needs are largely overlooked in current technological and clinical interventions. The special routines and obligations of caregivers of individuals with AD/ADRD are frequently not well-suited to the many artificial intelligence–driven (AI-driven) mental health solutions that are currently available. This reveals a critical need for sophisticated, customized solutions created especially to help the mental health of caregivers for patients with AD/ADRD.

Objective:To address the existing limitations of personalized mental health interventions, we aimed to identify existing literature on personalized …

Multi-Stakeholder Perspectives On Barriers To Mental Health Support For Informal Caregivers, Maria Lizette Rangel, Donaji Stelzig, Cassandra Martinez Enriquez, Hoda Badr

Department of Medical Oncology Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Informal caregivers experience elevated psychological distress but face substantial challenges in accessing mental health support. Prior research has focused primarily on individual or interpersonal determinants, with less attention to how organizational, community, and policy contexts shape access and contribute to inequities in service availability.

METHODS: Fifty-one stakeholders, including 17 informal caregivers, 23 community health workers (CHWs), and 11 mental health professionals, completed a demographic survey and 60-90-min semi-structured interviews in English or Spanish. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis, combining deductive coding guided by the Socioecological Model with inductive identification of emergent themes.

RESULTS: Participants identified both barriers and …

Adapting Identities: Multimodal Expressions Of African Women’S Agency In Francophone Film​, Alicia M. Hilaire

Department of French Studies Graduate Student Association Conference

No abstract provided.

Civil Rights And The Edtech Revolution, Kirsten Mettler

Student Journal of Information Privacy Law

Education technology (EdTech) products, like grading software and plagiarism detectors, have increasingly led to concerns over discrimination issues in schools. While, in some instances, schools can be held liable under the federal education civil rights statutes for these harms, that solution is insufficient. EdTech companies should themselves be held responsible. EdTech companies have not historically been understood to fall under these federal statutes, but this Article argues these companies can appropriately be governed by these laws as “recipients” of federal financial assistance. Most EdTech companies should qualify as “recipients” of federal financial assistance under one of three theories: they are …

Bridging The Gap: Early Childhood Reading Instruction Grounded In The Science Of Reading, Delilah A. Davis Gonzales, Ingrid Haynes Ph.D.

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

The Science of Reading (SoR) has become central to literacy research and practice, yet many early childhood classrooms struggle to integrate its principles in developmentally appropriate ways. Recent advances in cognitive science, culturally relevant pedagogy, and digital literacy highlight the need for instructional approaches that bridge research and practice. This manuscript examines how the five core components of reading—phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency—can be meaningfully implemented in early childhood education through structured literacy practices that remain play-based and culturally sustaining. A qualitative, illustrative approach is used, drawing from classroom-based case examples, professional observations, and current research. These examples …

A Snapshot Of Three High School, Female Students' Writing Knowledge, Apryl L. Poch

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

This study explored the writing knowledge of three typically developing strong high school female writers. Students completed one semi-structured, individual interview. Interview questions were adopted from Lin et al. (2007) and Saddler and Graham (2007). Results indicated that students possess relatively mature conceptions of writing, focusing more on the collective expression of writing. However, students did struggle with understanding the meaning of expository writing. Further consideration of students’ writing knowledge may allow teachers to better scaffold and develop the ways in which they teach writing across the high school grades, and to advance students’ content acquisition.

“These Kids Can’T Access The Information”: A Case Study Of Teacher Understanding Of Foundational Reading Skills At The Secondary Level, Stevy Schliewe, Emily Zoeller

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

National literacy reforms aim to improve students’ basic reading skills, yet adolescent readers and teachers have not been adequately included in the conversation. The purpose of this study was to explore perceptions of foundational reading skills at the secondary level among high school literacy practitioners. The study used a case study method to learn participant understanding of foundational skills and contextual factors surrounding their ability to teach them. Findings revealed how participants recognized the need for foundational reading skill development in their high school students. However, participants reported not feeling prepared to design this instruction and barriers presented in standards, …

Channeling Literacy Learning Into Everydayness: Northern Ugandan Women Language Peace, Madina Djuraeva, David Monk, Sara Ann Beach, Rosemary Nyirumbe

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

This study contributes to the literacy scholarship by exploring the motivations for literacy learning of adult women in Northern Uganda, connecting to current trends in language and literacy studies and education in post-conflict contexts that center the peacebuilding potential of language, literacy, and women. To understand women’s motivations and the ways peace is languaged through their narrative, we adopt a chronotropic lens to the analysis of the embodied discourse. We showcase the analysis of the findings that reflect the larger research corpora of 24 focus group participants that were interviewed on the campuses of their vocational school in Northern Uganda. …

Syncopation In Action, Karissa Szarek

SPARK Symposium Presentations

No abstract provided.

Significant Montana Cases, Noah Durnell, Rachael Dean

Montana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Multilingual Writers’ Rhetorical Agency Within The Constraints Of Artificial Intelligence, Juan Carlos Montoya

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Graduate Student Presentations

Drawing on the rhetorical traditions of Socrates, Aristotle, Isocrates, and Quintilian, this presentation examines the possible roles writing centers can play in fostering multilingual writers’ rhetorical agency in the age of GenAI.