Digital Commons Network^™

Counterfactual Thinking And Aging: The Role Of Executive Function., Clare Walsh, Catherine Deeprose, Raluca A. Briazu, Alison Bacon

School of Psychology

People frequently think about how events in the past might have happened differently and these thoughts play a central role in their cognitive, emotional and social functioning. Our study examined how these processes change with age. A group of 56 younger (mean age 22.34) and 50 older (mean age 71.96) adults completed tasks measuring the spontaneous generation of counterfactual thoughts, the generation of counterfactual thoughts when cued and the Counterfactual Inference Test which taps into the ease with which salient counterfactual thoughts come to mind. They also completed a Counterfactual Seeking Task to measure their motivation to seek out counterfactual …

Predictors Of Inpatient Rn Turnover In Rural And Urban Vha Hospitals, Paras Mehta, Laura A Petersen

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: The rising demand for health care delivery and an aging workforce is of particular concern in rural areas, where health care access depends upon an adequate nursing workforce. To address this shortage and optimize care, it is essential to measure when registered nurses (RN) leave inpatient direct care positions (ie, inpatient RN turnover) and identify modifiable factors correlated with RN turnover.

Objectives: Apply a novel method for characterizing inpatient RN turnover to understand factors associated with variation in RNs leaving inpatient positions at rural and urban Veterans Health Administration (VHA) hospitals.

Project design: Retrospective cohort study.

Subjects: Direct care …

Findings And Recommendations From The State Of The Art (Sota) Conference On Nursing Research To Improve Veteran Outcomes, David Atkins, Catherine Battaglia, Elizabeth Burkhart, Renee Colsch, Marguerite Daus, Heather Gilmartin, Nipa Kamdar, Melissa Knox, Ann Kutney-Lee, Christine M Olney, Kathryn Rugen, Tracy Weistreich, Sheila Cox Sullivan, On Behalf The Nursing Sota Planning Committee

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the largest employer of nurses in the United States, has more than 120,000 nursing personnel providing care to over 9 million Veterans across diverse settings. Despite nursing's central role in delivering and sustaining care, research on strengthening the nursing workforce and optimizing nursing practice has remained underdeveloped in VHA. To address this gap, VHA's Office of Research and Development, in partnership with the Office of Nursing Services, convened a State of the Art (SOTA) conference in November 2023 focused on nursing. The Nursing SOTA brought together nurses, researchers, operational leaders, and other stakeholders to review …

Relationship Between Number Of Assigned Patients And Rn Time To Administer Medications During The Peak-Time Medication Pass, Christine Yang, Laura A Petersen

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: Inpatient nurse staffing affects patient outcomes. Less is known about the mechanism of this relationship and how lower overall staffing in a unit affects individual RN activities at the bedside.

Objectives: Estimate the relationship between the number of patients assigned to an RN and time spent on medication administration at the peak-time medication pass (PTM), a common nursing task.

Research design: Estimate the association using multivariable linear regression to adjust for patient severity and staff and unit fixed effects.

Subjects: All 9272 RNs administering medications during the PTM on 243 inpatient units in 113 VHA hospitals in 2019.

Measures: …

Lockstepping Structure, Darrell A.H. Miller

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

The new judicial federalism is now entering its early middle age. As it has matured—moving from rights to structure—it has become more complicated in its application. For if one were to take arguments about state experimentation and interpretive flexibility to their logical conclusion, there is no reason state legislative, executive, and judicial powers should stay in lanes demarcated by federal constitutional law. Easily amended state constitutions and elected judges support theories of judicial function more akin to statewide legislative policymakers than passive judicial magistrates. Positive rights in state constitutions would seem to demand recalibration of the rules of standing and …

How Equity Changes, Samuel L. Bray

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

In Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court decisively rejected universal injunctions and offered a major decision about the law of equity. This Article grapples with a central question raised by CASA: if equity is not static, then what counts as legitimate innovation? This Article argues (1) that equity, in order to perform its functions, must have the capacity to innovate; (2) that any innovation should be in keeping with those functions and with equity’s own principles; and (3) that the primary stewards of the law of equity are the courts, not Congress. The vulnerabilities of Grupo Mexicano on these points …

Valuing Future Lives, Daniel J. Hemel, Jonathan S. Masur

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Federal regulation often involves a tradeoff between monetary costs in the present and life-saving benefits in the future. A central question in regulatory cost-benefit analysis is how to assign a present dollar value to future lives so that future lives and present dollars can be compared. For regulations that are projected to prevent deaths years or decades down the road, agencies make two key analytical moves. First, they adjust the value of a statistical life upward to reflect the fact that society’s willingness to pay to save lives will rise as people become wealthier in the future. Second, they discount …

When Are Foot Pursuits Really Necessary?: How Improved Policies Might Reduce Community Harm, Sharon R. Fairley

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Despite the widely accepted view that foot pursuits are inherently dangerous for both police officers and citizens, a minority of municipal police agencies have adopted policies that have the potential to minimize the risk of harm by limiting the circumstances in which police officers are permitted to pursue a subject on foot. This paper presents data related to foot pursuit incidents and existing foot pursuit policies. The paper documents that most existing foot pursuit policies are limited in their potential to reduce unwarranted deadly encounters because the guidance they provide requires officers to consider and weigh vague concepts in tense, …

Administrative Self-Constitutionalism, Brian Lipshutz

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Since the days of the Interstate Commerce Commission, federal agencies have generally refused to address the constitutionality of statutory provisions. They have offered little reasoning to justify that refusal, yet scholars have generally accepted it. This Article explains why agencies can—and should—address constitutional challenges to statutory provisions.

Agencies have the power to assess the constitutionality of statutory provisions. They already exercise a similar authority when they apply the canon of constitutional avoidance and consider the constitutionality of individual actions. There is no basis for stopping short of addressing challenges to statutes. And many scholars have recognized that, as a formal …

The Protective Power Of Psychological Resources In Mitigating Burnout And Enhancing Flourishing, Dylan R. Polkinghorne, David J. Radosevich, Deirdre M. Radosevich, Dianne D. Murphy, Laken James, Sue S. Craver

Management Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose

This study explores how burnout mediates the relationships between critical psychological resources, specifically resilience, flow and self-efficacy, and flourishing in contemporary work environments.

Design/methodology/approach

Data from 374 participants, including undergraduate students at a regional comprehensive university in the Midwest and full-time working adults in the USA, were analyzed using mediation analysis in MPlus 8.11 to assess the indirect and direct effects among burnout, psychological resources and flourishing in a work environment.

Findings

Results indicate that self-efficacy significantly predicts lower burnout levels and higher flourishing. Resilience and flow were negatively associated with burnout, reducing its impact; however, the direct effects …

Likelihood-Based Inference For Random Networks With Changepoints, Daniel Cirkovic, Tiandong Wang, Xianyang Zhang

Mathematical and Statistical Science Faculty Research and Publications

Generative, temporal network models play an important role in analyzing the dependence structure and evolution patterns of complex networks. Due to the complicated nature of real network data, it is often naive to assume that the underlying data-generative mechanism itself is invariant with time. Such observation leads to the study of changepoints or sudden shifts in the distributional structure of the evolving network. In this paper, we propose a likelihood-based methodology to detect changepoints in undirected, affine preferential attachment networks where, upon introduction, a new node selects one old to attach to with probability proportional to its degree. In particular, …

Intermittent Phrenic Afferent Activation Induces Phrenic Motor Plasticity, Nicole M. Popp, Taylor C. Holmes, Elizabeth A. Rozycki, Kristi A. Streeter

Physical Therapy Faculty Research and Publications

Approaches such as electrical stimulation of the phrenic neuromuscular system are currently used in humans to manage breathing impairments. We recently showed that electrical stimulation of the diaphragm muscle induces phrenic afferent-dependent plasticity. These findings highlight the need to better understand the mechanisms of afferent-mediated plasticity to guide and improve the development of novel therapies using electrical stimulation. Here, we tested the hypothesis that intermittent activation of large-diameter phrenic afferents induces phrenic motor plasticity, which, like other forms of plasticity, is pattern sensitive. We delivered inspiratory-triggered electrical stimulation using a narrow pulse width (0.1 ms) to preferentially activate large-diameter afferents, …

Sport Training Day Affects Adolescent Athletes’ Sleep Schedules, Abigail Larson, Jena Heck Street, Roman De Guia, Jacob J. Capin

Physical Therapy Faculty Research and Publications

Introduction: Sufficient sleep is integral to overall health whereas suboptimal sleep puts athletes at greater risk for injury, lengthens their recovery time, and decreases their performance. Our purpose was to compare sleep across training days (i.e., competition, practice, and rest) in adolescent athletes, specifically identifying differences between nights before and after training.

Methods: Participants [n = 33 (14 male, 19 female), aged 15.6 ± 1.0 years] wore an activPAL accelerometer continuously for 14 consecutive days and completed a sleep log noting training day status (i.e., competition, practice, rest).

Results: Athletes slept less on the day after competition compared to …

Transitioning To Life After Sport: Empowering Former College Varsity Athletes To Live More Healthfully, Linda Piacentine, Taylor L. Wolf, Jacob J. Capin

Physical Therapy Faculty Research and Publications

Introduction: 

The transition out of competitive sport comes with a range of psychosocial challenges for athletes, particularly when retirement is involuntary (e.g., due to injury). Little is known about the health of former athletes who often manage prior injuries and changing biopsychosocial factors.

Purpose: 

Identify the unique experiences of varsity athletes during college and as they transition to life after college sports and determine the facilitators, barriers, and needs of college varsity athletes to engage in a physically active and healthy lifestyle after competitive sport retirement.

Methods: 

Thirty former college varsity athletes (15F, 15M; mean age 23 ± 1 yrs; …

Evidence For A Spectral Break Or Curvature In The Spectrum Of Astrophysical Neutrinos From 5 Tev To 10 Pev, Karen Andeen

Physics Faculty Research and Publications

We report improved measurements of the all flavor astrophysical neutrino spectrum with IceCube by combining complementary neutrino samples in two independent analyses. Both analyses show evidence of a harder spectrum at energies below  ∼30  TeV compared to higher energies where the spectrum is well characterized by a power law. The spectrum is better described by a log parabola or a broken power law, the latter being the preferred model. Both, however, reject a single power law over an energy range 5 TeV–10 PeV with a significance  >4⁢𝜎, providing new constraints on properties of cosmic neutrino sources.

Black Hole Spectroscopy And Tests Of General Relativity With Gw250114, Jaclyn (Jax) Sanders

Physics Faculty Research and Publications

The binary black hole signal GW250114, the loudest gravitational wave detected to date, offers a unique opportunity to test Einstein’s general relativity (GR) in the high-velocity, strong-gravity regime and probe whether the remnant conforms to the Kerr metric. Upon perturbation, black holes emit a spectrum of damped sinusoids with specific, complex frequencies. Our analysis of the postmerger signal shows that at least two quasinormal modes are required to explain the data, with the most damped remaining statistically significant for about one cycle. We probe the remnant’s Kerr nature by constraining the spectroscopic pattern of the dominant quadrupolar (ℓ=m=2) …

Schelling & Spinoza, Michael Vater

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

Schelling is notorious for having a fluid vision of systematic philosophy and its methods. In an age where philosophy is expected to result in one or two books, not years of discussions with students and colleagues--and certainly not a distillation of one’s way of life--Schelling’s thought has been called protean or restless, or in Hegel’s snarky verdict “an education pursued in public.” The same could be said of Socrates. But there is a truth in these comments; it is difficult to find in fifty-six years of publications, addresses and abandoned manuscripts the single argument that is Schelling’s philosophy. What provokes …

Comparing Us Medicare Coverage Options As A Contributing Mechanism To Sticking Or Switching To An Insurance Plan, Lisa M. Grabert, Brian J. Miller, Kathryn L. Wagner

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Background

In 2025, the US Medicare program is expected to spend over $1.1 trillion taxpayer dollars. A growing trend in the US Medicare program is more beneficiaries electing a private insurer, referred to as Medicare Advantage (MA), to manage their care. Since 2023, a slight majority of Medicare beneficiaries have elected to enroll in MA, yet little is understood about the mechanisms that drive beneficiaries toward their choices.

Methods

Our objective was to examine the association between comparing coverage options and ‘switching’ or ‘sticking’ with Fee-for-Service (FFS) Medicare or Medicare Advantage (MA). We conducted a panel study, using data from …

From The Goodness Of Our Hearts: A Scoping Review Of Qualitative Literature On Altruism As A Reward Mechanism For Nursing, Jacqueline Christianson, Madaline Mccarthy, Bonnie Sommers-Olson, Emily Horner, Norah L. Johnson

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Introduction

Altruism, the desire to help others, is a common motivation for choosing a career in nursing. Improved understanding of the role of altruism as a reward or motivation for currently-practicing nurses may inform future interventions to improve effort-reward balance among practicing nurses. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to collect, examine, and present literature on how altruism has been described as a reward mechanism or motivation for engaging in professional nursing.

Methods

This scoping review of literature used the Arksey & O’Malley method, PRISMA-ScR reporting checklist, and Rayyan review management platform. PubMed, Web of Science, and CINAHL were …

An Educational Intervention On Mutual Goal Setting For Hospital Nurses: A Mixed-Methods Study, Teresa Jerofke-Owen, Kristi Opper, Joseph Beiler, Maharaj Singh

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Background:

Including patients in mutual goal setting is one mechanism to personalize care delivery and improve patient outcomes.

Objective:

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a nurse educational intervention about mutual goal setting on nurse engagement and self-efficacy for goal setting and the nurse/patient experience of goal setting.

Methods:

During this explanatory, sequential mixed-methods study, nurse engagement in goal setting and goal quality was assessed through chart audits 1-month pre-intervention (n = 173) and 1 and 3-months (n = 144, n = 137) post-intervention. Nurse self-efficacy was measured with the Appraisal Inventory Tool. Patient experience …

Beyond Numbers: Bridging Statistical Significance And Clinical Relevance In Healthcare Research, Maharaj Singh, Waheeda Khan, Mehreen Fatima

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Objective: This study aims to bridge the gap between statistical significance and clinical relevance using rigorous statistical methodologies applied to simulated healthcare data, thereby enhancing the translational value of research outcomes for patient‑centered care. Methods: A synthetic dataset representing 10,000 patients was generated, and descriptive statistics were applied to compare two treatment groups. Binary outcomes were predicted using both a logistic regression model and a neural network. Two‑tailed tests with a significant level of 0.05 were employed, utilizing SAS version 9.4 and IBM SPSS Statistics, Version 29.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, New York, United States of America). Results: The simulated dataset …

Artificial Intelligence And Mental Health: Promise, Pitfalls And Ethical Priorities, Maharaj Singh

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Mental health conditions are prevalent across the lifespan, yet workforce shortages, long waiting times, and fragmented systems mean many people never receive timely, evidence‑based care. Artificial intelligence (AI), including machine‑learning classifiers and large language models (LLMs), is being explored to support earlier detection, closer symptom monitoring and scalable psychoeducation. Early studies suggest AI can surface risk signals from language, sleep/activity traces and clinical notes; summarise complex records for clinicians; and deliver structured self‑help at scale. At the same time, safety, bias, privacy and accountability concerns remain salient.

The Performance Of Machine Learning Algorithms In Predicting Under-Five Anaemia In Tanzania, Henry Ofori Duah, Derrick Nyantakyi Owusu, Godwin G. Duah, Paul Shidende

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Aim

Anaemia in children under five remains a major public health concern, contributing significantly to global child morbidity and mortality. With the rise of machine learning (ML), novel opportunities exist to model and predict anaemia more effectively. This study aimed to evaluate and compare the performance of five ML algorithms in predicting anaemia among under-five children in Tanzania.

Methods

We conducted a secondary data analysis using the 2017 Tanzania Malaria Indicator Survey (TMICS). The dataset (n = 5906) was randomly split into training (70%) and test (30%) sets. Five ML algorithms, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Logistic Regression, Random Forest (RF), …

Designing A Study To Evaluate The Impact Of Webxr With Genai On Student Engagement In Distance Education, Kamran Mir, Geraldine Gray, Ana Elena Schalk, Muhammad Zafar Iqbal

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

This study aims to evaluate how immersive content can enhance student engagement, learning outcomes, and satisfaction in an open and distance learning context. The paper gives an overview of the background research and study design that investigates the impact of immersive virtual learning environments on distance education by integrating WebXR with GenAI into Moodle, a widely used virtual learning environment (VLE). The design considers two groups of learners, an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group will engage with WebXR having GenAI agents and the control group will experience the same course content delivered through conventional online teaching …

Survival Of Listeria Monocytogenes And Salmonella Typhimurium In Pepperoni With Reduced Salt And Sodium Nitrite Levels, And Sublethal Thermal Treatments, Shannon Heapes, Victoria Caballero, Jesus Frias, Bradley Afanda, Martin Danaher, Joseph P. Kerry, Geraldine Duffy

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

There is increasing pressure to reduce sodium nitrite and salt levels in processed and fermented meats in response to consumer demands and updated legislation. However, such reductions may impact pathogen control. In this study, the survival of Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella Typhimurium was evaluated in pepperoni produced with reduced salt and sodium nitrite levels, with or without an enhanced postfermentation thermal treatment. Pepperoni batters with formulations varying in sodium nitrite (50–150 ppm) and salt (1.4%–2.5%), were inoculated with cocktails of L. monocytogenes or S. Typhimurium (~log₁₀ 4–6 CFU g⁻¹), subjected to a postfermentation thermal treatment (53.5°C × …

Hybrid Bacterial Colony Optimization And Particle Swarm Optimization For Load Balancing In Fog Computing, Aryan Kumar, Punit Gupta, Rohit Verma

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Fog computing minimizes latency and bandwidth consumption by processing data near the source, but it has the challenge of workload balancing across the dynamic and resource limited fog nodes. Uneven task assignment can result in bottlenecks, idle resources, and lowered Quality of Service (QoS) standards. In this work, we introduce a hybrid metaheuristic load balancing algorithm for fog computing by combining the Bacterial Colony Optimization (BCO) and the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) techniques to enhance load balancing. BCO has good solution space exploration capabilities, whereas PSO has the advantage of quick convergence; the hybrid takes advantage from both to achieve …

A Review Of Data Interoperability As A Barrier To Non-Residential Building Energy Policy: Evidence From Ireland, Ankur Mitra, Kriti Bhalla, Ciara Ahern

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Non-residential buildings account for a significant share of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions across the EU, yet evidence-based policy development remains hindered by fragmented and non-interoperable building data systems. This study evaluates the suitability of publicly available electronic datasets for characterising Ireland’s non-residential building stock and supporting bottom-up energy modelling in the context of the recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD 2024/1275/EU).A systematic scoping review of national government and institutional datasets was conducted using an adapted PRISMA-ScR approach. The analysis identified the national Energy Performance Certificate database and GeoDirectory as the only datasets with sufficient scale and detail …

Browser-Based Phishing Detection System Using Modern Web Technologies, Muhammad Arshad, Beena Sherin Kuriakose, Choo Wou Onn, Farhan Ahmad Siddiqui, Mohammad Shahid Kamal

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Phishing remains one of the most persistent cybersecurity threats, exploiting human trust to steal sensitive information through deceptive websites. Traditional detection methods, reliant on blacklists and reactive reporting, offer limited protection against rapidly evolving zero-day attacks. To address these challenges, this study proposes and evaluates a hybrid browser-resident phishing detection framework that combines three complementary detection mechanisms: a locally executed Random Forest model using URL lexical features, lightweight real-time DOM structure analysis, and VirusTotal’s multi-engine reputation service. Communication between the client and server is optimised using gRPC over the QUIC protocol, ensuring secure, high-performance data exchange with built-in retry mechanisms …

A Memetic Nsga-Ii (M-Nsga-Ii) For Secure, Energy- And Latency-Aware Service Placement In Electronic Smart Grid Edge Networks, Saeed Javanmardi, Bahareh Pahlevanzadeh

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Today, smart grids use small electronic nodes to run services, but deciding where to put each service is hard. If we use cheap nodes, we save energy, but they are slow and not very secure. If we use fast nodes, they use too much power. In this paper, we look at this problem with three goals: using less energy, lowering security risks, and cutting down time delays. We must also make sure no node gets too much work. To do this, we propose a memetic optimization method named M-NSGA-II. It improves the normal NSGA-II by adding a smart start, changing …

Regulatory Invisibility And Energy Poverty: Epc Exclusion, Traveller Mobile Homes And Ireland’S Low-Carbon Transition, Paul Lally, Ehiaze Ehimen, Mary Galvin, Ciara Ahern

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) systems play a central role in residential decarbonisation by determining how dwellings are assessed, benchmarked and made eligible for retrofit support. However, these systems are largely designed around conventional, permanent, site-built housing and can exclude non-standard dwelling types. This paper examines the exclusion of permanently occupied Traveller mobile homes from Ireland’s EPC framework and considers the implications for energy poverty, retrofit policy and energy justice. Using a critical narrative synthesis, the study integrates academic literature, statutory reports, policy documents and community-based evidence to trace the relationship between Traveller accommodation policy, regulatory classification and contemporary decarbonisation frameworks. …