Digital Commons Network^™

01.01.10. Wood Duck, Aix Sponsa, Z. B. Holmes, Ann Hodgson, Florida Ornithological Society

01.01. <i>Anatidae</i> - Ducks, Geese, and Waterfowl

In the early 1900s, wood ducks were threatened with extinction due to overhunting and loss of habitat, however, protections beginning in 1918 with the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act coupled with management plans saved this species from extinction. Wood Ducks breed throughout the United States and into southern Canada, predominantly following freshwater sources bordered by shrubby or forested swamps.

Don Chuy: Haci Pasan Las Cosas (That’S The Way Things Occur), Manuel F. Medrano

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Judicial Voice On The Courts Of Appeals, Allison Orr Larsen, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

The judicial voice on an appellate court typically speaks in the collective, so when a judge chooses to go solo—either in a dissent or a concurrence—that act deserves a close look. Separate opinions on the U.S. Supreme Court are common because the Justices have strong incentives to articulate a distinctive personal jurisprudence. But lower court judges have always been more reluctant to write separately, and for good reason. The institutional design and longstanding practices of the U.S. courts of appeals are very different from the Supreme Court: Lower appellate court judges are bound by precedent in a different way, rarely …

Developer Perspectives On Licensing And Copyright Issues Arising From Generative Ai For Software Development, Trevor Stalnaker, Nathan Wintersgill, Oscar Chaparro, Laura A. Heymann, Massimiliano Di Penta, Daniel M. German, Denys Poshyvanyk

Faculty Publications

Despite the utility that Generative AI (GenAI) tools provide for tasks such as writing code, the use of these tools raises important legal questions and potential risks, particularly those associated with copyright law. As lawmakers and regulators respond to these questions, the views of users can offer relevant perspectives. In this article, we provide: (1) a survey of 574 developers on the licensing and copyright aspects of GenAI for coding, as well as follow-up interviews; (2) a snapshot of developers’ views at a time when GenAI and perceptions of it were rapidly evolving; and (3) an analysis of developers’ perspectives, …

The Executive's Takeover Of Independent Agencies: How Institutional Design Gave Way To Political Will, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

The anticipated demise of the independent agency is a saga that implicates Congress as much as it does the President or the Supreme Court. By capitulating to presidential initiatives and failing to defend their institutional prerogatives, Congress has facilitated presidential control of the administrative state. Indeed, irrespective of whether the Court formally repudiates Humphrey’s Executor, Congress has largely acquiesced to a regime whereby presidents essentially control independent agencies. By highlighting the competing incentives of Congress and the White House, this Essay explains the rise of presidential unilateralism vis-à-vis independent agencies. This Essay also casts light on a critically important but …

Expert Asymmetry: Evidence From Securities Litigation, Adam Callister, Andrew Granato, Belisa Pang

Faculty Publications

Modern litigation often involves two separate, extra-legal features: (1) contingency fee arrangements with the plaintiff-side attorney, and (2) a “battle of the experts” where the outcome of the case rests on conflicting expert witness testimony. We construct a model to illustrate that when these features occur simultaneously, in contexts where plaintiff-side attorneys bear the cost of hiring experts upfront, defendants will spend systematically more than plaintiffs on hiring expert witnesses. Our model is motivated by hand-collected data from a decade of securities class action litigation, where we show that experts polarize into almost entirely plaintiff-side versus defense-side experts, that defense-side …

The Lived Experience Of Special Education Director Retention: A Phenomenological Study Of Motivational And Organizational Influences, Matthew R. Taylor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The stability of leadership in special education is crucial for ensuring regulatory compliance, programmatic quality, and equitable services for students with disabilities. However, U.S. public schools face persistent challenges in retaining special education directors, resulting in a loss of institutional knowledge, service fragmentation, and increased risk of compliance failure. Drawing on self-determination theory and job embeddedness theory, this phenomenological study explored the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects that influence special education directors’ decisions to remain in their roles. Ten experienced special education directors from diverse public school settings in Texas participated in semistructured interviews and follow-up quantitative questionnaires. The analysis revealed …

Finding Value In Professional Learning: Developing Teacher Learning That Is Internalized And Implemented In Practice, Stephanie Dossett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This study was designed after the researcher engaged in multiple mandated professional learning experiences with faculty members who expressed dissatisfaction with their learning experiences, did not desire to engage in learning on the mandated topics, and wanted to engage in different types of learning opportunities. The problem was centered around dissatisfaction with professional learning among teachers and the lack of implementation of their professional learning in the classroom. The goal was to gather feedback that could help leaders design mandated learning for teachers that they would find satisfaction in and implement in their classroom. The study used semistructured qualitative …

Faculty Perceptions Of Engaging Generation Z Students Through Positive Education In The Classroom, Ashley D. Ragsdale

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined the engagement gap between Generation Z students and faculty in higher education, emphasizing how positive education approaches can help faculty become more confident and effective instructors. Generation Z students prefer instant internet access and digital learning, have shorter attention spans, and tend to be disengaged when instructors rely on traditional teaching methods. After the COVID-19 pandemic, this engagement gap became more evident. This basic qualitative study used semistructured interviews, reflexive journaling, and nonparticipatory observations. Participants included full-time health science faculty at a private university in central Texas. Each had at least 2 years of teaching experience …

The Impact Of Synchronous And Asynchronous Preference On The Performance Of Distance Learning Students, Christopher A. Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Distance learning is a growing part of education. The transition to distance learning was underway at higher education institutions, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced institutions of all types to rapidly transition to distance learning. The technology that was adapted during this emergency distance learning remained in the classroom once normal instruction resumed. This quantitative study examined two aspects of distance learning technology in education. The study examined student preference for either synchronous or asynchronous instruction through the framework of expectancy theory. Students who were more familiar with the course material were hypothesized to have a higher expectation of success and …

Accessing Campus Mental Health Services In A Nigerian Southwestern University: Barriers To Academic Success, Caroline Dada

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mental health disorders are a significant health concern among higher education institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria. A substantial treatment gap exists in the Nigerian healthcare system, and this gap is further worsened by cultural and religious barriers, which reinforce stigma that discourages students from seeking professional help. This qualitative narrative inquiry explored the barriers students encountered when accessing mental health services at a university in Southwestern Nigeria, to increase service access. Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted with seven professional mental health providers at a university counseling center between March and April 2025. Inductive thematic analysis was used to identify …

Psychological And Clinical Risk Factors For Substance Use In People With And Without Hiv, Joanna M Hobson, Shameka L Cody, Shannon R Gilstrap, Michael A Owens, Myles D Moody, Dyan M White-Gilliam, Stephen Justin Thomas, Emily J Bartley, Burel R Goodin

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BackgroundDespite growing concerns, limited research has demonstrated how psychological factors influence substance use in people with HIV (PWH). Therefore, we examined the association between heightened vigilance and substance use outcomes in people with (PWH) and without HIV (PWoH), while accounting for key risk factors.MethodsParticipants (n = 138) were recruited from an HIV clinic and the surrounding community, completing a urine drug screener (UDS) and questionnaires.ResultsPWH reported greater insomnia (

Characteristics Of Cerebral Palsy In The Midwestern Us, Susie Kim, Kelsey Steffen, Lauren Gottschalk-Henneberry, Jennifer Miros, Amy Robichaux-Viehoever, Karen Taca, Bhooma R Aravamuthan

2020-Current year OA Pubs

OBJECTIVE: Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common lifelong motor disability worldwide. Yet, data is limited on how CP manifests in the US. Our objective was to characterize and determine factors affecting functional outcomes in a large population of young people with CP in the Midwestern US.

METHODS: We integrated caregiver and clinician-facing standardized data entry into routine clinical care at a tertiary care CP center (https://bit.ly/CP-Intake-Methodology). We extracted this data for people with an ICD10 diagnosis of CP seen between March 22, 2023 and December 28, 2023 and used it to describe CP characteristics and determine factors affecting the …

Excellent Survival Following Low-Intensity Approaches Prior To Allo-Hsct In Ph+ All: A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis, Lacey S. Williams, Wenners Ballard Iii, Deniz Ozisik, Charles Scott Dorris, Kepher Makambi, Scott Rowley, Kieron Dunleavy, John Dipersio, Alaa Ali

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

The Association Between Major Depressive Disorder, Plasma Biomarkers Of Alzheimer's Disease, And Mild Behavioral Impairment Among Older Adults, Yiqi Zhu, Jean-Francois Trani, Ramkrishna K Singh, Semere Bekena, Jonathan Williams, Eric J Lenze, Ganesh M Babulal

2020-Current year OA Pubs

INTRODUCTION: Plasma biomarkers and mild behavioral impairment (MBI) are associated with dementia risk, but their relationships with major depressive disorder (MDD) are understudied. This study aimed to examine associations between plasma biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and MBI among older adults with and without MDD.

METHODS: Older adults aged ≥65 were recruited from longitudinal studies of depression and AD (

RESULTS: Older adults with MDD were more likely to endorse MBI. After adjustment, Aβ42/Aβ40 and p-tau217/np-tau217 positivity were associated with MBI among those with MDD but not among those without.

DISCUSSION: Neuropsychatric symptoms (NPS) and biomarkers are AD risk factors. …

Criterion And Convergent Validity Of Plasma Biomarkers In Early-Onset Alzheimer's Disease: Initial Findings From Leads, Dustin B Hammers, Kyle Womack, Erik Musiek, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

Alzheimer's Disease Stage 1 And 2: Biology, Diagnostics, And Treatment, Suzanne E. Schindler, Sarah M. Hartz, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

Effect Of A Pregnancy Lifestyle Intervention Embedded Into A Home Visiting Program On Child Neurodevelopment, Sarah S Farabi, Rosemary Bass, Amit Mathur, Cindy Schwarz, Candice Woolfolk, Richard Stein, Samuel Klein, Debra Haire-Joshu, Alison G Cahill

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Maternal obesity is associated with a higher risk of abnormal child neurodevelopment. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of a lifestyle intervention embedded into a home visiting program, Parents as Teachers (PAT), on 18-month neurodevelopment in the offspring. Pregnant women (9-15 weeks) of African American Race, 18-45 years old, first-trimester BMI 25.0-45.0 kg/m

Generating Synthetic Ct From Mri Data, Foysal Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides excellent soft tissue contrast without ionizing radiation, making it a strong alternative to computed tomography (CT) in medical imaging workflows. However, CT remains essential for applications requiring electron density information, such as radiation therapy treatment planning. This study investigated the feasibility of generating synthetic CT (sCT) images from MRI using a deep learning-based U-Net architecture. A two-dimensional U-Net was trained on paired MRI-CT data from the SynthRAD 2025 dataset, consisting of 120 T1-weighted (T1W) and 60 T2-weighted (T2W) axial cases, including deformed CT (dCT) aligned to MRI. Model testing used an independent dataset of 30 …

A Mixed Methods Study Of Secondary Educators' Perspectives Of Edmentum As A Credit Recovery Tool In Evergreen High School, Jaya Sudha Thumati

Doctor of Education Dissertations

This study quantitatively examined the impact of Edmentum Courseware as a credit recovery tool as measured by student course completion rates and course grades, and compared graduation rates before and after its implementation at Evergreen High School (pseudonym) located in a rural district in Upstate South Carolina. Additionally, the study also qualitatively explored the perspectives of secondary educators regarding the application of Edmentum Courseware as a tool for credit recovery and its effect on student success. Using the framework from three learning theories, which are Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1962), Universal Design for Learning (Rose & Meyer, 2002), and …

0897: William A. “Red” Dawson Collection, 1915-2023, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

William Alfred “Red” Dawson, a native of Valdosta, Georgia, led his high school football team to a state championship and played for four years at Florida State University. Dawson briefly played professional football for the Boston Patriots in the AFL and the Orlando Panthers. He was serving as an assistant football coach at Marshall University when a fatal plane crash killed seventy-five players, coaches, staff, and prominent citizens of Huntington. Dawson was essential in restarting the Marshall University football program, serving as acting head coach and coached through the 1971 season. He then began working in the construction industry and …

Predicting Oil Contamination In Water Using Machine Learning On Microbial Compositions, Tong Gao, Isaac Bigcraft, Stephen Techtmann, Issei Nakamura

Michigan Tech Publications

We present a compact and generative machine-learning framework that predicts oil contamination based on microbial community compositions from experimental samples. Our method combines dimensionality reduction with data augmentation and generative modeling to address high-dimensional, non-linear, and sparse microbial data. To reduce the 503-dimensional bacterial composition dataset, we compared three dimensionality reduction techniques: feature importance from random forest, principal component analysis (PCA), and t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE). Feature importance outperformed PCA and t-SNE, improving predictive performance and identifying microbial species most strongly correlated with oil contamination. To mitigate data scarcity, we augmented the training data using an augmented data neural …

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; …

Government Research Funding And The First Amendment, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette

Emory Law Journal

Federal science research funding has become a flashpoint in the second Trump Administration, with grant terminations and political reviews that look like textbook viewpoint discrimination. Yet beyond the apparent simplicity of these cases lies an array of doctrinal puzzles about how the Free Speech Clause applies to choices made in allocating public research dollars. From an innovation-policy perspective, direct funding’s advantage over market-set tools like patent law is government agenda setting—but agenda setting inevitably entails viewpoint choices that skew the scientific marketplace of ideas.

Public research funding warrants focused First Amendment attention for several reasons. First, it often presents the …

Deference Due? “Considers” And The Insurrection Act, Joshua Braver

Emory Law Journal

This Article offers a sustained statutory interpretation of the Insurrection Act, with a particular focus on judicial deference. The Insurrection Act is the principal statutory authority for deploying, under presidential command, the military on America’s streets to enforce federal law. The conventional wisdom and recent circuit court decisions about an analogous statute give “great deference” to the President’s determinations that the statute’s deployment triggers are satisfied.

This Article argues, however, that courts do not owe “great” deference when the President seeks to deploy the military domestically under three of the Insurrection Act’s four trigger provisions. The exception is Section 252’s …

Forever Chemicals, Short-Term Funds: Minnesota’S Costly Pfas Compromise, Lauren Marie Kramer

Emory Law Journal

Over the past twenty-five years, society has come to understand the dangers PFAS pose to human health and the widespread pollution of these chemicals in the environment. As the federal government has been slow to regulate these “forever chemicals,” states and municipalities have begun to take decisive action by suing manufacturers and polluters. Minnesota was one of the first states to litigate when it sued local giant, 3M, for extensive PFAS pollution in the company’s own backyard across the eastern suburbs of the Twin Cities. The groundbreaking settlement between the state and 3M for $850 million was seen as a …

Disarming The Discretionary Function Exception: Reform For Ftca Claims Against Federal Law Enforcement, Justin R. Harvey

Emory Law Journal

Federal law enforcement agencies often make mistakes but rarely pay for them. The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) is the main avenue for plaintiffs to sue the federal government for tort damages when wrongfully harmed. However, distinct procedural requirements in the FTCA limit the federal government’s liability. Notably, the FTCA’s “discretionary function exception” blocks claims arising from protected exercises of discretion by government officials, even when courts find that federal agents abused their discretion. Federal courts have struggled to apply this exception across government activity, particularly in claims against federal law enforcement—where the exception has morphed into a broad presumption …

Unplanned Obsolescence: The Dismantling Of Inter Partes Review At The U.S. Patent And Trademark Office, And What To Do About It, Elizabeth R. Ward

Emory Law Journal

Inter Partes Review (IPR), one of a set of administrative mechanisms used to review the validity of a patent after it has been granted, was once considered a key tool for patent litigators as an alternative to district court litigation. Beginning in early 2025, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director introduced a series of administrative rule changes involving “discretionary denial,” or the ability to deny institution of IPR proceedings. As a result, IPR has been rendered nearly unusable: the institution rate for an IPR petition has fallen from 68% in 2024 to 4% as of December 2025.

This …