Digital Commons Network^™

Coastal Empire Economic Monitor, 2nd Quarter, 2026, Georgia Southern University Center For Business Analytics And Economic Research

Coastal Empire Economic Monitor

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Stigma On The Mmpi-3 Scores Of An Indo-Caribbean Community Sample, Julia Persaud-Naipaul

Theses and Dissertations

Evaluation of personality and psychological disorders is accomplished through the use of psychometric measures. However, tests require interpretation of test responses using a normative criterion based on a particular population that may not fully consider the effect of cultural influences on an individual’s level of willingness to report psychological difficulties. For example, individuals in collectivistic cultures may not be as willing to self-report problems because mental illness is often perceived as a source of embarrassment and shame. One culturally unique population that has been overlooked in psychological assessment is the Indo-Caribbean population. Their specific cultural values, beliefs, attitudes, and practices …

The Prospector, September 1, 2026, Student Publications

The Prospector

No abstract provided.

“I Really Like Being On The Floor, Because I Spend All The Time In My Chair”: Children With Disabilities’ Experiences Of Physical Activity In School, Katherine Gulliver, Rachel Knight Lozano, Kathrin Paal

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

Children with multiple disabilities often encounter significant barriers to participating in physical activity, impacting not only their physical health but also their overall experience in school. This study places the voices of four children at the centre of their own research, exploring their lived experiences of participating in physical activity in school. Using Clark’s (2017) Mosaic approach, this child-centred participatory study shows how children take part and engage with physical activity as part of their school day. Using videos and photography, child-led tours and ethically sensitive conversations with researchers, children shared a range of opportunities for enjoyment, exploration and interactions …

Nurses' And Families' Experiences Of A Feasibility Trial Comparing Single‐Use And Multiple‐Use Endotracheal Suction Catheters In Mechanically Ventilated Patients: A Qualitative Study, Mohamed H. Eid, Kevin Hambridge, Patricia Schofield, Jos M. Latour

School of Nursing and Midwifery

BackgroundIn resource-limited Intensive Care Units (ICUs), reusing endotracheal suctioning catheters is often standard practice due to supply constraints or staffing pressures. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have explored the impact of these practices on patient outcomes. However, less is known about the experiences of nurses and family members involved in RCTs testing endotracheal suctioning interventions.AimTo explore the experiences of ICU nurses and family members participating in a feasibility RCT comparing single-use versus multiple-use endotracheal suction catheters flushed with chlorhexidine or normal saline in a resource-limited ICU setting.Study DesignA qualitative study was embedded within a feasibility RCT. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with …

Discomfort Avoidance And Desire For Normality Are Decision-Making Drivers Of Footwear Choice In Underserved Communities At Risk Of Diabetic Foot Ulcer, Krithika Anil, Neeraj Sharma, Sonal Patel, Jess Bailey, Catherine Smith, Sally Abey, Kayce Allcock, Richard Collings, Joanne Paton

School of Health Professions

BackgroundDiabetes-related foot ulceration (DFU) is a serious complication that can lead to lower limb amputation or death. Custom-made footwear is a key preventative strategy, yet adherence to use is often low. The factors influencing decision-making for footwear use remain unclear, particularly among underserved groups such as people from low socioeconomic and South Asian backgrounds. This study aimed to identify the psychological mechanisms underlying footwear choice and adherence in people with diabetes from low socioeconomic and South Asian populations.MethodsThis study used a qualitative approach conducted in two parts. Part 1 explored footwear-related experiences using one-to-one interviews informed by the COM-B model …

Exploring Factors Affecting The Use Of Blended Diets For Children And Young People In Health, Education And Social Care Settings In The Uk: The Protocol For A Realist Mixed Methods Study, Gemma Phillips, Jane Coad, Mary Hickson, Joseph C. Manning

School of Health Professions

Background Enteral tube feeding provides supplementary or alternative nutrition for individuals who cannot meet their nutritional needs orally and remains essential for a number of children and young people with complex health needs. Commercial formula remains standard practice in the UK, although increasing numbers of children and their families are choosing a blended diet and reporting significant physical and social benefits. However, support for families in using blended diets varies across health, education and social settings in the UK. Aim To explore factors affecting the use of blended diets in health, education and social care settings. Methods This sequential mixed …

Catalysts For Third-Country Market Entry: The Role Of Preferential Trade Agreements, Qiugu He, Xuan Luo

Research Collection School Of Economics

Preferential trade agreement (PTA) membership is known to divert trade volumes away from nonmember (third) countries along the intensive margin of trade, yet much less is known about its effects on third-country market entry along the extensive margin of trade. This paper examines whether PTAs catalyze market entry into third countries, and more broadly whether PTAs create spillover effects beyond member countries that matter for development. Using bilateral trade data from 1948 to 2020, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy, and find that the third-country market entry rate rises by 2.1% when the origin country has a PTA partner in the …

Threshold Spatial Panel Regression With Fixed Effects, Xiaoyu Meng, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We introduce general estimation and inference methods for threshold spatial panel regression with two-way fixed effects in a diminishing-threshold-effects framework. A valid objective function is obtained through a simple adjustment on the concentrated quasi loglikelihood with fixed effects being concentrated out, which leads to a consistent estimation of all common parameters. We show that the estimation of threshold parameter has a negligible effect on the asymptotic distribution of the main parameter estimators and thereby regular inference methods apply, though a bias correction may be necessary. The limiting distribution of the threshold parameter estimator is shown to be non-regular and infeasible, …

Schizophrenia Spectrum Biomarkers Consortium: Establishment Of A Biorepository For The Discovery Of Quantitative Fluid Biomarkers, Mohini Ranganathan, Susanne Jakob, Felecia Cerrato, Lia Urban Spillane, Tarlan S. Daryoush, Sophie Shuster, Katherine Dokholyan, Shaynna Herrera, Brian Koo, Clyde Markowitz, Pojen Deng, Sage Rush, Monica E. Calkins, Scott Troyan, Kosha Ruparel, Ruben C. Gur, Holly Reynolds, Claire Wegel, Matthew B. Johnson, Lauren Hom, Sam Bryant, Ross W. Mair, Randy L. Buckner, Rebecca Birnbaum, Christian G. Kohler, Cheryl M. Corcoran, Raquel E. Gur, Steven E. Hyman

Student Publications [Scholarly]

Background and Hypothesis: Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) produce severe symptoms, disability, and premature mortality, but only partially effective symptomatic treatments exist. Treatment development is impeded by lack of insight into disease mechanisms or objective biomarkers for clinical trials. Advances in genetics and neurobiology have converged on strong pathogenic hypotheses for SSDs centered on synapse dysfunction and excessive pruning, pathogenic processes that may produce measurable proteomic evidence in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Leveraging design precedents from successful fluid biomarkers discovery for Alzheimer’s disease, we undertook a pilot study to test the feasibility of repeated CSF and blood samples collection from individuals with …

The Timing Of Albedo Declines With Reforestation, Christopher A. Williams, Surendra Shrestha, Susan Cook-Patton, Natalia Hasler, Drew E. Terasaki-Hart, Samantha Yeo

Geography

Reforestation is a leading climate solution for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but generally decreases surface albedo, which diminishes its climate mitigation value. Knowing how quickly this albedo effect unfolds relative to carbon removal is critical for planning climate mitigation actions, yet the temporal changes in albedo are poorly described. This study uses satellite observations to characterize temporal changes in albedo with stand development for different forest types and ecoclimatic settings around the world. We find that about half of the climate warming effect from decreased albedo occurs within 40 years, but that it takes anywhere from 50 to …

Heroclix®: A Multiplayer Chess Game For Teaching The Fundamentals Of Human Capital Management, Chin Heng Low, Jiunwen Wang, Paul Lim, Bernie Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article describes the adaptation and use of the HeroClix® board game to teach critical real-world principles for effective human capital management within teams. In a HeroClix® game, players pit their team of miniature figurines against other players’ miniatures in combat. This is akin to organizations striving in the business environment today, with well-structured human capital within their teams as a key competitive advantage. In this article, we suggest how the game can be applied in the classroom for undergraduate students to experience, reflect on, and learn more about the prerequisite considerations in proficient people management, the dynamic nature of …

Cerebellar Atrophy In Pediatric-Onset Opsoclonus-Myoclonus-Ataxia Syndrome: A Large International Cohort Study, Rebecca Macrae, Kierstin Hederstedt, Christopher Cortina, Kumaran Deiva, Andrea Klein, Ming Lim, Thomas Rossor, Elizabeth A Sokol, Yasmin Khakoo, Nikita Malani Shukla, Timothy E Lotze, Wendy G Mitchell, Sarah Hopkins, Bo Zhang, Mark P Gorman

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background and objectives: Pediatric-onset opsoclonus-myoclonus-ataxia syndrome (POOMAS) is a rare, neuroinflammatory syndrome that targets the cerebellum and can cause irreversible cerebellar structural changes, namely cerebellar atrophy. We investigated the frequency of cerebellar atrophy, as well as associated risk factors and functional outcome measures, using the largest active POOMAS registry.

Methods: This was a retrospective observational study of participants with POOMAS with disease onset from 1995 to 2025 using data from the multinational, multicenter POOMAS registry. Variables were compared between the cerebellar atrophy subgroups using the Fisher exact test or Wilcoxon rank-sum test.

Results: Of participants with follow-up imaging, cerebellar atrophy …

Towards Human-Centered Digital Health Interventions, Kristin M Kostick-Quenet, Eric A Storch

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

This article discusses the potential of digital health interventions (DHIs) in mental health care, emphasizing the importance of designing them to foster genuine humanistic care. It highlights current challenges in measuring engagement and outcomes, advocating for integrating human-centered endpoints such as dignity, autonomy, and therapeutic alliance into evaluation frameworks. The authors call for mechanistic research to identify effective engagement strategies and context-specific implementation approaches. Ultimately, successful DHIs should demonstrate both clinical efficacy and the preservation of humane, person-centered care, ensuring ethical and meaningful mental health support through technology.

Modern Youth Or Moral Decadence: Discourses On South Korea’S “Youth Culture” In Magazines Of The Late 1960s And Early 1970s, Thibaut Diverchy

Asia Pacific Perspectives

The cultural phenomenon known as “youth culture” (ch’ŏngnyŏn munhwa) emerged in South Korean society at the turn of the 1970s. It encompasses Western fashion trends, music genres, leisure and nightlife. Labeled as a foreign and decadent trend by the authorities, this so-called counterculture was the target of repeated crackdowns. It is sometimes perceived as a force of protest or resistance, but it had more ambiguous relations to the regime. Popular entertainment magazines such as the Sunday Seoul or the Chugan Kyŏnghyang helped propagate youth culture and provided resources about new trends to young people, but also kept a certain distance …

Organic Pesticides: A General Overview, Marion Murray, Ann Mull

All Current Publications

Organic pesticides are naturally occurring, nonsynthetic, or minimally processed substances that control unwanted organisms in the environment. Categories include insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and miticides.

Bivip: A Competitive Neural Network For Bilateral Visuo-Haptic Processing, Eleonore Federica Di Rosa, Aaisha Sheth, Jeffrey Min-In Yau, Laura Astolfi, Cristiano Cuppini

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Visuo-haptic interactions are gaining interest in perception research because of their relevance to robotics and rehabilitation. While the benefits of integrating concurrent visuo-tactile cues are well-documented, the temporal dynamics of competitive interactions between vision and touch remain less understood. Building on extant empirical evidence of unilateral intersensory switching, we ask whether bilateral detection of visual and tactile stimuli can be explained by cross-sensory competition and explore the underlying sensorineural dynamics via a multi-level neural network model. Tested against results from a speeded reaction time task to unilateral and bilateral visual, tactile, and visuo-tactile targets, the network successfully predicts higher switch …

Library News September 2026, Research Medical Library

Library News 2026

• New Image Integrity Certification Questionnaire
• AI Tools in Systematic Reviews: Where They Help—and Where They Fall Short
• Optimizing Your Library Life (aka Library-maxxing)
• To Forego or Forgo: That Is the Question!

2026-09-22 Executive Council Minutes, Susie Salazar

Executive Council Minutes

No abstract provided.

Final 2023 Unreclaimed Sites Sampling: Ur-42 Site Evaluation Summary Report, Pioneer Technical Services, Inc.

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Algorithm Aversion In Academic Libraries: User Resistance To Ai-Enabled Discovery And Search Services, Fenfang Cao, Lvting Bu, Yi Huang, Yu Chi, Hengyi Fu

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Academic libraries increasingly deploy AI-enabled services such as intelligent search, recommendation systems, and chat-based assistance to support scholarly resource discovery. However, some users remain reluctant to rely on these tools. This phenomenon, often described as algorithm aversion, has been widely examined in healthcare and finance but remains underexplored in library contexts. This study investigates the factors associated with algorithm aversion in academic digital libraries and examines how these factors relate to one another. A two-phase mixed-method design was adopted. First, 41 semi-structured interviews with users from Chinese university libraries were analyzed using grounded theory. This stage produced 58 initial concepts, …

How Do Ai Service Agents Impact Tourists’ Pro-Environmental Behavior? The Effects Of Childlike Anthropomorphism And Moral Disengagement, Lujun Su, Liqin Gong, Yinghua Huang, Xuehuan He

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Drawing on moral disengagement theory, this research examines how service provider type shapes tourists' pro-environmental behavior. Across five studies including four scenario-based experiments and a field experiment, we show that AI service agents, compared with human service providers, tend to reduce tourists' pro-environmental intentions and behaviors. Moral disengagement serves as the psychological mechanism underlying this effect, such that AI service agents increase tourists' moral disengagement, which in turn weakens their pro-environmental behavior. We further show that childlike anthropomorphism attenuates this process by reducing moral disengagement: with childlike anthropomorphic AI tourists’ pro-environmental responses are comparable to their responses to human service …

Diagnostic Delay In Acute Care Settings And The Economic Burden Of Pemphigus And Pemphigoid: A Literature Review, Sana Altaf, Sara Shah, Simran Gill, Sarah Mazurovsky, Yasmeen Magharehabed, Carolyn Duong, Karen Vo

Student Publications

Pemphigus vulgaris (PV), bullous pemphigoid, and paraneoplastic pemphigus are autoimmune blistering diseases carrying significant mortality risk and economic burden. Diagnosis is frequently delayed in acute care settings, where these conditions mimic common dermatoses such as cellulitis, aphthous stomatitis, and Stevens-Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis. While emergency departments appropriately triage and admit severely affected patients, definitive diagnosis is often delayed across the acute care continuum, averaging 6 to 12 months from symptom onset. These delays result in repeated visits, inappropriate therapies, and avoidable hospitalizations. Pemphigus vulgaris hospitalization costs average $14,500 per patient annually in the United States, and cellulitis misdiagnosis alone generates …

Prevalence And Availability Of Specialty Dental Care Sites For Children Covered By Medicaid And Chip In The United States, Jonmichael Cope, Aaron David, Chase Otto, Inder Sehgal

Student Publications

Introduction: Access to dental care is a critical aspect of children's healthcare. For these reasons, Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), administered by states, cover medically necessary services. Specialty providers can enroll and participate in state or state-contracted plans, but availability varies widely. Our research objective was to evaluate the availability of non-general dentist specialists in endodontics, oral and maxillofacial surgery, orthodontics/dentofacial orthopedics on the InsureKidsNow website for Medicaid/CHIP enrollees, on a state-by-state basis, and to compare these with pediatric dental availability.

Methods: This is an observational, cross-sectional descriptive study. InsureKidsNow.gov was searched to identify and compare available and …

The Low Participation Of Women In The Truck Driving Industry, Aurora Floodine

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Women remain underrepresented in the United States trucking industry, particularly in leadership roles, despite ongoing efforts to increase workforce diversity and address persistent driver shortages. This qualitative phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of female trucking professionals who began their careers as truck drivers and later advanced into leadership positions. The study examined the strategies that facilitated women’s progression into leadership and the systemic barriers that may limit their advancement within the trucking industry. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 11 female trucking professionals, and the resulting data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Six themes emerged from the findings: (a) independence, …

School Leadership And Collaboration: A Case Study Of Leaders’ Experience Implementing Vertical Alignment Practices, Tara R. Wehmeyer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Changing student demographics within a large elementary school increased the need for collaboration between leadership and staff as they implemented a wide range of initiatives to support student learning. Grounded in the transformational leadership theoretical framework, this exploratory case study sought to systematically observe and gather knowledge about the experiences of campus leaders as they implement vertical alignment teams to foster a collaborative approach while instituting required initiatives. The sample included seven campus leadership team members and data collection utilized transcribed semistructured interviews, debriefing sessions after vertical alignment team meetings, meeting observations, and a researcher’s journal. All data were analyzed …

Don’T Let Us Down: A Phenomenological Study Of African American Employees’ Perceptions Regarding The Benefits Of Professional Development In Student Affairs, Courtney Nicole Demings

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The experiences of student affairs professionals are critical to the success of higher education, allowing for a concentrated exploration of African American student affairs professionals who are often employed in 2-year U.S. community colleges. The general problem was that African Americans may leave student affairs in community colleges if they do not perceive supervisory support for professional development and, in turn, career advancement. The purpose of this dissertation was to understand and interpret their lived experiences, illuminate the barriers to their career advancement, and discuss the impact of supervisory support. As such, this action research employed qualitative research through the …

Longitudinal Association Between Midlife Cardiovascular Health And Cognitive Change In A Bi-Ethnic Cohort, Janette Vazquez, Rebecca Bernal, Luis Aguirre, Jesus D. Melgarejo, Gladys Maestre, Sudha Seshadri, Helen P. Hazuda, Chen-Pin Wang, Claudia Satizabal

School of Medicine Publications

Introduction: Midlife cardiovascular burden contributes to cognitive decline and dementia. However, research in diverse populations remains scarce.

Methods: We included 402 San Antonio Heart Study participants (1979–1988; midlife mean age 57.9 ± 3.8, 58.5% women, 52% Mexican American) later enrolled in the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging (1992–2004). Midlife cardiovascular health was assessed using Life's Simple 7. Cognition was measured up to four times with the Mini-Mental State Examination. Generalized estimating equation models adjusted for age, sex, income, and education were used to relate cardiovascular factors to cognitive change. Sensitivity analyses evaluated attrition bias.

Results: Physical activity was associated …

Learning 1-Bit Lidar-Based Localization With Auxiliary Objective, Kaijie Yin, Zhiyuan Zhang, Tian Gao, Wentao Zhu, Cheng-Zhong Xu, Hui Kong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

6-DoF LiDAR-based localization is a fundamental capability for autonomous systems operating in large-scale outdoor environments. Many deep-learning-based localization methods have achieved promising performance so far. However, as one of the always-on modules competing for limited on-board computational resources, the localization module is expected to consume only a small portion of the overall compute budget. Most existing learning-based methods are still too heavy for this purpose. In contrast, binary neural networks (BNNs) offer an appealing solution, but the 1-bit compression causes severe information loss and performance drop. In this paper, we address this challenge by proposing Binarized LiDAR-based Localization (BiLoc), the …

Generalized Logit Adjustment: Improved Fine-Tuning By Mitigating Label Bias In Zero-Shot Vision Models, Beier Zhu, Qianru Sun, Xun Yang, Hanwang Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Foundation models like CLIP allow zero-shot transfer on various tasks without additional training data. Yet, the zero-shot performance is less competitive than a fully supervised one. Thus, fine-tuning and ensembling are also commonly adopted to better fit the downstream tasks. However, we argue that such prior work has overlooked the inherent biases in foundation models. Due to the highly imbalanced Web-scale training set, foundation models are inevitably skewed toward frequent semantics, and thus the subsequent fine-tuning or ensembling is still biased. In this study, we systematically examine the biases in foundation models and demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed Generalized …