Digital Commons Network^™

News You Can Use: Shining A Light On Home Security Cameras, Jordan Karnbach

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – From autonomous driving to personal health monitoring, AI-powered vision systems are transforming how machines understand human behavior.

Beyond Criminalization: A Call For Educational Restorative Justice In Response To Maryland’S 2024 Juvenile Crime Bill, Melissa B. Spirn

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Genetic Structuring Of The Ozark Pocket Gopher (Geomys Bursarius Ozarkensis) And Coevolution With Its Geomydoecus Ectoparasites, Monica Raquel Reusche

Student Theses and Dissertations

The Ozark pocket gopher Geomys bursarius ozarkensis is a highly isolated and restricted subspecies of the plains pocket gopher endemic to Izard Co., Arkansas. This isolation may have impacts genetically and may have caused speciation of their chewing louse. First, I updated the distribution and confirmed occupation at 46 previously documented and 91 additional sites, a 34% increase in areal range. Next, I evaluated natal dispersal which was rare (9.1%) and occurred over shorter distances (≤ 63 m) than for other gopher species. Analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms from contemporary populations and museum specimens indicated a high genetic structure among …

A New Model For Educational Program Assessments Using Automated Collective Concept Maps, Andrew R. Paullin

Master's Theses (2009 -)

This paper presents: Epistemological principles; the origins and theoretical foundations of concept maps; the current state of related works; the contributions, methods, results, and future road map of this research; and A New Model for Educational Program Assessments. An understanding that knowledge results from an evolution of cognitive structures enables a scientific approach to enhance the efficiency of learning. Building on prior works, this research provides a novel algorithm and tool to automatically create Collective Concept Maps from Individual Concept Maps by utilizing a dictionary, thesaurus, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence, and domain expertise. Abstraction Filters enable …

Risk And Protective Factors Associated With Teenage Pregnancy And Intergenerational Interventions: A Scoping Review Protocol, Zamasomi Luvuno, Wilbroda Hlolosile Chiya, Silingene Joyce Ngcobo, Deshini Naidoo, Serwaa Omowale, Tracy Zhandire, Elizabeth Musili Joseph-Shehu, Busisiwe Purity Ncama, Sinegugu E Duma

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: Teenage pregnancy remains a critical global health issue, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The intergenerational transmission of teenage pregnancy underscores the need for targeted interventions. Existing research on intergenerational approaches is fragmented, with varying methodologies and outcomes. This scoping review seeks to address this gap by answering the following research questions: What are the available intergenerational interventions for teenage pregnancy, and what are the associated risks and protective factors for early and late teenage pregnancy?

Methods and analysis: This study does not involve primary data collection and therefore does not require ethical approval. The review will be conducted …

The De Mau Mau Conspiracy: The Specter Of Black Vietnam Veterans In The Exercise Of Police Power, 1968-1976, Ina Cox

Dissertations

A forgotten and bizarre event encapsulates the violent decay that characterized the pivotal years the United States endured in the wake of the Vietnam War. Black veterans—guerrilla combat-trained, politically awakened by war, and disillusioned with the entrenched racial order at home—emerged as totems in a fearful, cynical political culture wracked by violence. Men overrepresented in the projection of American power abroad now stood as symbols of its fragility within, potential vessels of retribution for centuries of domestic and global oppression. This anxiety, merging with widespread protests and political upheaval, intensified the belief that American cities stood on the brink of …

Into The Language Barrier: Analysis Of The Debates Of Charles Taylor And Jürgen Habermas With Concentration On The Importance Of Philosophy Of Language, Tom Crosby

Dissertations

Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) and Charles Taylor (b. 1931) are two of the most important philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Throughout their lengthy bodies of work, spanning from the 1960s and continuing today, they were frequent interlocutors, and often responded to one another’s theories and arguments. They also engaged in direct debates in edited volumes to which they both contributed, including Communicative Action: Essays on Jürgen Habermas's The Theory of Communicative Action (1991), Multiculturalism (1994), and The Power of Religion in the Public Square (2011). The goal of this dissertation is to catalogue and analyze Habermas …

A Survey On Immersive Cyber Situational Awareness Systems, Hussain Ahmad, Faheem Ullah, Rehan Jafri

All Works

Cyber situational awareness systems are increasingly used for creating cyber common operating pictures for cybersecurity analysis and education. However, these systems face data occlusion and convolution issues due to the burgeoning complexity, dimensionality, and heterogeneity of cybersecurity data, which damages cyber situational awareness of end-users. Moreover, conventional forms of human–computer interactions, such as mouse and keyboard, increase the mental effort and cognitive load of cybersecurity practitioners when analyzing cyber situations of large-scale infrastructures. Therefore, immersive technologies, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, are employed in the cybersecurity realm to create intuitive, engaging, and interactive cyber common operating …

Evaluation Of Aav Vectors With Tissue-Specific Or Ubiquitous Promoters In A Mouse Model Of Mucopolysaccharidosis Type Iva, Shaukat A. Khan, Jose Victor Álvarez, F. N. U. Nidhi, Eliana Benincore-Florez, Shunji Tomatsu

Department of Pediatrics Faculty Papers

Mucopolysaccharidosis type IVA (MPS IVA) is caused by a deficiency of N-acetyl-galactosamine-6-sulfate sulfatase (GALNS), leading to the accumulation of keratan sulfate and chondroitin-6-sulfate and development of severe skeletal dysplasia. Enzyme replacement therapy and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation are current treatment options but have limited impact on bone lesions. In this study, we investigated adeno-associated virus (AAV)8 or AAV9 vectors with liver-specific thyroxine-binding globulin or liver-specific promoter-a modification of hAAT (LSPX), liver-muscle tandem (LMTP), liver-bone tandem (LBTP), and ubiquitous cytomegalovirus early enhancer/chicken β-actin (CAG) promoters in MPS IVA mice to compare therapeutic efficacy on biochemical markers and bone pathology. All vectors …

Common Aav Gene Therapy Vectors Show Nonselective Transduction Of Ex Vivo Human Brain Tissue, J P Mcginnis, Joshua Ortiz-Guzman, Maria Camila Guevara, Sai Mallannagari, Benjamin D W Belfort, Suyang Bao, Snigdha Srivastava, Maria Morkas, Emily Ji, Angela Addison, Evelyne K Tantry, Sarah Chen, Ying Wang, Zihong Chen, Kalman A Katlowitz, Jeffrey J Lange, Melissa M Blessing, Carrie A Mohila, M Cecilia Ljungberg, Guillermo Aldave, Ali Jalali, Akash Patel, Sameer A Sheth, Howard L Weiner, Shankar Gopinath, Ganesh Rao, Akdes Serin Harmanci, Daniel J Curry, Benjamin R Arenkiel

Children’s Nutrition Research Center Staff Publications

The ability to deliver a therapeutic sequence to a specific cell type in the human brain would make possible innumerable therapeutic options for some of our most challenging diseases; however, studies on adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector tropism have generally relied on animal models with limited translational utility. For this reason, establishing the tropism of common adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors in living human brain tissue serves as an important baseline for further optimization, as well as a determination of human brain cell types transduced by clinically approved gene therapy vectors AAV2 and AAV9. We have adapted an

Preoperative Dialysis Dose And Postoperative Outcomes In Patients Receiving Maintenance Hemodialysis, Vikram Fielding-Singh, Matthew W Vanneman, Arden M Morris, Wolfgang C Winkelmayer, Louise Y Sun, Pavel S Roshanov, Maria Montez-Rath, Glenn M Chertow, Eugene Lin

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: Little is known about preoperative hemodialysis dosing for patients with end-stage kidney disease. We assessed whether changes in preoperative hemodialysis dose (compared to and controlling for baseline dose) are associated with postoperative mortality in patients receiving maintenance hemodialysis.

Methods: We identified fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries receiving hemodialysis for end-stage kidney disease who underwent surgical procedures between January 1, 2011, and November 30, 2020. Follow-up ended December 31, 2020. The primary exposure was preoperative change in Kt/Vurea, defined as the difference between the Kt/Vurea in the hemodialysis session proximal to the procedure and the mean Kt/Vurea for the preceding 180 days. …

Amplifying Extremism: Small Town Politicians, Media Storms, And American Journalism, Nik Usher, Jessica C. Hagman

Communication: Faculty Scholarship

Within a week, a no-name Republican state representative from a town of 384 people in Illinois catapulted from obscurity to a prime-time appearance on Fox News' Ingraham Angle. This newly empowered politician, Darren Bailey, would go on to steer the pro-business Republican party in Illinois toward extremism. Democratic backsliding emerges across all levels of politics, but the threats posed by small-town politicians have been overshadowed by national-level politicians. This microstudy of a single politician's debut in the public eye showcases a novel approach to media corpus construction that combines proprietary and open databases, aggregated search tools, and targeted searching, and …

The Promotion Of Physical Activity For Use In Alzheimer's Disease Prevention Trials In Adults With Down Syndrome: Results From A 12-Month Randomized Trial., Lauren T. Ptomey, Brian C. Helsel, Richard A. Washburn, Robert N. Montgomery, Ron Krebill, Jessica C. Danon, Joseph R. Sherman, Daniel Forsha, Amy Bodde, Amanda N. Szabo-Reed, Anna M. Gorczyca, Joseph E. Donnelly

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

INTRODUCTION: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the leading cause of death in individuals with Down syndrome (DS). Participation in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) may prevent or delay the onset of AD. Therefore, we evaluated the potential effectiveness of a remotely delivered home-based group exercise (≈8/group) to increase daily MVPA and cardiorespiratory fitness in adults with DS to a level that may be associated with delaying AD in adults with DS.

METHODS: Adults with DS ((n = 81, age ≈27 years 55% female) without dementia were randomized (2:2:1) to a 12-month intervention, which included 40-min exercise sessions scheduled once (remote low …

Formulation And Assessment Of Indomethacin Nanoparticles For Dissolution Improvement, Malath Hatif Oudah, Fatima Mohamed Hussian Wais

Maaen Journal for Medical Sciences

Indomethacin is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug useful to reduce pain, rheumatoid arthritis and fever. Indomethacin, a Class II drug characterized by high permeability and low solubility. The goal of study was to develop Indomethacin nanoparticles by nanoprecipitation method and subsequently investigate if this nanoparticle formulation leads to enhanced solubility and a faster dissolution rate. Nine different formulas were prepared by using three different polymers (HPMC E50, PVP- K30, and poloxamer -188) in three different drug: polymer ratio 1:1, 1:2 and 1:3. Different types and concentrations of polymer used in this study, and the results reveal and found to have a …

Elephants, Ed Ting

CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal

No abstract provided.

Situational Analysis Of Child Labour In Coastal And Marine Activities In Zanzibar, Tanzania, Happiness Anold Moshi, Rukia Kitula

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This study analyses the situation of child labour in coastal and marine activities in Zanzibar, Tanzania, by examining activities carried out by children, the major driving factors for engaging in child labour, as well as the associated impacts to children’s schooling and wellbeing. Questionnaire survey, focus group discussions (FGDs), participant observations, and key informant interviews (KII) were all used to collect data for the study. The study involved a total of 90 children, who were randomly selected among working children in coastal and marine activities. It was found that most of the working children were involved in fishing, fish descaling, …

Presentations: Pennsylvania's Environmental Rights Amendment And Environmental Justice, Samantha Phillps Beers, John C. Dernbach, Emma H. Bast, Margaret O. Murphy

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

A Modern Moby-Dick: The First Circuit Reveals How Man's Unchecked Fixations Still Impact Nantucket's North Atlantic Right Whale In Nantucket Residents Against Turbines V. U.S. Bureau Of Ocean Energy Management, Julia A. Snyder

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Multigenerational Exposure To Glyphosate Has Only Modest Effects On Life-History Traits, Stress Tolerance And Microbiome In A Field Cricket, J. W. Whitlock, P. M. Orwin, Z. R. Stahlschmidt

Pacific Faculty Work

Glyphosate is the most used herbicide worldwide, and it can be toxic to off-target species, such as insects. Although GLY-based herbicides (GBHs) can influence insect microbiomes, little is known about its cascading effects on fitness-related traits, such as life history or stress tolerance, especially in the context of long-term, multigenerational exposure. Thus, we exposed the variable field cricket, Gryllus lineaticeps, to GBH within and across generations to examine the potential role of GBH in developmental plasticity and evolution. Specifically, we measured its effects on life-history traits (e.g. developmental duration, adult body size and mass, and a life-history trade-off between investment …

The Parthenon, June 11, 2025, Baylee Parsons, Kaitlyn Fleming, Ashton Pack, Nate Harrah, Soleil Woolard

The Parthenon

No abstract provided.

The Hitching Post: American Poetry And Chinese Mythology, Xiamara Elena Hohman

Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine the ways in which Chinese mythology has figured in American poetry, focusing particularly on the ways Chinese mythologies have served—and continue to serve—as “hitching posts,” quasi-material sites from which meaning can be created and explored. As I am defining it, a myth is a narrative that gives meaning to a lived experience. It explains what we commemorate and worship and renders meaningful both celebration and life. In the first three chapters of this study, I discuss the ways in which Chinese myths and cultural practices have been both used as hitching posts and appropriated by …

Multi Trajectory Guided Model Inversion Attacks, Indrajit Nandi

Master’s Dissertations

Recent advancements in deep learning have brought significant concerns regarding the privacy of training data due to overfitting and memorization, as well as a lack of defense mechanisms. In model inversion attacks, where Attackers aim to reconstruct original private training samples (i.e images) just by using the DNN model’s last layer output. Traditional black-box MI attacks face three key challenges: (1) Non-convex optimization landscapes often trap reconstructions in poor local minima, degrading output quality. (2) Black-box scenarios require excessive queries to approximate gradients, raising detection risks. (3) Unconstrained pixel-space optimization generates unrealistic artifacts since the inverse mapping lacks natural image …

From Picturebooks To Play: Dialogic Pedagogy For Cultivating Agency And Social Awareness In Young Learners, Amanda Deliman

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

This study examines how young children engage with picturebooks, discussion, dramatic inquiry, and writing to negotiate diverse perspectives and develop empathy in an early childhood classroom. Grounded in sociocultural and critical literacy theories, the research explores the role of dialogic pedagogy in fostering young learners’ agency and social awareness. Utilizing a qualitative single-case study design, data were collected over a full academic year in a second-grade classroom through video recordings, field notes, interviews, and student artifacts. Thematic analysis revealed that dialogic engagements supported students in developing a shared language about empathy, resolving classroom conflicts, and exploring actionable ways to support …

Highly Adaptable Dendrimer Gel Nanoparticles With Dual Targeting Of Upar And Ribonucleotide Reductase R2 For Better Retention And Improved Therapeutic Outcomes In Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, Hsin Yin Chuang, Da Huang, Lin Qi, Vidit Singh, Anna Chernatynskaya, Yue-Wern Huang, Hu Yang

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) accounts for approximately 15% of breast cancers and lacks estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), rendering it unresponsive to hormonal or anti-HER2 therapies. Due to its poor prognosis and limited treatment options, there is an urgent need for targeted therapies. In this study, we developed highly adaptable polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimer-based gel nanoparticles with dual-targeting capabilities against urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR) and ribonucleotide reductase R2 (R2). These nanoparticles were designed to target both TNBC cells and cancer-associated stromal cells by leveraging uPA-uPAR interactions and delivering the antisense oligonucleotide …

Sacred Bodies And (A)Historical Testimony: Han Kang's Human Acts, Jenny Yoojin Oh

Comparative Literature Undergraduate Senior Theses

The 1980 Gwangju Uprising is a significant event in contemporary South Korean political history. In the decades following, "Gwangju literature" has provided an avenue for representation, narrativization, and encounter with the event. South Korean author Han Kang is another writer of the Uprising, and her 2014 novel Human Acts returns to the site of injury in order to open up the event to the larger histories of sovereignty, civil conflict, and war that it localizes in Gwangju, 1980.

This thesis seeks to leverage the way the novel draws upon the sacred and the religious to call upon Gwangju. I argue …

"The Divine Light Illuminates The Intellect:" The Role Of Divine Illumination In The Theology Of Meister Eckhart, John Marshall Loving

Dissertations

This dissertation is a study on the epistemological theory of divine illumination in the works of Meister Eckhart (c. 1260 - 1329 CE). Illumination, first asserted by St. Augustine, is the theory that the human intellect is incapable of achieving epistemic certainty regarding what it sensorily receives. To gain this certainty, the mind is reliant upon illumination, wherein the sensed object is known by the mind through the light of that object's divine idea, which also serves as its ontological principle. Divine illumination was the dominant epistemology in Christian thought for centuries until it began to lose its influence in …

Captured And Enhanced Potentials Of Wild Edible Fruits In Tabora Rural, Uyui And Sikonge Districts, Tabora In Tanzania, Mirau N. Mbise

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Rural communities worldwide supplement food and income through wild edible fruits. However, the paucity of scientific inquiry on the perceptions and uses of wild edible fruits, value-addition, and marketing prompted this study. It interviewed respondents from 274 households in Tabora rural, Sikonge, and Uyui districts in the Tabora region of Tanzania. Descriptive and quantitative analyses were undertaken, and results showed that wild edible fruit activities are perceived to be for women, children, and less-educated people. Furthermore, the findings indicated that 100% (n = 274) of the respondents use wild edible fruits as food, and 48.6% (n = 133) use them …

Rethinking Large-Scale Phylogenomics With Eukphylo V.1.0, A Flexible Toolkit To Enable Phylogeny-Informed Data Curation And Analyses Of Diverse Eukaryotic Lineages, Laura A. Katz, Marie Leleu, Godwin Ani, Rebecca Gawron, Auden Cote-L'Heureux

Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Eukaryotic diversity is largely microbial, with macroscopic lineages (plants, animals, and fungi) nesting among a plethora of diverse protists. Our understanding of the evolutionary relationships among eukaryotes is rapidly advancing through ’omics analyses, but phylogenomic analyses are challenging for microeukaryotes, particularly uncultivable lineages, as single-cell sequencing approaches generate a mixture of sequences from hosts, associated microbiomes, and contaminants. Moreover, many analyses of eukaryotic gene families and phylogenies rely on boutique data sets and methods that are challenging for other research groups to replicate. To address these challenges, we present EukPhylo v.1.0, a modular, user-friendly pipeline that enables effective data curation …

Climate Change And Digital Nations: Harnessing The Metaverse To Perpetuate Small Island Statehood, Nicole Bessette

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Office Of Research, Economic Engagement And Outreach Update, June 11, 2025, Office Of Research, Economic Engagement And Outreach

Office of Research, Economic Engagement and Outreach

No abstract provided.