Digital Commons Network^™

Assessing Intra-Seasonal Changes In Summer Elk Diet Composition, Ava E. Window

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Elk (Cervus canadensis) require adequate forage to fulfill their seasonal nutritional requirements. Elk undergo their highest nutritional demands during summer to support critical life functions such as late gestation, lactation, and juvenile growth. However, variations in plant phenology significantly influence the quality and quantity of forage available to elk during the summer season. As summer advances and plant communities mature, forage quality often declines, leading to a landscape that imposes greater nutritional constraints on elk. As a result, prior research on elk foraging habits has primarily focused on late summer. This has led to limited knowledge surrounding the …

Navigating Challenges In Dentomaxillofacial Science By Integrating Genetics, Clinical Innovation, And Educational Intervention: Editorial Review, H. Hasanuddin, Acing H. Mude, Muhammad Ikbal, Erni Marlina, Muhammad Ruslin

Journal of Dentomaxillofacial Science

No abstract provided.

Assessing Social Cognition In The Clockδ19 Mouse Model Of Bipolar Disorder, Eden Fraatz

Psychology Theses

No abstract provided.

Spectrum Of The Lakes: Using Satellite Remote Sensing To Unveil Water Color In Minnesota's Sentinel Lakes For Water Quality Monitoring, Andrew J. Dooley, Wondwosen M. Seyoum, Catherine M. O'Reilly

Faculty Publications - Geography, Geology, and the Environment

Traditional water quality monitoring methods often face limitations of equipment costs and labor demands, requiring innovative approaches to effectively assess the ecological health of inland lakes across vast areas. This research explores the application of free, publicly available water color chromaticity analysis for midcontinent lakes in Minnesota, USA. We examined water color variations in Minnesota’s Sentinel Lakes using Landsat 8 OLI data to analyze surface reflectance samples collected from the deepest area within each lake during the late summer, corresponding to peak annual insolation and trophic activity. The median dominant visible wavelength was used to characterize water color. Results indicate …

Revolutionary Worldmaking: James Monroe Whitfield’S Poems In Martin Delany’S Blake; Or, The Huts Of America, Magdalena Zapędowska

Jacobson Center: Publications

Martin Delany’s Blake, serialized in the Weekly Anglo-African in 1861–62, includes five unattributed poems from James Monroe Whitfield’s volume America and Other Poems, which appear in the novel as compositions of the Cuban revolutionary poet Placido. Largely overlooked in scholarship on Blake, Whitfield/Placido’s poems are crucial to the impending revolt of the oppressed because they foster a collective emancipatory consciousness and model, through poetic form, the meticulous organization on which the revolution relies for success. Resonating with other poems and songs quoted in the novel, they speak to broader questions of poetry’s role in building communities of resistance. In turn, …

Rabble: A Companion To Pwa-Tem (2025)

Rabble, 2014-

Rabble is a companion chapbook publication to the magazine Pwatem. From the preface of most issues: "'Tell the rabble my name is Cabell."- James Branch Cabell to his editor, to help people learn how to pronounce his name. Cabell used the word derogatively but we are taking it back. These pages will showcase the writing and illustrations of our rabble-the ordinary students of VCU."

Historicity And Axiology: Temporal Implications For Axiology, Bennett Gilbert

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

To develop the axiology of moral (or ethical) values, phenomenological analysis must look at temporality in a way that is unfamiliar to it. This way is through knowledge and experience of the actual historical past, from which it has been separated by the Heideggerian conception of historicity and its classical Husserlian analysis of time consciousness. The development of historical studies helps to make this possible. A simple sample model of the diachronesis of the awareness of ethical significance, value, and obligation is presented. It moves the analysis from a presentist focus to the field of experience in which subjects develop …

Interdependence And Identity: Moral Relation In An Historical World, Bennett B. Gilbert

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

The twin concepts in the title will be introduced in the contexts of the philosophy of history and of philosophical personalism, as distinct from (though related to) their uses as logical and metaphysical categories. Overviews of varieties of philosophy of history and of basic principles I employ are foundations of the argument. Concepts, or ideas, in general have, I argue, real existence through the way that personal agents use them in creating the histories of human relations. I introduce a Personalist account, which has a more thoroughly diachronic character. Further remarks on the power of ideas to create relations expands …

The Meteoric Rise In The Privatization Of Space Meets The Dark Side Of The Moon, Sarah R. Yee

California Western International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Muharram, Milad And The Memons: The Commemoration Of Muharram And Celebration Of Milad Within The Memon Community, Ashkan Fayyaz

SSLA Culminating Experience

This thesis is a documentation of the Oral History of the commemoration of Muharram and celebration of Eid Milad-un-Nabi (ﷺ) within the Memon community residing in Karachi. The thesis traces a shift in scale from Muharram commemorations to Eid Milad-un-Nabi (ﷺ) celebrations. Using seven oral-history interviews from Kharadar and Hussainabad, it reconstructs the rituals affiliated with Muharram and Rabi-ul-Awal and analyses their meanings through hermeneutic phenomenology. It then analyzes transformation via Van Manen’s four lifeworld existentials: spatiality, corporeality, temporality and relationality. To complement the findings of this thesis, a historical analysis of Memon community’s practices in colonial Natal and colonial …

Video Analytics And Fourth Amendment Vision, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

What does the Fourth Amendment have to say about video analytics running on citywide camera systems? Video analytics (also known as computer vision) involves hardware and software in cameras that turns video surveillance streams into useful data, identifying, categorizing, matching, and alerting police about objects, people, and incidents. Video analytics can identify objects (e.g., hat, backpack, person, car) and track that person or thing back in time and through the streets using video surveillance footage. For police officers conducting virtual patrols or retrospective investigations, video analytics lets police scan thousands of linked cameras for suspicious behavior or a particular suspect, …

Getting Donor-Advised Funds Regulation Right: Closing The Public Support Test Loophole, Benjamin Leff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Donor-Advised Funds (“DAFs”) have been the subject of vigorous critical scholarship in the past two decades. This Article addresses two timely issues in DAF regulation: the theoretical justifications for extra strict regulation of DAFs, and, in light of those justifications, how to close a major loophole in the regulatory scheme. DAFs have been called “virtual private foundations” because they are similar in some respects to private foundations, but until two decades ago, they were treated for legal purposes as public charities. In 2006, Congress enacted legislation that both formally recognized DAFs for the first time and subjected them to several …

The Chitlins Effect: Distinguishing Cultural Resilience From Normalized Harm, Steffannie Roache

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Chitlins Effect is a practice framework developed to help behavioral health professionals distinguish between culturally rooted strengths and trauma-based patterns in the communities they serve. Named after a cultural example rooted in Black American history — where necessity became tradition, and survival became meaning — the framework describes how beliefs, behaviors, and coping mechanisms are transmitted across generations, becoming normalized within families, communities, and cultures even when those patterns carry harm. This paper introduces the conceptual foundation of the framework, situates it within existing research on historical trauma, intergenerational transmission, and social determinants of health, and outlines its application …

Electrocardiographic Assessment Of National-Level Triathletes: Sinus Bradycardia And Other Electrocardiographic Abnormalities, Mike Climstein, Kenneth S. Graham, Michael Stapelberg, Joe Walsh, Mark Debeliso, Kent Adams, Trish Sevene, Chad Harris

Kinesiology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: High-intensity endurance training induces specific cardiac adaptations, often observed through electrocardiographic (ECG) changes. This study investigated the prevalence of ECG abnormalities in national-level Australian triathletes compared to sedentary controls. Methods: A cross-sectional observational study was conducted involving 22 triathletes and 7 sedentary controls. Standard 12-lead ECGs assessed resting heart rate, ECG intervals, and axis deviation. Peak oxygen consumption was evaluated in triathletes to correlate with ECG indices and left ventricular mass, derived via echocardiography. Results: Triathletes exhibited significantly lower resting heart rates (53.8 vs. 72.1 bpm, −34%, p = 0.04), shorter QRS durations (0.088 vs. 0.107 ms, −21.6%, p …

“Clinical-Bfr”: An Exploratory Blood Flow Restriction Protocol Focusing On Clinical Application, Fabricio Eduardo Rossi, Kassiana De Araújo Pessôa, Zhi Xia, Jakob Lauver, Daniel Newmire, Jason Michael Cholewa, Steven Machek, Mario Alves De Siqueira Filho, Fabio Santos Lira, Antonio Herbert Lancha Jr, Emilia Zawieja, Nelo Eidy Zanchi

Kinesiology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose: Traditional blood flow restriction resistance training (BFR-Trad) is a cost-effective and time-efficient exercise modality that offers significant skeletal muscle benefits, including strength and mass gains. Despite employing low loads, BFR-Trad may not be well tolerated by all populations due to its high intensity, painassociated muscle discomfort, low affectivity, and cardiovascular responses. Consequently, reducing BFR intensity may be an interesting approach to making traditional BFR more clinically applicable. This was approached through the proposal of the present Clinical BFR.

Methods: Twenty-two healthy, untrained subjects (both female and male) aged between 18 and 30 years participated. Subjects completed three sessions of …

Capturing The World: Exhibition Trophies, Ethnography, And Displays Of Imperial Power, Amy Woodson-Boulton

History Faculty Works

Exhibition trophies have become invisible to most people reading about and looking at images of the great world’s fairs. This is not surprising; trophies have fallen out of our awareness because they, and the criticisms they provoked, have received surprisingly little scholarly attention. This article reveals not only this largely overlooked form, but also just how much cultural work they were doing and why so many people found them disturbing. Exhibition trophies became a solution to the nineteenth-century design problem of representing progress, imperial power, extractive superabundance, control of the natural world, and industrial capacity. Nineteenth-century exhibitors and collectors made …

Hunting And Fishing Ceos: Environmental Plunderers Or Saviors?, Thomas Covington, Steve Widler, Keven Yost

Finance Faculty Works

CEOs who participate in hunting and fishing benefit by appreciating natural environments and permanently consuming natural resources. We examine whether CEOs who hunt and fish make different environmental decisions and find that firms led by CEOs who obtain the most hunting and fishing licenses have lower environmental performance as measured by MSCI-KLD. This effect is strongest in the environmental category of climate change but also extends to pollution, waste, and the protection of natural capital. Furthermore, firms led by CEOs with the most hunting and fishing licenses are significantly more likely to pay a regulatory settlement for an environmental regulatory …

Immersive And Generative Technology: New Tools For Marketing, New Tools For Consumer Response, David W. Stewart, Gabrielle Pizzi, Shashi Matta, Federica Caboni

Marketing & Business Law Faculty Works

Immersive technologies, including AR, VR, XR, and generative technologies such as Gen‐AI, are reinventing marketing practice and consumer experience. In this article we provide an introductory review of how these technologies are (re)shaping consumer behavior in domains where the physical and digital converge, and consumers' response to them. Our review finds that while immersive technologies enhance engagement through personalization and multisensory feedback, they also raise concerns about accessibility, authenticity, and digital fatigue. Similarly, Gen‐AI, which is transforming many facets of marketing, including customer service, product development, marketing communications, and consumer research, raises new questions related to attribution, co‐creation, authenticity, and …

Development And Evaluation Of Machine Learning Models For Early Pediatric Sepsis Prediction, Ancita M. Andrade

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Sepsis is a leading cause of pediatric mortality, claiming more lives in the United States annually than all childhood cancers combined. Early identification in Emergency Departments (EDs) remains challenging, as the current Phoenix criteria establishes an updated international consensus definition for sepsis, however is not designed for use as a screening tool. This study aimed to develop predictive models identifying pediatric patients at risk of sepsis within 24 hours of admission. Multiple tree-based and deep learning models were trained utilizing clinical and laboratory data from the initial four hours of presentation. Both the LightGBM and LSTM architectures demonstrated superior performance, …

Cellular Mechanisms Of Spinal Motoneuron Hypoexcitability Underlying Dynapenia In Aging, Ibrahim Abdul Halim

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Age-related weakness remains poorly understood as the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. While synaptic input and muscular changes have been investigated with age, intrinsic motoneuron excitability alterations are often overlooked. This thesis provides the first direct assessment of intrinsic excitability and ion channel properties of spinal α-MNs from male and female mice across three ages: young, middle aged, and old. Our findings reveal a decline in intrinsic excitability of motoneurons with age in both sexes. Mechanistic analysis shows sex specific differences: female motoneurons exhibit increased dendritic size, hyperpolarized RMP, and SK channel overactivation, whereas males show only SK overactivation with age. …

The Responses Of Insect Herbivores And Local Food Webs To Invasive Shrubs, Logan W. Huber

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Invasive species cause widespread ecological disruption and economic loss. Invasive plants in particular have the potential to reshape forest food webs from the bottom up. However, the extent to which herbivores colonize and assimilate invasive plants into their diets remains unclear. To address this, I surveyed caterpillar abundance, richness, and herbivory on two invasive shrubs, Lonicera maackii and Elaeagnus umbellata, across regions differing in infestation history. Lonicera maackii supported lower overall caterpillar abundance and richness but hosted a more diverse and abundant caterpillar community in the heavily infested region. E. umbellata supported robust caterpillar communities and experienced herbivory levels comparable …

Computational Assessment Of Vitrimers Self-Healing For Renewable Energy And Aerospace Structures, Walaaeldin Mohamed Ahmed Derbala

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Self-healing polymers, particularly vitrimers, are emerging as promising candidates in the development of advanced materials for renewable energy and aerospace structures. These materials exhibit dynamic covalent bond exchange mechanisms that enable reprocess ability, damage repair, and extended operational lifetime under harsh conditions. This study presents a density functional theory (DFT)-based computational investigation of the mechanistic pathways and energetics of bond exchange reactions in model vitrimer systems. We explore transition states, energy barriers, and thermodynamic features corresponding to associative and dissociative self-healing reactions in vitrimers. The study focuses on Diaminodiphenyl disulfide (AFD), a bifunctional molecule composed of two para-substituted aminophenyl rings …

Evidence That Ultraviolet B Radiation Generates Systemic Responses Via Microvesicle Particle, Niharika Annapureddy

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation, ranging from 280–315 nm, has been identified as carcinogenic since 1928 and is known to cause skin cancer. Additionally, UVB exposure triggers inflammatory responses, systemic effects, and organ damage. Recent research has discovered that these adverse outcomes are facilitated by the release of microvesicle particles (MVP) via the inflammatory lipid mediator, Platelet-activating Factor (PAF). We have previously demonstrated that sunburn causes skin keratinocytes to release high levels of MVP by activating the PAF receptor (PAFR). These studies were designed to test if these microvesicles enter the bloodstream and travel to various organs, especially the gut, increasing …

Systemic Effects Of Varying Degrees Of Thermal Burn Injuries In Young Mice: Role Of Microvesicle Particles And Platelet-Activating Factor, Prince Wilfred

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Thermal burn injuries (TBI) result in local and systemic effects, particularly when a large body surface area is exposed to TBI. This study investigates the systemic effects of varying degrees of TBI in the murine model, focusing on the role of microvesicle particles (MVP) and Platelet-activating Factor (PAF) in mediating bacterial translocation and systemic inflammation. Utilizing the murine model, we analyzed MVP levels in the skin and blood, bacterial translocation in the gut, and the expression of pro-inflammatory mediators in the major organs at the 2-hour post-burn time point. Our studies revealed that after the two hours’ time point TBI …

Ready, Set, Resistance: A Dual Continuum Approach To Organizational Change Acceptance, Alexandria Bohn

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

With organizations operating in increasingly dynamic and competitive landscapes, organizations need to be able to get their employees to adapt to system-wide changes that are needed. However, research has suggested a 70% failure rate for organizational change initiatives (Hughes, 2011). Prior research has produced mixed research results when examining resistance and readiness to organizational change on either a single dimension (e.g., Kaplan, 1972) or two dimensions (e.g., Repovs, Drnovsek, & Kase, 2019). I extended prior research by examining resistance versus readiness as residing on a single continuum and whether effects on outcomes were moderated by change orientations. Research has suggested …

Mobile Weather Satellite Receiver, Luke Datsko, Sam Watts, Jason Do, Adam Bechtler

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The "Mobile Weather Satellite Receiver" project aims to create a portable, user-friendly device that receives and displays weather information from geostationary satellites, addressing the limitations of traditional weather sources like the Internet and weather radio, particularly in remote areas. This device will collect and demodulate satellite data, including imagery and Emergency Managers Weather Information Network (EMWIN) forecasts, to provide users with detailed local forecasts and real-time alerts.

Designed with a user-centric approach, the system includes a satellite dish, Software Defined Radio (SDR), a Raspberry Pi, and a custom software interface for ease of use. Its portability and ability to function …

The Vital Role Of Interpreters In The Deaf Community: Navigating Accessibility Amidst Declining Deia Initiatives, Andrew Kovacs

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The catalyst for this research project stems from the rollback of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) initiatives under the current presidential administration. Executive Orders from the presidential office have caused budget cuts and pauses in federal programs that affect all types of communities across the United States. For the Deaf community, funding for federal and state programs aimed at training ASL interpreters, helping Deaf individuals find jobs, and other communicative tools used by native signers has been paused. Despite the urgency of this issue, few studies have looked at the intersection of Deaf accessibility and the decline of DEIA …

Symposium: Defending Tomorrow’S Democracy—The Future Of Elections In The Era Of Advanced Technology - Introduction - Everything Old Is New Again—Advancing Technology And Enduring Problems In American Democracy, Atiba R. Ellis

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Algorithmic Lawmaking, Moral Judging, And Free Will, Jacob Eisler

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Novel Ai/Ml-Based Frameworks For Protein Conformation Selection In Drug Discovery Applications, Shivangi Gupta

Dissertations

Drug development is a lengthy, expensive process with a high failure rate. The urgency brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to enhance drug discovery by increasing target specificity, reducing toxicity, and optimizing formulation strategies. Building on this momentum, this dissertation introduces novel AI/ML-driven frameworks for protein conformation selection and classification, addressing critical challenges in modern drug discovery. However, designing such a novel AI/ML data-driven framework is a difficult task because most real-world biomedical datasets suffer from class imbalance issues, which can significantly skew AI/ML model training, resulting in …