Digital Commons Network^™

Electronic Cigarette Use And Clinically Assessed Oral Mucosal Lesions In Adults: A Systematic Review, Kevin K. Zhang, Kamran Awan

Annual Research Symposium

Abstract

Background: Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use among adults has risen rapidly over the past decade, prompting concern about potential adverse effects on oral health. Although the systemic consequences of e-cigarette exposure have been increasingly studied, effects on the oral mucosa remain less clearly defined. Existing investigations describe a range of oral mucosal findings, but reported outcomes and assessment methods are inconsistent, making it difficult to draw clear conclusions.

Objectives: To systematically review the available evidence examining the association between electronic cigarette use and oral mucosal lesions/alterations in adults, compared with non-users or other tobacco exposure groups.

Methods: A systematic literature …

Fs Agenda 2026-02-18, Northern Illinois University

Faculty Senate Archives

No abstract provided.

From Copper To Ashes: Violations Of The Right To A Healthy Environment And Health In Tsumeb, Namibia, Sarah Dávila

Fordham Environmental Law Review

The rights to a healthy environment and health are not new human rights to the African System for Human and Peoples’ Rights. In fact, they have been protected under the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights since 1981. However, outside of the established normative framework, a pressing issue arises in States where the extractive industry maintains a stronghold on the economy. The people of and around Tsumeb, Namibia, have been subjected to egregious human rights abuses and an environmental crisis. Their lives and environment have been historically and continuously destroyed due to the foreign-corporate extractive industry. The mining and …

Staff Education To Improve Provider Knowledge In Addressing Sdoh-Related Barriers Affecting Medication Adherence, Andrea Latimore

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This Doctoral of Nursing Practice (DNP) project focused on improving provider knowledge in addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) that contribute to medication nonadherence. There is a gap in provider knowledge in addressing SDOH-related barriers that contributes to poor health outcomes. Increasing provider awareness of SDOH improves patient outcomes. The practice-focused question guiding this doctoral project asked whether an educational module on SDOH improved provider knowledge in addressing SDOH-related barriers to medication adherence among adult patients with chronic illnesses. The program consisted of a pretest, an educational module delivered via a PowerPoint presentation, and a posttest. A total of 20 …

Strategies To Reduce Turnover And Retain Substance Abuse Treatment Center Counseling Staff, Hilary Harris

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many outpatient substance use treatment centers struggle with retention and recruitment of counseling staff. Without sufficient staff, substance use outpatient treatment centers are unable to provide services to patients who need such support, and patients often seek care in places like the emergency department, which creates problems for the healthcare system, such as overcrowding. The purpose of this research was to identify strategies to increase retention and improve recruiting effectiveness for counseling staff at outpatient substance use treatment centers. The conceptual framework of plan, recruit, retain underpinned this integrative review. The review question centered on the best strategies to reduce …

Staff Education To Improve Hygiene In Psychiatric Inpatients With Depression, Daina Aina Adebayo-Lewis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) staff education project was to enhance psychiatric nursing staff's knowledge and attitudes regarding the promotion of hygiene among adult behavioral health inpatients. Hygiene neglect is a widespread concern in psychiatric units as patients often experience psychomotor retardation, hopelessness, and low motivation that hinder self-care. To address this gap, a staff education program was implemented. Staff members (N = 35) participated in live huddle-based education sessions that included case discussions, demonstrations, and reflection exercises. Participants completed pre- and posttests measuring knowledge (10 items) and attitudes (6 Likert-scale items). Following the education, staff …

Llm-Driven Multi-Agent Social Network Simulation: Interdisciplinary Integration And Cutting-Edge Development, Jiting Li, Yi Sun, Yirong Wang, Yiqin Lin, Jun Jia, Gangsong Ding

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: The breakthrough of LLMs has provided powerful tools for social network research, advancing multi-agent social network simulation into a new era. This review systematically examined recent progress in LLM-driven multi-agent social network simulation research through a integrated perspective of multi-disciplines such as artificial intelligence, psychology, communication studies, and sociology. A three-tiered research system, which has gradually formed in this field and encompassed micro-level individual behaviors, meso-level interactive relations, and macro-level system emergence, was summarized. At the micro-level, research focuses on individual human behavior simulation, and numerous studies are dedicated to developing human-like agents with complex cognitive and affective architectures …

The Relative Strength Of Paternal Absence, Strong Black Woman Schema, And Self-Esteem In Predicting Resilience Among Black Women, Aqueelah Wheatley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The continued rise in single-mother households within Black communities has led to an increase in hyper-independence among Black women, a phenomenon referred to as the strong Black woman schema. Studies have found an association between hyper-independence (i.e., excessive self-reliance and emotional invulnerability) and absent fathers (i.e., due to incarceration or abandonment), forcing Black women to assume the roles of financial provider, caregiver, and community agent. Though studies have found a link between the strong Black woman and negative health outcomes (e.g., emotional distress), other studies have found that strong Black women characterize themselves as independent, empowered, and content individuals, feelings …

Staff Education To Improve Knowledge Of Nurse-Led Telemonitoring For Suicide Prevention, Finny Ngozi Rogers

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This Doctor of Nursing Practice project was a staff education initiative addressing a critical practice gap: clinical staff at a mental health facility lacked the practical knowledge to implement evidence-based telemonitoring protocols for suicide prevention, despite strong supporting research. High rates of suicide attempts and readmissions underscored the urgency for this intervention. The practice-focused question was: “Will a staff education program designed to educate healthcare providers on nurse-led telemonitoring protocols increase staff knowledge?” The purpose of this project was to develop, implement, and evaluate an educational program for providers to increase their knowledge on how a telemonitoring protocol can reduce …

Ethical Decision-Making And Modification Of Service Delivery: Social Workers In Connecticut During Covid, Marie Elana Hollingsworth

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Social work professionals often experience demanding and intense situations while facing organizational restructuring during crisis situations. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to explore the viewpoints of frontline social workers regarding their ethical decision-making processes in response to the mandatory modifications of the service delivery protocol during the COVID-19 pandemic. Enck’s biomedical and ethical decision-making framework grounded the study. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 10 frontline social workers in Connecticut who had been employed with a social service agency for at least 3 years, but no more than ten. Findings from coding and thematic analysis yielded …

An Exploration Of The Site Supervision During Internship Experience For Clinical Mental Health Counseling Students, William Thomas Zaffiro

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) study was to understand how CMHC students experience and create meaning of site supervision during internship under the new CACREP (2024) Standards. The bulk of the literature on this topic comes from allied social sciences and little research is available in the clinical mental health discipline. As such, there is a need to better understand this experience from the perspective of CMHC students. The study was grounded in interpretive phenomenology and used the rigorous IPA process to explore students’ lived experiences of supervision. I conducted a study using semi-structured interviews with eight …

Moving For Minutes! A Sustainable Self-Care Strategy In An Academic Workplace, Jan Michaelis, Ellen D'Errico

Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE)

The “6+1” standards of a healthy work environment in an academic setting, are described by Saunders et al. (2021) and include skilled communication, true collaboration, effective decision-making, appropriate staffing, meaningful recognition, authentic leadership, and self-care (the “plus one” standard). However, achieving work-life balance for faculty and staff at the school of nursing, who work long hours, can be challenging, often leading to the neglect of regular exercise, a crucial element of personal health and wellness. To address this issue, a staff member initiated the “Moving for Minutes" program (M4M) in 2009, aimed at encouraging weekly physical activities such as walking, …

The Student Movement Volume 110 Issue 14: Stars Shining Bright, Addison Randall, Corinna Bevier, Megan Constantine, Isa Demoraes, Joey Carrion, Maya Thomas, Aiko J. Ayala Rios

The Student Movement V. 110 (2025-2026)

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Concern Grows About Continuing Choir Program, Replacing Stephen Zork's Role, Addison Randall

Sunday Music Series at the Howard: Carla Trynchuk & Elena Braslavsky, Addison Randall

A Bad Faith Review of the New Muppet Show, Corinna Bevier

HUMANS

Promoting Mental Health at AU: A Look into The AU Active Minds Club, Megan Constantine.

Olive Oil, Oranges, and RyanAir: A Reflection on My Semester in Spain, Addison Randall

NEWS

AU Theater Wing Presents Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Isa DeMoraes

Harvard Professor Returns to Andrews University for Black History Month, Joey Carrion

IDEAS

Adventist Political Thought: On Republican Government, …

The U.S. Critical Minerals List: Between A Rock And A Hard Place, Wesley Peebles

Fordham Environmental Law Review

Critical minerals are minerals found essential to economic and national security and vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. Congress and presidents from both political parties have actively promoted critical mineral production, offering up billions of dollars to secure mineral supply chains. The federal government has invested to increase domestic mineral production, grow global partnerships, and reinvigorate U.S. industry in an attempt to reduce the risk of supply disruptions for these valuable minerals. To identify which minerals are critical to the United States, Congress tasked the Secretary of the Interior, acting through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), to evaluate and identify a …

Health Literacy And A1c: Evaluating Glycemic Control In Patients With Type 2 Diabetes, Margaret Hickey

ETD Collection

More than 38 million Americans have diabetes, a chronic illness requiring daily self-management. This challenge is further complicated when patients lack health literacy skills, yet 36% of U.S. adults function at or below basic health literacy. Low health literacy and diabetes contribute to poor health outcomes, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. This quasi-experimental, descriptive, correlational study examined the impact of health literacy on A1C awareness, glycemic control, and diabetes knowledge in adults with type 2 diabetes, and evaluated a teaching intervention that used visual aids teach-back. Participants with type 2 diabetes (ages 18+, A1C > 7%) were recruited from an outpatient endocrinology …

Commonwealth Times 2026-02-18

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

The Relative Importance Of Cultural Competence And Compassion Fatigue In Predicting Nurse Prescribing Self-Efficacy, Debarah Lane Jowett-Gordon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

As a result of the growing diversity among citizens requiring medical care, there has been a substantial increase in immigrants globally and in the United States. In the U.S. healthcare system, nurse practitioners (NPs) have been facing increased cultural challenges. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine the relative importance of cultural competence and compassion fatigue in predicting nursing prescribing self-efficacy. Cultural competence served as the theoretical framework, as it focuses on how NPs can effectively communicate with patients from diverse backgrounds by understanding and respecting cultural differences, thereby building trust, improving patient outcomes, and providing quality healthcare. …

Laudato Si’ And The Limits Of Law: Reflections On The Vocation To Protect Integral Ecology, Lucia A. Silecchia

Fordham Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Outburst Characteristics Of Transient  Low-Mass X-Ray Binary 4u 1608-52, Can Güngör

Turkish Journal of Physics

We present a detailed analysis of the long-term X-ray light curve of 4U 1608–52, focusing on fast-rising exponential-decay (FRED) outbursts, low-intensity states, and quiescent intervals. By calibrating the onset times of the outbursts, we identify three distinct classes for the FRED-type events: (i) the long-high outbursts, exceeding ~50 d in duration with peak count rates above ~40 cnt s-1; (ii) the short-medium outbursts, with durations of ~20 d and peak count rates of ~30-50 cnt s-1; and (iii) the short-low outbursts, also lasting ~20 d but reaching only ~20-30 cnt s-1 at peak. Furthermore, we examine the relation between preoutburst …

New Measurement And Analysis For The 15N + 11B Elastic Scattering System, Nurlan Amangeldi, İsmai̇l Boztosun, Dauren Soldatkhan, Bakytbek Mauyey, Kanat Makhanov, Raimbek Akhat, Aida Anuar, Gani Yergaliuly

Turkish Journal of Physics

New experimental data on the elastic scattering of the nuclear process 15N+11B at an energy of Elab=26.25 MeV were obtained on the DC-60 cyclotron of the INP RK. Based on a semi-microscopic analysis of the interaction of an accelerated 15N ion with 1p-shell nuclei 11B the effectiveness of the new B3Y-Fetal potential was studied. . The difference between the B3Y-Fetal potential and the traditional Yukawa potentials (M3Y-Reid and M3Y-Paris) is that its density-dependent parameters are determined from the saturation condition of nuclear matter at low energy. Analysis was performed on double folding optical model (DFOM) and so no for other …

Student Senate Meeting Minutes February 18, 2026, Student Senate-Winona State University

Student Senate Meeting Minutes

This document is the official Winona State University Student Senate Minutes for February 18, 2026.

Strategies Used By Information Technology Business Managers For Improved Competitive Drive In Organizational Culture, Kenechukwu Laura Mukaila-Lawal

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Poorly managed organizational culture changes can weaken competitive drive in information technology business organizations, limiting their ability to respond effectively to rapid technological advancements. This problem affects information technology business leaders, employees, and organizations operating in competitive markets, as a misaligned culture reduces innovation, employee engagement, and long-term sustainability. Grounded in organizational culture theory, the purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry project was to explore effective strategies that information technology business managers use to improve competitive drive in organizational culture in the Southwestern region of Nigeria. The participants were seven information technology business leaders who devised and implemented strategies to …

Hold Harmless For Whom? The Impact Of Covid Era Policies On School Funding, Teachers, And Students, Michah W. Rothbart, Samantha Cervantes, Amy Ellen Schwartz

Center for Policy Research

This study evaluates the fiscal and academic consequences of New York City’s hold harmless policy during COVID-19, which aimed to stabilize school expenditures amid unexpected enrollment declines by restoring schools’ funding up to initial levels. We examine how school racial composition predicts whether or when schools receive hold harmless “treatment” and assess the impact of hold harmless on financial resources, staffing, and student outcomes, exploring heterogeneity by timing of policy announcement. Although schools with higher White student shares were no more likely than those with higher Hispanic or Black shares to receive hold harmless funds, schools with higher Black shares …

The Lumberjack, February 18, 2026

Cal Poly Humboldt's Student Newspaper

The student newspaper of Humboldt State University.

Minutes From February 18 2026, University Senate

University Senate Minutes

Minutes from February 18 2026 University Senate Meeting

A Civilization’S Soul : Positioning Architectural Works In The Argument For Greater Restrictions On Ai Training, Alexandria B. Noble

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Algorithmic Chopin—Musical Authorship In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence, Eyal Brook

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of The Consistency Of A Speech Verification System With Human Raters In Early Literacy Screening Assessments, Yaacov Petscher, Jennifer O'Sullivan, Hugh W. Catts, Ashley Edwards, Lisa Fitton Ph.D., Ccc-Slp

Faculty Publications

This study investigates the use of a speech verification system (SVS) technology, a form of automatic speech recognition (ASR), in the assessment of children's reading skills. Despite the growing integration of ASR systems in educational assessment, significant challenges persist, particularly due to the acoustic, pronunciation and dialectal variability inherent in children's speech. Our research evaluated the consistency between human rater (HR) and speech verification system (SVS) scores produced from SoapBox Labs across three linguistic tasks—phoneme blending, expressive vocabulary and word reading. Results reveal variability in agreement rates, with SVS showing lower consistency with human raters in phonologically complex tasks like …

Evaluation Of The Consistency Of A Speech Verification System With Human Raters In Early Literacy Screening Assessments, Yaacov Petscher, Jennifer O'Sullivan, Hugh W. Catts, Ashley Edwards, Lisa Fitton Ph.D., Ccc-Slp

Faculty Publications

This study investigates the use of a speech verification system (SVS) technology, a form of automatic speech recognition (ASR), in the assessment of children's reading skills. Despite the growing integration of ASR systems in educational assessment, significant challenges persist, particularly due to the acoustic, pronunciation and dialectal variability inherent in children's speech. Our research evaluated the consistency between human rater (HR) and speech verification system (SVS) scores produced from SoapBox Labs across three linguistic tasks—phoneme blending, expressive vocabulary and word reading. Results reveal variability in agreement rates, with SVS showing lower consistency with human raters in phonologically complex tasks like …

Evaluating Functional Imagery Training And Internal Visual Imagery On Tennis Serve Performance, Jonathan Rhodes, Amelie Leach

School of Psychology

Imagery is widely used in sport, but its effectiveness depends on how it is structured and the range of senses engaged. This study compared Functional Imagery Training - a multisensory, motivational intervention - with single-sense internal visual imagery and a control condition without imagery training. Thirty-eight competitive tennis players completed imagery ability and preference assessments before engaging in a 6-week intervention. Serve accuracy was measured pre- and post intervention using a target-based scoring task. Both imagery conditions led to performance improvements, with Functional Imagery Training producing significantly greater gains. The control group showed no significant change. Imagery ability and preferred …