Digital Commons Network^™

Mississippi Library Association Annual Conference: 2025 Recap, Janessa Ullendorf

Mississippi Libraries

Recap from the 2025 annual conference of the Mississippi Library Association.

The Generative Turn: What Ai Doesn't Do And A Framework For Responsible Use, Deborah Lee

Mississippi Libraries

This column examines the limitations of generative AI as a foundation for responsible and informed use.  While much attention has been given to what AI can do, effective and responsible use depends on understanding what it does not do well.  For librarians as professionals grounded in information literacy, these limitations underscore the importance of critical evaluation and contextual understanding.  By recognizing both the capabilities and constraints of AI, librarians can better guide their communities in using these tools thoughtfully and effectively.

Slis Notes: Psst...Do You Have This Dirty Book?, Stacy Creel, Crystal Walker

Mississippi Libraries

Romance fiction is one of the most commercially successful and culturally significant genres in contemporary publishing, and this is not a one-year instance; it is a multi-year trend (Adams, 2026). In 2025, sales were up in the United States, and the growth was across platforms and formats—digital audio, e-books, and print. Two subgenres have sparked greater interest—romantasy and dark romance. Romantasy, the combination of romance and fantasy, has drawn new readers with the explosion of Sarah J. Maas, and dark romance, which gained some notoriety with Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) has seen strong growth and acceptance. In fact, the …

Full Issue: Volume 21, Issue 2 - Summer 2026

Jefferson Surgical Solutions

A publication for friends and colleagues of Jefferson’s Department of Surgery

In This Issue

Cover Story

Jefferson Transplant Institute Enters New Chapter of Innovation, Growth and National Impact - Page 1

Overview Science: Targeting the ‘Undruggable’ in Pancreatic and Other Cancers - Page 2

Clinical Integration Jefferson Trauma Surgeon and Resident Reflect on Honduras Medical Mission Trip - Page 2

In the Spotlight Joseph Boback, MBA - Page 2

Changing Lives Through Research Pilot Grant Lays Groundwork for New Standard in Ventral Hernia Recovery - Page 3

Please Welcome New Faculty - Page 3

Those Who Give Hollingsworth Family’s Gratitude …

News In Brief

Jefferson Surgical Solutions

Geno Merli, MD, was honored with UNICO National’s Marconi Science Award at the 2026 Mid-Year Meeting in Atlantic City, NJ. Established in 1995, the award recognizes a living scientist who exemplifies Guglielmo Marconi's vast scientific and creative accomplishments.

On March 25, Talar Tatarian, MD, received a 2026 Barbara Berci Memorial Award for leadership growth and career development from the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons at the annual meeting in Tampa.

On April 30, Stanton B. Miller, MD, MPH, Executive Director of the Jefferson Center for Injury Research & Prevention (JCIRP), accepted a CeaseFirePA Keystone Courage Award on …

Hollingsworth Family’S Gratitude Endows A Lasting Legacy

Jefferson Surgical Solutions

Jefferson has been part of Kim and Steve Hollingsworth’s lives for decades. Kim’s healthcare consulting firm began partnering with Jefferson in the early 2000s to implement a new hospital-information system. Across three generations, family members have turned to Jefferson for medical care. Their philanthropic relationship with Jefferson spans years, as well. Through the Hollingsworth Family Foundation, they have supported the COVID-19 Better Together Fund, pancreatic cancer research and the naming of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Clinical Trials Family Gathering Area in the Honickman Center.

Their most recent gift – endowing the Hollingsworth Family Professorship in Surgery, which honors …

Knowledge And Application Of Solar Energy As Alternative Power Source To Ict Facilities: A Case Study Of Minhaj University Lahore, Dr.Shahid Mehmood Dr., , Muhammad Faisal Mr., Ahmad Nawaz, Dr Allah Ditta Nawaz, Dr. Muhammad Aamir Hameed

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This paper is an exploration of the knowledge and utilization of solar energy to support ICT infrastructure at Minhaj University Lahore. In Pakistan, library operations and digital services can be disrupted due to power outages. In the survey, 87 scholars, students and library workers were surveyed about their awareness, experience and attitudes towards solar energy. The level of knowledge on solar energy was high as 100% of the respondents indicated that they are well informed about solar energy, 93.1 percent indicating that they can use it in the ICT sector. Nonetheless, large start-up costs, lack of equipment, and institutional barriers …

Toward The Significance Of Crevasse Orientation In Low And High Crevassed Regions On The Kennicott Glacier, Alaska, Usa, Claire A. Sturm

DePaul Discoveries

Supraglacial landforms serve as potential indicators of underlying bedrock morphology and glacier dynamics. The distribution and morphology of crevasses are closely associated with stress fields and ice-flow regimes, representing processes of stable glaciers, in contrast to their reduced occurrence in stagnant or receding ice masses. The orientation and density of crevasses influence a glacier’s ability to absorb solar energy, as they facilitate movement of meltwater down to subglacial rivers. Beyond the meltwater acting as a lubricant for basal sliding, the slope of the bedrock further impacts the local velocity and ice deformation of a glacier. The study of ice-fracturing mechanics …

Peer Attachment And Popularity Among Adolescents: The Mediating Role Of Relational Aggression, Katherine S. Fosco, Bailee Hill, Yan Li, Michelle F. Wright

DePaul Discoveries

Popularity during adolescence may pose a challenging social barrier, involving the desire for exclusivity and the need for broader peer connections. This study investigated the longitudinal effects of peer attachment on popularity among adolescents and the mediation process of relational aggression, expecting that peer attachment would be linked to reduced relational aggression, in turn relating to lower popularity at a later time point. The research participants (N = 569) included adolescents between the ages of 11 and 15 in the United States with data collection occurring at three time points. The path from Time 1 peer attachment to Time 2 …

From Landfill To Ladle: Using Open Lca To Calculate Food Diversion Impacts, Samantha Rodriguez

DePaul Discoveries

Food waste contributes to climate change because discarded food results in wasting embodied carbon from producing food. In addition to wasting embodied carbon, food that ends up in landfills emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. This life cycle assessment quantifies the carbon equivalent footprint of food donations from Costco to the Seton Soup Kitchen using OpenLCA. Two functional units were analyzed in this study. The first functional unit is one meal consisting of 500 grams of donated food that would otherwise be landfilled served to a Seton Soup Kitchen patron during one meal service. The …

Power-Efficient Packet Aggregation For Wireless Radio During Low-Power Processor Data Offload Via Throughput-Mismatched Interface, Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

A wireless radio buffers packets received from a low-power processor over a lower-throughput host interface while keeping radio-frequency (RF) hardware in a low-power state. Firmware on the wireless radio detects a first packet arrival and starts a single-shot aggregation timer. Subsequent packets received during the timer interval are accumulated in a local buffer without powering the RF hardware. When the timer expires, the firmware activates RF circuitry and transmits the accumulated packets as a high-throughput over-the-air burst. After the burst, the aggregation timer is not re-armed, allowing later packets to be transmitted without added aggregation delay. The timer duration may …

Vertebrate Diversity In Cave Systems Of Colombia: An Approach Based On Environmental Dna Metabarcoding Analysis, Rita Daniela Martinelli Marín, Carlos Andres Lasso, Francesco Sauro, Susana Josefina Caballero

International Journal of Speleology

There is currently limited knowledge of the biological communities inhabiting cave ecosystems in South America. This study examines the vertebrate community composition of 21 caves across diverse subterranean ecosystems in Colombia using environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis. Water was collected from water bodies inside caves and subterranean systems in six of the eight speleological regions of Colombia in eight departments. Water was filtered manually through a 0.8 m pore size filter and preserved with Longmire solution. A 170-base pair (bp) fragment of the 12s mitochondrial gene specific for vertebrate identification was amplified by PCR and sequenced by Illumina (metabarcoding). Data corresponding …

Origami Sake: Building A Sustainable Supply Chain For A New Beverage Startup, Akosua Sayer Koduah, Nick E. Johnston

ICHRIE Research Reports

Sustainability has become a strategic pillar in the hospitality and beverage industry, shaping supply chain decisions, consumer behavior, and market competitiveness. This study examines how Origami Sake, a startup brewery in Hot Springs, Arkansas, integrates sustainability into its supply chain from inception. Using qualitative analysis of company interviews, secondary data, and comparative literature, the study shows that Origami Sake embeds renewable energy, localized rice sourcing, and by-product reuse into its core operations. These practices reflect circular economy principles and strengthen regional identity, yet they also pose challenges related to packaging limitations, organic rice availability, data-tracking gaps, and the risks of …

Are Hotels Ready For Flooding? Improving Employee Preparedness, Ahmin Kwon, Marketa Kubickova, Swechchha Subedi

ICHRIE Research Reports

Focusing on the experiences of 500 current hotel employees in the United States, this report evaluates current levels of flood preparedness and the role of organizational support in shaping employee proactive response. Findings indicate that most employees have experience with flooding and rely on multiple information sources, yet trust in government response remains moderate. Clear disparities emerge across hotel segments, with significantly higher preparedness commitment and proactive behavior among employees in luxury hotels and those with longer tenure. Importantly, prior experience does not necessarily translate into effective preparedness. Although many respondents perceive existing information as sufficient, there is a continued …

Exploring Hotel Sustainability Through A Service Design Lens: An Espoused Theory Vs. Theory-In-Use Perspective, Cindy Yoonjoung Heo, Jaehyun Park, Sanqi Yang, Chen Ni, Lei Tang, Lei Yu, Julneth Rogenhofer, Geraldine Assen

ICHRIE Research Reports

Sustainability is now widely embedded in hotel strategies, but it is often assessed through what hotels communicate rather than what guests actually experience. This study examines that disconnect by drawing on Argyris and Schön’s distinction between espoused theory and theory-in-use, combined with a service design perspective. Using document analysis alongside in-situ observations at the front desk and in guest rooms, the study looks at how sustainability appears across service touchpoints and whether it is likely to be noticed and understood by guests. The findings suggest that many initiatives are operationally in place but remain largely out of sight during the …

Aviation Disruptions And Tourism Resilience: Policy Lessons From The Indigo 2025 Crisis For India’S Hospitality Tourism Sector, Ann Mary Varghese, Vijaya Zinnoury

ICHRIE Research Reports

The December 2025 IndiGo flight disruption crisis, characterized by widespread cancellations, delays, and capacity constraints, significantly impacted India’s tourism and hospitality sectors during peak travel periods. This research report examines the cascading effects of aviation instability on tourism demand, hotel occupancy, pricing dynamics, and regional economies. Drawing on secondary data from industry reports, news coverage, and policy analyses, the study identifies systemic vulnerabilities in India’s aviation–tourism nexus. Findings indicate that flight disruptions led to large-scale hotel cancellations, revenue losses, and demand volatility, particularly in destination-dependent regions in India such as Darjeeling, Rajasthan, and Uttarakhand. The report further evaluates industry responses, …

Tourism System Fragility: Evidence From The Middle East War, Ann Mary Varghese, Vijaya Zinnoury

ICHRIE Research Reports

The ongoing Middle East conflict (2026) has triggered one of the most significant global aviation disruptions since the COVID-19 pandemic, with widespread airspace closures, flight cancellations, rerouting, and fuel cost escalation affecting airlines worldwide. This research report examines how conflict-driven aviation instability has impacted tourism demand, hospitality performance, and destination economies.

Drawing on real-time global evidence, the study finds that the closure of critical air corridors across the Middle East, which handle approximately 15% of global air traffic, led to thousands of daily flight cancellations, mass rerouting, and substantial cost increases for airlines. These disruptions propagated across tourism systems, reducing …

Campus Food Recovery: Balancing Sustainability And Student Needs, Scott T. Taylor Jr., Wenhao Zhang, Robin B. Dipietro, Mary Stein, Junehee Kwon

ICHRIE Research Reports

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of a food recovery program at a large university on food waste reduction and food insecurity mitigation. The primary goal of the food recovery program was two-fold: to help provide ready-to-eat meals for students facing food insecurity and to help the campus food service provider minimize post-production food waste. Thus, food was recovered from multiple dining outlets on a large university campus in the southeast United States. To ensure a valid comparison between 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years, a 3-month period during the spring semesters in 2023 and 2024 was …

Robot Ready, Deploying Semi-Autonomous Food Delivery Robots, Betsy Bender Stringam, Somang Min, Jennifer Martinez

ICHRIE Research Reports

Semiautonomous food delivery robots are expanding rapidly across college campuses, healthcare facilities, office complexes, and other food delivery settings. The semiautonomous food delivery robot market grew to about $800 million in 2025 and is expected to exceed $3.24 billion by 2030.

This report draws on research studies conducted at a university contract foodservice beta deployment site, involving in-depth interviews with employees and managers who worked directly with semiautonomous food delivery robots during and after implementation, triangulated with field notes and observations by the research team. The report highlights key findings and develops an original practitioner framework around these findings, called …

Building Consumer Trust In Short-Term Rentals: A Literature Review On Factors Influencing Consumer Booking Motivations And Trust Formation, Alyssa N. Thornton, Kiyan Shafieizadeh

ICHRIE Research Reports

This study synthesizes existing research on consumer trust formation and booking motivations in short-term rental (STR) platforms through a systematic literature review. Drawing on 19 peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2025, the review examines how trust-building cues and motivational factors jointly influence consumer booking decisions in peer-to-peer accommodation contexts. Using a thematic analysis approach, the findings reveal five dominant themes: visual and aesthetic cues, host attributes, reviews and reputation mechanisms, economic and functional motivations, and host–guest interaction. The results highlight the central role of visual presentation and social signals in reducing perceived risk and fostering trust, while economic and …

Pricing Hawaii: When Discounts, Fees, And Transparency Collide In Hotel Pricing, Kody Dominguez, Ingrid Lin

ICHRIE Research Reports

This report examines how hotel pricing structures in Hawaiʻi; specifically, Kamaʻāina discounts, visitor rates, and destination fees interact to shape perceptions of fairness, transparency, and booking behavior.

Using survey data from 192 respondents and a pricing audit of 57 properties in Oahu, Hawaii, the findings reveal a structural disconnect between pricing intent and guest experience. While Kamaʻāina discounts range from 20–30%, mandatory destination fees averaging $37.69 significantly erode realized savings, particularly at mid-tier price points. As a result, 62% of residents perceive hotel pricing as unfair, compared to 27% of visitors, and nearly 70% of respondents report abandoning bookings due …

Beyond The Aisle: The Essential Guide For Event Planners To Navigate Cultural Diversity In Weddings, Ellee N. Marsh, Mary Olle Dr.

ICHRIE Research Reports

This research aims to address an educational gap within the event planning community regarding cultural diversity across the wedding industry. As the wedding market within the United States continues to increasingly globalize, planners are encountering couples from a wide variety of cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. Understanding and appreciating a wide range of these cultures creates an important baseline of someone else’s background in order to recognize where people are coming from and why they want certain traditions present. Recognizing this lack of cultural knowledge within the wedding planning community, I have developed a cultural wedding handbook that is designed …

Guests Attitude And Purchase Intention Towards Hotel Brand Extension, Daegeun Kim, Eun-Kyong (Cindy) Choi, Tanya Ruetzler, James Taylor

ICHRIE Research Reports

Brand extension is widely used among firms and hotels to launch new products using their parent brand name, making it important for practitioners to understand which factors influence consumers' attitude toward brand extension (ATT). This study investigated the role of consumer brand identity (CBI) in guests' attitude leading to purchase intention (PUR) for hotel vacation rentals. Findings suggest that CBI was a positive antecedent of perceived fit (PF) and tie (PT), which positively influenced ATT. Additionally, parent brand conviction and quality were identified as factors that positively influenced ATT and led to PUR. As the first study on hotel vacation …

Accreditation In Hospitality And Tourism Administration/Management: A History, Robert H. Bosselman

ICHRIE Research Reports

Accreditation in hospitality and tourism administration/managment education has a complex history. The current manuscript provides background on how accreditation was established in the field. The role played by International CHRIE and its members was reported as was the origin of the Accreditation Commission for Programs in Hospitality Administration. The manuscript provides suggestions for future direction of accreditation in hospitality and tourism administration/management education.

Closed-Loop Cross-Call Caller Memory For Voice Ai Agents, Gustavo Matthew Assuncao

Defensive Publications Series

This defensive publication discloses a closed-loop memory architecture for real-time voice AI agents in which the machine-readable output of a post-call extraction step is fed back to reconfigure the next generative session. On call teardown, a single generative pass jointly extracts the spoken caller identity and composes a personalized follow-up email, halving per-call inference cost relative to running extraction and composition as two passes. A per-persona configuration row gates a five-way action fan-out — follow-up email, admin briefing, CRM contact, CRM lead/ticket, and caller memory — over that single result. CRM lead creation exploits a unique-constraint violation as a control …

---

Go to article

Spoken-Delegation Phone-Errand Protocol, Gustavo Matthew Assuncao

Defensive Publications Series

This publication discloses, enables, and dates a protocol by which a human, while already speaking with an AI voice agent over a live telephone call, verbally delegates a second, downstream phone errand — and the platform autonomously performs it end to end and reports back. The mechanism has four coupled parts. First, in-call task capture: a function/tool call the model issues mid-conversation (schedulecall) converts a spoken delegation into a typed task row in the agent's own workspace, and the confirmation is spoken back within the same turn. Second, LLM workflow synthesis: a cognitive loop later dequeues the task and an …

---

Go to article

Personalizing Suggested Actions Embedded Within Device Notifications, Rabia Habus, Tomer Allalouf, Nadav Jonas, Yaniv Berkowitz, Sari Omari, Aviram Segal, Brad Eckman

Defensive Publications Series

Notifications on devices such as smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, laptops, etc. provide users a quick view of updates from various applications. Some notification interfaces also include quick action buttons for the user to take a corresponding action in the application that delivers the notification, e.g., mute a chat conversation, accept a calendar invite, etc. However, the suggested actions are limited to a preconfigured set and do not account for user context. This disclosure describes techniques to provide an enhanced notification UI with a wide range of suggested actions that are delivered to the user taking into account the user’s context. A …

Intent-Based Automotive Control Interface For Vtol Flying Cars: The Copter Paradigm — A Defensive Publication (Prior Art), Roman Vasyliev

Defensive Publications Series

Description

The Copter Paradigm: Translating Automotive Reflexes into Three-Dimensional Flight presents a conceptual architecture for intuitive human-machine interaction in personal Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) transportation.

Rather than introducing a specific mechanical invention, this publication proposes an Intent-Based Control (IBC) philosophy in which the operator expresses only the desired motion of the vehicle using familiar automotive controls, while the onboard flight-control system autonomously performs the complex aerodynamic and propulsion tasks required for safe three-dimensional flight.

The document describes one possible reference implementation of this concept, including control logic, mode transitions, steering architecture, safety mechanisms, and emergency procedures. However, the principles …

The A2a2p Protocol, Catherine A. Andrews

Defensive Publications Series

Disclosed is the a2a2p protocol — a system and method for enabling autonomous software agents to procure physical manufactured goods through a structured procurement protocol.

The system comprises: (1) a two-layer requirement schema that separates agent intent from manufacturing specification, enabling agents to arrive with varying levels of detail; (2) a resolution engine that evaluates three procurement paths — off-the-shelf, customize, and fabricate from scratch — and recommends the optimal path with pricing and tradeoffs (a Configure-Price-Quote flow); (3) an optional quality-weighted second-price auction mechanism that ranks suppliers by effective price (bid price divided by a multi-factor quality score) and …

Technical Disclosure: Localized Cymatic Disruption (Lcd) Matrix For Non-Thermal Polymer Decomposition, Christopher L. Eckes

Defensive Publications Series

This technical disclosure defines the architecture, calculated frequency bounds, and real-time telemetry protocols for an inline fluidic grid designed to execute non-thermal, non-chemical molecular decomposition of micro-plastic polymers (specifically Polyethylene Terephthalate [PET], High-Density Polyethylene [HDPE], and Polyvinyl Chloride [PVC]) via targeted mechanochemical shear. Bypassing traditional mechanical filtration and chemical depolymerization, the hardware configuration utilizes an inner-wall concentric cylindrical array of 960 independent lead zirconate titanate (PZT-5H) piezoelectric transducers driven with an engineered spatial phase-lag (Δ φ = π).

By generating a phase-locked radial Bessel beam profile \(J_0(k_r r)\) targeting the mechanical quality factors (Q) of specific polymer boundaries, the system …