Digital Commons Network^™

Executive Watch: The Breadth And Depth Of The Trump Administration's Threat To The First Amendment, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

Given the Trump administration’s continued and varied assaults on the First Amendment, it is vital to monitor those attacks and then realize the gravity of the “sweeping and draconian sanctions ” imposed by unconstitutional executive fiat. Vigilance is especially important, as New York Times investigative reporter Michael S. Schmidt has noted, because “Mr. Trump has employed tactics including lawsuits, executive orders, regulations, dismissals from government jobs, withdrawal of security details and public intimidation to take on a wide range of individuals and institutions he views as having unfairly pursued him or sought to block his agenda.”

Mindful of such matters, …

Cluster Analysis To Explore Morphological Variation Of Banana (Musa Spp.): A Case Study In Jember And Lumajang, East Java, Indonesia, Halimatus Sa'diyah, Vega Kartika Sari, Riza Yuli Rusdiana, Achmad Chaqiqotul Khofi

Jurnal Kultivasi

Banana (Musa spp.) is an important horticultural plant with a high variety in Indonesia; yet, knowledge on the morphological characteristics of indigenous bananas in East Java remains inadequate. This research aims to identify the variation and classify banana cultivars in East Java based on morphological character. The exploration was conducted using the accidental sampling method. The observations include 15 qualitative and 9 quantitative characters. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate the data, followed by cluster analysis using the average linkage method and Euclidean distance. The exploration resulted in 15 banana cultivars with varying morphology. The cluster analysis shows banana cultivars …

Spartan Daily, April 9, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 164, Issue 30

Cell Type-Specific Multi-Omics Analysis Of Cocaine Use Disorder In The Human Caudate Nucleus, Lea Zillich, Annasara Artioli, Veronika Pohořalá, Eric Zillich, Laura Stertz, Hanna Belschner, Ammar Jabali, Josef Frank, Fabian Streit, Diana Avetyan, Maja P Völker, Svenja Müller, Anita C Hansson, Thomas D Meyer, Marcella Rietschel, Julia Ladewig, Rainer Spanagel, Ana M M Oliveira, Consuelo Walss-Bass, Rick E Bernardi, Philipp Koch, Stephanie H Witt

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Structural and functional alterations in the brain's reward circuitry are present in cocaine use disorder (CocUD), but their molecular underpinnings remain unclear. To investigate these mechanisms, we performed single-nuclei multiome profiling on postmortem caudate nucleus tissue from six individuals with CocUD and eight controls. We profiled 30,030 nuclei, identifying 13 cell types including D1- and D2-medium spiny neurons (MSNs) and glial cells. We observed 1485 differentially regulated genes and 10,342 differentially accessible peaks, with alterations in MSNs and astrocytes related to neurotransmitter activity and synapse organization. Gene regulatory network analysis identified transcription factors including ZEB1 as exhibiting distinct CocUD-specific subclusters, …

Impact Of Perioperative Organ Injury On Morbidity And Mortality In 28 Million Surgical Patients, Felix Kork, Yafen Liang, Adit A Ginde, Xiaoyi Yuan, Rolf Rossaint, Hongfang Liu, Alex S Evers, Holger K Eltzschig

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Perioperative organ injury contributes to morbidity and mortality of surgical patients. This cohort study included all elective and emergent surgeries in Germany over 4 years to address the impact of perioperative organ injuries on outcomes. We analyzed 28,350,953 cases. In-hospital mortality was 1.4% (n = 393,157), and 4.4% of cases (n = 1,245,898) experienced perioperative organ injury. Perioperative organ injury was associated with 9-fold higher odds of death and prolonged hospital stay by 11.2 days. Acute kidney injury had the highest incidence (2.0%) and was associated with 25.0% mortality. While delirium had the second highest incidence (1.5%), it was associated …

Spectrum, Volume 54, Issue 10, Sacred Heart University

Newspapers (Obelisk & Spectrum)

Highlights include: What’s New at SHU (in Dingle)? - Give It Up for Giving Day! - SHU Provides a Forum for the “Voices of Tomorrow”- Dance Program Seniors Prepare for Their Final Bow - From Building Blocks to Blockbuster - SCMA Seniors Create Capstone Projects - Five Pioneers Looking to the Pros

Infant Colic Symptoms And Amino Acid Formula: Insights From A Prospective Cohort Study, Jerry M. Brown, Jessica V. Baran, Luke Lamos, Jesse Beacker, Jared Florio, Lea V. Oliveros, Abigail Fabbrini, Andrew Farrar, Michael Wilsey

Student Publications

Background/Objectives: Infant functional disorders, including colic, irritability, and sleep disturbances, often overlap with symptoms of cow’s milk protein allergy (CMPA). While extensively hydrolyzed formulas are commonly used to address these issues, the short-term efficacy of amino acid formulas (AAF) for managing colic remains understudied. This secondary analysis of a previously published prospective cohort, the largest of its kind in the United States, evaluated the short-term impact of AAF in improving colic and associated symptoms in infants under six months of age with suspected CMPA. Methods: This real-world prospective cohort study analyzed data from 138 infants with suspected CMPA initiated on …

April 9, 2025, Faculty, Illinois Wesleyan University

2024-2025

No abstract provided.

Understanding Infection, Viral Exacerbation And Respiratory Symptoms At Admission-Longitudinal (Universal) Study: A Prospective Observational Cohort Study Protocol, Universal Study Group, Tommaso Morelli, Martha Purcell, Pedro Rodrigues, Charles Roberts, Olivia Cox, Paul H. Lee, Kerensa Thorne, Alexander Allen, Angelica Cazaly, Jacqueline Nuttall, James Raftery, Gareth Griffiths, Andrew Cook, Nicola White, Neil J. Greening, Matthew Pavitt, James Myerson, Stefan J. Marciniak, Cyrus Daneshvar, Michael G. Crooks, Philip Mitchelmore, James D. Chalmers, Salman Siddiqui, Karl J. Staples, Tristan William Clark, Anna Freeman, Tom Wilkinson, Emma Tilt

Peninsula Medical School

Background Respiratory viral infections (RVIs) are a significant cause of morbidity and hospital admission worldwide. However, the management of most viral infection-associated diseases remains primarily supportive. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgent need for a deeper understanding of RVIs to improve patient outcomes and develop effective treatment strategies. The Understanding Infection, Viral Exacerbation and Respiratory Symptoms at Admission-Longitudinal Study is an observational study which addresses this need by investigating the heterogeneity of RVIs in hospitalised adults, aiming to identify clinical and biological predictors of adverse outcomes. This study aims to bridge critical knowledge gaps in the clinical course …

Gramd1b Is A Regulator Of Lipid Homeostasis, Autophagic Flux And Phosphorylated Tau, Diana Acosta Ingram, Jacob Marsh, Celeste M Karch, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Lipid dyshomeostasis and tau pathology are present in frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, the relationship between lipid dyshomeostasis and tau pathology remains unclear. We report that GRAM Domain Containing 1B (GRAMD1B), a nonvesicular cholesterol transporter, is increased in excitatory neurons of human neural organoids (HNOs) with the MAPT R406W mutation. Human FTLD, AD cases, and PS19 tau mice also have increased GRAMD1B expression. We show that overexpression of GRAMD1B increases levels of free cholesterol, lipid droplets, and impairs autophagy flux. Modulating GRAMD1B in iPSC-derived neurons also alters key autophagy-related components such as PI3K, phospho-AKT, and p62, …

Ai-Based Accessibility Widget (Aibaw) Shortcomings For Blind Web Users, Joshua A. Rovira

LSU Master's Theses

With legal, ethical, and financial motivations to make their websites more accessible, many businesses and sites have begun to employ the use of artificial intelligence (AI) based widgets to automatically make necessary modifications to their sites' pages and subdomains. In this work, we conduct a qualitative case study to determine the efficacy of these AI tools as they pertain specifically to blind users. We analyze pages from twelve websites using accessiBe's AI accessibility widget and provide a taxonomy of their violations against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 level AA compliance. We found each website to bear numerous violations …

The Medial Olivocochlear Efferent Pathway Potentiates Cochlear Amplification In Response To Hearing Loss, Patricia M Quiñones, Michelle Pei, Hemant Srivastava, Ariadna Cobo-Cuan, Marcela A Morán, Bong Jik Kim, Clayton B Walker, Michael J Serafino, Frank Macias-Escriva, Juemei Wang, James B Dewey, Brian E Applegate, Matthew J Mcginley, John S Oghalai

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The mammalian cochlea receives efferent feedback from the brain. Many functions for this feedback have been hypothesized, including on short timescales, such as mediating attentional states, and long timescales, such as buffering acoustic trauma. Testing these hypotheses has been impeded by an inability to make direct measurements of efferent effects in awake animals. Here, we assessed the role of the medial olivocochlear (MOC) efferent nerve fibers on cochlear amplification by measuring organ of Corti vibratory responses to sound in both sexes of awake and anesthetized mice. We studied long-term effects by genetically ablating the efferents and/or afferents. Cochlear amplification increased …

An Unsupervised Map Of Excitatory Neuron Dendritic Morphology In The Mouse Visual Cortex, Marissa A Weis, Stelios Papadopoulos, Laura Hansel, Timo Lüddecke, Brendan Celii, Paul G Fahey, Eric Y Wang, J Alexander Bae, Agnes L Bodor, Derrick Brittain, Joann Buchanan, Daniel J Bumbarger, Manuel A Castro, Forrest Collman, Nuno Maçarico Da Costa, Sven Dorkenwald, Leila Elabbady, Akhilesh Halageri, Zhen Jia, Chris Jordan, Dan Kapner, Nico Kemnitz, Sam Kinn, Kisuk Lee, Kai Li, Ran Lu, Thomas Macrina, Gayathri Mahalingam, Eric Mitchell, Shanka Subhra Mondal, Shang Mu, Barak Nehoran, Sergiy Popovych, R Clay Reid, Casey M Schneider-Mizell, H Sebastian Seung, William Silversmith, Marc Takeno, Russel Torres, Nicholas L Turner, William Wong, Jingpeng Wu, Wenjing Yin, Szi-Chieh Yu, Jacob Reimer, Philipp Berens, Andreas S Tolias, Alexander S Ecker

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Neurons in the neocortex exhibit astonishing morphological diversity, which is critical for properly wiring neural circuits and giving neurons their functional properties. However, the organizational principles underlying this morphological diversity remain an open question. Here, we took a data-driven approach using graph-based machine learning methods to obtain a low-dimensional morphological "bar code" describing more than 30,000 excitatory neurons in mouse visual areas V1, AL, and RL that were reconstructed from the millimeter scale MICrONS serial-section electron microscopy volume. Contrary to previous classifications into discrete morphological types (m-types), our data-driven approach suggests that the morphological landscape of cortical excitatory neurons is …

Addressing The Promise And Peril Of Ai For Nonprofit Management Through A Data Feminist Pedagogy, Billie Sandberg, Rafeel Wasif, Laura C. Hand

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has opened up possibilities for nonprofit management, and practitioners are taking notice. A recent study revealed that nearly 90% of nonprofit organizations are interested in using AI (MacDonald, Citation2023). Another study indicated that more than half of the nonprofits surveyed use AI to support finance, human resources, communications, and mission-related (i.e., working with clients, program implementation, and grantmaking) functions (Herschander, Citation2024). Indeed, many of us likely know student-practitioners and nonprofit colleagues who leverage AI to help write donor thank-you notes, newsletters, grant proposals, and press releases and who work for nonprofits that incorporate chatbots …

Co-Designing A Web-Based And Tablet App To Evaluate Clinical Outcomes Of Early Psychosis Service Users In A Learning Health Care Network: User-Centered Design Workshop And Pilot Study, Kathleen E Burch, Adam B Wilcox, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: The Early Psychosis Intervention Network of California project, a learning health care network of California early psychosis intervention (EPI) programs, prioritized incorporation of community partner feedback while designing its eHealth app, Beehive. Though eHealth apps can support learning health care network data collection aims, low user acceptance or adoption can pose barriers to successful implementation. Adopting user-centered design (UCD) approaches, such as incorporation of user feedback, prototyping, iterative design, and continuous evaluation, can mitigate these potential barriers.

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to use UCD during development of a data collection and data visualization web-based and tablet app, Beehive, to promote …

Impact Of Perioperative Organ Injury On Morbidity And Mortality In 28 Million Surgical Patients, Felix Kork, Yafen Liang, Adit A Ginde, Xiaoyi Yuan, Rolf Rossaint, Hongfang Liu, Alex S Evers, Holger K Eltzschig

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Perioperative organ injury contributes to morbidity and mortality of surgical patients. This cohort study included all elective and emergent surgeries in Germany over 4 years to address the impact of perioperative organ injuries on outcomes. We analyzed 28,350,953 cases. In-hospital mortality was 1.4% (n = 393,157), and 4.4% of cases (n = 1,245,898) experienced perioperative organ injury. Perioperative organ injury was associated with 9-fold higher odds of death and prolonged hospital stay by 11.2 days. Acute kidney injury had the highest incidence (2.0%) and was associated with 25.0% mortality. While delirium had the second highest incidence (1.5%), it was associated …

Activation Of Endoplasmic Reticulum-Localized Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 5 (Mglu5) Triggers Calcium Release Distinct From Cell Surface Counterparts In Striatal Neurons, Yuh-Jiin I Jong, Steven K Harmon, Karen L O'Malley

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGlu

Mobile Device Power Saving Using Proximity Beacons, Nazih Almalki

Defensive Publications Series

This document describes techniques that enable a computing device (e.g., a smart watch, ring, glasses, etc.) to preserve battery life by utilizing proximity beacons (e.g., location tracking stickers, AirTags, BLUETOOTH beacon, wireless locators, etc.) to locate the device. Many existing devices utilize power-intensive global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) (e.g., GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, QZSS, IRNSS, etc.) to track the device’s location. Using GNSS may be very resource expensive due to the high power cost associated with acquiring, tracking, and receiving weak satellite signals, particularly for devices with very small batteries such as watches, rings, glasses, and other wearable computing devices. …

Real-Time Monitoring And Enhancement Of Multi-User Communications With Ai Agents, Arman Rezaee, Sri Gundavelli

Defensive Publications Series

This document proposes a novel approach using Artificial Intelligence (AI), including Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI agents, to address the challenge of correlating low Quality of Experience (QoE) with underlying network Quality of Service (QoS) parameters in multi-user communication platforms like online teleconferencing systems. The proposed techniques facilitate real-time monitoring of audio/video feeds from teleconference participants to identify and label communication disruptions and correlate these disruptions with network parameters. This enables proactive network and application optimization to enhance user experience.

Analysis Of Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Initiatives In Environmental Education In Wisconsin, Jody Bauer, Robert Hougham, Sarah Burgess

Mid-Western Educational Researcher

This research aims to identify the quantity, quality, and condition of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in environmental education in Wisconsin. Researchers surveyed environmental education organizations across the state to collect and disseminate data related to the status and needs of these initiatives, and to identify areas of strength, improvement, or future staff learning opportunities. Some of the current DEI concerns in environmental education focus on the lack of diversity represented by staffing, achievement gaps represented by marginalized students, and a lack of overall accessibility to the outdoors or outdoor education for diverse communities. Findings from this study reinforce …

Ethnic/Racial Differences In Reading College Readiness: A Texas Pre- And Post-Pandemic Analysis, Neil A. Laminack, John R. Slate, Janene W. Hemmen

School Leadership Review

In this statewide multiyear investigation, the extent to which differences were present on the STAAR English I End-of-Course exam for Texas high school students as a function of their ethnicity/race (i.e., Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White) for the 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2020-2021, 2021-2022, and 2022-2023 school years were examined. Archival data from the Public Education Information Management System were obtained for the two school years pre-pandemic (2017-2018 and 2018-2019) and the three years post-pandemic (2020-2021, 2021-2022, and 2022-2023). Across all five school years and on all three grade-level standards, Approaches, Meets, and Masters, Asian students met the standards at the highest …

Exploring Teaching And Learning In Diverse Multilingual Spaces, Juliet M. Luther

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

None

Voices From The Frontline: School Leaders On Effective Communication, Abdelnasser Hosni Hussein

School Leadership Review

This qualitative cross-case study aimed to explore effective communication in suburban and urban schools. The study investigated K-12 leaders' perceptions of effective communication with parents in suburban and urban school districts. Three open-ended questions guided the research: 1) What are principals’ perceptions of effective communication with parents?, 2) What are principals’ perceptions of effective strategies of school-home communication?, and 3) What are the barriers that may obstruct effective communication between principals and families? This cross-case study is unique as it focused on school leaders' perspectives to define effective communication. Strategies, methods, and barriers were identified by participant school leaders. The …

Leading With Data, Leading With Ethics: A Practical Ethics Guide In Statistics And Data Analysis For Educational Leaders, Elliott Ostler, Tami Williams, John Schultz

School Leadership Review

Abstract:

In today's data-driven and data-informed educational landscape, leaders face increasing pressure to make decisions and present results based on what appear to be comprehensive statistical analyses. However, the ethical implications of these responsibilities can be complex, particularly when statistical results carry the potential to be miscommunicated, misinterpreted, misrepresented, or even misused. This article explores some of the critical aspects of ethical statistical practices in educational leadership and provides practical considerations for leaders in using and presenting data responsibly. Specifically, the narrative contained herein emphasizes ethical practice associated with statistics and data analysis, not simply the ethics of general research …

Design Of Pseudo-Lfsr Based Physical Unclonable Function, Jeeru Dinesh Reddy, Ajaykumar Devarapalli, Radha Rc, K Panduranga Vittal

The Journal of Engineering Research

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are primarily used for authenticating hardware devices. The objective of this research is to generate a large set of challenge-response pairs to strengthen the PUF. The Pseudo-LFSR PUF design relies on LFSR but does not contain any shift register; instead, it employs combinational circuits like inverters and XOR gates. The PUF's strength is based on the quantity of challenge-response pairs it possesses, with a larger set indicating better security and authentication. The proposed PUF has significant advantages, such as producing a large-bit response, with n bits of response captured from a single n-bit challenge. Moreover, the …

Pedal Energy – Photovoltaic (Pv) Integration As An Environmentally Friendly Alternative Energy, Yusnaini Arifin, Agustinus Kali, Ramang Magga, Andry Gunawan, Saddam Husen

The Journal of Engineering Research

Photovoltaic is Renewable Energy (RE) sourced from the sun. Apart from PV, pedal power generation is also a form of RE that can be used as alternative electrical energy because humans generate this energy in the pedalling mechanism. Furthermore, single use of renewable energy has limited continuity in the load supply because it relies heavily on sources that are only available sometimes. As proposed in this research, integrating several renewable energies, such as PV and pedal energy, could be a solution. This pedal generator uses a static bicycle to produce electrical energy by utilizing the Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG) …

Preparation And Application Of Conductive Technical Fabrics To Smart Textiles, Nsreen Alatrash, Ziad Saffour, Ghazal Tuhmaz

The Journal of Engineering Research

Cotton fabrics were used in this study to create electrically conductive pathways through printing with conductive materials. Graphite and a mixture of graphite oxide with manganese oxide were utilized as conductive inks in screen printing. To create the conductive ink, conductive materials were mixed with other substances such as thickener, moisturizer, and water. The viscosity of the ink was 10 mPa.s. After printing on the cotton fabric samples, the effect of conductive concentration on electrical conductivity was examined. It was found that a 5% concentration of graphite achieved the highest conductivity (1.75 × 10-5 S.cm-1). To further improve conductivity, multiple …

Tracking Stray Camels Crossing The Roads To Prevent Vehicle Accidents In Oman, Murshid Abdullah Al Alawi, Shaik Mazhar Hussain Shaik, Shaik Mazhar Hussain

The Journal of Engineering Research

The work presented in this paper addresses the problem of vehicle accidents due to stray camels crossing the roads by notifying the drivers about camels’ existence and location. Subsequently, the drivers can take precautionary measures to prevent collisions with camels. This is achieved by developing a system consisting of two parts. The first part is a bracelet tied to the camel's neck, and the second is the mobile application installed on the driver's mobile device. Hence, this proposed work aims to prevent road accidents in Oman due to stray camels moving freely on the roads and achieving safer travel during …

A Comparative Study Of Filtration Rate Of Water-Based Mud Between Silica And Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles Of Different Sizes For The Deep Well Application, Almotasim Alkalbani, Girma Chala, Alhaitham M. Alkalbani

The Journal of Engineering Research

In the oil and gas industry, drilling mud plays a vital role in the drilling process. However, during the drilling process, various factors such as the filtration process, the formation of a mud paste, and the pressure variation on the well walls can significantly impact the designs and complications in the well, in addition to changing the characteristics of the reservoir. One of the challenges in the drilling process is the leaching process, which can cause various problems including the rearrangement of pressure in the vicinity of the wellbore, swelling, and a variation in the strength characteristics of the rocks. …

Performance Of Mineral Oil Based Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Nanolubricant In Vapor Compression Refrigeration System: An Experimental Study, Nawaz Ahmad, Mohammad Tariq, Afzal Husain

The Journal of Engineering Research

Extensive research has been carried out in order to design a refrigeration system that is efficient and consumes less power. Several researchers have explored various techniques to decrease the power usage of compressors and increase the coefficient of performance (COP) of refrigeration systems by utilizing nanoparticles. The remarkable properties of nanoparticles, including their exceptional thermo-physical and tribological characteristics, have made their usage in a variety of thermal applications. This study investigated the performance of a hydrocarbon blend refrigerant also known as Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), mixed with Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube (MWCNT) nanolubricant made from mineral oil (MO) at different concentrations …