Digital Commons Network^™

Engage In The New Age: Understanding Why Emerging Adults Stay Or Stray In The Church, Michael D. Douglas

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This qualitative phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of emerging adults (ages 18–25) who were raised in small to midsize Black Baptist churches in Norfolk, Virginia, to examine the factors influencing their continued engagement or disengagement from the church. Against the backdrop of declining participation among young adults in African American congregations, the study investigates how preaching, discipleship practices, church-sponsored activities, and resource allocation shape patterns of belonging and retention. Through semi-structured interviews with emerging adults ages 18-25, the research uncovers the spiritual, relational, and organizational dynamics that either foster sustained involvement or contribute to disengagement. Findings highlight the critical …

The Predictability Gap: A Correlation Study Of Supporting Pillars And Repertoire Success In Abrsm Practical And Performance Grades Piano Examinations, Arthur Chit-Ho Ng

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study investigated the structural predictability trajectories within the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) graded piano framework. Utilizing an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, the project analyzed a longitudinal dataset (N = 449) to investigate variance in student achievement and the emergence of developmental plateaus, conceptually identified as the “Reading Wall.” Quantitative modeling revealed distinct structural divergences within the syllabus architecture: the traditional Practical Grades maintained a stable correlational signal between technical components and outcomes (r = .826 at Grade 7), whereas the digital Performance Grades yielded a non-significant association (p = .355). Furthermore, Grade 5 Music …

Exploring The Lived Experiences Of Women In Relationships With Men Experiencing Cluster B Personality Disorder Traits, Anita Farrington Woods

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Clinicians are increasingly motivated to understand inequities in mental health diagnoses. This interest may emerge from observing multiple clients struggling with similar challenges, recognizing gaps in relevant research, or experiencing personal circumstances that prompt deeper inquiry into current conditions and their root causes. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological transcendental study was to describe the marital experiences of women who are in relationships with men who exhibit Cluster B personality disorder traits. Cluster B personality disorder traits include unstable relationships, emotional dysregulation, lack of empathy, and erratic behaviors. Attachment theory, developed by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, guided this study …

Employees With Disabilities: Determining If Servant Leadership Moderates The Relationship Between Accommodations And Job Performance, Rachael E. Stout

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Over 11% of working-age adults have a disability in the United States. In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act established accommodations as the gold standard to help disabled individuals perform at work. The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental study was to evaluate the moderating effect of servant leadership on the relationship between accommodation support and job performance across different types of disabilities. This study used a cross-sectional online survey with NSHD disability types, the servant leadership SLQ-7, a question about the effectiveness of accommodation support, and the IWPQ for job performance. Survey responses were collected anonymously from 248 disabled workers …

When Illness Is Invisible: The Rhetorical Situation Of Internet-Informed Self-Identification In Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Kayla J. Martin

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the rhetorical situation of diagnostic communications for individuals with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) when presenting diagnostic information obtained online to medical providers in healthcare settings. The problem was that little was known about how individuals with hEDS communicatively negotiate internet-informed self-identifications or diagnoses within the rhetorical situation of patient-provider diagnostic interactions. The rationale for this research was that individuals with hEDS frequently experience significant diagnostic delays, symptom dismissal, and provider knowledge gaps that lead many to seek diagnostic information through online health information seeking (OHIS) and self-identification prior to obtaining a …

The Effect Of Mental Health Check-Ins On Stigma And Symptoms Of Anxiety, Depression, And Post-Traumatic Stress, Benjamin Joseph Boeke

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This applied quantitative study examined whether participation in structured mental health check-ins was associated with self-stigma toward seeking psychological help and reported symptoms of anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and depression among law enforcement officers. Using a cross-sectional, nonexperimental comparative design, anonymous survey data were collected from 130 active sworn officers across 10 small and mid-sized Iowa law enforcement agencies. The agencies included those with and without mandatory check-in policies; primary comparisons were based on officers’ reported participation in at least one check-in. Measures included the Self-Stigma of Seeking Help Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, PTSD Checklist for DSM-5, and Patient Health Questionnaire-9. …

The Correlation Of Information-Seeking Traits With Perceptions Of Artificial Intelligence Output To Ill-Defined Problems, Joel Bouchard

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a new class of technological tool whose innovation exists in its ability to engage in reciprocal, socially fluent, undetermined response generation. How individuals come to trust such responses, especially as it regards classes of problems previously unavailable to programmed computational responses, is a question of importance. Prior research has addressed motivational dispositions towards epistemic decision-making, but work examining the relationship between these traits and perceptions of AI output in epistemically ambiguous circumstances is limited. The current study aimed to address this gap by exploring how trait curiosity and need for cognitive closure (NFCC) relate …

Moral Ecology In Shakespeare's Tragedies: Nature, Animals, And Conscience As Ethical Agents In Hamlet, Macbeth, And King Lear, Md. Abu Bakkar

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

Shakespeare's tragedies repeatedly dramatize a universe in which moral transgression produces consequences that extend beyond individual psychology to affect society, nature, and the non-human world. This study examines how Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear construct a system of moral ecology, understood as a framework of ethical causality in which human actions generate interconnected consequences across psychological, social, and natural orders. Using qualitative close reading informed by moral criticism, ecocriticism, animal studies, and early modern cosmology, the study analyzes selected passages representing natural disturbance, animal imagery, and conscience as forms of ethical response. The findings show that the three …

Perceptual Evaluation Of 3d-Printed Typodont Teeth With Comparable Cutting Forces, Alex Cresswell-Boyes, Aylin Baysan, Graham Davis

Peninsula Dental School

Background: Pre-clinical training in endodontics relies heavily on typodont teeth to develop operative skills before patient care, but conventional polymer-based typodonts differ from human teeth in their cutting response, requiring greater force and producing an unrealistic cutting experience that often dissatisfies students. Methods: This study evaluated four alternative 3D-printed typodont materials—15 wt.% carbonated hydroxyapatite, 15 wt.% Puraflake ^® (glass flake filler), 15 wt.% zinc oxide, and a urethane/triethylene glycol dimethacrylate resin composite—based on their cutting force, post-cut surface roughness, and perceived cutting feel relative to extracted enamel, assessed via a five-point Likert scale questionnaire completed by 46 (n = 46) …

Nature-Based Activities To Support Mental Ill Health (Greengage): Protocol For A Pilot Randomised Controlled Trial And Process Evaluation, Caroline Jenkinson, Katie Gibbs, Rebecca Lovell, Alison Hurst, Kerryn Husk, Katrina Wyatt, Obioha C. Ukoumunne, Siobhan Creanor, Anne Spencer, Ruth Garside

Peninsula Medical School

Anxiety and depression are among the leading mental health difficulties worldwide. Nature-based interventions are increasingly being used to support mental health and wellbeing. There is growing policy interest in the use of nature as a setting for interventions. However, there remains a lack of robust evidence on their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.

The Parthenon, September 17, 2026, Trista Honaker, Davina Snyder, Soleil Woolard, Alana Romero Lozano, Claire Johnson, Hannah Anderson, Tally Mamula

The Parthenon

No abstract provided.

Faculty Development Courses On Ai: Introducing The Faculty Ai Capability Selection Framework, Dan R. Bradbury, Barbara Jo White, H. Kevin Fulk, Raymond Large

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

University faculty members are faced with how to best address pressing needs for building artificial intelligence (AI) skills.  Some of these needs are student-focused, as employers seek graduates with useful AI skills.  Faculty members, understanding how generative AI can impact the work they do, also face pressures to enhance their own skills and comfort using AI tools.  In this article, we consider AI capabilities that are impacting organizations’ expectations for new college graduates as well as AI capabilities changing the shape of faculty members’ work.  We propose the Faculty AI Capability Selection Framework as a means to guide the development …

Agree To Disagree? Classification Agreement Among Discrepancy-Based Sld Models Used In School Psychology, Emma M. Ferns, Carlos O. Calderón-Tena

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

For decades, school psychologists have attempted to operationalize the federal definition of the most prevalent disability under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), specific learning disability. These attempts have led to three major identification method camps: the severe discrepancy approach, the patterns of strengths and weaknesses (PSW) approach, and the response-to-intervention approach—all of which are federally permissible under the IDEA. This study aimed to determine whether three operationalizations of the severe discrepancy approach (simple severe discrepancy using 1 and 1.5 standard deviations and the regression approach) identified the same students as those classified by their school as having an …

A Framework For Teaching Maya Aspect System: Pedagogical Strategies For Maya Grammar, Quetzil E. Castañeda

Journal of Maya Heritage

Abstract. Maya, an Indigenous language spoken primarily in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, remains under-resourced in materials for second-language and heritage-language learners. Its agglutinative morphology, split ergativity, and aspect system pose particular pedagogical challenges, especially when Maya grammar is explained through Spanish or English tense categories. Based on a critical review of existing teaching resources and the author’s more than twenty years of experience teaching Maya, this article proposes a pedagogical framework for understanding its aspect grammar. Rather than organizing verbal morphology around tense, the framework distinguishes four principal conjugational forms: Ongoing Incomplete, Simple Past, Completed Present, and Subjunctive. It also introduces …

Decoupled Agent Architecture For Function-Based Remote Device Automation, Qingfei Tian

Defensive Publications Series

Orchestrating specific, function-level actions across heterogeneous fleets of electronic devices, such as smartphones, wearable devices, or smart home appliances, can present challenges, as methods like user interface scripting may be less reliable and placing complex logic on resource-constrained devices can be impractical. A system using a decoupled agent architecture may address these challenges. A remote agent, operating in a resource-rich environment such as a cloud server, can interpret high-level goals and translate them into a sequence of structured, function-based commands. A lightweight on-device agent may receive these commands via a communication relay and execute them programmatically using local device application …

Refereed Research - Indispensable Yet Not Fully Legitimate: Street Markets As Invisible Subsistence Infrastructure, Raji Srinivasan, Maria C. Merino

Subsistence Marketplaces

Street markets are key provisioning systems across the Global South, supplying fresh food, employment, and retail access absent formal infrastructure. Yet despite street markets’ functional indispensability to millions of low-income consumers, their legitimacy is chronically contested, affirmed by vendors and communities yet challenged by planners, developers, and state authorities who apply formal-economy criteria in evaluating them. We theorize this as a legitimacy paradox and ask what structural mechanisms sustain it? Using composite vignettes grounded in fieldwork, we theorize three mechanisms. First, visibility without recognition: street markets are hyper-visible yet excluded from cognitive templates of legitimate, formal retail. Second, asymmetric essentiality: …

20 Multifunctional Solutions For Hydraulics And Structural Frameworks Of Legged Robots: Self-Diagnostic Cartridge Valves, Mrf And Niti-Based Damping, Parametric Metamaterials, And Predictive Diagnostics, Volodymyr Kotegov

Defensive Publications Series

This document discloses twenty technical solutions for hydraulic drives, structural frameworks, and diagnostic systems of legged robots, unified by the design principle of a single physical element performing two or more functions simultaneously. These solutions encompass: self-diagnostic valves and seals utilizing impedance, piezoelectric, and NiTi mechanisms; damping and energy-recuperating structures based on magnetorheological fluids and liquid crystal elastomers; parametric metamaterial cells combining elastic, valving, and resonant functions; architectural designs for hardware-level hydraulic network survivability operating independently of electronics; cartridge interfaces with integrated opto-acoustic and electrochemical diagnostics; and a comprehensive structural joint architecture featuring three-level passive clamping and hydraulic lines routed …

Low Bandwidth Full-Duplex Multimodal Llm Interaction With Contextual Interruption, Longlong Zhu, Weiyue Huang

Defensive Publications Series

Multimodal LLMs implemented on a server can support remote user interaction over a network but require continuous real-time streaming of raw, uncompressed video and/or audio. This can be infeasible due to bandwidth constraints or other reasons, and can prevent real-time feedback in time-sensitive interactive settings. This disclosure describes an asymmetric edge and cloud collaborative architecture that can enable full-duplex and seamlessly interruptible multimodal LLM orchestration at low latency. The architecture decouples sensor processing tasks from cognitive reasoning tasks involved in interaction between a user and a multimodal LLM via modalities such as audio, video, or image. Computationally heavy processing of …

Efficient In-Context Retrieval For Search Ads Via Pre-Computed Corpus Key-Value Caching, Ladan Rabiee, Felix Yu, Ruiqi Guo, Chris Collins, Tianyin Zhou

Defensive Publications Series

A system performs large-scale information retrieval using a large language model (LLM) by pre-computing a key-value (KV) cache for a document corpus. The retrieval prompt is structured into static and dynamic parts, where the static portion includes system instructions and the entire document corpus. In an offline process, the LLM processes this static portion to generate and store a corresponding KV cache. During online inference, the system loads the pre-computed KV cache and appends the dynamic user query, which enables the LLM to perform its attention-routing task without reprocessing the entire corpus. A layerwise prefilling technique manages the memory footprint …

Dynamic Print Trigger Compensation For A Moving Robotic Printer, Hp Inc

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes a dynamic print-trigger control method for a printhead carried by a moving robotic platform. A liquid drop requires a finite time to travel from the printhead to the target surface. During this flight time, the robotic platform continues moving and may accelerate or decelerate, causing the drop to reach a position different from the intended printing position. The control method predicts the drop flight time using the printhead-to-surface distance and characteristics that affect drop ejection velocity, and predicts the movement of the robotic platform during the flight interval. The print trigger is then advanced or delayed so …

Sla-Based Asynchronous Request Processing System Using Failure Response Mode, Hp Inc

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure relates to the field of request handling in distributed network services that depend on other services. A system is disclosed that evaluates operational health signals for each service it calls and, when the evaluated condition of one of those services crosses a configured threshold, places itself into a failure-response mode for that one dependency. While the mode is active, handling is chosen from the semantics of each request. A read request receives an immediate error response, while a state-changing request is preserved in a durable store and acknowledged within the same call by an acceptance response that also …

Pre-Execution Dollar-Cost Query Router With Policy-Gated Cross-Engine Execution, Pravesh Kumar

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure relates to a method and a system for routing a structured query across a plurality of heterogeneous query execution engines. The present disclosure suggests receiving a query execution request including a structured query and parsing the query to generate a canonical representation of the query. The present disclosure also suggests determining an estimated execution cost based on at least scan characteristics associated with the query and a runtime estimation associated with execution of the query. Thereafter, the present disclosure suggests determining a policy compliance condition for each of the plurality of heterogeneous query execution engines based on …

Changing The Wind’S Direction: Reflections On Ian Shapiro’S After The Fall, Stefan Eich

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

Premolar Extraction, Upper Airway Changes, And Obstructive Sleep Apnea Risk: A Narrative Review, I-Ta Lee

Articles in Press

No abstract provided.

System And Method For Temporally-Correct Point-In-Time Embedding Reconstruction From Append-Only Accumulator Delta Logs, Durga S. Kala, Xinrong Huang, Nishanth Telukunta, Sreekanth Kanichetty

Defensive Publications Series

A system (200) for point-in-time reconstruction of time-decayed behavioral embedding accumulator states for payment entities includes an append-only accumulator delta log (202) that records, for each accumulator update event, an entity identifier, an exact authorization timestamp, a D-dimensional embedding delta, a pre-computed exponential decay factor, and the resulting accumulator weight. A checkpoint store (204) periodically snapshots the accumulator state including a decayed sum, a total weight, and a timestamp for each entity. A reconstruction engine (206) reads the latest checkpoint prior to a query timestamp, replays all delta log entries for the entity with timestamp strictly less than the query …

Decoupled Pricing And Fulfillment Arbitrator For Multi-Destination Agentic Commerce Systems, Richa Gupta

Defensive Publications Series

A decoupled pricing and fulfillment arbitrator extends the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) to maintain volume-based discounts for e-commerce orders shipped to multiple destinations. The system operates through a two-phase cryptographic handshake, where the arbitrator first validates the total item quantity in a cart to secure a global price lock from a merchant’s application programming interface (API). The arbitrator then atomizes the single order into multiple, concurrent fulfillment requests, one for each distinct shipping address. By embedding a cryptographic bulk token into each parallel request, the arbitrator instructs the merchant’s system to bypass standard single-destination validation rules and apply the pre-approved …

Cpeven‑Ω2.0 Caldwell Planetary Environmental Verification & Early‑Warning Network, Michael Victor Caldwell Mr.

Defensive Publications Series

CPEVEN‑Ω2.0 is a fully open, modular, multi‑physics environmental measurement and verification architecture designed for global deployment. It integrates reference‑grade sensors, distributed open nodes, multi‑physics correlation, artifact detection, uncertainty‑aware fusion, satellite/model comparison, source attribution, and experimental technology validation into one unified system.

CPEVEN‑Ω2.0 is not a sensor.

It is not a weather station.

It is not a model.

It is not a prediction engine.

It is a planetary environmental verification network that preserves raw measurements, validates experimental technologies, correlates multi‑domain signals, and produces reproducible environmental intelligence.

Every module is open hardware.

Every interface is documented.

Every measurement is traceable.

Every experimental …

Selective Bookmarking And Curated Export Of Conversational Ai Message Turns To External Documents And Notebooks, Richa Gupta

Defensive Publications Series

In multi-turn conversations with conversational artificial intelligence, details established in earlier turns are prioritized less than more recent turns as a session grows longer, and locating or reusing valuable content from within a long conversation typically requires scanning the full transcript or manually copying individual passages. This disclosure describes a message-anchoring and bookmarking approach in which each conversational turn is assigned a persistent identifier. A cited identifier is used to isolate and prioritize the corresponding turn, while unrelated conversational content is masked from further processing. Selected turns are additionally flagged through a bookmarking control, and the flagged turns are compiled, …

Remote Control Using Render Buffer Accessibility Extraction, Inductively Powered Electrophoretic Keycaps, And An Ultra-Wideband Pointing Latch, Stenal P. Jolly

Defensive Publications Series

Streaming applications on a smart television often render an interface into a single hardware-accelerated graphics surface.  A native accessibility engine may treat that surface as one opaque node, and printed remote keycaps do not follow the content on screen.  A remote control system addresses these limitations by extracting geometry and text directly from a graphics processing unit (GPU) render buffer of a host computing device.  The system rebuilds a virtual accessibility tree once per render frame.  Compact per-key updates travel over a low-energy wireless link to electrophoretic keycap displays, and inductive power regulation holds each keycap display at a steady …

Contention-Based Write Pulse Modulation On A Replica Timing Path For Process-Tolerant Sram Write Operations, Abhishek Dalal, Ayush Kulshrestha, Ajith K. P, Guru Shamanna, Akash Jha

Defensive Publications Series

Write margins in a static random-access memory (SRAM) array shift with semiconductor process variation, and the shift grows severe at the slow-NMOS/fast-PMOS (SF) corner, where a strong pull-up network inside a storage cell resists an overwrite.  A raised supply voltage widens that mismatch gap further.  A write pulse modulation method addresses the problem by coupling a contention circuit to the dummy bitline of a replica timing path.  The contention circuit holds an active pull-up against a dummy pull-down network, so the discharge rate of the dummy bitline follows the local ratio of PMOS drive to NMOS drive.  Reset logic ends …