Digital Commons Network^™

Deliberative Intelligence, Iterative Consensus, And Outcome-Grounded ‘Wisdom’ Via Reality Backpropagation, Joseph Jm Walker

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure introduces Reality Backpropagation, a mechanism for aligning artificial intelligence systems with real-world outcomes over time. While conventional AI systems rely on internal error gradients derived from training data, the disclosed system incorporates external “reality gradients” by evaluating predictions against observed consequences and updating agent influence accordingly.

Implemented within a modular, multi-agent architecture, the system includes structured deliberation, an agreement matrix for mapping convergence and divergence, and an iterative consensus loop in which outputs are treated as provisional rather than final. A Wisdom Module performs a Reality Audit Loop that compares expected and actual outcomes across multiple temporal …

Ai-Powered Visual Analysis Of Telemetry Time Series Images For Event Identification, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

The technology described in this paper relates to an agentic AI method for the automated visual analysis of telemetry plots provided in image format. The method involves identifying time-series characteristics within an image, such as axes and trends, and utilizing dependency-awareness to prioritize relevant data. Significant events are detected by analyzing value changes relative to plot scales, with a specific focus on identifying correlated shifts across multiple time series. These events are subsequently categorized into types, such as sustained increases or slow degrades, and summarized in a structured format. This approach automates the interpretation of graphical patterns to accelerate event …

Utah Secondary English Language Arts Teachers And The Use Of Body Diverse Young Adult Literature, Katy Johnson Bigham

Theses and Dissertations

Representation in young adult (YA) literature has expanded significantly in recent years, but body size diversity - specifically the inclusion of fat protagonists - is still minimal and understudied in secondary English language arts (ELA) classrooms. Research shows that diverse literature plays a crucial role in helping students see themselves and other reflected in the texts they read, as shown in the metaphor of literature as "windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors" (Bishop, 1990). So how does this apply to the representation of body size diversity in the ELA classroom? This study explores how secondary ELA teachers in Utah perceive …

Phishing Restraint: University Simulated Phishing Campaigns, Alexander M. Abou Khir

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Universities face heightened vulnerability to phishing attacks due to their open information-sharing culture and diverse user populations. This study examines how phishing exploits human factors within campus environments and evaluates three major training strategies: embedded phishing, microlearning, and role-based instruction to understand their individual and combined effectiveness. I explored studies that implement these strategies in pairs and use the strategies alone, identified trends in susceptibility reduction, behavioral reinforcement, and contextual relevance. I suggest that, while each method independently improves user awareness, multiple approaches offer stronger, more adaptable protection by addressing both psychological triggers and role-specific risks. The paper contributes a …

Confidentiality Of Ai Conversations: Protecting Self-Represented Litigants Who Use Chatgpt For Legal Advice, Anoo D. Vyas

Duke Law & Technology Review

When a layperson uses ChatGPT to obtain feedback on a legal matter, attorney-client privilege may not apply, as ChatGPT is not a lawyer, much less a human. Further, while lawyers are entitled to protection for their opinion work-product, it is not clear whether self-represented litigants are entitled to the same protection. Additionally, the broader duty of confidentiality binds only attorneys, not AI systems like ChatGPT. The public increasingly uses AI tools such as ChatGPT. If a layperson employs ChatGPT for legal advice, particularly in a civil matter, such communications may be discoverable and potentially admissible. This presents an access to …

Flu Vaccine Hesitancy In College-Aged People, Maria Sadek, Dr. Kaitlin Bonner

Fisher Showcase 2026

This project investigates influenza vaccine hesitancy among college‑aged individuals, the age group with the lowest national vaccination rates, to determine how these patterns manifest at Fisher. Building on my previous semester’s literature search, this semester focused on a deeper review of documented barriers and the development of an IRB‑approved survey tailored to Fisher students. Prior research highlights several predictors of vaccination, including past flu experience (a very strong predictor of vaccination behavior) and encouragement from trusted authorities. Alternatively, common barriers include low perceived risk, safety concerns, and cost or time constraints. Fisher‑specific data were collected to assess whether these national …

The Story Game: Dissuading The Abolition Of Man With Narrative Intellectual Virtue & The Hunger Games, Camille Bewley

Harding Undergraduate Research Conference

Relativism in modern America is leading society toward the fruition of C.S. Lewis’ warning of the abolition of man. This nation once founded on freedom inches closer to the dystopia which Suzanne Collins depicts in her Hunger Games series. This paper recognizes the growing need for humanity to realign with truth and universal values, first by reorienting itself to narratives. Through intellectual virtues of understanding and prudence as defined by Aristotle, society can translate stories into their inherent purpose; seeing truth and reality within the bottle of imagination. Stories contain the answers, narratives are the way humanity subscribes to reality. …

Influence Of Background Music On Proton Dose Monitors, Julia Colangeli, Rachel Felder, Nicole Geer, Favour Ihenwe, Shermineh Roodi, Sandra John Baptiste

Research Methods Poster Session 2026

This study examines the effects of background music, particularly varying bass frequencies, on dose monitor accuracy in proton therapy using the Hitachi PROBEAT-FR proton accelerator.

Strategies Higher Education Leaders Use To Improve Job Satisfaction Among Administrative Staff, Jerrod Jaquii Pass

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Organizational change initiatives in higher education often lead to decreased job satisfaction among administrative staff. Higher education leaders are concerned with maintaining employee job satisfaction during such periods because disengagement among administrative staff can reduce performance and increase turnover. The purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry was to explore strategies higher education leaders use to improve administrative staff job satisfaction during organizational change. Lewin’s change management theory served as the foundation for the capstone research project. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with a purposive sample of six higher education leaders in the United States who had implemented change initiatives …

Keeping To The High Road: Avoiding The Ethical Pitfalls In Disseminating Your Research, Daniel T. Kulp

LEAP Conference Speaker Slides

No abstract provided.

Responsible Authorship, Ethical Publishing, Research Integrity, Susan Garfinkel

LEAP Conference Speaker Slides

No abstract provided.

Nutrition Strategies To Help Children With Arfid Overcome Nutrition-Related Deficiencies, Saul Campos

The Agora

Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) is a serious and relatively newly recognized eating disorder that affects children and adolescents. The disorder was formally introduced in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) and is characterized by restrictive eating patterns that lead to significant nutritional deficiencies, weight loss or poor growth, dependence on nutritional supplements, or interference with psychosocial functioning (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Current estimates suggest that ARFID may affect approximately 1–5% of children and adolescents, though prevalence varies depending on the population studied and diagnostic criteria used (Białek-Dratwa et al., 2022). Unlike other eating disorders, …

Exploration Of A Relationship Between The Activities Of Trail And 4’-Trifluoromethoxychalcone., Abigail C. Ernst

Undergraduate Theses

Cancer is the overgrowth of dysregulated or mutated cells that affects 1 in 3 Americans. Chalcones are natural products with many possible derivatives, such as 4’-trifluromethoxychalcone (4TF), developed in Dr. Krzysiak’s lab, which exhibit anticancer activity against cancer cell lines. Tumor Necrosis Factor-Related Apoptosis-Inducing Ligand (TRAIL) is a tumor surveillance cytokine that acts on two receptor types: death receptors and decoy receptors. One way cancer cells can become resistant to TRAIL is by upregulating decoy receptors and/or downregulating death receptors. In this study, MTS assays evaluated the potential relationship between TRAIL and 4TF that sensitizes A549 cells to TRAIL. The …

Health Professional Education Associations: What Other Professions Teach Us About Building Resources, Community, And Advocacy For Midwifery Educators, Kim Q. Dau, Ms, Cnm

Doctor of Midwifery Advances in Midwifery Projects

In response to a looming health care workforce deficit, several health professions have experienced recent rapid workforce growth. These professions are supported by specialized health professional associations designed to promote educational excellence in the face of rapid growth. In contrast, the midwifery profession does not have dedicated professional organizations to support education programs. The purpose of this study is to better understand the various strategies used by selected health professional education associations and their value to the profession. This can be adapted to promote the growth and excellence of midwifery education in the United States, responding to the need for …

Formative Experiences, Belief Formation, And Entrepreneurial Success: An Upstream Development Perspective For Entrepreneurship Education, Johan C.G. Eriksson

Dissertations

This research examines how formative experiences inform the formation of entrepreneurial beliefs and how those beliefs relate to a practitioner-informed understanding of entrepreneurial success. Using a mixed-methods design, the study began with semi-structured interviews with 25 experienced entrepreneurs. Participants reflected on how they define entrepreneurial success and which formative experiences they associate with achieving it. Inductive thematic analysis produced a practitioner-informed definition of entrepreneurial success and identified twelve formative experiences connected to entrepreneurial development. A subsequent two-round Delphi study engaged these expert participants to further examine the relative importance of the identified experiences and to provide insight into which formative …

Update Mechanisms In Event Models: Boundary Effects And Dimensional Influences, Xing Su

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

People construct working event models to comprehend dynamic, multimodal information such as movies and narratives, but how these models update remains debated. Two mechanisms have been proposed: incremental updating, which selectively modifies specific dimensions while preserving others, and global updating, which discards the existing model entirely to construct a new one. This dissertation investigated how event boundaries influence which updating mechanism people employ. Across two experiments, participants read narratives about everyday activities while we measured recognition memory response times and self-paced reading times. Participants also completed event segmentation tasks to identify perceived boundaries. Results revealed a consistent dissociation opposite to …

Comments On Proposed Regulations Reg-117270-25: Trump Accounts Under Section 530a, Jin Huang, Margaret Clancy, Michael Sherraden, Lissa Johnson, Stephen Roll

Center for Social Development Research

In December 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department published a notice of intent to issue regulations concerning Trump Accounts (also known as 530A accounts), requesting public comments on proposed regulations for the Trump Accounts Contribution Pilot Program. This testimony presents comments submitted n response. Drawing on decades of Child Development Account research, including insights from the SEED for Oklahoma Kids experiment (SEED OK), the authors urge Treasury to adopt automatic enrollment to ensure that all eligible children— not only those whose families actively enroll them—receive the $1,000 pilot-program contribution. They outline federal–state implementation pathways using Social Security number data, recommend layered …

Consistent Gas-Phase Temperatures And Metallicities From Uv And Optical Nebular Emission, Erin Huntzinger, Yuguang Chen, Tucker Jones, Ryan Sanders, Peter Senchyna, Daniel Stark, Fabio Bresolin, Stephane Charlot, Jacopo Chevallard

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

The rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) spectra of star-forming galaxies are increasingly important as they become one of the primary windows to probe the physical properties of cosmic dawn (z > 8) galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope. However, the systematic discrepancies between UV and optical gas-phase metallicity measurements remain poorly understood in the local universe, partly due to challenges in achieving precise comparisons between UV and optical spectra for the same objects. In this work, we introduce a novel method that leverages the He II λ1640 and He II λ4686 nebular emission lines to achieve accurate aperture and reddening corrections between …

Are The Self-Employed Really Their Own Boss?: Evidence On The Degree Of Autonomy And Control The Self-Employed Have Over Their Work, Katharine G. Abraham, Susan N. Houseman, Beth C. Truesdale

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Self-employment is commonly equated with being one’s own boss. This implies that, compared to employees, the self-employed have greater freedom to make their own decisions on key aspects of their job, including how they do their work and when they work. In this paper, we use information from a large, nationally representative survey, collected as part of the American Job Quality Study, to examine the degree to which workers in various self-employment arrangements do, in fact, control their own work. We find that while the self-employed are more likely than employees to have a lot of input into how and …

Overcoming Apathy And Complacency Through Discipleship Micro-Groups At Spencer Church Of Christ, Jerrard A. Davis

Harding School of Theology Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Revitalising Tanzania’S Textile Industry Through The Uk Textile System’S Role, Charles M. Kahabi

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Currently, there is the environmental and social challenges emerging from the global clothing and textile industry, specifically on textile waste management.  Additionally, the flow of second-hand clothing (SHC) between European countries especially the UK and Tanzania is increasing. In the UK, rapid growth of second-hand clothing (mitumba) driven by fast fashion results in vast quantities of discarded garments, of which only a fraction is recycled, leaving the remainder in landfills. Conversely, Tanzania has long depended on imported SHC a practice that, while affordable, has undermined local textile industries and contributed to waste accumulation. By examining Tanzania’s textile landscape, the research …

Using Ai To Identify National Security Threats: A Holistic Examination Of The Legal Risks And Increased Need For Regulation, Skylar Mcvicar

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

Artificial intelligence (AI) is integrating rapidly into daily practice, including in the national security sector. AI has the potential to improve bureaucratic efficiency, enhance military intelligence and threat assessment, and develop autonomous vehicles and weapons, making it a revolutionary tool in national security. Since AI implementation is a relatively recent phenomenon, there is currently limited governmental regulation in place to safeguard against potential violations of civil liberties and other legal risks. Given AI's capacity to infringe on certain civil liberties such as the Fourth Amendment right to privacy and the Fourteenth Amendment protection against discriminatory policies, establishing strong oversight measures …

Tracing The Milky Way’S Evolution Through Its Star-Planet Systems, Rayna Rampalli

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

From individual planetary systems to the Milky Way's structure, stars are the linchpin connecting astrophysical scales. Through three complementary projects, my thesis leverages these connections and large stellar surveys to offer insight into the Galaxy's dynamical and chemical history and its role in shaping planet formation and evolution. (I) I developed Protify, an automated pipeline to measure stellar rotation periods in TESS light curves, enabling rotation-based ages for thousands of stars. Applying it to overdensities of stars in eccentric Galactic orbits, thought to be post-resonant signatures of spiral arm passages, revealed unexpectedly young rotators in dynamically old populations. Because such …

Implementation Of The Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies In Tanzania’S Downstream Oil And Gas Industries, Vitalis John Mwinyi

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

The advent of the fourth industrial revolution (IR4.0) has resulted in the digital transformation of multiple sectors of the economy due to the disruptive nature of the technologies driving the revolution. The technologies have already found their way into the oil and gas industries across the globe, especially in upstream, midstream, and downstream operations. However, the degree of implementation is not the same for these operations, considering the complexities involved, integrated process, the associated risk and investment cost, among others. This study aimed to establish the implementation level of IR4.0 technologies in the downstream operations. A survey method was employed …

Mental Gymnastics: How Misconceptions Drive Unstable Forms Of Scientific And Religious Reconciliation, Jamie Jensen, Jade Sorensen, Andrea Phillips, Mackay Strong, Isaac A. Woolley, Spencer M. Johanseon, Afton Fillmore, Luke N. Noakes

ScholarsArchive Data

Interview transcripts of introductory biology students attempting to reconcile evolutionary science with religious faith.