Digital Commons Network^™

Insights Into Stroke Risk And Prediction For Underweight Individuals, Saeed Awad M. Alqahtani, Moutasem S. Aboonq

Neurosciences

This review explores the relationship between underweight status and stroke risk and outcomes. Although the impact of obesity on stroke is well-documented, the harmful effects of being underweight are often overlooked. Drawing on evidence from observational studies, case-control studies, and meta-analyses, this review highlights that underweight individuals face increased mortality, poorer functional recovery, and higher rates of major adverse cardiovascular events and recurrent strokes post-stroke. Challenges in stroke prediction for this population are examined, including the limited research focus, shortcomings of existing risk assessment tools such as the CHA₂DS₂-VASc score, and population-specific factors affecting underweight prevalence …

Brief Of Former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul R. Michel And Scholars Of Law And Economics As Amici Curae In Support Of Respondents, In Hikma Pharmaceuticals Usa, Inc. V. Amarin Pharma, Inc., Jess Miers, Emily Michiko Morris, Mark F. Schultz, Kristina M.L. Acri, Bowman Heiden, Joshua Kresh, Honorable Paul Michel, Kristen Jakobsen Osenga, Douglas Park, Ted M. Sichelman

Akron Law Faculty Publications

• Innovation in Identification and Clinical Trials Testing of New Indications Yields Great Public Benefits but Requires the Incentive of Patent Protection.
• Section viii [skinny label statemetnts] was Never Intended to be a Safe Harbor for Infringement of Method of Use Patents.
• Allowing this Case to Proceed Past the Rule 12 Stage will not Deter Section viii Carve-Outs. 

Software-Defined Radios In Avalanche Detection, Andrew Mcdonald

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores the use of software-defined radios (SDRs) to develop a low-cost radar system for avalanche detection. Avalanches are a significant danger in mountainous locations and existing systems are often difficult or expensive to use. This research assesses if commercially available SDRs can be used to create a radar system capable of detecting moving targets and accurately measuring distance. A frequency-modulated contiuous-wave (FMCW) radar was implemented using the LimeSDR-Mini and the USRP B210. Signal generation, data collection, and processing all are performed in software, enabling easy configuration. Improvements to data transfer methods for the LimeSDR-Mini reduced sampling errors and …

Clinically Aligned Long-Context Transformers For Cross-Platform Mental Health Risk Detection, Aditya Tekale, Mohammad Masum

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Social media platforms contain rich but noisy narratives of psychological distress, creating opportunities for early mental health risk detection. However, existing datasets capture heterogeneous constructs such as suicide risk severity, depression diagnosis, and DSM-5 symptom presence, and most prior models are trained and evaluated on a single corpus, limiting their clinical alignment and cross-dataset generalizability. In this study, we fine-tune a domain-specific long-document transformer, AIMH/Mental-Longformer-base-4096, for binary mental health risk detection (risk vs. no risk) using two clinically aligned Reddit datasets: the C-SSRS Reddit corpus and the eRisk 2025 depression dataset. To handle long user histories, we introduce an LLM-based …

Automating Administrative Burden In Algorithmic Criminal Record Expungement, Sarah Esther Lageson, Ericka B. Adams, Elsa Y. Chen

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Administrative burden describes the learning costs, psychological costs, and compliance costs people face when attempting to interface with the government, particularly in seeking a benefit. Algorithmic and automated processes offer the potential of reducing administrative burdens, but scant empirical research has determined to what, if any effect. This study uses the case of criminal record expungement in two policy contexts: traditional, court petition-based systems and newly enacted automated systems, to understand if and how administrative burden persists, and whether and how these burdens operate differently in the context of the criminal legal system. Drawing on interviews with 105 expungement-eligible people, …

Dhansingh V. Hager

All Decisions

Court granted motion to join DOB as a respondent in HP proceeding seeking correction of a DOB elevator violation, holding that Housing Court has broad jurisdiction under CCA § 110(d) to enforce not only HPD-administered Housing Maintenance Code violations but also violations of the MDL and local laws pertaining to housing standards that are under DOB's responsibility.

Quantifying Provider Relief Fund Allocation Trends: A Descriptive Analysis Of Rural And Urban Hospitals, 2014-2023, Wendell C. Mcclurg

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Rural hospitals operate on thin margins, have limited access to capital, and face a heightened risk of closure. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Provider Relief Fund (PRF) distributed more than $170 billion to health care providers to offset revenue losses and preserve access to care. Most evaluations of PRF have focused on profitability, which may overstate financial resilience by overlooking liquidity. Using Hospital Cost Reports for hospitals from 2014-2023, we examined trends in Days Cash on Hand (DCOH), operating margin, total margin, and PRF funding intensity by rurality and ownership. Liquidity rose sharply during 2020-2021, coinciding with the peak of …

Sweep Angle Effects Of Flow Over A Seal Whisker-Inspired Undulated Cylinder, Trevor Dunt, Christin T. Murphy, Ondrej Fercak, Raúl Bayoán Cal, Jennifer A. Franck

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Flow over a seal whisker-inspired undulated cylinder at swept back angles is computationally investigated, comparing the vortex shedding, forces, and wake characteristics to those of an equivalent smooth geometry. Numerous prior studies have demonstrated that undulated cylinders can reduce mean drag and unsteady lift oscillations; however, none have isolated the effects of the sweep angle resulting from whisker positioning in flow. Inspired by the active control seals exert over their whiskers while navigating and sensing in unsteady aquatic environments, this study investigates how such orientation influences the hydrodynamic performance of the geometry. Simulations are performed of flow across a rigid, …

Inclusive Education Of Indigenous Belief Communities In Indonesia: Perspective Of Independent Learning, Muhammad Ghafar, Nunu Ahmad An Nahidl, Muhammad Thoyib, Rihab Wit Daryono Jr., Edi Junaedi, Neneng Habibah

The Qualitative Report

Indigenous belief communities in Indonesia continue to face marginalization in the national education system, limiting their access to education that aligns with their spiritual and cultural values. Our study investigates how the Sapta Darma community members perceive inclusive education and how their socio-cultural traditions can support educational practices rooted in independent learning. Using a qualitative phenomenological approach and a multi-site design, data were collected from 30 participants, including community leaders, parents, and youth in Banyuwangi, Kediri, and Yogyakarta through in-depth interviews, observations, and documentation. The results show that inclusive education in the Sapta Darma community, grounded in the spirit of …

Christopher Radziewicz V. Usa

2026 Decisions

USDC for the District of Delaware

Does Concurrent Completion Of A Computer Task Interfere With Talking? Comparing Younger And Older Adults, Emma Simpson Hymas

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the impact of a computer-based divided attention task on spoken language and compares the impact between younger (18–30 years) and older (55–82 years) adults. Sixty adults participated in a speaking task and two computer tasks which varied in difficulty. The Level 1 computer task involved highlighting each instance of the word “the” and the Level 2 computer task involved highlighting each instance of the word “the” while also underlining each instance of the word “a”. Each task was completed alone and then two computer tasks with different levels of difficulty were completed concurrently with a procedural discourse …

Functional And Structural Basis Of A Hypermorphic Trpc3 Variant, Briar Bell, Angela M Jaramillo-Granada, Luis O Romero, Irene A Gutierrez, Venkata K P S Mallampalli, Guizhen Fan, Sameer Varma, Matthew L Baker, Irina I Serysheva, Valeria Vásquez, Julio F Cordero-Morales

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Cerebellar ataxias are characterized by impaired motor coordination resulting from neuronal dysfunction within the cerebellum. The mechanisms underlying this pathology and its cerebellar-specific neurodegeneration remain unknown. We uncover how a gain-of-function canonical transient receptor potential member 3 (TRPC3) mutation, coupled with a cerebellum-specific isoform, stabilizes the channel’s open state, resists the leading inhibitor Pyr3, and drives calcium-dependent cell death. Restoring calcium homeostasis by expressing a Purkinje cell calcium pump improves cell viability. Transgenic expression of the TRPC3 hypermorphic variant in Caenorhabditis elegans induces neurodegeneration, confirming its pathogenicity across species. Cryo–electron microscopy and molecular simulations reveal the structural basis for the …

A Study Of Transients From Ground-Based Surveys Reveals New Ultra-Compact Accreting White Dwarf Binaries, Jan Kára, Liliana E. Rivera Sandoval, Wendy Mendoza, Thomas J. Maccarone, Manuel Pichardo Marcano, Luis Salazar Manzano, Ryan J. Oelkers, Jan Van Roestel

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

AM CVn stars are ultra-compact semi-detached binaries consisting of a white dwarf primary and a hydrogen-depleted secondary. In this paper, we present spectroscopic and photometric results of 15 transient sources pre-classified as AM CVn candidates. Our analysis confirms 9 systems of the type AM CVn, 3 hydrogen-rich cataclysmic variables (accreting white dwarfs with near-main-sequence stars for donors), and 3 systems that could be evolved cataclysmic variables. Eight of the AM CVn stars are analysed spectroscopically for the first time, which increases the number of spectroscopically confirmed AM CVns by about 10%. TESS data revealed the orbital period of the AM …

Precision Spectroscopy Of 2s-Ns Transitions In Atomic Hydrogen: A Determination Of The Proton Charge Radius, R. G. Bullis, W. L. Tavis, M. R. Weiss, Orellana O. Cisneros, A. J. Cheeseman, Ulrich D. Jentschura, D. C. Yost

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We present absolute frequency measurements of 2S_1/2-nS_1/2 two-photon transitions with n=8, 9, and 10 in a cryogenic beam of atomic hydrogen. Each transition has been measured with a fractional uncertainty of ≈2.6x10^-12. Combining the results from this Letter and the 1S_1/2-2S_1/2 transition frequency, we extract a root-mean-square proton radius of rp=0.8433(31) fm and a Rydberg frequency of cR_∞=3 289 841 960 252.9(9.7) kHz. These are in good agreement with the CODATA 2022 recommended values.

Using Diffusion Mri To Relate Hippocampal Subfield Microstructure To Delayed Verbal Memory In Cognitively Intact Individuals At Genetic Risk For Developing Alzheimer's Disease, Jennapher Lingo Vangilder, Andrew Hooyman, Sasha Hakhu, Kurt G. Schilling, Leland S. Hu, Yuxiang Zhou, Richard J. Caselli, Leslie C. Baxter, Scott C. Beeman

Physical Therapy Faculty Articles and Research

Intervention to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an important treatment strategy but detecting at-risk individuals before significant disease progression remains challenging. This study evaluates the relationship between hippocampal microstructure and verbal cognition in cognitively intact older adults, focusing on the differences between APOΕ ε4 allele carriers and noncarriers. Participants (n = 41 noncarriers, 33 carriers) over 60 years old (mean ± SD: carriers 71 ± 6.6; noncarriers 71 ± 6.4 years) underwent diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) and volumetric assessments. We assessed hippocampal structure, including microstructure, using Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging (NODDI), diffusion tensor …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Immigration Law Professors In Support Of Respondent, Peter L. Markowitz, Lindsay Nash

Amicus Briefs

Amicus curiae brief submitted by immigration law professors in support of the respondent in Bondi v. Lau before the Supreme Court of the United States. The brief argues that lawful permanent residents returning from travel abroad may not be treated as seeking admission unless they satisfy the statutory criteria set forth in the Immigration and Nationality Act. It further contends that ambiguities in deportation statutes should be resolved in favor of noncitizens under the longstanding immigration rule of lenity.

Just City And Racialized Media: How A Non-Profit Provokes Policy And Fights Criminal Injustices, Isabella L. Wollfarth

LSU Master's Theses

This study explored the intersection of racialized media narratives, nonprofits, and penal policy through a case study of Just City, a nonprofit criminal justice organization located in Shelby County, Tennessee. Through the lens of Just City, this study explored how nonprofits resist racialized media narratives regarding crime and how in turn this contributes to penal policy reforms. This is accomplished using a thematic analysis to draw larger conclusions from coding Just City’s Instagram and through extensive interviews with Just City staff and local Shelby County and Tennessee politicians. These methods are guided by framing theory, an ideological framework that explains …

A Pretraining-Based Framework For On-Device Training Of Imu-Based Locomotion Mode Detection For Wearable Active Exoskeletons, Muhammad Tahir Khan

LSU Master's Theses

Active exoskeletons are being developed to support human movement in physically demanding industries such as construction. For these systems to work effectively, they must be able to correctly identify the user’s current activity. This process is known as locomotion mode detection and plays an important role in selecting the appropriate control parameters for exoskeletons. Many existing approaches use inertial measurement units (IMUs) to recognize these activities and have shown strong performance. However, most of these methods depend on large amounts of labeled data collected under specific conditions. As a result, they often do not perform well when applied to new …

Influence Of Depressive Symptoms On Disease Activity In Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis: The Mediating Effect Of Self-Efficacy, Wen-Wei Lin, Chieh-Tsung Yen, Hua-Lung Huang, Hanoch Livneh, Ming-Chi Lu, Wei-Jen Chen, Tzung-Yi Tsai

Leadership, Learning and Counseling Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background and Objectives:

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a lifelong autoimmune disease in which joint inflammation is caused by a dysfunctional immune system. Synchronous depressive symptoms have been identified as determinants of disease progression, especially disease activity as measured using the 28-joint Disease Activity Score (DAS28). Although growing evidence suggests the interplay between depression and DAS28 in RA, related findings remain inconsistent, implying that a pivotal underlying mechanism is overlooked. Hence, we aimed to examine whether self-efficacy, the belief in one’s ability to manage health, could mediate the association between depressive symptoms and DAS28.

Materials and Methods:

Between January and October …

Theory, Experiments, And Image Recovery Algorithms For X-Ray Interferometry, Hunter C. Meyer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Purpose: X-ray grating interferometry is a form of X-ray phase contrast imaging capable of simultaneously measuring attenuation, differential-phase, and dark-field images arising from X-ray absorption, refraction, and small-angle scattering, respectively. These additional contrast mechanisms have potential clinical and industrial applications, particularly for lung tissue characterization and disease identification. As grating interferometers approach clinical viability, key challenges include reducing X-ray dose, mitigating mechanical instability, and correcting spectral artifacts resulting from beam hardening.

Methods: The modulated phase grating interferometer (MPGI) is a potential solution for reducing X-ray dose by eliminating the analyzer grating used in alternative interferometer designs, including the Talbot-Lau interferometer …

The Power Of Beliefs: Cognitive Pathways Linking Mental Health Literacy To Psychological Distress, Katherine Elise Kirsch

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Mental health disorders are prevalent in children and adolescents, and they are accompanied by challenges throughout the lifespan. Mental health literacy (MHL) provides a flexible framework to address child and adolescent mental health. Identifying significant relationships between MHL and mental health outcomes has the potential to inform successful interventions. This study uses a secondary analysis of data gathered for the Study on Attitudes of Adolescents and Young Adults Toward Relevant Health Issues to isolate MHL belief domains that significantly effect psychological distress levels in adolescents.

The Swiss Youth Mental Health Literacy and Stigma Survey was used to assess the MHL, …

Some Modal Insights From A Defense Of The Principle Of Sufficient Reason, Daniel Kim

LSU Master's Theses

The Principle of Sufficient Reason has a long history, but basically put, states that everything that exists has a reason or explanation for its existence. This principle has been a controversial one as it has been used to argue for the existence of God and have been accused of entailing determinism. In this thesis, I will be defending a version of the PSR advocated by Alexander Pruss, that all true contingent propositions need an explanation. I will also argue that the principle of sufficient reason should be restricted to our phenomenal experiences, just like Kant does.

This is in response …

The Living Archive: Photography, Social Media, And The New Frontier Of Activism, Lundyn C. Herring

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to analyze the discursive field and technology of photography and its multi-faceted role in the oppression of colonized people under Western imperialism. Among the main collection highlights of many established state-run archival institutions are photographic records consisting of surveillance images, mugshots, and other visual media as representations of the political hegemony that is exerted over governed peoples. From the mid-19th century to 2026, much has shifted in the realm of photography with the introduction of smartphones, accessible technology, and social media platforms during the beginning of the twenty-first century. As states and powerholders apply the technology of …

Wearable Sensor System Used To Measure Linear And Angular Acceleration Of The Head Of American Football Players, David A. Emerson

LSU Master's Theses

American football players are repeatedly subject to high-velocity impacts; collisions can exceed 100 g in the NFL [1]. Rotational accelerations of the head caused by high-velocity collisions have been proven to be extremely damaging to the highly organized brain fibers at the brain-skull interface [2]. The sensor system (SS) measures the nonplanar acceleration at four locations on a chin strap using ADXL314 accelerometers and utilizes rigid-body kinematics to estimate the head rotational state from the measured acceleration of the SS [3]. The SS was validated through progressive testing, including steady-state, linear impact, and rotational impact testing. The ADLX314 sensor exhibited …

Prosecutorial Philosophy And Racial Disparities In Arrest Rates, Carl L. Reeds

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The prominent issue of racial disparities in arrest in the criminal justice system is well documented. One proposed mechanism for addressing these disparities in the criminal justice system is the emergence of progressive prosecutors. Progressive prosecutors are vastly different than traditional prosecution through the approach to their roles in the criminal justice system. Traditional prosecutors prioritize convictions and punishment, often seeking maximum sentences for defendants and relying on the traditional model of tough-on-crime policies. Progressive prosecutors pledge to reform the criminal justice system by declining to prosecute certain low-level offenses, expanding diversion programs, and explicitly addressing racial and socioeconomic disparities. …

District Leadership Influence On The Sustainability Of Dual Language Bilingual Education Programs, Jessica Hessler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dual language bilingual education programs operate within policy environments that often constrain their long term viability, despite their deep historical roots in the United States. This qualitative study examined how district/central office leadership systems supported the sustainability of these programs. While prior research has emphasized school site collaboration between principals and teachers, limited attention has been given to the district/central office level leadership systems and strategies that shaped program coherence, implementation, and endurance. Guided by a framework integrating social justice leadership with principles of sustainable leadership, the study examined the research question: How do district or central office leadership systems …

Clinical Features, Laboratory Characteristics, And Outcomes Of Covid-19 Patients In A Tertiary Care Reference Hospital In Panama City, Panama. A Retrospective Observational Study, Santiago E. Hernandez Bojorge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Latin America experienced some of the world’s highest COVID-19 mortality rates, yet data on in-hospital outcomes and their social and geographic determinants remain limited. This dissertation investigated multilevel baseline factors associated with in-hospital mortality among adults with COVID-19 at Panama’s largest public tertiary hospital (Hospital Santo Tomás), integrating survival, mediation, and spatial-temporal modeling within a causal-inference framework.

A retrospective cohort of 1,526 RT-PCR–confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations (May 2020–November 2021) was analyzed using multivariable Cox proportional-hazards, Fine–Gray competing-risk, mediation, and Bayesian spatial models. Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) pre-specified causal relationships and minimally sufficient adjustment sets. DAG-guided models quantified total effects without conditioning …

Effective Spectrum-Based Antibiotic Resistance Index For Monitoring Resistance In Gram-Negative Bacilli, M Cristina Vazquez Guillamet, Alice Bewley, Nicole J Tarlton, Reid Goodman, Michael J Durkin, Michael Bernauer, Meghan Brett, Kevin Hsueh, Cristian Bologa, George Turabelidze, Andrew Atkinson, Victoria J Fraser

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing public health threat, and we currently lack accurate measures to track and trend this resistance. We developed the antibiotic resistance index (ARI) that aggregates resistance of Gram-negative bacilli (GNB) into a single metric which can be tracked across healthcare settings and over time.

METHODS: Culture data were collected from adult patients who met the CDC adult sepsis event criteria across 10 Barnes-Jewish HealthCare (BJC) hospitals between January 2018 and December 2023. An antibiotic's effective spectrum (AES) was calculated as the ratio of susceptible GNB to all identified GNB. The ARI was calculated as …

System For Automated Offer Generation With Transaction Classification And Interactive Guidance, Morgan Robins, Matthew Miceli

Defensive Publications Series

Systems for generating employment offers can involve manual data entry, which may be inefficient and introduce errors that can lead to delays in a hiring process. An automation framework may be integrated within a host platform, for example, an applicant tracking system, to programmatically generate employment offer documents. The system can ingest data from various sources, such as approved requisitions and candidate profiles, and can use configurable schemas to populate offer templates. The framework could also include a logic engine to classify a transaction type, a validation module to audit an offer against business rules, and an interactive interface to …

Oh, The Places Women In Law Will Go, Judge Jane Gray '79, Secretary Elaine Marshall '81, Dean Raven Byrne '06, Amy Clay '16, Margaret Currin '79 (Moderator)

Conferences

Panel discussion focusing on the women's history of Campbell Law School and what each of the distinguished panelists have accomplished with their law degree.