Digital Commons Network^™

Minimally Invasive Percutaneous Endoscopic Foraminotomy And Discectomy In A French Bulldog With Intervertebral Disc Extrusion, Tanhatai Krajarngjang, Luksamee Limpongsai, Panutda Darapong, Woraphanit Sonbanpai, Mataya Taweechart

The Thai Journal of Veterinary Medicine

A six-year-old female French Bulldog was referred for neurological diagnostic tests and treatment for progressive paraparesis over an 8-day period. The dog had a history of intervertebral disc extrusion (IVDE) surgical correction two years prior. Neurological examination revealed T3–L3 myelopathy. Magnetic resonance imaging of the thoracolumbar spine confirmed IVDE with spinal cord compression at T13–L1. A minimally invasive percutaneous endoscopic foraminotomy and discectomy (PEFD) was performed to remove the extruded disc material. The patient regained the ability to stand and showed voluntary limb movement 48 hours post-surgery. At the 4-week follow-up, the patient showed a complete recovery to her baseline …

Professional Values And Workplace Alignment In Dpt Alumni: A Quantitative Cohort Analysis, Debra Ann Beazley, Stephen Elam, Penny S. Elam, Lawrence S. Ramiscal, Pt, Dpt, Ph.D.

Lynchburg Journal of Medical Science

Background: Professional values are foundational to physical therapy practice and are emphasized throughout Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) education. Although identity formation literature suggests that core values may persist after graduation, less is known about how workplace context, career stage, and clinical performance relate to the long-term enactment of values among practicing clinicians.

Purpose: To examine whether professional values among DPT alumni differ across demographic groups, career stages, and outpatient settings, and to explore associations among organizational support, workplace value alignment, and historical educational performance.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey study was conducted among University of Lynchburg DPT alumni …

The Multi-Agent Ai System For Automated Media Ingestion And Metadata Enrichment, Shravan Nayak

Defensive Publications Series

The process of ingesting and cataloging large volumes of digital media can be inefficient and difficult to scale, often relying on manual workflows that may be slow and error-prone. A multi-agent artificial intelligence framework may be used for automated media content ingestion and metadata enrichment. Such a system can comprise a central orchestrator agent that analyzes incoming media and delegates processing tasks to multiple specialist agents that operate in parallel. A confidence-based routing mechanism can assign a score to generated metadata, where high-confidence results may be automatically committed and low-confidence results can be directed to a human-in-the-loop review process. This …

Ralph Loop-Driven Agentic Skill Refinement Through Attributed User Feedback, Robert Barton, Yathiraj B. Udupi, Maithri V M

Defensive Publications Series

An agentic platform may capture operator satisfaction signals at scale without connecting that feedback to the specific skill artifacts that drove the evaluated responses. A system is proposed herein that closes this gap by attributing Ralph Loop feedback and agent execution trajectories to specific skill artifacts, aggregating signals across the operator population to localize underperformance to an implicated skill section, and dynamically tailoring diagnostic feedback questions as confidence in the problem diagnosis grows. The resulting closed-loop skill quality management system transforms failed or suboptimal agent executions into targeted skill improvements and validates each improvement by monitoring whether the Ralph Loop …

Defensive Publication — Email Gateway With Message-Identifier Threading For Consolidated Inbound And Outbound Agent Communications On A Dedicated Subdomain, Yahor Karpovich

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes an email gateway architecture for automated agents (including AI-based agents) that communicate with users by email on a dedicated subdomain, consolidating both inbound and outbound message handling in a single component to preserve correct conversational threading. The gateway assigns and retains a stable message identifier for each outbound message, mapped to its internal conversation, task, or record. For inbound messages, the gateway reconstructs the correct conversation by matching standard reference headers (such as In-Reply-To and References) against its stored identifiers, even where the inbound provider does not preserve application context. Where reference headers are absent, altered, or …

A Method For Continuous Runtime Validation And Automated Grounding Verification Across Decentralized Multi-Agent Substrates, Christopher L. Eckes

Defensive Publications Series

Autonomous edge agents executing long-duration, decentralized runtimes lack centralized verification mechanisms to detect slow, cumulative parameter drift. Over extended operational cycles, minor coordinate deviations inside the local elastic substrate (\(\Phi _{t}\)) compound, leading to silent structural decay where the system can no longer distinguish between environmental telemetry and internal semantic noise.

This specification introduces Entry 134 as a definitive execution framework for Continuous Runtime Validation. By implementing a real-time Autoregressive Divergence Test (\(\mathcal{D}_{\text{AR}}\)), the system mathematically measures the distance between the fluid local state and the frozen global base matrix (\(W_{\text{global}}\)). If the divergence vector exceeds an invariant geometric threshold, …

Multi-Domain Federated Agentic Operations, Akhil Raja Pappu, Martin Espinosa, Rajneesh Gupta

Defensive Publications Series

To manage operational tasks and production environments  in large-scale computing environments, a system and method can utilize a federated swarm of specialized software agents. Each agent may have a specific domain persona, such as an incident investigator or a mitigation specialist, an operational workflow specialist for Method of Procedure (MOP) execution, a release engineering specialist for software development lifecycle (SDLC) release health, or a third-party (3P) SaaS governance/operational specialist . These agent swarms can be running headless and/or they could also be instantiated on a per-event basis and can operate within a context defined by a component-specific harness, which may …

Input-Gated Structural-Class Selection To Prevent Fabricated Personal Narrative In Ai-Generated Content, Vipul Panday

Defensive Publications Series

An AI system that offers a “personal narrative” output style (first-person stories, career milestones, and similar) will, absent real grounding material from the actual person it writes for, produce plausible-sounding but fabricated personal anecdotes, such as invented mistakes, invented moments, invented lessons, attributed to a real, named individual. In a professional publishing context, where the output is posted under that person's real name, this is a specific and consequential failure mode, distinct from generic chatbot hallucination, because it makes a false factual claim about a real person's lived experience. This disclosure documents a production mechanism that addresses this failure mode …

Past The Watchful Dragons: How C. S. Lewis’S Fiction Humanizes The Analytical Framework Of The Problem Of Pain, Charlotte L. Hambrick

Masters Theses

C. S. Lewis was one of the 20th century’s greatest Christian apologists. Writing across multiple genres—from academic literary criticism to lay sermons, and from philosophical and theological analysis to several kinds of fiction—his impact on Christian thought remains profound. This thesis analyzes Lewis’s approach to the intellectual problem of evil in The Problem of Pain and demonstrates how he makes those starkly cold, prickly concepts more warm, human, and relatable in several of his works of fiction. It will first consider Lewis’s personal history with death, abuse, war, and grief, showing how his lived experiences with pain shaped his thinking …

The Dream Itself Was Home”: Imaginary Homelands As A Model For Analyzing Contemporary African Return Narratives, Renee King

Masters Theses

Although contemporary African return narratives featuring female protagonists explore a wide range of themes, they consistently portray women who struggle to situate themselves within an increasingly globalized world. In these narratives, the homeland initially functions as a stabilizing anchor that emboldens the protagonist to pursue education or employment abroad, yet works such as Doreen Baingana’s Tropical Fish and Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah reveal that the homeland the protagonists once treated as immutable ultimately exposes itself as a dream. This destabilization unsettles the notion of an unshakeable cultural identity and demonstrates how migration reshapes both the self and the meaning of home. …

A Biblical Understanding Of Discipleship As A Pedagogy For The Fear Of The Lord, Desirae Jeffreys

Masters Theses

The fear of the Lord is a significant topic found throughout scripture, yet it is a concept that lacks recognition in our culture, and even in some churches today. The reality is that there is confusion about how to define the fear of the Lord and, thereby, confusion about how to teach the fear of the Lord. This thesis provides a biblical understanding of the fear of the Lord as described in Proverbs 1–9. The fear of God is evaluated through the lens of instruction throughout these chapters, providing a basis of understanding for the complexity of the definition of …

Lucas Guggenheimer V. Wellpath Llc

2026 Decisions

USDC for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

Droplet Clustering Signatures Of Entrainment In Clouds, Suryadev Pratap Singh, Michael Larsen, Jesse Anderson, Hamed F. Sadi, Jae Min Yeom, Will Cantrell, Raymond A. Shaw

Michigan Tech Research Data

The spatial distribution of cloud droplets is relevant for various microphysical processes, such as condensational growth, collision-coalescence, riming and aggregation, and radiative transfer. Cloud droplets and other hydrometeors exhibit clustering at dissipation scales and above due to turbulence-induced preferential concentration. Here, we investigate the role of entrainment in modulating the scale-dependent clustering of cloud droplets and explore how this mechanism differs from inertial clustering. We have performed experiments in the Pi Convection-Cloud Chamber, and imaged 2-D droplet fields in the cloud-top region where dry-air entrained through an open cylindrical flange leads to an entrainment-mixing process. Captured images are processed to …

Spn 313: Advanced Communication Skills, Aleksin Ortega, Aleksín H. Ortega

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus for SPN 313 (Advanced Communication Skills) at the College of Staten Island, CUNY, presents a zero-textbook-cost, OER-based course in advanced academic writing in Spanish designed for a mixed population of heritage speakers and advanced second-language learners. The course follows a genre-based progression through four textual forms — description, narration, exposition, and argumentation — organized around a recursive writing process of drafting, instructor feedback, and revision. Its signature assignment, the Autobiografía lingüística (Linguistic Autobiography), serves as the Spanish program's ACTFL-aligned assessment artifact and is supported by a structured independent-inquiry project on dialectal variation. The syllabus foregrounds the dialectal diversity …

Diagnostic Accuracy Of A Single-Item Happiness Index For Screening Mild Depressive Symptoms, Shun Chan, Aderonke Odetayo, Jasmine Cheung, Anson Chui Yan Tang, Lorna Kawi Ping Suen, Simon Ching Lam

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Background: Depression symptoms are a mental health problem with rising prevalence globally. To enhance the estimation of depressive symptoms in epidemiological studies, a 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) has been widely used. Some local research found that a single-item General Happiness Index (GHI) highly correlated with the scales used for screening the depressive symptoms. This study hence aimed to explore the sensitivity and specificity of GHI for screening mild or more severe depressive symptoms based on the secondary data analysis in the Chinese population.

Methods: This methodological study used the data collected in the General Happiness Survey 2024 and 2025 …

Near-Field Acoustic Microscope With Normal Force Metrology Capability, Kacharat Supichayanggoon

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation introduces quartz tuning fork (QTF) based Shear-force Near-field Acoustic Microscopy (SANM) and Whispering Gallery Acoustic Microscopy (WGAS) systems, upgraded this time with Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) capability to also monitor the vertical force component involved in shear force interactions. This enhanced system aims at studying nano-sized confined fluids under shear, with an emphasis on finding correlations between the fluid's a) viscoelastic properties and b) near-field acoustic wave emission capability. In the current SANM/WGAS/AFM system addressed here, the confined fluid is constituted by the water meniscus that bridges the gap between the apex of a laterally …

Recommendations To Solve The Problem Of High Levels Of Burnout Among Special Education Teachers At Waite High School In Ohio, Byron Scott Swartz

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to provide recommendations to solve the problem of high levels of burnout among special education teachers at Waite High School in Ohio. The problem was that 45% of special education teachers at Waite High School reported feeling burned by their current jobs. The rationale for this study was that it was critical to reduce feelings of burnout among special education teachers since improving feelings of burnout may lead to better performance in the classroom teachers and fewer staffing shortages. The central research question was as follows: How can the problem of high levels of …

A Natural Fit: Reconceptualizing The Work Of Oregon's Silent Era Sister Exhibitors, Karen Caverly-Molineaux

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Inspired by the quadrupling of women theater owners in Census reports between 1910 and 1920, this dissertation focuses on women theater owners in the state of Oregon and brings their experiences of theater ownership to the forefront for historical inquiry. The 1920 Census reported nineteen women theater owners for Oregon, yet the research here only found eighteen. Of the eighteen found, only two women’s Census records indicate them as theater owners – meaning this dissertation’s study found more than the Census accounted for. However at the same time, many have yet to be located. Scholarship claims women’s work as happening …

Explainable Ai Framework For Stage-Specific Drug Doses Prediction In Chronic Kidney Disease: A Multi-Algorithm Comparison With Adverse Event Prediction, Saeful Amri, Satriya Pranata, Dwi Purnomo Putro, Wawan Kurniawan

Polytechnic Journal

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) affects medication dose safety due to altered pharmacokinetics. Current clinical decision support systems lack stage-specific personalization and explainability. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the appropriate medications and doses for chronic kidney disease using machine learning algorithms by comparing the methods. This study is divided into two phases. Phase 1 involves a literature review that compares four classification techniques for predicting drug prescriptions for individuals with kidney disease. After a screening and evidence evaluation process, 12 papers were selected for analysis. From the 12 studies, the types of analysis methods obtained were Decision Tree, K-Nearest Neighbour …

Effective Strategies Human Resource Business Leaders Use To Decrease Employee Turnover, Dorothy Norton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Employee turnover continues to be a widespread organizational challenge because it increases recruitment and training costs, disrupts productivity, and negatively affects organizational performance and sustainability. The research problem was that some business leaders lack effective strategies to reduce employee turnover. The purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry project was to explore strategies business leaders use to reduce employee turnover. Herzberg’s two-factor theory served as the conceptual framework for the study. The participants were six business leaders with responsibility for employee retention who successfully implemented employee retention strategies. Data were gathered through semistructured interviews and analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s reflexive …

Treatment Alternatives To Incarceration Program (Taip) Counselor’S Perceptions Of The Effectiveness Of Taip Within West Texas, Patricia Arenas

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Substance abuse remains a major challenge in the U.S. probation system, as recidivism persists despite specialized treatment programs such as the Treatment Alternatives to Incarceration Program (TAIP) available in Texas. This issue matters to policymakers, judges, community supervision officers, TAIP administrators, treatment providers, and local communities because decisions about funding, supervision, sanctions, coordination, and service delivery affect rehabilitation outcomes, public safety, and reoffending. This transcendental phenomenological study explored TAIP counselors’ perceptions of the program’s effectiveness in treating substance abuse offenders and reducing recidivism in West Texas. Guided by Husserl’s phenomenology, data were collected through semi structured interviews with four TAIP …

Adversary Action Re Parish Property

Catholic Dioceses in Bankruptcy

No abstract provided.

Post-Pandemic Telebehavioral Health: Sustaining And Regulating Remote Mental Health Care As A Core Modality, Weiqiao Dong

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The United States continues to face a persistent mental health crisis after the COVID-19 pandemic, raising a policy question about the long-term role and regulation of telebehavioral health as a core modality of care. This thesis examines that question through a case study of New York State, an early center of the pandemic and a leader in telehealth policy reform.

Guided by the Health Policy Triangle framework, this thesis integrates longitudinal data from all 62 New York counties for 2010-2025 with a 2025 cross-sectional dataset covering 61 counties. Seventeen standardized indicators are organized into four dimensions: geographic, economic, demographic, and …

Timothy Baptist Church Of Amherst, Virginia, And Technology, Christopher L. Groom

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The contemporary local church faces a critical crossroads, challenged by a widening gap between traditional ministry approaches and today's digital-native world, resulting in decreased engagement and relevance. This research tackles the urgent issue of ecclesiastical stagnation in a highly connected society. When the local church and technology strategically unite, they can dramatically shift the church’s path from static tradition toward active, missional innovation. Embracing digital tools will transform preaching from a localized, one-dimensional event into a rich, multi-layered homiletic experience that enhances message impact and clarity. By intentionally using these tools, the church can reach a wider, more diverse audience …

Teachers’ Lived-Experiences Enacting Culturally Responsive Teaching: A Transcendental Phenomenological Study, Temy Nguyen Taylor

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of implementing Culturally Responsive Teaching practices during the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards for science teachers at comprehensive high schools in one district in California. The theory guiding this study was Prochaska’s and DiClemente’s theory on the transtheoretical model of change to understand the phenomena of teachers’ pedagogical decisions in the classroom as they transition to enact culturally responsive teaching (CRT) because of the NGSS. Bandura’s social cognitive theory and Piaget’s social constructivism theory were the educational theories that served as a backdrop for teacher …

A Christ-Centered Approach To Ai-Assisted Sermon Preparation For Cedar Grove Community Church, Andrew Michael Poe

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping nearly every sector of society, presenting both opportunities and ethical challenges for Christian ministry. Amid this technological shift, many pastors, Bible teachers, and lay leaders experience ethical uncertainty about the appropriate use of AI in expository preaching and teaching. This Doctor of Ministry action research project developed and evaluated an eight-week training designed to equip the teaching team at Cedar Grove Community Church with a Christ-centered approach to AI-assisted sermon preparation. The purpose of this project was to provide biblical, theological, and practical guidance enabling communicators to leverage AI responsibly without compromising ministerial integrity …

Staff Education To Enhance Nurse Knowledge Of Standardized Sud Screening Using The Dast-10 In An Outpatient Psychiatric Setting, Peters Olugbemiga Adu

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The utilization of substance use disorder (SUD) screening tools at the practice site was inconsistent, contributing to limited identification and diagnosis of SUDs. The project was conducted at a psychiatric outpatient clinic in an urban region of Maryland that serves many patients with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. The purpose of the project was to develop, implement, and evaluate a staff education program focused on the Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST-10). The primary goal was to improve staff knowledge and understanding of the DAST-10 screening tool. A 14-item multiple-choice questionnaire was administered before and after the educational intervention …

Digital Presence In Live Hybrid Performance, Luke Cargill

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This thesis examines how digital presence, the sense that a digital performer is socially and performatively "there," is designed and tested in live hybrid performance. Drawing on four practice-based projects (Vicarious, Voltage, Vicarious: Encore Edition, and SUPER BLOOM), the first phase identifies a recurring but empirically untested claim: that digital presence depends on interactivity and co-presence with live performers, though these factors were always entangled in practice.

The second phase tests this claim directly. A new mini-performance, featuring the first fully AI-driven digital character in this line of work, was produced for controlled comparison. Using a 3 (intro type: AI-driven, …

Secondary English Teachers' Experiences Related To Instructional Communication With Their Students In A Southeastern State: A Phenomenology, Toye L. Wheeler

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to explore secondary English teachers’ experiences related to instructional communication with their students in a southeastern state. Guided by Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, the study examined how teachers perceive, experience, and navigate communication within contemporary secondary English classrooms. Participants included 10 secondary English teachers from two public high schools who had at least three years of teaching experience and worked with diverse student populations. Data were collected through open-ended questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups and were analyzed using phenomenological reduction, including epoché and horizontalization. Five themes emerged from the analysis: the varied …

Faith, Function, Formality: Integrating Gospel Vocal Techniques Into Western Classical Pedagogy, Korwind Z. Stokes

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This applied qualitative case study explored the integration of gospel-derived vocal techniques within Western classical choral pedagogy in a secondary music education setting. The study addressed a gap in music education literature concerning the intentional use of gospel-derived vocal practices as pedagogical resources within formal secondary choral instruction. Guided primarily by constructivist learning theory and informed by culturally responsive teaching, the study examined how students’ prior musical experiences could serve as a foundation for learning Western classical vocal concepts. The study was conducted within a public high school choral program and focused on the intentional incorporation of gospel-derived techniques during …