Digital Commons Network^™

Reed Comfortably Leads In U.S. Senate Election, Foulkes Expands Lead In Ri Gubernatorial Primary 4/23/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Incumbent Senator Jack Reed is the clear favorite in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and leads prospective Republican challenger Raymond McKay in a general election matchup. Helena Foulkes has increased her lead over incumbent Governor Dan McKee in the race for the Democratic nomination for Rhode Island governor. Three-quarters of Rhode Islanders disapprove of McKee's job performance, with particularly low marks given to his handling of roads and bridges, the cost of living, and the economy. Rhode Islanders have a generally poor understanding of two possible ballot measures which would create new constitutional rights in the state. Housing, jobs …

Mitochondrial Dna Replication Is Regulated By Endoplasmic Reticulum-Mitochondrial Contact Sites, The Mitochondrial Calcium Uniporter, And Manganese, Amaia Lopez De Arbina, Angelica Zamudio-Ochoa, Mikel Muñoz-Oreja, Diego Perez-Rodriguez, Laura Mosqueira-Martín, Rebecca Lasalandra, Marina Villar-Fernandez, Uxoa Fernandez-Pelayo, Laura Rodriguez-Gomez, Seungtae Lee, Francisco Gil-Bea, Nerea Osinalde, Ainara Vallejo-Illaramendi, Dmitry Temiakov, Antonella Spinazzola, Ian Holt

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Faculty Papers

Mitochondrial DNA replication occurs at contact sites between the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and mitochondria (ERMCS). Beyond the known role of the tubular ER protein RTN4, the factors regulating this process are poorly defined. Here, we show that repressing the ER protein ERLIN2 in human fibroblasts depletes ER-mitochondrial contact sites and inhibits mitochondrial DNA replication, as does silencing RTN4 or the ER-mitochondrial tether GRP75. GRP75 or RTN4 scarcity also decreases the level of the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU), whose inhibition blocks mitochondrial DNA synthesis. Because ERMCS depletion did not diminish mitochondrial calcium, and MCU complex can transport manganese, we tested whether …

Kenyon Collegian - April 23, 2026

The Kenyon Collegian

No abstract provided.

Weight Concerns And Body Image Dissatisfaction Elicit Maternal Psychological Control Through Escalating Appearance Anxiety Behaviors, Madeleine Guillont

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

The current study examines bidirectional associations between adolescent body-related concerns and maternal psychological control, and the behavioral mechanism through which these associations operate. Participants were 723 sixth- through ninth-grade students (350 girls, 373 boys; ages 11–15) attending all public middle and secondary schools in a mid-sized Lithuanian community. Self-report surveys were collected at three time points across the course of a school year. Results from full longitudinal mediation models indicated that higher body image dissatisfaction and weight concerns at the beginning of the school year predicted increases in maternal psychological control at the end of the school year, through increases …

Llm For Clinical Named Entity Recognition: A Study On Rag With Pubmed And Umls, Apoorv Tripathi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

The first step of biomedical NLP is recognizing clinical named entities, which consist of identifying and categorizing a variety of clinical entities such as diseases, symptoms, genetics, diagnostic tests, procedures, etc. from a body of unstructured clinical text. This study presents a PubMed and UMLS based Retrieval Augmented Generation framework which improves the performance of the Large Language Models to identify clinical entities by providing context. In particular, the framework consists of a two-stage pipeline, where candidate tokens are identified from initial LLM-based classification and refined with retrieved context from either PubMed or UMLS. The proposed framework is assessed across …

Differentiable Objectives For 3d Scene Relighting Via Gradient Descent On Olat Basis Coefficients, Anson Savage

Theses and Dissertations

Designing effective lighting is an iterative and often time-consuming process. This work contributes to automatic lighting design research by presenting a render-engine agnostic optimization routine: gradient descent on RGB multipliers of one-light-at-a-time (OLAT) basis images. We compare several objective functions to accomplish lighting tasks and show that our method is capable of quickly and effectively exploring different lighting styles using either text prompts or reference images. We also present several datasets specific to lighting tasks and show that fine-tuning on these datasets can improve performance.

Advanced Studies In Characterization Of Pyrolysis Products From Live Vegetation, Mahsa Alizadeh

Theses and Dissertations

Fire is a naturally occurring element in many ecosystems which can have both positive and negative effects. However, in recent years the frequency of the fires and the area they affect has increased. The rapid spread of wildland fires coupled with the limited resources available to forest services to manage wildland fires highlights the urgency for accurate prediction of fire spread. Fire prediction models enable the fire management services to predict the spread of fire and prioritize firefighting efforts more effectively. Understanding reactions and mechanisms occurring during wildland fires improves the fire prediction models. During wildland fires, the biomass covering …

The San José De Laguna Mission: Christian Iconography Through The Lens Of Pueblo Oral Traditions, Natalie Sims Rasmussen

Theses and Dissertations

The San José de Laguna Mission was constructed in 1699 in modern New Mexico. Following on the heels of the second Pueblo revolt, it stands as a testament to the Pueblo adoption of Christian symbols in the portrayal of their own oral traditions. A central theme in the Laguna oral tradition is the complementary nature of masculine and feminine forces that make up the universe. The Christian figures of the altar screen, such as Saint Joseph, Saint John Nepomuck, Saint Barbara, and the Trinity, can be interpreted through the lens of the Pueblo oral tradition regarding a 19th century Laguna …

Latent Class Patterns Of Medication Attitudes And Their Correlates Among Older Adults In The United States, Jiaming Liang, Min Ji Kwak, Mona Shirvani, Alexander Testa, Rafael Samper-Ternent, Zhigang Xie, Jack Tsai

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

No abstract provided.

English Music For The Recorder: April 23, 2026, Illinois State University School Of Music

School of Music Programs

This is the one hundred and eighty-ninth program of the 2025-2026 season.

Kemp Recital Hall

April 23, 2026

Thursday Evening

6:00 p.m.

Vista: April 23, 2026, University Of San Diego

USD Vista (1965-)

No abstract provided.

Creating Sustainable School And Home Gardens: Gardening With Native Plants, Kathy Cabe Trundle, Lawrence Krissek

All Current Publications

Native plants form the foundation for healthy local and regional ecosystems. By adding native plants to your gardening and landscape plans, you will contribute to nature’s best hope for the soil health, habitat resilience, and biodiversity we need for a brighter, more sustainable future.

Advances In The Design Of Bio-Organic Resistive Switching Memory, Muhammad Awais, Yi Sheng Wong, Feng Zhao, Kuan Yew Cheong

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Bio-organic materials have garnered significant attention as sustainable candidates for non-volatile resistive switching memory (RSM) because of their specialized chemical, structural, and environmental advantages. This review presents a design-centered perspective on bio-organic RSM by outlining the key device components required for effective device engineering, including electrode materials, memristive thin films, intermediate layers, substrates, and electrical measurement strategies. Each component is discussed in detail with respect to the material properties and operational parameters that influence overall device performance, such as functional groups, interfacial interactions, and processing conditions. The review further analyses the critical roles of electrode pairing, interfacial chemistry, additive incorporation, …

Mechanism Of Improved Miscibility Of Co2–Oil Systems By Multiester-Headgroup Surfactants, Ning Xu, Yanling Wang, Baojun Bai, Yu Zhang, Wenjing Shi, Zhaonian Zhang, Wenhui Ding, Peixu Ma, Zan Gao

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the pursuit of carbon neutrality, the CO₂-enhanced oil recovery provides dual benefits by enabling both carbon sequestration and incremental oil production. However, its application is limited by high minimum miscibility pressure. CO₂-philic and oil-affinitive surfactants have emerged as an effective, low-dosage, and cost-efficient strategy to reduce the minimum miscibility pressure. In this study, macroscopic phase behavior experiments combined with molecular dynamics simulations were employed to systematically elucidate the influence of multiester-head surfactants on CO₂–oil miscibility. Using a modified pressure–volume–temperature apparatus equipped with optical power monitoring, we determined that multiester-head surfactants reduced the first-contact …

Psychometric Analysis Of The German Version Of The Barriers To Healthcare Checklist-Short Form, Judith Peth, Nicole David, Sophia Duckert, Petia Gewohn, Daniel Schottle, Pascal Rahlff, Alexander Konnopka, Hannah Konig, Kai Vogeley, Christina Nicolaidis, Dora M. Raymaker, Holger Schulz

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Autistic people face multiple barriers to health care. To recognize specific barriers in a standardized way, autistic people, health care providers, and researchers need a suitable measure. The Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education successfully developed the Barriers to Healthcare Checklist— Short Form (BHC-SF). It remains unclear whether (1) a German version of the BHC-SF performs well in terms of psychometric properties and (2) the BHC-SF consists of multiple constructs (i.e., assessing structural validity). Methods: We created a translated and culturally adapted version of the 17-item BHC-SF and used it with 345 autistic people in Germany. Psychometric …

Persian To British Mandate-Period Settlement At Qedumim Square, Yafo (Jaffa): An Umayyad Fortress And Ottoman Street, Avraham S. Tendler

'Atiqot

An excavation at Qedumim Square, Yafo, uncovered settlement remains of the tell, dating from Iron II, the Persian, Hellenistic–Early Roman, Byzantine, Early Islamic, Crusader and late Ottoman–British Mandate periods. Two segments of a fortification wall were probably part of an Umayyad-period fortress dating from the seventh century CE. A late Ottoman-period stone-paved street with a drainage and sewage channel below it contribute important data concerning the urban infrastructure of that time. Several coins and large quantities of pottery retrieved from the excavation, including a few ceramic items inscribed with short Hebrew, Greek and Latin inscriptions, shed light on the settlements …

Dendroarchaeological Analysis Of Charcoal Fragments From The Byzantine Street In The City Of David, Jerusalem, Mordechay Benzaquen, Dafna Langgut

'Atiqot

The excavation of the Byzantine Street in the City of David, Jerusalem (Area S2) yielded several hundred charcoal fragments from multiple loci, of which 200 specimens were analyzed at the Laboratory of Archaeobotany and Ancient Environments at Tel Aviv University. Preservation was generally good to moderate, and all identified taxa belong to the local Mediterranean Israeli flora. The assemblage is characterized by low taxonomic diversity and is overwhelmingly dominated by conifers, with Cupressus sempervirens (Mediterranean cypress) and Pinus halepensis (Aleppo pine) comprising nearly 90% of the analyzed material, suggesting that most of the charcoal derives from construction timbers commonly used …

Cotton Threads From The Byzantine Street (Area S2), Jerusalem, Naama Sukenik

'Atiqot

The excavation of the Byzantine Street in the City of David, Jerusalem, yielded bundles of thread preserved through carbonization. They were identified as cotton fibers based on their morphological structure as observed under light microscopy. Despite their poor state of preservation, which makes it difficult to determine the nature of the object and its precise date, this study offers several possible interpretations based on the analytical results and preliminary findings.

Glass Finds Of The Late Byzantine–Umayyad Periods From The Byzantine-Period Street (Area S2), Jerusalem, Tamar Winter

'Atiqot

Most of the glass finds recovered from Area S2 of the paved Byzantine-period street, south of the Temple Mount, date to the late Byzantine–Umayyad periods. These finds include various bowls, wineglasses and bottles, many of which are decorated with applied and fused-in trails, as well as jugs, lamps, windowpanes and a single tessera. The glass vessels and artifacts are characteristic of the period, and they reflect conventions observed in other contemporaneous glass corpora from Jerusalem and its environs. Nonetheless, a multi-sided vessel with a rather uncommon design is noteworthy, as very few examples of this type have been documented in …

Excavations At Jerusalem: The Byzantine Street (Area S2), Moran Hagbi, Joe Uziel

'Atiqot

This report presents the results of an excavation conducted on the northwestern corner of the City of David, between the Giv‘ati Parking Lot and the Ottoman walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Six strata were exposed, spanning the Early Roman and Early Islamic periods. The main archaeological feature exposed was a section of a stone-paved street dating to the late Byzantine period. The street, previously exposed in other excavations, was a primary south–north artery running along the Tyropoeon Valley and linking between the City of David and the upper parts of Jerusalem. This street was likely an important route, …

Reemergence Of Street Planning In Yafo (Jaffa): The Late Ottoman Ha-Ẓorfim Compound, Yoav Arbel

'Atiqot

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Yafo (Jaffa) was a rapidly changing town, reemerging from centuries of stagnation. While the mound retained its unappealingly medieval character, new neighborhoods sprouted up around it, replacing the orchards and fortifications. Urban development demanded access and connections, which were ensured with the construction of broad new throughways, with stone paving and drainage systems not seen in Yafo since antiquity. All this development naturally lured traders, officials and diplomats to build their mansions and businesses along these thoroughfares. One of these was the presently named Ha-Ẓorfim (“The Jewelers”) Street, on the eastern outskirts …

Umayyad Streets Leading To The Temple Mount/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharīf Gates In Jerusalem: Evidence Ofurban Planning, Control And Ideology, Yuval Baruch

'Atiqot

At the beginning of the eighth century CE, the Umayyad rulers initiated the construction of an extensive governmental complex at the foot of the Temple Mount/al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf, comprising at least four impressive monumental buildings. The present study shifts the focus from the architecture of these structures to the street system of the complex, arguing that it functioned not merely as infrastructure but as a sophisticated mechanism of movement and control. These streets, laid out along carefully planned axes and constructed atop artificial fills, employed wide, controlled gates and specific lines of sight to dictate a continuous experiential sequence. Through the …

Aspects Of Urban Planning In Bet She’An-Scythopolis: A View From Rhometalkes’ Alleys, Benjamin Y. Arubas, Leah Di Segni

'Atiqot

Intercity roads, colonnaded and drained streets, agoras and forums of the Roman and Late-Antiquity city of Bet She’an-Scythopolis—all have been widely studied, producing an ample bibliography. Not so are alleys, although they must have served various functions as thoroughfares for foot traffic or in relation to the buildings that overlooked them. These buildings could have been domestic, commercial or public, causing the function of the alley to surely change accordingly. This paper is dedicated to the study of two such alleys, which existed solely amidst public buildings, and whose story can be told based on the results of excavations and …

Menorah Graffiti On The Streets Of Jerusalem, Shlomit Weksler Bdolah, Nahshon Szanton

'Atiqot

This article examines three menorah graffiti incised on paving stones along Roman–Byzantine streets of Jerusalem. The engravings appear beside depictions of board games, suggesting that pedestrians paused at these locations. All three graffiti are situated along streets oriented eastward, toward the Temple Mount, raising the likelihood that visual engagement with the sacred precinct influenced the incision of this Jewish symbol in the urban sphere. The article explores the context of the menorah graffiti and their cultural and historical significance within the public sphere. Drawing on archaeological data, historical sources and comparative examples of menorah representations in public settings in the …

The Stepped Podium : A Landmark On Jerusalem’S Main Thoroughfare In The Second Temple Period, Nahshon Szanton

'Atiqot

This article presents a small, stepped pyramidal structure that was built upon the eastern side of the Stepped Street in Jerusalem under the rule of the Roman procurators. It considers the structure’s archaeological context, architectural and functional uniqueness in light of comparable finds and sources, both historical and literary, to better understand its role and use. Based on these sources, the structure seems to have served as street furniture in the public sphere, used as a public place for trial or to announce lost-and-found artifacts.

Exploring The Dual Advising System For Students’ Success: A Developmental Advising Model, Louisa Godwyll, Eugene Kwarteng-Nantwi, Pious Jojo Adu-Akoh

Mid-Western Educational Researcher

This qualitative study explored the dual advising system for student success at a U.S. higher education institution. Research has indicated that approximately 40–60% of students enrolled in doctoral programs do not complete their doctoral degrees. High attrition rates have led some institutions to adopt a dual advising system, a form of developmental advising, to support doctoral students’ success. Creamer and Creamer’s (1994) developmental advising model served as the conceptual framework of the study. The model defines the first stage of advising as defining task, where advisors engage in teaching and utilize strategies to help students attain educational, career, and individual …

Toyon 68 - Full Issue

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Full Issue - Toyon 62

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Treating Depression With L-Methylfolate: A Review Of Evidence, Marianna G. Pettit

Epsilon Sigma at-Large Research Conference

Abstract

Introduction & Background: Depressive disorders have many different causes. Folate deficiency can sometimes be behind these disorders, due to this vitamin’s role in neurotransmitter synthesis. Some research suggests that supplementing with an active form of folate improves depressive symptoms with and without antidepressant use. Purpose Statement Question: For individuals with depressive disorders, does supplementation with L-methylfolate (LMF) reduce symptoms of depressive disorders with or without use of an antidepressant? Literature Review: A manual literature search for sources published within the past 7 years revealed 557 documents from four different databases. Key search words included, “depression,” “treatment,” …

A Systematic Literature Review On Alternative Treatment Modalities In Adults With Treatment Resistant Depression, Brian Miller

Epsilon Sigma at-Large Research Conference

Abstract

            Currently, Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioners (PMHNPs) often defer to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for individuals with TRD who fail to achieve resolution of their disorder. However, many individuals do not meet criteria for ECT or decline the treatment due to side effects and associated risks. To synthesize potential alternative treatments and address the current gap in literature that does not include first-line preferred electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), a systematic literature review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA 2020). Databases searched for this review included the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature …