Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Bai1 Deficiency On Cell Survival During The Critical Period Of Retinal Development, Nicholas Mirmanesh

PCOM Biomedical Studies Student Scholarship

The postnatal retina undergoes further development during the critical period, during which excess neurons are culled, and synapses are refined to shape the mature retinal circuitry. Brain-specific angiogenesis inhibitor-1 (BAI1) has been implicated in synaptic development, phagocytosis, the regulation of angiogenesis, and inflammatory signaling, suggesting it may play an important role in retinal maturation. The goal of this project was to determine how BAI1 deficiency affects retinal cell survival and layer morphology during the critical period. Mice were divided into three genotype groups: BAI1 +/+ Wild Type (WT), +/- (Het), and -/- (KO). Apoptotic cells were quantified using TUNEL staining …

2026 Cyber-Resilient Health Care Workshop Report, Malcolm Schongalla, Sergey Bratus

Computer Science Technical Reports

The ISTS and the Dartmouth College Cybersecurity Cluster hosted the successful, inaugural Cyber-Resilient Health Care (CRHC) Workshop, March 5th & 6th, 2026. The event theme was "Innovation and Implementation," in response to the need to shift from reactive to proactive resiliency measures in the healthcare sector. Approximately 30 experts in clinical health care, cybersecurity, medical technology, policy, and innovation met to discuss solution-focused innovations addressing hard, cyber-related problems in health care. The agenda featured keynotes, an expert panel, innovation pitches, small group discussions, and a tabletop infrastructure disaster exercise. Participants gained insights into the obstacles and solutions involved in supporting …

Uab Libraries News, 06 2026, Uab Libraries

UAB Libraries News

No abstract provided.

Understanding Adolescents’ Attitudes Toward Disabilitiesto Improve Out-Of-School Programs, Vanessa Spero, David C. Diehl, John M. Diaz, Serap Gorucu

Journal of Youth Development

This study explores adolescents’ attitudes and perceptions toward individuals with disabilities in out-of-school time (OST) settings. Gaining insight into these attitudes can help inform future initiatives and interventions to develop programs that foster inclusion and greater participation of people with disabilities in OST programs. This study employed quantitative methods using the Brief Questionnaire for Adolescents on Attitudes Toward Persons with a Disability (CBAD-12A), developed by Álvarez-Delgado et al. (2020), to survey adolescents about their attitudes and perceptions toward individuals with disabilities. The results of the study revealed no statistically significant differences in attitudes toward individuals with disabilities based on whether …

Lesson Plan: Sr. Levadura (Mr. Yeast), Kali Elise Rye

World Languages and Cultures

This project addresses critical microbiology misconceptions concerning microbes and fermentation. Alongside Nuestra Ciencia’s lesson development team, this activity was researched and tested to demonstrate ideal fermentation conditions for yeast. In addition to the hands-on experiment, this project also required an interactive worksheet to be completed alongside the activity. With feedback from undergraduate students, researchers, and professors, the content was shaped to create an engaging, easily comprehensible activity that introduces microbiological concepts to students. As it has progressed, the Sr. Levadura (Mr. Yeast) activity has been implemented in two quarters of SCM 302 (Learn by Doing Lab) where over 400 elementary …

Disclosure Duties And Responsibilities, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Contract disclosure rules differ in structure, function, and design. Though scholars often treat all these rules under the rubric of duty, in fact they fall into two broad categories. Disclosure duties treat the failure to disclose as a legal wrong; disclosure responsibilities attach positive legal consequences to disclosure but do not treat nondisclosure as a legal wrong. Disclosure duties can be further divided. Specified disclosure duties, which typically apply to consumer and other mass-market transactions, provide detailed guidance regarding both what information to disclose and how to disclose it. Generic disclosure duties, such as the tort of nondisclosure, provide broad …

Camless Valve Engine, Berkeley Burbank, James Thomas Daniel, Haydn Fischer, Nicos Katigbak, John Holden Kleiner, Martin Raabe

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

This project focuses on the design and validation of a camless engine valve system as an  alternative to traditional camshaft-based valvetrain architectures. Conventional engines rely on  fixed camshaft profiles that limit performance and efficiency across varying operating  conditions. The goal of this work is to replace both the camshaft and throttle body with a  pneumatically actuated system capable of independently controlling valve timing, lift, and  duration in real time. By removing the mechanical constraints of a camshaft, the system has the  potential to optimize engine operation across all RPM ranges, improving efficiency and overall  performance without requiring major changes to …

Mantaray Profiler, Ashika Balamurugan, Divya Bengali, Angelina C. Ekdawy, Gabriela Ruiz, Alexander Israel Torres, Alondra Valencia Prado, Ysidro Magana

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Ocean health monitoring is essential for understanding and protecting marine ecosystems, yet existing methods of collecting oceanographic data are often expensive, labor-intensive, and difficult to scale. This project presents the design, integration, and testing of the MANTARAY Profiler, a low-cost, autonomous ocean-monitoring system developed to support repeatable environmental data-collection missions with reduced operator involvement. The system was designed to navigate among multiple surface waypoints, execute vertical profiling maneuvers, and collect water-column data while maintaining a compact, user-friendly, and transportable platform.

The profiler travels horizontally across the water surface to a predetermined GPS waypoint using autonomous navigation and heading-control algorithms. Once …

Predicting Clinical Outcomes Of Non-Specific Low Back Pain By Studying The Interaction Of Clinical And Demographic Factors Of A Retrospective Data Set, Erica Michelle Fernandes

Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to investigate demographic factors, including age, gender, body mass index (BMI), race, marital status, insurance type, severity of disease (initial pain level), and clinical factors such as number of visits (no. of visits) at physical therapy (PT), length of time at PT and the type of clinician either physical therapist versus physical therapy assistant (PTA), that most predict PT clinical outcomes in patients with nonspecific low back pain (NSLBP) and see if there is an interaction between demographic and clinical variables.

Methods

The current study is a retrospective, cross-sectional, observational study using secondary electronic …

Ai, Medicine, And Social Determinants Of Health Data, Ryan Doyloo, Nicholson Price

Articles

This article examines how medical AI systems are incorporating SDoH data and the governance challenges that follow. The authors show that while SDoH integration can enhance clinical workflows and predictive accuracy — potentially improving outcomes for underserved populations — it also introduces acute risks of proxy discrimination, where facially neutral variables replicate protected characteristics. Surveying U.S., EU, and international frameworks, the authors argue that existing regimes lack clear ex ante guidance to distinguish beneficial from harmful uses of SDoH data. In response, they advance post-market monitoring as a pragmatic and scalable pathway: generating real-world, SDoH-stratified evidence that can support enforcement, …

Feedback Loops: What Am I Missing?, Patrick Barry

Articles

In May, 2024, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “For Conversations You Dread, Try a Chatbot.” Here are the opening lines: Many people worry about the outsize role that AI may eventually play in our lives. But what if employing an AI program could actually help us with issues that cause fear and anxiety? We’ve found that it can be a surprisingly effective tool for figuring out how to approach emotionally charged conversations.

Mapping The Tar Vrna Interaction With Hiv-1 Integrase, Jian Sun, Rahul Yadav, Tolga Catmakas, Luke Fisher, Nicholas C. Fitzkee, Jacques J. Kessl

Faculty Publications

A series of critical interactions within the viral core between viral RNA (vRNA) and HIV-1 Integrase (IN) has previously been reported. In these studies, contact points between vRNA and IN were identified using RNA-seq and MS-based protein foot-printing approaches. Several IN amino acids located in its C-terminal domain (CTD) were found to be essential for vRNA binding, and their alanine substitution severely impacted the correct morphogenesis of the mature viral core. Here, we have used the TAR element to extend these studies by performing a comprehensive mapping of the interaction by deploying RNA crosslinking and NMR methodologies. Together, these approaches …

One Assay To Rule Them All: Development Of A Global Environmental Dna Tool To Support Range-Wide Surveys Of An Imperiled Sawfish And Its Application In The Eastern Tropical Pacific, Juan C. Cubillos-M, Annmarie Fearing, Demian D. Chapman, Peter M. Kyne, P. Joana Dias, Cindy Gonzalez, Ryan N. Lehman, Yaliana Chichaco, Bryan L. Huerta-Beltrán, Kayla L. Mcculloch, Sarah M. Toepfer, John K. Carlson, Nicole M. Phillips

Faculty Publications

Environmental DNA (eDNA) has emerged as a powerful tool to support the conservation of threatened species. The sawfishes are one of the most imperiled vertebrate groups, with all five species classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Owing to their toothy rostra, sawfishes are easily entangled in a wide range of fishing gear, with mortalities in fisheries and loss of habitat driving global declines. The Largetooth Sawfish, Pristis pristis, historically had a circumtropical range, but has experienced severe declines in geographic range and abundance. Viable populations are thought to be confined to northern Australia, but …

Analytical And Cross-Sectional Clinical Validity Of A Smartphone-Based U-Turn Test In Multiple Sclerosis, Marta Plonka, Rafal Klimas, Dimitar Stanev, Lorenza Angelini, Natan Naplorkowski, Gaby Gonzalez Chan, Lisa Bunn, Paul Glazier, Richard Hosking, Jennifer Freeman, Jeremy Hobart, Mattia Zanon, Jonathan Marsden, Licinio Craveiro, Mike D. Rinderknecht

School of Health Professions

Background: Gait and balance impairment can profoundly impact people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS). Objectives: To evaluate the analytical and clinical validity of the U-Turn Test (UTT), a smartphone-based assessment of dynamic balance in PwMS. Methods: The GaitLab study (ISRCTN15993728) enrolled adult PwMS (EDSS 0.0 – 6.5). PwMS performed the UTT in a gait laboratory (supervised) using six smartphones at different wear locations and daily during a two-week remote period (unsupervised) using one smartphone (belt front). Median turn speed was computed per UTT. In the supervised setting, turn detection accuracy of smartphones was compared to motion capture (mocap) via F1 scores. …

The Relationships Among Neighborhood Disadvantage, Mental Health And Developmental Disabilities Diagnoses, And Race/Ethnicity In A U.S. Urban Location, Deborah Winders Davis, Kahir Jawad, Yana B. Feygin, Michelle Stevenson, Bethany Wattles, Veronnie Faye Jones, Jennifer Porter, W. David Lohr, Jennifer Le

Biostatistics Faculty Publications

Childhood health disparities by race have been found. Neighborhood disadvantage, which may result from racism, may impact outcomes. The aim of the study is to describe the distribution of mental health (MH) and developmental disabilities (DD) diagnosis across Child Opportunity Index (COI) levels by race/ethnicity. A cross-sectional study using 2022 outpatient visit data for children < 18 years living in the Louisville Metropolitan Area (n = 115,738) was conducted. Multivariable logistic regression analyses examined the association between diagnoses and COI levels, controlling for sex and age. Almost 18,000 children (15.5%) had a MH or DD (7,905 [6.8%]) diagnosis. In each COI level, the prevalence of MH diagnosis was lower for non-Hispanic (N–H) Black than for N–H White children. In adjusted analyses, there were no significant associations between diagnoses and COI for non-White children for MH or DD diagnoses. The odds of receiving a MH [OR: 1.74 (95% CI: 1.62, 1.87)] and DD [OR: 1.69 (95% CI: 1.51, 1.88)] diagnosis were higher among N–H White children living in Very Low compared to Very High COI areas. Current findings suggest that COI does not explain disparities in diagnosis for non-White children. More research is needed to identify potential multi-level drivers such as other forms of racism. Identifying programs, policies, and interventions to reduce childhood poverty and link children and families to affordable, family-centered, quality community mental and physical health resources is needed to ensure that families can build trusting relationships with the providers while minimizing stigma.

Missed Clinic Appointments For Human Papillomavirus-Related Oropharyngeal Cancer, John M. Vieth, Anthony A. Mangino, Melina J. Windon, Joseph Valentino

Biostatistics Faculty Publications

Background: Missing appointments delay treatment affecting patient outcomes and healthcare resource utilization. Adherence to scheduled appointments has not been studied in patients with HPV-related oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HPV-OPSCC). Methods: We collected data from 36,690,000 scheduled medical outpatient encounters at the University of Kentucky Health Care from 2012 to 2021. A total of 36,579 of these encounters were from 334 patients with HPV-OPSCC. We performed regression analysis of no-show appointments by demographics, tumor characteristics, and insurance factors. Results: The no-shows rate for appointments was significantly higher for the HPV-OPSCC cohort (4.6% vs. 2.2% p < 0.001). The HPV-OPSCC cohort missed 36% of their appointments. Black, Hispanic, younger, those who have ever smoked and patients with advanced tumor stage all had statistically significantly higher no-show rates (p < 0.01). Conclusions: Treatment delay impacts cancer treatment efficacy and no-show appointments burden medical systems. Further research into targeted interventions is needed to lower barriers for attending appointments.

Microbiota Dynamics And Bacterial Pathogen Survival During Milk Kefir Fermentation And Storage, Léon Maughan, Leonard Koolman, Guerrino Macori, Christina Killian, Seamus Fanning, Paul Whyte, Declan Bolton

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

This study identified and investigated the relative abundance of bacterial and fungal (predominantly yeast) species in the milk kefir grains, during a typical fermentation (25◦C for 48 h) and subsequent chilled storage (4◦Cfor up to 30d) using Nanopore sequencing (16S and ITS amplicon). Challenge studies were also undertaken toexamine the behaviour of Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella Senftenberg, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Staphylococcusaureus as well as non-toxigenic mesophilic and psychrophilic Clostridium spp. (Clostridium sporogenes and Clos-tridium gasigenes, respectively). Lactobacillus and Lactococcus were the predominant bacterial genera with relativeabundance of 91% and 2% in milk kefir grains, 32% and 63.7% after 24 h of …

Fire–Climate–Vegetation Linkages In A Quaking Aspen Forest During The Late Holocene, R. Justin Derose, Jesse L. Morris

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Fire plays an important role in shaping forested ecosystems around the globe. Unlike many other fire-driven forest types, our understanding of pre-settlement fire behavior in quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) systems is limited. To better understand the frequency and severity of fires in a putatively stable quaking aspen forest, a small, key watershed was selected for sediment coring to reconstruct fire history, vegetation change, and climatic variability. The study aim was to explore the fire–climate–vegetation linkages in an aspen-dominated catchment. For the past ~4000 years this basin has been dominated by quaking aspen but also subalpine fir (Abies …

Handheld Hyperspectral Imaging Dataset Of Annual Sowthistle And Little Mallow Under Abiotic Stress For Machine Learning, Elijah Brunnengraeber, Tyler Cassidy, Dylan Woodbridge, Arun D. Jani, Arun K. Sharma

Biology, Agriculture and Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Machine learning has become an increasingly important tool for overcoming agricultural challenges by enabling efficient and consistent classification of crop-related data. Training such supervised models requires high quality labeled datasets. This work presents a dataset consisting of raw and preprocessed hyperspectral imaging (HSI) files capturing reflectance in the visible to near-infrared range (400–1000 nm) from two problematic weed species on California’s Central Coast: annual sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus) and little mallow (Malva parviflora). Hyperspectral imaging provides rich spectral-spatial data cubes that can support the development of deep learning models and autonomous technology for precision weed management. Plants …

Hospital Bed Tray Table, Ava Mikeska, Sara Chamness, Samantha Kenney, Kaitlyn Ould

Mechanical Engineering

This project documents the design and development of a collapsible hospital bed tray table created through the Mechanical Engineering Senior Project program at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. The goal of the project was to reduce the floor space occupied by existing overbed tray tables while preserving the functionality, stability, and durability expected by patients, visitors, and healthcare staff.

The final design modifies a commercially available overbed tray table by incorporating a folding tabletop hinge mechanism and a telescoping base. The hinge allows the tabletop to lock in both the upright and stowed positions, while the telescoping base retracts to …

Using A Screening Tool Is Effective In Choosing Costly Nursery Ingredients, Kynna M. Crawford, Katlyn A. Mcclellan, Eric M. Weaver

Animal Science Research Report 2026

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Corn Ddgs Contaminated With Varying Levels Of Deoxynivalenol (Don) On Growth Performance And Health Of Nursery Pigs, Alejandra Forero-Salamanca, Andres F. Boliver-Sierra, Crystal L. Levesque

Animal Science Research Report 2026

No abstract provided.

Sdsu Extension Calving Camp, Taylor Grussing

Animal Science Research Report 2026

No abstract provided.

Sdsu Youth Beef Summit, Christina Bakker, Erin Dehaan, Jessica Drum, Madison Kovarna, Tommy Norman, Warren Rusche, Robin Salverson, Logan Vandermark, Julie Walker

Animal Science Research Report 2026

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of Partial Replacement Of Distillers Grains With Extruded Soybeans And The Effects On Growth And Immune Function, Garrett Meyer, Andrea Brandner, Federico Podversich, Steve Lawson, Manuel Manuel, Warren Rusche, Zachery Smith

Animal Science Research Report 2026

No abstract provided.

Influence Of Nutrient Restriction During Mid-Gestation On Calf Performance Through Weaning, Sydni Lammers, Logan Vandermark, Ira Parsons, Hector Menendez, Jameson Brennan, Zachery Smith, Kenneth Olson, Amanda Blair

Animal Science Research Report 2026

No abstract provided.

Observing Ph Of Grass-Fed Bison Heifer Gastrointestinal Tracts Postmortem, Ekaterina Lopez-Bondarchuk, Madison Higbee, Kallen Kafka, Ava Graham, Phillip Urso

Animal Science Research Report 2026

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Dietary Tribasic Copper Chloride Level And Duration In Growing-Finishing Pigs, Courtney L. Pohlen, Angel Martinez, Rafe Q. Royall

Animal Science Research Report 2026

No abstract provided.

Effects Of High Dietary Soybean Meal On The Gut Microbiome Of Finishing Pigs, Angel Martinez, Courtney L. Pohlen, Joseph G. Halbur, Eric M. Weaver, Rafe Q. Royall, Benoit St-Pierre

Animal Science Research Report 2026

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of Partial Replacement Of Distillers’ Grains With Heat-Treated Full-Fat Soybeans On Growth And Carcass Characteristics In Finishing Beef Steers, Sean Robinson, Warren Rusche, Federico Podversich, Justin Delver, Zachary Smith

Animal Science Research Report 2026

No abstract provided.