Digital Commons Network^™

Designing And Evaluating Ai Learning Coaches Within The Doctor Of Pharmacy Curriculum, Brianne L. Dunn, Maggie Richardson

AI Day 2026

No abstract provided.

Public Policy Issues Faced By Educators Teaching Incarcerated Youth, Tariq Shabazz

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Educational policies at the federal, state, and juvenile levels shape the academic transfer and reintegration processes for youth returning from confinement to public schools in the United States. Despite the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, the literature indicates that policies at the federal, state, and programmatic levels were not fully aligned. Each required education to be provided to juveniles while incarcerated, but each did not show how this education was transferred afterward or if this was a requirement at each level. The purpose of this general qualitative study was to conduct a comparative policy analysis of …

Perioperative Skin Integrity: A Quality Improvement Initiative To Prevent Skin Injuries In Surgical Patients, Emily Francom

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

No abstract provided.

Topological Clustering Of Aphasic Brain Networks, Jiaying Yi, Jian Yin, Rahul Ghosal Ph.D., Dirk Den Ouden Ph.D., Julius Fridriksson Ph.D., Rutvik Desai, Yuan Wang

AI Day 2026

Stroke disrupts brain connectivity. A left-hemisphere stroke could lead to post-stroke aphasia (PSA).

Statistical Problems in PSA

• Subtyping: Traditionally based on behavioral scores, ignoring underlying information in the brain.

• Treatment outcome trajectory: Tracking longitudinal changes in the brain over course of treatment.

Modeling Challenge & Solution

• Standard graph-theoretic methods rely on thresholding networks at a single scale.

• Persistent homology (PH) yields multiscale topological features in both signals and networks.

Topological Clustering of Brain Signals & Networks

• State-of-the-art topological clustering methods are highly efficient computationally but require additional transformations for signals.

• We also need a …

Ai-Driven Burnout Detection In Nursing A Comprehensive System Integrating Biometric Wearables, Geographic-Environmental Mood Tracking, And Real-Time Chatbot Interventions, Sicheng Wang

AI Day 2026

No abstract provided.

Towards Contactless Pediatric Anthropometry Using Millimeter-Wave Radardar, Reza Tavasoli, Sanjib Sur, Srihari Nelakuditi

AI Day 2026

Objective

Design a contactless, privacy-preserving system for pediatric anthropometry, estimating body circumferences and BMI using millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar instead of tape measures or cameras

Motivation

•    Anthropometric measurements are essential for pediatric growth monitoring and health-risk screening (e.g., obesity, malnourishment)

•    Contact-based tape measurements cause discomfort in children, leading to movement, repeated attempts, and operator-dependent errors

•    3D camera/depth solutions are sensitive to clothing, lighting, and occlusions, and raise privacy concerns for pediatric populations

Why mmWave Radar?

•    Contactless sensing that penetrates clothing, works in any lighting, and preserves privacy, overcoming key limitations of cameras and contact-based approaches

•    Radar …

Coping With Climate Change: A Mixed-Methods Approach To Understanding Irrigation Technology Outcomes In Gujarat, India, Jamie M. Sommer, Trupti Jain, Biplabketan Paul, Karina Yager, Eliza White, Andrew Hargrove, Peggy Ann Spitzer

Montclair State University Scholarship & Creative Works

Previous research on climate change interventions highlights that adaptation and mitigation strategies must be tailored to local contexts to effectively benefit both people and the environment. However, there remains a gap in analyzing the effectiveness of locally specific climate-related technologies in enhancing food security, improving livelihoods, and addressing social dimensions such as women’s autonomy. The authors address that gap by drawing on two data sources, one quantitative and one qualitative, to evaluate the impact of an irrigation technology. Specifically, the authors assess its effectiveness in improving crop yields and addressing issues related to migration, women’s autonomy, and economic conditions. The …

U.S. Foreign Aid’S Effects On Un Voting Patterns From Years 2017-2023, Brody Young

Undergraduate Theses

This is a study of the relationship between U.S. Foreign Aid and its effects on a receiving nation’s voting coincidence, with voting coincidence measuring how often a nation votes the same as the U.S. in the UN General Assembly. In this study the dependent variable is voting coincidence in the UN General Assembly. The primary independent variable is the average amount of foreign aid UN nations have received from the U.S. in 2017-2023. With several other more minor independent variables including average GDP of nations from 2017-2023, the average population of a nation from 2017-2023, whether a nation is a …

Curriculum Minutes 03/19/2026, Curriculum Committee

Curriculum Committee Minutes

No abstract provided.

Is A Gender-Neutral Income Tax Feasible—Or Desirable?, James Alm, Yvette Lind

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

It is increasingly recognized that the individual income tax leads to disparate treatment by race, ethnicity, and gender, even when the statutory tax code is written in a race-, ethnicity-, and gender-blind way. Partly in response to these disparate treatments, there have been many suggestions for moving the income tax to more neutral treatments of taxpayers. In this paper, we focus on a specific aspect of these reform efforts: making the individual income tax gender-neutral. We first examine the many sources of gender non-neutrality in the income tax. We argue that gender non-neutrality arises largely because of deviations of “income” …

The Combined Effects Of Art Therapy And Yoga On Stress In Graduate Students, Wen-Fang (Tiffany) Tsai

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

Graduate students experience disproportionately high levels of stress, and when this stress becomes chronic, it is associated with adverse psychological and physical health outcomes. While yoga and art therapy have independently demonstrated potential in reducing stress, their combined effects remain underexplored. This quantitative study employed a two-group experimental design to investigate the synergistic effects of an integrated art therapy and yoga intervention on stress reduction and flow enhancement. Graduate students (N = 23) were randomly assigned to either the integrated intervention or an active control group receiving yoga only. Participants received three weekly 50-min sessions, with pre- and post-intervention …

Periodontal Biomarkers In Cardiovascular Disease: Mechanisms, Diagnostics, And Clinical Implications, Max Foroughi, Keykavous Parang

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Purpose

Periodontal disease is a chronic inflammatory condition increasingly associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) beyond shared risk factors. This review evaluates evidence linking periodontal inflammation to cardiovascular outcomes and identifies periodontal biomarkers with potential relevance for cardiovascular risk assessment.

Methods

A narrative review was conducted using PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases, including studies published between 1990 and 2025. Epidemiological, clinical, and mechanistic studies examining associations between periodontal disease, inflammatory and microbial biomarkers, and cardiovascular outcomes were included. Biomarkers were categorized as inflammatory cytokines, acute-phase proteins, oxidative stress markers, lipid mediators, and microbial indicators. Evidence regarding periodontal therapy and …

Efficient Multi-Kilobase Knock-Ins In Mice And Cell Lines Using Crispr/Cas9 And Raav Donors With Unbiased Whole-Genome Characterization By Lock-Seq, Monica F Sentmanat, Zi Teng Wang, Evguenia Kouranova, Samuel T Peters, Wan Ching Chan, Jed Lin, Yong Miao, J Michael White, Mia Wallace, Xiaoxia Cui

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Multi-kilobase knock-ins (KIs) are a necessary, yet challenging type of genome editing to create and characterize in cell lines and animals. The combination of rAAV donor transduction and electroporation of single-cell mouse embryos with Cas9/gRNA ribonucleoprotein complex enables highly efficient KI, but the insert size is limited by the viral packaging capacity. Here, we report the creation of up to 6.7 kb precise KI achieved in one step by using three rAAVs designed to insert one after the other. To fully characterize the edited genome with large KIs, we developed LOCK-seq (LOng-read sequencing of Captured Kilo-base targets), where relevant genomic …

A Novel Optuna-Vmd-Ml Framework For Enhanced Settlement Prediction Of Buildings Around Foundation Pits, Jing Zhang, Zhenlin Wang, Shiyu Sheng, Sifan Shen, Chuang He, Huafeng Shan, Haijie He, Li Ai

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

The prediction of building settlement around foundation pit is of vital importance to ensure the safety and stability of urban construction projects. However, current predictions of buildings surrounding foundation pit face numerous challenges. Therefore, this study proposes a framework that integrates Optuna-based hyperparameter optimization, variational mode decomposition (VMD), and machine learning (ML) for accurate and timely settlement prediction in practical engineering scenarios, referred to as the Optuna–VMD–ML framework. Optuna is employed to tune the hyperparameters of both VMD and the ML models; the Optuna-tuned VMD decomposes the settlement time series into mode components, which are then used to train the …

Sepsis-Triggered Proteolysis Of Profibrinolytic Annexin A2 Associated With Microvasculopathy-Related Organ Dysfunction, Hana I. Lim, Michael Bender, Huigen Chen, Frances M. West, Julio Lanfranco, Dena Almeida, Katherine A. Hajjar

Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine Faculty Papers

Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory disorder marked by dysregulated inflammation and coagulopathy. Annexin A2 (A2), a profibrinolytic protein, assembles plasminogen and tissue plasminogen activator on cell surfaces, thereby maintaining vascular patency. However, its role in human sepsis has remained poorly defined. We investigated whether A2 undergoes qualitative or quantitative modification during human sepsis with associated end-organ dysfunction. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells and plasma were collected from 65 patients with sepsis and 27 healthy controls. A2 expression and integrity were evaluated with cell surface plasmin generation using immunoblot and fluorometric assays. Both A2 integrity and plasmin generation were significantly reduced in …

Conceptualizing Osteopathic Medical Professionalism: An Institutional Self-Assessment Rubric For Colleges Of Osteopathic Medicine, Regina K. Fleming, Matthew Shelnutt, Tony A. Slieman, Stephanie White, Bruce R. Williams

Faculty and Staff Publications

Context: Professionalism in medicine has been historically difficult to define, teach, assess, and remediate. While professionalism is vital to the practice of medicine, the lack of consistency across training and disciplines, combined with the often generalized nature of its description, has caused challenges in academic medicine and has led to the weaponization of its use. It is clear that change in this essential competency in medicine is needed, and change has to begin with an honest self-assessment.

Objectives: The purpose of this report is to present an evidence-based rubric for the assessment of professionalism at the institutional level. The literature …

2026 March 19 - From My Notepads Newsletter, Office Of The President, East Tennessee State University, Brian Noland

From My Notepads: A Newsletter from President Brian Noland

No abstract provided.

De Aquí Y De Allá: Exchanging Language And Visual Culture In The Lower Rio Grande Valley, Chloë M. Robinson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study examines graphic design in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) as a site of cultural hybridity, shaped by transnational histories and bilingual practice. It explores how Mexican and Anglo design markers intersect and are negotiated in daily life through analysis of 2,180 visual artifacts, interviews with ten local creatives, and a survey of fifty residents. Historical research traces influences like nineteenth-century wood type and rótulo signage to contemporary advertising. Interviews reveal that local creatives navigate hybrid identities through code-switching, bilingual fluency, and borderlands experiences. Survey results show that participants’ language preferences predict how they categorize and rank typographic …

Immunoregulatory Effects Of Choerospondias Axillaris (Roxb.) B.L.Burtt & A.W.Hill Fruit Extract In Mice With Insights On In Vitro Mechanism, Ravi Gautam, Anju Maharjan, Jaehee Lee, Sujeong Yang, Jihun Jo, Manju Acharya, Daeun Lee, Narayan Prasad Ghimire, Saroj Lamichhane, Byungsun Min, Changyul Kim, Hyoungah Kim, Yong Heo

Department of Microbiology and Immunology Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Lapsi (Choerospondias axillaris), a plant native to Nepal, has been traditionally used in Asian countries to treat cardiovascular conditions. However, its effects on immune regulatory function remain largely unexplored. This study aimed to in vivo evaluate the immunoregulatory properties of Lapsi fruit extract in mice on immunotoxic responses with analysis on in vitro mechanism for immune suppression, oxidative stress, and inflammatory response. Male Balb/c mice were intragastrically administered various doses of the extract for 21 days. In some mice, immune suppression was induced with cyclophosphamide, and subsequent immune recovery was assessed. In addition, RAW264.7 cells and THP-1-derived macrophages were …

Intimate Partners Of National Guard And Reserve Members And Veterans With A Mental Health Diagnosis, Christine Sutton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research has documented increasing mental health challenges among military service members; however, limited scholarship examines the lived experiences of partners of National Guard and Reserve members when a mental health diagnosis is present within the relationship. Despite expanded attention to active-duty families, National Guard partners remain underrepresented while navigating dual civilian–military demands, fragmented support systems, and inconsistent access to care. The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore and interpret the lived experiences of partners of National Guard and Reserve service members diagnosed with a mental health condition. Guided by a hermeneutic phenomenological framework, the study explored how …

Describing The Creation Of Physician Burnout Prevention Efforts: A Phenomenological Investigation, Amy Cowan

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite physician burnout being a recognized problem, no single, successful, clear strategy has been developed to lessen this issue. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the motivations underlying the development of responses to physician burnout by their creators and the factors that influenced their decision-making in creating these responses. A purposeful sample of 17 creators of physician burnout and suicide prevention strategies in the United States was selected based on Moustakas’s conventions for conducting a qualitative descriptive phenomenological study. Notwithstanding this sample, data collection continued until saturation was achieved. The qualitative data were collected using semi-structured …

Single Custodial Fathers And The Challenges To Receiving Services, Oriesha Anyah Peña

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Single fathers are an increasing population in the United States and worldwide. However, the literature and programs that guide human services professionals supporting single fathers’ parenting experience are limited in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. There is a need to further study the varied challenges these fathers experience so that professionals in social support organizations and agencies can implement appropriate services, support, programs, and resources into practice and ensure access to support their families and parenting. This qualitative study includes a force field analysis as part of a formative program needs assessment to explore human services professionals' perceptions of service needs, …

Fibrinogen-Bmal1 Signaling As A Therapeutic Target To Limit Aortic Dissection By Preserving Vsmc Contractility, Xiaohan Zhong, Dongjie Li, Yuanfei Zhao, Lu Dai, Jinzhang Li, Zhiqi Ji, Bojing Zuo, Hongshan Liu, Haixia Huang, Wei Wang, Haiyang Li, Yuyong Liu, Ming Gong, Xin-Liang Ma, Wenjian Jiang, Meili Wang, Hongjia Zhang

Department of Emergency Medicine Faculty Papers

Aortic dissection (AD) is a life-threatening vascular disease with a high mortality rate. Surgery is essential in the acute phase but carries significant risks, whereas elective surgery during the chronic phase yields better outcomes. However, no pharmacological therapy has been proven effective in slowing AD progression. In our recent pilot clinical study, an association between higher plasma fibrinogen levels and improved clinical outcomes was observed in AD patients, suggesting a potential protective role of fibrinogen. However, direct evidence supporting this hypothesis is lacking. In this study, a population-based analysis of nonsurgically managed patients with acute AD revealed a distinct association: …

Targeting Cardiomyocyte-Derived Extracellular Vesicle Mir-574-5p Protects Against Cognitive Impairment Induced By Ischemia-Reperfusion, Erya Chen, Xiaoyu Zhu, Haiqing Chang, Qi Li, Zhenkun Zhao, Changteng Zhang, Yu Cao, Yajing Wang, Xinliang Ma, Tao Zhu, Shu Zhang, Lu Gan, Jin Liu, Chan Chen

Department of Emergency Medicine Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND:  Acute myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (MI/R) increases risk for cognitive decline, yet the underlying mechanisms mediating heart-brain communication remain poorly understood. Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) have emerged as novel long-range signaling mediators and may play a critical role.

METHODS: MI/R was induced by transient ligation of the left anterior descending artery. Cognitive performance was assessed using multiple behavioral tests. sEVs derived from cardiomyocytes were labeled to track their distribution and cellular uptake in the brain. Heart and brain tissues were analyzed for microRNAs (miRNAs) expression using bioinformatics, qPCR, and RNAScope. The role of specific miRNAs was investigated through genetic inhibition of …

Neurobiological Pathways Underlying Brain Tumor Progression: Basis For Oncogenicity And Opportunities For Immunotherapeutic Intervention, Carrie E. Andrews, Jenny Zilberberg, Raul Perez-Olle, David Andrews, Mark A. Exley

Department of Neurosurgery Faculty Papers

Both primary and metastatic brain tumors rely on signals from the surrounding environment for their survival and progression. In particular, the most common and lethal brain cancer, glioblastoma (GBM), derived from glial cells (astrocytes or microglia), has been shown to integrate into synaptic networks and to receive paracrine signals from neighbouring tumor microenvironment (TME) cells. There is increasing evidence that metastatic disease in the brain exhibits similar behavior. The TME both maintains malignant cells and is maintained by them, a process that relies on cancer stem cells (CSCs). These stem cells and their signaling mechanisms, including in the case of …

Implementation Of Preventive Health Presentations At A Multicultural Senior Center, Binh Le

EMET Projects

No abstract provided.

Pulmonary Complications Of Cancer Therapy: Clinical Presentations, Imaging Patterns, And Management Strategies, Bilal Zafar, Tasmea Haque, Miranda Tan, Ritika Singh, Lara Bashoura, Ajay Sheshadri, Maria Azhar, Saadia A Faiz

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background and objectives: Therapeutic agents for cancer can cause unique pulmonary toxicities and mimic other conditions. The advent of new targeted molecular and immune therapies has changed the landscape of cancer treatment. These adverse events pose diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. This review aims to summarize the clinical presentations, radiographic patterns, and management strategies for noninfectious pulmonary complications associated with cancer therapies.

Materials and methods: A literature review was conducted focusing on drug-induced lung injury (DILI), radiation-induced lung injury (RILI), pleural disease, pulmonary vascular complications, and other inflammatory conditions in patients with cancer. The data sources included clinical trials, guideline recommendations, …

Evaluating Eight Smoking Metrics For Modelling Survival In Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, Andrew Cl Lam, Yao Li, M Catherine Brown, Yangqing Deng, Katrina Hueniken, Natasha B Leighl, Frances A Shepherd, Kiera Murison, Zhichao Wang, Jui Kothari, Angela S Wenzlaff, Haoran Liu, Takashi Kohno, Angela Cecilia Pesatori, Curtis Harris, Hongxia Ma, Juncheng Dai, Matthew J Barnett, Ryan Diver, Leticia Ferro Leal, Guillermo Fernandez-Tardon, Mónica Pérez-Ríos, Michael Pa Davies, Bernd Holleczek, Paul Brennan, David Zaridze, Ivana Holcatova, Jolanta Lissowska, Beata Świątkowska, Dana Mates, Milan Savic, Hermann Brenner, Angeline S Andrew, Fiona Taylor, John K Field, Alberto Ruano-Ravina, Sanjay S Shete, Adonina Tardon, Ying Wang, Loic Le Marchand, Rui Manuel Reis, Matthew B Schabath, Marian L Neuhouser, Hongbing Shen, Maria Teresa Landi, Kouya Shiraishi, Jie Zhang, Ann G Schwartz, Ming S Tsao, David C Christiani, Ping Yang, Rayjean J Hung, Wei Xu, Geoffrey Liu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: Smoking is a strong modifiable prognostic factor for lung cancer survival. We compared eight smoking metrics to determine which metric best models the relationship between smoking exposure with overall survival (OS) and lung cancer-specific survival (LCSS). These metrics included cigarettes-per-day, smoking duration, pack-years, square-root pack-years, logcig-years, the comprehensive smoking index, age-of-initiation, and years-since-quit.

Materials/methods: This retrospective, pooled analysis included 25 International Lung Cancer Consortium studies between June 1, 1983-December 31, 2019. The performance of smoking metrics for modelling OS was compared based on 1) strength and significance in adjusted Cox-proportional hazard models and 2) linearity based on the goodness-of-fit …

Spartan Daily, March 19, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 166, Issue 25

Inexorably Entangled Environmental And Knowledge Commons, Todd Aagaard, Brett M. Frischmann

Faculty Publications

For people to effectively share an environment, they usually also must effectively share knowledge about that environment. While seemingly obvious and intuitive, this insight is often overlooked in literature about governing resources as commons. Focusing on the knowledge commons associated with an environmental commons helps to illuminate a host of complex governance dilemmas. This chapter examines the interrelationship between environmental and knowledge commons, weaving together different strands of commons research and practice. Examples discussed include shared pastures, forests, road systems, computer servers, social media platforms, living rooms, and antimicrobial effectiveness/resistance.