Digital Commons Network^™

The Roberts Court's Transformative Religious Freedom Cases: The Doctrine And The Politics Of Grievance, Stephen M. Feldman

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that the Roberts Court has adopted a conservative approach in religious freedom cases, shifting toward a jurisprudence that favors Christianity and undermines the separation of church and state. This approach, rooted in tradition and a de facto Christian America, has led to significant changes in both Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause doctrines. The Court's decisions increasingly protect Christian practices and institutions while marginalizing non-Christian religions, reflecting a broader ideological shift toward judicial engagement and away from principles of federalism and judicial restraint.

Hostile Shores: Racial Exclusion Laws And The West Coast, Brendan Williams

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article examines the historical and ongoing racial exclusion laws on the West Coast, focusing on California, Oregon, and Washington. It argues that despite their progressive reputation, these states have a legacy of discriminatory laws targeting Chinese, Black, and Japanese populations, which has led to enduring racial inequities that persist today.

Effects Of Gamification On Knowledge Acquisition: Aviation Weather Online Training, Jacqueline Mcsorley

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Due to the high popularity of gaming, researchers have begun to implement aspects of these games into real life (known as gamification). Motivation and engagement may be influenced by certain game mechanics and user types, which then could also impact learning. A gap still exists as to whether leaderboards and narratives impact motivation or engagement when implemented in a non-game context (i.e., an online training program). Studies indicate that aviation weather training for general aviation pilots is underdeveloped, particularly for NEXRAD. In considering the competitive/ goal-oriented nature of pilots, gamification elements such as Achievements and Stories could best motivate pilots-in-training …

The Cost Of Playing The Game: Modeling In-Game Purchase Intention And Investigating Purchase Behavior Of Mobile Gamers, William J. Shelstad

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Free-to-play games typically have a monetization model that relies on players to purchase in-game items or virtual goods to generate revenue (Nguyen, 2015). There have been several empirical efforts to investigate purchase intention of virtual goods in video games with some focusing on quantitative models of purchase intention. Most of these studies tend to be with virtual worlds and lack the use of validated instruments to measure constructs (Hamari & Keronen, 2017). This research sought to gain a greater understanding of purchase intention of in-game content or virtual goods in mobile games through two studies.

Study 1 modeled purchase intention …

The Impact Of Individual And Team-Level Variables On Burnout In Healthcare Providers, Logan M. Gisick

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Burnout among medical providers is a growing issue with effects that start at the provider level and span outward to affect the entire hospital system. The consensus of the literature is that there are multiple categories of factors which lead to the development of burnout including personal characteristics, social characteristics, and job/work characteristics. Because of the highly collaborative and interpersonal nature of healthcare work, the interactions among team members have the potential to significantly influence provider burnout and recent studies are beginning to examine this interaction more carefully. However, there is little research that examines the relationship between multiple personal …

Annotated Legal Bibliography

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Field Research In The Era Of The Islamic State And Trump, William Yaworsky, Dawid K. Wladyka, Katarzyna Sepielak

Anthropology Faculty Publications

We survey anthropologists who work in Arab League countries to ascertain their perceptions of fieldwork security conditions. Based on the responses of forty-seven specialists reporting on conditions in 127 field sites, we find the security environment in the Arab League to be diverse. Scholars working in nations such as Morocco, Oman, and Qatar report overwhelmingly favorable research conditions, while their colleagues working in Lebanon and Syria report a largely dismal situation. The paper also queries respondents on their perceptions of the impact that Trump administration policies and rhetoric have on their ongoing field research. Here, we find Arab League specialists …

Pharmacological Extension Of Lifespan Via Mitochondrial Uncoupling In Drosophila Melanogaster, Analisa Taylor

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Biden, Trump, Durbin, And Taxes: The 2020 Election In Illinois, John Jackson, John Foster

The Simon Review (Occasional Papers of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute)

This paper provides a summary of the 2020 presidential race, both nationally and in Illinois. It also analyzes the U.S. Senate race in Illinois and the referendum on the graduated income tax proposal, which was Governor JB Pritzker’s highest policy priority for that year. The results are placed in the larger context of the deep polarization of America and Illinois. The analysis uses the results of the 1996 presidential election (Clinton vs. Dole) and senatorial election (Durbin vs. Salvi) and the 1998 gubernatorial election (Ryan vs. Poshard) as a baseline to demonstrate the profound geographical realignment of the two parties …

Understanding The Perceived Impact Of Social And Emotional Learning Interventions On High School Student Success, Michelle Wright

All Theses And Dissertations

Integrating social and emotional learning (SEL) skills into instructional practices and academic content has become a priority in many school districts (CASEL, 2018). While educators and clinical professionals alike have made strides in recognizing the importance of SEL, the level of implementation across districts varies greatly (CASEL, 2018). This qualitative program evaluation explored whether school staff at a public suburban high school in the Northeastern United States perceived the implementation of various interventions aimed at increasing SEL skills of students to be successful. This study utilized semi-structured interviews to identify which interventions had been implemented by a group of school …

Identifying Complex Adaptive Systems Using Quantitative Approaches At A Midsized Biotechnology Firm, Sean M. Sullivan

All Theses And Dissertations

Rapid technological progress is becoming more challenging for organizations to implement and manage. The traditional, hierarchical leadership models are often inadequate to cope with continuous change, and the inability to keep up with the latest advances can quickly imperil a company. In particular, the field of biotechnology is currently experiencing revolutionary advances. Where hierarchical leadership models lapse, complexity theory and complexity leadership theory may provide an alternative leadership model for successful organizational adaptation. However, much of the research surrounding complexity theory remains academic. Historical data from a biotechnology company was analyzed during a computer hardware and software upgrade to detect …

Supportive Neighborhoods, Family Resilience And Flourishing In Childhood And Adolescence, Sheila Barnhart, Molly R. Bode, Michael C. Gearhart, Kathryn Maguire-Jack

Social Work Faculty Publications

Flourishing is linked with health and well-being in childhood and adulthood. This study applied a promotive factors model to examine how neighborhood assets might benefit child and adolescent flourishing by promoting family resilience. Using data from the combined 2018 and 2019 National Survey of Children’s Health, structural equation models tested direct and indirect relationships between neighborhood physical environment, neighborhood social cohesion, family resilience, and flourishing among 18,396 children and 24,817 adolescents. After controlling for multiple covariates that may influence flourishing, the models supported that higher levels of neighborhood social cohesion were directly associated with higher levels of flourishing adolescents, and …

Home Sweet Home? Examining Residential Instability And Preschoolers’ Early Mathematics Development, Marisha Kashyap

Publications and Research

In 2020, approximately 13% of all children under five experienced residential instability. Residential instability, also known as housing instability, is known to compromise the socio-emotional and behavioral development of young children. However, there is limited evidence documenting the effect of housing instability on preschoolers' cognitive and academic abilities, in particular the development of mathematics skills. The present literature review argues that unstable residential conditions have important implications for preschoolers’ early mathematics development. First, the current literature review explores the implications of residential instability for the early childhood developmental period. Then this review examines current studies on promotive and risk factors …

Your Loyalty Program Might Be Losing You Money, Raghuram Iyengar, Young-Hoon Park, Qi Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

From Amazon Prime to Panera Bread’s Unlimited Sip Club, loyalty programs have become commonplace in a wide variety of industries. However, despite their popularity, it’s not always clear whether these programs are actually profitable. The authors analyzed data from 24,000 customers at a large Asian retailer to explore the various factors that can drive a program’s profitability, and identified three takeaways to help managers ensure their subscription programs are a net positive: They recommend that managers should go beyond averages and analyze trends on an individual level, measure the underlying factors that drive changes in revenues, and remember to account …

Breaking The Sound Of Silence: Explication In The Use Of Strategic Silence In Crisis Communication, Pang, A., Yan Jin, Youngji Seo, Sung In Choi, Hui-Xun Teo, Phuong D. Le, Bryan Reber

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Crises present organizations with the “rhetorical exigency” to enact control. Silence is not an option. This study, as the first empirical examination of Le et al’s (2019) seminal study on silence in crisis communication, examines, first, if silence can be strategically used as a bona fide strategy; second, under what circumstances should silence be broken; and third, when silence is broken, how it affects (a) organizational reputation, (b) societal risk perception, and (c) the publics’ crisis information sharing intention. An online experiment was conducted using a nationally representative sample in the United States. Participants were recruited in 2019 via a …

Organizational Cultural Strength As The Negative Cross-Entropy Of Mindshare: A Measure Based On Descriptive Text, Arianna Marchetti, Phanish Puranam

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The strength of an organization’s culture is an important property that may have implications for organizational structure, performance, diversity, and inclusion, independent of its content. However, progress on conceptualizing and measuring cultural strength has been restricted so far. We propose a novel measure of an organization’s cultural strength as the negative average cross-entropy of its members’ mindshare distributions, defined on a support comprising a set of firm-specific cultural elements. Using descriptive text data produced by 2.9 million individuals in about 95 thousand US firms from the employee review website Glassdoor.com, we calculate our measure of organizational cultural strength using topic …

Nutritional Quality Of Four Novel Porridge Products Blended With Edible Cricket (Scapsipedus Icipe) Meal For Food, Nelly C. Maiyo, Fathiya M. Khamis, Michael W. Okoth, George O. Abong, Sevgan Subramanian, James P. Egonyu, Cheseto Xavier, Sunday Ekesi, Evanson R. Omuse, Dorothy Nakimbugwe, Geoffrey Ssepuuya, Changeh J. Ghemoh, Chrysantus M. Tanga

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Currently, no data exist on the utilization of the newly described cricket species (Scapsipedus icipe) meal as additive in food products, though they have high protein (57%) with 88% total digestibility as well as a variety of essential amino acids. This article presents the first report on the effects of processing techniques and the inclusion of cricket meal (CM) on the nutrient and antinutrient properties of four porridge products compared to a popularly consumed commercial porridge flour (CPF). Porridge enriched with CM had significantly higher protein (2-folds), crude fat (3.4–4-folds), and energy (1.1–1.2-folds) levels than the CPF. Fermented cereal porridge …

Geographic Dispersion Of Invasive Crop Pests: The Role Of Basal, Plastic Climate Stress Tolerance And Other Complementary Traits In The Tropics, Casper Nyamukondiwa, Honest Machekano, Frank Chidawanyika, Reyard Mutamiswa, Gang Ma, Chu Sen Ma

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Global pest invasions have significantly increased in recent years. These invasions together with climate warming directly impact agriculture. Tropical climates feature extreme weather events, including high temperatures and seasonal droughts. Thus, successful invasive pests in tropics have to adapt to these extreme climate features. The intrinsic factors relevant to tropical invasion of insects have been explored in many studies, but the knowledge is rather dispersed in contemporary literature. Here, we reviewed the potential biophysical characters of successful invasive pests’ adaption to tropical environments including [1] inherent high basal stress tolerance and advanced life-history performances [2], phenotypic plasticity [3], rapid evolution …

Metformin Bicarbonate-Mediated Efficient Rnai For Precise Targeting Of Tp53 Deficiency In Colon And Rectal Cancers, Jiangsheng Xu, Yunhua Liu, Sheng Liu, Wenquan Ou, Alisa White, Samantha Stewart, Katherine H R Tkaczuk, Lee M Ellis, Jun Wan, Xiongbin Lu, Xiaoming He

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Colon and rectal cancers are the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in the United States and effective targeted therapies are in need for treating them. Our genomic analyses show hemizygous deletion of TP53, an important tumor suppressor gene, is highly frequent in both cancers, and the 5-year survival of patients with the more prevalent colon cancer is significantly reduced in the patients with the cancer harboring such deletion, although such reduction is not observed for rectal cancer. Unfortunately, direct targeting TP53 has been unsuccessful for cancer therapy. Interestingly, POLR2A, a gene essential for cell survival and proliferation, is …

Predictive Radiation Oncology - A New Nci-Doe Scientific Space And Community, Jeffrey C Buchsbaum, David A Jaffray, Demba Ba, Lynn L Borkon, Christine Chalk, Caroline Chung, Matthew A Coleman, C Norman Coleman, Maximilian Diehn, Kelvin K Droegemeier, Heiko Enderling, Michael G Espey, Emily J Greenspan, Christopher M Hartshorn, Thuc Hoang, H Timothy Hsiao, Cynthia Keppel, Nathan W Moore, Fred Prior, Eric A Stahlberg, Georgia Tourassi, Karen E Willcox

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

With a widely attended virtual kickoff event on January 29, 2021, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Department of Energy (DOE) launched a series of 4 interactive, interdisciplinary workshops-and a final concluding "World Café" on March 29, 2021-focused on advancing computational approaches for predictive oncology in the clinical and research domains of radiation oncology. These events reflect 3,870 human hours of virtual engagement with representation from 8 DOE national laboratories and the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNL), 4 research institutes, 5 cancer centers, 17 medical schools and teaching hospitals, 5 companies, 5 federal agencies, 3 research centers, …

Trends In Acromioplasty Utilization During Arthroscopic Rotator Cuff Repair: An Epidemiological Study Of 139,586 Patients, Taylor J Willenbring, Marijke J Devos, Ryan J Warth, James M Gregory

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

INTRODUCTION: Acromioplasty remains very common during rotator cuff repair (RCR) despite limited evidence of clinical efficacy. This study observed the incidence of acromioplasty from 2010 to 2018 in Texas using a publicly available database.

METHODS: A total of 139,586 records were analyzed from the Texas Healthcare Information Collection database ranging from 2010 to 2018. These cases were divided into those with and without acromioplasty (N = 107,427 and N = 32,159, respectively). Acromioplasty use was standardized as the number of acromioplasties per RCR (acromioplasty rate). Two subgroup analyses were conducted: surgical institution type and payor status.

RESULTS: In 2010, acromioplasty …

Friends Of The Tmc Library Event Featuring Dr. Hotez, Rebecca Denkeler

TMC Library Newsletter (2015-)

The Friends of the Texas Medical Center Library present a virtual Book & Author Event featuring Dr. Peter J. Hotez on April 29, 2022, at 6:30pm. Each ticket includes one copy of Preventing the Next Pandemic (with signed bookplate) and one link to the zoom event.

Data Management Report April 2022, Tennessee. Department Of Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities

Compliance & System Data/Reports

This monthly report provides data on various aspects of the department's activities and programs.

How Important Are Accommodations? Examining The Retention Of Students With Specific Learning Disabilities In Higher Education, Donna Stanic

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Students with disabilities are entering higher education at higher rates than ever before. However, the retention rates of these students are disproportionately low compared to peers without disabilities. More so, students with learning disabilities are less likely to be retained compared to those with other types of disabilities. This study sought to examine the factors that influence first to second year retention of students with disabilities, specifically those with learning disabilities. Among these factors, the study placed a specific focus on the use of accommodations. Utilizing data from the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS:09), descriptive and inferential analyses were conducted …

Impact Of Net Houses On The Natural Regulation Of The Populations Of Trialeurodes Vaporariorum (Homoptera: Aleyrodidae) And Tuta Absoluta (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), Two Major Tomato Pests In Kenya, Anaïs Chailleux, Junitor Chepkemoi, Julien M. Haran, Laure Benoit, Robert Copeland, Emilie Deletre

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

The abandonment of insecticide treatments to achieve sustainable crop production calls for a combination of methods to obtain satisfactory pest control. To this end, net houses and biological control are two promising methods, though we suspected that most natural enemies are blocked outside the net houses. In Kenya, tomato crops are particularly threatened by Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Westwood 1856) and Tuta absoluta (Meyrick, 1917) that are targets of most insecticide treatments in this country. We investigated in an on-farm experiment (i) the abundances of T. vaporariorum and T. absoluta in open fields and in net houses, (ii) the diversity of arthropod …

Measuring And Modelling Crop Yield Losses Due To Invasive Insect Pests Under Climate Change, Henri Ez Tonnang, Bonoukpoè M. Sokame, Elfatih M. Abdel-Rahman, Thomas Dubois

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Climate change and agriculture are strongly correlated, and the fast pace of climate change will have impacts on agroecosystems and crop productivity. This review summarizes potential impacts of rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations on insect pest-crop interactions and provides two-way approaches for integrating these impacts into crop models for sustainable pest management strategies designing. Rising temperatures and CO2 levels affect insect physiology, accelerate their metabolism and increase their consumption, ultimately increasing population densities, which result in greater crop injury and damage, and yield loss. Whereas these direct effects are empirically demonstrated for temperature rises, they are less straightforward for …

Organic Maize And Bean Farming Enhances Free-Living Nematode Dynamics In Sub-Saharan Africa, Janet G. Atandi, Noah Adamtey, Agnes W. Kiriga, Edward N. Karanja, Martha W. Musyoka, Felix M. Matheri, Chrysantus M. Tanga, Danny L. Coyne, Komi K.M. Fiaboe, David Bautze, Solveig Haukeland

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Despite their important ecological roles for soil health and soil fertility, free-living nematodes (FLN) have received relatively limited research attention. The present study evaluated the community structure and diversity of FLN in a field setting. The experiments were conducted in on-farm and on-station field plots sown to maize (Zea mays) and beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) under four cropping practices. These farming systems included organic (compost and biopesticide use), conventional (synthetic fertilizer and pesticide applications), farmer practice (organic and synthetic amendments) and a control (non-amended plots). Nineteen genera of free living nematodes, belonging to bacterivores, fungivores, omnivores and predators were recorded. Among …

Closing Ceremony- 2022, St. Mary's University

Schedules - 2022

No abstract provided.

Virtual Meetings During Covid-19 Pandemic: Is It Time To Say Goodbye To Physical Meetings?, Maseeh Uz Zaman, Nosheen Fatima

Department of Radiology

Abstract are not provided by the author/publisher

Gimme Shelter: Amending Fema's Enabling Legislation To Permit Citizen Suits For Failures In Disaster Recovery Efforts, Zachary R.M. Outzen

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Note argues that democratizing the disaster relief process through enabling citizen suits against FEMA to timely deliver housing relief assistance is one potential solution to the immense problem at hand. This Note provides an overview of FEMA’s obligations to survivors of natural disasters under both federal law and evolving interpretations of binding international law. This Note asserts that FEMA’s repeated failure to deliver necessary disaster relief aid to these survivors constitutes violations of these obligations. This Note will then assert that the issue underlying these failures (i.e., flawed administrative and bureaucratic processes) is analogous to similar failures by environmental …