Digital Commons Network^™

Ellen White And Environmental Ethics, Joann Davidson

Ellen White and Current Issues Symposium

No abstract provided.

Purification Of Water By Plant Extracts And Green Biosynthesized Agnp Of Syzygium Aromaticum, Seham Abdel-Shafi, Mostafa I. Abdelglil, Saida Amer, Sobhy El Sawy Elsilk, Khaled Ali, Mohamed F Ghaly

Al-Farahidi Biomedical Journal

The drinking water quality must meet both the WHO guidelines and Egyptian standards. This ensures public health and the suitability of water for different uses. The purification of water by biosynthesized silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) Syzygium aromaticum (Clove) is an eco-friendly approach where the clove extract acts as a reducing and stabilizing agent to create AgNPs through a “green synthesis” method. The AgNPs, when combined with the extract, show antimicrobial activities and kill the pathogenic bacteria in water. The water pollution include Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas, Salmonella, Acinetobacter, Flavobacterium, Clostridium, Vibrio and E. coli. In vitro experiments showed inhibition of Staphylococcus spp. …

Improving Road Safety Through Multimodal Deep Learning For Driver Drowsiness Detection, Hadel A. Hussain, Mohammed A. Subhi, Ahmed S. Al Tmeme, Ahmed D. Radhi, Marwan Ali Albahar

Iraqi Journal for Computer Science and Mathematics

One of the most common causes of road accidents globally is driver drowsiness and it needs solutions that are reliable and can be applicable in numerous real-life situations. We present this paper with the aim of developing a deep-learning system that is capable of reliably detecting drowsiness in diverse and varied conditions across different drivers, environments, and sensor types. Our system is known as Multimodal Attention Network (MMAN), which combines information of eye and head movement, heart-rate and breathing pattern, and vehicle-dynamics signal. MMAN has a gradient-reversal layer that enables the layer to be domain-adaptive such that it does not …

Multitaskvenationnet: A Multi-Task Deep Neural Network With Strip Pooling And Hybrid Upsampling For Leaf Vein Segmentation, Ishak Ariawan, Ahmad Ashari, Moh. Edi Wibowo

Iraqi Journal for Computer Science and Mathematics

Leaf vein segmentation is a critical task in plant phenotyping and species classification, yet it remains challenging due to the hierarchical, curvilinear nature of veins and interference from complex backgrounds. Existing methods face three key limitations. First, they lack directional context modeling, leading to blurred vein boundaries and the omission of fine venation. Second, they fail to effectively capture global dependencies, limiting semantic coherence across spatial regions. Third, they do not incorporate explicit mechanisms for detecting vein discontinuities, which is essential for complete topological understanding. To address these challenges, we propose MultiTaskVenationNet (MTV-Net), a multi-task deep segmentation framework that integrates …

Model-Based Vision System For Evaluation And Improvement Of Gaits In Legged Locomotion, Kenneth P. Clark, Christopher R. Meng, Laurence J. Ryan

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure relates to the evaluation and improvement of gaits in legged locomotion of humans, animals, and robots by superimposing a biomechanical figure selected from a spectrum of models onto the recorded motion of a test subject. For gait evaluation, a model is selected from a database to closely match the observed gait and existing performance parameters are obtained. For gait improvement, an incrementally superior model is selected from the database to provide enhanced performance goals. This Model Vision Evaluation (MoVE) system thus includes spectrums of biomechanical models over a range of inferior to superior levels of skill and performance …

Documenting Hiv/Aids Through Rural Voices: Oral Histories As Sites Of Mutual Aid, Siena Kuehn

Feminist & Queer Praxis

This essay is part of the WGSS Capstone class and focuses on utilizing oral histories of HIV/AIDS in Winona as a method of mutual aid. This work includes two contributions to the HIV/AIDS Winona Oral History Project, the interviews with Joan Schwinghammer and Dr. Anne Vande Berg. This research was done in conjunction with Dr. Mary Jo Klinker.

Book Of Abstracts, Seton Hall University

2025 Augustine Undergraduate Research Symposium

No abstract provided.

The Under-Prosecution Of White-Collar Crime, Joseph Whalen

Honors Program

White-collar crime comprises nonviolent, financially motivated offenses by individuals and corporate entities. The social costs are immense, yet the prosecution of such crimes is comparatively small compared to other forms of non-violent crime, often resolving with opaque settlements rather than prosecution. This study examines why under-prosecution is so prevalent in white-collar crime, how it undermines democratic trust, and what reforms could be implemented to improve accountability. Under-prosecution will be operationalized through a mixed-methods design, accounting for the most observable proxies. First, the share of filings involving white-collar offenses; second, the prevalence of deferred or non-prosecution agreements (hereinafter referred to as …

Performance Of Adaptive Wingtips On A Tailless Supersonic Business Jet, Khushi Piparava

2025 Fall Honors Capstones Projects - Archive

The growing interest in supersonic business travel has renewed focus on efficient, low-drag configurations that can achieve high performance while maintaining stability and structural integrity. This research investigates the aerodynamic and structural implications of adaptive folding wingtips on a tailless supersonic business jet (SBJ) concept designed under the SkyBreaker senior design program. Using a conceptual aerodynamic model based on linearized supersonic theory, the Polhamus leading-edge suction analogy, and an empirical compression-lift correlation, the study evaluates how varying wingtip droop angles influence lift, drag, lift-to-drag ratio (L/D), and static stability. The analysis was performed parametrically in MATLAB, using geometry inputs derived …

Alcira Calona-Escobar V. Attorney General United States Of America

2025 Decisions

Agency

Bayesian Alignment Prior To Connectionist Temporal Classification Loss, Lawry Sorenson

Theses and Dissertations

We propose revisions of Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) loss and forced alignment to support longer input sequences. CTC loss is normally used for training in speech and handwriting recognition tasks when the labels are not fully aligned with the data, while forced alignment is a downstream task that finds the optimal path for segmentation purposes. The current implementations consider all possible alignments between the input and label, which grows exponentially with the size of the input. We show that in cases when silence is removed and speaking rate is consistent, the true alignment is a mostly straight line across time …

Commutative Schur Rings Over Characteristic 2 Special Orthogonal Groups, Andrew Haviland

Theses and Dissertations

We study commutative Schur rings over the special orthogonal groups $\mathrm{SO}^{\pm}(n,2)$ that contain the class $\mathcal{C}$ of transvections. We show that the partition of $\mathcal{C}$ determined by a commutative Schur ring has either one or two parts. We classify all remaining partitions of $\mathcal{C}$ that could be determined by a commutative Schur ring.

From Cafes To Competitiveness: The Influence Of Amenities On Office Values And Suburban Economic Development In Portland, Or, Jihye Kang

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation examines the spatial and economic implications of urban amenities in the formation of suburban office markets in the post-pandemic period. The research applies principles from agglomeration theory, spatial econometrics, and urban planning to analyze the statistical relationships between amenity distribution, rent formation, and location behavior across central and non-central submarkets.

The research consists of three integrated papers focused on the Portland–Vancouver–Hillsboro, OR–WA Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). The first paper employs spatial econometric modeling, specifically a Spatial Autoregressive Model with Autoregressive Disturbances (SARAR), to examine the relationship between proximity to cafés and office rent levels in Portland’s central business …

Interview With Orca Award Winner John J. Janovy, Jr., Unl Biological Sciences; Parasitologist And Author, Mark Griep, John J. Janovy Jr.

UNL ORCA Interview Series

Professor John Janovy, Jr., was awarded the ORCA in 1998. John was born in Louisiana, but his family moved to Oklahoma, where he grew up in Tulsa and then Oklahoma City. Something in his youth must have sparked an interest in science because he earned three degrees from the University of Oklahoma in Norman: a bachelor of science in math in 1959, a master of science in zoology in 1962, and doctoral degree in zoology in 1965. Next, he ventured 1400 miles east to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he did post-doctoral work for about a year. …

Fear The Feminine! Willa Cather’S O Pioneers, Edith Wharton’S The Glimpses Of The Moon, And The Rejection Of Femininity In The Canon Formation Of Realist And Naturalist Writing, Anna Connor

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Online Decision Mamba, Trenton W. Ruf

Dissertations and Theses

Online in-context reinforcement learning enhances offline-trained policies through online fine-tuning. We introduce Online Decision Mamba (ODM), an architecture that replaces the attention mechanism in Online Decision Transformers (ODT) with the Mamba module to improve long-context sequence modeling and overall RL performance. We performed in-depth evaluations on MuJoCo (OpenAI Gym) and Atari benchmarks, comparing ODM against state-of-the-art offline and online baselines—including Decision Mamba (DM) and ODT. Our results show that ODM achieves competitive or superior performance, with particularly robust gains when initial datasets lack expert demonstrations. In the Qbert Atari environment, ODM shows context-length sensitivity similar to offline DM; however, we …

December 9, 2025, Pacific Global

Pacific Global Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Empowering Digital Fluency: A Course-Based Strategy For Practical Ai Tool Integration In Higher Education, Melissa J. Brooks

Teaching Repository of AI-Infused Learning

This course was designed to introduce students to a range of AI tools while enabling hands-on experience in their practical application. Students were required to explore multiple AI tools across domains such as content generation, data visualization, video production, note-taking, and accessibility. The course culminated in a final project where students selected and applied an AI tool (or set of tools) to create a resume, a cover letter, and a presentation about themselves and how they anticipate the use of AI in their chosen Industry. Tools recommended were Jenni.AI, ChatGPT, Slide bean, Canva, Grammarly, Gamma, Synthesia.AI, and Perplexity, Otter.AI. One …

From Myths To Mastery: A Progressive Ai Literacy Course Using The Clear Framework And Authentic Problem-Solving, Laura J. Mcneill, Sierra Cantrell

Teaching Repository of AI-Infused Learning

"Digital Minds: Your AI Adventure Begins" employs a 14-week progressive scaffolding approach that transforms freshman students from passive AI consumers into critical collaborators through weekly hands-on experiments with tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Adobe Firefly. Each week features structured "AI Questions" that connect course concepts to students' lived experiences, combined with practical activities like creating Gemini GEMS projects that encourage students to investigate AI myths and cross-reference external sources in real-time. The course culminates in collaborative AI-human projects addressing real community problems, with ongoing peer evaluation and reflection that emphasizes critical thinking and ethical reasoning over technical outputs.

Implementing Dataops: A Scalable Framework For Modern Data Warehousing, Dmytro Valiaiev

Theses and Dissertations

DataOps has been coined as a novel term that emerged as a synthesis of data management practices with software engineering concepts, such as DevOps and Agile, with the goal of improving data quality and governance in enterprises. The proliferation of scratch table use and transformation tools, such as dbt, has led to an exponential increase in the number of data models, which complicates standardization efforts and increases maintenance overhead. Although the market is saturated with various flavors of text-to-SQL engines that promote increased productivity and self-service use in organizations, there are limited tools available to optimize individual queries, enforce consistency, …

Liahona Project Data Set 3 Up To June, 2021, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Spiritual Proficiency

This document is a collection of highlights extracted from more than 1000 articles from the Japanese online Liahona magazines, spanning from the beginning of 2019 to June, 2021. Each article was individually checked to extract inspirational principles and highlights from personal experiences, serving as a resource to develop Spiritual Proficiency and build the foundation for Wits Psychology (With the Spirit Psychology). The document is 97 pages long.

Usa V. Frances Eddings

2025 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Ai And Racism: 6 Reasons Black People Need Digital Literacy, Brianna A. Baker

Publications and Research

Key Points

• AI often reflects racial bias in its training data, which can distort how Black people are represented.
• Psychological stress increases when digital tools misunderstand or misinterpret Black experiences.
• Digital literacy strengthens emotional wellbeing by helping users recognize and counter biased outputs.

How Does County Educational Composition Affect Mortality?, Heeyoung Lee, Tse-Chuan Yang

Population Health Research Brief Series

The gap in life expectancy between Americans with and without a bachelor's degree keeps growing. This brief summarizes findings from a study using data from the National Center for Health Statistics Multiple Cause of Death files and the American Community Survey on 3,122 U.S. counties from 2010-2022. The authors find that a county's educational makeup creates divergent mortality effects for residents. For every 1% increase in bachelor's degree holders in a county, mortality declines by 4.5% for degree holders but increases by 1.2% for those without degrees. This pattern holds across heart disease, cancer, and stroke. The findings suggest that …

Portable Skin Imaging Light-Box For Clinical Grade Skin Scans, Kayandra Lewis, Cayden Skidmore, Komi Atitsogbe Golo

Senior Design Project For Engineers

This project focuses on designing and developing a modular, portable skin-imaging light box to improve the consistency and accuracy of smartphone-based dermatological imaging. As AI-driven skin assessment tools grow in capability, a major limitation remains the variability in lighting, angle, and color fidelity in user-captured photos. To address this challenge, the team created a fold-flat, low-cost light box that attaches securely to a wide range of smartphones and provides uniform, high-CRI illumination suitable for clinical-grade analysis. Research into lighting technologies, human factors, smartphone specifications, and AI diagnostic tools guided the engineering decisions, ensuring the design aligned with real-world telemedicine and …

Consensus-Based Expert Recommendations For Diagnosis And Clinical Management Of Vanishing White Matter., Romy J. Van Voorst, Daphne H. Schoenmakers, Joshua L. Bonkowsky, Adeline Vanderver, Ingeborg Krägeloh-Mann, Geneviève Bernard, Enrico Bertini, Ali Fatemi, Paulo V. Sgobbi, Nicole I. Wolf, Samuel Groeschel, Davide Tonduti, Caroline Sevin, Jennifer L. Orthmann-Murphy, Ludger Schöls, Ettore Salsano, Bernard Brais, Nicole Jaffe, Kasper W. Ter Horst, Sabine E. Hannema, Katherine G. Hayes, Jochen Meyburg, Marc Van Heerde, Anne Marie Sbrocchi, Rosalina Van Spaendonk, Isabelle Thiffault, Geesje H. Hofsteenge, Carolina Sudmeier-Broek, Corrie Timmer, Donna Skwirut, Allyson Buck, Bret Hollberg, Ron Chapleau, Hanka Dekker, Susan G. Campbell, Truus E M Abbink, Prisca S. Leferink, Marjo S. Van Der Knaap

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Vanishing white matter (VWM) is a rare disorder, characterized by degeneration of CNS white matter, clinically often exacerbated by stressors such as fever and minor head trauma. VWM is caused by biallelic pathogenic variants in the EIF2B1-5 genes, causing reduced activity of eukaryotic initiation of translation factor 2B, resulting in dysregulation of the integrated stress response (ISR). New scientific insights and increased clinical trials in experimental therapies highlight the need for clinical guidelines to improve and standardize care for patients with VWM worldwide. Standardized care is important for therapy development, as it lessens clinical variability of trial participants at study …

Modeling Private Debt Using U.S. Consumer Expenditure Data, Stsiapan Dziamentsyeu

Honors Capstones

This project models private household debt among U.S. consumers using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) between 2013 and 2023. The analysis focuses on identifying how demographic and economic characteristics, such as income, housing expenditures, education, and occupation, relate to non-mortgage “other” loan balances. After initial model development produced poor residual behavior due to zero-inflation from imputed debt values, the analysis was refined to include only households reporting verifiable debt. Multiple modeling techniques, including AIC-based variable selection and Lasso regularization, were compared under a five-fold cross-validation framework. The Lasso model achieved superior predictive accuracy (RMSE = 1.55, MAE = …

Liahona Project Data Set 5 Up To 2025, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Spiritual Proficiency

This document is a collection of highlights extracted from more than 800 articles from the Japanese online Liahona magazines, spanning from the beginning of 2024 to the end of 2025. Each article was individually checked to extract inspirational principles and highlights from personal experiences, serving as a resource to develop Spiritual Proficiency and build the foundation for Wits Psychology (With the Spirit Psychology). The document is 61pages long.

The Association Between Loneliness And Mental Health In Underserved Communities, Ameemah Khan, Yu-Ping Chang

Biennial Convention (CONV)

Background: Loneliness is a distressing emotional state that arises when an individual's actual social relationships do not align with their desired social connections. As loneliness becomes increasingly prevalent among adults, its adverse effects on mental health have grown more evident. Research links loneliness to poor sleep quality, suicidal ideation, severe depressive symptoms, and heightened stress. These effects are particularly pronounced in underserved communities, where social determinants of health disproportionately impact African Americans, contributing to poorer health outcomes. However, limited research explores the relationship between loneliness, sleep, and depression specifically within African American populations.

Purpose: This study aims to determine whether …

The Patient Violence Framework, Laura Graham, Jennifer Bail

Biennial Convention (CONV)

Patient Violence against nurses is a widespread problem resulting in both emotional and physical injury to the nurse. Emergency Department (ED) nurses are at an increased risk due to the volume and variety of the patients they serve, and the general chaotic environment of the ED; however, little research has been done examining the characteristics of patients who offend and the physical environment of the ED where the event happened. The aim of this three-article dissertation was to develop a more thorough understanding of the personal attributes (endogenous) of the individual patient and external (exogenous) factors of the ED setting …