Digital Commons Network^™

Adaptive Urban Design For Delta Cities: Strategies For Resilience In The Face Of Climate Change, Tuka El Ghazaly

COP30

No abstract provided.

Breaking The Cycle: Integrating Education Into Loss And Damage Finance – The Case Of Honduras, Cecilia Caviglioli

COP30

No abstract provided.

Subtropical Marine Cloud Brightening Suppresses The El Niño–Southern Oscillation, C. Xing, S. Stevenson, J. Fasullo, C. Harrison, C. Chen, J. Wan, J. Coupe, C. Pfleger

Faculty Publications

Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and marine cloud brightening (MCB) are two proposed methods of compensating for greenhouse gas-induced warming by reflecting incoming solar radiation. However, their effects on the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a critical mode of climate variability, are poorly understood. Here we use ensembles of climate model simulations to show that deploying MCB in the subtropical eastern Pacific dramatically reduces ENSO amplitude by approximately 61%, while SAI has a negligible impact. MCB increases cloud albedo, which cools the subtropical eastern Pacific and triggers a loss of moist static energy. This cooling promotes atmospheric subsidence, dries the tropical Pacific, …

Rate Of Sea-Level Rise And Sediment Characteristics Modulate Deltaic River-Tide Interactions, Peter Bacopoulos, Celalettin E. Ozdemir, Matthew Hiatt

Faculty Publications

Due to sea-level rise, small river-dominated deltas (< 100 km²) are expected to become more exposed to tidal influences in the future. However, there remains a knowledge gap in the impending hydrodynamics of such deltas, particularly with the interactions between river and tidal flows. In addition to sea-level rise, river-tide interactions in these deltas depend on their morphology, which is influenced by the sand proportion in the particulate matter delivered by rivers. This study investigates river-tide interactions predicted for small deltas formed by different sand-to-mud ratios under various sea-level rise scenarios. Delta morphologies were generated using reduced-order complexity model (DeltaRCM), …

Opportunities Lost: The Hidden Cost Of Public Education In Pennsylvania K–12 Schools, Center For Racial And Economic Justice

Center for Racial and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Faq: Remote Work Racial Discrimination, Center For Racial And Economic Justice

Center for Racial and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Factors Associated With Postpartum Depression Among Women Attending Postnatal Clinics In A Tertiary Care Hospital In Nairobi, Kenya, Cecilia Muthoni Njoga

Master of Medicine in Family Medicine

Background 

Postpartum depression (PPD) is a major mental health disorder affecting women during the postpartum period with a global prevalence of up to 17.22%. This prevalence has been shown to be higher in low and middle-income countries. In Kenya, about a fifth of women are affected. PPD can lead to poor infant growth and interference with maternal-child bonding. Additionally, women with PPD experience a lower quality of life and their children have an increased risk of developing and psychotic disorders later in life. Understanding the factors associated with PPD is crucial for early diagnosis and intervention. The study aimed to …

Factors Informing Referral Of Adult Patients To Palliative Care Services In A Tertiary Facility In Kenya: Physicians' Perspective, Donnah A. Opiyo

Master of Medicine in Family Medicine

Background The growing burden of chronic diseases underscores the urgent need for palliative care integration into healthcare systems worldwide. Despite its benefits, palliative care remains underutilized due to various barriers, including health system limitations, institutional challenges, infrastructure gaps, and individual provider factors. However, limited research has explored the specific factors influencing physicians' decisions to refer patients to palliative care. This study sought to fill that gap by examining the key determinants shaping referral practices in a tertiary facility in Kenya.

Design and Methods This exploratory qualitative study examined 22 physician specialists from five departments at Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi. …

Enhancing Postpartum Depression Screening Rates: An Educational Intervention For Primary Care Pediatric Providers: A Quality Improvement Project, Jasmine Shaterra Jones

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

This quality improvement (QI) project sought to increase postpartum depression (PPD) screening rates at a single pediatric primary care practice setting by implementing an educational intervention for pediatric providers. Postpartum depression is a common and debilitating mental health condition affecting many mothers worldwide. Postpartum depression impacts many women in the United States and affects all ethnicities, although rates may vary based on demographic and socioeconomic factors. Despite the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendations for maternal PPD screening at one, two, four, and six months, well-child visits, national screening rates remain low, with a large number of cases undiagnosed. The current …

Evaluation Of A Nurse Practitioner-Led Preoptimization Care Management Program’S Impact On Patient Satisfaction For Total Hip And Knee Arthroplasty, Bryttany Chambers

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

This evaluation project aimed to assess whether the nurse practitioner-led preoptimization care management program can increase patient satisfaction by improving the quality metrics, such as same-day ambulation post-surgery, discharge to home, and compliance in preoperative education. The evaluation retroactively reviewed 46 charts of primary total knee and hip arthroplasty patients, male (38%) and female (62%), aged 43 to 84. Using Fisher’s exact test to examine the Net Promoter Scores (NPS) for six months of the PCM program, there was no significant increase in patient satisfaction scores, despite PCM patients averaging 89% compared to non-PCM patients at 83%, based on an …

Educating Nurse Practitioners On Music-Based Interventions: An Evidence-Based Project, La’Keshia Henderson

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Background: Arts-based interventions (ABIs) harness the transformative power of art to enhance processes or situations, particularly those related to physiological, emotional, and psychological well-being. There are three types of arts-based interventions: visual, literary, and performing arts. Among these, music therapy, a form of performing arts intervention, has gained recognition as an effective approach for addressing mental health challenges. Music therapy has shown promise in reducing anxiety symptoms, offering a non-invasive and accessible form of support within ABI strategies. Purpose: This project assessed changes in nurse practitioners' knowledge, attitudes, and practices, as well as their intentions to utilize music-based interventions in …

Developing A Novel Patient-Centered Definition Of Severe Maternal Morbidity, Adina R. Kern-Goldberger

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Defining, preventing, and evaluating severe maternal morbidity (SMM) has become an important component of obstetric care delivery, but existing frameworks for SMM do not account for how patients perceive and experience morbidity. Objective: This study evaluated patient values and perceptions related to maternal pregnancy complications with the goal of devising a patient-centered maternal morbidity composite. Study Design: This 2-part sequential qualitative to quantitative mixed-methods study first involved semi-structured interviews of postpartum patients recruited from an urban, academic hospital prior to discharge from the delivery admission with purposive sampling by race and mode of delivery. Qualitative data around patient-perceived adverse …

Evaluating Demand-Responsive Scheduling In Public Transportation Service Offerings To Retirement Communities, Steven D. Silver

Mineta Transportation Institute

This project addresses alternatives to fixed schedule local transportation service offerings to members of retirement communities. The project design measures the effects of the contrast between fixed schedule (Fixed) service and demand-responsive services (DRT) in retirement communities in Santa Clara County that are closely matched in demographic profiles and geographic location. The research team investigates the effects of scheduling alternatives in a diary format with a within-person variable of four recent trips. The measure of public transportation usage under the Fixed schedule and DRT service offerings is supplemented by a measure of subjective well-being (STS) for each trip—in other words, …

Evaluation Of Prerequisite Discrimination Skills For Obtaining Assent From Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities: A Translational Study, Jessica J. Helen Detrick

Dissertations

Assent can be defined as an individual’s affirmative agreement to participate and should be obtained by those who cannot consent (i.e., children and adults deemed as “incapable”) when conducting research or providing services. Federal policies recommend considering age, maturity, and psychological state to determine if a participant can assent. Beyond these considerations, there is little guidance. However, practitioners and researchers still have an ethical obligation to obtain assent. Morris and colleagues (2021) conducted a literature review of assent procedures documented within behavior-analytic journals and found few studies. Of the procedures identified, many would likely be difficult to implement with participants …

Immune Modulation Affects Olfactory Glomerular Recovery In Zebrafish, Bonnie E. Ebendick

Dissertations

Adult zebrafish regenerate neurons throughout their lifetime and exhibit rapid recovery from neuronal damage with support from their immune system, making them an excellent model for studying neuroinflammation and brain repair mechanisms. When olfactory sensory neurons are lesioned, their cell death stimulates the immune system by activating microglia and other immune cells in the olfactory bulb, initiating tissue repair and neuronal replacement. This dissertation investigates how the immune system influences recovery from neuronal damage, testing the hypothesis that immune perturbation in zebrafish alters neural recovery.

To investigate the link between immune function and neuronal regeneration, zebrafish received a unilateral lesion …

Mexican Americans’ Attitudes Toward Mexican Immigrants In The United States, Sandra Daisy Espinoza Montes

Dissertations

The United States (U.S.) has often been described as a nation of immigrants. Among the 40 million immigrants in the U.S., Mexican-descent individuals comprise 25% of the overall immigrant population, positioning them as the largest immigrant group in the country. Additionally, Mexican Americans constitute 63% of the Latinx population, making them the largest minoritized ethnic group in the U.S. Considering that Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans have a significant presence in the country, scholars have called for additional research on attitudes towards Mexican immigrants (Byrne & Dixon, 2016; Flores et al., 2022). However, much of the existing literature on attitudes …

The Development Of High Throughput Assays For Identification And Evaluation Of Small Molecule Modulators Of The Pri-Microrna-18a—Hnrnp A1 Interaction, Emile N. Van Meter

Dissertations

Therapeutics targeting RNA is a rapidly growing field. While only 1.5% of the human genome encodes genes for protein, over 70% o=f the human genome contains the genes for noncoding RNAs that regulate protein expression and function. Expanding the paradigm of small molecule drug discovery from traditional protein targets to include RNA would broaden the therapeutic landscape and provide new methods to modulate previously undruggable targets. miRNAs (miRs) have been found to be aberrantly expressed in many disease states, including neurodegenerative diseases and cancers making them promising therapeutic targets. The production of functional, mature miRs requires multiple proteins in a …

Measurements And First Principles Calculations On The Non-Centrosymmetric Superconductor Aupb3, Meena Shrestha

Dissertations

AuPb₃ is a non-centrosymmetric superconductor that crystallizes in a tetragonal structure and undergoes a superconducting transition at 4.4 K. Non-centrosymmetric superconductors that lack inversion symmetry are predicted to have an admixture of spinsinglet and spin-triplet symmetry induced by strong antisymmetric spin-orbit coupling (ASOC).

In this work, we investigated the normal and superconducting properties of AuPb₃. We also carried out the Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations to study the strength of ASOC and its impact on vibrational and electronic properties. A high-quality polycrystalline sample of AuPb₃ was grown and characterized by powder x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, …

Understanding Residential Development In A High-Quality Transit Area (Hqta): An Application Of Deep Learning, Dohyung Kim

Mineta Transportation Institute

Considerable research addresses the dynamics between land use and public transportation, including the impacts of transit systems on urban development and vice versa. However, this research has underestimated the heterogeneity of contributing factors to urban developments near transit by property type: vacant lot and occupied property. That is, what drives development in vacant lots differs from what drives development in already-occupied property. A lack of comprehensive data that differentiates development records based on the type of property is one explanation for this research gap. This project fills this research gap by employing a deep learning algorithm and separately examining the …

Mae Enewsbrief Apr- June 2025, Department Of Mechanical And Aerospace Engineering, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Co-Creating Play:Utilizing Comics To Potentialize Participatory Self-Determination In Marginilized Young Adults, Marlin Mcknight

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Storytelling has long served as a vital mechanism for preserving cultural heritage, transmitting values, and fostering intergenerational connection (Moeshlin, 2024). Despite this significance, graphic narratives such as comics and graphic novels have been historically marginalized—dismissed as trivial “children’s media” or reduced to entertainment rather than recognized as culturally resonant tools (McCloud, 1993). This marginalization intensified as comics evolved to depict adult themes and, at times, harmful stereotypes, triggering social backlash that stigmatized their utility for younger audiences (Segran, 2020). Consequently, scholarly exploration of comics’ therapeutic potential has stagnated, hindered by the medium’s tumultuous history. This study bridges this gap by …

Engineered Interfaces For Enhanced Transient Liquid Phase Bonding In Electronics Assembly, John Russell Harris

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Growing applications in transportation make power density a key optimization target in the power electronics industry. More power in a shrinking environment leads to high heat flux and junction temperatures that damage silicon-based switching devices. Temperatures approaching 175℃ can result in false triggering of the device’s activated state, resulting in short circuits. Developing wide bandgap semi-conductors, such as gallium nitride and silicon carbide, are less susceptible to this complication as the energy from elevated temperature is a smaller fraction of what would be required to trigger the device. These devices are projected to function reliably in environments of up to …

Photochemical Fabrication And Tribological Evaluation Of Hexagonal Grooves With Corner Dimples On Cast Iron Surfaces, Steven Sonntag

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The traditional honing process used to texture cylinder liners in internal combustion engines has long been recognized as suboptimal, as evidenced by the need for a break-in period before achieving peak performance. Although laser-based methods can produce micro-scale features with high precision, they are often cost-prohibitive and difficult to scale for large or complex components. This study explores photochemical machining (PCM) as a low-cost, scalable alternative for fabricating high-resolution surface textures—specifically, hexagonal grooves with corner dimples—on gray cast iron. The resulting textures exhibit uniform groove widths (~13 μm) and varied depths, demonstrating PCM’s capability to create high-resolution patterns with sub-micron …

High-Resolution Energy Efficient Selective Laser Sintering Of Copper Nanoparticles, Bo Shen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Copper (Cu) is widely utilized in electronics and photonics applications due to its outstanding electrical and thermal conductivity. With increasing demand for miniaturization and higher precision in modern manufacturing, traditional selective laser sintering (SLS) techniques designed primarily for high-throughput production are becoming insufficient. These conventional methods struggle to deliver the resolution required for micro-scale fabrication and often cause thermal damage to sensitive substrates. Therefore, there is a growing necessity to develop compact and high-resolution laser sintering systems capable of precise microfabrication with minimal thermal influence. This study addresses this challenge by investigating nanosecond pulsed laser sintering as a method to …

M Book, 2025-2026, University Of Mississippi

M Book

No abstract provided.

Copyright In Characters: A Proposal For Reform, Michael W. Carroll

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

The doctrine of character copyright is an eccentricity in copyright law that should either be abandoned or substantially reformed. Originally limited to literary characters, this doctrine decomposes a narrative work in order to recognize characters as works of authorship independent of the narrative works from which they are derived. Claimants generally seek independent protection for characters for three, sometimes overlapping, reasons: (1) to repackage what would otherwise be a weak claim of substantial similarity if comparison were to be made with the work(s) from which the character has sprung; (2) to overcome obstacles posed by prior licensing decisions that have …

Interview With Former Chairman Of Cardiology E. Berry Hey, Jr. Md, Caitlin Moss

Historic Narratives

No abstract provided.

It’S A Lightboard … And A Glassboard!, Craig Looney

Physics Faculty Publications

In this poster I present an innovative lightboard-glassboard design concept and prototype. The device, when not in use as a lightboard, is positioned against a wall in a low-profile configuration and used as an illuminable office glassboard. For video production, the device – supported and guided by a robust anti-tip rail system – is safely rolled away from the wall and used as a lightboard. This device has several advantages over traditional mobile lightboard designs including ease and reliability of setup, elimination of storage and transport issues, usability in modest-sized offices, and functionality as an illuminable glassboard when not in …

Tremblings, August 2025, Western Aspen Alliance

Tremblings

Small-stand Challenges in the Northern Rockies

Brytten Steed, PhD, USFS Forest Entomologist (retired) Forest Health Protection - Missoula Field Office

Aspen in the Northern Rocky Mountains exist more often as small, scattered patches or “stringers” than the iconic landscapes of aspen found elsewhere. Like early-season fireflies, they dot the landscape where moisture is present, ringing potholes, lining streams, or clinging to topographies rich in subsurface moisture. Their rarity belies their importance to wildlife, livestock, fire movement, and humans. Aspen are preferred browse for large herbivores, a hotspot for birds, and home to a diversity of plants. People, too, gravitate …

Sustainable Master Planned Gateway Communities: The Kamas Valley Case, Zachary Sannar

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

Gateway communities (towns and cities located near public lands and natural amenities) are experiencing significant and often disruptive change as they transition from economies historically rooted in natural resource extraction to those increasingly driven by tourism and amenity-based migration (Howe et al., 1997; Stoker et al., 2020).

In the Intermountain West, places like Jackson, Wyoming; Springdale, Utah; and West Yellowstone, Montana exemplify this trend, and Kamas Valley is emerging as part of this broader pattern.

Although these communities share a deep cultural and economic connection to their landscapes, they now face mounting pressures from population growth, changing land uses, and …