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Trans* Educators In Early Childhood Through Secondary (Pk-12) Schools: An Exhaustive Literature Review, Chris Cyan Divens

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This literature review provides documentation and analysis for 22 years of empirical, English-language research on trans* educators in early childhood through secondary (PK-12) education. A total of 87 publications from six different continents provide a basis for researchers and policymakers interested in better understanding this historically marginalized population. Findings include a diverse array of methodological and theoretical approaches as well as several meta-level findings concerning the varied circumstances of trans* educators. There is a need for additional research to address persistent gaps as well as for sweeping policy change and collective action to improve the unacceptable conditions of trans* educators.

Food Literacy Program Among Adults In A Primary Care Setting, Marie K. Williams

Student Scholarly Projects

Practice problem: The increase in preventable chronic diseases is associated with food illiteracy, which arises from a lack of understanding of nutritional value and dietary guidelines (Silva et al., 2023).

PICOT: (P) In adult primary care patients aged 30-75 years, (I) does the implementation of evidence-based food literacy program (C) compared to standard practice (O) improve food literacy (T) in eight weeks?

Evidence: Using a validated food literacy questionnaire effectively measures improvements in food literacy. Customized programs that fill knowledge gaps are essential for enhancing overall food literacy. Intervention: Customized educational tools were provided to participants based on their knowledge …

2025 July 24 - Academic Council Agenda And Minutes, Academic Council, East Tennessee State University

Academic Council Agenda and Minutes

No abstract provided.

For The Greater Good: Civil Commitment For Addiction Amid The Overdose Epidemic, Steven P. Meerschaert

Cleveland State Law Review

America is facing a reckoning born of its own duality. Our society is gradually embracing an increasingly permissive stance on recreational drug use, while at the same time we lament the human costs of addiction. What the media has dubbed the “opioid epidemic” has seen increases in drug addiction diagnoses and opioid-involved overdose deaths nearly every year since 1999. In a rush to designate guilty parties and to crown a “gold standard” for treatment options, we have focused on theoretically flawed approaches that fail to follow the science precisely. At the same time, we dismiss validated treatment modalities in their …

Improving Large Language Models’ Summarization Accuracy By Adding Highlights To Discharge Notes: Comparative Evaluation, Mahshad Koohi Habibi Dehkordi, Yehoshua Perl, Fadi P. Deek, Zhe He, Vipina K. Keloth, Hao Liu, Gai Elhanan, Andrew J. Einstein

School of Computing Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Background: The American Medical Association recommends that electronic health record (EHR) notes, often dense and written in nuanced language, be made readable for patients and laypeople, a practice we refer to as the simplification of discharge notes. Our approach to achieving the simplification of discharge notes involves a process of incremental simplification steps to achieve the ideal note. In this paper, we present the first step of this process. Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated considerable success in text summarization. Such LLM summaries represent the content of EHR notes in an easier-to-read language. However, LLM summaries can also introduce inaccuracies. …

From Surviving To Thriving: The Oxygen Mask Approach For Middle Management, Lydia Marque

Master's Projects and Capstones

Problem: Middle managers in healthcare experience high levels of stress, heavy workloads, and burnout. At a large medical center in Northern California, middle managers reported low perceptions of organizational support for well-being despite an abundance of available resources.

Context: Baseline data indicated a perceived support score of 6.5 out of 10 on the Employee Interest Survey and a People Pulse Culture of Health score of 60 for assistant nurse managers (ANMs), both below regional benchmarks. These findings suggested inadequate engagement with organizational well-being resources.

Interventions: A six-month performance improvement initiative, guided by the ADKAR change model and …

Union Employees’ Perceptions And Lived Experiences Of Organizational Culture And Job Satisfaction In Michigan Manufacturing Organizations, Angela Wantuck

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Manufacturing organizational cultures steeped in tradition, corporate loyalty, and paternalistic values have experienced a decrease in union employee engagement and organizational satisfaction. Manufacturing leaders are concerned with this decrease as a primary indicator of employee walkouts or union strikes, impeding the manufacturing process, and affecting market share, profitability, and local economies. The purpose of this qualitative hermeneutic phenomenology study was to explore the union employees’ perceptions and lived experiences of organizational culture and job satisfaction in Michigan manufacturing organizations. Shaped by Schein’s organizational culture theory, the research question queried the perceptions of the union-represented employees as a subculture in the …

Quantifying The Economic Burden Of Cancer In California Using Advanced Analytics, Terence Casey Kelley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Cancer imposes a significant and multifaceted economic burden on California’s health care system and communities. Despite extensive national data, California-specific cost analyses have been outdated and limited. This study quantified California’s cancer-care burden through a quantitative, cross-sectional design grounded in the cost-of-illness framework and human-capital theory. A retrospective modeling approach used 2015–2023 data from the California Cancer Registry, National Cancer Institute, National Program of Cancer Registries, and California’s all-payer claims database. California’s economic burden from cancer was estimated using a meta-analysis of national cost data, which was then applied to state-specific cancer incidence, prevalence, and mortality through a multicriteria decision …

You Better Werk: The Viability Of A Labor Union For The Cast Of Rupaul’S Drag Race, Brandon Stump

Cleveland State Law Review

Reality television cast members are poorly compensated, working under tremendously restrictive and controlling contracts. While actors and writers who are members of the Screen Actors Guild of America and the Screen Writers Guild of America have collectively bargained with studios for better wages, terms, and conditions of employment, contestants on reality television series have gone it alone – auditioning for a series and having no choice other than to accept the contract provided by the studios. In December 2024, at the end of the Biden administration, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint on behalf of the reality …

Wildfire And Water Security: Post-Fire Erosion And Sedimentation Threaten Utah's Reservoirs, Quinn Olpin, Kendall Becker, Scott Hotaling, Aish Chandrasekaran, Patrick Belmont

All Current Publications

As an arid state with limited water, Utah relies heavily on reservoir storage to maintain its water supply throughout the year. This vital water storage, however, is increasingly at risk due to contemporary wildfires. Wildfires pose a risk to water storage because after vegetation burns, erosion typically increases. Eroded soil can be carried by rivers and deposited into reservoirs where it accumulates as sediment, reduces water storage capacity, clogs dam outlets, and degrades water quality. Identifying which watersheds are most vital to maintaining Utah’s water supply, are most threatened by wildfires, and are most prone to high levels of post-fire …

Comparing Solutions To Reduce Inaccuracies Within Eyewitness Testimonies, Dequentin Augustine, Dr. Chandra V. Thornton

Cleveland State Law Review

Comparing Solutions to Reduce Inaccuracies within Eyewitness Testimonies informs readers about how inconsistencies within eyewitness statements have led to wrongful convictions by examining factors and statistics that lead to highlighting inaccuracies within eyewitness testimonies. We identified three psychological methods that may be beneficial in reducing these inaccuracies: 1. double-blind lineup; 2. cognitive interview; and 3. expert testimony. After examining their strengths, weaknesses, and counterarguments, we agree that these three methods may be beneficial in reducing inaccuracies within eyewitness testimonies by establishing federal recommended guidelines to which states should adhere.

Unmasking A New Dialect Of Deception: Leveraging The Federal Trade Commission To Combat Deceptive And Exploitative Corporate Policies, Hani Baltagi

Cleveland State Law Review

Corporate social responsibility initiatives have transformed fair labor policies into powerful marketing tools, but the gap between the public promise to embrace ethical labor practices and actual corporate compliance with such practices has widened. This has the effect of not only impeding the average consumer’s purchasing decision, but perpetuating—if not catalyzing—labor exploitation across the world. The existence of this paradigm thus necessitates additional, heightened intervention by none other than Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The FTC’s three-pronged test for deception—previously created to combat other forms of deceptive practices—provides an accountability framework for deceptive marketing claims that utilize unfollowed, self-adopted corporate fair …

Coli@Fire2024: Findings Of Word-Level Code-Mixed Language Identification In Dravidian Languages, Asha Hegde, Fazlourrahman Balouchzahi, Sabur Butt, Sharal Coelho, Kavya G, Harshitha S. Kumar, Sonith D, Shashirekha H. L., Ameeta Agrawal

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Code-mixing, a linguistic phenomenon where multiple languages are blended within a single text, has become increasingly prevalent in multilingual societies, particularly in digital communication. The CoLI-Dravidian shared task, organized as part of Forum for Information Retrieval and Evaluation (FIRE) 2024, aimed to address these challenges by inviting researchers to develop models capable of classifying words in code-mixed texts involving Dravidian languages — Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Tulu - interwoven with English. The task presents significant challenges due to the complexity of linguistic structures, mixed-language tokens, and dialectal variations, especially in low-resource languages like those in the Dravidian family. The participating …

The Sodium-Glutamate Antagonist Riluzole Improves Outcome After Acute Spinal Cord Injury: Results From The Riscis Randomised Controlled Trial Analysed Using A Global Statistical Analytic Technique, Michael G. Fehlings, Karlo M. Pedro, Mohammed Ali Alvi, Ali Moghaddamjou, James S. Harrop, Ralph Stanford, Jonathon Ball, Bizhan Aarabi, Paul M. Arnold, James D. Guest, Shekar N. Kurpad, James M. Schuster, Ahmad N. Nassr, Karl M. Schmitt, Jefferson R. Wilson, Darrel S. Brodke, Faiz U. Ahmad, Albert Yee, Wilson Z. Ray, Nathaniel P. Brooks, Jason Wilson, Diana S.L. Chow, Elizabeth G. Toups, Kevin E. Thorpe, Jiaxin Huang, Peng Huang

School of Medicine Faculty Publications

Background: Spinal cord injury (SCI) clinical trials typically rely on a single primary endpoint to assess drug efficacy. This strategy fails to adequately capture the full impact of treatment in heterogenous neurological conditions like SCI. A more patient-centric analysis requires assessment of neurological function, functional capacity, and quality of life, incorporating meaningful patient-reported outcomes. The global statistical test (GST) addresses this challenge using a unified statistical conclusion regarding the superiority of a treatment strategy over another by evaluating multiple trial endpoints simultaneously. Methods: The RISCIS trial (Safety and Efficacy of Riluzole in Acute Spinal Cord Injury Study) data was analysed …

Mediation Analysis To Investigate Differences In Prostate Cancer Diagnosis Stage Through Environmental Risk Factors In Louisiana, Nubaira Rizvi, Randy Hamilton, Xiao-Cheng Wu, Michael D. Celestin, Tung-Sung Tseng, Qingzhao Yu

School of Public Health Faculty Publications

Prostate Cancer (PCa) is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among men. In Louisiana (LA), Black men are disproportionately diagnosed at later stages compared to White men. This study explores environmental risk factors as potential intermediate variables linking race to cancer diagnosis stage. The Louisiana Tumor Registry data included 24,647 male patients diagnosed with PCa in LA between 2010 and 2018. Among them, 15,875 (64.40%) were Caucasian American (CA) and 8772 (35.59%) African American (AA). Mediation analysis using multiple additive regression trees (MART) identified possible intermediate variables that potentially explain the observed disparity. …

Public Understanding Of And Engagement With Community Health Workers And Promotores De Salud: Findings From Two National Surveys, Elizabeth A. Rohan, Julie S. Townsend, Andrea Torres, Hope L. Thompson, Dawn M. Holman, Avid Reza, Felicia Solomon Tharpe, Erin Caple, Ashley Wennerstrom

School of Public Health Faculty Publications

INTRODUCTION: Community health workers (CHWs) can improve health by helping people navigate health care services and systems and connecting them to community services that address nonmedical factors such as food insecurity, housing, and transportation. While CHWs have long been part of the US public health system, there are no data, to our knowledge, on the public's familiarity and interactions with CHWs. METHODS: We analyzed data from the 2022 Porter Novelli FallStyles and Estilos surveys, online market research surveys of the general public delivered in English (FallStyles) or primarily Spanish (Estilos). Each survey asked the same 4 questions on familiarity and …

Responding To Police Perjury, David R. Katner

Cleveland State Law Review

The way in which defense lawyers phrase their challenges in criminal proceedings where police witnesses are thought to have committed perjury might place decisionmakers in the awkward position of unintentionally or intentionally coming to the aid of the witnesses who are unable to defend themselves during closing arguments. This article proposes a shift in the paradigm of how defense counsel characterize and handle testimony that seems untruthful, without having to engage in tactics that intend to be disrespectful to all police officers, let alone to the witnesses in the trial. Creating a continuum from absolute truthfulness to absolute untruthfulness and …

Making Criminal Penalties Collar-Blind On The Federal Level, Claire Osborn-Wright

Cleveland State Law Review

This paper is intended to be the first in a series of papers that addresses whether lower income individuals suffer all of the following at much higher rates than their percentage of the population would suggest should be the case: (1) police stops for questioning; (2) arrests; (3) prosecutions; (4) convictions; and (5) lengthy post-conviction incarcerations. In particular, this first paper addresses the question of whether prison sentences imposed for “blue-collar crimes” are significantly longer than prison sentences imposed for “white-collar crimes.” In general, “blue-collar crimes” refer to crimes that are committed by individuals who possess blue-collar professions and “white-collar …

Cost-Effective Automated Uhi Mapping With Ai: A Case Study Of A Scalable Framework For Climate Equity In San José, California, Martin Alvarez Lopez

Master's Theses

Urban areas experience the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, with higher temperatures than rural areas, disproportionately impacting low-income communities. Mapping UHIs is a process that usually requires significant amount of human resources, and is not scalable. The lack of accurate and detailed UHI maps makes it difficult for decision makers to design effective mitigation strategies. In this work we introduce a cost-effective, scalable, and universally applicable UHI mapping framework that leverages open-source data and AI-driven feature extraction from remote sensing imagery. Using various causative factors such as city characteristics, anthropogenic heat, city canyons, and meteorological variables, we create UHI maps …

All Eyes On Me: Security And Preventative Measures In The Era Of Shoplifting, Clarissa Guevarra

Master's Theses

The passing of CA bills ranging from AB 1779 to SB 1416, and Proposition 36 aims to combat a supposed rise in retail theft, particularly denoting the increase in organized retail theft. This research investigates the accuracy of mainstream narratives surrounding retail theft, focusing on the various security strategies adopted by major retailers—namely, Walmart and Target stores—in the San Francisco Bay Area. The study aims to analyze the different types of security (human and physical), and their efficacy, and to envision alternative strategies to address theft beyond the adoption of punitive security strategies. Using a visual ethnographic approach, supplemented with …

One Nation Under Guard, Everett T. Glynn

Master's Theses

The rise of segments of the labor force devoted to functions other than production has received increased scholarly attention, particularly pertaining to the robust deployment of the police and criminal justice apparat in the neoliberal era. Critical perspectives align the rise of the securitization of society with political and economic transitions that occur within the contexts of changes to social inequality and crackdowns on social movements beginning in the 1970s. In a theoretical construction of the emerging concept of guard labor, this thesis finds that robust societal deployments of a form of functional labor used to entrench social inequality has …

How Effective Are Engineered And Non-Engineered Riparian Forest Restoration Projects In Providing Salmonid-Quality Habitat In The San Francisco Bay Area?, Alexander Ivanov

Master's Theses

Streams and their riparian zones in the San Francisco Bay Area have been degraded, severely harming salmonid populations in the region. Ecological restoration is a common approach to return stream function. Such restoration projects vary widely in intensity, from low-impact vegetation removal/planting to highly engineered projects involving structures and grading. This research investigated the effectiveness of streams restored using engineered versus non-engineered solutions in supporting salmonid habitat viability in San Francisco Bay Area streams. Fourteen streams, seven from each of the two types of restoration, were sampled in the wet and dry season in 2024, three times each season. Data …

The Relationship Between Psychological Contract Breach And Work Motivation And Attitude Among Tech Employees: The Moderating Role Of Conscientiousness, Rama E. Khoury

Master's Theses

There has been some research on moderating factors of the relationship between psychological contract breach (PCB) and work engagement and affective commitment. However, most studies conducted have mainly focused on situational factors (e.g., job satisfaction, exchange imbalance), not on individual factors (e.g., personality traits). This research gap leaves a question in the role that personality traits play in influencing the negative consequences of PCB. The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating role of conscientiousness on the relationship between PCB and two outcomes, work engagement and affective commitment. Hypotheses were tested using 103 technology industry employees in the …

Interactions Between A High Intensity Wildfire And An Atmopsheric Hydraulic Jump In The Case Of The 2023 Lahaina Fire, Clifford Dw Ehrke

Master's Theses

On 8 August 2023, a grass fire that started in the city of Lahaina, Hawai’i, grew into the deadliest wildfire in the United States since 1918. This wildfire offers a unique opportunity to explore the impact of high heat output on an atmospheric hydraulic jump and a downslope wind event. We conducted two WRF-SFIRE simulations to investigate these effects: one incorporating fire–atmosphere feedback and the other without it. We compare these WRF-SFIRE simulations to all available data regarding the fire event, including high resolution satellite data, weather station data from other parts of Maui and the Hawaiian Archipelago, and official …

Visions Of Kleinian Groups, Genevieve Nguyen

Master's Theses

Discrete groups of M¨obius transformations, called Kleinian groups, act on the Riemann sphere. We explore the connection between M¨obius transformations and PSL(2,C), its subgroups, and linear algebraic properties to understand the dynamics of various Kleinian groups, including Fuchsian groups and Schottky groups. In particular, we use Mathematica to program visualizations of Schottky groups and their limit sets.

Quantum Algorithm Emulation Using Fpgas, Samuel Petruescu

Master's Theses

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have been used in most of the physics sub-fields for various unique purposes. This includes particle physics, quantum optics, and, more recently, quantum computing. FPGAs boast many benefits over previous experimental and computational setups. They are versatile, easy to program, and cost-effective, leading to an understandable desire to incorporate them into the new field of quantum computing. While FPGAs have been used to help control the readout and control of physical qubits, they can also be a good tool for improving algorithm simulations, which is the focus of this paper. Different algorithms have different computational …

Superconducting Quantum Chip Design And Simulation, James F. Saslow

Master's Theses

This work presents a comprehensive analytical and simulation-based study of superconducting quantum chip architectures, spanning both 2D planar and 3D-integrated designs. We first design and simulate a planar quantum chip layout using Qiskit Metal, which is imported into Ansys HFSS (High Frequency Structure Simulator) to construct a 3D model and perform electromagnetic simulations. A detailed analysis using Driven Modal, Eigenmode, Magnetostatic, and Q3D Capacitance Extraction solvers ensures our simulations accurately reflect physical behavior. The results are validated against analytical models from microwave engineering. pyEPR (Python Energy Participation Ratio) is used to extract key quantum metrics, including eigenfrequencies, quality factors, decoherence …

Fluid-Structure Interaction Comsol Model For Unsteady Flow Through A 3d Bi-Leaflet Mechanical Heart Valve, Aya Zaky

Master's Theses

In this study, we developed a 3D Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) model using COMSOL© to analyze the unsteady flow through a bi-leaflet mechanical heart valve. The model incorporates sufficient complexity to test various factors, such as leaflet angle rotation, material selection for rigid components, fluid properties, and different simulation modes. Simultaneously, the model maintains a simplified structure and is developed using a single software platform, facilitating ease of modification and expansion by other researchers or developers. The mechanical heart valve (MHV) design was created using St. Jude’s geometric parameters as a reference. The input and output pressure waveforms are derived from …

The Sodium-Glutamate Antagonist Riluzole Improves Outcome After Acute Spinal Cord Injury: Results From The Riscis Randomised Controlled Trial Analysed Using A Global Statistical Analytic Technique, Michael G. Fehlings, Karlo M. Pedro, Mohammed Ali Alvi, Ali Moghaddamjou, James S. Harrop, Ralph Stanford, Jonathon Ball, Bizhan Aarabi, Paul M. Arnold, James D. Guest, Shekar N. Kurpad, James M. Schuster, Ahmad N. Nassr, Karl M. Schmitt, Jefferson R. Wilson, Darrel S. Brodke, Faiz U. Ahmad, Albert Yee, Wilson Z. Ray, Nathaniel P. Brooks, Jason Wilson, Diana S-L Chow, Elizabeth G. Toups, Kevin E. Thorpe, Jiaxin Huang, Peng Huang

Department of Neurosurgery Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Spinal cord injury (SCI) clinical trials typically rely on a single primary endpoint to assess drug efficacy. This strategy fails to adequately capture the full impact of treatment in heterogenous neurological conditions like SCI. A more patient-centric analysis requires assessment of neurological function, functional capacity, and quality of life, incorporating meaningful patient-reported outcomes. The global statistical test (GST) addresses this challenge using a unified statistical conclusion regarding the superiority of a treatment strategy over another by evaluating multiple trial endpoints simultaneously.

METHODS: The RISCIS trial (Safety and Efficacy of Riluzole in Acute Spinal Cord Injury Study) data was analysed …

Abalone And Seaweed Co-Culture: Growth And Shell Biomineralization Of An Iconic California Gastropod, Noah R. Kolander

Master's Theses

Climate change threatens shellfish aquaculture worldwide, with ocean acidification (OA) accelerating shell dissolution and reducing calcification, hindering growth. This study addressed the negative impacts of OA on juvenile red abalone (Haliotis rufescens), a life stage that is particularly susceptible to climate stressors, and the ability of the red seaweed, dulse (Devaleraea mollis), to mitigate these effects. I tested the hypothesis that Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA), with abalone and seaweed grown in co-culture, can raise seawater pH through photosynthesis to yield more favorable conditions for abalone growth and shell construction. A 5-month experiment was conducted to determine the benefits of IMTA …