Digital Commons Network^™

Unfriending The Kids: The Problematic Race To Childproof Social Media, Randolph A. Robinson Ii

Cleveland State Law Review

A growing number of states have recently enacted new laws with the goal of protecting young people from potential harm allegedly caused by social media use. These laws are diverse in their approaches but broadly seek to limit youth access to social media platforms by imposing age verification and parental consent requirements. These laws directly implicate the First Amendment rights of both young users who will no longer be able to access speech or speak on social media platforms as well as adult users who must now submit to age verification to access these quintessential forums for political discourse.

These …

From Maps To Meadows: Ecologically Literate Zoning And The Regeneration Of Wildlife Habitats, Jonathan Rosenbloom

Cleveland State Law Review

For more than a century, zoning has shaped the American landscape, often at the expense of wildlife and ecosystems. Rooted in legal doctrines that treated animals as property and nature as a raw material, zoning codes have fragmented habitats, erased migration corridors, and accelerated biodiversity loss. At the same time, federal protections are narrowing, leaving critical gaps in environmental governance. This Article argues that local governments possess both the authority and the obligation to respond. By embedding ecological principles into zoning—through conservation districts, wildlife corridor protections, wetland buffers, pollinator protections, dark skies, wildlife fencing, habitat restoration, and others—municipalities can transform …

An Era Of Silent Overruling: Lack Of Transparency In The Supreme Court And The Expanding Unworkability Doctrine, Sydney Washburn

Cleveland State Law Review

This Note examines the Supreme Court’s growing practice of “silent overruling," the effective displacement of precedent without explicit acknowledgment, and argues that this phenomenon threatens transparency, stability, and public trust in the judiciary. While the doctrine of stare decisis is intended to promote consistency and predictability, the Court has increasingly relied on the vague and discretionary “unworkability” doctrine to justify departing from precedent without clearly articulating its reasoning. Focusing on the Court’s recent decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, this Note argues that the Court silently overruled Robinson v. California while purporting not to reconsider it. In …

June 26, 2026 Ereporter, University Of Alabama At Birmingham

eReporter (campus newsletter)

No abstract provided.

Brushstrokes Of Belonging: An Arts-Based Approach To Heritage Language Sustainability Among Multilingual Youth, Erica Anne Daniels

Dissertations - ALL

This qualitative case study examines how arts-based curriculum supports heritage language learning among elementary-aged multilingual students in a community language program. Drawing on Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, Transformative Multiliteracies, and Community Cultural Wealth, this study analyzes observations, student artifacts, and interviews across Arabic and Karen heritage language classrooms using an arts-based curriculum. Findings demonstrate that arts-based practices foster four key outcomes: identity exploration, the development of agency and critical authenticity, relational language sustainability through family engagement, and heightened motivation grounded in creativity and cultural relevance. Students’ multimodal identity texts, such as drawings, ceramics, and jewelry, served as transformative sites where linguistic …

De-Homogenizing Inclusive Education In South Africa: How Local Onto-Epistemological Framings Of Dis/Ability, Smartness, And “Successful” Inclusive Education Inform Culturally Sustaining Inclusion Practices, Treasa Marie Praino

Dissertations - ALL

In this multi-site, interpretivist, qualitative study, I explored how participants in two socio-culturally and geo-historically distinct South African inclusive primary schools conceptualize dis/ability, smartness, and successful (inclusive) education. I also examined how participants’ interpretations of these constructs informed each school’s unique and culturally sustaining inclusive education practices. I aimed to answer two overarching research questions for this dissertation: (1) How do Saamgroei and Oakview participants conceptualize dis/ability, smartness, and successful (inclusive) education? (2) How do participants’ constructions of dis/ability, smartness, and successful (inclusive) education inform their culturally sustaining inclusion strategies? Saamgroei is a Quintile 1 (government-funded) rural school, serving predominantly …

Exploring Grit As A Contributing Factor In Social Work Retention Following Burnout, Denise Rice-Prior

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Her Voice In Photos: Empowering Women Through The Lens Of Resilience, Doryn Wallach

Theses - ALL

Women in midlife (ages 40–65) face a convergence of psychosocial stressors, including hormonal transitions, caregiving demands, identity shifts, and cultural invisibility, yet accessible, non-clinical supports remain scarce. This program evaluation examined whether participatory therapeutic photography, paired with brief written reflection and community witnessing, could function as an art therapy-informed, strengths-based intervention for this population. Five participants completed a week-long photography sequence structured around a challenge, reframe, and reflect arc, selecting three captioned images and a written reflection to represent their experience. Images were displayed in a digital frame installed where three midlife women served as community witnesses. The researcher collected …

Neither Here Nor There: Cultural Identity Among Vietnamese Immigrants, Duyen Thu Pham

Theses - ALL

Acculturation is a fundamental aspect of the migration experience that enables individuals to adapt to new environments while maintaining meaningful connections within both familial and social spheres. Depending on class, economic conditions, and sociopolitical context, experiences of acculturation differ across generations. This thesis argues that, through the ongoing process of cultural negotiation, Vietnamese immigrants create unique cultural identities that balance adaptation to the host country with the preservation of Vietnamese cultural values, beliefs, and practices. It also explores how migration history, intergenerational differences, and cultural memory influence varied experiences of acculturation and belonging among Vietnamese immigrants in the United States. …

Binding Energy Of Muonic Beryllium: Perturbative Versus All-Order Calculations, Shikha Rathi, Ulrich D. Jentschura, Paul Indelicato, Ben Ohayon

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We compute the ground-state binding energy of muonic (Formula presented) (Formula presented) Be in two ways: first, the fully perturbative treatment of the nuclear-size effect often employed in light systems, and second, an approach that accounts for the finite-nuclear-size to all orders (and is inspired by calculations otherwise employed for heavy muonic ions). The results are compared term by term and show that both approaches agree to better than one part-per-million of the total energy. The objective of this work is twofold. The first is practical: to provide a parameterization that allows the extraction of the (Formula presented) (Formula presented) …

Trustworthy Reinforcement Learning And Communication-Efficient Multi-Agent Systems, Rui Zuo

Dissertations - ALL

The rapid proliferation of autonomous systems, such as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) transitioning to large-scale Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations, demands a paradigm shift toward reliable, transparent, and resilient autonomy. While Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) and Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) have demonstrated exceptional capabilities in complex decision-making and coordination, their real-world deployment in safety-critical domains is hindered by two fundamental challenges. First, the opaque, "black-box" nature of DRL models prevents human operators from understanding and trusting the agents' underlying logic. Second, as multi-agent operations scale, they become severely constrained by the stochastic link qualities and strict bandwidth limitations …

Preserving The Family In The Globalized Era: Explaining State Discouragement Of Women’S Rights And The Gap Between Law And Family Realities In Tajikistan, Ivy Alexandra Raines

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is guided by a two-part research question, which begins by asking why Tajikistan exhibits low levels of gender equality within the family despite strong international commitments and a formally secular legal framework. The second question builds on the first by asking why a state that offers legal guarantees in line with its international commitments, as outlined by Article 16 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), invests significant energy in discouraging divorce rather than in safeguarding women’s rights that would support their ability to leave harmful marital situations. Employing qualitative discourse …

A Systematic Review Of The Acceptability Of Function-Based Assessments Of Student Behavior, Siani Ym Amidon

Dissertations - ALL

Function-Based Assessments are widely used to identify the antecedents and consequences of maladaptive behaviors across age groups. While social validation of intervention goals and procedures has long been emphasized (Wolf, 1978), the integration of acceptability assessments within Function-Based Assessments remains underexplored. This systematic review examined the extent to which acceptability assessments have been incorporated into Function-Based Assessments, along with their influence on intervention development. A total of 21 studies (N = 72) met inclusion criteria. Among the 33% of studies that reported demographic information, the majority of participants were Black, male children with disabilities in preschool or elementary settings. Physical …

Atropisomer Mechanochemistry Of Diarylethene Mechanophores: A Study Of Structure-Mechanical Activity Relationships, Cijun Zhang

Dissertations - ALL

Stimuli-responsive organic structures are advanced, intelligent platforms that dynamically adjust their physical or chemical properties—such solubility, or color—in response to external stimuli including light, heat, pH, redox conditions, mechanical force, or magnetic fields. Among these structures, mechanophores represent an important class that is specifically responsive to mechanical force. Synthetic mechanophores can be rationally engineered to exhibit tunable mechanosensitivity as well as tailored chemical and physical properties. In this work, we designed and synthesized a type of atropisomeric mechanophores based on sterically congested diarylethene photoswitches, and systematically investigated their mechanical and photochemical properties. Chapter 1 Chapter 1 provides a general introduction …

Scaling Logical Reasoning On Modern Hpc Hardware, Yihao Sun

Dissertations - ALL

Deductive logic reasoning has evolved from a theoretical symbolic artificial intelligence tool into a massive computational workload. Modern domains, ranging from static program analysis and binary reverse engineering to knowledge-graph reasoning, rely on Datalog, a logical query language, to express deeply recursive, declarative specifications. However, scaling logic reasoning to these industrial workload exposes two interlocking ceilings in traditional engines. Architecturally, the memory bandwidth and parallel throughput of single-node CPUs fall drastically short of the read- and write-heavy demands of semi-naive evaluation. Asymptotically, traditional query processing algorithms, such as binary join algorithms generate massive intermediate relations that exhaust device memory on …

Three Essays On Collaborative Policymaking: Examining The Influence Of Procedural Dynamics On Policy Outputs In Collaborative Marine Fisheries Management, Shuping Wang

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation advances the study of collaborative policymaking by examining an underexplored relationship: how the collaborative policymaking processes shape policymaking outputs. Drawing on scholarship on collaborative policymaking, adaptive policymaking, and collective learning, this dissertation proposes and tests three approaches to measuring both processes and outputs, using U.S. Marine Fishery Management Councils as the empirical context. Three essays collectively demonstrate that policymaking outputs are systematically shaped by the dynamics of the collaborative process itself. Essay 1 shows that knowledge diversity among stakeholders affects the passage of council decisions, revealing that engagement with diverse knowledge forms is not always positively associated with …

Impure Evidentialism: Essays On The Sources & Structure Of Doxastic Normativity, Felipe Oliveira

Dissertations - ALL

The four papers of my dissertation provide a new defense of Impure Evidentialism. The combination of evidentialism about normative reasons for belief with pragmatic encroachment (i.e. impurism) about epistemic justification is a familiar and intuitive view. However, many of the combo view’s finer points, unique advantages, and objections have not been addressed. My dissertation fills this gap by offering a new defense and in-depth look of what I take to be the most plausible version of the combo view. My version of Impure Evidentialism offers an improved and comprehensive account of the norms that govern our beliefs, explains why these …

A Comparative Study Of Attitudes Towards Trust In Ai And Ethics In Ai Between Indian International Students And American Students In The Us Universities, Niraj Sitaula

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation shows that Indian international students studying AI in the US universities have different attitudes towards trust in AI and ethics in AI compared to American students studying AI in the US universities. This dissertation used the survey method and examined 447 survey responses from Indian international students and American students from 97 universities in the US. Trust in AI was analyzed with three constructs of trust: dispositional trust, functionality trust, and institutional trust. Likewise, the attitude towards ethics in AI was examined using three constructs: the importance of ethical principles for AI, attitude towards transparency in AI, and …

Three Essays On Political Economy And International Trade, Shuo Zhang

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is composed of three papers that explore how institutions, globalization, and trade shocks affect individuals' political preferences and firms' behavior. The first paper studies how mass protest events drive political change among citizens. I exploit the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement (ANTI-ELAB protest) in Hong Kong and its impact on the subsequent 2019 Hong Kong District Council Election. Taking advantage of a granular dataset of organized events during the protest, I exploit spatial variation in protest intensity, as measured by the number of events, across Constituency Areas. Empirical results show that in Constituency Areas with higher protest …

Essays On Urban Economic Geography In Developing Countries, Taylor Lathrop

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation contains two papers on urban economic geography in a developing country context. In the first, I identify and quantify local spillovers between firms of heterogeneous ownership type using a rich dataset of Indonesian manufacturing firms with granular location information. Within local clusters of manufacturing employment, I find an elasticity of domestic firm productivity with respect to the average quality of domestic neighbors of 0.025, and an elasticity of domestic firm productivity with respect to the average quality of foreign neighbors of 0.002. For foreign-owned firms, I find little evidence of productivity spillovers from neighbors of either ownership type. …

Bio-Inspired Visual Intelligence: Improving Efficiency And Robustness Through Foveal-Peripheral Sampling And Learned Saccades, Jiayang Liu

Dissertations - ALL

Deep neural networks have achieved state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of computer vision tasks, yet their deployment in real-world and safety-critical domains remains limited by two major challenges: vulnerability to adversarial perturbations and high computational cost. While adversarial training can improve robustness under certain threat models, it is computationally expensive and often generalizes poorly to black-box or transferable attacks. At the same time, conventional vision pipelines process uniformly sampled high-resolution images, introducing substantial data redundancy, latency, and energy overhead. In contrast, the human visual system achieves efficient and robust perception through space-variant foveal-peripheral sampling, attention-guided saccadic eye movements, and …

Legitimacy And Reputation In Sports Corporate Social Advocacy: The Role Of Communication Strategies, Issue Position, And Fan Identification, Maria Grover

Dissertations - ALL

Corporate social advocacy (CSA) has become increasingly common in professional sport, yet most research has examined individual athlete activism or sport consumer brands rather than leagues and teams. This dissertation examined how two public-relations communication strategies – highlighting a collaborative decision-making approach and creating a strong explanatory link between an organization and an issue – impact perceived CSA legitimacy and organizational reputation, and how audience-level factors such as fan identification and pre-existing issue position condition those evaluations. A 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment with a control group (N = 302) presented U.S. NFL fans with a fictitious league statement advocating …

Older Recent Widows’ Physical Activity Before And After Spouses’ Deaths A Qualitative Investigation Of The Impact Of Duration And Intensity Of Care Work And Social Support, Mary Theresa Pagan

Dissertations - ALL

Abstract This study investigates and expands understanding of how care work, widowhood, social support, and physical activity intersect in the lives of older recent widows. The study addresses three primary research questions examining the duration and intensity of care work, pre- and post-death social support, and factors that influenced widows’ physical activity before and after the death of their spouses. Thirty semi-structured, face-to-face interviews conducted with heterosexual widows aged 60 and older residing in Upstate New York who were widowed within 6–24 months prior to interview. Interviews explored care work experiences, social support, widowhood transitions, and both structured and non-structured …

Wmu Board Of Trustee Board Meeting, Thursday June 25, 2026, Wmu Board Of Trustees

WMU Board of Trustees Meetings

• Acceptance of the Agenda
• Approval of the Minutes (April 16, 2026)
• Remarks by the Chair of the Board
• Remarks by the President
• Updates by the Faculty Senate President
• Updates by the Western Student Association Speaker of the Assembly
• Updates by the Graduate Student Association President
• Western Michigan University Employee Graduates
• Academic Tenure and Promotion
•  Public Comments Regarding Action Items

Action Items

• Academic Tenure and Promotion
• Fall 2026 Differential Tuition Rates
• Fall 2026 Tuition and Required Fee Rates
• 2026-27 General Fund Operating Budget
• Teaching Assistants Union (TAU) Labor Agreement
• Michigan State Employees Association (MSEA) Labor Agreement
• President’s Annual Review/Compensation/Contract
•  Memorandum of …

Agentic Ai-Enabled Physics-Informed Machine Learning Framework For Intelligent Building Modeling, Control, And Automation, Zixin Jiang

Dissertations - ALL

Buildings account for a significant share of global energy consumption, and meeting the 2050 net-zero decarbonization targets requires retrofitting approximately 10,000 buildings per day in the United States alone. However, current human-centered workflows for building modeling, simulation, control, and operation remain too slow and labor-intensive to support deployment at this scale. This dissertation proposes an integrated two-pillar framework consisting of a physics-informed machine learning framework for integrated building modeling, control, and simulation, and a multi-agent agentic AI framework for automating building energy engineering workflows built on top of that foundation. The first pillar introduces a Physics-Informed Modularized Neural Network (PI-ModNN) …

Cerebrovascular And Bleeding Outcomes Of Warfarin Versus Direct Oral Anticoagulants Therapy For Atrial Fibrillation: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis Of Randomized Controlled Trials, Abeer A. Alomairi, Rana Alduhaysh, Alaa Samandar, Abeer Alshehri, Ghada Alabdullah, Saud Almutairi, Faisal Althekair

Neurosciences

Objectives: To compare the effects on cerebral health in atrial fibrillation patients receiving either warfarin or direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs). Atrial fibrillation is linked to a higher likelihood of both stroke and cognitive impairment. While warfarin has historically served as the leading anticoagulant treatment, DOACs are now more frequently viewed as alternatives with an improved safety profile.

Methods: The methodology involved an extensive search of multiple databases, completed up to June 2024. This search yielded randomized controlled trials, which together enrolled over 60,000 participants between the ages of 70 and 84. The DOACs studied were dabigatran, rivaroxaban, apixaban, and edoxaban, …

A Systematic Comparative Review Of Antipsychotic Efficacy And Safety In The Treatment Of Hiccups, Omar Alshargi, Samah Alzaid, Zainab Albahouth, Muradi Hassan Albanji, Hala Makki, Rawan. F. Alboqami, Maram Al Shammari, Huda Alruwaili, Fawaz Alruwaili, Rahmah Ali Algarni, Omar Ibrahim Albahouth

Neurosciences

Objective: To evaluate and compare the safety and effectiveness of antipsychotic medications for the treatment of hiccups, thereby guiding clinicians toward evidence-based treatment guidelines. Hiccups are often benign and self-limiting; however, they can become persistent and intractable, adversely affecting the quality of life. Antipsychotics have been identified as a therapeutic option for the management of hiccups; however, the available evidence supporting their safety and efficacy has not been synthesized.

Methods: This review utilized the revised Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The Cochrane Risk of Bias Assessment Tool was modified to evaluate the quality of the …

Sub-Regional Motor–Somatosensory Connectivity And Lifespan Plasticity In Functional Networks, Adnan A. S. Alahmadi

Neurosciences

Objectives: To determine how cytoarchitectonically defined subdivisions of the primary motor cortex, somatosensory cortex, and supplementary motor area (SMA) reorganize their integration with large-scale brain networks during healthy aging. This study investigated the lifespan trajectories of functional connectivity within cytoarchitectonically defined subregions of the primary motor cortex, somatosensory cortex, and supplementary motor area (SMA).

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of resting-state fMRI data from 150 healthy individuals (aged 23–80 years), stratified into young, middle-aged, and older groups. Data were sourced from the Southwest University Adult Lifespan Dataset (SALD) and analyzed between June 2024 and June 2025. Using the Jülich …

The Top 50 Cited Articles In Pediatric Neurology: A Bibliometric Analysis, Anas Alyazidi, Osama Muthaffar, Ahmed Bamaga, Hebah Qashqari, Abdulmalek Alhithlool, Ahmad Alanezi, Sameer Almehmadi, Mohamed Babiker, Fahad Bashiri

Neurosciences

Objectives: To identify and analyze the most influential articles within the field of pediatric neurology through a bibliometric lens. As pediatric neurology continues to expand across subspecialties, identifying landmark studies is critical for understanding clinical and research priorities. Bibliometric analysis enables the evaluation of citation trends to highlight impactful contributions that have shaped the field.

Method: A bibliometric analysis of the 50 most-cited pediatric neurology articles was conducted. Articles were assessed by citation metrics, study design, subspecialty, journal impact factor (JIF), and funding status. Correlation and regression analyses evaluated associations between variables.

Results: Citation counts ranged from 185 to 1,440 …

Prevalence Of Depression Among Patients With Epilepsy In Saudi Arabia: A Nationwide Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Mothana Y. Al Jabr, Aryam M. Alenizi, Faisal S. Aleisa, Mazen A. Alghamdi, Noura I. Alfehaid, Muteb M. Alqahtani, Abbas S. Almutair

Neurosciences

Objective: To assess the pooled prevalence of depression among epilepsy patients and find the associated demographics and psychosocial factors. Mood disorders are significant comorbidity between patients diagnosed with epilepsy, adversely influencing quality of life and complicating disease management. However, the incidence, prevalence, and associated risk factors of depression in patients diagnosed with epilepsy in Saudi Arabia are not well elucidated.

Methods: This review was employed used studies retrieved from medical databases and the Saudi Digital Library. Observational and cross-sectional studies assessing depression between patients diagnosed with epilepsy in Saudi Arabia were included. Data were analyzed using the Freeman–Tukey double arcsine …