Digital Commons Network^™

Lived Experiences For Family Caregivers In The Cayman Islands After A Loved One Has Attempted Suicide, Pamella Williams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Early Childhood Educators' Experiences Of Literacy Programs For Low-Income Preschool Students, Amy M. Brown

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Improving Nursing Orientation: A Preceptor-Led Competency Program, Brandy Tanesa Broadway

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Athletic Trainers And Access To Healthcare For Transgender Collegiate Athletes Of Color: The Role Of Intersectionality, Tarah Althea Holness

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Cracks In The Earth: Why Is East Africa Losing Its Soil?, Maarten Wynants, Aloyce Amasi, Will Blake, Pascal Boeckx, Andrew Brooks, Claire Kelly, Ivan Lizaga, Linus Munishi

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

No abstract provided.

Maa': An Analysis From The May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection, Claire T. Chilla

Department of Anthropology

Research of a maa’ textile within the May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection (MWESC) from Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Report discusses different knowledge systems including technical and physical as well as cosmological and spiritual from the Toraja people. Also analyses affects of colonialism, trade, spirituality, tourism, and funerary practices.

Development Of Antagonist Peptides Of The Crk/Crkl Sh2 Domains By Modifying The Peripheral Amino Acid Residues Of The Yxxp Motif., Taeju P. Park, Anuradha Roy, Justin T. Douglas, Laurie Harned, Sarah A. Neuenswander, Neka Large, Giridhar Mudduluru, Melinda Broward, David K. Johnson

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) through the phosphotyrosine-Src homology 2 (SH2) interaction play critical roles in many signal transduction pathways. CT10 regulator of kinase (Crk) and Crk-like (CrkL) are structurally and functionally similar adaptor proteins that mediate PPIs through their SH2 domains. Crk and CrkL are essential in tumor cell migration and invasion and have been proposed as therapeutic targets. However, there are no Crk and CrkL inhibitors available. Previously, we designed a conserved heptapeptide that binds to Crk by analyzing the 15 YXXP motifs in p130Cas. The peptide bound to the SH2 domain of Crk (CrkSH2) and inhibited the CrkSH2-p130Cas interaction. …

Online Legislation: Developments And Trends In Data Privacy And Software Development, Garrett J. Splinter

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The increasingly relevant interaction between the law and data privacy, as well as compliance requirements enforced by the United States, is currently in a state of transition. Various states, such as California, Colorado, Connecticut, Nebraska, and many others, all have passed legislation with varied requirements and definitions that make for a challenging framework in which software developers operate, as the universal nature of the internet renders their compliance with current legislation a challenge. Enforcement also tends to be relatively relaxed in most modern examples, though it has escalated after 2020, and this trend may continue in the future, lending credence …

Analysis Of Dynamic Difficulty Scaling Ai In Video Games, Tyrese W. Walker

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Video games are a popular form of interactive media and, since their inception, have become one of the largest forms of media consumed. As such, they have evolved greatly from their humble beginnings into much more complex experiences, and adjusting the difficulty level to suit the needs of the player has become common practice. While there are simple ways to do so, the best games often feature a dynamic difficulty-scaling system that adapts to the player. Classics like Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead are excellent examples of innovative dynamic scaling design. By analyzing the strongest elements of these works, …

Brazilian Souls: Portraits Of Brazilian Nationalism In The Piano, Rafael Lima Lima De Paula

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This portfolio consists of the artifacts of the creative, artistic and research work realized during my doctoral studies. In its core, all recitals had Brazilian music, especially that of H. Villa-Lobos, as a unifying element, although personal taste and reasoning were also a driving force behind choosing repertoire and building a theme for each recital. The research work is connected to the repertoire performed, with Villa-Lobos' music and the Brazilian nationalist movement as common threads. “Respectful Majesty,” the research paper attached to Recital 1 analyzes elements present in Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras N.4 and brings the piece's neoclassical nature to the …

Consumer Evaluations Of Corporate Generosity, Yanyi Leng

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

How do consumers evaluate corporate generosity? This dissertation examines how both the structure and communication of firms’ charitable initiatives shape consumer judgments, revealing that consumers are highly sensitive to cues about consistency, authenticity, and responsibility embedded in corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. In Chapter One, “Consumers Prefer that Corporations Donate Periodically,” I examine how the temporal consistency of corporate giving influences consumer evaluations. Across seven preregistered studies (N = 150,563), including two large-scale field studies and five online experiments, I demonstrate that making a series of periodic contributions, e.g., donating $20,000 per month for 12 months, rather than donating an …

Narrating Power: How Organizations Can Shape Power Holders’ Perceptions And Behaviors Through Promotion Narratives, Hyun Jung Yoon

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Promotions are gateways to influential positions of power in organizations. Much work on promotions has examined how changing the promotion decision system—how the promotion is decided—can affect the power-related perceptions and behaviors of the promoted employees. However, I argue that organizations can also actively shape the perceptions and behaviors of the promoted employees through how they deliver those decisions—through narrating them. Specifically, I theorize that “promotion narratives”—the personal explanations organizations provide to promoted employees about why they were promoted—can shape how promoted employees construe the role of others in obtaining a promotion and how they engage with others in the …

The Economics Of Technical Debt: Venture Capital, Cybersecurity, And Engineering Quality, Joao Henrique Avila Alves Dimas

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies the economic consequences of technical debt—the accumulated cost of expedient engineering decisions in a firm’s software codebase—and how external forces shape it. Using direct codebase analysis of over 80,000 monthly snapshots from 600+ open-core technology firms (2010–2025), I develop the first dollar-denominated measure of technical debt in the finance literature and apply it across two empirical settings. Chapter 1 examines whether venture capital monitoring extends to firms’ technical practices. Using a stacked difference-in-differences design around first VC entry (225 treated firms, 330 controls, 85 cohorts), I find that VC-backed firms reduce critical code defect density by 24% …

Essays In Empirical Asset Pricing, Songrun He

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines several empirical asset pricing questions using around-the-clock high-frequency data, financial text, and AI methods. The first chapter studies systematic jump risk in equity markets by linking around-the-clock market jumps to contemporaneous news narratives identified with a reasoning large language model, and finds substantial heterogeneity in risk premia across jump types. The second chapter addresses lookahead bias in financial text analysis by developing chronologically consistent language models and showing that they perform well in both standard language tasks and asset pricing applications. The third chapter studies cryptocurrency perpetual futures, derives no-arbitrage benchmark prices under realistic payoff assumptions, and …

Juvenile Justice, Kayla Baptiste

Harriet L Wilkes Honors College Theses 2020 - Present

When a minor fatally shoots their classmate, the justice system faces a harrowing question: does this child deserve the same death sentence as an adult murderer? While most instinctively answer ‘no,’ the philosophical ‘why’ remains complex. Juvenile courts were founded on the principle that young offenders are developmentally distinct, possessing limited decision-making capacity and a unique potential for reform. Some argue that punishing juveniles identically to adults harmfully ignores these developmental limits, while others contend that exempting them from adult sanctions disregards the cruelty and intent present in their crimes. Ultimately, however, no philosophical justification for punishment—neither utilitarian nor retributive—justifies …

Large-Scale Genetic Characterization Of Parkinson’S Disease In The African And African Admixed Populations, Fulya Akçimen, Kimberly Paquette, Peter Wild Crea, Kathryn Step, Emily Waldo, Mathew J Koretsky, Paula Saffie-Awad, Charles Achoru, Funmilola Taiwo, Simon Ozomma, Gerald Onwuegbuzie, Marzieh Khani, Spencer Grant, Lukman Owolabi, Chiamaka Okereke, Olajumoke Oshinaike, Emmanuel Iwuozo, Suleyman Can Akerman, Paul Suhwan Lee, Shyngle Oyakhire, Nosakhare Osemwegie, Kensuke Daida, Sani Abubakar, Adedunni Olusanya, Mariam Isayan, Christiane Alvarez, Rami Traurig, Adebimpe Ogunmodede, Sarah Samuel, Mary B Makarious, Fadimatu Sa'ad, Rashidat Olanigan, Kristin Levine, Ewere Marie Ogbimi, Dan Vitale, Francis Odiase, Francis Ojini, Olanike Odeniyi, Zih-Hua Fang, Nkechi Obianozie, Deborah A Hall, Ernest Nwazor, Tao Xie, Francesca Nwaokorie, Mahesh Padmanaban, Paul Nwani, Ejaz A Shamim, Alero Nnama, David Standaert, Morenikeji Komolafe, Marissa Dean, Godwin Osaigbovo, Elizabeth Disbrow, Ismaila Ishola, Ashley Rawls, Frank Imarhiagbe, Shivika Chandra, Cyril Erameh, Vanessa Hinson, Naomi Louie, Ahmed Idowu, J Solle, Scott A Norris, Abdullahi Ibrahim, Camilla Kilbane, Gauthaman Sukumar, Lisa M Shulman, Daniel Ezuduemoih, Julia Staisch, Sarah Breaux, Clifton Dalgard, Erin R Foster, Abiodun Bello, Andrew Ameri, Raquel Real, Erica Ikwenu, Huw R Morris, Roosevelt Anyanwu, Erin Furr Stimming, Kimberley Billingsley, Wemimo Alaofin, Pilar Alvarez Jerez, Osigwe Agabi, Dena G Hernandez, Rufus Akinyemi, Sampath Arepalli, Laksh Malik, Raymond Owolabi, Yakub Nyandaiti, Hampton L Leonard, Kolawole Wahab, Oladunni Abiodun, Carlos F Hernandez, Fatima Abdulai, Hirotaka Iwaki, Soraya Bardien, Christine Klein, John Hardy, Henry Houlden, Kamalini Ghosh Galvelis, Mike A Nalls, Nabila Dahodwala, Whitley Aamodt, Emily Hill, Alberto Espay, Stewart Factor, Chantale Branson, Cornelis Blauwendraat, Andrew B Singleton, Oluwadamilola Ojo, Lana M Chahine, Njideka Okubadejo, Sara Bandres-Ciga

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Elucidating the genetic contributions to Parkinson's disease aetiology across diverse ancestries is a critical priority for the development of targeted therapies in a global context. We conducted the largest sequencing characterization of potentially disease-causing, protein-altering and splicing mutations in 710 cases and 11 827 controls from genetically predicted African or African admixed ancestries. We explored copy number variants (CNVs) and runs of homozygosity in prioritized early onset and familial cases. Our study identified rare GBA1 coding variants to be the most frequent mutations among patients with Parkinson's disease, with a frequency of 4% in our case cohort. Of the 18 …

Steel Corrosion In Underground Transportation Infrastructure, Amr M. Morsy, Islam A. Ebo, Shiv K. Janardhanan

Mineta Transportation Institute

Corrosion of buried steel, a critical component of American transportation infrastructure, remains one of the most insidious challenges due to the uncertainty associated with its estimates. Predicting when and how this corrosion happens is very difficult. This uncertainty grows exponentially with time, making corrosion estimation in the long term even more challenging, especially with buried steel and steel structures, which cannot even be monitored visually. While significant advancement has been made to understand the effect of the various corrosion parameters on soil corrosivity, there is a lack of a comprehensive understanding of how these factors collectively contribute to corrosion as …

Messages From The Provost, Georgia Southern University

Messages from the Provost

• Message from the Provost

• Georgia Southern Recognized as Top Place to Work

• Dr. Jennifer Schroeder to Lead Graduate Education

• Graduate Student Earns National Fellowship for Clean Energy Research

Designing The Spaces In Between: How Transitional Spaces In Elementary Schools Shape Clarity, Well-Being, And Belonging, Cristin Witcher Siegel

Theses

This thesis investigates the role of transitional spaces in elementary schools and their impact on students’ experiences of clarity, well-being, and belonging. While educational design often prioritizes classrooms as primary sites of learning, this study argues that the spaces between them, including corridors, stairwells, and entry zones, play a critical role in shaping daily experience and supporting student development. Using a comparative case study methodology, three elementary schools in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago were analyzed, each representing a distinct architectural era and educational philosophy: Crow Island School (1939), Wilmette Junior High School (1958), and Sunset Ridge School (2018). …

Irregular Warfare, Part One: Updating The Term And The Toolkit, Jocelyn Garcia, James Giordano

Strategic Insights

Irregular warfare (IW) is evolving in response to advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies. This commentary is about how IW should no longer be understood solely as violent conflict between state and non-state actors, but as a broader spectrum of kinetic and non-kinetic activities operating across cognitive, informational, cyber, and sociopolitical domains. AI is amplifying influence operations, disinformation campaigns, cyber activities, and cognitive targeting by increasing their speed, scale, accessibility, and deniability. AI-enabled irregular warfare can also degrade public trust, weaken decision-making, and undermine military readiness and allied cohesion. There is a need for updated definitions, clearer strategic …

Trends In Trauma: Increasing Rates Of Sexual And Domestic Violence Among Female Latin American Asylum Seekers, Alfonso Mercado, Andy U. Torres, Francisco Banda, Amanda Venta, Luz M. Garcini, Alejandro Luis Vázquez, Aldo Barrita, Oswaldo Moreno

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

The last 10 years of scientific research analyzing asylum-seekers’ mental health has established high rates of trauma exposure throughout the migratory trajectory. However, limited studies have identified gender-based violence among Central American asylum-seeking women. The purpose of this study was to identify the frequencies of gendered-base violence among asylum-seeking women from Central and South America at a humanitarian respite center (USA) and a tent encampment (Mexico) on both sides of the United States–Mexico Border using data from three independent studies in 2016, 2019, and 2023, respectively. Visual trend analysis identified a peak in domestic violence in 2019, a stable frequency …

Early-Stage Rectal Mixed Neuroendocrine-Non-Neuroendocrine Neoplasm Treated With Local Excision In A Frail Elderly Patient: A Multidisciplinary Management Dilemma, Christopher M. Ahmad, Rae-Anne Kastle, Talyn Smith, Harsha Kalagana, Kerry Williams-Wuch

Student Publications

Mixed neuroendocrine-non-neuroendocrine neoplasms (MiNENs) of the rectum are rare tumors that typically demonstrate aggressive behavior, largely driven by high-grade neuroendocrine carcinoma components. Evidence guiding management is limited, particularly for early-stage lesions and for patients unable to tolerate standard oncologic surgery. We report the case of an elderly man with extensive comorbidities who was found to have a 1.3 cm rectal MiNEN following transanal endoscopic microsurgery (TEMS) performed for rectal bleeding. Histopathology revealed a moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma component and a well-differentiated grade 1 neuroendocrine tumor (NET) component, with submucosal invasion greater than 2 mm, negative margins, low tumor budding, small-vessel lymphovascular …

Acute Respiratory And Renal Failure Following Delayed Recognition Of T-Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia In A Previously Healthy Child, Olivia R. Kaufman, Christopher M. Ahmad, Samira Haberman, Ethan Speer, Curtis King

Student Publications

T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is an aggressive pediatric hematologic malignancy that frequently presents with mediastinal involvement. Delayed recognition can result in rapid clinical deterioration due to airway compression, metabolic derangements, and treatment-related complications. We report the case of a previously healthy 12-year-old male who developed acute hypoxemic respiratory failure secondary to a large mediastinal mass initially treated as pneumonia, in whom imaging demonstrated a large anterior mediastinal mass with airway compression and a malignant right-sided pleural effusion with the diagnosis of T-ALL. The hospital course was complicated by severe tumor lysis syndrome resulting in oligo-anuric acute kidney injury, recurrent …

Bns Bldgs., Llc V. Thomas

All Decisions

In this nonpayment proceeding, the court grants respondent's motion for discovery with respect to the apartment's rent regulatory status. The court finds that respondent demonstrated ample need based on the DHCR rent history, which showed indicia of fraudulent deregulation.

Selection Of Graphic Symbol Collections By Speech And Language Pathologists For Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Vasiliki Hadjicharalambous, Donald R. Fuller, Eliada Pampoulou

Communication Sciences & Disorders Faculty Publications

Graphic symbol collections are often implemented in assessment and interventions with clients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The selection of the optimal collection is considered by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) a challenging task. Since limited literature exists on the factors that guide this selection specifically for clients with ASD, this study aimed to explore those in detail, for which a qualitative design was followed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with SLPs who shared their views on the factors that affect this selection. A thematic analysis of the interview transcripts took place. The outcomes showed that SLPs focus on multiple factors, grouped as …

Impact Of Intravenous Thrombolysis On Aspiration Thrombectomy Outcomes: An Imperative Trial Subgroup Analysis, Maxim Mokin, Reade Andrew De Leacy, William Mack, Raul G. Nogueira, Shahram Majidi, Dana Tomalty, Jan Vargas, Brett L. Cucchiara, Kenneth V. Snyder, Victoria Parada

School of Medicine Publications

Background The impact of intravenous (IV) thrombolysis on the outcomes of aspiration thrombectomy as the primary endovascular approach to stroke in patients with large vessel occlusion is unknown.

Methods The Imperative Trial was a prospective, investigational device exemption, multicenter trial of first-line aspiration thrombectomy that assessed the safety and efficacy of the Zoom System, including a novel 0.088 inch aspiration catheter in patients with stroke within 8 hours of onset. We compared procedural, technical, and clinical outcomes of aspiration thrombectomy based on whether patients had received IV thrombolytics prior to the intervention.

Results Among the 260 patients treated with front-line …

Support Systems, Capability Configurations, And Enabling Conditions For Circular Entrepreneurship, Israa Thiab

Theses

The transition to a circular economy requires entrepreneurs who can create value from waste, design regenerative business models, and navigate resource-constrained environments. Yet understanding what enables circular entrepreneurial success remains fragmented across the sustainability and entrepreneurship literatures. This dissertation examines how entrepreneurial support systems, capability configuration, and external enabling conditions shape circular venture development and performance through three complementary studies that together advance a unified framework of circular entrepreneurial effectiveness. Study 1 employs participatory action research with a donor-funded incubation program in Jordan, examining how stakeholder priorities reconfigure support systems for circular entrepreneurs. Analysis of two cohorts reveals that stakeholder-driven …

Timing Isn't Everything: Rethinking Mortality Risk In Type A Aortic Dissection Surgery, Anna H Xue, Joseph S Coselli

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

No abstract provided.

Apathy, Effort-Based Decisions And Brain Integrity In Alzheimer’S And Parkinson’S Diseases, Lee-Anne Morris, Hideo Suzuki, Seonjoo Lee, Zekai Jin, Bryan B Chen, Ana Marin, Edward D Huey, Yunglin Gazes, Sarah R Heilbronner, Campbell J Le Heron, Nora Vanegas-Arroyave

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Apathy, or loss of motivation, is a prominent syndrome accompanying both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, in addition to other disorders. One approach to understanding motivational loss is to examine the processes underlying goal-directed behaviour. Weighing up rewarding outcomes against the effort costs required to obtain them (effort-based decision-making) is a core computation when deciding to act for outcomes. Although a growing body of evidence points to disruption of this computation in people with apathy, which underlying decision parameters drive this disruption, their neural associations and whether these would generalize or differ across brain disorders have not been examined. People with …

Cpt1a Loss Promotes Lung Metastasis In Immune-Competent Mice Via A Mechanism Of Mtdna Release And Chronic Activation Of Sting Pathway, Xiaoyong Wang, Shu-Ting Chou, Yoonha Hwang, Jin Chen, Deanna N Edwards

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The metastatic progression of breast cancer involves complex interactions between tumor cells and immune cells, including T cells that exert cytotoxic pressure to limit metastasis. Tumor cells reprogram their metabolism to evade immune surveillance, a critical step to achieving metastatic outgrowth. Using an unbiased CRISPR screen targeting metabolism-related genes and a clinically relevant spontaneous metastasis mouse model, we identified CPT1A, the rate-limiting enzyme in fatty acid β-oxidation, as a suppressor of immune-dependent metastasis. Loss of CPT1A enhances lung metastasis in immunocompetent mice, but not Rag1 KO mice that lack mature lymphocytes. Loss of CPT1A triggers cytosolic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) release …