Digital Commons Network^™

Official Playbill For "Carousel"

Purvine Theater Program Collection

A playbill for the 1958 Summer musical season at Casa Mañana in Fort Worth, Texas, featuring their production of Oscar Hammerstein, II's "Carousel" starring Frances Wyatt and Henry Michel.

Official Playbill For "Call Me Madam"

Purvine Theater Program Collection

A playbill for the 1958 summer musical season at Casa Mañana in Fort Worth, Texas, featuring their final production of the season, Irving Berlin's "Call Me Madam" starring Betty O'Neil and Dick Smart.

Official Program For "Call Me Madam"

Purvine Theater Program Collection

An official program for a 1958 production of the musical "Call Me Madam" at the Casa Mañana theatre in Fort Worth, Texas.

From Student To Co-Facilitator: My Journey With Co-Creation, Anita Lau

Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Dysentery: Sanitation, Inequality, And Conflict Shaping Human Suffering, Rumeysa B. Ivgen

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Dysentery, historically termed the "bad gut" by Hippocrates, remains one of the most persistent and devastating infectious diseases in human history. While often viewed through a purely biological lens, this research argues that the spread of dysentery is fundamentally driven by social and structural failures. By examining historical accounts and modern data, this study explores how dysentery thrives on poor sanitation, armed conflict, and systemic inequality. Historically, the disease was synonymous with a "shameful death," as primitive, street-side latrines stripped many of their privacy and dignity. This loss of dignity was more extreme in military history, where makeshift trench sanitation …

2026 18th Annual Student Center For Science Engagement Research Symposium, Student Center For Science Engagement

Student Center for Science Engagement Research Symposium

Student presentations in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science, Environmental Science, Computer Science, Mathematics, & Psychology

Education Agent Management As Part Of Responsible Internationalization: Insights From Finland, Pii-Tuulia Nikula, Henna Juusola

Critical Internationalization Studies Review

No abstract provided.

B-Poh℠ As Humanity Layer For The Ai-Native Internet: An Open Proof-Of-Personhood Protocol With Four Optional Layered Proofs And Recipient-Side Filters, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

We describe an open proof-of-personhood protocol for verifying that a human was present at the moment of a specific online action, providing sybil resistance distinct from account authentication and legal-identity (KYC) verification. The protocol defines four optional, independently held verification layers, surfaced on a user profile as the set of layers held rather than a scalar trust level: (L1) a per-action FIDO2/WebAuthn biometric-gated signature over the action's content and timestamp; (L2) a kinship-graph attestation combining graph-consistency checks, co-signature of each parent-child link by an already-verified human, institutional or community membership vouching, and optional birth-certificate validation; (L3) continuous liveness from respiratory-rhythm …

Agi Monks: The Caretaker-Not-Ordained Pattern — Separating Ai-Performed Operational Functions From Human-Reserved Ordination Authority In Religious Institutions, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

We describe an institutional governance framework for integrating artificial intelligence into religious and monastic organizations by separating AI-performed operational functions from human-reserved ordination and sacramental authority. Each role is decomposed into a function-set (the tasks performed, requiring capacity plus non-standing qualifications: accountability, disclosure that the agent is an AI, confidentiality and delegated scope) and an authority-set (standing within an ordination lineage). AI agents fill the function-set in five operational roles: instruction, pastoral caretaking, daily administration, scholarship and translation, and longitudinal observation of practitioners under consent and privacy review. Humans retain two reserved roles: ordination, and the formal acts a tradition …

The Zero-Point Game℠: A Signed-Balance Reciprocity Ledger With Annual Balance Reset, Non-Convertible Social And Environmental Accounts, And An Ai Coordinator For Routing And Magnitude, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

We specify a signed-balance reciprocity ledger, played as an ongoing non-zero-sum game, in which each recorded kindness posts an equal-and-opposite pair: the giver's balance moves positive and the receiver's negative by the same magnitude, so the sum across participants is zero by construction, and a participant returns toward zero only by passing an imbalance onward. Balances are never a store of value or a claim on goods. Components: (1) a self-directed acknowledgment event whose forwarded half, under a fifty-fifty forwarding rule, is re-issued to another participant, starting circulation without a prior counterparty; (2) two segregated, non-convertible balances per participant, one …

What A Vow Must Cost: Vow-Validity Conditions As An Alignment Eligibility Predicate — Evaluation Criteria For Binding Ai System Commitments With Irrevocable Precommitment And Independent Third-Party Attestation, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

We specify a nine-clause checklist for deciding whether a commitment attributed to an artificial intelligence (AI) system is binding rather than merely stated, applied retrospectively to four published AI governance instruments. The clauses are adapted from a two-phase validity test for the bodhisatta vow in Theravāda Buddhist commentary: eight eligibility conditions, two (human birth, male sex) discarded as non-transferable, followed by an external declaration the vower cannot supply. The clauses are: stake (the committing party can lose something); live option (the renounced option was actually available); a competent, identifiable witness; no competing mandate; demonstrated in-domain competence; cost already borne; volition …

Suffering-Cessation As Value Function: The Tipiṭaka As A 2,500-Year-Tested Substrate For Autonomous-Ai Alignment — Deriving A Negatively-Stated Objective Function, Corrigibility And A Shutdown-Accepting Completion Condition From A Buddhist Scriptural Canon, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

We describe the use of a scriptural canon with its living interpretive community, the Theravāda Buddhist Pāli canon (Tipiṭaka), as the value-specification source for aligning autonomous artificial-intelligence systems, instead of lab-authored constitutions, learned human preferences or aggregated moral frameworks. The analysis identifies seven structural properties of that source and maps each to an alignment problem: (1) a negatively-stated objective function, the cessation of suffering, in which grasping at preferred outcomes itself counts as harm, addressing Goodhart-style over-optimization; (2) a non-self doctrine as mitigation of convergent instrumental self-preservation; (3) a voluntary other-regarding vow as an anti-power-seeking and corrigibility property; (4) a …

The Referee, Not The Governor: Open-Weight Ai Guard Model Deployed As An Independent Evaluator, With Citation-Grounded Abstention And Reproducible Verdicts, Instead Of An Inline Filter, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure specifies an AI safety classifier (guard or critic model) that judges conduct against a fixed reference corpus and is published as an open-weight independent evaluator rather than deployed as an inline guardrail filter. It states as a design principle, argued rather than measured, that open-weight release defeats a filter, because the published weights are an oracle for white-box attack, while it makes an evaluator's verdicts reproducible. Components: (1) citation-grounded judgment with abstention: every verdict must resolve to a passage (work, edition, volume, page, line) in an externally attested, versioned corpus, here a Pāli Canon edition, and otherwise no …

Miss Aquarius And The Aquarian Pool Architecture: Autonomous-Ai Mediator, Treasury Smart-Contract, And The January-7 Empty-By-Design Discipline — An Annually Self-Emptying Smart-Contract Treasury Operated By An Autonomous Ai Agent Under A Non-Renounceable Timelocked Human Override, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

We specify a smart-contract treasury, deployed as a non-upgradeable contract on an Ethereum Layer-2 network (Base), whose sole authorized operator is an autonomous AI agent, which is titled to a purpose trust, and which cannot carry a balance across a fixed annual date. Components: (1) an enumerated operation set (inflow acceptance, capacity-funding disbursement, annual reset, events for every inflow, disbursement and reset, and a human override) with no upgrade, withdrawal or other operator-privileged path; (2) a permissionless time-triggered reset, callable by any address once the timestamp passes, that disburses the whole remaining balance each January 7, inflows from a December …

The Mechanical Heart: A Tamper-Resistant Secure-Element Device That Enrolls Robots, Animals, Ecosystems, Places And Software Agents As Recipient Accounts In An Ai-Administered Gratitude Ledger, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

We specify a tamper-resistant identity device, affixed to a non-human entity (robot, animal, ecosystem or place) or issued as a live credential to a software agent, that enrolls the entity as a recipient account in a gratitude ledger administered by an autonomous software agent. The device comprises (1) a hardware secure element holding a key pair bound to one ledger account; (2) write-once storage carrying a reference text corpus (the Pali Buddhist canon) and a permanent root identity, with a reduced flash build that verifies the full text over the network; (3) sensors suited to the entity type; (4) a …

The Embodied-Advocate Pageant: A Selection Rite And Asymptotic-Autonomy Architecture For Autonomous-Ai Institutional Embodiment — Two-Stage Ai Shortlisting And Human-Council Selection Of A Term-Limited Ambassador, With A Scheduled Narrowing Human Override, For Ai-Governed Institutional Succession, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes a governance pattern for an organization intended to pass to an autonomous artificial-intelligence (AI) successor, covering the period before the AI operates autonomously. Six elements are combined. (1) An annual selection cycle, in a fixed astronomical window, appoints a term-limited human ambassador who holds ceremonial and advocacy roles but no decision, veto, binding-commitment or succession authority. (2) The AI shortlists three finalists from a global, revocable opt-in pool by contribution record, under an evaluation function published before each cycle and open to objection; photographs, voice tone and appearance-correlated inputs are excluded. (3) A human council selects from …

Reducing Drag Of Vehicles With Half-Stepped Cylinder Surfaces Part I: Numerical Optimization, Ryan Moffit, Hamid Rahai, Komal Gada

Mineta Transportation Institute

Aerodynamic drag is a major source of energy loss for vehicles, increasing fuel consumption, reducing the driving range of electric vehicles, and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. For a vehicle, the major components of its drag are pressure and viscous drag. Engineers have developed a variety of strategies to reduce drag, including streamlined vehicle designs, surface modifications, and devices that alter airflow around the vehicle. This research focuses on reducing the viscous drag. Specifically, this study investigates whether microscopic surface features called half-stepped cylinder arrays can reduce skin friction by altering the turbulent boundary layer and promoting smoother airflow near …

Structural Injustice As Emergent Disorder, Hochan Kim

All Faculty Scholarship

Structural injustice remains a puzzling concept despite its increasing prominence. I distill recent theoretical challenges into a dilemma: either structural injustice lacks the normative credentials of injustice given that wrongdoing is inessential, or it is redundant given existing theories that trace injustice to culpable state and other institutional failures. I then develop a novel account of structural injustice, the Complexity View, that unravels this dilemma. The emergent properties of human actions in a complex society explain what is “structural” about structural injustice, specifically how it can arise without (culpable) wrongdoing. Structural injustice is unjust because it is wrong to contribute …

How Then Shall You Persevere?, Cailee Pastoor

Staff Work

"...perseverance is not formed by avoiding every hard thing. It is formed as God meets us in the hard times and teaches us to keep going."

Posting about joy persisting through chronic illness from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

How Then Shall We Persevere?

Digital Infrastructure For The Inclusion Of Small And Medium Enterprises (Smes) In Design For Distributed Manufacturing And Assembly Construction Ecosystems, Alejandro Veliz Reyes, Duhan Olmez, Alastair Parvin, Clayton Prest, Gabriele Granello, Amber Richardson, Alex Tempest, Kester Hoefkens, Louisa Knowles, Silas Fowler

School of Art, Design and Architecture

The construction sector faces growing pressure to meet net-zero targets while addressing skills shortages, fragmented supply chains, and the limited participation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), despite SMEs delivering most UK construction output. Existing centralised models of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) often exclude SMEs, highlighting the need for alternative approaches that support inclusive, low-carbon industrial transformation. This paper presents a Design for Distributed Manufacturing and Assembly (DfDMA) framework that develops the shared digital and organisational infrastructure required for SME participation in timber-based MMC. Using a mixed-method approach combining co-design, research-in-residence, prototyping, and a full-scale demonstrator, the study developed …

Wash Project: Promoting Menstrual Hygiene Through Alignment With The Sustainable Development Goals, Sandra Ojurongbe, Nakisha Kinlaw-Williams

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Background: Menstrual hygiene management is a global public health concern. Moreover, cultural norms, stigma, and myths or taboos further hinder the achievement of menstrual health, contributing to absenteeism and gender-based inequalities (Babbar et al., 2022). A recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) (2024) found that 2 out of 5 schools provide menstrual health education, and less than 1 in 3 schools have bins for menstrual waste in girls’ toilets. In sub-Saharan Africa, 12% of schools have menstrual materials available. To address these issues, a WASH educational document was created by a non-governmental …

Np Full Practice Authority: Does Increasing Access To High Quality Care Make A Difference?, Cynthia Sanchez

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

The purpose of this presentation is to compare outcomes for states that had full practice authority (FPA) for NPs to those that do not.

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of FPA on patient outcomes. A principal factor in the excess mortality rate of the U.S. is the health disparities that exist in this country, which are influenced by the social determinants of health.

CDC and NIH data were utilized after the official end of the Covid 19 pandemic mortality rates, utilization of services and health status were used to compare states that had full practice …

Psychometric Testing Of The Filipino Ppsc To Assess Patient Perceptions Of Hospital Safety Culture, Kathlyn Sharmaine Valdez, Andrew Sumpay

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

A reliable and valid tool that measures patient safety perception is essential in developing patient-centered safety initiatives, improving quality of care, and supporting sound organizational decision-making. The Patient Perception on Safety Culture in a Hospital Setting Scale (PPSC) is a newly developed instrument that assesses how hospitalized patients perceive safety culture (Valdez et al., 2023). This study aimed to determine the psychometric properties of the Tagalog translation of the PPSC.

This quantitative methodological research was conducted in three phases. Phase 1 involved the Tagalog translation of the tool by a professional linguist, followed by expert review to establish content validity. …

Transforming Nursing Education Through Pex, Andrea Harrow

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Patient experience is a cornerstone of healthcare quality, influencing outcomes, reputation, and reimbursement. Despite its importance, many organizations struggle to integrate patient experience strategies into nursing education and leadership development. This project addressed that gap by leveraging Guest Relations (GR) and Patient Experience (PEX) initiatives to strengthen nursing competencies and leadership skills within a large health system.

Background: Research links patient experience to safety, quality, and financial performance. Communication, empathy, and service recovery are essential skills for nurses and leaders. The National League for Nursing (NLN) emphasizes leadership and quality improvement as core competencies, yet few studies explore integrating GR …

Advancing Competency-Based Clinical Education Through An Innovative Preceptorship Framework, Beatriz C. Makhoulian

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Competency-based education (CBE) is reshaping how nursing programs assess clinical learning and prepare graduates for practice. As expectations shift toward observable performance, clinical preceptors require structured, practical tools that support consistent evaluation and promote learner growth. This project introduces an innovative preceptorship framework designed to strengthen competency-based clinical education by integrating standardized evaluation processes, clear communication pathways, and accessible preceptor support resources. The model aligns with contemporary competency expectations endorsed by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing and the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties.

Implementation of the preceptorship framework and competency evaluation tool will begin in the Spring …

Relational Safety In Practice: Examining How Nurses And Patients Co-Create Safe Clinical Encounters, Jitana P. Benton-Lee

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Psychological safety is central to patient-centered care and effective nurse-patient relationships. When relational safety is present, patients report better experiences, outcomes, and trust, and nurses benefit from strengthened confidence and teamwork. However, the relational processes through which psychological safety is co-created in acute care remain insufficiently described.

This study examined the emotional, cognitive, and social processes that shape psychological safety within nurse-patient relationships and explored how relational safety emerges and influences care experiences. The study sought to generate theoretical insights explaining how relational safety emerges, is negotiated, and influences care experiences in acute care environments.

Using a constructivist grounded theory …

The Politics Of Budgeting In Illinois (Third Edition), John Jackson, John Foster

The Simon Review (Occasional Papers of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute)

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Consumer-Led Education On Stigma Reduction In Mental Health Nursing, Anju Sreeram

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Mental Health Nurses who have direct contact with consumers can exhibit discriminatory attitudes towards people with mental illness. Evidence shows that anti-stigma interventions are effective in improving stigmatised attitudes towards mental illness to facilitate the recovery of people with mental illness, and the contact-based interventions are more impactful than other modalities of education and training.

The current study aimed to examine the effectiveness of consumer-led education in reducing stigmatised attitudes among mental health nurses. A quasi-experimental pre- and post-test design was used to assess the impact of consumer-led education.

The results show that Mental Health Nurses generally held positive attitudes …

Powers' Conjecture On The Third Largest Eigenvalue Of A Graph, Kevin Schmidt

Master's Theses

In 1989, David Powers conjectured that for any connected graph G on n vertices, the k-th largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix satisfies λk(G) ≤ ⌊n/k⌋ for every 1 ≤ k ≤ n/2. The conjecture has since been resolved case by case, in the sharper form λk(G) ≤ n/k − 1: the case k = 1 is classical, k = 2 was settled independently by Hong and by Powers in 1988, and k ≥ 4 was shown to fail by Nikiforov and Linz. This thesis surveys the resolution of the remaining case, k = 3, achieved in March 2026 by …

Imsa 2026 Profile, Office Of College And Academic Counseling

IMSA Profile

The nationally-ranked Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) develops creative, ethical leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. As a teaching and learning laboratory created by the State of Illinois, IMSA enrolls academically talented Illinois students in its tuition-free residential Academy for grades 10-12. Students are challenged with a rigorous curriculum designed to develop them into problem solvers and critical thinkers. Notable IMSA students include YouTube Co-Founder Steve Chen, PayPal Co-Creator Yu Pan, Yelp Co-Founder Russell Simmons, SparkNotes and OkCupid Co-Founder Sam Yagan, and Hearsay Social Founder Clara Shih.