Digital Commons Network^™

Trends In Antimicrobial Resistance Associated With Gastrointestinal Tract Infections In The Uae: A Comprehensive Retrospective Surveillance 13-Year (2010-2022) Study, Madikay Senghore, Jens Thomsen, Najiba M. Abdulrazzaq, Wei Chen, Eveline Kaambo, Stefan Weber, Fouzia Jabeen, Godfred Antony Menezes, Abiola Senok, Dean B. Everett, Carole Ayoub Moubareck

All Works

Background This study analyzes longitudinal trends in AMR among key bacterial pathogens causing GI infections across the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to inform future treatment policies and public health interventions. Methods We conducted a 13-year, nationwide, longitudinal surveillance study (2010-2022) using data from 341 public and private healthcare facilities and 45 diagnostic laboratories across the UAE. Pathogen identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing followed WHO GLASS standards, supplemented by WHONET-integrated electronic medical records. Statistical analyses assessed trends in pathogen incidence, resistance patterns, geographic distribution, and associations with clinical outcomes. Findings Out of 15,593 laboratory-confirmed GI cases, the highest burden was observed …

Workload-Aware Performance Prediction And Data Movement For Data-Intensive Computing, Kevin Assogba

Theses

Data-intensive workloads in high-performance computing and artificial intelligence move massive volumes of data across deep memory and storage hierarchies, often spending more time moving data than computing on it. Their access patterns, data-sharing relationships, and computational graph properties are largely determined by descriptors known to the application before execution. However, general-purpose runtimes treat this structure as opaque, and the resulting gap between workload behavior and runtime decisions accounts for a substantial fraction of their execution time. Despite advances in performance modeling and data-movement systems, this structure remains underexploited. Schedulers, caches, and I/O paths provision resources conservatively, prediction models are rarely …

Sea-Level Rise And Regional Economic Adjustment On The U.S. Gulf Coast, Md A M Hasif, Juhee Lee, Robin A. Choudhury

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Sea-level rise (SLR) poses escalating risks to the U.S. Gulf Coast, where critical industries, infrastructure, and populations are concentrated in low-lying areas. This study estimates the short- and long-run economic effects of SLR using a panel autoregressive distributed lag-pooled mean group framework applied to county-level data from 26 coastal counties across five Gulf Coast states from 2005 to 2021. Over this period, mean sea level increased by approximately 11 cm on average across counties, with cumulative changes ranging from about 4 cm to over 24 cm and substantial cross-county variation, providing a meaningful empirical setting for identifying economic adjustment. We …

From Suitability To Invasion Risk: Integrating Correlative And Mechanistic Models For Predicting The Potential Distribution Of The Red Palm Weevil, Abdelmutalab G.A. Azrag, Komi Mensah Agboka, Elfatih M. Abdel-Rahman, Rehemah Gwokyalya, Seid A. Kemal, Hamadttu A.F. El-Shafie, Mohamed A. Bob, Samira A. Mohamed, Sunday Ekesi, Abdou Tenkouano

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

The red Palm Weevil (RPW) Rhynchophorus ferrugineus is the most devastating pest of palm trees and is responsible for significant economic and biodiversity losses worldwide. The larvae bore deep into the trunk or crown for feeding, resulting in extensive tunneling and mortality of the trees. In this study, we developed a hybrid modeling framework for RPW that integrates ecological niche modeling (ENMs) with a temperature-driven risk index (RI). The ENM was developed from the RPW occurrence data, while the RI was driven from temperature-dependent life history traits of RPW. The two approaches were combined through a weighted additive method to …

Best Practices For Supporting Occupational Therapy Students With Disabilities During Clinical Education: Results From A Three-Round Delphi Study, Courtney Gohean, Katie Mclaughlin, Aster Harrison

Department of Occupational Therapy Faculty Papers

INTRODUCTION: Disabled occupational therapy students face systemic barriers in clinical education. Although legal mandates require reasonable accommodations, implementation is often inconsistent, and few standardized guidelines exist for fieldwork education. This study is aimed at establishing best practices for supporting occupational therapy and occupational therapy assistant students with disabilities during fieldwork.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A three-round Delphi study was conducted with a panel of 30 experts, including disabled occupational therapy students, disabled occupational therapy practitioners, academic fieldwork coordinators (AFWCs), fieldwork educators (FWEs), disability services staff, and researchers. In Round 1, participants answered open-ended questions about challenges, accommodations, and environmental supports. Responses …

Threshold Spatial Panel Regression With Fixed Effects, Xiaoyu Meng, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We introduce general estimation and inference methods for threshold spatial panel regression with two-way fixed effects in a diminishing-threshold-effects framework. A valid objective function is obtained through a simple adjustment on the concentrated quasi loglikelihood with fixed effects being concentrated out, which leads to a consistent estimation of all common parameters. We show that the estimation of threshold parameter has a negligible effect on the asymptotic distribution of the main parameter estimators and thereby regular inference methods apply, though a bias correction may be necessary. The limiting distribution of the threshold parameter estimator is shown to be non-regular and infeasible, …

Coverage-Aware Gradient-Boosted Intrusion Detection For Smart-Meter Distributed Denial-Of-Service Resilience, Harsh Kumar, Sanjeev Kumar

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) relies on continuous communication among smart meters, gateways, routers, and utility monitoring systems, increasing exposure to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) traffic. This study presents a system-level intrusion-detection methodology integrating coverage-aware sensor placement with leakage-controlled gradient-boosted classification. The contribution lies in combining monitoring visibility, training-only feature sanitization, duplicate and cross-partition overlap removal, false-positive-constrained threshold selection, repeated external testing, and a validated feature-budget mode. Seventeen CIC-DDoS2019 parquet files were analyzed. After removing conflicting labels, exact duplicate feature vectors, and 4,666 testing records overlapping the training partition, the final dataset contained 121,088 training records and 297,790 external testing records with …

Latinos In Massachusetts: Salvadorans, Phillip Granberry, Florita Coto Tristán, Daniel Gascón

Gastón Institute Publications

As part of The Gastón Institute’s 2026 Latinos in Massachusetts series, we present here a profile of Salvadorans living in Massachusetts in 2024. This report analyzes Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data from the 2024 American Community Survey (ACS), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Our descriptive analysis uses both household- and individual-level data to estimate population size and percentages and to compare Salvadorans to Other Latinos and Non-Latinos in the state.

Democracy And Public Policy Network Expert Analysis On September 2026 Ohio Likely Voters Poll, Robert Alexander

Democracy and Public Policy Network Polls

No abstract provided.

Survey Of 1000 Ohio Likely Voters, September 2026 Tabs, Robert Alexander, Melissa K. Miller, David J. Jackson, Joshua Boston

Democracy and Public Policy Network Polls

No abstract provided.

Survey Of 1000 Ohio Likely Voters, September 2026 Toplines, Robert Alexander, Melissa K. Miller, David J. Jackson, Joshua Boston

Democracy and Public Policy Network Polls

No abstract provided.

Using Early And Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, And Treatment (Epsdt) To Improve Access To Obesity Pharmacotherapy: A Practical Guide For Clinicians Caring For Youth With Obesity Across United States Medicaid Programs:, Jaime M. Moore, Valerie M. O'Hara, Cassie Totman, Brooke Sweeney, Sarah Hampl, Alaina P. Vidmar

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

BACKGROUND: Coverage of obesity pharmacotherapy for youth varies substantially across state Medicaid programs. This variability limits access to evidence-based treatment for pediatric obesity. The Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (EPSDT) benefit is a federally mandated Medicaid provision requiring coverage of medically necessary services for individuals under age 21, even when such services are not included in standard state Medicaid benefits. Despite its broad scope, EPSDT remains underutilized due to limited awareness and operational complexity.

METHODS: We developed a clinician-facing, practice-oriented framework to operationalize EPSDT for pediatric obesity treatment. This approach integrates (1) review of federal EPSDT policy and …

Non-Vigorous Physical Activity Associated With Reduced Hospitalization Risk With Or Without Diabetes Or Peripheral Artery Disease: Study Of Latinos., Sarah K. Alver, Carmen C. Cuthbertson, Kelly R. Evenson, Jennifer A. Schrack, Daniela Sotres-Alvarez, Natasha Z. Anita, Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani, Linda C. Gallo, Jordan A. Carlson, Matthew Allison, Martha L. Daviglus, Olga Garcia-Bedoya, Christina Cordero, Xiaonan Xue, Jianwen Cai, Kunihiro Matsushita, Robert C. Kaplan

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

PURPOSE: This study assessed whether greater physical activity (PA) and lesser sedentary behavior (SB) reduce hospitalization risk equally among those with and without prediabetes, diabetes, or peripheral artery disease (PAD).

METHODS: We studied PA, SB and hospitalizations in 12,734 adults from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, who were 52.2% female with mean (standard deviation) age 41.1 (14.9) yr at baseline. Participants reported 10,025 nonpregnancy-related hospitalizations (excluding emergency room only) over 13 yr. We modeled the association between accelerometer-measured activity (SB; light intensity physical activity [LPA]; moderate physical activity [MPA]; vigorous physical activity [VPA]) and hospitalization, using Andersen-Gill proportional …

Prediction Of Decline In Ovarian Function In Turner Syndrome., Roopa Kanakatti Shankar, Tazim Dowlut-Mcelroy

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Comment on

• The role of hormonal markers in predicting reproductive lifespan in girls with Turner syndrome-a retrospective study. van der Coelen S, Sas T, Richter-Unruh A, Braat D, Fleischer K, Nadesapillai S, IntHout J, van der Velden J.J Endocr Soc. 2026 Jun 5;10(7):bvag122. doi: 10.1210/jendso/bvag122. eCollection 2026 Jul.PMID: 42272567 Free PMC article.

Ovarian Cancer Tumor Immune Profiles Associated With Intrauterine Device And Oral Contraceptive Use., Jennifer M. Mongiovi, Ana Babic, Naoko Sasamoto, Mary K. Townsend, Allison F. Vitonis, Mollie Barnard, Jonathan Hecht, T Rinda Soong, Jose R. Conejo-Garcia, Lauren C. Peres, Joellen M. Schildkraut, Holly R. Harris, Jennifer A. Doherty, Francesmary Modugno, Brooke L. Fridley, Shelley S. Tworoger, Kathryn L. Terry

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

BACKGROUND: Non-hormonal intrauterine devices (IUDs) create an inflammatory uterine environment while oral contraceptives (OC) suppress ovulation and have different associations with ovarian cancer risk. We have evaluated the associations of these two contraceptive exposures with ovarian tumor immune infiltration.

METHODS: This study assessed associations of IUD and OC use with tumor immune features via multiplex immunofluorescence in 24 ovarian tumor tissue microarrays from four case-control and two cohort studies. Multivariable-adjusted beta-binomial models estimated the odds of tumor T cell positivity by contraceptive history.

RESULTS: High-grade serous tumors had the highest percentage of tumor cells positive for total T cells (CD3+ …

The Rise And Fall Of Lateral Electrical Surface Stimulation (Less) Through The Lens Of Srs Archives., Ali Rezazadeh Shirazi, Jay I. Kumar, Katie Dold, George H. Thompson, Andrew G. King, Richard M. Schwend, John P. Lubicky, Jay Shapiro, Behrooz A. Akbarnia, History Committee Of The Scoliosis Research Society

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

PURPOSE: Lateral electrical surface stimulation (LESS), commercially known as the ScoliTron™, emerged in the late 1970s as a noninvasive alternative to bracing for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. Early clinical reports generated considerable enthusiasm and adoption, but the technique was ultimately abandoned. This study examined the rise and fall of LESS through a combined analysis of the Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) archives and published literature, with the goal of understanding factors that influence the adoption, evaluation, and abandonment of innovation in scoliosis care.

METHODS: A structured historical review was conducted using archival materials from the Scoliosis Research Society (SRS), including meeting abstracts, …

Outcomes For Congenitally Corrected Transposition Of Great Arteries Using Various Surgical Techniques: A Systematic Review And Network Meta-Analysis., S U Hasan, Sur Usmani, S H Ahmed, A Pervez, M A Kamalia, A D Shah, Mujeeb Zubair

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

INTRODUCTION: Congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries (ccTGA) is a rare disorder. Here, we evaluated the effectiveness of physiological, anatomical and Fontan repair techniques for ccTGA.

METHODS: A systematic database search in PubMed, Embase and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials was conducted from inception to 5 June 2023. Random-effects network meta-analysis was performed, comparing mortality, postoperative arrhythmias, reintervention after definitive surgery and transplant-free survival in patients undergoing physiological, anatomical and Fontan repair.

FINDINGS: A total of 1,209 patients were included from nine studies. Fontan repair was associated with a higher rate of transplant-free survival (absolute risk [AR] 0.999 …

Vomica And Respiratory Distress: A Complicated Lung Hydatid Cyst In A Child., Riccardo Guanà, Antonella Peduto, Maria Grazia Sacco Casamassima, Marco Denina, Marco Petraz, Cristina Giuliano, Giuseppe Farruggio, Lucia Gerbaudo, Fabrizio Gennari

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Hydatid cyst, caused by Echinococcus infection, is the most common parasitic lung infection in children. Giant cysts are generally the result of a late diagnosis and are associated with a high risk of spontaneous rupture and life-threatening complications, including anaphylactic shock. We present the complex management of a large, complicated hydatid cyst of the lung in an 11-year-old boy in a nonendemic area. This case highlighted the specific work-up and surgical treatment of lung cysts as well as the differential diagnosis to consider when treating pulmonary masses or pneumonia.

Patient-Specific Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling Of Airway Collapse In Infants With Robin Sequence., Gautam Jalori, Michael Barbour, Michael Bindschadler, Kelly Evans, John P. Dahl, Alberto Aliseda

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Robin Sequence (RS) is a congenital condition in which patients experience dynamic, periodic obstruction or collapse of the upper airway due to an underdeveloped jaw and a posteriorly displaced tongue. Current clinical techniques for evaluating airway obstruction do not provide quantifiable data and fail to account for the dynamic nature of obstruction or collapse. There is no standardized criterion to characterize obstruction or collapse severity. This study presents the first method that extracts airway motion from 4-dimensional computed tomography and performs a patient-specific, moving-mesh computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of RS patients with complete airway collapse or obstruction. To quantify …

Pharmacogenetics In Pediatric Cardiology., Adenike Adenikinju, Jonathan B. Wagner, Mollie Walton

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Children with congenital and acquired heart disease frequently require complex and prolonged pharmacotherapy, often involving off-label cardiovascular medications with narrow therapeutic ranges. Consequently, variability in drug response and medication-related adverse events remains a significant clinical challenge in pediatric cardiology. Pharmacogenetics provides a framework to individualize drug selection and dosing by incorporating genetic variability alongside established clinical and developmental factors. This review outlines the current clinical utility and emerging role of pharmacogenetics in pediatric cardiology, emphasizing applications most relevant to day-to-day patient care. Established pharmacogenetic associations with direct implications for pediatric cardiac practice include gene-drug pairs involving tacrolimus (CYP3A5), …

Preface. Neutrosophic Decision-Making, Artificial Intelligence And Large Language Models: Applications In Engineering, Education And Public Policy In Latin America. Special Issue Of The International Academic Meeting At Universidad Bernardo O'Higgins, Santiago, Chile (2026), Maikel Yelandi Leyva Vazquez, Alexis Matheu Perez, Florentin Smarandache

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

This special issue collects the papers presented at, and derived from, the international academic meeting held at Universidad Bernardo O'Higgins (UBO) in Santiago, Chile, over two days: Tuesday, June 30 and Wednesday, July 1, 2026. The meeting, organized by Professors Maikel Yelandi Leyva Vazquez and Alexis Matheu Perez, was honored by the presence of Professor Florentin Smarandache, founder of neutrosophy. Sessions covered the foundations of neutrosophic logic, NeutroAlgebra and AntiAlgebra, plithogenic statistics and probability, the epistemic auditing of large language models, and their applications to higher education, institutional evaluation, and public policy, in connection with the FONDECYT Regular 2026 project …

Internal Verdicts Track Evidence: A Template-Controlled Neutrosophic Reading Of Epistemic States In Large Language Models Via The Jacobian Lens, Maikel Leyva, Alexis Matheu Perez, Florentin Smarandache

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

For twenty-five years, neutrosophic logic has assigned independent degrees of truth (T), indeterminacy (I), and falsity (F) to model epistemic states that classical and fuzzy semantics cannot express. All previous applications, however, measured these components on outputs: answers, judgments, expert evaluations. This paper reports, to our knowledge, the first neutrosophic reading of components inside the internal representations of a large language model. Using the recently released Jacobian lens on Qwen3.5-4B, we project intermediate-layer readouts onto lexicons of support, refutation, and hedging, obtaining layer-wise (T, I, F) profiles under three epistemic conditions (conflicting evidence, first-person false belief, factual control; n = …

Sexual Education And Sti Prevention In High School: A Neutrosophic Analysis Of The Opportunities And Risks Of Generative Artificial Intelligence, Antonio Pioquinto Rivera, Gregorio Nunez Hernandez, Rosalinda Villa Juarez

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) remain a critical challenge during adolescence. Given the limitations of traditional sex education, generative artificial intelligence (GAI) has emerged as a personalized and anonymous consultation alternative. This study analyzes, from a neutrosophic perspective, the scientific evidence published between 2019 and 2026 on the use of GAI to strengthen STI prevention among high school students. Through a critical integrative review of thirteen reference studies, a matrix was built that classifies the findings across four dimensions (AI-mediated learning, sexual education, STI prevention, and educational equity) according to their truth (T), falsity (F), and indeterminacy (I) components. The results …

Beyond National Accuracy: A Neutrosophic Geographic Evidence Audit Of Preschool-Attendance Prediction In Ecuador (Ensanut 2018), Cindy Patricia Campoverde Vera

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

Predictive models built on national surveys are usually summarized by one aggregate performance figure, yet a national metric may conceal large differences in how the model behaves across territories. We examined this problem with the 2018 Ecuadorian National Health and Nutrition Survey (ENSANUT 2018). A conventional Random Forest trained on five child and household variables reached a national accuracy of 64.83% against a majority-class baseline of 54.40%. This aggregate concealed substantial geographic heterogeneity: provincial accuracy ranged from 56.1% (Bolivar) to 78.0% (Canar). To represent this evidence without collapsing it into one number we formalize a Neutrosophic Geographic Evidence Audit (NGEA), …

Verified, Unsupported, Or Contradicted? A Neutrosophic Evidence Audit Of Public-Security Dashboard Indicators: Citizen-Security Incidents Reported To Ecuador's Ecu911, July 2026, Jhon Jairo Tuz Chamorro

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

Administrative dashboards display values whose evidential support is rarely audited. This study characterised the open file of incidents reported during July 2026 to Ecuador's Integrated Security Service ECU911. The analysis demonstrated that population normalisation substantially changed the territorial ranking. Three dashboard indicators that failed evidential review were used as validation cases for the proposed Neutrosophic Dashboard Indicator Audit (NDIA), under which each indicator is treated as a proposition whose numerical value and interpretation must be adequately supported by the underlying data and computational procedure. The audit distinguished between different forms of evidential failure, including a computational contradiction, a claim unsupported …

Beyond Scalar Uncertainty: Independent Neutrosophic Evidence Coordinates For Conflict-Aware Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Florentin Smarandache, Maikel Yelandi Leyva Vazquez

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines reduce the quality of retrieved evidence to one number, and common scalar uncertainty summaries conflate evidential distinctions that a three-coordinate representation keeps apart: insufficient, contradictory and explicitly indeterminate evidence. We use the non-normalized neutrosophic triple (T, I, F) as a testable multidimensional evidence representation, with independent channels for support, explicit indeterminacy and opposition, and subject its defining design principle to a controlled empirical test on a pre-specified battery built on Climate-FEVER, validated externally on ConfRAG. The independent triple gives the best five-way behaviour with the LLM evaluator; normalization deletes the magnitude that signals insufficiency. The benefit …

The Enforceability Of Economic, Social And Cultural Rights As A Neutrosophic Variable: The Right To Education In Ecuador, Alejandro Montece

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

In 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in 1966 it divided fundamental rights into two covenants. This study analyses the level of enforceability of economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights, taking the right to education in Ecuador as its case, and argues that enforceability is not a binary property but a neutrosophic variable: for each dimension of the right there coexist degrees of realization (T), degrees of documented non-realization (F), and a component of indeterminacy (I) that the analysis types into constitutive indeterminacy and removable indeterminacy. The results show high truth values …

Generative Ai For Curriculum And Assessment Design In Competency-Based Tvet: An Exploratory Evidence Map With Neutrosophic Annotations, Maria Del Refugio Patino Cayetano, Blanca Estela Calderon Munoz

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

Technological and polytechnic universities in Mexico revise their competency-based study plans on a multi-year cycle, and generative AI (GAI) tools are increasingly used informally by faculty to draft curriculum documents and evaluation instruments, without a published evidence base for the practice. This paper reports an exploratory, non-registered scoping search of the OpenAlex database for evidence on GAI use in curriculum and assessment design, read against four explicit propositions. What remains undocumented is narrower: authoring of curriculum or evaluation documents by GAI inside a multi-year, institutional, competency-based TVET/polytechnic revision cycle, specifically within the Textile Design and Fashion Engineering discipline.

Field-Deployable Pose Estimation For Youth Athlete Screening: A Reproducible Protocol And Its Sensitivity Limits In A Genetically Controlled Case Series, Darvin Manuel Ramirez Guerra, Christian Edison De La Torre Choque, Jorge Guiseppe Herrera Chamorro, Jordi Kevin Flores Zabaleta

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

Smartphone pose-estimation applications promise laboratory-grade biomechanical screening at negligible cost, an attractive prospect for youth sport programmes in low-resource settings. This paper contributes a reproducible field protocol for smartphone-based postural and jump screening, and reports its behaviour on a deliberately adversarial test case: a set of sex-discordant triplets (n = 3, age 13 years) who share prenatal environment, socioeconomic context and training history. The contribution is the protocol, the fully reported case data, and an explicit statement of what a criterion-validation study against force platforms and open pose estimators would need to establish before field screening claims can be sustained.

Ahp-Topsis-Based Cybersecurity Control Prioritization For Local E-Government: Integrating Cobit 2019 And Iso/Iec 27001:2022 In Ecuador, Gabriel Neptali Bailon Arcentales, Jair Andres Semblantes Pinto, Noel Batista Hernandez

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

Local governments in Ecuador manage critical citizen services yet operate with limited cybersecurity maturity. This paper presents MPEC-GAD, a cybersecurity governance model integrating COBIT 2019 strategic alignment with ISO/IEC 27001:2022 technical controls, using AHP-TOPSIS multi-criteria prioritization. Applied to GAD Jaramijo (Manabi, Ecuador), the four decision criteria weight risk reduction, implementation cost, deployment time, and technical complexity (AHP Consistency Ratio CR = 0.0054 < 0.10). The TOPSIS ranking directs scarce resources toward the 47 mandatory EGSI controls with highest risk-reduction per investment unit. A single-round structured review by seven experts rated pertinence, viability and completeness with mean scores >=4.0/5.0.