Digital Commons Network^™

Dynamics For Complex Quadratic Networks, Templates And Mutations, Anca R. Radulescu, Eva Kaslik, Alexander Fikl, Sarah Muldoon, Johan Nakuci, Mark Comerford

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Modeling, Control Analysis, And Parameter Estimation Of Epidemic Dynamics Using The Unscented Kalman Filter, Muhammad Imran, Saira Batool, Brett Mckinney

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Delineating Differences In Firing Rate Estimates Of Healthy And Parkinsonian Single-Unit Basal Ganglia Recordings, Richard R. Foster, Cheng Ly

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Association Of Mirnas As Biomarkers For Severe Liver Dysfunction In Severe Dengue Infection, Napat Pas-Arj, Nattachai Srisawat, Umaporn Limothai, Sasipha Tachaboon, Janejira Dinhuzen

Chulalongkorn Medical Journal

Background: Identification early biomarkers for predicting severe liver dysfunction in severe dengue patients is essential. Currently, there is no any data on circulating microRNAs to predict this important complication.

Objectives: This study aimed to explore the role of circulating microRNAs in prediction severe liver dysfunction in dengue infection by identifying and validating predictive microRNAs via Nanostring and RT-qPCR.

Methods: On the initial day of admission, serum samples were gathered from patients with dengue infection. These patients were monitored for 14 days post-admission to ascertain their final diagnosis. Following the WHO 2009 criteria, participants were categorized into severe liver dysfunction and …

Tumor Markers And Pancreatic Enzymes Reflect Early Pancreatic Dysfunction In Type 2 Diabetes, Walaa Mohammedsaeed, Suliman Alharbi, Lama Alraddadi, Saja Aljohani, Talat Almehmadi, Sarah Alawfi

Saudi Medical Journal

Objective: To evaluate whether pancreatic enzymes and tumor markers reflect early pancreatic dysfunction in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Methods: In this cross-sectional study conducted between January 2023 and January 2024, 300 Saudi adults with T2DM were assessed for serum CA19-9, CA125, amylase, and lipase. Associations with glycemic control, insulin resistance (homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance [HOMA-IR]), and metabolic parameters were examined using multivariable linear and logistic regression adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, diabetes duration, lipid profile, and medication use. Receiver-operating characteristic analyses evaluated biomarker performance for identifying poor glycemic control (HbA1c >8.5%). Exploratory analyses …

Demographic Profiles, Clinical Characteristics, And Meteorological Context Of Heat-Related Illnesses Among Hajj Pilgrims In 2023, Ghadah Alsaleh, Majed Alsalamah, Fahad Alamri, Fatemah Alsaleh, Anas Khan

Saudi Medical Journal

Objective: To describe the demographic profiles, clinical characteristics, and meteorological context of heat-related illnesses among Hajj pilgrims in 2023.

Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted using data from 1,129 pilgrims diagnosed with HRIs across healthcare facilities in Mecca, Mina, and Arafat. Demographic and clinical data were extracted from the Hajj Health Information System, while temperature, humidity, wind speed, and rainfall records were obtained from the National Center for Meteorology.

Results: Heat exhaustion (48.2%) and heatstroke (37.4%) were the most common diagnoses, with 24.9% of the cases requiring hospitalization. Males represented 55.4% of cases and accounted for 51.2% of …

From Early Adversity To Adult Health: Quality-Of-Life Consequences In A Mental Illness In Saudi Arabia, Rawan Saad Alghamdi, Ahmad A. Mirza, Ibrahim Fae Asiri, Fatemah Samir Alghamdi, Nawaf Abdulaziz Alharthi, Shaymaa A. Abdalal, Iman K. Ramadan

Saudi Medical Journal

Objectives: Childhood trauma (CT) is prevalent among bipolar disorder (BD) patients and exacerbates clinical outcomes, which may impact the quality of life (QoL). This study explores the prevalence of CT and its association with QoL among BD patients in Saudi Arabia. Methods: Cross-sectional study conducted among adults with BD during the euthymic phase. Sample size was estimated using a single-proportion approach (target n=141), and participants recruited by convenience sampling of eligible outpatients. CT was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), and QoL using the the Brief Quality of Life in Bipolar Disorder (Brief QoL.BD). Results: The CT prevalence was …

A Retrospective Cohort Study Of Uterine Cancer Epidemiological Analysis And Age-Based Disparities In Saudi Arabian Population Across 32 Years, Sallwa M. Alshehre, Mohammad A. Althubiti

Saudi Medical Journal

Objectives: To investigate the burden of uterine tumour in Saudi Arabia during the past 32 years (1990–2021), with an emphasize on the prevalence, incidence, mortality, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Knowing these patterns strengthen the national aims of cancer control under Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) Vision 2030. Methods: A retrospective study was performed using data retrieved from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) database. The work included population from Saudi Arabia between 1990 and 2021 and tested standardization age-specific metrics, involving uterine tumour incidence, prevalence, mortality, and DALYs. Results: Uterine tumour cases raised from 507 in 1990 to 6,366 …

Seroprevalence Of Hepatitis B And Hepatitis C In Patients Hospitalized In Palliative Care Service, Meryem Betos Koçak, Burcu Güler

Saudi Medical Journal

Objectives: Patients receiving palliative care often have complex comorbidities and frequent healthcare exposure, which may place them at risk for blood-borne infections such as hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV). However, data on the seroprevalence and prognostic impact of these infections in palliative populations remain limited. This study aimed to determine the seroprevalence of HBV and HCV markers in patients hospitalized in a palliative care unit and to assess their association with mortality. Methods: This retrospective study conducted on 545 adult patients a tertiary palliative care unit between 2018 and 2024. Demographic characteristics, comorbidities, nutritional support, mobility, …

Impact Of Treatment On The Health-Related Quality Of Life Of Children With Cancer In Saudi Arabia, Fayzah Hussain Alhussain, Amany Anwar Saeed Alabdullah

Saudi Medical Journal

Objective: The impact of cancer on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is considerable, particularly for children undergoing oncological treatment. While research has addressed HRQOL in childhood cancer survivors, less attention has been given to those actively undergoing treatment, including in Saudi Arabia. This systematic review aimed to address this gap by quantitatively evaluating studies reporting on the HRQOL of children in Saudi Arabia during their active cancer treatment phase. We also compare these findings with studies from around the world, emphasising demographic, medical and parental predictors of HRQOL. Methods: A comprehensive search of relevant databases (MEDLINE, CENTRAL, Embase, PsycINFO and …

Dream-State Consolidation Transformers For Long-Horizon Artificial Intelligence, Johny Manuel-Devadoss, Joanna Johnson, Jayden Jack Johnson

Defensive Publications Series

Contemporary transformer architectures achieve strong performance through large-scale parameterization, retrieval augmentation, and extended context windows. However, persistent token-level retention scales poorly for lifelong or long-horizon cognition due to increasing computational cost, retrieval interference, context fragmentation, and memory saturation. This paper proposes a speculative but computationally grounded framework termed Dream-State Consolidation Transformers (DSCT), in which artificial systems alternate between online inference phases and offline consolidation phases. During online operation, systems process high-resolution episodic information from external environments. During offline consolidation, episodic traces are replayed under stochastic perturbation and compressed into semantically stable latent representations.

Unlike conventional persistent-memory systems, DSCT prioritizes abstraction …

Biology Major Takes On Research And Collegiate Boxing In Senior Year, Devin Chivers

College of Arts and Sciences Newsroom

Beyond her genetics research in the lab, Ja’Brina Hargrave-Perkins trains and competes with UD’s boxing club.

Decolonizing The Home: Anti-Racist Parenting In Asian American Families And Its Effects On Children's Mental Health, Danielle Angela R. Soriano

College Honors Program

Few studies in the field of psychology have investigated how anti-racist and anti-colonial parenting styles are practiced, especially within the Asian American community. The current study aims to investigate how anti-colonial and anti-racist parenting practices are explicitly manifested and their relationship with mental health in Asian American communities. This study concludes by proposing new directions in literature and exploring how anti-colonial approaches can support positive mental health outcomes in children and adolescents. By borrowing questions from the California Department of Education Parent Engagement Module Series and developing new items tailored to our participants’ demographics, we found that the majority (n …

A Kantian Guide To Understanding Agentic Ai And Its Ethical Consequences, Amelia Wang

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

The rapid emergence of Agentic AI, which are systems capable of autonomous, multi-step decision-making with minimal human oversight, has prompted growing discourse and concern regarding whether such systems possess a form of agency comparable to that of human beings, and subsequently, what ethical responsibilities ensue if they do. This thesis argues that many of the ethical risks surrounding Agentic AI stem from a fundamental misconception, which is the tendency to describe these systems using the language of agency ("deciding," "acting," "choosing") without examining whether they satisfy the philosophical conditions for genuine rational agency. Drawing on Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the …

Lgbtqia+ Inclusion In K-12 Education: A Systematized Review Of U.S. South Atlantic Region Educational Policy, Benjamin Little

Educational Specialist, 2020-current

LGBTQIA+ students experience disproportionate rates of discrimination, bullying, and mental health challenges within their educational settings, while educational policies shaping school climate vary considerably across jurisdictions. The purpose of this systematized review was to identify trends in the structure and implementation of LGBTQIA+ inclusion policies across K-12 state-level public education systems within the U.S. South Atlantic region and to examine how these policies addressed the needs of transgender youth and LGBTQIA+ students of color. This review synthesized publicly available state education documents, legislative materials, and nonprofit policy reports using a systematized review methodology guided by PRISMA principles and qualitative theme …

What’S Behind The Mask: The Diagnostic Divide In The Female Autism Phenotype, Shelley Gies Alston

Educational Specialist, 2020-current

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by differences in social communication and restrictive, repetitive behaviors; however, women are diagnosed at significantly lower rates than men. This study examined whether DSM-5-TR diagnostic practices may contribute to the underdiagnosis and delayed identification of ASD in individuals assigned female at birth (AFAB), with attention to masking behaviors, gendered social expectations, and clinician interpretation of symptoms. Grounded in the Female Autism Phenotype (FAP), a retrospective mixed-methods study surveyed 12 AFAB individuals aged 18–24 who self-identified or were formally diagnosed with ASD. Participants completed a 44-item online survey including Likert-scale and open-ended …

Psychometric Framework For Coexistence With Large Carnivores, Benjamin Ghasemi, Gerard Kyle, Tara Teel, Rebeca Niemiec, Kevin Crooks, Jenny Anne Glikman, Neil H. Carter, John A. Vucetich, Michelle L. Lute, Stewart Breck, Beatrice Frank, Dana Hoag, Jonathan Salerno, Lily M. Van Eeden, Jeremy T. Bruskotter

Michigan Tech Publications

Human–carnivore coexistence is essential for biodiversity conservation, yet measuring the attitudes and behaviors that support it remains methodologically challenging. We developed psychometric scales to assess willingness to coexist with carnivores and the underlying beliefs of this coexistence through an iterative expert elicitation process grounded in risk perception theory and moral psychology to ensure strong content validity. The scales measure willingness to coexist and encompass individual and collective behaviors and their cognitive antecedents: perceived positive consequences, perceived negative consequences, and ethical considerations. We validated the scales based on three representative samples of Colorado residents (n = 434, 442, 433) focused on …

Past, Present, And Future For The Children's Oncology Group (Cog) Renal Tumor Committee Trials, Nicholas Cost

Grand Rounds

At the conclusion of this activity, learners will be able to:

1. Describe COG Renal Tumor Committee.
2. Discuss outcomes from the last generation of COG Renal Tumor studies.
3. Examine current and next generation of COG Renal Tumor studies

Psy 1100 Writing Intensive Syllabus, Jos Khan

Open Educational Resources

This is an ZTC/OER syllabus for a PSY 1100 writing intensive course at Kingsborough Community College.

Illinois Wesleyan To Launch First-Of-Its-Kind Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Quantum Science And Engineering Program, Tori Joseph

Press Releases 2020-2029

No abstract provided.

Thrombin-Induced Myofibroblast Differentiation Is Regulated By Myocardin And Novel Effector Genes In Ipf Fibroblasts, Christiana Okeke

Biotechnology Theses

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive interstitial lung disease characterized by fibroblast activation, excessive extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition, and irreversible respiratory decline. In this study, we investigated the role of myocardin and its downstream effectors, RGS5, DLGAP5, and TAGLN, in thrombin-induced myofibroblast differentiation and ECM remodeling using primary human IPF fibroblasts. Myocardin knockdown significantly attenuated thrombin-induced expression of profibrotic genes, including FN1, COL1A1, PAI-1, ACTA2, and CNN1, as well as the novel effectors RGS5, DLGAP5, and TAGLN, confirming myocardin as a central regulator of fibrotic signaling. Silencing RGS5 produced minimal effects on gene and protein expression despite minor downward …

Identification Of Proteins With Immune Stimulatory Activities From The Culture Filtrates Of Nontuberculous Mycobacteria, Christian Albert Agyei Acheampong

Biotechnology Theses

Nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are the mycobacterial species other than Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis, and Mycobacterium leprae, which causes leprosy. Diseases caused by NTM are on the rise in the United States and are steadily becoming a significant public health problem globally, particularly in developed countries. Despite the ability of NTM pathogens to interact with the host immune system, the proteins responsible for eliciting host immune responses remain unidentified, making the accurate and timely diagnosis of the disease a challenge. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that NTM strains secrete proteins that stimulate immune responses. Our study …

Mapping And Framing Circular Economy In The Sixth Assessment Report Of The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change: A Systematic Text Analysis, Marta Castellini, Nadezhda Ushakova, Sergio Vergalli

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Working Papers

Although the circular economy (CE) is recognised as a key climate mitigation strategy, its integration within global climate frameworks, such as those developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Assessment Reports, remains unclear. This study provides a systematic analysis of how the circular economy is framed in the climate-mitigation context of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report using a mixed-methods approach that combines computational text analysis with qualitative content analysis through sentence-level manual coding. Eight Chapters relevant to the mitigation were examined and findings show that CE is most frequently framed as a supporting strategy (44.3%), followed …

First Recombinant Expression, Purification, And Film Formation Of A Single Solitary Bee Silk Protein From Osmia Lignaria, Oran Wasserman, Kristin K. Durrant, Jackson J. Morley, Paula E. Oliveira, Mallory R. Wootton, Brianne E. Bell, Ethon D. Van Noy, Randolph V. Lewis, Justin A. Jones

Biology Student Research

Solitary bees account for most described bee species worldwide, with many spinning silk fibers to form protective cocoons during development; however, solitary bee silk proteins remain largely unexplored in recombinant systems and biomaterial fabrication. Here, we report the first recombinant expression and biomaterial formation from a solitary bee silk protein. Osmia lignaria silk fibroin 2 (OligF2) was expressed in Escherichia coli BL21(DE3) using an expression and purification scheme adapted from a recombinant hagfish intermediate filament (rHIF) workflow, yielding 0.34 g/L at ~70% purity. The purified OligF2 protein was cast into films at 0.75% and 1% (w/v). …

Underlying Mechanisms In The Relationship Between Ptsd And Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Jillian B. Heymann

Dissertations

Current bodies of knowledge support the relationships between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), pain catastrophizing and PTSD, and pain catastrophizing and IBS. However, much less is known regarding how pain catastrophizing influences the relationship between PTSD and IBS. Additionally, while correlations between some demographic and trauma-related symptomatology have been elucidated in the relationship between PTSD and IBS, their impact as potential moderators on the relationship between PTSD and IBS has yet to be fully examined. Examining a student sample from a large midwestern university, the present study aimed to investigate the potential mediating and moderating roles …

Comparison Of Efficacy Of Autologous Platelet Rich Plasma Versus Silicone Products For Treatment Of Scars, Sanjay Kumar Giri, Ahana Bandyopadhyay, Santanu Suba, Sweta Singh, Bramhadatta Pattnaik, Gaurav Chhabra

Sultan Qaboos University Medical Journal

Objectives: This study aimed to compare the efficacy of intralesional autologous platelet rich plasma (PRP) injection in post-traumatic and post-surgical scars to a control group managed with silicone-based products. In addition, this study aimed to determine the success rate via aesthetic result, symptom improvement and outcome in terms of complications using autologous PRP on scars caused by burns or trauma. Methods: This randomised controlled trial study was conducted from August 2022 and February 2024 at the Departments of Burns and Plastic Surgery, Surgical Gastroenterology and Obstetrics and Gynaecology, AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, India. Intralesional autologous PRP injections were administered to post-traumatic or …

More Than The Sum Of Its Sexes: Functional Constraints, Embodied Capital, And Age-Structured Labor In Human Forager Economies, Eric Schniter, Hillard Kaplan, Brenda Bowser, Cari Goetz

ESI Publications

"The paper's rough consensus attributes the SDoL to differential variance in food returns across male- and female-typical foraging domains, sourcing this primarily to Bird and Codding (2015) and Kelly's (2013) reframe of the classic 'hunting vs. gathering' axis as 'risky vs. non-risky foraging.' Indeed, the data show that males more often pursue large game and honey, resources that yield higher caloric returns but with high unpredictability, injury risk, and failure rates. Females, especially those with dependent young, more often target plant foods and small game that produce steadier, lower-variance returns. But variance-buffering is a proximate ecological account, not a life …

Consonance, Dissonance, And The Brain: Directions In Modern Concert Music, Julianna F. Stratton

College Honors Program

Modern Western arts pedagogy can easily lead its students to believe in the unimpeded evolution of musical language, progressing from highly consonant music to the dissonant explorations of the 20th century. Although extreme schools of music made their mark on the modern music scene, and some of their techniques do continue today, recent trends in the concert hall have seemingly embraced tonality and consonance again. This work addresses some of the neuroscientific and psychological underpinnings of this change. It explores the processes by which we assign meaning to sound, which might tell us about future trajectories of music in the …

Contested Surveillance: Gendered Citizenship And Political Participation In Egypt And Lebanon, Mohamad Zarif

Theses and Dissertations

While the 2011 Arab Uprisings were famously framed by the utopian narrative of a 'Facebook Revolution', this view has given way to a dystopian reality in which digital infrastructures can facilitate authoritarian retrenchment. This thesis interrogates how lowermiddle- and working-class precarious youth navigate and perceive this "Architecture of Control" in Cairo and Beirut. Using a comparative qualitative design with purposive and snowball sampling, this research integrates digital ethnography and fourteen interviews with eighteen participants (nine women, seven men) to capture lived experiences of surveillance rather than the internal logic of state security institutions. The study yields three primary findings. First, …

Peer-Led Team Learning: Transforming The Introductory Colsa Experience, Derek Edry

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.