Digital Commons Network^™

Usa V. Julio Suarez

2025 Decisions

USDC for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

How Effective Are Engineered And Non-Engineered Riparian Forest Restoration Projects In Providing Salmonid-Quality Habitat In The San Francisco Bay Area?, Alexander Ivanov

Master's Theses

Streams and their riparian zones in the San Francisco Bay Area have been degraded, severely harming salmonid populations in the region. Ecological restoration is a common approach to return stream function. Such restoration projects vary widely in intensity, from low-impact vegetation removal/planting to highly engineered projects involving structures and grading. This research investigated the effectiveness of streams restored using engineered versus non-engineered solutions in supporting salmonid habitat viability in San Francisco Bay Area streams. Fourteen streams, seven from each of the two types of restoration, were sampled in the wet and dry season in 2024, three times each season. Data …

Thomas Gage V. Borough Of New Providence

2025 Decisions

USDC for the District of New Jersey

Sekema Gentles V. Borough Of Pottstown

2025 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Usa V. Safehouse

2025 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Refugee Law Lab Consultation Report On Bill C-2, Sean Rehaag, Petra Molnar, Simon Wallace

Commissioned Reports, Studies and Public Policy Documents

This Report documents consultations undertaken by the Refugee Law Lab (RLL) with refugee advocacy communities in response to proposed legislation, Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act. The report: a) Provides an overview of Bill C-2, highlighting its impacts on immigration and refugee law b) Outlines critiques of Bill C-2 made by advocacy and human rights organizations c) Describes the RLL, its consultation objectives, and methodologies d) Presents key themes from the RLL's consultations e) Proposes an action plan for the RLL and recommendations for other university-based researchers.

You Better Werk: The Viability Of A Labor Union For The Cast Of Rupaul’S Drag Race, Brandon Stump

Cleveland State Law Review

Reality television cast members are poorly compensated, working under tremendously restrictive and controlling contracts. While actors and writers who are members of the Screen Actors Guild of America and the Screen Writers Guild of America have collectively bargained with studios for better wages, terms, and conditions of employment, contestants on reality television series have gone it alone – auditioning for a series and having no choice other than to accept the contract provided by the studios. In December 2024, at the end of the Biden administration, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint on behalf of the reality …

Responding To Police Perjury, David R. Katner

Cleveland State Law Review

The way in which defense lawyers phrase their challenges in criminal proceedings where police witnesses are thought to have committed perjury might place decisionmakers in the awkward position of unintentionally or intentionally coming to the aid of the witnesses who are unable to defend themselves during closing arguments. This article proposes a shift in the paradigm of how defense counsel characterize and handle testimony that seems untruthful, without having to engage in tactics that intend to be disrespectful to all police officers, let alone to the witnesses in the trial. Creating a continuum from absolute truthfulness to absolute untruthfulness and …

Sterilized Speech: The U.S. Impacts Of E.U. Digital Service Rules, Jelena Laketić

Cleveland State Law Review

In recent decades, online platforms have transformed how people communicate and interact. Speech on platforms has enabled commerce, driven political processes, facilitated revolution, and built communities. Distinguishing between beneficial and harmful content, however, has grown increasingly difficult. Beginning with the new legal framework for the illegal distribution of copyrighted works and the dissemination of audiovisual and terrorist content, the E.U. has taken the global lead and change in regulating online speech. The culmination of this approach has been the recent adoption of the Digital Services Act (DSA), which promises to revolutionize online platforms’ liability. This Article argues that the new …

Making Criminal Penalties Collar-Blind On The Federal Level, Claire Osborn-Wright

Cleveland State Law Review

This paper is intended to be the first in a series of papers that addresses whether lower income individuals suffer all of the following at much higher rates than their percentage of the population would suggest should be the case: (1) police stops for questioning; (2) arrests; (3) prosecutions; (4) convictions; and (5) lengthy post-conviction incarcerations. In particular, this first paper addresses the question of whether prison sentences imposed for “blue-collar crimes” are significantly longer than prison sentences imposed for “white-collar crimes.” In general, “blue-collar crimes” refer to crimes that are committed by individuals who possess blue-collar professions and “white-collar …

Choline-An Essential Nutrient With Health Benefits And A Signaling Molecule, Brianne C. Burns, Jitendra D. Belani, Hailey N. Wittorf, Eugen Brailoiu, G. Cristina Brailoiu

College of Pharmacy Faculty Papers

Choline has been recognized as an essential nutrient involved in various physiological functions critical to human health. Adequate daily intake of choline has been established by the US National Academy of Medicine in 1998, considering choline requirements for different ages, sex differences and physiological states (e.g., pregnancy). By serving as a precursor for acetylcholine and phospholipids, choline is important for cholinergic transmission and the structural integrity of cell membranes. In addition, choline is involved in lipid and cholesterol transport and serves as a methyl donor after oxidation to betaine. Extracellular choline is transported across the cell membrane via various transport …

Beyond Scrolling: Social Media’S Impact On Creativity, Gabriel Owusu, Murad Moqbel

Information Systems Faculty Publications

Although prior research has explored social media’s impact on team creativity and knowledge management, its influence on individual creative performance remains understudied. Drawing on Transactive Memory Systems (TMS) theory, this research investigates how social media deep structure use affects individual creative performance through TMS dimensions: specialization, credibility, and coordination. We surveyed 362 U.S. active social media users, focusing on Facebook usage, and tested the hypothesized relationships using structural equation modeling. Findings reveal that social media deep structure use significantly influences TMS dimensions, which enhance creative performance through individual creative efficacy. This study extends TMS theory to individual creativity and introduces …

Deciphering The Apomixis Reproductive Trait And Its Manipulation Strategies To Enhance Crop Improvement, Mohd Razik Midin, Aiesyaa Majdiena Emlee, Mohamad Azimi Shaharudin, Fadzlin Qistina Fauzan, Siti Fatimah Zakaria, Emelda Rosseleena Rohani, Farah Ayuni Farinordin

Turkish Journal of Botany

In plants, apomixis is the process of asexual reproduction when seeds are produced from the maternal tissues of the ovule. Gametophytic and sporophytic apomixis develop with distinctive mechanisms and are molecularly triggered either by hybridization or polyploidization. As apomixis involves meiosis suppression and parthenogenesis, these events are likely to be genetically driven. T he apomictic trait is associated with several genes that need a diploid or aneuploid gamete for their transfer in polyploid species. T he molecular mechanisms driving apomixis in various plant species have been explained by previous investigations into apomictic genes. Apomixis offers agronomic advantages, such as reducing …

Conjugative Delivery Of Toxin Genes, Yang Grace Li, Daniel Haeusser, William Margolin, Peter J Christie

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The bacterial type IV secretion systems (T4SS) are medically problematic for their roles in the dissemination of mobile genetic elements or effector proteins, but they also have great potential for new antimicrobial therapies. Recent studies have deployed the T4SS subfamily of conjugation systems to deliver gene editing CRISPR/Cas systems to disrupt drug resistance genes or kill targeted bacterial recipients. However, the therapeutic potential of conjugative CRISPR/Cas delivery is compromised by mutations or host repair systems that diminish the efficiency with which CRISPR/Cas induces double-strand breaks in new transconjugants. Here, we compared the efficiencies of conjugation-based killing systems based on the …

Anxious Traits Intensify The Impact Of Depressive Symptoms On Stigma In People Living With Hiv, Alexia Koukopoulos, Antonio Maria D'Onofrio, Alessio Simonetti, Delfina Janiri, Flavio Cherubini, Paolo Vassalini, Letizia Santinelli, Gabriella D'Ettorre, Gabriele Sani, Giovanni Camardese

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background/Objectives: Despite medical advances, stigma remains a major challenge for people living with HIV (PLWH). This study examined clinical, sociodemographic, and psychological predictors of HIV-related stigma, and explored whether affective temperament moderates the impact of depression on stigma.

Methods: This cross-sectional observational study included 97 PLWH attending a tertiary infectious disease unit in Rome, Italy. Participants completed a battery of validated psychometric instruments assessing depressive symptoms, anxiety, manic symptoms, mixed affective states, general psychopathology, impulsivity, and affective temperament. HIV-related stigma was evaluated using the Berger HIV Stigma Scale, which measures personalized stigma, disclosure concerns, negative self-image, and concerns …

Machine-Learning Driven Strategies For Adapting Immunotherapy In Metastatic Nsclc, Maliazurina B Saad, Qasem Al-Tashi, Lingzhi Hong, Vivek Verma, Wentao Li, Daniel Boiarsky, Shenduo Li, Milena Petranovic, Carol C Wu, Brett W Carter, Girish S Shroff, Tina Cascone, Xiuning Le, Yasir Y Elamin, Mehmet Altan, Simon Heeke, Ajay Sheshadri, Joe Y Chang, Percy P Lee, Zhongxing Liao, Don L Gibbons, Ara A Vaporciyan, J Jack Lee, Ignacio I Wistuba, Cara Haymaker, Seyedali Mirjalili, David Jaffray, Justin F Gainor, Yanyan Lou, Alessandro Di Federico, Federica Pecci, Mark Awad, Biagio Ricciuti, John V Heymach, Natalie I Vokes, Jianjun Zhang, Jia Wu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), either as monotherapy (ICI-Mono) or combined with chemotherapy (ICI-Chemo), improves survival in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, prospective guidance for choosing between these options remains limited, and single-feature biomarkers like PD-L1 prove inadequate. We develop a machine learning model using clinicogenomic data from four cohorts (MD Anderson n = 750; Mayo Clinic n = 80; Dana-Farber n = 1077; Stand Up To Cancer n = 393) to predict individual benefit from adding chemotherapy. Benefit scores are calculated using five distinct functions derived from 28 genomic and 6 clinical features. Our integrated model, A-STEP (Attention-based …

Biochemical And Proteomic Analyses Explain The Role Of Thiourea In Improving Tolerance Against Cadmium Toxicity In Maize, Mustafa Yildiz, Hakan Terzi̇, Nurgül Sönmez

Turkish Journal of Botany

Thiourea (TU), a sulfur-containing compound, is recognized for its ability to ameliorate the deleterious impacts of metal ions on plant growth. Nonetheless, the molecular mechanisms by which TU regulates metabolic activities in maize (Zea mays L.) under cadmium (Cd) stress remain largely unexplored. This study seeks to clarify how TU (35 μM) mitigates or enhances tolerance to Cd toxicity (50 μM) through physiological and proteomic methods. Cd exposure resulted in inhibited plant growth, leaf chlorosis, and lipid peroxidation; however, the addition of TU reduced Cd toxicity by decreasing Cd accumulation and modulating antioxidant enzyme activity. The global proteome profile was …

Syed A.H. V. A.S.

All Decisions

The court granted a partial dismissal of the holdover petition, ruling that service of the predicate notice was defective for most respondents. While it denied the motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, finding no per se family exception, it found that the notice was not properly served on five of the six respondents. The court also denied the motion to join the building owner, stating that the claim of an "illusory tenancy" was not viable as pleaded and that a succession claim was premature. The case will proceed to trial against the single remaining respondent who was …

Designing Well-Being Intervention Trials For People With Progressive Multiple Sclerosis: The Importance Of Understanding Usual Care Comparators, Marcia Finlayson, Silvia Poli, Federico Bozzoli, Giampaolo Brichetto, Lars Bø, Isolde Martina Busch, Ulrik Dalgas, Nikos Evangelou, Amanda Farrin, Jennifer Freeman, Helena Jidborg, Daphne Kos, Claudia H. Marck, Daniel Ontaneda, Jessica Podda, Michela Rimondini, Polly Swain, Emma Tallantyre, Lauren A. Taylor, Roshan Das Nair

School of Health Professions

Well-being captures an individual’s capacity to lead a mean ingful and engaged life. Interventions to address well-being go beyond managing symptoms or supporting daily activity performance. Designing trials to evaluate the effectiveness of such well-being interventions can be challenging. One such challenge is determining what the comparator or control arm should be. Several trials of complex interventions use usual care as a comparator, but this can be particularly challenging when planning trials across multiple countries and health care systems. Therefore, trial design decisions must be informed by a good understanding of what constitutes usual or routine well-being interventions across locations. …

Generalizability Of Existing Ai Models For Automatic Disfluency Detection In Children's Speech, Caryn W. C. Iwakiri

Master's Theses

Achieving consensus in identifying disfluencies and diagnosing developmental stuttering has been a significant challenge for many clinicians, particularly in young bilingual children, who tend to show increased disfluencies. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to recognize more complex yet systematic patterns that might not be easily observable by even trained clinicians. It also has the potential to bring consistency in the measurement of stuttered speech. This study compares the performance of four AI models, their performance on detecting disfluencies including both stutter-like-disfluencies (SLD) and typical disfluencies (TD) in monolingual and bilingual children's data, then explores whether increasing the quantity of …

The Relationship Between Psychological Contract Breach And Work Motivation And Attitude Among Tech Employees: The Moderating Role Of Conscientiousness, Rama E. Khoury

Master's Theses

There has been some research on moderating factors of the relationship between psychological contract breach (PCB) and work engagement and affective commitment. However, most studies conducted have mainly focused on situational factors (e.g., job satisfaction, exchange imbalance), not on individual factors (e.g., personality traits). This research gap leaves a question in the role that personality traits play in influencing the negative consequences of PCB. The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating role of conscientiousness on the relationship between PCB and two outcomes, work engagement and affective commitment. Hypotheses were tested using 103 technology industry employees in the …

Sirilla: Predicting Traffic Flow Via Stacked Decentralized Federated Learning, Andrew Selvia

Master's Theses

Billions of people today rely on traffic predictions to optimize their travels. Digital mapping services deliver accurate predictions by learning from vast troves of historical data. Impressive as these systems are, their assumptions do not always apply. They depend on an endless flow of sensitive user data to a central authority, a stable Internet connection, and trustworthiness on both sides of the traditional client-server model. This thesis explores a novel architecture which bucks those assumptions. In the proposed model, traffic data remains on edge devices which individually train models via federated learning. Beyond the obvious privacy benefits, this architecture enables …

Early Care And Education Systems In The United States Of America: Voices Of The Past, Present, And Future, Timothy Harper

Dissertations

This mixed-methods study centers the voices, knowledge, and leadership of Black and Indigenous women working in Early Care and Education (ECE) while tracing how racism, sexism, and classism have shaped the field from colonization to the present day. Twenty in-depth interviews with sixteen Black and Indigenous educators across the United States are paired with secondary analyses of national workforce data to create a multilayered portrait of their professional realities. Grounded in Black feminist thought and Indigenous desire-based inquiry, the analysis surfaces six inter-locking themes: (a) enduring structural barriers that depress wages and limit advancement, (b) the day-to-day resilience that sustains …

Engagement Of Secondary History Social Science Teachers With Professional Development: A Phenomenological Study, Suzanne Paulazzo

Dissertations

Secondary social science teachers tend to feel disengaged and frustrated with their professional development (PD) experiences. They also feel that recommended meaningful practices appear to be time-consuming, require extra hours of preparation, and rely heavily on collaboration. Using phenomenological methodology, the dissertation research investigated secondary social science teachers' perceptions of their roles as educators, their professional growth, and their motivations for engaging in professional development opportunities. Nine male and one female teacher participants from a History-Social-Science Department in an urban public school in Northern California participated in an interview. This study addressed the following research questions: How do teachers perceive …

Cultivating Belonging: Empowering Hispanic Parents In The U.S. Education System, Kalpana Galagali

Dissertations

This qualitative study explores the experiences of Hispanic families at Bay Area Middle School and the strategies I employed to create a sense of belonging and support for both students and their families. Key strategies included fostering effective communication through Spanish interpreters, celebrating cultural traditions, and organizing inclusive events like the annual cultural fair. Parents expressed gratitude for the personal attention their children received and noted how these initiatives positively impacted their sense of belonging. The findings highlight that cultural integration and community-building efforts significantly enhanced family engagement, transforming perceptions of the school environment from feelings of disconnection to appreciation …

Cultura Y Corazón: Latina Elementary School Principals Leading Schools, Mariana M. Alvarez

Dissertations

This qualitative participatory study focused on understanding the experiences of Latina elementary school principals on their pathway to school leadership and how cultural intuition and community cultural wealth influence their approaches to school leadership. Chicana Feminist Epistemology (CFE) and Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) framed the study, while testimonio y pláticas served as the methodological framework. The concept of Community Cultural Wealth served as an analytical framework. Students of color often feel their histories, experiences, and languages are undervalued in education. Participants in this study shared challenges in navigating school, coming from families that valued education but faced barriers. Their …

Economic Re-Colonisation: Reflections On The New Zealand Treaty Of Waitangi Settlement Process And The Epistemic Violence Of Resolution, David Carter

Talking Heads Seminar Series

The 1998 Ngai Tahu-Crown Te Tiriti o Waitangi-Treaty of Waitangi settlement represents a long battle for justice concerning Te Waipounamu (South Island) of Aotearoa, New Zealand.

We focus on the resolution practices of the New Zealand Government and the impacts of financialising historic harm as economic techniques dominate the articulation of resolution. The paper challenges three main ideas. First, it illustrates a logical impossibility in a process of ‘resolution’ determined by the Crown. Second, it challenges the financialisation rhetoric applied in ‘resolving’ harm caused. Third, it challenges the imposition of economic control in requiring Ngai Tahu to establish a corporate …

N-Fold Symmetric Quasicrystallography As The Projection Of The Affine Coxeter Group WA(BN), Nazife Ozdes Koca, Mehmet Koca, Ramazan Koc, Amira Al Maqbali

Sultan Qaboos University Journal For Science

Quasicrystals are obtained as the projections of higher dimensional cubic lattices. This paper aims to show that the affine dihedral subgroup Wa(I2(h)) of the affine group Wa(Bn), h = 2n being the Coxeter number, offers a different perspective to -fold symmetric quasicrystallography. The affine group Wa(I2(h)) is constructed as the subgroup of the affine group Wa(Bn), the symmetry of the cubic lattice ℤn. The infinite discrete group with local dihedral symmetry of order 2 operates on the concentric -gons obtained by projecting the Voronoi cell of the cubic lattice with 2n vertices onto the Coxeter plane. Voronoi cells tiling the …

Effect Of Rotation On Plane Wave Propagation In A Magneto-Thermo Elastic Solid, G Rajkumar, K Somaiah, Srinivas Remidi

Sultan Qaboos University Journal For Science

The present article deals with the effect of angular rotation on the propagation of plane harmonic waves in a homogeneous, isotropic magneto-thermo elastic medium. The governing equations of a generalized magneto-thermo elastic solid are formulated and solved with the method of plane harmonic solution. Three types of waves, namely, plane longitudinal, magneto, and magneto-thermal waves, are significantly affected by the angular rotation of the solid. It is very interesting to observe that the classical result is obtained as angular rotation vanishes. For computational purposes, the available lithium niobate (LiNbO3) material was treated as the model of thermo-magneto elastic medium. The …

The Reluctant Heroes: How To Teach Younger Generations Every-Day Heroism Through Pedagogical Imagination, Jarema Drozdowicz

Heroism Science

This article explores the notion of pedagogical imagination in the context of its practical use in teaching young learners today. The idea of imagination is being presented through the lens of the existing concepts such as ethnographic, historical, and sociological imagination introduced in the social sciences and humanities by various authors. The educational setting of today’s digitalized reality is being understood here as a sociocultural sphere where different generations clash in their diverse abilities to learn and form specific skills that might help them to cope with difficult real life situations. The process of forming heroic behavior patterns is thus …