Digital Commons Network^™

Asset Or Liability? Farmers’ Perceptions Of Improved Maize Seeds As A Climate Change Adaptation Strategy In Semi-Arid Areas Of Chamwino District, Tanzania, Jackson Raymond Sawe

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This study explores the perceptions of smallholder farmers in semi-arid areas of Chamwino District, Tanzania, regarding the adoption of improved maize seeds as an adaptation strategy to climate change. It aims to explore whether farmers view the use of these seeds as an asset that helps them adapt to climate change, or as a liability that presents challenges resulting from the adoption of improved seeds. The study employs both quantitative and qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. Data were collected from 125 smallholder farmers across six study villages through household surveys, in-depth interviews, field observation, and document review. Participants …

Experiences Of Black Women In Black Colleges Voluntarily Seeking Psychiatric Services, Linda Jarvis Brown

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Black Americans face significant barriers to psychiatric services including a lack of access to culturally competent care. Mental illnesses continue to be the leading causes of disability in the United States. This qualitative phenomenological study, guided by the health belief model, explored the experiences of Black women in Black colleges who voluntarily seek psychiatric services. My study addressed a gap in understanding the facilitators and barriers for Black women voluntarily seeking mental health services. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with nine participants who were Black women attending Black colleges who voluntarily sought psychiatric services. Data analysis was accomplished using …

Leadership Strategies To Enhance Funding Performance In Pre-K -12 Public School Districts, Cynthia W. Williams Jones

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Some school leaders lack strategies to impact educational funding performance in prekindergarten through 12th grade (PK-12) public schools and increase students’ academic achievement and performance. School leaders and policymakers are concerned with improving educational funding, student achievement, and student performance in PK-12 public schools. Grounded in the Baldrige excellence framework, the purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry study was to identify effective strategies that school leaders use to improve educational funding performance in PK-12 public schools and increase students’ academic achievement and performance. Participants were six PK-12 public school leaders with at least 5 years of leadership experience who had …

Strategies For Reducing Cost Overruns On Government-Funded Infrastructure Projects In Jamaica, Owen Whitely

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Cost overruns involving government-funded infrastructure projects have the potential to lead to adverse economic and social outcomes. Project managers and government administrators are concerned with cost overruns as they often lead to delays, resource misallocation, and decreased public trust. Grounded in the theory of constraints, the purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry was to explore strategies project managers use to reduce cost overruns for government-funded infrastructure projects in Jamaica. Participants were five project managers working on large-scale infrastructure projects with experience effectively mitigating cost overruns in Jamaica. Data were collected through in-depth semistructured interviews, government documents, and public records. Five …

Mapping Vascular Network Architecture In Primate Brain Using Ferumoxytol-Weighted Laminar Mri, Joonas A Autio, Ikko Kimura, Takayuki Ose, Yuki Matsumoto, Masahiro Ohno, Yuta Urushibata, Takuro Ikeda, Matthew F Glasser, David C Van Essen, Takuya Hayashi

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Mapping the vascular organization of the brain is of great importance across various domains of basic neuroimaging research, diagnostic radiology, and neurology. However, the intricate task of precisely mapping vasculature across brain regions and cortical layers presents formidable challenges, resulting in a limited understanding of neurometabolic factors influencing the brain's microvasculature. Addressing this gap, our study investigates whole-brain vascular volume using ferumoxytol-weighted laminar-resolution multi-echo gradient-echo imaging in macaque monkeys. We validate the results with published data for vascular densities and compare them with cytoarchitecture, neuron and synaptic densities. The ferumoxytol-induced change in transverse relaxation rate (ΔR

Disentangling The Channels Of Impact Of The Ukraine War On Global Food Markets: An Integrated Scenario Approach, Maksym Chepeliev, Maryla Maliszewska, Maria Filipa Seara E Pereira

Department of Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

The war in Ukraine has major implications for the world's agricultural and food markets, as the Black Sea region is a large supplier of crops and fertilizers. Impacts of the war are further exacerbated by the sanctions against Russia, spillover effects from disruptions of other commodity markets, adverse weather events and domestic policies that countries around the world have implemented in pursuit of food security. In this paper, using a comprehensive modeling framework, we decompose the impacts across various channels and show that the cumulative effect of the considered indirect spillovers is even more substantial than the direct agricultural supply …

Detection Of Fake News In Short Videos: A Multimodal Approach, Mona Kumari

Master’s Dissertations

The rise of generative models and affordable video editing tools has fueled the spread of fake and manipulated videos, undermining information reliabilityespecially on social media. Traditional detection methods, focused on single modalities like visual artifacts or text cues, often struggle with diverse, user-generated content. This dissertation presents a unified framework for fake video detection that integrates multimodal semantics, narrative structure, and propagation behavior. Visual, audio, text, and OCR features are extracted using pretrained models (CLIP, Wav2Vec2), and segment-level graphs are built to model narrative flow using Graph Attention Networks (GATv2Conv). User engagement dynamics are modeled via a bidirectional LSTM. A …

Climate Change And Digital Nations: Harnessing The Metaverse To Perpetuate Small Island Statehood, Nicole Bessette

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Panel 2: Environmental Rights Amendment And Environmental Justice, Samantha Phillips Beers, John C, Dernbach, Emma H. Bast, Margaret O. Murphy

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

A Monumental Tug Of War: The Clash Over Presidential Authority And National Monuments In Murphy Co. V. Biden, Benjamin S. Levy

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Morphological And Physiological Responses Of Cymbopogon Citratus And Pennisetum Alopecuroides To Saline Water Irrigation, Haifeng Xing, Asmita Paudel, Julie Hershkowitz, Youping Sun

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Reclaimed water provides a sustainable and economical alternative for landscape irrigation, but its elevated salinity can negatively impact sensitive plant species. This study evaluated the salinity tolerance of two widely used ornamental grasses, Cymbopogon citratus (lemon grass) and Pennisetum alopecuroides (fountain grass), under three electrical conductivity (EC) levels: 1.2 (control), 5.0, and 10.0 dS·m⁻¹. Visual assessments over 62 days showed that both species maintained an acceptable appearance under saline conditions. C. citratus exhibited no foliar damage, with visual scores above 4.6 even at 10.0 dS·m⁻¹, whereas P. alopecuroides showed slight leaf injury but retained a score …

Modernism’S Mythic Mothers: Queering Motherhood Through Classical Matrilineage, Samantha Marie Lepak

Dissertations

I position this dissertation at the intersection of modern/contemporary literature, queer/feminist theory, and ancient Greek classics in the hopes of better understanding the spaces in which they meet, engaging with writers from the late modernist era to the present in order to highlight the connections between theories, themes, and practices of queerness from the modernists forward. Using the work of H.D. and writers following in her footsteps, I argue that exploring adaptations of Greek classics written primarily by female and gender-variant authors from the modernist era forward illuminates the extent to which the classics enables writers to “think queerly,” considering …

Maternal Access For Depression In Rural Environments, Simone Parlier

Dissertations

Significance –As many as 25% of birthing persons experience postpartum depression (PPD) within the first year after childbirth making this one of the most common postpartum disorders. PPD is prevalent, incapacitating, and treatable. The first step is identifying those at risk. Rural birthing persons are understudied, and may have unique predisposing characteristics as well as geographic challenges for optimal detection and treatment of PPD. Purpose -The long-term goal is to improve the health of rural families. Using The Theory of Unpleasant Symptoms, the purpose of this descriptive, cross-sectional research was to describe the prevalence of PPD in rural birthing persons …

Ethnicity Through Education: An Analysis Of The Influence Of Formal Education On Ethnicity In Garo Hills, Samirkumar Benedict Talati

Dissertations

In recent decades, the positioning of ethnic groups within the educational context has emerged as an important area of scholarly investigation. The structural, institutional, and local contexts often determine how ethnic groups shape their ethnicity. This study draws from panethnicity and social ontology frameworks to examine ethnic consciousness and the processes of solidarity-building across subgroups within the Garo community in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya. The unequal distribution of educational resources has led to socioeconomic disparities and class formation within Garo society, creating a growing divide between the educated and uneducated Garos. While acknowledging the diversity among subgroups, this study …

Exploring Latinx Students' Experience With School Connectedness: A Hybrid Thematic Approach To Deductive And Inductive Analysis, Maria Olivia Mendez

Dissertations

This qualitative study aimed to deepen the understanding of school connectedness experienced by Latinx high school students. Specifically, the researcher sought to explore how Latinx students described their connection to school during their high school years. Additionally, to examine whether their experiences aligned with the social and ecological structures outlined in the theoretical model supporting adolescent connectedness to school. If there is alignment, in what ways did it manifest? If not, how did the experiences differ? The study had two primary objectives: (a) to gain insight into how Latinx students experienced school and their sense of connection through their narratives, …

Working Paper No. 101, “Universal Welfare” In Marxist Thought, And Its Implementation During The Era Of The Soviet Union, Eunji Jang

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry seeks to establish that although in his writings Karl Marx emphasized “Universal Welfare” as a central ideal, its appearance and realization in the Soviet Union was affected by tensions between ideology and the realities of centralized economic control. The first section explores Marx’s vision of universal welfare as a structural component of a post-capitalist society rooted in collective ownership and human emancipation. The second section examines how the Soviet Union institutionalized welfare across sectors such as education, healthcare, housing, and employment, while access to these services was often influenced by labor contribution and political loyalty. The final section …

Cosmic Force: A Framework For Applying The Prohibition Of The Use Of Force In Outer Space, Erin Pobjie

International Law Studies

Outer space is becoming increasingly contested and existing approaches to identifying prohibited force in outer space lack a systematic foundation, hindering their application to novel challenges such as temporary interference with critical satellites or threats involving commercial space actors. This article addresses this gap by developing the first comprehensive, multifactorial legal framework for identifying a prohibited use of force in outer space. This framework provides a structured method for analyzing non-kinetic actions, temporary effects, and persistent hazards like space debris. It fundamentally advances existing legal approaches in three ways. First, it establishes when States can be implicated in a violation …

Egr3 Deletion Rescues Developmental And Epileptic Encephalopathy In Kcna1-Null Mice, Arindam Ghosh Mazumder, Saifina Karedia, Nandani Adhyapak, Catharina Schimer, John Samuel Bass, Jessica L Kamen, Miranda J Jankovic, Qinglong Miao, Amelia L Gallitano, Alexander B Saltzman, Antrix Jain, Anna Malovannaya, Edward Glasscock, Isamu Aiba, Jeffrey L Noebels, Vaishnav Krishnan

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

KCNA1 encodes the α-subunit of the voltage-gated potassium channel KV1.1. Mutations in KV1.1’s pore domain result in developmental and epileptic encephalopathy (DEE), where early life seizures and a culprit lesion synergistically disrupt neurodevelopmental trajectories, resulting in intellectual disability that often presents with disturbances in sleep, sociability and sensory processing. Abnormalities in the subcellular localization of Kv1.1, via mutations in/autoantibodies against LGI1 and CNTNAP2, also give rise to syndromes of epilepsy and neuropsychiatric impairment. Mice with deletions of Kcna1(“−/−“) display spontaneous seizures at 2–3 weeks of age and premature mortality. In this study, we applied instrumented home-cage monitoring to examine …

Citrullinated Eno1 Vaccine Enhances Pd-1 Blockade In Mice Implanted With Murine Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells, Ricardo A León-Letelier, Alejandro M Sevillano-Mantas, Yihui Chen, Soyoung Park, Jody Vykoukal, Johannes F Fahrmann, Edwin J Ostrin, Candace Garrett, Rongzhang Dou, Yining Cai, Fu-Chung Hsiao, Jennifer B Dennison, Eduardo Vilar, Banu K Arun, Samir Hanash, Hiroyuki Katayama

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background/Objectives:Cancer vaccine targets mostly include mutations and overexpressed proteins. However, cancer-associated post-translational modifications (PTMs) may also induce immune responses. Previously, our group established the enzyme protein arginine deiminase type-2 (PADI2), which catalyzes citrullination modification, is highly expressed in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), promoting antigenicity.

Methods: Here, we show the workflow of designing citrullinated enolase 1 (citENO1) vaccine peptides identified from breast cancer cells by mass spectrometry and demonstrate TNBC vaccine efficacy in the mouse model. Immunized mice with citENO1 peptides or the corresponding unmodified peptides, plus Poly I:C as an adjuvant, were orthotopically implanted with a TNBC murine …

On The Concepts Of Modern And Archaic, Augusto Boal

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

No abstract provided.

Editors' Introduction To The 8th Volume Of The Pto Journal, Pto Journal Editor

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

No abstract provided.

Environmental Migration And Governance Deficiencies - A Topic Worth Attention, Dr. Friedarike Santner

Future Journal of Social Science

No abstract provided.

Roles Of Nigerian Ulama In Politics And Nation-Building: The Controversy, Achievements And Recommendations, Abdulkadir Salaudeen, Saidu Ahmad Dukawa

Future Journal of Social Science

Religion and politics in Islam are not watertight compartments. In Islam, it is impossible to separate the state from religion because Islam is a state in the political sense and a religion in the spiritual sense. It is true that state-religion-separation is the norm in the secularist West. It is not true in Islam where state and Islam are indivisibly connected. Despite the interconnectedness between Islam and politics, a lot of people see participation of ulama in politics as an abomination due to the current of apolitical Islam that is sweeping across the circle of ulama. Focusing on Nigeria, this …

The Plight Of The Farmer Leaflet

Eartha M. M. White Textual Material

Leaflet: Women's Christian Temperance Union flyer. Undated.

Customer Prioritization: From Conceptualization To International Application, Maria Gracner, John William Cadogan, Gregor Pfajfar

Economic and Business Review

This study examines customer prioritization, a strategic practice where businesses allocate resources and efforts based on customer value. While its significance in international marketing continues to grow, limited research exists on how customer prioritization is understood and applied in international firms operating across diverse cultural contexts. Addressing this gap, the study explores how international-marketing managers conceptualize customer prioritization and identifies its key components. Using a qualitative methodology, the study conducted in-depth interviews with Slovene international-marketing and sales managers from 13 export-oriented firms. Thematic analysis, guided by the Gioia methodology, identified four central themes: prioritization tactics and strategies, international customer profitability, …

Comparison Of Two Injection Techniques On Pain Perception Among Adult Patients Receiving Intramuscular Injection: A Randomized Controlled Trial, Dr.Sindhu L, Dr. Bindu R. Nayar, Dr. Rajamohanan Pillai K

Manipal Journal of Nursing and Health Sciences

Introduction: The administration of intramuscular injection is a common procedure performed by nurses that causes pain to the patient. The way nurses administer injections is one of the factors associated with increased client discomfort. Aspiration has been ingrained in the intramuscular injection procedure, and even though many policies no longer endorse it, it is often frequently taught and used. Injections without aspiration are considered more comfortable for patients. Aspiration in the injection is a controversy concerning its perceived benefits and indications due to a paucity of available data, there is no evidence that this procedure is essential or truly …

Neural Engineering In Action: Exploring Muscle Movement Through Data And Design, Dr. Ashwin Mohan, Dr. Sowmya Anjur, Mrs. Namrata Pandya, Matthew Stroud, Dr. David Bergin Emeritus, Dr. Satish Nair

2025

No abstract provided.

Jean Prillman V. George Parsons

2025 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Daniel Andrews,Sr. V. Pennsylvania Department Of Corrections

2025 Decisions

USDC for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

Matter Of Promenade Nelson Apts. Llc V. New York State Div. Of Hous. & Community Renewal

All Decisions

In an Article 78 proceeding regarding a Major Capital Improvement (MCI) rent increase, the appellate court reversed a lower court's denial of the landlord's petition. The court held that while DHCR's retroactive application of the HSTPA to the landlord's pending MCI application was rational, the agency failed to establish a rational basis for its determination that certain installations exceeded the scope of necessary work. The matter was remanded to DHCR because the agency also failed to address the merits of the landlord's argument that the disputed costs were required for code compliance.