Digital Commons Network^™

Forecasting Pediatric Emergency Department Arrivals: Evaluating The Role Of Exogenous Variables Using Deep Learning Models, Egbe Etu Etu, Jordan Larot, Kindness Etu, Joshua Emakhu, Sara Masoud, Imokhai Tenebe, Gaojian Huang, Satheesh Gunaga, Joseph Miller

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background Forecasting pediatric emergency department (ED) demand remains a critical challenge in healthcare operations. This study aimed to identify exogenous variables influencing pediatric ED visits and evaluate the performance of different forecasting models. Method Using a retrospective observational design, we analyzed 192,347 pediatric ED visits across nine hospitals in Southeast Michigan between 2017 and 2019. Patient data were aggregated into daily arrival counts and enriched with exogenous variables such as weather, air quality, pollen, calendar, Google search trends, and chief complaints. Feature selection was performed using XGBoost and SHapley Additive exPlanations to identify the most influential predictors. Three forecasting models …

Applied Research In Field Crop Pathology For Indiana, 2024, Darcy E. P. Telenko, Sujoung Shim

Purdue University Press Books

Applied Research in Field Crop Pathology for Indiana, 2024 serves as a summary of the applied field crop pathology research trials conducted in 2024 under the direction of the Purdue Field Crop Pathology program in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Purdue University. In Indiana, there are more than 57,600 farms, 16,000 crop producers, and 900 certified crop advisers, Extension educators, and crop-protection industry representatives who manage more than 11.4 million crop-production acres with a total value of $6.3 billion annually. There are more than twenty diseases affecting corn, soybeans, and wheat that may decrease crop production and …

Artificial Light At Night Alters Seaweed Reproductive Phenology, Emma Moyse, Louise Firth, Tim Smyth, Thomas Davies

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is a growing, globally prevalent environmental stressor. It is known to disrupt biological processes across taxa and biomes, including reproductive phenology in terrestrial plants, but its potential to alter reproductive timings in marine macroalgae remains unexplored. We used reflectance spectrometry to quantitatively assess changes in receptacle ripeness of three fucoid macroalgae species at four field sites along an ALAN gradient in Plymouth Sound, UK over a six-month period. At sites with elevated ALAN (measured using Sky Quality Meters, range 16.15–18.76 mag arcsec ⁻², equivalent to 3.75 × 10 ⁻²–3.38 × 10 ⁻³ cd/m …

Multisite Assembly Of Gateway Induced Clones (Magic): A Flexible Cloning Toolbox For Use In Vertebrate Model Systems, William B Gillespie, Yuwen Zhang, Oscar E Ruiz, Juan Cerda, Joshua Ortiz-Guzman, Michelle Sherman, Williamson D Turner, Gabrielle Largoza, Lili E Mosser, Esther Fujimoto, Chi-Bin Chien, Kristen M Kwan, Benjamin R Arenkiel, W Patrick Devine, Joshua D Wythe

Duncan NRI Faculty and Staff Publications

Here, we present MultiSite Assembly of Gateway Induced Clones (MAGIC), which leverages Gateway-based recombinatorial cloning technology for rapid, modular assembly of plasmids to facilitate transgenesis in cells and vertebrate animal models. The MAGIC collection of plasmids spans a range of in vitro and in vivo uses, from tools for optically and chemically tunable gene expression, to simultaneous expression of microRNAs and fluorescent reporters, to a suite of distinct subcellular compartmental fluorescent reporters, to Cre and Dre recombinase-dependent gene expression. MAGIC system components are compatible with existing MultiSite Gateway Tol2 systems currently used in zebrafish and mammalian lentiviral and adenoviral Destination …

Quantum Readiness In Cybersecurity Education: A Framework For Preparing The Next Generation In The Post-Quantum Era, George Antoniou

Faculty and Staff Publications & Presentations

The rapid advancement of quantum computing represents both a revolutionary opportunity and an existential threat to contemporary cybersecurity infrastructure. While quantum computers promise unprecedented computational capabilities, they simultaneously pose a critical risk to current cryptographic protocols that protect sensitive data, financial systems, and national security frameworks. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards, recently formalized by NIST in 2024, provide a roadmap for quantum-resistant encryption. However, a significant gap exists between technological advancement and educational preparedness, with most cybersecurity curricula failing to adequately prepare students for the quantum era. This paper addresses the urgent need for comprehensive quantum readiness in cybersecurity education across …

Global Seafarer Shortage In The Age Of Automation “A Cross National Analysis Of Maritime Workforce Gaps, Met System Performance, And Digital Readiness”, Zouheir Abd Elfattah Badawy

Blue Economy

The maritime transport sector is confronting an intensifying shortage of qualified seafarers, particularly licensed officers, which poses substantial threats to global logistics and shipping sustainability. This study conducts a comparative analysis of four key seafarer supplying nations the Philippines, India, China, and the United Kingdom to identify root causes of this workforce crisis in the context of technological change and automation. Utilizing a mixedmethods design, the study integrates statistical workforce data from BIMCO, ICS, and national maritime bodies with survey responses from 428 cadets and junior officers enrolled in accredited MET institutions. The findings reveal that although India and the …

Does The National Benchmark Quantitative Literacy Test Predict Performance In Stem Programmes In Commerce, Engineering And Science?, Robert N. Prince

Numeracy

In South Africa, university completion rates remain low, with only 23% of students finishing within the regulation time (three or four years). These completion rates continue to reflect racial inequalities, with ‘White’ students significantly more likely to complete degrees in professional fields such as engineering and commerce compared to their ‘African’ counterparts. To address these challenges, the South African higher education institutions, through their umbrella body, introduced the National Benchmark (NB) tests to assess students’ academic literacy skills—including quantitative literacy, academic literacy, and mathematics—to identify those most at risk of struggling with the curriculum. The NB tests aim to evaluate …

The Emancipation Of Shakerism, Philippe Chavance

Communal Societies

No abstract provided.

Sustainability In Practice: A Comparative Case Study Analysis Of The Ecovillage At Ithaca, Earthaven, And Sirius, Jesse Sherry, Alison Ormsby

Communal Societies

No abstract provided.

Fall 2025 - Volume 35, Number 2

CompassPoint

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Moravian Brethren Religious Thought And Practice On The Development Of Camphill Communities, Robin Jackson

Communal Societies

No abstract provided.

Proceedings Of The 11th Geia Seminar (2024), Patrícia Tosqui Lucks, Juliana De Castro Santana

GEIA Seminar

No abstract provided.

At The Crossroads: Ryan Coogler’S Metaphysical Meditation On Blues Music’S Power Of Salvation And The Terror Of Racial Predation In “Sinners”, Terri Bowles

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In Sinners (2025), written and directed by Ryan Coogler, intercultural histories of music, religion and oral tradition inform a modern and complex horror tale confronting the terror of Jim Crow in the post–World War I Mississippi Delta. The film, starring frequent Coogler collaborator and muse Michael B. Jordan as twin war veterans out to reestablish their lives as juke joint owners, coalesces themes of economic repression, racial voyeurism, and secular and religious entanglements with cinematic horror allegories of objectification, consumption and possession. This review explores the film’s tense and violent examination of these themes and the lived and imagined spaces …

From Prompt To Prejudice: Visual Evidence From Ai Image Generation Platforms, Jinu K. Varghese, Padma Rani

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This study examines how AI image generation systems perpetuate digital orientalism through systematic cultural representation patterns that increasingly shape global digital markets and international development discourse. Using visual social semiotics methodology, we conducted comparative analysis of Midjourney and ChatGPT platforms across nine culturally specific prompts examining religious imagery, contemporary social dynamics, and power structures in Indian cultural contexts. Our findings reveal that both platforms consistently reproduce colonial-era representational frameworks despite culturally sensitive prompting and advanced technical capabilities. The analysis identifies three systematic patterns: temporal displacement strategies that acknowledge modernity while containing it within orientalist categories, institutional validation requirements that privilege …

Dynamic Transmit Power And Duty Cycle Control For Wireless Range Extension, Omar El Ayach, Nihar Jindal

Defensive Publications Series

Wireless communication range for certain devices (e.g., a smartphone, smart watch, wearable device, augmented reality glasses, etc.) can be limited by regulatory transmit power constraints, such as for specific absorption rate, which may contribute to unreliable connections at a network edge. Systems and methods are described for dynamically managing a transmitter's duty cycle and instantaneous power. For example, a link assessment module can monitor wireless conditions and, upon detecting a power-limited state, a duty cycle modulator can reduce the transmitter's active time using techniques such as inter-frame space elongation or control frame mechanisms. This reduction can create a power budget …

User-Specified Source Preferences For Personalizing Information Retrieval Results, Deep Shah, Aditya Bhandari, Phelipe Fernandes, Chris Meave-Ohrt

Defensive Publications Series

The information retrieval systems that utilize general ranking algorithms may not consistently surface content from sources an individual user personally trusts, potentially leading to a less personalized experience. Systems and methods can provide a framework for users to explicitly designate preferred content sources. These preferences may be stored and retrieved when a user performs a search. With appropriate user permissions being obtained, the search process can be modified to incorporate these preferences, for example, by performing a parallel search restricted to the preferred sources or by applying a ranking boost to content originating from these sources. This approach can result …

Dynamic Adjustment Of User Interface Colors Based On Contextual Signals, Tim Whalin

Defensive Publications Series

The user interface colors extracted from source content may exhibit reduced legibility and inconsistent visual fidelity when viewed under different conditions. Factors such as device screen brightness, ambient lighting, and system display modes can alter the perceived color. A system can receive a base color and a set of real-time contextual signals from a computing device and a transformation algorithm can then process these signals to modify properties of the base color, for example, its lightness and saturation, while often preserving its hue. This process can improve the perceptual consistency and readability of user interface colors across various viewing environments …

Autonomous Agentic Analytics -Ai System For Financial Datasets, Santosh Babu Kanutala, Karthikeyan Kandasamy, Nick G. Roberts

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure relates to a method and system for automatic agentic analytics for proactive, intelligent analytics through coordinated artificial intelligence (AI) agents. The system monitors one or more real-time financial data sources and generates user context features, data context features and organizational context features based on the monitoring. The system combines the user context features, the data context features, and the organizational context features to generate a combined feature vector. Further, the system processes the combined feature vector to identify AI agents to be activated and determines agent coordination strategies for the identified AI agents.

Multimodal Llm For Automated Validation And Correction Of Geospatial Data., Ilia Labzovsky, Danny Karmon

Defensive Publications Series

Manual verification of potential map inaccuracies can be resource and time intensive. Some systems may utilize a multimodal large language model (LLM) as a reasoning engine for map data validation. An LLM can be configured to ingest and analyze disparate data sources, such as user-generated reports, street-level and satellite imagery, and anonymized aggregate location data. By performing a cross-validation analysis on these inputs, the system may calculate a confidence score for a potential map discrepancy. In some examples, when the score exceeds a predetermined threshold, the system can automatically execute a correction in a geospatial database. This automated correction process …

Multi-Directional Haptics Actuator, J-Z Tseng

Defensive Publications Series

This publication discloses a multi-dimensional haptic actuator (“MDHA”) for use in electronic devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers. Several of the disclosed MDHA’s components are uniquely configured and positioned in both the X plane and the Y plane to provide enhanced power-force efficiency in two or more directions, thereby enabling a wider range of user scenarios (e.g., additional vectorial sensations and different compositions of haptic frequencies) than are possible with traditional single-plane actuators.

Seismic Responsive Buildings: Comparison Between Egyptian Code 2012 With Different International Codes For Seismic Structural Irregularities At Architectural Design, Aya Abd El Ghaffar Mohamed, Mohamed Anwar Mohamed Fikry, Mai Mohamed Abdo

Mansoura Engineering Journal

Seismic codes are laws and regulations that establish the basic requirements for building structures that can withstand seismic activity. Each country has different restrictions under different subheadings, depending on the seismic history of the region and the economic situation of the country. "Structural irregularity" is the most significant aspect of earthquake codes contributing to architectural design. A regular design of a structure leads to more rational behavior during earthquakes, enhancing resistance to dynamic loads and economic performance in comparison to irregular buildings. Architects must understand how earthquakes impact structures, as the structural system shapes the building's form and aesthetics, and …

How Can Smart Resilience Cities Provide Sdgs? An Integrative Framework Regarding Climate Change Mitigation, Asmaa M. Hassan, Manar A. Kotb

Mansoura Engineering Journal

Urbanization and climate change influence public health and wellbeing, which presents challenges facing architects and urban planners towards providing sustainable and resilient cities. In this context, smart city concept has been adopted to contribute to mitigating such influence. This study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis within the previous scope. Then an integrative framework for climate change mitigation towards resilient smart cities based on SDGs is accomplished. The results indicate that further efforts are needed to develop “smart tools”, “urban economy”, and “carbon footprint. In addition, the proposed framework provides a significant paradigm shift towards mitigation of climate change impacts, …

A Novel Hybrid Intrusion Detection Model: A New Metaheuristic Approach For Feature Selection Based On Ai Techniques For Cyber Threat Detection, Maryam Mahdi Alhusseini, Alireza Rouhi

Iraqi Journal for Computer Science and Mathematics

The rapid increase in internet usage, digital transformation, and the rise of interconnected devices have greatly expanded the attack surface, introducing new and evolving cybersecurity challenges. Conventional security solutions frequently have difficulty adjusting to complex threats and the vast dimensionality of network traffic data, particularly in the case of imbalanced datasets. To tackle these challenges, this research introduces a Hybrid Intrusion Detection System (HyIDS-EVO) that combines the Energy Valley Optimizer (EVO) for feature selection and dimensionality reduction with machine learning classifiers, which include Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), Decision Tree (DT), and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN). The system’s effectiveness …

Population Structure Analysis Of Four Basal Higher-Attines Using Bioinformatic Approaches, Gabriel Mcdanield

Biology Theses

Metapopulations within the family Formicidae are unique among other animals due to the large colonies they build, and the mating strategies required to fertilize a specialized reproductive caste that will often produce young for the life of the colony. One group of ants, the fungus-gardeners (tribe Attini). The population structure of North American non-leafcutting, fungus-gardening ants has been understudied, especially in the southwest of the United States. Additionally, not much is known about their dispersal biology, so the dynamics of dispersal of these species and how they affect population structure is likewise not well known. To shed light on the …

The Student Movement Volume 110 Issue 8: Exchanging Ideas, Emotions, And Musical Tastes, Melanie Webb, Audrey Lim, Megan Constantine, Anna Rybachek, Isa Demoraes, Kyle Simpson, Michael Orellana, Andrew Francis, Reagan Westerman, Alyssa Caruthers, Madison Vath, Moraya Truman

The Student Movement V. 110 (2025-2026)

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Nominations, Predictions and No Taylor Swift: The 2026 Grammy Nominations, Melanie Webb

Violinist Junqi (Sophie) Tang Comes to HPAC This Sunday, Audrey Lim

HUMANS

Rooted in Nature: The AU Biophilia Club Cultivates Community and Connection, Megan Constantine

Japanese Exchange Student Shares Her Experiences at Andrews University, Anna Rybachek

Senior Cardinals Play in their Final Games, Isa DeMoraes

NEWS

Dating Game Brings Both the Rom and the Com, Kyle Simpson

Honors Church Resounds with Faith and Melody, Michael Orellana

Hucks Leaving AU Diversity Officer Role for NAD Position, Andrew Francis

AUSA Town Hall Tackles Tuition, Meal Plans and …

Playa Sediment Bioaccessibility Presents Previously Unknown Risks To Population Health In A Water-Stressed Region Undergoing Lake Desiccation: Salton Sea, Usa, Jordan Jaeger

Theses

Globally, drylands are expanding, and endorheic basins are in rapid decline. Saline lake desiccation exposes lakebed playa likely to become dust, posing potential health risks to surrounding communities. Studies investigating health risks from playa dust exposure often focus on health effects associated with the presence of airborne particulates, but fewer studies investigate health risks associated with dust source chemistry. This study examines dust source particle composition in a desiccating inland sea in a water-stressed agricultural region of California. Specifically, chemical bioaccessibility of bound trace elements uncovers risks to children, adults, and agricultural worker health. Arsenic exposure via sediment ingestion poses …

Evaluating And Supporting Transformative Agreements: Five Institutional Perspectives In Discussion, Anna R. Craft, Peggy Kain, Danica Lewis, Camille Mccutcheon, William Joseph Thomas

Libraries Professional Work

Transformative—or Read and Publish—deals are impacting the open access (OA) publishing landscape, allowing libraries to test new models for funding and incentivizing OA publishing, while also providing direct benefits for authors, including discounts and waivers on article processing charges (APCs). But how sustainable are transformative deals in light of library materials budgets and workloads for personnel who negotiate these deals, manage the implementations, and support campus authors? And how can libraries evaluate the perceived value of these deals in relation to the specific needs of their institutional users?

A Boost Of Confidence: Improving Perinatal Bereavement Care, Kimberly Winn

Student Scholarly Projects

Practice Problem: Perinatal loss can have a profoundly distressing impact on families. Nurses play a crucial role in supporting care during this challenging period and must be confident in perinatal bereavement care.

PICOT: The PICOT question that guided this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Scholarly Project was, in inpatient hospital Maternal Child Health (MCH) nursing staff (P), does implementing a standardized perinatal bereavement care checklist (I), compared to current practice (C), improve nurse confidence in perinatal bereavement care as evidenced by the Perinatal Bereavement Care Confidence Scale (PBCCS) (O) in eight weeks (T)?

Evidence: Ten evidence-based articles were included in …

Trump V. Slaughter: Brief Of Independent Agency Board Members And Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondent, Samuel Bagenstos

Appellate Briefs

Amici are removed board members from independent federal agencies and scholars whose work includes the study of independent agencies and the separation of powers between the President and Congress. Amici advance the view that there are federal agencies whose responsibility for protecting the safety and stability of the national infrastructure or ensuring the structural integrity of government necessitates their independence. Significant negative consequences would likely follow if these agencies were to lose their independence and their work were to become politicized.

The Mediating Role Of Supply Chain Disruption Between Supply Chain Resilience Practice And Competitive Advantage Of Manufacturing Companies, Solomon Amsalu Gesese, Rajwinder Singh

International Journal of Applied Management and Technology

The global expansion of supply chain (SC) networks improves the overall performance of the SC and increases an organization’s susceptibility to disruptions within the chain. This study examines the mediating role of supply chain disruption (SCD) between supply chain resilience practice (SCRP) and competitive advantage (CA) of manufacturing companies in Ethiopia. We employed descriptive and explanatory research designs and analyzed the data collected from 347 participants using SEM methods. The findings show that SCRP significantly affects SCD and CA. Moreover, SCRP significantly influences CA, mediated by SCD. Building and maintaining SC resilience reduces disruptions and enhances competitiveness in the ever-changing …