Digital Commons Network^™

A Systematic Review Of Prejudice Against Immigrant Women In Organizational Leadership In The United States, Vanessa Ampofoa Boadu

Student Research and Creative Activity Expo

This study examines how gender, nationality/immigration status, and ethnicity shape workplace experiences, impact professional advancement, and overall productivity

Generative Ai And The Transformation Of Instructional Design Practice, Nour El Houda Maache

Student Research and Creative Activity Expo

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is becoming increasingly common in higher education, yet little has been studied on how it is changing the everyday work of instructional designers (IDs). This qualitative study explores how IDs experience changes in professional practice following the integration of GenAI. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seventeen IDs working in U.S.

Effects Of Electrolyte Composition On Co-Ni Electrowinning From Li-Ion Battery Black Mass Leachates, Javier Serrano

Student Research and Creative Activity Expo

Investigation of promising electrolyte combinations for selective Co-Ni electrowinning in battery black mass recycling.

Predicting Water Layer Formation Vs. Entrainment In Dense Phase Co2 Transport Pipelines From Hydrodynamics And Fluid Properties, Favour Bawa

Student Research and Creative Activity Expo

This work presents a mechanistic model that predicts whether free water will remain entrained or form continuous layers in dense-phase CO₂ transport pipelines.

Blue Space As Amenity And Disamenity: Disparity In Interstitial Water Bodies, Mara Pirone

Geography Honors Projects

Access to environmental amenities is distributed unevenly across urban areas, often due to discriminatory institutional practices such as redlining and racial covenants. Urban blue spaces (lakes, streams, rivers) can serve as either an environmental amenity or dis-amenity, depending on development and investment strategies. This paper explores how institutional racism, measured by variables such as historic redlining and racial covenant practices, shapes access to blue space as an amenity in the Twin Cities. Our results show that access to large, well-maintained, and well-invested blue space is distributed unevenly. Studying this relationship shows how cities continue to promote environmental injustice in interstitial …

Data For Effect Of Simple Motor Repetition On Inverted Pendulum Control: Exploring Age-Related Variations, Kimia Kiani, Qiushi Fu

Research Data and Datasets

This dataset contains data from a human motor-control experiment investigating how prior motor repetition influences subsequent control and learning of a virtual inverted-pendulum task in young and older adults. Participants performed the inverted-pendulum task using a robotic interface and completed either force-based or movement-based repetition training between task blocks. The dataset includes measures of pendulum control performance, task progression, training condition, hand, and age group. These data support the study “Effect of Simple Motor Repetition on Inverted Pendulum Control: Exploring Age-Related Variations.”

Artificial Intelligence Driven Insights And Predictions For A Television Application, Neetesh Mittal, Vivek Kushwaha, Vivek Yadav, Saravanan Santhamoorthy Theckyam

Defensive Publications Series

Traditional data analytics for television applications rely on manual, dashboard-centric models that track historical user activity. These traditional data analytics for television applications fail to explain underlying user behaviors or to correlate multiple simultaneously launched features with core business objectives. To address these limitations, the disclosed technology describes an autonomous analytical system that utilizes a distributed client-server architecture that hosts a hierarchical multi-agent backend built on an orchestration framework. A supervisor agent coordinates specialized domain engines to execute targeted statistical, performance, and viewership analysis algorithms over read-only television application databases. Communication under strict End-User Credential (EUC) zero-trust security and under …

Caldwell Cmhre-Ω1.2 Open-Hardware Modular Thermal Stabilization, Direct-Liquid-Cooling, And Waste-Heat Utilization Research Platform, Michael Victor Caldwell Mr.

Defensive Publications Series

The Caldwell CMHRE-Ω1.2 is a modular open-hardware research platform for evaluating direct liquid cooling, thermal stabilization, phase-change buffering, low-grade thermoelectric energy recovery, gyroid-inspired flow distribution, localized vortex/impingement heat-transfer enhancement, and adaptive thermal control.

CMHRE-Ω1.2 uses a controlled 100–500 W electrically metered copper heater block as a chip analog. A primary, conventional liquid-cooling loop is always available to remove the full thermal load safely. Optional research modules operate in bypassable side streams so no experimental energy-recovery module becomes a mandatory thermal bottleneck.

The platform incorporates selected practical elements from the posted CIERS-TEG v3.0 disclosure: detailed metering and control architecture, copper-foam-enhanced PCM, …

Systemic Progress Regeneration Protocol (Sprp), Volodymyr Kotegov

Defensive Publications Series

This protocol defines the mandatory rules for the creation, evaluation, acceptance, and long-term stewardship of engineering work by parties that voluntarily adopt it.

The protocol exists to counteract a fundamental process: the spontaneous decay of civilizationally critical engineering knowledge. Its objective is not the production of superior individual artifacts. Its objective is the sustained growth of the survivable mass of engineering knowledge — the quantity of knowledge that remains comprehensible, reproducible, and extensible after complete institutional rupture, generational turnover, and loss of external infrastructure.

The protocol claims no universal authority. It applies only to nodes and Inheritance Lines that have …

System And Method For Swarm-Directed Autonomous Fleet Training And Assessment Across Vehicle Domains, Eric Zavesky

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method for coordinated autonomous vehicle fleet training and assessment across vehicle domains is disclosed. The system comprises a networked fleet of autonomous vehicles operating as self-directed agents with built-in self-preservation, each vehicle configured to receive semantic scenario constraints, interpret and fill gaps using autonomous driving intelligence, independently detect collision risk, and coordinate evasive maneuvers with other vehicles without blindly trusting central commands. A training orchestration engine transmits semantic constraints at multiple specificity levels without specifying complete trajectories. A distributed safety protocol layer implements a three-level detection hierarchy enabling any vehicle or system level to trigger coordinated safety …

Ciers‑Teg V3.0 Thermal Cascade Waste‑Heat Recovery System, Michael Victor Caldwell Mr.

Defensive Publications Series

CIERS‑TEG v3.0 is an open‑hardware, research‑grade thermal‑energy recovery architecture designed for high‑density compute environments such as AI GPU clusters, power‑electronics arrays, and industrial process lines. The system captures waste heat at the chip level, routes it through a controlled thermal cascade, and converts portions of that heat into electrical power, stored thermal energy, and useful low‑grade utilities. Unlike single‑stage thermoelectric approaches, CIERS‑TEG v3.0 maintains exergy across multiple descending temperature stages using microfluidic extraction, gyroid thermal spreading, phase‑change buffering, condensation‑based utility recovery, and parasitic pump‑energy harvesting.

The architecture integrates several previously independent open‑hardware subsystems: Arachne‑Chip ULTRA‑REAL for direct‑die microfluidic heat capture; …

A System And Method For Outcome-Consequence Weighted Scoring In Packet-Switched Communication Networks, Shubham Shivhare

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure discloses a system and a method for per-packet Outcome-Consequence Weight Scoring (OCWS) in packet-switched communication networks. The system includes a processor and a memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the system to: for each packet received at the system, compute a per-packet significance score as a weighted combination of five semantic factor values, the five semantic factor values including a meaning density value, a downstream consequence probability value, a synchronization criticality value, a time sensitivity value, and an irreplaceability value. The processor is configured to classify each packet into one of a plurality …

Fabrication Of Photoresist Su-8 Pyrolyzed Carbon Electrodes And Their Integration In A Microfluidic Hematocrit Detection System, Hwi Yong Lee, Jessika A. Rogers, Chito Kendrick, Sanaz Habibi, Adrienne Minerick

Michigan Tech Publications

Carbon microelectrodes are attractive for microfluidic biosensing due to their wide potential window, low overpotentials, chemical stability, and compatibility with low-cost microfabrication. Pyrolysis of photopatterned SU-8 offers a scalable route to carbon electrode fabrication; however, conventional two-step pyrolysis often leads to adhesion issues, geometric distortion, and limited surface area in low-aspect-ratio planar designs. These constraints restrict performance and broader adoption in analytical microdevices. Hematocrit determination, a clinically essential diagnostic measurement, requires electrodes with high reproducibility and robust electrochemical response. A simplified fabrication strategy that improves electrode surface area and performance while maintaining low-aspect-ratio planar geometries remains unresolved. We developed a …

Meaning Of Mentoring For Puerto Rican Diaspora Professionals Seeking Career Advancement, Coralys M. Cedó Negrón

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Hispanic/Latino professionals remain underrepresented in senior leadership positions across industries in the United States. Organizational leaders need to understand this concern as a critical indicator of factors that may shape leadership development and career advancement among underrepresented professionals. Grounded in the mentoring model, the purpose of this qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) study was to understand the meaning of mentoring for Puerto Rican diaspora professionals seeking career advancement in the United States. The participants comprised 10 Puerto Rican professionals living and working in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area who had participated in formal or informal mentoring relationships. Data were collected …

Building Competency Through Context: A Simulation-Driven Curriculum Redesign, Natalya Pasklinsky, Mary T. Hickey, Kristy Deyeso

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Background: Traditional nursing curricula often emphasize isolated psychomotor skill instruction, limiting retention and transfer to complex clinical settings. Previously, students completed a three-hour skills lab followed by a single three-hour simulation. Faculty observed that, even immediately after the skills session, learners struggled to apply those same technical skills in simulation. During “double-day” sessions, both sequencing approaches produced similar performance gaps, revealing a misalignment between knowledge, skills, and reasoning, highlighting the need for a simulation-centered redesign to support contextual skill application.

Purpose: This project aimed to redesign the simulation curriculum to align with AACN Essentials (2021), advancing a competency-based framework emphasizing …

Open Visitation Hours: Improving Patient Outcomes In A Large Urban Hospital, Danielle Brochu, Victoria Freed

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Multiple studies have shown that patient clinical outcomes as well as patient/family satisfaction greatly improves with unrestricted visiting hours (Dragoi et al., 2022; Ning & Cope, 2020; Shao, 2022). The purpose of this project is to improve patient clinical outcomes and satisfaction by expanding visitation that enables families to be more present at the bedside and partner with nursing staff in patient care.
During the COVID 19 pandemic, patients around the world experienced an increase in negative physical and emotional impacts due to restrictions on family visiting (Hugelius et al., 2021). Post-pandemic, it is crucial to renew the focus on …

The Role Of Seed Mix Characteristics And Soil Amendments During Post-Agricultural Prairie Restoration, Valerie N. Thurston, Michaela J. Woods, Madelaine Gregory, Mary C. Lloyd, Ryan W. Mcewan

Biology Faculty Publications

Introduction: Prairie restoration on degraded lands may be influenced by seed mix characteristics, including species richness and legume establishment. Soil amendments may facilitate restoration; however, the practical usefulness of techniques such as applications of whole soil and leaf mulch remains relatively unclear.

Objectives: We assessed whether increasing species richness and legume content in seed mixes enhances prairie restoration success and examined how soil amendments interact with seed mix composition to influence cover, species richness, diversity, and legume establishment.

Methods: We conducted a field experiment on a 12-ha post-agricultural site in Ohio, U.S.A. Twenty 50 × 50 m plots received one …

Quality Reveals What Quantity Conceals: Deceptive Equity Patterns In Urban Green Space Distribution, Zheng Xian, Yoshiharu Suzuki, Kun Liu, Clive E. Sabel, Naoki Nakaya, Atsushi Hozawa, Tomoki Nakaya

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Equitable provision of urban green space depends on how green space exposure is measured, yet aggregate, quantity-focused metrics can mask disparities in quality. We introduce the concept of deceptive equity, in which apparent distributional fairness conceals substantive inequality, and test it across 344 postcode areas in Sendai, Japan. Across three dimensions — ecological (NDVI), perceptual (Green View Index) and service provision (accessible park count) — we paired a quantity indicator with a quality indicator. A quantity–quality divergence emerged in every dimension: wherever a quality indicator showed a significant socioeconomic gradient it favoured affluent areas, whereas the corresponding quantity indicators were …

Compbio And Miras-A Multi-Omic Analysis Platform Built On A Memory-Based Intelligence Engine, Ruteja A Barve, Chad E Storer, Wayne D Hoxsie, Curtis Marcum, Joshua F Mcmichael, Jared M Lalmansingh, Brittany K Smith, Mark R Johnson, Daniel J Kuster, Richard D Head

2020-Current year OA Pubs

As molecular and cellular technologies have advanced, the need to analyze and interpret the resulting vast and multi-modal data into actionable intelligence has become a rate-limiting factor in scientific advancement. While traditional knowledgebase-pathway tools and LLM-based AI tools provide a degree of support in data interpretation, both exhibit known limitations. Presented here is the CompBio multi-omic analysis platform built upon Memory-based Intelligent Reasoning System (MIRaS), an associative reasoning engine grounded in episodic and semantic memory, capable of inferring biological relationships directly from stored knowledge rather than from model training. The MIRaS system is not dependent on human-curated pathway knowledgebases, provides …

Perfect Storm Impeding Strategic Leadership Decision-Making At Uc Berkeley, John Kraft, Arthur Kraft, Hank Adler

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Exogenous events have disrupted higher education and impacted the decision-making skills of university presidents. While all university presidents are affected, the problem is most acute at the thirty-six AAU members of the power four conferences. The exogenous events were the precipitous cancellation of federal research grants, the on again and off again restrictions on both new and current foreign students studying at US universities, the proposed 15% limit on indirect costs, the tax on university endowments, the changes in student loan programs, the annual $20.5 million NIL revenue sharing settlement for Division I (DI) athletes, and their share of the …

Temperature Predictions With Zncuins/Zns Quantum Dots, Reu/Fri Program Physics And Astronomy, Amber Banks

Student Works

For hundreds of years, humans have built thermometers based on the principles of thermal expansion and contraction. In the modern world, there is a need to scale down our thermometers to monitor cellular reactions, both within the human body and within artificial organ chips. Lewis et al. (2020) introduces a nanoscale thermometer based on the thermal expansion of CdTe quantum dots. When ex panded, these dots exhibit systematic changes in photoluminescence (PL) which are recognized by a neural network as an increase in temperature. Our research builds upon the framework of Lewis et al. (2020), testing its feasibility with ZnCuInS/ZnS …

Cognitive Warfare And The Brain-As-Battlespace: Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, And The Emerging Domain Of Neurostrategic Competition, James Giordano, Robert Schmidle

Strategic Insights

The human brain is becoming a consequential arena of strategic competition. This commentary looks at how cognitive warfare draws on the neural processes underlying perception, emotion, trust, identity, judgment, and decision-making to influence individual and collective behavior. It describes how existing beliefs, biases, social affiliations, and information environments shape the way people interpret and respond to competing narratives, making natural cognitive processes potential targets for exploitation. Dr. Giordano and Dr. Schmidle trace how advances in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, big-data analytics, neurotechnology, and behavioral modeling are expanding the ability to assess and potentially influence cognition. Particular attention is given to population …

Understanding Familicide: Psychosocial, Behavioral, And Mental Health Risk Factors And Implications For Forensic Behavioral Health Professionals, Molly M. Vogl

Master of Arts in Human Services

Familicide is a rare but devastating form of family violence involving the killing of multiple family members by another family member. Although research examining domestic violence, homicide, and homicide-suicide has expanded, familicide remains less understood due to its low occurrence and complex nature. This capstone examined the psychosocial, behavioral, and mental health risk factors commonly associated with familicide perpetrators and explored how forensic behavioral health professionals may use this information to improve violence risk assessment, prevention, and intervention efforts. A review of peer-reviewed research from academic databases and scholarly search engines identified common themes associated with familicide, including relationship conflict, …

Spatial Reconstructability Analysis: Information-Theoretic Modeling Of Categorical Raster Data, David Percy

Dissertations and Theses

This research focuses on the application of Reconstructability Analysis (RA), an information-theoretic machine learning (ML) methodology, to categorical spatial data in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). RA was developed in the systems community with applications including classification, prediction, pattern recognition, and decision analysis. RA is implemented in OCCAM (Organizational Complexity Computation and Modeling), a software suite developed at Portland State University that analyzes discrete data in tabular form, with observations in rows and variables in columns. While RA has been successfully applied to a variety of domains, no systematic application to georeferenced raster data arranged in regular grids has been previously …

Comparison Of Cubesat And Pocketqube Mission Timelines And Costs, Benjamin Skinner, Brian Damitz, Nathan Ford, Brian Iverson, David Long

Small Satellite Conference

PocketQube missions promise to reduce costs, speed up development timelines, and increase pedagogical value. We compared this mission format to CubeSat mission to compare relative strengths and weaknesses.

Solar-Assisted Battery Charging For The Chipsat Architecture: Chipsat Updates And Validation For The Descent Mission, Mark Lohatepanont, Joshua Umansky-Castro, Val Zeitlin, Matthew Hurford, Mason Peck, Andrew Filo, Alex Burke

Small Satellite Conference

DeSCENT is a suborbital mission to deploy 100 ChipSats from Blue Origin's New Shepard near 100 km altitude. The experiment characterizes ChipSat free-fall kinematics and dispersion, and demonstrates their potential for distributed atmospheric sensing. The updated ChipSat combines rechargeable energy storage and body-mounted solar cells with GPS, sensing, onboard logging, and 915 MHz LoRa communications. Lab testing and high-altitude balloon flights validate integrated power operation and long-range communications performance. Preliminary mechanical testing supports the remaining deployment and flight-verification effort.

Tbearr: Tardigrade Bio-Exploration Reproduction Research Payload, Chloe Nissen, Jameson Feeley, Kylie Nager, Wilmar Galvez Alfonso, Amber Paul, Sean Crouse, Larry Fineberg, Francisco Crespo Cutillas

Small Satellite Conference

The mission aims to design and build an external ISS payload module investigating the reproductive response of Hypsibius exemplaris (tardigrades) to prolonged radiation in Low Earth Orbit. Experimental success will be measured by population density, as well as analysis of glutathione (GSH) and glutathione disulfide (GSSG, counterpart to GSH) via spectrophotometric assays. This will determine the amount of reactive oxygen species (compounds that cause cellular damage, ROS) generated, and how much of it was neutralized. In-orbit experimentation data, through post-mission experimentation, will be analyzed through on-board or astronaut post-processing and testing procedures. This will provide insight into the mechanisms behind …

Faculty Senate Executive Committee Agenda August 24, 2026, Utah State University

Faculty Senate & Faculty Senate Executive Committee

3:00 Call to Order

Approval of Minutes - April 13, 2026

3:05 University Business

3:20 Faculty Senate Business

3:35 Reports

EPC Annual Report

Empowering Teaching Excellence

Center for Instructional Design and Innovation

4:00 Additional Business

Adjourn: 4:30 pm

Faculty Senate Executive Committee Minutes August 24, 2026, Utah State University

Faculty Senate & Faculty Senate Executive Committee

• Call to Order
• Approval of Minutes - April 13, 2026
• University Business
• Faculty Senate Business
• Reports
• EPC Annual Report
• Empowering Teaching Excellence (ETE)
• Center for Instructional Design and Innovation
• Additional Business
• Adjourn: 4:39

Hydrogels For Local Drug Delivery In Biofilm-Associated Periprosthetic Joint Infection: Current Progress And Future Directions, Karolina Kraus, Pawel Mikziński, Bindu Subhadra, Emil Paluch

Faculty Publications - Biological Sciences

Periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) remains one of the most serious complications of arthroplasty, largely due to the formation of microbial biofilms on implant surfaces. Biofilm-associated infections exhibit increased tolerance to antimicrobial therapy and host immune responses, making eradication difficult and often requiring repeated surgical interventions. Consequently, there is a growing need for effective local therapeutic strategies capable of delivering high concentrations of antimicrobial agents directly to the site of infection while minimizing systemic toxicity. Hydrogels have emerged as promising drug delivery platforms for the management of biofilm-associated PJI. Their biocompatibility, injectability, high water content, and tunable physicochemical properties enable controlled …