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Hospital Operational Strategies For Reducing 30-Day Acute Myocardial Infarction Readmissions In The Southeast United States, Heather Smith

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Thirty-day readmissions following acute myocardial infarction (AMI) remain a significant challenge for health care organizations due to increased health care utilization, costs, and adverse patient outcomes. The purpose of this integrative review was to identify effective operational strategies for reducing 30-day readmissions among patients with AMI in the Southeast United States. An integrative review of literature published between 2019 and 2026 was conducted using Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, MEDLINE/PubMed, UAB Lister Hill Library, Walden Library, Scopus, American Heart Association, and Google Scholar. Twenty-five articles were appraised using the Johns Hopkins appraisal process, and 15 studies meeting …

K–3 Teachers’ Perspectives Regarding Learnable Intelligence As A Developmental Target And Their Advocacy For Students’ Cognitive Capabilities, Eleanor Nkechi Maduako

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Extensive research shows the brain is malleable and, with experience and knowledge, intelligence can grow. The research problem addressed through this study was that the extent of early childhood educators' knowledge of learnable intelligence and their advocacy for advancement of children’s cognitive capabilities as a developmental goal were unknown. Guided by Perkins’s theory of learnable intelligence, the purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore K–3 teachers’ perspectives on learnable intelligence as a developmental target and how they advocate for children’s cognitive capabilities in their classrooms. In vivo and axial coding of data from semistructured interviews with 12 participants …

Belonging And Whole Person Formation In Graduate Education: A Conceptual Framework For Student Flourishing, Cynthia Hickman

Papers

Graduate students experience substantial academic, personal, and professional demands that can negatively affect well-being and persistence. For students enrolled in professional programs, belonging may develop within two overlapping communities: the academic institution and the emerging profession. Institutional and professional belonging can provide connection, support, engagement, and opportunities for identity and professional development. This paper synthesizes literature on these two forms of belonging and proposes a conceptual framework describing their potential relationship with whole-person formation and flourishing. Whole-person formation extends graduate education beyond knowledge acquisition and professional competence to include development across interconnected dimensions of the person. Within the proposed framework, …

The Ohio Oil And Gas Anti-Indemnification Statute: A Proposal, Reid Edwards

University of Dayton Law Review

No abstract provided.

Transient Activation Of Potent Progenitor Cells Is Required For Spinal Cord Regeneration, Chase Alexander Weinholtz

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Mammalian spinal cord injury is an intractable biomedical problem driven by interlocking maladaptive cellular responses that prioritize acute stabilization over long-term recovery. However, this deficient regenerative capacity is not an inherent limitation. The zebrafish, for example, capably regenerates and regains motor function with 2 months of a full transection injury. This ability is thought to rely on the transient expansion of stem cell-like progenitors marked by sox2 expression. Yet our understanding of the identities and contributions of this crucial population remains limited. Here, we determine the molecular identities and cellular contributions of sox2+ progenitors during innate spinal cord repair in …

Experiences Of Psychological Recovery From Work In Second-Generation Asian Americans, Laura Yang

Dissertations and Theses

Individuals of Asian descent make up approximately 7.4% of the U.S. population. As one of the fastest-growing minority groups, their population is projected to reach nearly 15% by 2065, with 38% being foreign-born – surpassing all other racial minority groups. Despite their increasing presence in the U.S. workforce, research on Asian workers' nonwork experiences remains limited. One key unexplored area is how Asian workers engage in recovery after work, considering their unique cultural and racialized experiences. Drawing on literature examining psychological recovery from work, this qualitative study employed multiple methods of analysis, both listening guide method and thematic analysis, to …

Machine Learning-Driven Prediction And Design Guidance For Asphalt Concrete Using Marshall Stability And Indirect Tensile Strength, Jianglei Xing, Xiao Tan, Mu Guo, Pengwei Guo, Yuhuan Wang, Dongzhao Jin

Michigan Tech Publications

This work addresses the simultaneous prediction of Marshall Stability (MS) and Indirect Tensile Strength (ITS) by integrating machine learning models with multi-objective optimization for the preliminary design of asphalt concrete. Based on 389 experimental samples, 15 variables were selected to describe asphalt properties, aggregate gradation, volumetric parameters and fiber characteristics, and four dual-output prediction models were developed. The models were evaluated using 50 Monte Carlo splits. TabICLv2 performed slightly better for MS prediction, with an RMSE of 1.49 ± 0.22 kN and an R of 0.85 ± 0.04, whereas TabPFN showed a slight advantage for ITS prediction, achieving an RMSE …

Hybrid Photonic–Electronic Neuromorphic Integrated Circuits, Lilian Neim

Theses

Photonic neural networks use integrated photonic circuits to perform neural network operations with high bandwidth and the potential for energy-efficient computation. In these systems, optical device responses can represent weights, and wavelength division multiplexing enables multiple wavelength channels to be processed in parallel within the same waveguide. However, scalable photonic neural network hardware needs weights that can be programmed, stored, and read reliably. Many current approaches require continuous electrical or thermal tuning to hold the optical state. This dissertation addresses this challenge by developing a hybrid photonic-electronic approach to non-volatile electro-optic memory. Here, we design and demonstrate a non-volatile electro-optic …

Effective Strategies To Implement Energy-Efficient Practices In Enterprise Cloud Data Centers: A Qualitative Pragmatic Inquiry, Joshua Tremayne Campbell

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Cloud computing has increased electricity use in data centers, leading to higher costs and a larger carbon footprint. Information Technology (IT) leaders need to address this, as such inefficiencies will increase operational costs, undermine sustainability commitments, and leave companies unprepared for future regulatory pressures. Energy-efficient technologies can reduce data center energy consumption by 40-60%, yet few studies examine the qualitative processes behind IT leaders' practices. The specific IT problem is that some IT leaders lack effective strategies to implement energy-efficient practices in enterprise cloud data centers. Grounded in the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework, the purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry was …

2026-08-11 Minutes, Morehead State University. Staff Congress.

Staff Congress Records

Staff Congress meeting minutes from August 11, 2026.

Institute For Global Health And Development : Issue 14 - April-June 2026, Institute For Global Health And Development

IGHD Newsletters

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Threads Of The Frightening: The Uncanny, Alienation, And Horror In Otsuichi's Fiction, Kathryn Lawhon Stephens

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The “J-horror boom” of the 1990s and early 2000s saw the international success of films like Nakata Hideo’s Ring (1998), bringing considerable and laudable attention to Japanese horror in the realm of film and media studies. Yet even Ring’s Sadako, one of the most popular contemporary figures in Japanese horror, first appeared as a literary character years before her debut on screen. The average layperson’s unfamiliarity of such a famous horror icon’s literary origins illuminates the comparative lack of literature-centric scholarship on major writers and figures of Japanese horror that this dissertation seeks to rectify.

First interrogating the fluidity …

Closing The Gap In Offshore Wind Environmental Evidence Chains: A Workshop-Derived White Paper, Jiaxin Chen, Lilian Lieber, Matthew Palmer, Dan Lear, Deborah Greaves

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Offshore wind development is accelerating at a time when environmental assessment is increasingly required to support timely consenting, cumulative-effects understanding, nature recovery, regional planning, floating offshore wind deployment and public trust. The workshop underpinning this White Paper was convened in recognition that the sector's central challenge is no longer simply a lack of data, but the weak connection between data, monitoring approaches, models, uncertainty, governance and decision-making.Environmental monitoring often remains project-specific and receptor-focused, while models remain component-specific or scenario-specific. Data systems are similarly fragmented across owners, repositories, formats, access arrangements and project lifecycle stages. Yet regulators and statutory advisers require …

Prenatal Health Factors Of Pregnant People Associated With Second Degree Postpartum Hemorrhage Across The United States, Elizabeth Simpler

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Secondary postpartum hemorrhage (SPPH) is a significant contributor to maternal morbidity in the United States and occurs after hospital discharge during the postpartum period. Persistent disparities in terms of maternal outcomes suggest access to prenatal care alone may not adequately address clinical and social factors associated with SPPH. Guided by the Social Ecological Model, which recognizes that health outcomes are influenced by a collective approach to examining health. The purpose of this study was to examine associations between SPPH, prenatal care access, and social determinants of health from 2019 to 2022 while controlling for maternal age, race, and delivery type. …

Scalable And Accurate Computational Frameworks For Complex Genetic Variants: From Repeat Expansion Discovery To Somatic Mosaicism Benchmarking, Zitian Tang

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) offers a comprehensive view of genetic variation in human disease, but translating sequencing data into reliable biological and clinical insight depends on both the deployment of appropriate computational tools and the availability of rigorous benchmarking resources to evaluate them. This dissertation addresses both requirements through two complementary lines of work. In a cohort of 788 patients with idiopathic peripheral neuropathy (IPN) from the Peripheral Neuropathy Research Registry, a WGS-based pipeline integrating ExpansionHunter Denovo and ExpansionHunter with unsupervised genotype clustering identified biallelic RFC1 AAGGG repeat expansions in 2.3% of all IPN cases and 6.9% of patients with pure …

The Defining Role Of Ago4 And Its Catalytic Activity During De Novo Rna-Directed Dna Methylation, Tianyi Li

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Plant transposable elements and transgenes are continuously targeted for transcriptional repression via the pathway of RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM). Although perpetual RdDM of the endogenous genomic loci has been well studied in the field, much less is known about the de novo RdDM pathway, the pioneering round of DNA methylation responsible for triggering and initiating silencing of new transgenes. Despite being two distinct pathways, both perpetual and de novo mechanisms of RdDM require the production of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and the key proteins of the ARGONAUTE4 (AGO4) clade. However, the order and likely mechanism of recruitment of AGO4 to …

Co-Opting Modernity: The Semantic Retooling Of Faith At The 1893 World’S Parliament Of Religions, Erik P. Palmer

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago served as a high-stakes arena where the boundaries of religious legitimacy were redrawn through the intentional adoption of social science vocabulary. Staged within the Neo-Classical architecture of the White City of the World’s Columbian Exposition, the event was more than a civil gathering; it functioned as a “Museum of Faiths” where religious traditions were curated, categorized, and evaluated against the perceived benchmarks of Western civilization. The physical environment of the Fair, a monument to industrial triumph, was built to display things that worked. The organizers demanded that religions demonstrate they were useful …

Assessing Non-Thermal Plasma In Cutaneous Regeneration, Arden Rodriguez, Meliah Martin, Graeme Grainger, Arineh Shahbazi

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Chronic and acute wounds remain a significant clinical challenge, particularly in austere and resource-limited environments where access to advanced care is restricted. Non-Thermal Plasma (NTP) has emerged as a promising, non-invasive modality with reported antimicrobial and regenerative properties; however, its mechanisms of action and effects on human skin tissue require further characterization. The scope of this project is to engineer and utilize a 3D human skin epithelial model to evaluate the effects of NTP on wound healing. We will first build a 3D epithelial tissue model that will simulate human skin, followed by modeling and evaluation of wound pathology and …

Magnesium-Enhanced Methane: A Novel Metalized Fuel For Mars Return Missions And Next-Generation Propulsion Systems, Kinga Wysocka

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

This research investigates magnesium-enhanced methane as a novel metalized fuel concept for high-performance, in-situ resource utilization (ISRU)-compatible rocket propulsion. While methane is a leading candidate for Mars missions due to its producibility via the Sabatier process, its combustion performance is limited by the high activation energy of the initial C–H bond (~4 eV). To address this limitation, density functional theory (DFT) calculations were performed to analyze methane and hydrogen interactions with a Mg(0001) surface. A converged slab model (3×3×4 and 3×3×5) was validated with energy differences below 1 meV per atom for k-point sampling and ~13.99 meV per atom for …

From Dust To Growth: Microbial Pathways To Extraterrestrial Farming, Stefani Capasso Villanueva, Nupur Kulkarni

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

From Dust to Growth: Microbial Pathways to Extraterrestrial Farming addresses the fundamental challenge of sustaining long-term human habitation on other planets. In the era of the Artemis missions, establishing a cost-effective, bioregenerative food source is critical to reducing logistical dependency on Earth, and mitigating the physiological stressors faced by spacecrew through improved nutrition. This study initially investigated the viability of cultivating Mizuna, a proven ISS model organism, in a substrate of Martian regolith simulant amended with organic compost. Following iterative trials, it was found that the plant survival rate was extremely low, even after varying percentages of compost and simulant. …

Advanced Manufacturing And Materials Of A Bio-Mimetic Hoof For Space Robotics Applications, Benjamin Heckel

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Planetary surfaces often feature steep, uneven, and unpredictable terrain conditions that resemble some of the most challenging natural environments on Earth. In these terrestrial settings, certain animals have evolved to navigate complex landscapes with remarkable agility. One example is the mountain goat, an animal whose hooves have evolved for stable and precise movement across rocky, inclined surfaces. This biological adaptation provides a useful model for improving robotic mobility in planetary exploration. This study draws inspiration from that natural adaptation to develop a bio-mimetic robotic hoof designed to enhance traction, durability, and adaptability for extraterrestrial exploration. By replicating the mechanical properties …

Fault-Aware Flight Path Assessment For Evtols Using An Integrated Air Traffic Management Environment, John Clardy, Edison Alberto Martinez Samaniego

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

This study introduces a simulation framework to evaluate Fault-Aware Flight Paths for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft within an integrated air traffic management environment. By combining an air traffic management system with intelligent trajectory generation frameworks, the approach assesses the development of safe, adaptive, and fault-aware flight paths that account for traffic interactions, airspace features, and specific operational constraints. Real-world historical airspace traffic data was used to accurately simulate complex and congested operational conditions. The main goal is to evaluate the operational impact of integrating eVTOL operations into the National Airspace System, with a focus on conflict detection, …

Experimental Design And Comparative Analysis Of Cubesat-Based Reflector Concepts For Future Solar Energy Redirection On Mars, Tatyana Vladislavova Ivanova

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Previous research shows that redirecting sunlight with large orbital mirrors could support warming specific regions of Mars by targeting ice deposits and releasing greenhouse gases. Although the concept has strong theoretical support, deploying and adjusting massive rigid reflectors in orbit remains a major technical challenge. This study aims to investigate the impact of using a swarm of small, adjustable CubeSats equipped with different reflector types on the effectiveness of solar energy redirection for Martian surface heating. Through comparison of multiple designs in controlled conditions, this work addresses whether smaller, flexible systems could offer a practical alternative to traditional large mirrors. …

Se(3) Touchdown Dynamics With Multi-Joint Landing Legs And Regolith-Dependent Contact For Autonomous Tip-Over Risk Prediction, Rithika Nagarajan

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

This project develops an SE(3)-based touchdown dynamics framework to study how lunar landers can remain stable during landing on sloped and uncertain terrain. Safe lunar landing is challenging because uneven load redistribution, slip, and asymmetric sinkage can push the vehicle’s center of mass outside its support polygon, increasing tip-over risk. The purpose of this work is to extend a fixed-leg touchdown model to a multi-joint landing leg system while also examining how varying regolith properties affect landing stability. The method combines coupled rigid-body translation and rotation with per-foot unilateral contact, compliant normal force response, and Coulomb-limited friction to simulate touchdown …

An Energy-Aware Meta-Learning Framework For Real-Time Lunar Rover Localization Via Adaptive Algorithm Selection, Jose Demedeiros, Garrett Seyler

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

This work proposes an energy-aware meta-learning framework that selects the single most suitable localization algorithm for a lunar rover, per scene, using only monocular imagery and orbital maps. The goal is to achieve sub-meter accuracy while minimizing onboard compute and energy consumption. We assemble a suite of seven lunar-relevant algorithms spanning relative and absolute localization, including monocular ORB-SLAM3, LuVo homography-based visual odometry, Censible cross-view matching with orbital imagery, crater-based methods (LunarNav and ShadowNav), monocular horizon navigation with a DEM, and DROID-SLAM. Relative methods provide incremental motion updates, while absolute methods deliver global pose fixes; an Extended Kalman Filter fuses these …

The Osteocyte-Osteoblast Network Requires Dynamic Mechanical Loading For Key Functions, Kevin Kowalski

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Spaceflight investigations have demonstrated that reduction in gravity-induced loading regimes is detrimental to maintenance Earth-normal bone and marrow. Mechanistically, however, there are still gaps in knowledge about how the reduction in gravity influences the different niches within the tissue. For example, cortical bone is a stable semi-solid structure that allows for only minor deformations before failure, while marrow is a viscous hydrogel-like material that can resist significant fluidic and compressive forces. We hypothesize that maintenance of different niches within the bone microenvironment are dependent on different loading regimes, and that the collective impact if gravity-induced loading needs to be considered …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Human-Ai Interaction Through Animated Shapes, Kavya Dipen Shah, Angel Hinojosa, Caroline Deck

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

As technology becomes more advanced, it is important to understand how people perceive the intentions and abilities of machines. This project, conducted in the InTeRACT Lab, explores how we attribute humanlike qualities to different types of agents, ranging from animals to robots. The study analyzes data from an experiment where participants watched animations of moving triangles. Although the videos were identical, participants were told the shapes represented either humans, robots, dogs, or inanimate objects. While previous math-based data showed that these labels changed how people felt, those structured scales didn't allow for a natural, unbiased explanation of what people actually …

A System Safety Approach To Assuring Artificial Intelligence Enabled Functions In Civil Aviation, Evan Bear, Quinn Galen

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques are increasingly proposed for use in safety-critical civil aviation functions including perception decision support and pilot assistance. Existing aviation safety and certification standards such as ARP4754A and DO-178C were developed under assumptions of determinism explicit requirements and complete behavioral specification which do not directly apply to learning-enabled systems. This mismatch has created uncertainty regarding how artificial intelligence enabled avionics can be safely assured and certified. This paper presents a system safety approach for assuring artificial intelligence enabled functions within existing aviation certification frameworks. In this approach safety assurance is based on explicitly identifying the …

A Hybrid Llm-Srgm Framework For Ai-Enabled Reliability Assessment In Safety-Critical Software Systems, Caleb Stone, Shrenik Jadhav

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Ensuring the reliability of software intensive and safety critical systems is a persistent challenge across aerospace, defense, transportation, and other mis- sion focused domains. Traditional software relia- bility growth models (SRGM) provide useful quanti- tative insight into defect discovery trends, but they rely mostly only on numerical failure data and do not use the rich contextual information contained in test logs, anomaly reports, and engineering notes. This paper presents a hybrid framework that com- bines semantic features extracted by a large lan- guage model (LLM) with a non-homogeneous Pois- son process (NHPP) based software reliability growth model. The LLM analyzes …

Extraction Of Cedarwood Essential Oils Via Steam Distillation, Forrest Dohner

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Many natural materials, including pine and eucalyptus, produce distinct scents due to the presence of volatile organic compounds. In cedarwood, this aroma arises from a combination of aromatic molecules, which are organic compounds containing conjugated carbon ring systems that interact with olfactory receptors. Specifically, cedarwood contains three primary compounds responsible for its scent: cedrol, cedrene, and thujopene. The objective of this experiment was to extract these essential oils from cedarwood and identify their chemical composition. Steam distillation was used to isolate the volatile components by passing steam through the cedarwood, causing the essential oils to vaporize at temperatures below their …