Digital Commons Network^™

Crafting The Wings Of Tomorrow's Leaders, Anushka Sharma

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

SOAR is a social impact initiative I founded in partnership with Big Brothers/Big Sisters Lafayette. We provide novel leadership and character development resources for local Lafayette youth. The motto—engage, uplift, and achieve—speaks to my aims for inspiring the next generation of leaders, within Purdue members and local youth. This reflection essay is an opportunity to express the aims of SOAR, the intentionality behind this initiative, and how I hope to contribute to the development of youth in Lafayette and beyond. Mr. Brennan’s visit is a milestone for SOAR, and having the opportunity to converse with a renowned youth development leader …

Jovial Family Farm Facilitates Intergenerational Learning Opportunities Through Urban Farming, Maera Williams

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Maera Williams is a sophomore in Environmental and Ecological Engineering at Purdue University. She joined the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) Urban Farming team as a freshman and now serves as project manager of ten undergraduate students collaborating with Jovial Family Farm to design and develop three indoor hydroponics systems for a laboratory space on their property in Broad Ripple, IN. Jovial Family Farm is a nonprofit organization founded by Drs. Bobbie and Brian Jellison with the mission to provide senior citizens, their families, and their communities with meaningful engagement opportunities on an intergenerational scale through urban agricultural activities. …

Wolf Park, Pawsing For Impactful Beginnings: The Role Of Community Engagement And Education In Service-Learning, John W. Robbins, Deniz Eksioglu, Kaushal Patel

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Our team’s endeavor, conducted under the guidance of Dr. Kristen Bellisario, encapsulates a service-learning journey with Wolf Park, a sanctuary dedicated to the conservation and research of wolves and wildlife. Through immersive experiences, community outreach, and collaborative partnerships, our team sought to amplify public understanding of wildlife conservation and inspire a sense of responsibility among participants. This essay examines the impact of our initiatives on both the community and ourselves, emphasizing the transformative potential of education, engagement, and community partnerships in effecting positive societal change. Our team advocates for sustained support for wildlife conservation efforts and underscore the necessity of …

Empowering Tech Professionals: Mentorship And Interview Preparation In The Face Of Industry Layoffs, Sakhi Aggrawal

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

In recent years, the Information Technology (IT) industry has witnessed significant turmoil, marked by waves of mass layoffs that have left numerous skilled professionals grappling with job loss and uncertainty. The year 2023 alone saw over 250,000 tech workers in U.S.-based companies lose their livelihoods due to corporate restructuring, with renowned giants like Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta being forced to trim their workforce. This unsettling trend highligts a pressing need to support those affected and empower them to regain stability in their careers.

Against this backdrop, I, an experienced technical program manager and software engineer with a background at …

Editorial, Elizabeth B. Brite

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

No abstract provided.

Aboard The Giant Clam: Ramon Muzones's Maritime Historicization Of The Nation, Winton Lou G. Ynion

Kritika Kultura

Philippine literature scholarship is currently interested in decentering the discourse of nation-building from the capital to the periphery, but least often is attention given to the very geography that makes these communities marginalized. Habitually, multiculturalism and multilingualism have been convenient explanations for why it is difficult for the Philippines to come up with a “national literature” and a paradigm for imagining a nation. This essay centers on this neglected aspect, casting a novel written by a marginalized author in a vernacular language – the Margosatubig (1946) by Ramon Muzones. Three prime objectives guided the navigation of this paper: (1) to …

Training For Learner-Centered Pedagogy And Curriculum Design Agendain Staff Development For Problem-Based Learning (Pbl), Peter Freebody

Kritika Kultura

No abstract provided.

"Pedagogic Invasion": The Thomasites In Occupied Philippines, Dinah Roma-Sianturi

Kritika Kultura

The early education of the Philippines by American voluntary teachers (the Thomasites) is often hailed as a laudatory project. However, education can be a deceptive gift. The ethnographic writings of the Thomasite teachers, like Mary Fee’s A Woman’s Impressions of the Philippines, reveal that these well-meaning American teachers had their own colonial opinion of their Filipino students. Perhaps unwittingly, the Thomasite teachers were still part of the American colonial education policy. Most especially, the memoir writings reveal a perception of Filipino males as effeminate and childlike, an opinion that did much to legitimize the American colonial mandate.

A Medieval Book Fitting(?) From The ‘Atlit Castle, Vardit Shotten-Hallel, Dana Ashkenazi

'Atiqot

A metal object found on the surface at the ‘Atlit Castle was identified as a book fitting. Although such mounts could have served other functions, such as inlays, belt or girdle mounts, this artifact was probably an anchor-plate, part of a book clasp for a medieval codex, possibly of religious content, bound in a leather cover. Visual testing inspection and SEM-EDS analysis of the book fitting have shown that the item was made of a heterogeneous composition of copper alloy. This book fitting joins a growing corpus of metal artifacts from the Latin East, establishing a metallurgical database for future …

A Milestone Without A Road: A Distance Marker Below An Arch Of The High Aqueduct To Caesarea, Avner Ecker, Yotam Tepper, Avshalom Karasik

'Atiqot

A milestone located in Bet Ḥananya, below one of the arches of the Hadrianic High Aqueduct to Caesarea (Canal B), was subjected to a 3D scan. This technique enabled the reading of the inscription on the milestone and thereby, to date the stone to the period of the dual reign of Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (161–169 CE). It also became apparent that the stone marked the fourth mile station from Caesarea. This paper suggests that the milestone is in situ and marked a segment of the Roman imperial road between Caesarea and the legionary base at Legio. The …

Wightman Prosperity Church Council Minutes 2016-2024, Wightman United Methodist Church, Prosperity

Methodist Local Church Records

No abstract provided.

Michigan Academician, Volume 49, Issue 1

Michigan Academician

2024 Conference Abstracts

Predictive Modeling And Sustainability Assessment Of Hydrothermal Liquefaction Of Seaweeds: A Techno-Economic And Life Cycle Analysis Approach, Micheal O. Asama

Mechanical Engineering Theses

This study presents comprehensive predictive models and an economic and environmental assessment of HTL for converting macroalgae into biofuels and valuable co-products. Predictive models were developed based on experimental kinetic data to simulate batch HTL of brown seaweed, capturing the yields of biocrude, gas, biochar, and water-soluble compounds as functions of key process variables, including temperature, time, pressure, and water-to-biomass ratio. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) confirmed that temperature and residence time significantly affect biocrude yield, with an optimal yield of 23% achieved at 283°C, 200 bar, 54 minutes, and a 10:1 water-to-biomass ratio. The model’s predictive accuracy was validated with …

Board Of Trustees Meeting Minutes, December 12, 2024

Board of Trustees Minutes

Minutes from the Wright State University Board of Trustees Meeting held on December 12, 2024.

Characterizing The Risk Of Meteorite Ejecta To Future Lunar Surface Operations, Jacob Yates

Theses and Dissertations

In-situ materials provided adequate shielding against the risk of meteorite ejecta for future lunar surface operations. Both regolith simulant and simulant-epoxy mixtures stopped simulated ejecta projectiles with velocities at or near lunar escape velocity. Those depth penetrations for those two in-situ related materials were shallow inside 3 cm and may prove to be influential in future mission planning of lunar surface operations. The lunar surface poses a potential risk from meteoroid ejecta for future lunar surface operations. The safety ramifications of long-term crewed missions for the Artemis program, NASA’s lunar program, are being investigated or reconsidered from the previous Apollo …

Simple Steps To Help Beat The Blues This Holiday Season, Robbin Ray

Media Relations

No abstract provided.

Women, Collective Creative Practice, And Community Health, Anne Hensley

Honors Theses

A growing body of research shows that art therapy yields positive outcomes for those experiencing stress and mood disorders. Creative arts therapies have been shown to lower cortisol, improve personal and universal outlook, decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression, increase self-esteem and confidence, alleviate burnout, help individuals to cope with trauma, and support brain function through activity-dependent plasticity. However, little research has been done on collective and collaborative arts, and the enhanced benefits communal practice might bring. Additionally, art therapy is inaccessible to many, due to a dearth of practitioners and cultural and socioeconomic barriers to participation. Peri-, menopausal, and …

Performance Evaluation Of Routing Protocols And Ml-Based Enhancements For Uav-Assisted Post-Disaster Communication Networks, Prachi Choudhary

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

During natural disasters, the existing communication systems collapse, and the disaster-affected areas become disconnected without any means of exchanging information. The collapse of existing communication networks poses challenges for First-Responders (FRs) in locating survivors during Search and Rescue (SAR) operations and for survivors to communicate for emergency aid. To alleviate post-disaster consequences and save lives, Uncrewed Air Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, can be employed to establish adaptable and reliable emergency communication networks. UAVs offer portability and rapid deployment, making them effective in crises. This thesis presents two main contributions: 1) Evaluation and Comparison of Routing Protocol Performance: The …

Tag-Based Security In C: Writing And Specifying Flexible Protection, Sean Noble Anderson

Dissertations and Theses

The C language is ubiquitous and insecure. Tag-based security policies offer a flexible toolkit for runtime protection, including policies that mitigate the effects of undetected programming bugs and those that enforce security properties of the program logic. But tag policies can be difficult to define, and the protection that they offer can be difficult to specify and to prove.

This dissertation builds from an assembly-level specification of stack safety, encompassing the essential control-flow structure of C and other high level languages, to a C source-level policy definition framework called Tagged C. Tagged C includes a variant C semantics parameterized by …

Landslide Mapping, Characterization, And Hazard Assessment With 3d Slope Stability Modeling In White Bluffs, Washington State, Anna Tsitsivas

Dissertations and Theses

Slope failures shape the landscape by moving unstable material downslope and, in doing so, become a great hazard to all those in their path. Understanding the mechanisms that control landslide location, timing, size, type, and runout - and therefore hazards - requires a deep understanding of the local geology, stratigraphy, and groundwater conditions. Along White Bluffs, in south-central Washington, landslides of several failure styles have likely been triggered by an increased water table in recent decades, threatening both farmland behind the bluffs and habitat below. This study focuses on characterizing potential groundwater sources and determining controls on spatial and temporal …

12.02.2024 Orsp Connect, Liz Williamson

ORED Newsletter

Email Address Matters

All of Us Researcher Symposium

Welcome Anya Goldman

Aquatic Plant Threats To The Columbia River, Jacob Rose, Gabriel Campbell

Center for Lakes and Reservoirs Publications and Presentations

These presentation slides provide an overview of some of the invasive aquatic plants that pose an emerging threat to Oregon waterways. It contains botanical notes and high-quality photographs of approximately nine different plant species. Additional slides emphasize the importance of early detection and rapid response, as well as existing resources for invasive species outreach. This presentation was given orally at the Oregon Department of Agriculture's Interagency Noxious Weed Symposium to an audience of natural resource practitioners.

Hypernetwork Reconstruction From Time-Series Measurements, Ziyi Peng, Bharat Singhal, Jr-Shin Li

Electrical and Systems Engineering Undergraduate Student Research

Hypernetworks, which enable joint interactions among three or more nodes, reveal complex network dynamics underlying various systems. This study focuses on reconstructing hypernetwork connectivity structures from time-series data. By transforming the inference task into a bilinear optimization problem, we develop an iterative algorithm to recover adjacency matrices and coupling strengths accurately. Our method's robustness is validated with phase-coupled oscillator models, achieving an average AUC score of 0.8 for connectivity reconstruction. Future directions include enhancing algorithm efficiency for larger networks and refining coupling strength estimations. This work advances network inference by offering a scalable and accurate approach to decoding higher-order network …

Investigation Of Real-Time Gaseous Thermal Decomposition Products Of Representative Per- And Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (Pfas), Kateřina Litvanová, Bethany Klemetstrud, Feng Xiao, Alena Kubatova

Chemistry Faculty Publications

The thermal decomposition of per- and poly fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) is poorly understood. Here, we present an innovative, comprehensive analytical method to investigate their thermal decomposition, including perfluorocarboxylic acids (PFCAs), alcohol, sulfonates, and GenX (acid dimer), focusing on identifying their breakdown products. In this study, evolved gas analysis–mass spectrometry (EGA-MS) was used for fast real-time screening to determine the significant temperatures to be investigated with the thermal desorption-pyrolysis coupled with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (TD-Py-GC-MS), which provided detailed information about evolved PFAS and their breakdown products. This approach enabled a systematic study of perfluorocarboxylic acids (PFCAs) ranging from C₃ to …

Closed Domain Question Answering With Language Models: Application Of Retrieval-Augmented Generation And Parameter Efficient Fine-Tuning In Healthcare, Aaron Cummings

Master's Theses

Dementia care presents significant challenges for informal caregivers, particularly in managing behavioral symptoms that affect over 90% of individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) during the moderate-to-severe stages. These symptoms, including agitation, wandering, and repetitive activities, impose emotional and physical burdens on caregivers, often exacerbated by a lack of reliable, accessible, and personalized resources. Non-pharmacological interventions, while evidence-based, are underutilized due to knowledge gaps and the inefficiency of traditional training and information retrieval methods.

This research explores the adaptation of large language models (LLMs) to address these challenges by developing a framework for closed-domain Question Answering (QA) systems, …

Disrupting The Status Quo: Narratives Of Women Of Color Leaders At California Community Colleges, Lesley Doricely Meza

LMU Theses and Dissertations

The California Community College (CCC) system is the largest higher education system in the United States and serves diverse students. However, CCC’s leadership does not mirror the diversity of its student population. Senior-level positions continue to be dominated by White men, highlighting the lack of diversity among leadership at these institutions and exposing the ongoing underrepresentation of women, especially women of color (WOC), in leadership positions due to the ingrained hierarchal and patriarchal systems in CCCs. This qualitative study aimed to provide a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of WOC, who are midlevel administrators at the CCC system. A …

Faculty Senate Meeting Agenda December 12, 2024, University Of Rhode Island Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Meeting Agendas

No abstract provided.

A Conjugate Of An Egfr-Binding Peptide And Doxorubicin Shows Selective Toxicity To Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells, Phi-Phung Than, Shih-Jing Yao, Emad Althagafi, Kamaljit Kaur

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Selective targeting of cancer cells via overexpressed cell-surface receptors is a promising strategy to enhance chemotherapy efficacy and minimize off-target side effects. In this study, we designed peptide 31 (YHWYGYTPERVI) to target the overexpressed epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells. Peptide 31 is internalized by TNBC cells through EGFR-mediated endocytosis and shares sequence and structural similarities with human EGF (hEGF), a natural EGFR ligand. Unlike hEGF, peptide 31 does not induce cell migration in TNBC cells. A novel conjugate of peptide 31 with doxorubicin (Dox) retains selectivity for TNBC cells and exhibits significant toxicity comparable …

Small Molecule With Big Impact: Metarrestin Targets The Perinucleolar Compartment In Cancer Metastasis, Vivek Kashyap, Bhuvnesh Sharma, Divya Pandey, Ajay K. Singh, Godwin Peasah-Darkwah, Bhupesh Singh, Kuldeep K. Roy, Murali Yallapu, Subhash Chauhan

School of Medicine Publications

Metarrestin (ML246) is a first-in-class pyrrole-pyrimidine-derived small molecule that selectively targets the perinucleolar compartment (PNC). PNC is a distinct subnuclear structure predominantly found in solid tumor cells. The occurrence of PNC demonstrates a positive correlation with malignancy, serving as an indicator of tumor aggressiveness, progression, and metastasis. Various promising preclinical results have led to the clinical translation of metarrestin into a first-in-human trial. This review aims to summarize (i) the current understanding of the structure and function of PNC and its role in cancer progression and metastasis, (ii) key findings from studies examining the effect of metarrestin on various cancers …

Exploring The Accuracy Of Interferometric Quantum Measurements Under Conservation Laws, Nicolò Piccione, Maria Maffei, Andrew N. Jordan, Kater W. Murch, Alexia Auffèves

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

A (target) quantum system is often measured through observations performed on a second (meter) system to which the target is coupled. In the presence of global conservation laws holding on the joint meter-target system, the Wigner-Araki-Yanase theorem and its generalizations predict a lower bound on the measurement’s error (Ozawa’s bound). While practically negligible for macroscopic meters, it becomes relevant for microscopic ones. Here, we propose a simple interferometric setup, arguably within reach of present technology, in which a flying particle (a microscopic quantum meter) is used to measure a qubit by interacting with it in one arm of the interferometer. …