Digital Commons Network^™

Latent Policy Manifold For Governing And Selecting Orthogonal Ai Directives, Nathan Myung-Chul Kim, Abraham Addisie

Defensive Publications Series

A system for managing modular directives for large language models can address challenges associated with redundant or conflicting instructions. The system can create a latent policy manifold by vectorizing a repository of natural language instructions and applying a matrix factorization technique, such as singular value decomposition, to identify an underlying orthogonal basis. This manifold can be used by an offline governance component to analyze and reduce redundancy in the instruction repository and by an online routing engine to select a subset of instructions at runtime. The selected subset of instructions can be both relevant to a given query and mathematically …

Should I Stay Or Should I Go? The National Flood Insurance Program And Where We Go When The Next Storm Hits, Kevin Fitzpatrick

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

In Spring, Texas, there is a house that has flooded twenty times due to heavy rain and flooding, resulting in National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) payouts totaling over $912,000 to cover the repairs. This house’s current value is $42,000, so the payouts have dwarfed its value by over nineteen times. The story of this home is indicative of an ongoing crisis regarding the NFIP, but also a larger crisis of how we manage the risks of flooding in the United States. Flooding causes more damage in the United States than any other severe weather-related event, costing an average of $5 …

Alternative Marine Fuels And Mrv Liability Under Unclos Part Xii, Andrey Chernov

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

Shipping’s decarbonization depends not only on adopting alternative fuels but also on the reliability of the monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems that underpin compliance. Ammonia, hydrogen, methanol, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) each introduce distinctive risks of error at the stages of certification, custody transfer, onboard measurement, and verification. At the same time, maritime law is increasingly data-driven. The International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index (EEXI) and Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) depend on reported fuel-use data, while the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) and FuelEU Maritime Regulation impose direct financial penalties for inaccurate reporting. This …

Editor's Page, Art Mcphee

Witness

No abstract provided.

Becoming Modern: Households’ Electricity Use And Coping With Power Outages In Post-Socialist Dar Es Salaam, Emanuel Lukio Mchome

Tanzania Journal of Sociology

Since its invention in the 1880s, electricity has been regarded as a pervasive driver of modern life. As scholars have shown elsewhere, ideas of modernity have influenced the provision and use of electricity in cities across the globe. By and large, scholars have examined electricity-modernism in terms of the construction of high-tech electric infrastructure by major actors. Those who have studied power failures This article examines electricity-modernism from the perspective of everyday electricity use and the experience of power outages, a lens rarely used by scholars. It draws from oral history interviews and archival sources to show how ideas of …

Beyond The “Him-Her-Ing” Dichotomy: Unpacking Gendered Power Logics In Tanzanian Public Administration, Furaha Julius

Tanzania Journal of Sociology

Despite decades of policy commitment to gender equity in Tanzania, substantive inequality within public administration endures. This study moves beyond quantifying women's underrepresentation to investigate the discursive and performative mechanisms that sustain a gendered power logic, termed him-her-ing. Situated within post-structural feminist theory and drawing on qualitative data from 21 in-depth interviews and a critical review of policy documents, this paper reveals how administrative practices—from leadership norms to routine task allocation—continuously reproduce a binary that privileges masculine-coded authority. Findings demonstrate that ostensibly neutral bureaucratic procedures, religious and customary influences, and informal patronage networks coalesce to marginalize feminine subjectivities, even within …

Rebuilding Tourism Resilience In The Post-Pandemic Era: Hotel Success Narratives In Tanzania, Godwin Lema, Judith Mshana

Tanzania Journal of Sociology

COVID-19 struck tourism more deeply than ever before and it is still less clear how tourist hotels in the remote setting of the global south navigated the crisis. Limited explored empirically and what remain less known is how the standard operating procedures were designed, perceived and effectively applied to inform resilience in specific tourist hotel setting. In this article we explore the role of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) played in rebuilding tourist hotels resilience. Karatu district Tanzania touristic space situates study context. Methodological approach adopted is qualitative research design with integration of interview, observation and pertinent hotel statistics in comparing …

Security Architecture Decision Framework For Endpoint Protection In Resource-Constrained K-12 Environments, Jason Folker

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

K-12 educational institutions face an ongoing challenge in protecting endpoints when budgets and staffing prevent the implementation of standard security best practices. Technology directors routinely make difficult decisions about administrative rights, software controls, and security tooling, but they lack frameworks designed for the constraints and priorities specific to educational environments. This paper develops a security architecture decision framework tailored for K-12 endpoint protection. The framework integrates five weighting dimensions to help technology directors evaluate competing architectural choices. These dimensions include educational impact, security risk reduction, resource requirements, compliance obligations, and operational feasibility. The framework creates structured documentation that helps decision-makers …

Electrospinning Of Covalent Organic Frameworks (Cofs) For Adsorption Of Heavy Metal Ions, Samar A. Salim

Nanotechnology Research Centre

This study reported the synthesis, electrospinning, and heavy metal adsorption of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) integrated into poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) nanofibers. COF-1 and COF-2 were synthesized by solvothermal and reflux techniques, respectively, and subsequently incorporated into PMMA via electrospinning with different loadings (0.1%, 0.5%, and 1.0%). The synthesized PMMA_COF nanofibers were analyzed utilizing X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). PMMA_COF nanofibers with fiber diameters of 350-450 nm were obtained. The structural and morphological investigations validated the effective integration of COFs into the PMMA matrix, with COF-1 demonstrating superior dispersion …

Penilaian Safety Climate Di Area Quarry Pada Pabrik Semen Di Indonesia, Andrizqa Andrizqa, Mufti Wirawan, Raden Ismail Haq, Asep Zaenal Muttaqien, Muhammad Arifin Ramzy Lubis

National Journal of Occupational Health and Safety

Work in the quarry area of the cement industry has a high risk of occupational accidents. Workers' understanding of the safety climate is important to prevent workplace accidents and injuries. This study aimed to assess the safety climate in the quarry area of a cement plant in Indonesia while identifying aspects that still require improvement. This study employed a descriptive quantitative approach using a questionnaire adapted from the Loughborough Safety Climate Assessment Toolkit (LSCAT). The sample consisted of all workers in the quarry area, including 49 permanent workers and 90 contract workers. The results showed that the average safety climate …

Pseudodifferential Absorbing Boundary Conditions For Waves, Lauren Taylor

Mechanical Engineering Theses

Absorbing boundary conditions (ABCs) are required to truncate the computational domain when performing Finite Element Analyses of exterior acoustic problems where physical domain is unbounded. ABC is applied on a fictitious boundary containing the scatterer and ideally allows outgoing waves to leave without non-physical reflections. Preventing artificial reflections is essential to benefit from the accuracy of the numerical method used. Otherwise, ABC acts as a reflective surface, and artificial reflections distort the solution in the entire domain which is not recoverable by any type of refinement. Pseudodifferential ABCs were used to describe the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map which maps known boundary values …

First Year College Students’ Perceptions Of Their Engagement Skills And Satisfaction In Online Courses, Ryan Ann Mathews

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem that was addressed through this study is the gap in literature on first-year college students’ perceptions of engagement and satisfaction in online courses. Grounded in the framework of Astin’s student involvement theory and Cotton et al., happy productive theory, the purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore first-year college students’ perceptions of their engagement and satisfaction in online courses. Semistructured interviews with eight first-year online college students throughout the U.S. were conducted. Through thematic analysis, the following four themes emerged: First-year online college students noted that their (1) engagement skills and study habits, when used consistently, …

Biophysical Insights Into A Cryptic Ligand Site In The Hydrophobic Core Of Human Pcna, Alexis N. Dispensa, Sharon N, Greenwood, Jason Yang, Daniel E. Logatto, James Fusco, E. Railey White, Roderic G. Eckenhoff, Zhiwei Liu, Brian P. Weiser

Department of Anesthesiology Faculty Papers

Proteins contain small pockets that form due to imperfections in residue packing or the rotational and conformational movement of amino acids. In this work, we used the fluorescent probe 1-aminoanthracene (AMA) to detect a small ligand pocket in the hydrophobic core of human proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), which is a critical protein for DNA replication and repair. Fluorescence measurements of AMA reported that the core of PCNA had a dielectric constant (ε) of 4, which was very apolar and similar to cyclohexane (ε = 2). Protein mutagenesis, photoaffinity labeling, and molecular dynamics simulations localized the binding site for AMA …

Multiple Event Segmentation Mechanisms In The Human Brain, Tan T Nguyen, Joset A Etzel, Matthew A Bezdek, Jeffrey M Zacks

2020-Current year OA Pubs

The human brain segments continuous experience into discrete events, with theoretical accounts proposing two distinct mechanisms: creating boundaries at points of high

Sleep Disturbances Affect Sleep Quality Of Hospitalized Adults, Tonjia Hardesty

Dissertations

Abstract

Background: Sleep disturbances affect the quality of sleep hospitalized adults experience, possibly extending patient recovery time. Treatment of insomnia frequently includes pharmacological interventions exposing patients to potential side effects, leading to negative patient outcomes.  The purpose of this project was to determine if a sleep hygiene toolkit including eye masks, earplugs, advocacy cards, and removal of nicotine patches at bedtime would improve patient sleep quality without use of pharmacological interventions.

Methods: A descriptive observational design was used in this quality improvement (QI) project. A convenience sample of 37 (N =37) participants over the age of 18 years and …

Enhancing Well-Being: Implementing Weekly Social Interventions For Older Adults In Independent Living, Rosa Huang

Dissertations

Loneliness and social isolation significantly impact the physical and mental well-being of older adults. This quality improvement project implemented an eight-week social intervention designed to reduce loneliness and enhance well-being through weekly sessions incorporating mindfulness exercises, gratitude journaling, and structured socialization activities. The intervention was delivered by nursing students to a sample of residents in a Midwestern independent living community. While most standardized measures of loneliness and mood did not show statistically significant changes, the project resulted in a statistically significant increase in social network engagement as measured by the Lubben Social Network Scale-6 (LSNS-6). The findings suggest that group-based …

[Excerpt From] The Nurse Manager's Guide To Budgeting & Finance, 4th Edition, Annmarie Papa

Sigma Publications: Book Excerpts

Nurses focus on the art and science of caregiving, so stepping into a nurse manager role brings new challenges—especially when it comes to the economic reality of patient-staffing ratios, budgets, reports, accounting, and financial decision-making. Acronyms such as FTEs and ADCs can feel like a foreign language, but thankfully, this book is here to help. The Nurse Manager’s Guide to Budgeting and Finance, 4th Edition, provides real-world tools, tips, and strategies nurses need to manage resources wisely, support their team, and keep their unit on track in an increasingly complex healthcare environment. In this practical, on-the-job handbook, author AnnMarie Papa …

Extrafloral Nectaries In Woody Plants: Toward An Integrated Framework For Ant-Mediated Plant Defense, Fangming Liu, Qifei Cai, Victor Busov, Zhen Liu

Michigan Tech Publications

Extrafloral nectaries (EFNs)-secretory structures that recruit predatory arthropods as indirect defenders against herbivory-have been studied almost exclusively in herbaceous systems, leaving a critical gap in our understanding of plant defense in woody plants. In trees, secondary growth, ontogenetic regulation, and seasonal phenology generate structural and temporal heterogeneity in EFN expression poorly captured by existing frameworks. We synthesize evidence across structural, chemical, and functional dimensions of EFN biology to develop an integrated framework for perennial trees. Our analysis suggests that methodological limitations in EFN detection likely bias the current chemical record of woody EFNs, while incomplete chemical characterization constrains the evaluation …

Coherent Two-Photon Backscattering And Induced Angular Quantum Correlations In Multiple-Scattered Two-Photon States Of The Light, Nooshin M. Estakhri, Theodore B. Norris

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

We present the emergence of coherent two-photon backscattering, a manifestation of weak localization, in multiple scattering of maximally entangled pure and fully mixed two-photon states and examine the effect of entanglement and classical correlations. Quantum correlations in backscattering are investigated for finite three-dimensional disordered structures in the weak localization regime, as well as systems of a small number of scatterers with specified spatial arrangements. No assumptions are made about the statistical behavior of the scattering matrix elements. Furthermore, we study the interplay between quantum correlations induced by multiple scattering and the correlations that may be present in the illumination fields, …

On Culpability: When Ai Goes Wrong, Who Is At Fault?, David J. Mulder

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"I found the book so engrossing precisely because it forced me to sit in the discomfort of distributed blame, especially as someone who uses AI regularly."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­the novel Culpability from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox  Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in  every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

On Culpability

Uk Sensorimotor Conference 2026, Ian Howard, Gunnar Schmidtmann, Chris Fogwill, Antonio Capozio, Nick Holmes, Joe Galea, Zoltan Soltesz, Natalie Maffitt, Flàvia Ferrus Marimon, Jonathan Marsden, Jon Green, Bethan Thomas, Raymond Reynolds, Griet Warlop, Callum Jarvis, Gabriela Gonzalez Chan, Stephen Hall, Caitlin Smith, Isabel Farr, Adam Shann

UK Sensorimotor Conference programme

Conference programme

The 2026 UK Sensorimotor Conference in Plymouth aimed to bring together the UK sensorimotor community in an open and informal environment to share research, exchange ideas, and foster new collaborations. The meeting encompassed a broad scientific scope, spanning basic and clinical studies across humans and animals, motor control and learning, neuromuscular and vestibular systems, development and ageing, as well as computational, neuroimaging, electrophysiological, and robotic approaches to sensorimotor function.

Nanoscale Morphological Perturbations Of Lipid Membranes Induced By Membrane Active Peptides, Yasith Sandeepa Indigahawela Gamage

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Membrane-active peptides (MAPs) are a diverse group of biologically relevant molecules that induce nanoscale modulations during their interactions with cell membranes. Understanding the precise mechanism by which these MAPs perturb or modulate the cell membranes is a cornerstone of membrane biophysics, as it facilitates rational design of useful therapeutics. That is, if we have the knowledge to determine what the peptide can do, how selective it is, or how toxic it might be, we can optimize them and design new peptide therapeutics such as for antimicrobial, anticancer, or drug-delivery applications. In general, MAPs can be categorized into two classes based …

Extrafloral Nectaries In Woody Plants: Toward An Integrated Framework For Ant-Mediated Plant Defense, Fangming Liu, Qifei Cai, Victor Busov, Zhen Liu

Michigan Tech Publications

Extrafloral nectaries (EFNs)—secretory structures that recruit predatory arthropods as indirect defenders against herbivory—have been studied almost exclusively in herbaceous systems, leaving a critical gap in our understanding of plant defense in woody plants. In trees, secondary growth, ontogenetic regulation, and seasonal phenology generate structural and temporal heterogeneity in EFN expression poorly captured by existing frameworks. We synthesize evidence across structural, chemical, and functional dimensions of EFN biology to develop an integrated framework for perennial trees. Our analysis suggests that methodological limitations in EFN detection likely bias the current chemical record of woody EFNs, while incomplete chemical characterization constrains the evaluation …

Depaul Digest

DePaul Magazine

James Bort, assistant professor at the Driehaus College of Business, levels the playing field for underdog entrepreneurs. Arieahn Matamonasa Bennett, associate professor at the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, helps connect to the natural world through equine-assisted therapy. Plus, alumni pitch in during Vincentian Service Day and the latest news from DePaul's 10 colleges and schools, from music education students teaching youth to law students engaging in international human rights work.

Full Issue: Summer 2026

DePaul Magazine

In DePaul Magazine's summer 2026 issue, learn how DePaul is living its Vincentian mission through innovative community engagement and service learning, exemplified by its Irwin W. Steans Center and Speech Language Pathology and Occupational Therapy graduate programs. Also, meet alumna Kate Steinberg who revisits her youth and DePaul days as a rising social media influencer, get the latest news from DePaul's 10 colleges and schools, and much more.

Class Notes

DePaul Magazine

From promotions to performances, see the latest accomplishments by DePaul alumni across class years and generations. Plus, read alumni spotlight profiles of Derrick M. Robinson Jr. (SCPS '11), who battles bullying through sneakers donations, and Alessandra Swanson (JD '09), a first-generation alumna who rose to partner at a prominent national law firm.

Sensitivity Analysis Of A Line-Scan Hyperspectral Camera For Single-Channel Ifld-Based Solar Induced Fluorescence Retrieval And Early Nitrogen Stress Detection In Cotton, Angelin Regina Maria Villanueva Favorito

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Nitrogen (N) deficiency is a significant contributor to crop stress and yield loss in cotton, yet early detection remains challenging because conventional vegetation indices such as NDVI only resolve physiological changes after prolonged stress has produced outward structural symptoms. Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), estimated via the improved Fraunhofer Line Depth (iFLD) method, offers a functional indicator of photosynthetic activity that responds to stress before structural changes emerge. This thesis presents two studies investigating the use of a single-channel line-scan hyperspectral camera for proximal SIF retrieval and its application to early N-stress detection in cotton. Study I demonstrated that an in-scene …

Artificial Intelligence In Pharmaceutical Care: Transforming Drug Discovery, Development, And Patient-Care Delivery, Abdulrahman G. Alharbi, Abdulrahman A. Aljabri

Saudi Medical Journal

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into pharmaceutical care represents a paradigm shift in healthcare delivery, offering unprecedented opportunities to revolutionize medication management, accelerate drug development, and enhance patient outcomes. This comprehensive review synthesized evidence from global literature (2021–2025) examining AI applications across drug discovery and development, clinical trials optimization, medication therapy management, and pharmacy operations. The AI demonstrated prediction accuracies of 86–98% in drug discovery, 80% improvement in clinical trial recruitment efficiency, and 32.7% increase in medication adherence over standard care. The global AI drug discovery market, valued at \$1.5 billion (2023), is projected to reach \$11.8 billion by …

Generating Synthetic User Populations Via World Simulation For Privacy-Safe Ai Evaluation, Amey Venkatanarayan, Yen-Ting Liu, Kamakshi Kodur, Paddy Flynn, Yue Hu, Jose Jimenez-Olivas, Zhewen Song

Defensive Publications Series

Evaluating personalized artificial intelligence (AI) systems may be challenging, as the use of detailed user context can conflict with user privacy considerations. A system is described for generating synthetic user populations via a world simulation. The system can create generative agents with demographic and behavioral characteristics based on aggregated, anonymized statistical data. These agents can interact over time within a simulated environment, producing a stream of longitudinal user behavior captured in isolated test accounts. The resulting dataset can be used for scalable, automated testing and debugging of AI models, offering a contextually rich, privacy-respecting alternative to using real user data. …

Agent-Aware Mesh Network For Hybrid Ai Policy Enforcement, Antonio Ojea

Defensive Publications Series

Organizations in regulated sectors may face challenges using large-scale, cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) services because of data sovereignty and compliance mandates. A system may provide a decentralized, agent-aware mesh network that functions as an infrastructure layer to bridge on-premise environments and external AI services. This network can intercept and semantically understand complex agent communications, allowing an active enforcement layer to perform actions such as sanitizing data, pausing high-risk operations for human review, and maintaining a sovereign audit log. This approach can allow organizations to leverage advanced AI reasoning capabilities from external providers while assisting in the maintenance of local control …