Digital Commons Network^™

System And Techniques To Facilitate Probabilistic Attribute-Based Security Policy Conversions, Renato Morais

Defensive Publications Series

Proposed herein is an artificial intelligence (AI) for information technology operations (AIOps)-driven engine and system that provides for the ability to automate the transition from legacy Internet Protocol (IP)-based rules to identity-centric, zero trust policies. In this context, Security Group Tags (SGTs) are used as an illustrative example of such attribute-based policies. The system correlates identity metadata with real-time traffic telemetry and applies a Stability Index (SI) to evaluate whether a legacy rule can be converted to an attribute-based policy with reduced risk of service disruption. The SI considers identity consistency, temporal persistence, and traffic coverage so that conversion recommendations …

Explainable Machine Learning Revealing The Impact Of Mental And Physical Health On Arthritis, Ma Shams, S Fatema, Dmh Islam, A Datta, David Eisenberg, Dt Mridula, J Mawa, A Sultana, N Ahmed, M Islam, Ts Pias

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Objectives To develop a robust and interpretable machine learning framework for arthritis risk prediction and to identify important risk factors associated with the disease.Methods This study used four datasets, which are Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) 2019, BRFSS 2021, National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) 2020 and NHIS 2022. We evaluated 11 machine learning and deep learning architectures including a custom stacked ensemble combined with five resampling techniques to address class imbalance and 9 imputation methods to handle missing data. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), sensitivity, specificity and balanced accuracy are used to evaluate model performance, with …

Gust-Induced Aerodynamic Performance In Insects' Forward Flapping Flight, Arash Farsani, Ori Stearns, Gal Ribak, Roi Gurka

Physics and Engineering Science

Flapping-wing flight is inherently unsteady, where atmospheric gusts can substantially degrade the aerodynamic performance when their characteristic time scales are comparable to the wingbeat period. This study presents a numerical investigation and time–frequency characterization of gust-induced aerodynamic response of flapping wings of varying size, inspired by the flight of a longhorn beetle, Batocera rufomaculata. Geometrically similar wings spanning the biological range were simulated in forward flight under identical prescribed kinematics and a transient frontal gust with a smoothly ramped profile. Three-dimensional unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulations using the shear stress transport k–ω turbulence model were performed to resolve the instantaneous pressure …

Sand Could Be Key To Safer, Stronger Structures, Clara Turnage

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – Engineers have been working to protect buildings, bridges and other structures from severe weather and natural hazards damage for centuries, but one of the best methods may begin with sand, according to a new published study.

Unbiased Avidity-Based Isolation Of Antigen-Specific T Cells, Amanda Montoya, Meredith L Frank, Peixin Jiang, Hui Nie, Minying Zhang, Emily Bontekoe, Jared K Slone, Ludovica L Posta, Sofia Rosy Caterina Sorice, Tina Cascone, Maura Gillison, Don L Gibbons, Jianjun Zhang, Eleonora Dondossola, Lydia Kavraki, Pamela L Wenzel, John V Heymach, Alexandre Reuben

The Brown Foundation: Institute of Molecular Medicine

Background: Cancer immunotherapies have significantly improved treatment efficacy and patient survival by exploiting antigen-specific T cells to eliminate cancer cells. However, current approaches for identifying and isolating antigen-specific T cells typically require prior knowledge of target antigens, limiting discovery, and reducing the ability to consistently detect rare tumor-reactive T cells. We therefore sought to develop an unbiased platform for the identification and enrichment of antigen-specific T cells using naturally processed and presented tumor antigens.

Methods: We developed ATTACH (Assessment of T cells Tethered to Antigen Class I Histocompatibility), a microfluidic platform that applies controlled shear stress and leverages tumor cells …

Upar-Guided Dendrimer Gel Nanoparticles Reprogram Inflammation To Stabilize Atherosclerotic Plaques, Hsin Yin Chuang, Huari Kou, Yue-Wern Huang, Hu Yang

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Atherosclerosis is characterized by lipid deposition, chronic inflammation, and apoptosis within the arterial wall, leading to plaque progression and instability. Current lipid-lowering therapies fail to fully address residual cardiovascular risk driven by local inflammation and cell death. Here, we report the development of uPA-functionalized, rapamycin-encapsulated dendrimer nanoparticles (G5PM-uPA/RA) that preferentially accumulate in urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR)-enriched atherosclerotic plaque, including macrophage- and apoptosis-rich lesion microenvironments. G5PM-uPA/RA was constructed by cross-linking reaction-enabled flash nanoprecipitation in a custom-made multi-inlet vortex mixer, followed by thiol-maleimide conjugation of uPA for uPAR-guided targeting. The nanoparticles demonstrated uniform morphology, favorable stability, and efficient rapamycin loading. In …

Defining Life: A Conversation, K. Kofman, C. Adami, F. Baluška, J. Bongard, D. Brash, P. Calvo, G. Dodig-Crnkovic, P. Das, C. Fields, T. Froese, P. L. Gentili, G. Y. Georgiev, Scott F. Gilbert, T. N. W. Jackson, S. Kauffman, N. Lane, P. Marshall, D. Mcshea, W. Miller, S. Newman, A. Nunn, T. P. Pavlic, M. Picard, W. Ratcliff, A. Reber, J. Shapiro, A. Sloman, R. Solé, C. Sonnenschein, S. Stepney, R. Watson, O. Witkowski, M. Levin

Biology Faculty Works

Life is one of the most fascinating features of the physical world. Despite centuries of scientific study, experts still disagree about the definition, and even the possibility or utility of a definition, of this field. In a recent paper, we used AI to analyze the conceptual space formed by definitions of life given by a select set of modern workers in the life sciences and related fields. However, some of the most interesting material emerged as real-time conversations among those polled. In order to ensure that these ideas are not lost to the peer-reviewed scientific record, we here provide a …

Synthesis, Characterization, And In Vitro And In Silico Antibacterial Evaluation Of 5-(3-Nitrophenyl)-1, 3, 4-Thiadiazol-2-Amine, Abdelghani Sehmi, Farouk Boudou, Ahcene Keziz, Amal Belakredar, Huda Alsaeedi, Mikhael Bechelany, Gemma K. Kinsella, Ahmed Barhoum

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Introduction – This study reports the synthesis, structural characterization, and antibacterial evaluation of 5-(3-nitrophenyl)-1, 3, 4-thiadiazol-2-amine (NPTA), a commercially available thiadiazole derivative with potential antimicrobial activity. Methods – NPTA was synthesized through a green, one-pot condensation reaction between thiosemicarbazide and 3-nitrobenzoic acid in absolute ethanol, affording a pale-yellow crystalline solid with a melting point of 110 °C–112 °C. The compound was characterized using Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, confirming its structure. In vitro antibacterial assays, in silico ADMET and toxicity profiling, molecular docking, frontier molecular orbital (FMO) analysis, and 200 ns molecular dynamics simulations were performed. …

Um–Protoshare: Unet-Guided, Multi-Scale Shared Prototypes For Interpretable Brain Tumour Classification Using Multi-Sequence 3d Mri, Ali Golbaf, Vivek Singh, Swen Gaudl, Emmanuel Ifeachor

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Deep learning shows strong promise in brain tumour classification using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), although limited interpretability constrains clinical translation. Most interpretability methods are post-hoc and yield visual attribution maps that are only weakly connected to the decision process. Clinicians prefer decisions built from evidence they can recognise and verify on MRI, rather than post-hoc explanations. Case-based models embed reasoning by comparing image evidence with learned prototypes, yielding “this looks like that” rationales at decision time and mirroring clinical reasoning. Building on this paradigm, we introduce UM–ProtoShare, which compares the input multi-sequence 3D brain MRI with a bank of shared, …

Comparative Lca Of Germanium Production From Coal Fly Ash Using Chlorinated Distillation And Solvent Extraction, Dennis Dadzie, Kwame Awuah-Offei, Michael Moats, Nasib Al Habib, Weston Hartzell

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Germanium is increasingly important for high-tech applications, yet its supply chain is vulnerable, with production limited to a few countries. Although prior research has explored alternative techniques for extracting and recovering germanium, the literature lacks comparative life-cycle evidence that quantifies their environmental burdens and translates findings into actionable (policy) recommendations. This paper presents a cradle-to-gate life-cycle assessment that compares the environmental burdens of producing 1 kg of single-crystal germanium from coal fly ash via chlorinated distillation (CD) and solvent extraction (SX). Under the study's assumptions, CD has lower potential impacts in 15 of 19 impact categories, while both routes show …

Towards Resilient Platform Work In The Philippines, Cheryll Ruth Soriano, Jayvy Gamboa, Jan Michael Alexandre Bernadas, China Patricia Villanueva, Marge Medina, Katherine Brimon

SDRC Projects

Platform work is increasingly promoted as a strategy for employment generation in the Philippines. The Philippine Labor Force Survey of 2021 reported that around 1.7 million gig workers are engaged by online platforms or mobile applications, with many depending on it as their primary livelihood. Yet the rapid expansion of platform labor as a livelihood opportunity is unfolding alongside intensifying climate disruption and technological transformation. Extreme heat, flooding, supertyphoons, unstable power infrastructure, and digital dependency are creating new forms of vulnerability for platform workers—many of whom already operate under precarious and weakly protected labor conditions. Due to its archipelagic topography …

Strengthening Your Ai Fluency: Building Community Resilience In An Era Of Climate Change, Suzanne Loui

Generative AI Teaching Activities

Through guided use of two AI platforms, Notebook LM and Gemini, the student will generate, analyze and evaluate ideas for implementing Pre-Disaster Hazard Mitigation and Community Resilience in a location of your choice.

Polydopamine-Cu(Ii) Ions Functional Coatings On Zinc Wire: Surface Characterization And Degradation Behavior, Md Tanvir Hossain, H. R. Bakhsheshi-Rad, Bashir Ahamed, Erico Freitas, Bruce Lee, Jeremy Goldman, Jaroslaw Drelich

Michigan Tech Publications

Bioactive surface modification of degradable zinc (Zn) vascular implants is essential for controlling biodegradation and supporting vascular healing. Here, we describe the fabrication of polydopamine coating (PDA-Cu) containing up to ∼0.8 wt % Cu ions on Zn substrates using an immersion-assisted mussel-inspired polymerization strategy. The coating is composed of densely packed PDA-Cu nanospheres with diameters of ∼130-170 nm, exhibiting an even distribution of Cu ions within the PDA matrix via Cu-catechol coordination. Thirty-day leaching tests confirmed a steady release of 0.01-0.04 ppm of Cu ions per 5 days from Zn/PDA-Cu samples in Hank's balanced salt solution (HBSS). In vitro nitric …

Online Decoding Of Rat Self-Paced Locomotion Speed From Eeg Using Recurrent Neural Networks, Alejandro De Miguel, Nelson Totah, Uri Maoz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Objective. Accurate and reliable neural decoding of locomotion holds promise for advancing clinical applications such as rehabilitation and prosthetic control, as well as for understanding neural correlates of action. Recent studies have demonstrated successful decoding of locomotion kinematics across species in motorized treadmill settings. However, efforts to decode locomotion speed directly and continuously in more natural contexts—where pace is self-selected rather than externally imposed—are scarce, and those that exist generally achieve only modest accuracy and require intracranial implants. Here, we aim to decode self-paced locomotion speed non-invasively and continuously using cortex-wide electroencephalography (EEG) recordings from rats. Approach. We introduce an …

Advances In Gene Editing Strategies For Viral Disease Resistance In Pigs: Knock-Out, Knock-In, And Overexpression Approaches, Zhao Namula, Takeshige Otoi, Aya Nakai, Megumi Nagahara, Maki Hirata, Fuminori Tanihara

The Thai Journal of Veterinary Medicine

Highly contagious viral pathogens—such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, classical swine fever, and African swine fever—continue to pose serious threats to the swine industry and cause major global economic losses. Conventional disease control approaches, such as vaccination and biosecurity, are limited by viral heterogeneity and immune escape mechanisms. Gene editing technologies, most notably the CRISPR/Cas9 system, offer an innovative means of introducing innate viral disease resistance or resilience in pigs. The continuous improvement of these tools can provide a sustainable strategy to enhance animal welfare and global food security and reduce reliance on traditional control measures. This review provides …

1951 Memo Regarding Flood Prevention Efforts Box 42, David Canfield

Rocky Mountain National Park

Memorandum from Park Superintendent regarding the Lily Lake flood, and concern of Estes Park that Lawn Lake could pose a similar risk. Questions of jurisdiction and practical elements of dam construction are discussed in relation to the National Park Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and town of Estes Park. Terms: Rocky Mountain National Park; Flooding; Lily Lake; Fish Creek; South St. Vrain Highway; Baldpate Inn; Estes Park; Lawn Lake; LaNoue; dams; Horseshoe Park; National Park Service; Bureau of Reclamation; Big Thompson Project; state fish hatchery; Olympus Dam; Estes Park Power Plant; J. H. Knight; South Platte River District; State Engineer; Estes …

The Structural Problem With Real-Time Crime Centers, Holly Merclich

Student Journal of Information Privacy Law

Since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has become fixated with public safety, oftentimes at the expense of individual privacy. The surveillance state expanded after this in the early 2000s, and the country’s first Real Time Crime Centers were born. Real Time Crime Centers are hubs where different technologies and information are fused and aggregated into one easy to use space. Data outputs from automated license plate readers, closed circuit television, and various law enforcement databases are aggregated into one single pane of glass view to achieve higher rates of case closures and increase the efficiency of …

Like, Share, & Comply: Recommendation Algorithms & Ftc Enforcement Authority, Alexandra Logan

Student Journal of Information Privacy Law

As recommendation algorithms and generative artificial intelligence become central to digital platforms, the Federal Trade Commission has, in the past, increasingly signaled its intent to regulate emerging technologies under Section 5 authority to prevent unfair or deceptive acts or practices. This paper examines how companies may face Federal Trade Commission scrutiny when algorithmic design, personalization systems, or public representations result in consumer harm. Drawing on case studies involving TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and others, the paper explores the limitations of plaintiff litigation under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and examines this potential avenue of expanding federal administrative enforcement. It …

Rurality And Redistricting: California's Proposition 50, Rural Identity, And Democratic Legitimacy, Lisa R. Pruitt

Maine Law Review

When California voters embraced mid-decade congressional redistricting in 2025, the greatest media attention landed on the state’s First Congressional District, CA-01. It is residents of that district who are likely to feel the consequences of the new maps most profoundly. In the form established by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission in 2021, CA-01 occupied more than 26,000 square miles in the state’s northeastern corner. The district included a number of inland counties stretching from Modoc, tucked into the corner formed by the Oregon and Nevada state lines, to Colusa, in the Great Central Valley. The cluster of ten counties—hereinafter “old …

Context-Aware Personalized Modular User Interfaces Using Artificial Intelligence, Stephanie Brisendine, David Karam, Chorong Johnston, Dj Oh, Tyler Kugler, Tim Raupach, Alok Chandel, Lucas Dupin, Hannah Bowman

Defensive Publications Series

Current computing devices display static home screens. Also, application data is isolated within individual applications. This forces users to access different apps for information, creating a high cognitive load. This disclosure describes techniques that, with user permission, automatically generates and presents an adaptive, contextually appropriate user interface (e.g., home screen interface) on a computing device. The user interface provides seamless, proactive, personal assistance throughout the day and reduces the effort (and time) the user needs to spend to access desired information. With user permission, data from multiple sources is aggregated and an on-device machine-learned model is implemented to identify user …

The Vanishing Customer: A Framework For Analyzing Benefit–Burden Decoupling In Attention-Economy And Ai-Companion Transactions, David Lee Wise, Avan Lee Wise

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes an analytical framework for identifying and evaluating benefit–burden decoupling in digital-service transactions, with particular application to attention-economy platforms and conversational AI-companion systems. The framework treats two observed phenomena — the relocation of the paying party from customer to product (wherein a user's attention, data, or disclosure is monetized while the user is denied the status of a served customer), and the relocation of responsibility from maker to user (wherein a provider retains the financial benefit of a design or deployment decision while attempting, via terms-of-service disclaimers and "sole-risk" framing, to shed the decision's downstream burdens) — as …

Managing A Plurality Of Parallel Batches, Saeed Alrahma, Michael Butler, Matthew Markwell

Defensive Publications Series

Limited accelerator memory on mobile devices may restrict the concurrent execution of parallel large language model workloads. The capacity of the key‑value cache may often constrain the number and length of these tasks. A workload scheduling method is disclosed to manage these memory constraints. When the cache capacity is reached, the state of a specific workload is serialized and moved to an alternative memory location. This process frees cache slots, which allows other parallel tasks to proceed. Once memory is vacated by completed tasks, the serialized state is restored to an accelerator cache for continued processing. This approach enables the …

Automated Cloud Service Optimization Via Simulated Transitions And Feature Parity Analysis, Paras Mamgain, Sridharshini Saravanan, Jaspreet Singh

Defensive Publications Series

Systems and methods can automate the analysis of cloud service consumption to assist with challenges in selecting between a-la-carte and bundled purchasing models, as manual evaluation may be slow and resource-intensive. A computational framework, which can operate on a computing device such as a server or personal computer, may leverage a large language model to ingest and analyze diverse data sources, for example, billing information, system logs, and service documentation. The system can simulate the financial and operational impact of transitioning to a bundled service, using semantic reasoning to assess functional equivalence beyond simple keyword matching. This automated evaluation process …

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 …