Digital Commons Network^™

Government Construction Projects Stumbling In Saudi Arabia Case Study: Municipal Sector Projects, Nawaf Saleh Altayash Eng, Abdurahman Ibrahim Ammar Dr

Emirates Journal for Engineering Research

Governmental construction projects receive a large proportion of the annual Kingdom budgets. The Kingdom’s government has been interested in addressing the problem of stumbling projects by establishing and launching several programs, initiatives, and projects. Despite this interest, the problem of stumbling government projects still exists.

This study aims to reach recommendations that lead to practical solutions to solve the problem of stumbling municipal sector construction projects in the Kingdom, by identifying the reasons for government construction projects stumbling in general and construction municipal sector projects in particular, classifying the reasons for stumbling of municipal sector construction projects, and arranging them …

Spartan Daily, September 17, 2024, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2024

Volume 163, Issue 10

Studying Police Crime, Philip M. Stinson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Invited presentation given at the 2024 NIJ National Research Conference on September 17, 2024 in Pittsburgh, PA. Part of the "Justice Starts with Accountability: NIJ Research on Eradicating Police Crime and Misconduct" panel. Sponsored by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

Place-Based Community Engagement: M Partner Accomplishments In Pontotoc And Ecru, 2020-23, Albert Nylander, Laura Martin

M Partner Publications

A partnership between the cities of Pontotoc and Ecru and the University of Mississippi.

Mechanical Engineering Student Embarks On Polish Immersion, Bridging Heritage And Innovation, University Of Dayton

Blog: The Dayton Engineer

Imagine exploring the heart of Europe where centuries-old history intertwines with cutting-edge future innovation. This was reality for mechanical engineering student Iga Jaromin when embarking on the GE Aerospace Immersion program in Poland.

2024 School Of Engineering Vision Award Winners Recognized, University Of Dayton

Blog: The Dayton Engineer

The University of Dayton School of Engineering Vision Awards recognize the innovation, creativity, entrepreneurial thinking and outstanding performance of our faculty and staff for their work as it relates to our School's values of community, innovation, excellence, and engagement and service. Four Vision Awards are presented annually: Community, Innovation, Scholarship and Engagement and Service.

Lamellipodia-Mediated Osteoblast Haptotaxis Guided By Fibronectin Ligand Concentrations On A Multiplex Chip, Xiaotian Feng, Seoyoung Jeong, Melissa L. Carr, Radhika P. Atit, Samuel E. Senyo

Faculty Scholarship

Skull morphogenesis is a complex, dynamic process involving two different germ layers and progressing to the coordinated, directional growth of individual bones. The mechanisms underlying directional growth toward the apex are not completely understood. Here, a microfluidic chip-based approach is utilized to test whether calvarial osteoblast progenitors undergo haptotaxis on a gradient of Fibronectin1 (FN1) via lamellipodia. Mimicking the embryonic cranial mesenchyme's FN1 pattern, FN1 gradients is established in the chip using computer modeling and fluorescent labeling. Primary mouse calvarial osteoblast progenitors are plated in the chip along an array of segmented gradients of adsorbed FN1. The study performs single-cell …

Effects Of Tourism On Rural Roads & Rural Delivery With Cav, Roger Chen, Cody Tallman, Preston Garcia, Tribikram Rajaure, Panos Prevedouros, Rafaela De Melo Barros

CSET Project Reports

While some congestion is expected at rural attractions such as national parks, theme parks, special sporting events, scenic points and the like, there are locations along the rural highway network that nearby attractions cause substantial congestion and/or unusually elevated traffic safety risk. This paper presents the case of two very popular tourist attractions on the North Shore of the Island of Oahu in the State of Hawaii: Laniakea Beach and Shark’s Cove. These locations are within five miles of each other and are served solely by the 2-lane rural Kamehameha Highway. These two locations have been congestion black spots for …

Drivers Of Coral Reef Benthic Changes And Implications On Ecosystem Functioning And Services, Miriam Reverter

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Increasing anthropogenic stressors will likely result in many coral reefs undergoing compositional and functional benthic changes, including towards non-hard coral dominated communities. The decline of reef building species and the increase of alternative (i.e., non reef-building) organisms profoundly affect the functioning of coral reefs and the services provided, but this remains poorly understood, especially for non-algal alternative communities. Here, we propose a standardised framework to study coral reef benthic changes and review the knowledge on coral reef shifts and their implications on coral reef functioning and service provisioning using this framework, which contains the five following elements: 1) contextual information, …

Worldline Integration Of Photon Amplitudes, N. Ahmadiniaz, V. M. Banda Guzmán, J. P. Edwards, M. A. Lopez-Lopez, C. M. Mata, L. A. Rodriguez Chacón, C. Schubert, R. Shaisultanov

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

It has been known for many years that methods inspired by string theory, such as the worldline formalism, allow one to write down integral representations that combine large numbers of Feynman diagrams of different topologies. However, to make this fact useful for state-of-the-art calculations one has to confront non-standard integration problems where neither the known integration techniques for Feynman diagrams nor algebraic manipulation programs are of much help. Here I will give a progress report on this long-term project focussing on photon amplitudes at one and two loops, in vacuum and in external fields.

Student Senate Meeting Minutes September 17, 2024, Student Senate-Winona State University

Student Senate Meeting Minutes

This document is the official Winona State University Student Senate Minutes for September 17, 2024.

Center For Safety Equity In Transportation (Cset) Baseline Data And Outreach, Nathan Belz, Billy Connor

CSET Project Reports

The research presented herein summarizes the research and education efforts conducted at the University of Alaska Fairbanks as part of the Outreach, Synthesis, and Baseline Data efforts promoted by the Center for Safety Equity in its first year of operation. These key areas were to effectively engage relevant parties needed for larger research efforts, better evaluate what work has been done and how effective existing programs are and establish a baseline using existing and relevant data to inform and evaluate CSET safety efforts and identify commonalities and differences in RITI safety needs across the consortium states. Dozens of outreach events …

Mechanical Properties And Thermal Decomposition Mechanism Of Glycidyl Azide Polyol Energetic Thermoplastic Elastomer Binder With Rdx Composite, Quili Sun, Xiao-Mei Yang, Guang-Zhong Yin

Artículos científicos

To improve the reinforcement effect between a binder and high solid filler in a propellant formula, grafting the bonding group into the binder to form a neutral polymeric is a practically novel approach to improving the interface properties of the propellant. In this work, a glycidyl azide polyol energetic thermoplastic elastomer binder with a –CN bonding group (GAP–ETPE) was synthesized, and the mechanical and thermal decomposition mechanism of GAP–ETPE with Hexogeon (RDX) model propellants were studied. The stress–strain results indicated that the tensile strength and strain of GAP–ETPE/RDX model propellants were 6.43 MPa and 32.1%, respectively. DMA data showed that …

Footprint Tools Tiptoeing Towards Nitrogen Sustainability, James N. Galloway, Elizabeth A. Castner, Elizabeth S M Dukes, Jessica Fox, Allison M. Leach

Faculty Publications

As we face multiple environmental crises (e.g. climate change, nutrient pollution, freshwater scarcity), there is often a disconnect between an entity’s activities and the pollution resulting from that activity. Footprint tools help address this disconnect. They are effective in educating people, institutions and communities on how their resource use results in environmental pollution and what we can do to moderate that pollution. These tools connect an entity’s activities with the associated pollution. Footprint tools are also constantly evolving. As we better understand how to best estimate emissions—especially from sources further removed like those from the supply chain—the guidance and methods …

Footprint Tools Tiptoeing Towards Nitrogen Sustainability, James N. Galloway, Elizabeth A. Castner, Elizabeth S M Dukes, Jessica Fox, Allison M. Leach

Faculty Publications

As we face multiple environmental crises (e.g. climate change, nutrient pollution, freshwater scarcity), there is often a disconnect between an entity’s activities and the pollution resulting from that activity. Footprint tools help address this disconnect. They are effective in educating people, institutions and communities on how their resource use results in environmental pollution and what we can do to moderate that pollution. These tools connect an entity’s activities with the associated pollution. Footprint tools are also constantly evolving. As we better understand how to best estimate emissions—especially from sources further removed like those from the supply chain—the guidance and methods …

Employee Retention Plan For A Maryland Nonprofit Organization, Frant Kembou

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) face many challenges impacting their program implementation and mission accomplishment. CTL is a NPO operating in Maryland. Like many other NPOs, CTL faces an employee retention problem that affects its ability to complete its social activities and benefit the communities it serves. The practice-focused research question of this study was focused on developing strategies and methods to improve employee retention at CTL. This professional administrative study involved exploring strategies and methods to improve employee retention at CTL using a general qualitative method. Herzberg’s two-factor theory was the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected using semi-structured …

Development Of Message Passing-Based Graph Convolutional Networks For Classifying Cancer Pathology Reports, Hong Jun Yoon, Hilda B. Klasky, Andrew E Blanchard, J. Blair Christian, Eric B Durbin, Xiao Cheng Wu, Antoinette Stroup, Jennifer Doherty, Linda Coyle, Lynne Penberthy, Georgia D Tourassi

School of Public Health Faculty Publications

Background: Applying graph convolutional networks (GCN) to the classification of free-form natural language texts leveraged by graph-of-words features (TextGCN) was studied and confirmed to be an effective means of describing complex natural language texts. However, the text classification models based on the TextGCN possess weaknesses in terms of memory consumption and model dissemination and distribution. In this paper, we present a fast message passing network (FastMPN), implementing a GCN with message passing architecture that provides versatility and flexibility by allowing trainable node embedding and edge weights, helping the GCN model find the better solution. We applied the FastMPN model to …

What About Us? A Quantitative Analysis Of Microaggressions In Community Colleges, Marcelo Angulo

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Microaggressions have been studied in higher-education institutions, professional work environments, and ordinary life. However, most research studies on microaggressions in higher education focus on the experiences of college students at four-year institutions, exposing a gap in the literature on microaggressions in two-year community colleges. Research has shown that community college students’ collegiate experiences differ from those of students at more “traditional” college settings, based on factors such as cost of attendance, flexibility, and campus life. The increasing diversity of student demographics in community colleges suggests a greater likelihood for microaggressions to arise within these institutions. Thus, a quantitative approach was …

Strategies To Lower Employee Turnover In The Retail Industry, Mark Alexander Coombs

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Employee turnover poses significant challenges for small retail business owners, impacting operational efficiency, customer service quality, and financial stability. Grounded in Herzberg’s two-factor theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies small business owners in the retail industry used to reduce and sustain lower employee turnover in the South-Central region of the United States. Six small business owners from the retail sector participated in the study. Data were collected through audio-recorded interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. Six key themes emerged: honesty and clear expectations, open-door policy, respect and recognition, employee empowerment, competitive compensation, and …

Understanding The Factors Influencing Marketing Bi System Adoption In Us Smes, Daniel L. Giovannucci

JWU Dissertations & Theses

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the United States face challenges in adopting Business Intelligence (BI) systems, which are crucial for optimizing the competitiveness of digital marketing strategies. This study examines the adoption of BI systems among digital marketing teams in US SMEs through the lens of the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) and Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) frameworks. The primary research question guiding the study is: What factors influence BI adoption among digital marketing teams in United States SMEs?

Guided by constructs formulated through past research and the DOI and TOE frameworks, this study applied a quantitative research method involving an online …

Elements, Andres L. Sanchez

Theses and Dissertations

Elements is a dissertation that presents my work as an out-of-the-Academy conceptual writer that loves teaching even though I won’t ever teach again. The dissertation includes a critical introduction, “Do You Actually Want to See This?” that seeks to examine conceptual poetry in the light of Sianne Ngai’s stuplimity and Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht’s performance theories so that we may rethink conceptual poetry’s effect on the audience when it is performed. The creative manuscript, “Elements,” is the result of a process stolen from Raymond Queneau to be used on David Hilbert’s The Foundations of Geometry but is instead redirected …

Body, Ritual, And Place: Advancing Their Chronotopic Interrelationship In Design Praxis And Pedagogy Through An Exploration Of Juxtaposed Surfaces, Threshold Sites Of Dialogic Encounter, And Collage, Robert Brown, Zoe Latham

School of Art, Design and Architecture

Echoing philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope, an ‘intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships,’ our work explores the interrelation of the body, ritual, and place as a chrontopic site of design and pedagogy. This exploration reaffirms architecture’s grounding in people, their inhabitation of place, and spatial form, an interrelatedness too often underexamined withinarchitectural education. First positioning ritual thematically, our discussion addresses three interrelated issues: the role of juxtaposed ritual surfaces in activating the body, ritual and place; the potential of ritual surfaces as threshold sites of dialogic encounter; and collage as a medium to investigate and communicate the interrelationship of body, …

Design Considerations For Self-Management Technologies For People Living With Dementia And Informal Carers – Perspectives Of Healthcare Professionals And Charity Workers, Dympna O'Sullivan

Conference papers

Dementia is a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to decline in memory, language, reasoning, and the ability to perform daily activities. It is linked to poorer quality of life for the person with dementia and their informal (unpaid) carers. While early intervention and access to adequate care are critical in slowing dementia's progression and better managing associated symptoms, dementia is frequently only diagnosed at an advanced stage and care is often fragmented. To better understand how to meet the complex needs of persons living with dementia and their informal carers, 10 healthcare professionals and 10 charity workers from relevant community and …

Design Considerations For Self-Management Technologies For People Living With Dementia And Informal Carers - Perspectives Of Healthcare Professionals And Charity Workers, Dympna O'Sullivan, Julie Doyle, Orla Moran, Michael Wilson, Siobhan Oneill, Jonathan Turner, Suzanne Smith

Conference papers

Dementia is a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to decline in memory, language, reasoning, and the ability to perform daily activities. It is linked to poorer quality of life for the person with dementia and their informal (unpaid) carers. While early intervention and access to adequate care are critical in slowing dementia's progression and better managing associated symptoms, dementia is frequently only diagnosed at an advanced stage and care is often fragmented. To better understand how to meet the complex needs of persons living with dementia and their informal carers, 10 healthcare professionals and 10 charity workers from relevant community and …

Dual-Peptide Functionalized Hydrogel For Enhancing Biosynthesis And Immunomodulation In Primary And Stem Cells For Therapeutic Applications, Xiaohong Tan

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration significantly contributes to disability and the economic burden of musculoskeletal diseases. Early changes in IVD degeneration include reduced cellularity and altered phenotype in nucleus pulposus (NP) cells, leading to diminished capacity for extracellular matrix (ECM) and glycosaminoglycan production. Cell supplementation, particularly with bone marrow-derived human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), has been explored to promote ECM synthesis and repair. MSCs offer potential for either direct cell replacement or by secreting factors to support disc repair by restoring biosynthetic activity of remaining endogenous NP cells and ameliorating inflammation. Biomaterials have been extensively studied to preserve and restore the …

Dual-Peptide Functionalized Hydrogel For Enhancing Biosynthesis And Immunomodulation In Primary And Stem Cells For Therapeutic Applications, Xiaohong Tan

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration significantly contributes to disability and the economic burden of musculoskeletal diseases. Early changes in IVD degeneration include reduced cellularity and altered phenotype in nucleus pulposus (NP) cells, leading to diminished capacity for extracellular matrix (ECM) and glycosaminoglycan production. Cell supplementation, particularly with bone marrow-derived human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), has been explored to promote ECM synthesis and repair. MSCs offer potential for either direct cell replacement or by secreting factors to support disc repair by restoring biosynthetic activity of remaining endogenous NP cells and ameliorating inflammation. Biomaterials have been extensively studied to preserve and restore the …

University Libraries Fall 2024 Newsletter, Missouri University Of Science And Technology

University Libraries Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Host-Derived Ceacam-Laden Vesicles Engage Enterotoxigenic Escherichia Coli For Elimination And Toxin Neutralization, Alaullah Sheikh, Debayan Ganguli, Tim J Vickers, Marjahan Akhtar, Nazia Khatoon, Bipul Setu, Supratim Basu, Wandy L Beatty, James M Fleckenstein, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Enterotoxigenic

Adamts12 Promotes Fibrosis By Restructuring Extracellular Matrix To Enable Activation Of Injury-Responsive Fibroblasts, Konrad Hoeft, Benjamin D. Humphreys, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Fibrosis represents the uncontrolled replacement of parenchymal tissue with extracellular matrix (ECM) produced by myofibroblasts. While genetic fate-tracing and single-cell RNA-Seq technologies have helped elucidate fibroblast heterogeneity and ontogeny beyond fibroblast to myofibroblast differentiation, newly identified fibroblast populations remain ill defined, with respect to both the molecular cues driving their differentiation and their subsequent role in fibrosis. Using an unbiased approach, we identified the metalloprotease ADAMTS12 as a fibroblast-specific gene that is strongly upregulated during active fibrogenesis in humans and mice. Functional in vivo KO studies in mice confirmed that Adamts12 was critical during fibrogenesis in both heart and kidney. …

Loss Of P53 And Smad4 Induces Adenosquamous Subtype Pancreatic Cancer In The Absence Of An Oncogenic Kras Mutation, Daowei Yang, Xinlei Sun, Rohan Moniruzzaman, Hua Wang, Citu Citu, Ignacio I Wistuba, Anirban Maitra, Yang Chen

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Pancreatic cancer is associated with an oncogenic KRAS mutation in approximately 90% of cases. However, a non-negligible proportion of pancreatic cancer cases harbor wild-type KRAS (KRAS-WT). This study establishes genetically engineered mouse models that develop spontaneous pancreatic cancer in the context of KRAS-WT. The Trp53