Digital Commons Network^™

Du Undergraduate Showcase Abstracts: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, Kabe Aberle, Nadia Kako, Kateri Mcrae, Brooke Agulnek, Sky Palmon, Yasmine Ramirez, Francisca Aguirre Beltran, Ashley Juarez, Bridget Kim, Tessa Appel, Sterling Kerr, Spencer Ingley, Gabe Meyer, Robin Tinghitella, Dale Broder, Lily Baeza, Chloe Beers, Julia Coakley, Whitney Kelsey, Sydney Gainforth, Gabi Wing, Audrey Martin, Aaliyah Amore Berry, Brooke Watley, Kiruthika Venkatesan, Rachel Bienstock, Annabella Brotherston, Madison Bryant, Mia Burgener, Emma P. Lieb, Rachel A. Johnson, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Kania Campbell, Kiena Campbell, Courtney Cassidy, Sage Krzyzkowski, Maddox Jones, Skylar Abookire, Luke Hawkins, Sunnah Yoon, Andrea Chu, Yan Qin, Nyah Cubbison, Brian Gearity, Daniel Mcintosh, Mariely Cruz, Edward Garrido, Grady Dionne, Nicole Doris, Lyndsie Salvagio, Ann-Charlotte Granholm-Bentley, Anna Dymov, Hannah Eckert, Gabrielle Welsh, Erica Larson, Charlie Ernst, Anna Zhou, Sarah Watamura, Larissa Fedorovich-Klein, Georgie Fields, Kimberly A. Guevara, Aven Mccall, Ben Peltier, Feruz Yahia, Patrick Flores, Jadyn Floyd, Sophia Forcier, J. Von R. Monteza, Peter Sokol-Hessner, Gwendolyn Geiger, Scott Nichols, Camryn Gunter, Kendal Hengst, Charlie Bednarz, Issy Garside, Addison Baker, Rachel Mina, Brooke Hermanson, Amanda Klingler, William Highfill, Sydney Jaques, Kerstin Lewey, Allison Grossery, Daniel Linseman, Ethan Lim, Jagger Livengood, Owen Mantelli, Gabby Pappas, Abby Mcdonald, Madeleine Dierking, Eve Miller, Emma Loeber, Anna Marlow, Michael Kerwin, Ella Mathews, Hillary Hamann, Khadija Mohamed, Vivian Nguyen, Gabri Notov, Ifunayachi Ogbonna-Ukuku, Sunil Kumar, Charles Baysah, Sarah Olson, Don Sullivan, Anna Paradiso, Jay Parrish, Mira Pronobis, Alisha Pravasi, Kerstin Haring, Diego Ramirez, Christopher Reardon, Juliana Ramirez, Casey Doherty, Ella Kestner, Teagan Weindel, Cate Billings, Pablo Torre-Walter, Lucy Rand, Samantha Reynolds, Mark Siemens, Khadeeja Rashid, Laine Satterlee, Piper Heilbronner, Lily Pound, Ben Whitehurst, Anna Respet, Lizzie Lesoing, Sydney Hertel, Aya Saad-Masri, Brooke Ballenger, Max Proske, Hannah Rosenberg, Ellia Nakahara, Sophia Espinoza, Ivan Woolhouse, Simon Ruland, Gorkem Er, Timothy Sweeny, Melaku Saketa, Michela Schenk, Maren Lynch, Madi Hamm, Grace Schroeder, Michelle Rozenman, Rana Seif, Jackson Hall, Marisela Simental, Daniel Paredes, Aaron Mena, Preston Spaan, Evelyn Stovin, David Andrew Swartz, Anh Tran, Daniel Pittman, Luke Farchione, Emily Boyer, Ukari Verner, Lacey Conrad, Jonathan Velotta, James Weiner, Jagger Gossett, Noah Sherry, Sam Proud, Ben Block, Avi Narayana, Zoey Weiss, Alyssa Wilson, Gabrielle Walsh, David Zonana, Keely Wright, Kena Riveria, Lillybelle Deer, Jena Doom, Elysia Davis, Isabelle Yaremenko, Caitlyn Young

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

Abstracts from the DU Undergraduate Research Showcase.

Louis Pasteur: The Man Who Said, "Science Brings Men Closer To God", Alan L. Gillen, Adam Russell

Faculty Publications and Presentations

July 6, 2025, marks the 140-year anniversary of the first successful treatment of the rabies virus, discovered by Louis Pasteur. Louis Pasteur’s contributions and reputation are ever prevalent today, with “pasteurized” products being the signature of his legacy in microbiology. Through the creation of the “pasteurization” process (the gentle heating of food and drink products to eliminate pathogens), Louis Pasteur eloquently stated his motive for scientific discovery: “Man’s first look at the universe discovers only variety, diversity, multiplicity of phenomena. Let this gaze be enlightened by science . . . and simplicity and unity shine everywhere.” Ultimately, Pasteur’s work sought …

Cheating With The Fifth Amendment: Weaponizing The Fifth Amendment Privilege To Undermine Equitable Dissolution Of Marriages, Elizabeth I. Boals

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Despite widespread adoption of no-fault divorce, many U.S. states still consider adultery in the allocation of alimony and property. In sixteen of those states, adultery remains a criminal offense—enabling spouses accused of infidelity to invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination during divorce proceedings. This Article explores how such invocations obstruct discovery, delay litigation, and create strategic advantages for wealthier or culpable spouses, especially in fault-based or hybrid divorce regimes. After surveying the historical development of divorce law and the expansion of Fifth Amendment protections into civil contexts, the Article critiques current remedies—adverse inferences, implied waivers, and immunity—as ineffective or …

Psychopharmacological Therapy Positively Modulates Disease Activity In Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Systematic Review, Federica Di Vincenzo, Antonio Maria D'Onofrio, Angelo Del Gaudio, Elena Chiera, Gaspare Filippo Ferrajoli, Francesco Pesaresi, Alessio Simonetti, Marianna Mazza, Georgios Demetrios Kotzalidis, Mauro Pettorruso, Giovanni Martinotti, Loris Riccardo Lopetuso, Antonio Gasbarrini, Gabriele Sani, Gionata Fiorino, Franco Scaldaferri, Giovanni Camardese

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Depression, anxiety, and perceived stress are common comorbidities in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and may negatively influence the disease course. Likewise, severe IBD may contribute to the development or worsening of psychiatric symptoms. Despite the established relevance of the gut-brain axis and frequent use of psychotropic medications in IBD patients, limited evidence exists regarding the effects of psychiatric treatments on gastrointestinal disease activity. Therefore, the aim of this systematic review is to evaluate the effectiveness of psychiatric therapies on gastrointestinal symptoms and disease activity in patients with IBD. The work was conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. Searches …

Small Policy Changes Can Accelerate The Adoption Of Improved On-Farm Storage Among Smallholder Farmers, Michael Brander, Zewdu Abro, Menale Kassie, Wolfgang Mittmann, Lukas Stiefel, Matthias Huss

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Reducing food losses is a significant and often overlooked opportunity to bolster global food security and enhancing the resilience and sustainability of global food systems. Food losses are highest in low-income countries where millions of smallholder farming households remain particularly vulnerable. As yet, smallholders’ adoption of loss-minimizing storage technologies, such as hermetic storage bags, remains low. Here, we study the effects of two types of policy options on the adoption of improved on-farm storage in the case of Ethiopia. Using a randomized controlled trial, we show that a small partial subsidy, which mirrors the current fiscal burden on these technologies, …

Community Health Workers: Key To Decreasing Food Insecurity In Pregnant Individuals, Linda Waggener Dnp

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Projects

Objectives: Food insecurity (FI) in pregnant individuals (PI)s is a global threat to birthing individuals and fetuses with potential immediate and intergenerational impacts on family and community. Community Health Workers (CHWs) facilitate support including food resources for FIPIs. The Family Fresh Rx (FFRx) program, within Food as Medicine (FaM) model provides fresh fruits and vegetables, optimize nutrition, and mitigates threats to health. This Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Quality Improvement (QI) project’s two objectives were CHWs’ FFRx program and referral process satisfaction evaluation through a pre, post, and four-week post refresher presentation (RP) modified System Usability Scale (mSUS) …

Educating Healthcare Providers To Prevent And Mitigate The Effects Of Zoom Fatigue, Andrea Lima

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Projects

Zoom Fatigue (ZF), or physical and neuropsychological responses to excessive videoconferencing (VC), increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like burnout, ZF can compromise patient safety by causing decreased job satisfaction, social isolation, disrupted focus, and difficulty empathizing with patients. This Plan-Do-Study-Act quality improvement project aimed to assess feelings about VC, raise awareness of the adverse effects of overuse, and empower primary care providers (PCPs) to improve their work experiences. A group of on-site PCPs at a tertiary care medical center in the Southwest, who continued holding exclusive virtual team meetings after the pandemic, was asked to complete the 15-question Zoom Exhaustion …

Speak Now With The Courage To Confront: An Educational Intervention To Address Bullying, Dominique Desiree Gomez

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Projects

Abstract

Background: Nurse-to-nurse bullying is a critical issue within the nursing profession, impacting close to half of all nurses. This phenomenon, articulated by the phrase "nurses eat their young," detrimentally influences employee retention, job satisfaction, morale, and ultimately, patient care. Furthermore, nurse-to-nurse bullying significantly affects the well-being of nursing professionals, particularly targeting novice nurses. This targeting raises substantial concerns regarding their retention, as many consider leaving the profession within their initial years of practice due to experiences of bullying. The educational intervention project titled “Speak Now with the Courage to Confront” is designed to mitigate bullying among novice nurses through …

Doubly Erased: Lgbtq Literature In Appalachia By Allison Carey, Lis Regula

Critical Humanities

A book review of Allison Carey's Doubly Erased: LGBTQ Literature in Appalachia

Directional Poetics: An Interview With Ed Simon On Pittsburgh, Appalachia, And The Memories Of Geography, Ed Simon, Scott C. Mcdaniel

Critical Humanities

An Interview with Ed Simon

Where The Fog Hangs: An Interview With Elaine Sheldon Mcmillion On Appalachia, Filmmaking, And The Power Of Small Acts, Elaine Mcmillion Sheldon, Scott C. Mcdaniel

Critical Humanities

An Interview with Elaine Sheldon McMillion

Appalachian Archipelagos: "Writing From Measureless Location” In C.S. Giscombe’S Geopoetics, Jay Butler

Critical Humanities

This essay begins with a speculative gesture: what if we read Appalachia not as a bounded, landlocked region, but as an archipelago—where coherence lies not in contiguity, but in multiplicity and geopoetic drift? Drawing on the poetry of C.S. Giscombe, which spans the Caribbean to Appalachia and unsettles geographic conventions by inhabiting “measureless location” – not as a metaphor but as a method, materially grounded yet elusively meaningful – and guided by R.A. Judy’s Sentient Flesh and its theory and practice of para-semiosis and poiesis-in-black, this essay follows Giscombe’s pragmatic and prismatic geopoetics as it upends dominant frameworks of …

Planetary Thinking: Hellbenders As Emissaries Of Appalachia, Tierra R. Curry

Critical Humanities

Hellbenders are prehistoric salamanders that have thrived in cold rivers since before the continents divided. Once found throughout Appalachian watersheds, due to exploitation and habitat degradation only a few dozen healthy populations survive. Monstrous yet fascinating, hellbenders were often reviled historically, but in recent decades they have gained iconic status and are now celebrated as charismatic indicators for clean rivers. Hellbenders are symbols of the wild because of their ancient history, elusive nature, and contribution to ecosystem resilience. The same forces that drove the decline of these amphibian sentinels have sacrificed public health in Appalachia. Their demise echoes the struggle …

“Here’S To The Long Haul: Dark Green Religion And Planetary Thinking In Appalachian Environmental Movements”, Joseph Witt

Critical Humanities

Environmental humanities scholars have worked to develop alternative frameworks for understanding and relating to Earth’s systems in the hope of reforming the exploitative and extractive practices and attitudes characteristic of the Anthropocene. For example, Dipesh Chakrabarty argued that addressing climate change necessitated appreciating the entanglements between global (human) and planetary (Earth systems) scales. While Chakrabarty noted that ancient and Indigenous cultures may have retained approaches necessary for this work, he was skeptical of the ability of modern secular intellectual traditions focused on global justice perspectives to ultimately facilitate a planetary non-anthropocentric ethic. However, by only briefly engaging with themes of …

Planetary/Peripheral Appalachia, Matthew Halm

Critical Humanities

One of the characters in William Gibson’s science fiction novel The Peripheral describes the timeline-manipulating technology around which the story turns as a way of “third-worlding” the past. By sending information back and forth across time, the users of the technology, in our future, outsource work to inhabitants of their past (our near-present). An entire world becomes the “third world” for another world, home to cheap labor and expendable resources. The characters this happens to in the novel live in Appalachia, a choice that works in part to ground the otherwise cosmic scale of timeline manipulation and global catastrophe while …

Planetary [] Appalachia: Editor’S Introduction, Scott C. Mcdaniel

Critical Humanities

Editor's Introduction to Volume 4 Issue 1

The Tax Adviser, Volume 12, Number 4, April 1981, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

New Tax Cost Of Excessive Compensation, James E. Cheeks

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Tax Contingency Audit Workpapers: Current Developments, Observations, And Proposals, William T. Diss, Robert E. Hanson

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Taxation Of Group-Term Life Insurance: Sec. 79 History, Denise Lamaute

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Testing For Exchange Rate Bubbles For The Indian Rupee Versus Major World Currencies: An Empirical Examination Over The Long Run, Adrian M. Austin, Swarna Dyuti Dutt, Dipak Ghosh

Pennsylvania Economic Review

Identifying and dating financial bubbles in real time is at the forefront of current empirical research. The ability to recognize these events in real time can provide very useful alerts to central bankers and fiscal regulators. The complexity, however, of their nonlinear structure and the inherent sudden break mechanisms make econometric testing challenging. Recent econometric advances propose a recursive flexible window methodology that can detect single and multiple financial bubbles. It successfully, ex-ante, identifies the well-known historical episodes of exuberance and collapse and can differentiate between periodically collapsing bubbles and strong financial growth. One sizeable strand of the current research …

The Creation And Evaluation Of An Engineering Student Leadership Academy, Jean Mclaughlin, Thuy Vu, Seokmin Kang

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

This article describes the creation and evaluation designed to support student success through their inclusion in a variety of professional and technical training programs. The opportunity to develop a leadership academy specifically for engineering students allowed faculty program coordinators to deliver content that was normally not available to students at this Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). We implemented and evaluated the leadership academy using a mixed-methods approach involving multimedia interviews and two traditional survey data collection techniques. Traditional online surveys gave quick feedback to coordinators on what the students found valuable, with the biggest change in programming being the spreading out of …

Towards A Theoretical Account Of The Refugee In International Law, Catherine Dauvergne

All Faculty Publications

The ambition of this work is to describe what it would mean to interject the concept of the refugee into theoretical accounts of international law and to argue that this undertaking is overdue and increasingly necessary. The starting point is the twinned observations that the refugee is almost entirely absent from international legal theory, and that refugee law scholarship has rarely engaged with the dominant narratives of international legal theory. Despite being a creature of the law, the refugee is more theoretically anchored in accounts of international relations than in theoretical accounts of the law. The article begins outside legal …

Exploring Sex-Specific Clinical Features In Chinese Patients With Takotsubo Syndrome, Hong-Yi Duan, Ling-Lin Wang, Ling-Chun Lyu, Zhen-Hua Shi, Xiao-Ping Lin, Zheng-Yang Yu, Guo-Hua Fan, Jing Chen, Xin-Hong Yang, Wei Deng, Chang-Wu Xu, Yan Huang, Qing Zhou, Jin-Ling Chen, Hong-Ning Song, Dong Hu, Jin-Qiu Liu, Hector Barajas-Martinez, Charles Antzelevitch, Kan Liu, Hong Jiang, Dan Hu

Department of Medicine Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Takotsubo syndrome (TTS) is considered as a transient acute heart failure syndrome predominant in females. However, data on Chinese TTS patients are limited. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the clinical characteristics of Chinese TTS patients, identify prognostic markers.

METHODS: A total of 258 TTS patients were enrolled. Data on clinical characteristics and in-hospital major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) were collected and analyzed. The latter included severe heart failure, shock, malignant arrhythmia, and death.

RESULTS: The average age of TTS patients was 59.3 ± 19.2 years. Female patients accounted for 68.9%. MACE occurred in 41.4% of patients during hospitalization. …

Hikikomori Risk In The Uk, Gregory Gorman, Alison Bacon, Jon May, Stephen Minton

School of Psychology

Background: Hikikomori syndrome involves voluntary withdrawal from social life, school and work, with onset typically in young adulthood. Hikikomori risk has not been examined in the UK, and these studies aimed to validate and refine the Hikikomori Risk Inventory-24 (HRI-24) screening tool in UK young adults. Methods/Results: In Study 1, participants (n = 341) completed the HRI-24. Item analysis and confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a shorter 13-item HRI (HRI-13), which demonstrated a perfect correlation with the full HRI-24. Both the HRI-13 and HRI-24 showed strong convergent and divergent validity, correlating with depression, anxiety, avoidant coping and negative early life …

Preliminary Investigation Of The Association Between Epigenetic Aging Acceleration And Amyloid Biomarkers In Bipolar Disorder, Gabriel R Fries, Steven De La Garza, Ning O Zhao, Andres W Bass, Camila N C Lima, Nobuhide Kobori, Tatiana Barichello, Gustavo Turecki, Paul E Schulz, Breno S Diniz, Jair C Soares

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Objectives: Bipolar disorder (BD) has been associated with an elevated risk of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). We assessed AD biomarkers in BD and tested whether epigenetic aging (EA) acceleration is associated with changes in these markers.

Design, setting, participants: Cross-sectional study of n = 58 living individuals with BD and n = 20 age- and sex-matched control participants, as well as analyses of postmortem brain samples (Brodmann area 9/46) from n = 46 individuals with BD.

Measurements: Amyloid beta (Aβ)40, Aβ42, and total Tau levels were measured in plasma from individuals with BD and controls, and Aβ42 levels were measured in …

A Novel Approach To Increase Accuracy In Remotely Sensed Evapotranspiration Through Basin Water Balance And Flux Tower Constraints, Kul Khand, Gabriel B. Senay, Mackenzie Friedrichs, Koong Yi, Joshua B. Fisher, Lixin Wang, Kosana Suvočarev, Arman Ahmadi, Housen Chu, Stephen Good, Kanishka Mallick, Justine Missik, Jacob A. Nelson, David E. Reed, Tianxin Wang, Xiangming Xiao

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Remote sensing-derived evapotranspiration (RSET) products capture the spatiotemporal variations of evapotranspiration (ET) from field to basin scales with unprecedented details. However, their accuracy varies across RSET estimation methods and diverse hydroclimate regions. While ET modeling efforts to account for biophysical processes and controlling parameters have made good progress in recent years, a parallel approach of integrating in-situ ET with RSET could reduce biases in RSET products. Basin water balance ET (WBET) and flux tower ET are widely applied to evaluate RSET accuracy, yet such ET measurements are rarely used for RSET bias corrections, especially for large area applications. To address …

Emergent Collective Reproduction Via Evolving Neuronal Flocks, Nam H. Le, Michael Levin, Richard A. Watson, Josh Bongard, Christopher L. Buckley

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

This study advances the understanding of evolutionary transitions in individuality (ETIs) through a novel artificial life framework, VitaNova, which integrates self-organization and natural selection to simulate the emergence of complex, reproductive groups. By dynamically modeling individual agents within an environment shaped by predators and spatial constraints, VitaNova reveals mechanisms by which simple agents evolve into cohesive units exhibiting collective reproduction. The findings highlight the synergy between self-organized behaviors and adaptive evolutionary strategies as fundamental drivers of ETIs. This approach deepens our understanding of higher-order biological individuality and offers a new empirical pathway for investigating ETIs, extending current theoretical frameworks.

Exact Solutions Of M-Fractional Complex Ginzburg-Landau Equation Via Two Analytical Methods, Nematollah Kadkhoda, Mojtaba Baymani, Maad M. Mijwil, Mostafa Abotaleb

Iraqi Journal for Computer Science and Mathematics

This article investigates the M-fractional complex Ginzburg-Landau (CGL) equationby utilizing the modified simplest equation method and the modified G'G-expansion method. The CGL holds significant importance in the realm of oscillatory phenomena and optical fibers. By implementing a fractional complex transformation, the M-fractional CGL equation is transformed into an ordinary differential equation (ODE).By employing these methodologies, bright periodic solutions, periodic solutions, and dark wave solutions relevant to phenomena witnessed in nonlinear optics or plasma environments are ascertained.It is demonstrated that these methods are very powerful and efficient to solve many fractional differential equations.

Reason for Expression of Concern: …

Enhancing Image Denoising Performance Through Cosine Similarity-Based Block Matching And Adaptive Thresholding - Ca-Ebm3d, R. Padmapriya, A. Jeyasekar

Iraqi Journal for Computer Science and Mathematics

Image denoising plays a vital role in enhancing visual quality by effectively suppressing noise while retaining critical image structures and textures. Traditional Block-Matching and 3D (BM3D) Filtering techniques, although widely adopted, often encounter challenges in achieving an optimal trade-off between noise reduction and feature preservation due to limitations in fixed-thresholding strategies and suboptimal block matching. To address these shortcomings, this study introduces a novel Cosine Adaptive BM3D (CA-BM3D) approach, which integrates cosine similarity for more accurate block matching and incorporates adaptive thresholding to enhance denoising efficiency. The proposed method was evaluated on six standard 8-bit grayscale images such as Leena …