Digital Commons Network^™

Protecting ‘Punks’: The Shortcomings Of The Prison Rape Elimination Act, Rachel Goldsmith

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

Prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse is widespread in US male prisons, with inmates “turning each other out” by sexually assaulting each other. While the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) received unanimous support in Congress in 2003, motivated by the Human Rights Watch Report “No Escape: Male Rape in Prisons,” scholars argue that the PREA fails to protect prisoners from prison rape: for example, its standards may be ineffective or criminalize consensual sex between prisoners. This essay will examine the shortcomings of the PREA, drawing on current legal scholarship, and propose solutions to enhance the law's effectiveness in protecting prisoners. The US government …

Beyond Subsidies And Mandates: Testing A Simple Behavioral Mechanism To Drive Health Insurance Coverage, Wendy Netter Epstein, Hansoo Ko, Christopher Robertson, Kevin Wilson, David Yokum

Faculty Scholarship

Uninsured individuals face reduced access to care, financial risk, and higher mortality. Although public programs and private subsidies have lowered uninsurance, these mechanisms remain incomplete and politically unstable. We evaluate whether a low-cost outreach intervention can increase health insurance enrollment without altering plan prices. Using a randomized field experiment involving 16,477 uninsured Maryland households, we assigned households to a no-contact control or to receive email and postcard outreach featuring affordability messaging alone or combined with responsibility or community framings. Outreach increased qualified health plan enrollment by 0.699 percentage points and total coverage by 0.967 percentage points relative to control. The …

Evaluating Functional Imagery Training And Internal Visual Imagery On Tennis Serve Performance, Jonathan Rhodes, Amelie Leach

School of Psychology

Imagery is widely used in sport, but its effectiveness depends on how it is structured and the range of senses engaged. This study compared Functional Imagery Training - a multisensory, motivational intervention - with single-sense internal visual imagery and a control condition without imagery training. Thirty-eight competitive tennis players completed imagery ability and preference assessments before engaging in a 6-week intervention. Serve accuracy was measured pre- and post intervention using a target-based scoring task. Both imagery conditions led to performance improvements, with Functional Imagery Training producing significantly greater gains. The control group showed no significant change. Imagery ability and preferred …

Transition Beyond The Transaction, Finding Clarity Through Learning: An Autoethnographic Study Of My Search For Purpose And Meaning As A Graduate Student Veteran, Guy Delahoussaye

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The issue at hand for this study is the lack of specifically designed support for graduate student veterans as they transition from military service in search of a job in the civilian workforce. A recent Department of Veteran Affairs study stated that in 2018, nearly 700,000 veterans used veteran educational benefits, with 52% of this group in undergraduate programs and 9% in graduate programs. Both undergraduate and graduate student veterans seek career opportunities, personal growth, improvement of economic status, and professional advancement, but how these groups approach achieving their goals is not the same. When support was available, there was …

Understanding The Lived Experiences Of Mental Health Professionals Providing Animal Assisted Play Therapy® To Adults In An Outpatient Setting, Kelsey Unger

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Animal Assisted Play Therapy® (AAPT) is a growing therapeutic approach that incorporates a therapy animal into therapy while utilizing the therapeutic powers of play. There is a lack of research on using AAPT with adult clients in an outpatient setting. This needs to be explored so best practices can be developed to ensure that counselors are using AAPT with adults in a safe and ethical manner for both clients and animals. I sought to understand the lived experiences of mental health professionals providing AAPT to adult clients in an outpatient setting through hermeneutic phenomenology. The data were collected through semi-structured …

The Impact Of Cultural Competence On Patient Outcomes In The Bahamas, Erinique Denise E. Ingraham

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In The Bahamas, the quality of care received by culturally diverse patients remains generally poor, highlighting an inability to adapt to the changing climate and adopt culturally responsive practices. The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative study was to examine the relationship between perceived cultural competence of healthcare providers in The Bahamas and its impact on patient outcomes for the non-Bahamian patients they treat. The tripartite model of cultural competence grounded this study. The participants comprised 49 non-Bahamian patients from the public and private sectors. They completed the patient-reported physician cultural competency measure, self-efficacy for managing medications and treatments, and the …

Educator Retention And Director Practices In Early Childhood Education Settings, Katherine Williams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Early childhood education (ECE) educators leave their profession at a rate 14% higher than K-12 educators, resulting in multisystemic issues that affect children, families, staff, and the ECE industry. Research has shown a connection between leadership practices and ECE educator turnover intentions; however, there is limited research on the relationship between the servant-leadership (SL) practices of ECE directors and ECE educators’ turnover intentions. Grounded in Greenleaf’s theory of servant-leadership, the purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the relationship between ECE director SL practices and its seven dimensions, measured using the SL scale, and ECE educator turnover intentions, measured …

Development And Diffusion Of The Social Capital Index (Soci), Dean Kyne, Daniel P. Aldrich, Dominic Kyei

Sociology Faculty Publications

Social capital influences community disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. In 2020, Kyne and Aldrich introduced the Social Capital Index (SoCI), a pioneering, publicly available county-level measure capturing bonding, bridging, and linking social capital across the United States. Since then, the SoCI has been widely adopted across disciplines and applied in diverse research contexts. Five years later, emerging theoretical developments and expanded data availability offer an opportunity to reassess its diffusion and strengthen its methodological foundations. This study addresses three objectives: (1) revisiting the conceptual roots that informed the original index, (2) examining its diffusion through citation and co-citation analyses of …

Model Free Sliding Mode Control For Uavs, Aashrita Mandalapu

Theses

Sliding Mode Control (SMC) is a robust and adaptable control strategy recognized for its ability to withstand uncertainties, disturbances, and parameter variations. Although the straightforward implementation of SMC along with its insensitivity to modeling inaccuracies make it effective for a wide range of applications, it still relies heavily on an accurate system model. In dynamic environments where system characteristics vary over time, a model-independent SMC framework becomes necessary. So, a Model-Free Sliding Mode Control (MFSMC) approach is proposed as a compelling solution for complex nonlinear systems where deriving an accurate model is difficult. In contrast to conventional SMC approach, MFSMC …

Cover And Contents

Turkish Journal of Physics

No abstract provided.

Scalar Hybrid Meson B̄Gc, Bi̇rten Barsbay İnaç

Turkish Journal of Physics

The scalar hybrid meson H_bc, containing both heavy b and c quarks, represents an intriguing exotic state in QCD. In this article, we investigate its strong decay properties using three-point QCD sum rules. We focus on the two leading decay channels, H_bc → B⁺ D⁰ and H_bc → B⁰ D⁺, which are expected to dominate the decay dynamics. The B and D mesons produced in these decays each consist of one heavy and one light quark. The strong coupling constants at the corresponding vertices are extracted, and the partial decay widths …

The 1/C Expansion Of General Relativity In A 3+1 Formulation, Revisited, Mahmut Elbi̇stan

Turkish Journal of Physics

We study the 1/c expansion of general relativity within a formulation that is compatible with both the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner and the Kol-Smolkin decompositions. The Einstein-Hilbert action takes a common form for those decompositions as they are dual to each other. We first develop a method to expand this generic form and then push the expansion up to c−3 order within this novel approach. Next, we apply our technique to the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner decomposition and expand it up to c−3 order explicitly. In order to demonstrate the applicability of our method and to highlight the duality at the level of expansion, we also …

Outburst Characteristics Of Transient  Low-Mass X-Ray Binary 4u 1608-52, Can Güngör

Turkish Journal of Physics

We present a detailed analysis of the long-term X-ray light curve of 4U 1608–52, focusing on fast-rising exponential-decay (FRED) outbursts, low-intensity states, and quiescent intervals. By calibrating the onset times of the outbursts, we identify three distinct classes for the FRED-type events: (i) the long-high outbursts, exceeding ~50 d in duration with peak count rates above ~40 cnt s-1; (ii) the short-medium outbursts, with durations of ~20 d and peak count rates of ~30-50 cnt s-1; and (iii) the short-low outbursts, also lasting ~20 d but reaching only ~20-30 cnt s-1 at peak. Furthermore, we examine the relation between preoutburst …

New Measurement And Analysis For The 15N + 11B Elastic Scattering System, Nurlan Amangeldi, İsmai̇l Boztosun, Dauren Soldatkhan, Bakytbek Mauyey, Kanat Makhanov, Raimbek Akhat, Aida Anuar, Gani Yergaliuly

Turkish Journal of Physics

New experimental data on the elastic scattering of the nuclear process 15N+11B at an energy of Elab=26.25 MeV were obtained on the DC-60 cyclotron of the INP RK. Based on a semi-microscopic analysis of the interaction of an accelerated 15N ion with 1p-shell nuclei 11B the effectiveness of the new B3Y-Fetal potential was studied. . The difference between the B3Y-Fetal potential and the traditional Yukawa potentials (M3Y-Reid and M3Y-Paris) is that its density-dependent parameters are determined from the saturation condition of nuclear matter at low energy. Analysis was performed on double folding optical model (DFOM) and so no for other …

Hybrid 3d Modelling Framework For Indoor Navigation Using Federated Learning And Internet Of Things-Enabled Edge Devices, Noopur Tyagi, Jaiteg Singh, Saravjeet Singh, Ahmad Ali Alzubi, Farman Ali, Sukhjit Singh Sehra, Babar Shah

All Works

Background There has been a recent trend towards using three-dimensional (3D) models to enhance spatial awareness and maximize resource utilization in complex environments. 3D building model can be used in various applications, such as real-time guidance and tracking the positions of individuals in multi storied buildings. Cities are now being modeled and studied in three dimensions as an improved method of urban planning. Method This study proposes an advanced indoor navigation framework that combines 3D modelling, federated learning (FL), and Internet of Things (IoT) integration to deliver reliable floor-level localization and real-time guidance. In Phase 1, highly accurate 3D models …

Exploring The Theoretical Foundation With Rupture And Delayed Rupture Experiments, Shi-Qing Wang, Junpeng Wang, Asal Y. Siavoshani, Cheng Liang

University Research

We carry out uniaxial continuous and step stretching of various cross-linked polymer networks to demonstrate how characteristics of rupture during continuous stretching and delayed rupture after step stretching can be used to probe the structure of the emergent kinetic activation theory of bond dissociation (KATBD) for elastomeric failure. Based on delayed rupture experiments, we show that the network lifetime tntw, taken as the incubation time tdel-rupt for delayed rupture, depends on temperature in an Arrhenius like manner and is exponentially sensitive to the degree of network stretching (depicted by the step-stretch ratio λss). Rupture at λb during continuous stretching for …

The Bg News February 18, 2026, Bowling Green State University

BG News (Student Newspaper)

The BGSU campus student newspaper. February 18, 2026. Volume 105-Issue 18.

2026-02-18 Week In Review: Feb. 9-15, Maddie Rodriguez

The Spectator Online

No abstract provided.

How Place Makes Us Human, Rachel Ann Brickner

Creative Nonfiction Magazine

No abstract provided.

My First Baptist Winter, Tim Bascom

Creative Nonfiction Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Snow, Beatrice Lazarus

Creative Nonfiction Magazine

No abstract provided.

Recorded Lightning, Amaris Ketcham

Creative Nonfiction Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Bus Stop, Ashley Hay

Creative Nonfiction Magazine

No abstract provided.

It's Time To Stop Talking About Global Warming, Andrew C. Revkin

Creative Nonfiction Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Market Theology Of The Early Church: Some Theological Contributions To The Dismal Science, Jacob Sheldon Feiser

Journal of Religion and Business Ethics

This Article seeks to make three modest contributions. First, this Article serves to correct a failed historiography of the early church. While no patristic scholar argues that the early church professed a sort of proto-communism, other disciplines, namely, economics and business, perpetuate a misapprehension of how the early church thought about property and markets. Second, this Article offers an intellectual survey of both Ante-Nicaean and Nicaean/Post-Nicaean church fathers on property and markets. Through this survey, this Article seeks to demonstrate a general theme of the acceptance of private property, capital accumulation, market exchange, and arbitrage. Finally, this Article supports two …

Unleaving, Beth Tillman

Creative Nonfiction Magazine

No abstract provided.

More Than Mere Semantics: Why Virginia Cannot Force Preferred- Pronoun Mandates On Public School Teachers Under Virginia’S Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Isaac Rizkallah

Liberty University Law Review

Right now, school administrators and jurists across the nation are wondering how to address the legal implications of the transgender movement in public schools. In response, many public schools have adopted policies requiring teachers to identify transgender students by their preferred pronouns. These preferred-pronoun mandates have created face-offs between the personal preferences of transgender students and the religious tenets of teachers. As a result, school officials and courts around the United States find themselves wedged between this clash.

Unfortunately, the tension is often resolved at the teachers’ expense. But what are the consequences? Homogenization of thought and belief among public …

How Much Can A Coffee Table Really Cost You? What To Do With Websites, Testers, And Serial Filers Within The Context Of The Ada, Ava Perez Erickson

Liberty University Law Review

Differences have been used throughout history to separate that which is deemed superior from that which is inferior. Disabilities, both physical and mental, are what history has often deemed a mark of the inferior. With little rationale to explain the occurrence of many disabilities, man turned to divine punishment and quasi-scientific movements to fill the gaps and explain the existence of what was assumed to be a lesser, plighted people. Our modern nation is no different and found itself, for the better half of the 20th century, enamored by the eugenics movement, satisfied with the explanation that disabled individuals were …

If You Want To Get Away With Indecent Exposure, Do It Online, Rebekah E. Bynum

Liberty University Law Review

If a person exposes his or her genitals to a minor in private or in public, that person would be guilty of indecent exposure. But if a person exposes his or her genitals to a minor over video chat, no harm, no foul. Similarly, if a person exposes his or her genitals to a minor via text message, there are no repercussions. Why is it that the same act—when done through a screen—functions like a loophole to a crime? The reason for this “loophole” is because of a misunderstanding of the crime of indecent exposure. The crime was developed, not …

Improving Quantitative Support Across An Institution Using An Ecosystem Framework, Laura Muller, Melissa Eblen-Zayas

Numeracy

In our keynote address at the 2025 National Numeracy Network Annual Meeting, we introduced the framework we developed for considering four domains of an institution’s quantitative skills/reasoning support ecosystem that includes bridge programs with a quantitative component, approaches to assessing readiness, curricular on-ramps, and supplementary support. We believe this ecosystem framework has the potential to help campus leaders coordinate institutional efforts around student success in areas connected to students’ quantitative preparation. This keynote highlighted the idea that coordination of stakeholders and their engagement with domains of the ecosystem fall along a spectrum. We provide approaches for using this framework to …