Digital Commons Network^™

Can Angiotensin Ii Affect The Inflammatory Response Of Human Dental Pulp Cells In Vitro?, Bella Luna Colombini-Ishikiriama, Thiago José Dionisio, Thais Francini Garbieri, Rafaela Alves Da Silva, Sandra Helena Penha Oliveira, Vanessa Soares Lara, Andrew S Greene, Carlos Ferreira Dos Santos

Faculty Research 2026

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate the capacity of fibroblasts from permanent and deciduous dental pulp to express inflammatory mediators when exposed to bacterial and inflammatory antigens. It also sought to assess the presence of components of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) and the potential modulatory role of ANG-II in this response.

METHODOLOGY: Fibroblasts were cultured from the pulp of permanent and deciduous teeth obtained from three adult and four pediatric donors with informed consent. Cells were stimulated with Porphyromonas gingivalis and Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharides (LPS) either alone or in combination with ANG-II and, in some cases, with IL-1β. Gene expression …

Reward Deficits In Co-Occurring Social Anxiety And Depression: The Roles Of Anhedonia, Boredom, Loneliness, And Covid-19 Social Restriction, Nathan M. Hager, Alicia L. Milam, Hannah C. Hamrick, Benjamin Swanson, Matt R. Judah

Psychology Faculty Publications

Prior research points toward reward deficits as crucial to the link between social anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder. However, studies have not explored specific types of reward deficits or how social-environmental factors may impact them. The current study examined whether the indirect effects of three reward deficits (anhedonia, boredom, and loneliness) accounted for the connection between social anxiety and depression. Questionnaires were collected in a sample of college students (N = 523) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing examination of environmental stressors (i.e., remote learning and current friend network size) on reward deficits. Indirect effect models …

Dupilumab For The Treatment Of Prurigo Nodularis, Iain Noel Encarnacion, Noelle Desir, Simona A. Alomary, Nicole Baker

SKMC Student Presentations and Publications

Prurigo nodularis (PN) is a chronic, intensely pruritic dermatosis driven by neural and immune dysregulation, with historically limited FDA-approved treatment options. In September 2022, dupilumab became the first FDA-approved therapy for PN. To review the clinical efficacy of dupilumab in PN, with emphasis on pivotal clinical trials, real-world evidence, and safety profile. We examined mechanistic studies of dupilumab, early case reports and series, phase 3 LIBERTY-PN PRIME and PRIME2 randomized trials, real world observational studies, and safety data. Dupilumab, a human monoclonal antibody targeting IL-4Rα, suppresses type 2 inflammation. In PRIME (n = 151) and PRIME2 (n = 160), dupilumab …

Harding University Spring Sing Program 2026

Spring Sing

Program for the 2026 Spring Sing performance at Harding University

Theme: Destinations

Host & Hostesses: Miriam Bennett, Callie Disch, Weston Eades, and Isaac Linnett

The Outer Space Legal Regime: Peace In Name, Power In Practice, And The Call For A New Treaty, Jaeden Esquivel

Chapman Law Review

Space warfare poses grave dangers that many fail to appreciate. Modern technologies and data-driven services have transformed the domain of space from a distant scientific frontier into the backbone of twenty-first century life. GPS navigation, supply chain logistics, aviation systems, weather forecasting, disaster planning, emergency services, and countless other essential, everyday data-driven systems depend on satellites operating in orbit. If these satellites were permanently disabled or destroyed, the critical Earth-bound infrastructure that relies on them would collapse as well.

For nearly fifty years, space as a geopolitical domain has relied on the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) to ensure that …

Campus Crises And The Limits Of Title Vi, Suzanne B. Goldberg, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

This Piece examines the deployment of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a mechanism for regulating campus conflict following the 2023 to 2024 campus protests and seeks to reset the discourse in light of the statute’s history, doctrine, and role in higher education. Title VI is an important tool for addressing identity-based harassment, epithets, and violence between students, but it is neither designed nor effective as a tool for negotiating clashes between universities’ cornerstone commitments to robust debate and an optimal learning environment for all students. In converting the statute from a source of protection against …

Scalar Source Localization Using Multi-Sensor Domains Of Dependence In Turbulent Channel Fow, Zejian You, Xiaowei Zhu, Qi Wang

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Tracking hazardous events such as wildfire smoke, coastal oil spills, or chemical releases in natural environments is complicated by turbulent dispersion and molecular diffusion. This study presents a method to localize pollutant sources rapidly and accurately using infinite time-averaged measurements from a multi-sensor network, leveraging the duality between mean forward and adjoint scalar fields. The forward-adjoint duality states that measurements at the sensor (forward feld) are equal to the adjoint field at the source, providing crucial spatial information about the source. Consequently, the adjoint scalar fields can be interpreted as the domain of dependence for the sensor observations [1, 2]. …

An Ecological-Evolutionary Investigation Of Phenotypic, Genetic, And Environmental Variation And Correlations Among Reproductive Traits Of Tall Goldenrod (Solidago Altissima), Michael J. Wise, Daniel Lavy, David E. Carr, Warren G. Abrahamson Ii

Faculty Journal Articles

Although fitness-related traits are expected to be under strong selection, traits related to reproduction are often quite variable within plant populations. We used data from two large greenhouse experiments to quantify phenotypic, genetic, and environmental variation, as well as genetic tradeoffs that might help explain the maintenance of withinpopulation variation in four traits related to sexual or vegetative reproduction in tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima). The goldenrod population exhibited high levels of both phenotypic and genetic variation for capitulum (flower head) number and size, seed production, and rhizome growth. Significant negative genetic correlations were present between the number of capitula and …

Inferring Duty Under The “Stop Campus Hazing Act”: National Fraternity And Sorority Liability, Gregory S. Parks

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unleashed: A Phenomenological Study Of Empowerment Leadership Among Elementary School Superintendents, Michelle Marie Ramirez

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this exploratory phenomenological study was to identify and describe the strategies used by exemplary superintendents of elementary school districts in Fresno, Kern, Monterey, and San Luis Obispo counties to create conditions for empowerment for everyone in their organization based on five variables: trust, love, belonging, strategy, and culture.

Methodology: This phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of exemplary elementary school district superintendents in Fresno, Kern, Monterey, and San Luis Obispo counties. Purposeful, criterion sampling was used to identify 10 participants who met the study’s criteria. The semistructured, open-ended interview protocol was developed by a thematic research …

Human Resources Professional’S Job Practices In Manufacturing That Impact Employee Job Satisfaction And Retention, Alma Rosa Avalos

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this explanatory sequential mixed methods study was to identify and describe employee job practices in the manufacturing industry as perceived by HR professionals that impact employee job satisfaction. The second purpose of this study was to determine which employee job satisfaction practices have the most impact on employee retention as perceived by HR professionals.

Methodology: An explanatory sequential mixed methods design examined the perceptions of 30 purposively selected Los Angeles County HR professionals. Data was collected through an online survey and interviews and analyzed using descriptive statistics, frequency tables, and qualitative analysis.

Findings: HR professionals consistently …

When Nigeria Happens To You: Finding Effective Leadership Approaches For Crisis Management And Organizational Resilience Among Nigerian Leaders, Grace Odim

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how Nigerian SME leaders interpret and apply leadership strategies to manage crises and build organizational resilience in volatile environments. The study focused on key dimensions of leadership, including strategic crisis navigation and vulnerability assessment, organizational resilience, contextual leadership, experiential learning and innovation, and organizational sustainability.

Methodology: This study employed a qualitative phenomenological research design to examine the lived experiences of Nigerian SME leaders who had navigated significant organizational crises. Participants were purposefully selected based on their direct experience managing disruptions that affected their businesses. Data were collected through semistructured interviews …

Neurofilament Light Chain But Not Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein Serum Levels Are Elevated In Wolfram Syndrome, Matthew J Jansen, Heather M Lugar, Cris M Brown, Abby F Tang, Liam J Oiknine, Ling Chen, Jonathan M Koller, Brian A Gordon, Bess A Marshall, Fumihiko Urano, Tamara Hershey

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Wolfram syndrome is a rare genetic disorder caused by pathogenic variants in the

OBJECTIVE: To determine if serum NfL and/or GFAP levels are elevated in Wolfram syndrome compared to controls and whether they can serve as monitoring biomarkers.

METHODS: Serum NfL and GFAP levels were log

RESULTS: NfL levels were higher in the Wolfram group relative to all control groups (

CONCLUSION: Serum NfL elevation in Wolfram syndrome may reflect the ongoing, relatively slow neurodegeneration occurring in this disorder. However, without any correspondence between serum levels and currently used clinical and neuroimaging metrics, it has limited utility as a …

Interpretive Facts: Textualism, Empiricism, And The Law-Fact Divide, Hannah Walser

Articles

This Article offers the first systematic examination of where empirical linguistic evidence should fit in the federal court system's division of labor based on law and fact. I begin by identifying interpretive facts : generalized empirical evidence about how a particular word or phrase has been used by a population of speakers, understood by a population of listeners, or both. Thanks to technological advances in corpus linguistics permitting the quantitative analysis of large numbers of texts, as well as methodological shifts that frame ordinary meaning as an empirical question, such facts are increasingly prominent in statutory and constitutional interpretation cases. …

From The Goodness Of Our Hearts: A Scoping Review Of Qualitative Literature On Altruism As A Reward Mechanism For Nursing, Jacqueline Christianson, Madaline Mccarthy, Bonnie Sommers-Olson, Emily Horner, Norah L. Johnson

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Introduction

Altruism, the desire to help others, is a common motivation for choosing a career in nursing. Improved understanding of the role of altruism as a reward or motivation for currently-practicing nurses may inform future interventions to improve effort-reward balance among practicing nurses. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to collect, examine, and present literature on how altruism has been described as a reward mechanism or motivation for engaging in professional nursing.

Methods

This scoping review of literature used the Arksey & O’Malley method, PRISMA-ScR reporting checklist, and Rayyan review management platform. PubMed, Web of Science, and CINAHL were …

Memory Effects In Many-Body Systems, Jeffrey Beckstrand

Master's Projects

This thesis investigates memory effects in many-body systems through the MoriZwanzig Formalism for projected dynamics of a Hamiltonian System which yields the Generalized Langevin Equation (GLE). The GLE is a stochastic differential equation (SDE) that studies the dynamics of observables under the effects of many other observables in the system. Although satisfying, the GLE has a term called the Memory Kernel that encodes the past of the system and introduces a computational challenge by introducing a non-Markovian property to the equation. The kernel is often approximated by introducing a delta function, which simplifies the computation, but at the loss of …

Impact Of Cigarette Smoke On Immune And Stromal Cells, Justin Wong

Master's Projects

Cigarette smoke is a plight on human health, being a major contributor to lung diseases. The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) directs immune regulation and metabolic adaptation in response to environmental toxins. This study investigates transcriptomic changes between wild-type and AHR knockout mouse lung tissue under smoke and air conditions. Single-cell RNA sequencing data were generated by the Butcher Lab and analyzed in Seurat for differential gene expression (DGE) analysis. A two way ANOVA framework was used with DGE analysis to classify genes as smoke induced or suppressed in an AHR dependent or independent manner, and these gene sets were analyzed …

Safe-R2r: A Safety-Aware And Budget-Optimized Retrieval Controller For Rag Systems, Mandar Sunil Gondane

Master's Projects

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) improves factual grounding in large language models by incorporating external evidence during inference. However, most RAG systems rely on fixed retrieval strategies that ignore query difficulty, computational cost, and prediction uncertainty. This project introduces SAFE-R2R (Safety-Aware and Budget-Optimized Reason-to-Retrieve), a retrieval controller that treats retrieval as a query-dependent decision problem. SAFE-R2R organizes retrieval into a multi-rung ladder ranging from no retrieval to deeper retrieval with reranking. At each rung, the system generates an answer, computes reliability signals, and combines them into a risk score used within a conformal calibration framework to decide whether to accept the answer …

Multi-Agent Path Planning And Optimization Using Q-Learning, Chirag Rudrish

Master's Projects

Robot navigation in a multi-agent setting requires a balance between safety and efficiency, especially in dense environments. In these two-dimensional spaces, the scope for geometric errors is much less and could lead to collisions or immobility. This project proposes to address the navigation task using a two-phase path planning pipeline that combines reinforcement learning and convex optimization in a scalable and robust manner. The first phase consists of generating diverse collision-free paths using a Q-learning agent that is trained on a visibility graph representation of the environment. The discretization of the environment using waypoint-based graphs allows the agent to train …

Cost-Aware Predictive Routing For Vision-Language Models, Sahil Sait Naveed

Master's Projects

Vision-language models (VLMs) are increasingly used for multimodal tasks, but their inference costs vary widely across model tiers. This work presents a predictive routing framework that assigns each query to the most cost-effective VLM by using multimodal embeddings, clustering, and per-cluster model error estimates. Evaluated on six commercial VLMs, the selected router reduces average cost by about 49 percent relative to the quality-first setting on both validation and test. This comes with accuracy losses of 0.4 percentage points on validation and 0.9 on held-out test data. It also outperforms K-NN and ZeroRouter routing baselines while providing lowercost operating points than …

Stepwise Sudoku Reasoning Training Using Transformers, Lok Man Chu

Master's Projects

Sudoku is a constraint satisfaction problem that serves as a testbed for studying reasoning and stepwise deduction. While many solvers can produce correct solutions, they often fail to generate human interpretable sequences of logically consistent steps. This study investigates whether a transformer trained on stepwise deduction traces can learn to solve Sudoku puzzles through sequential, logically deducible moves. Results show that solve accuracy improves significantly with more training data, reaching approximately 78% at 1500k samples. Stepwise analysis indicates that the model effectively learns simple strategies, achieving near-perfect performance. However, performance on more complex strategies remains limited. Overall, while the model …

Adaptive Real-Time Fraud Detection Using Online Learning And Explicit Concept-Drift Detection, Purva Govind Tugaonkar

Master's Projects

Real-time credit card fraud detection faces challenges such as extreme class imbalance, delayed feedback, and concept drift in transaction streams. This project implements and evaluates an adaptive streaming fraud detection framework based on three methodologies: (1) online learning with incremental updates, (2) explicit conceptdrift detection using statistical monitoring, and (3) separate models for immediate and delayed supervision, combined with cost-sensitive learning and anomaly detection. The system processes the credit card fraud dataset in a batched streaming fashion, uses multiple online learners and ensembles. Experiments show that online, driftaware models maintain high recall on frauds while controlling false positives under imbalanced …

Multi-Agent Path Planning And Optimization Using Q-Learning, Chirag Rudresh

Master's Projects

Robot navigation in a multi-agent setting requires a balance between safety and efficiency, especially in dense environments. In these two-dimensional spaces, the scope for geometric errors is much less and could lead to collisions or immobility. This project proposes to address the navigation task using a two-phase path planning pipeline that combines reinforcement learning and convex optimization in a scalable and robust manner. The first phase consists of generating diverse collision-free paths using a Q-learning agent that is trained on a visibility graph representation of the environment. The discretization of the environment using waypoint-based graphs allows the agent to train …

Ai Deployment Authorisation: A Global Standard For Machine-Readable Governance Of High-Risk Artificial Intelligence, Daniel Djan Saparning

Student Publications

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) governance lacks a formal, enforceable mechanism for determining whether a given AI system is legally permitted to operate in a specific domain and jurisdiction. Existing approaches-such as model cards, audits, and benchmark evaluations provide descriptive information about model behaviour and training data but do not produce binding deployment decisions with legal or financial force. This paper introduces the AI Deployment Authorisation Score (ADAS). This machine-readable, regulator-grade framework evaluates AI systems across five legally and economically grounded dimensions: Risk, Alignment, Externality, Control, and Auditability, derived from safety engineering, alignment theory, algorithmic accountability, and liability economics. ADAS produces …

Construction Industry Preparedness For Generation Z And Millennials: Aligning Industry Characteristics With Workforce Job Preferences, Ameenullah Amiri, Dhaval R. Gajjar, Jason D. Lucas

The Professional Constructor

The construction industry in the United States suffers from workforce shortages, partly due to younger generations being hired more slowly than baby boomers retire. Generation Z’s (Gen Z) lack of interest in joining the construction industry, coupled with the retirement of older workers, has amplified the problem. This paper investigates existing literature to identify the work and career preferences of Gen Z and Millennials and determine where the industry may focus efforts to attract these two generations. Through a systematic literature review, this study identified overlaps and gaps between the current construction industry workforce’s perceptions of the industry and the …

Annual Report Of The Officers Of The Town Of Campton, New Hampshire For The Fiscal Year Ending December 31, 2025, Campton Town Representatives

Campton, NH Annual Reports

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire.

2025 Annual Report Of The Officers, Town Of Orange, New Hampshire, Orange Town Representatives

Orange, NH Annual Reports

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire.

Town Of Bow New Hampshire And Bow School District 2025 Town And School Annual Report, Bow Town Representatives

Bow, NH Annual Reports

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire.

Nutrient-Driven Transcription Factor-Dna Interactions And Their Signaling Mechanisms In Metabolic Disease, Evelyn A. Bates

Theses and Dissertations--Nutritional Sciences

Metabolic homeostasis is maintained through tightly coordinated signaling networks that integrate diverse physiological inputs. Central to this regulation are transcription factors, which sense nutrient, hormonal, and vitamin-derived signals and translate them into coordinated gene expression programs. Transcription factor activity is governed by DNA binding, recruitment of coregulatory proteins, and interactions with specific response elements in gene promoters, which allows them to selectively modulate diverse metabolic pathways. Owing to their multifactorial and tunable nature, transcription factors have emerged as promising targets for the treatment and diagnosis of metabolic diseases, including metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). This dissertation explores the molecular …

Efficient Organic Molecular Crystal Structure Prediction Using The Density Functional Tight-Binding Method, Maureen M. Kitheka, Yan Jing, Yan Yao, Puja Goyal

Faculty Publications – Chemistry

Over the years, computational crystal structure prediction (CSP) for organic molecules has thrived as an area of research, spanning various scientific disciplines and having significant applications in industries such as pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. Within the field of batteries, redox-active organic materials (ROMs) such as quinones have received increased attention as promising electrode materials for rechargeable batteries. However, experimental determination of the crystal structure of intermediate species formed during the discharge/charge cycle can often be challenging. Incomplete X-ray diffraction patterns can also lead to difficulties in crystal structure determination for ROMs used in batteries. Use of a semiempirical electronic structure method …