Global Inventory Of Fluoropolymer Production Plants And Their Associated Pfas Environmental Contamination, Anna J. Miller, Kevin Kleemann, Juliane Glüge, Rainer Lohmann, Ian T. Cousins, Dorte Herzke, Mark F. Miller, Amanda Rensmo, Xenia Trier, Zhanyun Wang, Martin Scheringer

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Fluoropolymers are widely used across sectors, but their production is associated with emissions of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), which are mobile, persistent, and toxic. In this work, we compiled a global inventory of fluoropolymer production plants (FPPs) and assembled PFAS concentration measurements for various media in their vicinity. We identified 52 currently operating FPPs across 11 countries and 41 cities. For 12 FPPs, in 12 different cities, there are peer-reviewed site-specific PFAS measurements specifically attributed to the FPP. At these 12 sites, at least 236 individual PFASs have been detected across multiple environmental media, including surface water, groundwater, air, …

Preliminary Cruise Report: Tn452 Eastern Lau Spreading Center And Northeastern Lau Basin, Kingdom Of Tonga, April 19, 2026 – May 18, 2026, Roxanne A. Beinart, Shawn Arellano

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Case Report: Suspected Rupture Of A Papillary Thyroid Tumor In A Patient With Graves' Disease Who Experienced Airway Narrowing Without Respiratory Distress., Daniel Goodman, Samuel Bosco, Bradford Davison Smith

Otolaryngology (ENT) Resident Research

This case report describes a 55-year-old woman presenting with acute dysphagia and neck swelling after a "popping" sensation in her neck. CT and MRI revealed a large retropharyngeal cystic mass and a left thyroid lobe mass, causing airway displacement. Despite significant effacement of the oropharyngeal and supraglottic airway on flexible nasopharyngolaryngoscopy, the patient remained asymptomatic regarding respiratory distress. Subsequent ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration biopsy diagnosed malignant papillary thyroid carcinoma. Concurrently, previously undiagnosed Graves' disease was identified. The clinical presentation was attributed to suspected rupture or hemorrhage of the malignant thyroid tumor, leading to a serosanguineous fluid collection and inflammatory edema. …

Pilot Program For Telemental Health Access To Rural Underserved Localities, Traci Brickhouse Jones, Sarah Kott, Oswaldo Moreno, Aneida Winston

GEHLI - 2026 VCUL Team Project Publications

This proposal recommends legislation directing Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services to establish a two-year pilot program focused on expanding telemental health access in rural Virginia. The purpose of the pilot is to address persistent behavioral health disparities in areas where residents face major barriers to obtaining timely mental health care.

The legislation is designed to build on existing telehealth infrastructure and aligns with Virginia’s Statewide Telehealth Plan under § 32.1-122.03:1, which already supports broader use of telehealth services across the Commonwealth. By creating a focused pilot first, the state can test implementation strategies before considering broader expansion.

Unlocking Testing Potential: Establishing A Unified Testing Hub To Support Student Success, Pallavi Singh, Yonella Demars, Maggie Christ, Ewa Way, Lisa Domico, Karolina Aberg

GEHLI - 2026 VCUL Team Project Publications

This project evaluates the feasibility and strategic impact of establishing a centralized testing hub at VCU. By analyzing current practices, stakeholder needs, and peer models, the study aims to assess benefits such as improved testing integrity, accessibility, and operational efficiency. Findings will inform actionable recommendations for implementation, with the potential to enhance student success, reduce administrative burden, and position VCU in the forefront of secure, standardized academic assessment for both in-person and online education.

New Media For New Marijuana: An Initiative Addressing The Challenges Of A Changing Cannabis Landscape And Its Impact On The Driving Safety Of The Vcu Community, Kelsa Bartley, Peter Henry, Donisha Terry, Emily Yeaman, Quingguo Xu, Matthew Winheim

GEHLI - 2026 VCUL Team Project Publications

Cannabis products today are significantly more potent and more widely available than in previous generations, creating new health and safety challenges for college students. This project aims to develop an evidence-based awareness campaign that delivers information about the health risks of emerging cannabinoid products and the consequences of impaired driving due to cannabis use. The campaign aims to increase student awareness, encourage responsible decision-making, and contribute to a safer, healthier VCU community.

Rest My Case: Sleep Science Should Inform J.D. Program Structures And Licensure Examinations To Enhance Performance, Equity And Well-Being, Laura J. Mott, Paula J. Manning

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

This Article critically examines the legal profession’s longstanding marginalization of sleep and circadian biology and argues that temporal structural norms embedded in legal education and licensure are at odds with established scientific evidence. Drawing on extensive and interdisciplinary research in neuroscience, chronobiology, cognitive psychology, and timekeeping, this Article explores how sleep deprivation and chronotype misalignment with institutional schedules impair attention, memory, emotional regulation, mental and physical health, and decision-making—capacities that are essential to competent, ethical, and sustainable legal practice. Despite robust scientific consensus that sleep quality, quantity, and timing have profound effects on performance and well-being, law schools and licensing …

Creative Destruction For The Patent System? Impact Of Generative Ai, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

AI raises the provocative possibility that patents could one day become obsolete. AI has the ability both to generate inventions and to simulate the perspective of a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA). This article explores the transformative impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the United States patent system. The article supports a scenario in which everything becomes invented—and simultaneously, everything becomes obvious—thus challenging a foundational criterion for patentability. These developments can occur within established principles of inventorship, obviousness, and subject matter eligibility under U.S. patent law. Using a narrative case study and a test invention, the …

State Wetland Protections After Sackett V. Epa: Lessons From The Prairie Pothole Region, Elizabeth Thilges

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

The Right To Share: Affording Americans Meaningful Control Over Their Data, Kevin Frazier

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

Americans today face unprecedented opportunities to leverage their personal data for health, education, and economic benefit; yet state and federal privacy laws increasingly restrict their ability to do so. This Article argues that the prevailing regulatory paradigm—rooted in paternalism, behavioral assumptions, and a deep distrust of both firms and individuals— has produced a system that paradoxically denies people meaningful control over their own information. As artificial intelligence tools grow more capable, the inability of individuals to share data freely threatens to entrench inequities, concentrate access to high-quality AI systems among the wealthy, and accelerate the formation of an “AI abyss” …

From Data To Decisions: Why Ai Inferences Should Count As ‘Effects’ Under The Fourth Amendment, Susan Tanner

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

This Article argues that AI-driven microtargeting, enabled by large-scale data brokerage and increasingly acquired by government actors, creates a dual constitutional problem. First, it undermines Fourth Amendment protections through what has become known as the ‘data broker loophole.’ Second, it amplifies inequality and civic distortion by segmenting political information flows in ways that evade traditional constitutional checks and statutory privacy regimes. Building on Carpenter v. United States, Riley v. California, and United States v. Jones, this Article proposes a doctrinal framework that treats government acquisition of granular behavioral datasets and model outputs as ‘searches,’ even when intermediated by private actors, …

Sentinels Of Security -- A Case For State Leadership In The Quantum Era, J.T. Ayotte

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

You'll Loan Nothing And Be Happy, Becky Chambers

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

Digital lending of eBooks offers flexibility to patrons, but it also exacerbates the existential threats libraries face. Libraries cannot own eBooks—they can only license and lend them on publishers’ terms—which means libraries are paying more for less. This is known as the “digital lending problem.” Access to older books is even more limited, as publishers and copyright holders rarely offer them as eBooks, creating the “20th century book problem.” These problems are chilling libraries’ creative approaches to digital lending and are further exacerbated by the Trump Administration’s attacks on libraries and the continuing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. These developments …

Hyperscalers In The Heartland: How A Climate-First Framework Can Incentivize Sustainable Data Center Development And Grid Decarbonization, Eli Dotson

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

This Note proceeds in three parts. Part II surveys the rise of AI and hyperscale data centers, the technical and legal challenges their loads pose, and the evolving policy landscape, both nationwide and in Minnesota. Part III argues that Minnesota should build on its emerging data center framework in two ways. First, the PUC should institutionalize the framework’s most promising features by setting a “clean energy floor” to ensure that data centers contribute to, rather than prevent, the decarbonization of Minnesota’s grid. Second, the PUC should create an additional “distributed flexibility pathway” by forcing utilities to consider alternative ways of …

259th Annual Cornish Report Of The Selectmen And Other Town Officers For The Year Ending December 31, 2025, Cornish, New Hampshire, Cornish Town Representatives

Cornish, NH Annual Reports

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

Annual Report Of The Town Officers Of The Town Of Columbia, New Hampshire For The Year Ending December 31, 2025 Including The Report Of The School Directors, Columbia Town Representatives

Columbia, NH Annual Reports

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

Dr. David M. Lowry Papers - Accession 1906, David Michael Lowry

Manuscript Collection

The Dr. David Lowry Papers document the life and career of Dr. David Michael Lowry (1938-2025), an organist, musicologist, and music professor at Winthrop University from 1965 to 2011. Lowry was Professor of Music Emeritus at Winthrop and helped establish the York County Choral Society in 1981, serving as its artistic director for 31 years.

The collection consists of biographical and family materials, correspondence, certificates, church and recital programs, newspaper clippings, musical scores, photographs, physical media, and artifacts. Materials document Lowry’s education, teaching career, musical performances, research, and professional accomplishments. The collection includes numerous musical scores and research materials relating …

"Art, Esthetics, Ideal": An Ethics For Literary Translators In The Age Of Translating Machines, Gabriel González Núñez

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

The advent of effective machine translation has raised several issues for translators, including the question of how a human translator ought to translate in this age of translating machines. In this context of new ethical questions, the present essay argues that an answer may be found in Pedro Figari’s (1912) philosophical essay on esthetics. Following Figari, the current essay argues that literary translation is art, that as such it can produce an esthetic emotion on readers and that the purpose of such art and esthetics is an ideal in the form of the continuous betterment of the human condition.

Your Voice Matters Subtitle: First-Year Writing And Social Justice, Jackie Hendricks, Amy J. Lueck, Loring Pfeiffer, Maura Tarnoff

OER for Social Justice Grant

Your Voice Matters: First-Year Writing and Social Justice frames writing as both an intellectual and community-oriented practice rooted in identity, audience awareness, and ethical engagement. Beginning with personal ways of knowing and the social construction of language, the text advances through public writing for social change, research methods grounded in justice, rigorous source collection and analysis, and strategies for making scholarly conversation visible and meaningful to real audiences. By foregrounding positionality, linguistic justice, and multi-modal strategies for public communication, this book equips students with the critical tools and reflective practices necessary for producing purposeful, public-facing writing.

Influence Of A Structured Strength Program On Sport-Related Outcomes In Female Lacrosse Players, Taylor R. Howard

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Per the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), approximately 30,000 individuals participate in collegiate lacrosse in the United States, roughly 13,000 being women. Participation beyond the NCAA has increased substantially in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), National Junior College Athletics Association (NJCAA), the Women’s Club Lacrosse Association (WCLA), and high school programs nationwide.  As women’s lacrosse continues to grow, strength and conditioning programs at the collegiate level have become pervasive to enhance athletic performance. However, limited research exists examining the impact of strength training on physical performance in women’s lacrosse.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the …

A Preliminary Investigation Of Research Collaboration Through Scientific Paper Co-Authorship In The Gulf Of Mexico, Juliet Vallejo, Evelyn Roozee, Dongkyu Kim, Andrew M. Song, Christopher A. Gabler, Jasper R. De Vries, Antonia Sohns, Gordon M. Hickey, Owen Temby

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

It is well known that publications with collaborators from external institutions increase citations. This effect scales with spatial distance. There are also many barriers to long-distance collaborations, including linguistic differences, funding constraints, and the incremental costs of remote collaboration. This paper uses the Gulf of Mexico as a case study to examine long-distance research collaboration because it consists of three countries with diverse development levels and two prominent diplomatic languages, within a singular regional ecosystem of tremendous natural and economic value. This paper uses bibliometric network analysis to examine scientific research article co-authorship in the Gulf of Mexico from 2000 …

Histochemical Alteration, Protein Nitration, And Antioxidant Expression In Oysters As Early Warning Indicators For Microplastic Contamination In The Texas Gulf Coast, Rebecca Muñiz, Md Faisal Amin, Md. Saydur Rahman

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Microplastics are widely distributed in aquatic environments and have been detected in numerous organisms. Marine bivalves are among the most affected aquatic organisms by microplastics due to their filter-feeding behavior. In this study, 60 oysters were collected from two sites along the Texas Gulf Coast. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and Nile red staining were used to detect microplastics in oyster (Crassostrea virginica) tissues. We compared field and laboratory samples collected after a two-week depuration period to identify differences in the shape and size of microplastics in oyster tissues. Results from the field sites showed a large number of microplastics, …

Possible Reconsideration To The Library Of Congress Classification System’S Liberal Placements Of African American Psychology And African American Social Science, Eddie Hughes

Southern University and A&M College: John B. Cade Library Publications

The Library of Congress Classification (LCC), developed by Herbert Putnam in 1897, remains the predominant system for organizing materials in U.S. academic libraries. By integrating innovations with earlier classification systems by Charles Cutter and Melvil Dewey, the LCC divides human knowledge into 21 classes, each represented by alphabetic codes. While Psychology is classified under BF and social sciences under HQ, materials on African American Psychology and African American Social Science are primarily cataloged under Class E—History of America—specifically E185.625 and E185.86. This placement raises critical questions about the appropriateness of categorizing these subjects as historical rather than disciplinary. Given African …

Improving Staff Perceptions Of Effective Communication Through Frequent Micro-Team Huddles: A Quality Improvement Initiative, Sara Krslovic

Master's Theses and Capstones

Abstract 

Background: Effective communication among interdisciplinary team members is essential for safe, coordinated patient care. An outpatient primary care clinic identified inconsistent and non-inclusive communication within assigned micro-teams, particularly between nurses and providers, creating an opportunity to implement a structured communication strategy.

Local Problem: Communication within micro-teams lacked a standardized process, and nurses were often excluded from routine communication with providers. Prior to implementation, no formal micro-team huddles had occurred within the previous six months.

Methods: A four-week quality improvement initiative was conducted using the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) framework. Weekly, micro-team huddles were implemented between nurses, providers, and the medical assistant …

Implementing A Nurse Re-Education Program To Promote Timely Use Of The Jada® System In The Postpartum Hemorrhage Cascade: A Quality Improvement Project, Maegan E. Doody

Master's Theses and Capstones

Background: Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), defined as blood loss greater than 1,000 mL after delivery, is a leading cause of maternal morbidity in the United States. Identification of risk factors and timely intervention are critical to improving maternal outcomes after delivery. First-line interventions include manual uterine massage, uterotonic medications, and antifibrinolytic medications; however, when bleeding is not well controlled, the Jada® System (Jada) is a newer vacuum-induced hemorrhage control device with a high efficacy and safety profile, particularly when implemented earlier in the hemorrhage cascade.

Local Problem: In 2025, the annual rate of PPH within the microsystem was 7.29%, …

Reducing Readmissions For Copd Through Improved Education: A Gap Analysis, Raphael Gaughan

Master's Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Promoting Equitable Access To Postpartum Hemorrhage Education: A Quality Improvement Project Using Educational Interventions For Night Shift Nurses, Michelle Stella

Master's Theses and Capstones

Abstract

Background: Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) is a serious condition that can lead to maternal morbidity or mortality following the birth of their child. It is important for nurses to be properly educated to manage this condition quickly and efficiently. Night shift nurses often face barriers to accessing educational opportunities during their shift because most education is tailored to daytime hours.

Local Problem: At the project site facility, night shift nurses perceived inconsistent access to education compared to day shift nurses. This gap highlighted the need for more flexible educational modalities to meet the needs of night shift nurses.

Methods: This …

Enhancing Patient Safety And Team Communication Via Standardized Unit Handoff Tools In Inpatient Rehabilitation, Julia Rae Before

Master's Theses and Capstones

Abstract

Background: Interdisciplinary safety huddles in healthcare are used to facilitate staff communication, voice patient safety concerns and identify high acuity patients, as well as identify current unit issues that need resolution. Using characteristics of safety huddles, revising patient report sheets to include pertinent safety information often shared during huddles may lead to an increase in staff perception of communication as well as awareness to patient safety concerns. Within an in-patient rehabilitation hospital, anonymous staff reports indicated dissatisfaction with interprofessional communication and microsystem data revealed increased events of adverse patient outcomes and safety concerns. Baseline data indicated inconsistent patient handoff …

A Patient-Centered Approach To Improving Patient And Family Education On Perioperative Processes To Reduce Anxiety: A Quality Improvement Initiative, Ashley Lauren Doherty

Master's Theses and Capstones

Background: Perioperative anxiety is common among surgical patients and their family members. Anxiety may be increased by uncertainty and limited understanding of the surgical experience. Improving perioperative education may enhance understanding, reduce anxiety, and support a more patient and family centered surgical experience.

Local Problem: A Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) identified knowledge gaps in patient and family education about the perioperative process. The existing waiting room bulletin board was outdated and provided limited information. PACU nurses observed anxiety-related behaviors and confusion among patients and family members about the perioperative process. Patient satisfaction surveys routinely collected by the hospital also demonstrated …

Enhancing Safety And Efficiency In Cardiac Admission Handoffs Through Implementation Of An I-Pass Checklist: A Quality Improvement Project, Soraia D. Barros

Master's Theses and Capstones

Abstract

Background: Effective care handoff is a necessary step for maintaining patient safety during hospitalizations. The goal of this quality improvement project was to improve the completeness of information, particularly cardiac-related, provided by the ED staff to the CSSU nurses. The implementation involved the creation of a cardiac checklist and applying it to the pre-existing I-PASS forms used during asynchronous handoff.

Local Problem: The macrosystem implemented an updated system for handoffs between the ED and CSSU by substituting an over-the-phone report with a faxed I-PASS sheet. The result, as identified by the CSSU staff, is that reports contain undetailed patient …