Digital Commons Network^™

Association Between Diabetes Mellitus, Hypertension, Obesity, And Diagnosis Of Covid-19 In Puerto Rico, Julian Rene Rivera Rodriguez

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The population of Puerto Rico has been heavily affected by chronic diseases; however, data remains limited on the influence of diabetes mellitus (DM), hypertension, and obesity on the probability of COVID-19 diagnosis. The purpose of this quantitative study was to evaluate the association between non-communicable diseases that included DM, obesity, hypertension, and COVID-19 diagnosis, controlling for age and sex and person exposure in Puerto Rico. The sample consisted of 1,463 participants who underwent a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for COVID-19 from April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021. Results from adjusted multivariable logistic regression analyses established that obesity OR …

Cep76 Impairment At The Centrosome-Cilium Interface Contributes To A Spectrum Of Ciliopathies, Kamal Khan, Erika Tavares, Katherine Bishara, Aysegul Ozanturk, Leila Qebibo, Stephan Frangakis, Daniel G Calame, Isabelle Meunier, Béatrice Bocquet, Rafal Ploski, Mohammad Ayman Al Khateeb, Dana Marafi, Luke Mansard, Lena Damaj, Richard A Lewis, Farid Ullah, Thomas Arbogast, Jackson P Ogden, Madeleine Harion, Marjolaine Willems, Maha S Zaki, Tobias Bartolomaeus, Anne-Françoise Roux, James R Lupski, Malgorzata Rydzanicz, Rami Abou Jamra, Francis Ramond, Elise Heon, Lydie Burglen, Erica E Davis

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Dysfunction at the centrosome-cilium interface underlies a broad range of ciliopathies. Here, we identify biallelic variants in CEP76, encoding a centrosomal protein, in eight unrelated individuals presenting with neurodevelopmental, ocular, and variable additional multisystem features. Proband-derived fibroblasts and CEP76-depleted RPE1 cells display ciliary deficits, including impaired cilium formation and length, disrupted transition zone architecture, and impaired IFT88-mediated anterograde intraflagellar transport. Zebrafish cep76 mutants recapitulate key clinical phenotypes, and in vitro complementation assays confirm pathogenicity for all tested human disease-associated variants. Proteomics analysis identifies CEP76 interactors, including known partners CCP110 and CEP97, and highlights clinically and functionally relevant candidates, including …

A Lightweight Microchained Architecture For Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Network Reputation Systems, Simeon Ogunbunmi, Ronghua Xu, Yu Chen

Michigan Tech Publications

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks are widely adopted for diverse applications in modern Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, ranging from last-mile deliveries to infrastructure inspections. The growing reliance on UAVs makes a secure and trustworthy network environment essential. However, deploying a practical reputation framework in resource-constrained UAV networks necessitates a lightweight, high-throughput, and scalable solution. This paper introduces a Lightweight Microchained ARchitecture (LiMAR) for UAV network reputation systems. LiMAR presents a novel lightweight microchained blockchain model optimized for UAV networks, addressing key blockchain overheads such as storage bloat, high validation costs, and consensus delays. By separating operational data from on-chain …

The Diamond, October 17, 2025, Dordt University

Dordt Diamond

• Front Page: Raiders Stand Down - Dordt Football Defeats Northwestern for First Time in Program History; Dordt Data Breach Ongoing; Archive Artifacts - Hulst Library Receives Historical Religious Texts
• Feature: Small Bug, Big Bite - No-See-Um Season at Dordt; Music After Midnight; Staying Home; Dr. Dave Mulder Publishes Book on AI in Education; College Coffee Culture in Sioux County; Crossing Borders - Joe Bakker's Journey as an Online and In-Person Educator; Gen Z Men Trending Toward Christianity
• Politics: The Tylenol Debate - Does it Really Cause Autism?; The Federal Government Shuts Down; Students Anticipate Midterm Elections
• News …

Beyond The Flames: Housing Justice And Rebuilding After The Wildfires, Michala Storms, Awoenam Mauna-Woanya, Christopher Chinn, Kaimipono D. Wenger

Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law

The speakers for this symposium explored the intersection of housing justice and the legal and policy obstacles encountered in rebuilding efforts in Los Angeles following the devastating wildfires. The wildfires burned more than 55,000 acres. That's approximately the size of Los Angeles city. Destroyed over 16,251 structures and has claimed at least 29 lives. These fires were the most catastrophic in all of Los Angeles County's history. The speakers discussed the challenges faced by displaced communities amid ongoing housing shortages, as well as the broader implications for housing policy and zoning. The conversation examined how attorneys, policy makers and the …

The George-Anne Deep Dive, Georgia Southern University

George-Anne Media Group: Newsletters & Magazines

No abstract provided.

From Classroom To Clinic: Innovative Strategies To Develop And Assess Clinical Readiness And Student Success, Megan Frazee, Nicole M. Sleddens, Tessa M. Wells

Posters and Presentations: Physical Therapy

Clinical education readiness is a foundational expectation in physical therapist education and a core requirement of CAPTE accreditation. In response to national concerns regarding variability in student preparedness, the American Council of Academic Physical Therapy published a set of core knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that students should demonstrate prior to beginning full-time clinical experiences. Many of these KSAs emphasize competencies within the affective domain, such as adherence to professional standards and effective communication. Clinical reasoning is also highlighted as a key component essential for clinical readiness. However, these competencies are often underemphasized and difficult to assess prior to clinical …

Neuro Rehab In Rural America: Interprofessional Strategies For Implementing Evidence Based Practice, Stacie Mae Larreau Christensen, Rebecca L. Kinnison, Amy J. Goldman, Colleen Spellman

Posters and Presentations: Physical Therapy

No abstract provided.

Educating About Military Culture: Lived Experiences Of Nurse Educators, Jennifer C. Dodge

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite national initiatives designed to expand healthcare programs and resources for veterans, there is a lack of knowledge about military culture and health problems specific to this demographic among registered nurses who serve in a role to impact the suicide rate among the veteran population. The purpose of this qualitative study, guided by Leininger’s culture care theory and Benner’s novice to expert model, was to understand the lived experiences of associate degree in nursing (ADN) nurse educators in non-Veterans Health Administration-affiliated programs regarding teaching undergraduate nursing students about military veteran culture. Fifteen ADN nurse educators, selected through purposeful sampling, participated …

Home Health Agency Ownership As A Predictor Of 30-Day Readmissions In Illinois, Tonya Gray

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The health outcome of reducing 30-day Medicare readmissions continues to be a constant measurement of quality patient care. Post-acute services, like home health care, play a vital role in national efforts to improve patient care, contributing to cost reductions. This quantitative study explored the relationship between home health agency (HHA) ownership (for-profit vs. nonprofit) and Medicare 30-day readmissions by race, age, and gender. The three research questions addressed the independent variable, type of HHA ownership (for-profit vs. nonprofit), and the impact on the dependent variables, 30-day Medicare readmissions by race, age, and gender in Illinois. Binomial logistic regression was used …

Fy2026 All Salaries Over $50,000, Clemson University

Salary Reports

No abstract provided.

Prioritizing Data Quality In Machine Learning For Thermophysical Property Prediction: A Case Study On Normal Boiling Points Of Organic Compounds, Frank T. Mtetwa, Neil F. Giles, W. Vincent Wilding, Thomas A. Knotts Iv

Faculty Publications

Accurate prediction of the normal boiling point (NBP) of organic compounds is essential for the design and optimization of chemical processes. This is especially true for modern practice since experimental measurements of many compounds of contemporary importance are difficult to perform due to cost, purity, and stability issues. Traditional methods, such as group contribution (GC) and quantitative structure–property relationship (QSPR) approaches, are limited by inflexibility and diminishing accuracy in these situations. Machine learning (ML) approaches have shown promise but are plagued by two weaknesses for the nonspecialist: ease of use (especially compared to GC and QSPR) and proven accuracy for …

From Statistical Dependence To The Space Of Possible Superdeterministic Theories, Mordecai Waegell, Kelvin J. Mcqueen

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Bell’s theorem demonstrates that any physical theory that is consistent with the predictions of quantum mechanics, and which satisfies some apparently innocuous assumptions, must violate the principle of local causality. It may therefore be possible to maintain local causality by rejecting one of these other assumptions instead. One possibility that has recently received significant attention involves rejecting the principle of statistical independence (SI). In this paper, we consider the frequency interpretation of SI, which states that ρ(λ) ≈ ρ(λ|Z), where ρ(λ) is the relative frequency of an element of an ensemble being in the state λ, and Z is a …

The Perfect Host: Jwst Cepheid Observations In A Background-Free Type Ia Supernova Host Confirm No Bias In Hubble-Constant Measurements, Adam G. Riess, Siyang Li, Gagandeep S. Anand, Wenlong Yuan, Louise Breuval, Stefano Casertano, Lucas M. Macri, Dan Scolnic, Yukei S. Murakami, Alexei V. Filippenko

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

Cycle 1 JWST observations of Cepheids in Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) hosts resolved their red-giant-dominated near-infrared backgrounds, sharply reducing crowding and showing that photometric bias in lower-resolution Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data does not account for the Hubble tension. We present cycle 2 JWST observations of >100 Cepheids in NGC 3447, a unique system that pushes this test to the limit by transitioning from low to no background contamination. NGC 3447, an SN Ia host at D ≈ 25 Mpc, is an interacting pair comprising (i) a spiral with mixed stellar populations, typical of H0 calibrators, and (ii) a …

Evaluation Of Over-The-Counter Cutaneous Lidocaine Cream For Temporary Deafferentation In Upper Limb Rehabilitation: A Cross-Sectional Study, Kelsey Baker, Daniel Salinas, Maria Lozano Bonilla, Jared Hensley, Hunter M. Butler, Monica Lozano Garcia, Chelsea Erazo Macias, Ashley Tijerina, Victoria Cuello, Bharathi Gadad

School of Medicine Publications

Introduction: Topical or cutaneous methods of temporary deafferentation (TD) have shown potential as a tool to augment the effects of rehabilitative approaches for neurological conditions. TD has been suggested to achieve such effects due to its ability to suppress activity from afferent input that may be inhibitory to rehabilitative processes. However, most approaches to date have utilized prescription-grade anesthetic agents, which may be difficult to translate to routine outpatient rehabilitation or in remote settings. Here, we sought to evaluate whether TD could be achieved with readily available over-the-counter (OTC) 5% lidocaine topical anesthetic. We targeted the biceps brachii for TD, …

Teaching Statistical Literacy Through An Excel Class Project, Patricia Berchiolli, Omar Babun Codorniu

Faculty and Staff Publications & Presentations

Lynn University’s core curriculum, The Dialogues, enables students to develop critical thinking, communication, and innovation skills. As part of this curriculum, Introductory Statistics introduces students to key statistical concepts while showing how they can be applied in real-world situations using Excel. The highlight of the course is the Statistics Excel Project, where students create their own dataset with a mix of quantitative and qualitative variables. To keep the focus on learning statistical techniques rather than data collection, students use Excel’s random number generator for quantitative data, which also avoids the need for IRB approval. From there, they calculate statistical measures, …

Passenger Delight In Liminal Spaces: Uncovering The Dynamics Of Airport Airside F&B, Thorsten Merkle, Sushanta Das

ICHRIE Research Reports

The airport airside environment is a unique and highly consequential setting for consumer behavior, where passengers’ food and beverage (F&B) decisions are shaped by time pressure, emotional states, and spatial constraints. This study empirically validates two complementary frameworks - the CX Delightors Framework and the Airport Airside Consumption Model - in the U.S. context to deepen understanding of passenger behavior in this liminal space. Using survey data from 1,374 passengers across three major U.S. hub airports (DEN, PHX, SLC), we conducted principal component analyses to refine the original nine CX Delightors attributes into five robust dimensions: Hospitality & Ambiance, Value …

Evaluating Different Soil Health Parameters For Edge-Of-Field Water Quality, Dipesh Giri, Siddhartho Shekhar Paul, Yichao Rui, Molly Meyers

Symposium of Digital Agriculture

Soil health indicators are increasingly used to guide conservation practice outcomes, but their vertical distribution and relationship to nutrient losses in surface runoff remain understudied. Since 2016, we have conducted multi-depth soil health assessments across agricultural fields in the Great Lakes Basin transitioning to conservation practices such as cover cropping and no-till. Our goal was to identify soil metrics that are predictive of edge-of-field (EOF) water quality outcomes. We assessed 21 biological, chemical, and physical soil indicators at 0–5 cm and 5–15 cm depths, calculating stratification ratios (SR = 0–5 cm ÷ 5–15 cm) for 57 site-years. Nine indicators met …

Dronesar: A Uav Based Synthetic Sperture Radar For Soil Moisture Remote Sensing, Leo Li, Lena Azimi, Melba Crawford, James Garrison

Symposium of Digital Agriculture

Soil Moisture is a critical component of the earth water cycle and very important for plant health and development. DroneSAR is a drone based synthetic aperture radar technology that can provide high resolution field level soil moisture measurement data that can be used for flood/drought monitoring and crop yield prediction. Currently, this technology is under algorithm development for soil moisture retrieval.

Geospatial Modeling Of Spatiotemporal Variability In Farm-Scale Soil Organic Matter Dynamics, Amiya Kalra, Rachel Stevens, Shams R Rahmani, Daniel J. Quinn, Shaun Casteel, Siddhartho S. Paul

Symposium of Digital Agriculture

Soil organic matter (SOM) is a key indicator of soil health, which is vital for maintaining future crops and income. Furthering our understanding of long-term variability in SOM and digital soil mapping methods of SOM will help farmers make management decisions supporting stable yields. While SOM dynamics have been studied in some regional-scale and plot-level studies, their spatiotemporal variability at farm scale is largely unstudied. In this research, we used geospatial models to identify and interpret long-term trends (2015-2024) in SOM at farm scale using the Purdue University research farm in West Lafayette, Indiana as a case study. Our SOM …

The Political Construction Of Anti-Transgender Policy: A Critical Policy Analysis Of North Carolina State Legislators' Discursive Strategies, David Osworth, Morgan Edlin

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

In recent year anti-LGBTQ policy has been cropping up at the state level across the United States. While these policies have been described as unprecedented, they signal a period of retrenchment for the rights of queer and transgender individuals in the United States. This critical policy analysis of North Carolina state legislation that is decidedly homophobic and transgender examines the discursive tactics of policy actors (i.e. North Carolina Legislators) as they argue these policies during legislative sessions. Through our analysis of legislators’ commentary during House of Representative sessions we identified discursive formations that were considered allied with the LGBTQ community …

Wayward Joy In Queer Femme-Inist Educational Research, Sarah Stapleton, Lindsay Cavanaugh, Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This article draws on our experiences with “Femme Educational Futurities,” a dream-mapping (Author 2, 2023), critical arts-based, participatory-informed project about softness in K–12 schools, to explore the boundaries of queer, femme-inist research. We trace how our attempts to enact research softly (Schwartz, 2020) led us towards wayward joy (Hartman, 2019): a messy affective terrain marked by connection, vulnerability, shame, and hope. For each author, we identify what Applebaum (1995) calls a “stop” moment and explore within each instance the convergence of softness, radical love (hooks, 2000) and tender failure (Halberstam, 2011), and discuss what joy means to us as a …

Myths And Magical Thinking: American Civil Religion, The Establishment Clause, And “Codified Irrationality” In Anti-Crt Measures, Kyle Reinhard

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In Part I, I preview some of the overlapping tensions in U.S. public schooling created by the occasionally competing mandates of education federalism and democratic theory; describe the current state of the law with respect to the constitutionality of state and local governments seeking to inculcate (allegedly) prosocial community values in curriculum; and consider how battles over the meaning of “patriotism” through the decades show that ideology and religion often blend—and still, inevitably, make it—into the public square broadly nonetheless.

In Part II, I describe how religion is a useful tool, both descriptively and as a constitutional jurisprudential framework, …

From Freedom Schools To Freedom: A New Vision Of Desegregation, Joseph Kim

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

I begin with Part I, where I hone in on the school integration movement of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. I start at Brown v. Board of Education. When asked about Brown, most if not all people associate it with the racial integration of segregated public schools and the demise of Plessy v. Ferguson’s separate-but-equal doctrine. However, importantly, I argue that racial integration was not necessarily required by Brown. Rather than mandating racial integration of segregated schools, Brown mandated desegregation of segregated schools. The distinction between “desegregation” and “racial integration” is an important one. While …

Adaptive User Interface Lighting Based On Ambient Conditions, David Murphy, Gustavo Sonoda, Andrew Andreson Stewart, Kenichi Yoneda, Christian Robertson

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes techniques for adapting user interface (UI) lighting of an electronic device to blend with its ambient light conditions. Per techniques of this disclosure, on-screen UI elements on the device are dynamically relit to appear as if they are physical objects being illuminated by actual light sources in the surrounding environment. A model of the ambient lighting environment is created that includes the color, intensity, and location of point light sources in front of the device. Additionally, UI elements associated with an underlying operating environment as well as application specific UI elements are treated as part of a …

A Method And System For Recovering Useable, Secure And Available Key For Blockchain Applications, Panagiotis Chatzigiannis, Shimaa Ahmed, Suvradip Chakraborty

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure relates to methods and systems for recovering useable, secure and available key for blockchain applications. The method involves receiving an input story from a user that encapsulates a memorable life experience and processing this using a natural language processing (NLP) model to create a semantic embedding vector. Additionally, the method optionally collects a biometric sample to produce biometric embedding, which is combined with semantic embedding. Locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) is applied to this combined embedding to create a fixed-length bitstring, which is then processed through a fuzzy extractor to produce a stable, cryptographically strong key for securing digital …

Codfish In Portugal: Drafting A Proposition Of A National Tourist Itinerary, Cristina Carvalho, António Gonçalves

International Journal of Tour Guiding and Visitor Attraction Research

The purpose of this empirical study is to draft a proposition on a tourist itinerary feasible of being organised, promoted and interpreted in its technical features by stakeholders, namely tour operators, promoters and official guides across Portugal. This themed proposition on codfish links towns such as Viana do Castelo, Ílhavo and Lisbon, thus encompassing manifold cultural expression elements, from cod schooners to museums, and from gastronomy to events. As an empirical study, the authors resort to data collected from several scientific sources to base its (yet brief) literary review on cultural tourism and heritage interpretation. Their experience in tour guiding …

Physics 2425 Lecture Slides Volume 1, Chapter 6: Application Of Newton's Laws, Raji Kannampuzha Ph.D.

Physics

This page provides lecture slides for Calculus-based University Physics I (PHYS 2425). Chapters covered in the course are based on OpenStax Physics Volume I and Volume II from Rice University. These materials were created as part of Collin College’s CARES OER Development Grant in 2022. Materials were peer-reviewed by Collin faculty and administrators as part of the grant process.

This work, "University Physics I Lecture Slides," is adapted from "University Physics Volume 1" and “University Physics Volume 2” by William Moebs, Samuel J. Ling, Jeff Sanny, et al., used under CC BY 4.0.

Physics 2425 Lecture Slides Volume 1, Chapter 8: Potential Energy And Conservation Of Energy, Raji Kannampuzha Ph.D.

Physics

This page provides lecture slides for Calculus-based University Physics I (PHYS 2425). Chapters covered in the course are based on OpenStax Physics Volume I and Volume II from Rice University. These materials were created as part of Collin College’s CARES OER Development Grant in 2022. Materials were peer-reviewed by Collin faculty and administrators as part of the grant process.

This work, "University Physics I Lecture Slides," is adapted from "University Physics Volume 1" and “University Physics Volume 2” by William Moebs, Samuel J. Ling, Jeff Sanny, et al., used under CC BY 4.0.

Learning How To Practice Takes Practice, Micah Killion, Robert Duke

John J. Cali School of Music Scholarship and Creative Works

Effective music learning depends on effective music practice. Although time spent with teachers is an important component of young musicians’ development, time spent alone practicing is perhaps even more consequential. Researchers and teachers have offered many prescriptions about effective music practice, yet observations of young musicians’ actual practice reveal that their behavior in the practice room is often quite unlike what teachers envision. The most important aspects of effective practice are the thinking, perceiving, and decision-making that serve to organize how musicians spend their time. We discuss how to help students focus their attention in ways that lead to the …