Digital Commons Network^™

The Ghannouchi Test: The Compatibility Of Religious Ideas And Secular Democracy, Andrew P. Sheppe

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Secular, democratic societies and governments evolved out of religious societies and defined themselves partially in opposition to religious authority. This historical relationship has led to a debate about the compatibility between religious ideas and modern, secular society. Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde posited that secular, democratic societies still depend on religious foundations. Jürgen Habermas disagrees, claiming that processes of rational dialogue can provide sufficient support.

Two prominent twentieth century theologians, Reinhold Niebuhr and Abraham Joshua Heschel demonstrate that democratic systems are enriched and protected by theistic ideas, thus supporting Böckenförde’s dictum. However, they both recognize the importance of epistemic humility and a …

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Resources To Treat Seasonal Affective Disorder, Amanda Teschner, Ayonitemi Odukoya, Brooke Waldon, Joshua Spence, Katelynn Paluch, Marilyn Li, Mercylia Untono, Nina Agemy

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Building Healthy Habits: Preventative Strategies For Childhood Obesity, Alissa Ward, Cameron Craig, Chloe Sutlick, Gabrielle Henry, Isabelle Adams, Jerimiah Gumma, Omer Abdullah, Sami Zaidi

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Improving Access To Educational Resources And Health Outcomes For Diabetes, Ami Suresh, Conner Slotnick, Danielle Santoyo, Eric Mylfurry, Karen Abdelmalek, Martin Murad, Preston Parana, Urva Mehveen

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Exercise Initiatives To Improve Child Obesity, Alice Werynski, Ashley Simbafo, Diana Kernen, Koa Williams, Linda Beqaj, Noah Krepostman, Trevor Buck

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Resources To Improve Incidence Of Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease, Anthony Kavanagh, Arianna Mcclellan, Asa Smith-Villegas, Djelika Kabore, Lina Shalaby, Tara Rahmani, Vyom Grover, Zackariah Farah

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Addressing Adolescent Depression Through Community And Systems-Based Care, Anirudh Gopalam, Connor Genschaw, Don'aa Williams, Gerardo Rubio Monroy, Jennifer Nnadozie, Murray Meri, Tina Tripathi, Abdullah Mahmood

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Empowering Families With Resources To Combat Childhood Obesity, Abisola Fasakin, Alqasim Elnaggar, David Abdelnour, Mujeebah Kamal-Muili, Prit Patel, Ryan Palazzolo, Sydney Huston

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Pediatric Depression And Anxiety: Hope Through Healthcare, Andreas Mozny, Arjan Goenaga Castillo, Audrey Millar, Ebony Williams, Griffin Lotze, Haytham Al-Qasmi, Kamontip Jongnarangsin, Tricia Jain

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Improving Lifestyle Choices In Children Withtype-2 Diabetes Mellitus, David Williams, Hariharan Ramakrishnan, Luv Thakkar, Sanjana Kumar, Srikar Munukutla, Stephan Gonzalez, Taqwa Naas, Ted Hirschfield

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Resources To Improve Diabetes Mellitus In Adult Males, Abdul Naser Zamzami, David Echeverri, Isabella Costa, Musaed Al Rashidi, Pooja Menon, Xiaohan Zhan, Zain Abdun-Noor

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Improving The Understanding Of The Complexities Underlying Adult Obesity, Ethan Montoya, Maria Villalba, Morzouk Lawal, Nataliah Jwaida, Safa Razvi, Susan Lagrand, Vittal Ashwin Kandukuri, Robert Chalhoub

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Lifestyle Modification Resources For Cardiovascular Disease Risk Reduction, Ali Mustapha, Cheyenne Gonzales, Clara Devota, Emily Yao, Mahmood Alsughayer, Marcel Addis Jackson, Namrata Vedagarbha, Shane Tinsley

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Resources To Prevent Adolescent Hypertension, Anabelle Dally, Carlton Parker, Henry Ubaydi, Isabella Garcia, Joshua Mathews, Lila Tudrick, Michelle Brown, Ralph Durgham

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Barriers To Effective Diabetes Management In A Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Setting, Amaris Bradley, Karen Nakhla, Kyle Tsutsui, Mohamad Fardous, Saihaj Deol, William Frazier, Yeganeh Tabatabaei Alavi, Zackary Taylor

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Treatment, Resources, And Prevalence Of Depression Among Adolescents With Chronic Health Conditions, Daeho Kim, Elyse Vanderwoude, Francesca Settineri, James Moss, Karen Crile, Matthew Mellor, Rachele Willard, Sarah Farhat

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: A Highly Misunderstood, Multifactorial Disease, Alexa Maruszewski, Ali Eidy, Chelsea Kumi, Hailey Hartmann, Jacob Pawlowski, Kinan Suliman, Laura Garcia, William Davie

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: Preventative Measures To Mitigate The Development Of Atherosclerotic Coronary Artery Disease, Alexander Orr, Celina Wu, Elijah Marquez, Fateh Ahmad, Kendyll Gartrelle, Logan Harrison, Mia Sooch, Zahra Chehab, Emilio Espinal

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Chronic Illness Education 2025: School-Centered Interventions To Address Childhood Obesity, Aaron Yang, Amanda York, James Mcknight, Madison Jordan, Myron Shaba, Riley Marchin, Rita Pisegna, Constantine Tangalos

Patient Education Projects

No abstract provided.

Mission Engineering Competencies Workshop Report: Roles, Responsibilities, And Skills, James D. Moreland, Jr. (Editor), Thomas Irwin, Robert-Allen Baker

Center for Mission Engineering (CME) Publications

This report summarizes the findings of a two-day Old Dominion University Mission Engineering Workshop involving the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the University of New South Wales, and Old Dominion University, focused on defining the roles, competencies, and skills essential to Mission Engineering. It presents a structured competency framework and offers recommendations to guide workforce development, training, and cross-agency collaboration in support of complex, mission-driven systems.

Telogen Effluvium And Anesthesia Considerations: A Case Report., Elizabeth Johnson-Gray, Samantha A Currier, Hanen Fernandez, Matt Brown, Matthias Franzen

Ambulatory and Primary Care Articles

Telogen effluvium is a form of non-scarring hair loss characterized by premature shedding of hair. Pathophysiologically, telogen effluvium occurs when a significant number of hair follicles prematurely enter the telogen phase, resulting in excessive shedding. The exact mechanism is unclear, but it is believed to involve alterations in the hair follicle's growth cycle, possibly mediated by illness, infection, major surgery, low protein intake, or hormonal changes. Some medications can also be linked to this disease, such as beta blockers, carbamazepine, and vitamin A. When affected hairs are in the resting phase, noticeable hair shedding occurs. Our patient was a 61-year-old …

A Phenomenological Study On The Enabling Role Of Digital Competencies In Heutagogical Learning Contexts, Jennifer Dean

Masters

This study examines how digital competencies contribute to independent learning within heutagogical contexts in higher education.   The research was conducted to address assumptions that digital competence directly enables learner autonomy, despite limited understanding of this empirical relationship in practice.   A qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological approach was employed, using nine semi-structured interviews to explore learners’ lived experiences in digitally mediated environments.   The findings indicate that self-directed learning is primarily driven by intrinsic motivation and often occurs unconsciously.   Digital competencies were found to act as enabling factors by facilitating access, flexibility and engagement, however, their influence on autonomy was context-dependent rather than deterministic. …

Expanding Equity And Innovation In Pharmaceutical Law And Drug Development: Paying Clinical Trial Participants For Their Data, Steve Calandrillo, Bernadette Tosti, Jefferson Smith, Jamison Koeman

Articles

Bringing a drug to market is exceedingly expensive and exposes pharmaceutical manufacturers to significant legal risk. But when companies are successful, their profits make the PowerBall jackpot look like petty cash. Staggering rewards measure in the billions or millions for the firms, CEOs, pharmacies, drug benefit managers, data brokers, and many more actors in the pharmaceutical-to-patient pipeline. The only individuals who don’t get paid handsomely are the clinical trial participants, whose voluntary participation and data helped make those successes possible. It is long past time that we reform the legal and regulatory roadblocks to paying clinical trial participants in the …

Torus Probabilistic Principal Component Analysis, Anahita Nodehi, Mousa Golalizadeh, Mehdi Maadooliat, Claudio Agostinelli

Mathematical and Statistical Science Faculty Research and Publications

Analyzing data in non-Euclidean spaces, such as bioinformatics, biology, and geology, where variables represent directions or angles, poses unique challenges. This type of data is known as circular data in univariate cases and can be termed spherical or toroidal in multivariate contexts. In this paper, we introduce a novel extension of probabilistic principal component analysis (PPCA) designed for toroidal (or torus) data, termed torus probabilistic PCA (TPPCA). We provide detailed algorithms for implementing TPPCA and demonstrate its applicability to torus data. To assess the efficacy of TPPCA, we perform comparative analyses using a simulation study and three real datasets. Our …

Graph Convolutional Networks Enable Fast Hemorrhagic Stroke Monitoring With Electrical Impedance Tomography, J. Toivanen, V. Kolehmainen, A. Paldanius, A. Hänninen, A. Hauptmann, Sarah J. Hamilton

Mathematical and Statistical Science Faculty Research and Publications

Objective: To develop a fast image reconstruction method for stroke monitoring with electrical impedance tomography with image quality comparable to computationally expensive nonlinear model-based methods. Methods: A post-processing approach with graph convolutional networks is employed. Utilizing the flexibility of the graph setting, a graph U-net is trained on linear difference reconstructions from 2D simulated stroke data and applied to fully 3D images from realistic simulated and experimental data. An additional network, trained on 3D vs. 2D images, is also considered for comparison. Results: Post-processing the linear difference reconstructions through the graph U-net significantly improved the image quality, resulting in images …

Diet, Gut Microbiota, And Histidine Metabolism Toward Imidazole Propionate Production In Relation To Type 2 Diabetes, Yanbo Zhang, Christina Cordero, Bing Yu, Robert D Burk, Robert Kaplan, Qibin Qi

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Objective: To examine associations of serum imidazole propionate (ImP), histidine, and their ratio with incident type 2 diabetes (T2D) and related dietary and gut microbial factors in U.S. Hispanic/Latino people.

Research design and methods: In the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, we evaluated serum ImP, histidine, and ImP-to-histidine ratio at baseline (2008-2011) and their cross-sectional associations with dietary intake and prospective associations with incident T2D over ∼12 years (n = 4,632). In a subsample with gut microbiota data during a follow-up visit (2016-2018), we examined gut microbial species associated with serum ImP and their potential interactions with dietary intake. …

High-Impact Chronic Pain And Cognitive Decline Among Mexicans Aged 60 And Older From 2012 To 2018, Rafael Samper-Ternent

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Pain is associated with cognitive decline, but prior research has not considered differences between high- and low-impact chronic pain or low-and middle-income countries, such as Mexico. Our objective was to evaluate the association between high-impact chronic pain and cognitive decline among older adults in Mexico. We used data from the 2012-2018 Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS), a nationally representative study of older Mexican adults (60+). Pain, measured at each wave, was categorized as high-impact chronic pain (pain that limits daily activities), low-impact chronic pain (pain that did not limit daily activities), and no chronic pain. Cognition was measured at …

Lessons From Mysticism For Healthcare Providers: Health Care As A Space For Intersubjective Encounters Of Care, Micaela Plantinga, Alexandre A. Martins

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

Society’s deep divisions, fueled by individualism, competition, consumerism, rigid ideologies, and limited dialogue, have impacted health care, leading to weakened connections between providers and patients. In the U.S., heavy reliance on medical technology and the rise of AI have further eroded these intersubjective bonds, reducing empathetic engagement in care. To address this challenge, the paper explores insights from Christian mystics Saint Teresa of Avila and Edith Stein. Teresa’s teachings on self-examination and humility, despite her life as a cloistered nun, influenced both her religious order and the broader Church. Meanwhile, Stein’s phenomenological approach emphasized empathy and "suffering with" others, viewing …

The Ethics Of Consent: Reflecting On The Case Of R/Changemyview, Casey Fiesler, Jessica Vitak, Michael Zimmer

Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

The SIGCHI Research Ethics Committee was established in 2016 in recognition of how the shifting technological landscape has complicated research ethics in HCI. Our research community has also taken up the call to help understand and guide this complex space, examining topics such as research taking place on online platforms without explicit consent, the use of bots as confederates in field experiments, debriefing for large-scale experiments, HCI research that involves or implicates marginalized populations, and ethical considerations for studying social media platforms such as Reddit.

Reduction Of Neuronal Activity Mediated By Blood-Vessel Regression In The Adult Brain, Xiaofei Gao, Xing-Jun Chen, Meng Ye, Jun-Liszt Li, Nannan Lu, Di Yao, Bo Ci, Fei Chen, Lijun Zheng, Yating Yi, Shiwen Zhang, Zhanying Bi, Xinwei Gao, Yuanlei Yue, Tingbo Li, Jiafu Lin, Ying-Chao Shi, Kaibin Shi, Nicholas E Propson, Yubin Huang, Katherine Poinsatte, Zhaohuan Zhang, Dale B Bosco, Shi-Bing Yang, Ralf H Adams, Volkhard Lindner, Fen Huang, Long-Jun Wu, Hui Zheng, Simon Hippenmeyer, Ann M Stowe, Bo Peng, Marta Margeta, Qingchun Guo, Xiaoqun Wang, Qiang Liu, Jakob Körbelin, Martin Trepel, Hui Lu, Guoen Cai, Bo O Zhou, Bo Shen, Ying-Mei Lu, Wenzhi Sun, Jie-Min Jia, Feng Han, Hu Zhao, Robert M Bachoo, Woo-Ping Ge

Center on Aging Staff Publications

The brain vasculature supplies neurons with glucose and oxygen, but little is known about how vascular plasticity contributes to brain function. Using longitudinal in vivo imaging, we report that a substantial proportion of blood vessels in the adult mouse brain sporadically occlude and regress. Their regression proceeds through sequential stages of blood-flow occlusion, endothelial cell collapse, relocation or loss of pericytes, and retraction of glial endfeet. Regressing vessels are found to be widespread in mouse, monkey and human brains. We further reveal that blood vessel regression cause a reduction of neuronal activity due to a dysfunction in mitochondrial metabolism and …