Digital Commons Network^™

Cancer-Targeted Pro-Theranostic Bi-Metallic Organo-Coordination Nanoparticles, Hengbo Huang, Lei Fang, Janaka Wansapura, Julie L Prior, Brad Manion, Baogang Xu, Cody Hongsermeier, Nisha Gamadia, Nicole Blasi, Rui Tang, Christopher Egbulefu, Monica Shokeen, James D Quirk, Samuel Achilefu

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

Costs Of Non-Metastatic Prostate Cancer Treatment Among Privately Insured Men In The United States, Ashley J. Housten, Su-Hsin Chang, Hannah E. Rice, Allison J. L'Hotta, Eric H. Kim, Bettina F. Drake, Joanna L. Buss, Mary C. Politi

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Our objective was to quantify the cumulative total and out-of-pocket (OOP) costs for 3 non-metastatic prostate cancer treatment modalities: radiation, surgery, and conservative management at intervals of 1-, 3-, and 5-years post-diagnosis. We predicted these cumulative costs for a typical patient to improve cost transparency, facilitate conversations about potential costs, and to help advance non-metastatic prostate cancer cost evaluation.

METHODS: We used Merative™ MarketScan® Commercial Database data from 2007-2020. The cumulative total costs evaluated from the healthcare sector perspective were patient, clinician, and system/facility costs. We used descriptive statistics to summarize the sociodemographic characteristics of the cohort and a …

Semi-Supervised Multimodal Multi-Instance Learning For Aortic Stenosis Diagnosis, Zhe Huang, Xiaowei Yu, Benjamin S. Wessler, Michael C. Hughes

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Automated interpretation of ultrasound imaging of the heart (echocardiograms) could improve the detection and treatment of aortic stenosis (AS), a deadly heart disease. However, existing deep learning pipelines for assessing AS from echocardiograms have two key limitations. First, most methods rely on limited 2D cineloops, thereby ignoring widely available Spectral Doppler imaging that contains important complementary information about pressure gradients and blood flow abnormalities associated with AS. Second, obtaining labeled data is difficult. There are often far more unlabeled echocardiogram recordings available, but these remain underutilized by existing methods. To overcome these limitations, we introduce Semi-supervised Multimodal Multiple-Instance Learning (SMMIL), …

Safenav: Safe Path Navigation Using Landmark Based Localization In A Gps-Denied Environment, Ganesh Sapkota, Sanjay Madria

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In battlefield environments, adversaries frequently disrupt GPS signals, requiring alternative localization and navigation methods. Traditional vision-based approaches like Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) and Visual Odometry (VO) involve complex sensor fusion and high computational demand, whereas range-free methods like DV-HOP face accuracy and stability challenges in sparse, dynamic networks. This paper proposes LanBLoc-BMM, a navigation approach using landmark-based localization (LanBLoc) combined with a battlefield-specific motion model (BMM) and Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Its performance is benchmarked against three state-of-the-art visual localization algorithms integrated with BMM and Bayesian filters, evaluated on synthetic and real-imitated trajectory datasets using metrics including Average Displacement …

2024-25 Annual Report, Tennessee. Board Of Paroles

Annual Reports

This document is the annual report for the Tennessee Board of Parole during the fiscal year.

Piezo1-Mediated Calcium Influx Transiently Alters Nuclear Mechanical Properties Via Actin Remodeling In Chondrocytes, Jaquelin M Garcia-Castorena, Rosa Riester, Miranda Gamino-Ornelas, Nikitha Ada, Farshid Guilak, Marina Danalache

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Mechanosensation allows cells to generate intracellular signals in response to mechanical cues from their environment. Previous research has demonstrated that mechanical stress can alter the mechanical properties of the nucleus, affecting gene transcription, chromatin methylation, and nuclear mechanoprotection during mechanical loading. PIEZO1, a mechanically gated Ca

De Novo Lipid Synthesis In Cardiovascular Tissue And Disease, Tariq J Khan, Clay F Semenkovich, Mohamed A Zayed

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Most tissues have the capacity for endogenous lipid synthesis. A crucial foundational pathway for lipid synthesis is de novo lipid synthesis (DNL), a ubiquitous and complex metabolic process that occurs at high levels in the liver, adipose and brain tissue. Under normal physiological conditions, DNL is vital in converting excess carbohydrates into fatty acids. DNL is linked to other pathways, including the endogenous synthesis of phospholipids and sphingolipids. However, abnormal lipid synthesis can contribute to various pathologies and clinical conditions. Experimental studies involving dietary restriction and in vivo genetic modifications provide compelling evidence demonstrating the significance of lipid synthesis in …

Expert Consensus On The Diagnosis And Management Of Digoxin Toxicity, Jason B Hack, Sue Wingate, Ron Zolty, Michael W Rich, Paul J Hauptman

2020-Current year OA Pubs

While there has been a decline in the use of digoxin in patients with heart failure and atrial fibrillation, acute and chronic digoxin toxicity remains a significant clinical problem. Digoxin's narrow therapeutic window and nonspecific signs and symptoms of toxicity create clinical challenges and uncertainty around the diagnostic criteria of toxicity and responsive treatment choices for the bedside clinician. A systematic review of published literature on digoxin toxicity (34,587 publications over 6 decades, with 114 meeting inclusion criteria) was performed to develop 33 consensus statements on diagnostic and therapeutic approaches which were then evaluated through a modified Delphi process involving …

The Interrelationships Of Three Change Of Direction Ability Tests In Elite Female Volleyball Players: An Exploratory Study, William C. Wright, Elroy J. Aguiar, Lee J. Winchester, Michael V. Fedewa, Andrew D. Fields, Michael R. Esco

Research, Publications & Creative Work

Background: The purpose of this exploratory study is to evaluate the relationships between commonly used change of direction COD tests (t-test, L-drill, and 5-10-5 shuttle) in Division I female volleyball players.

Methods: Sixteen Division I female volleyball players (age = 19.4 ± 1.4 years, height = 176.2 ± 10.6 cm, weight = 71.5 ± 11.1 kg) participated in this study and completed three trials of the t-test, L-drill, and 5-10-5 shuttle in a randomized order. The best time for each test was recorded and analyzed. Pearson product correlations were used to determine the interrelationships between each of the three COD …

Environmental Monitoring Report: For Work Performed: July 1, 2022 Through June 30, 2023, Tennessee. Department Of Environment And Conservation

Environmental Monitoring Reports

This FY2023 EMR presents results for 20 independent projects, originally defined in TDEC’s FY2023 Environmental Monitoring Plan (EMP) and subsequently completed over the course of FY2023 period of performance.

Characterization Of The Biofilm-Forming Ability And Certain Virulence Characters Ofaeromonas Spp. Isolates From Rainbow Trout, Türker Çelebi̇, Ertan Emek Onuk, Esra Demi̇rbaş, Gökçen Di̇nç

Turkish Journal of Veterinary & Animal Sciences

Aeromonas spp., commonly found in the aquatic environment, cause infections in both fish and humans. Their pathogenicitydepends on various virulence factors and ability to form biofilm. The current study aimed to determine the biofilm-forming capabilitiesand certain virulence characteristics of 25 Aeromonas spp. isolates obtained from rainbow trout in Türkiye. The biofilm-forming abilitiesof isolates were investigated comparatively using Congo red agar (CRA), the tube method (TM), and tissue culture plates (TCPs).Potential virulence factors, including hemolytic activity, gelatinase production, serine protease activity, DNase activity, and motility,were evaluated using phenotypic tests. Additionally, the distribution of four known virulence genes, namely aerA, exu, fla, …

Effects Of A Diet Supplemented With A Blend Of Protected Organic Acids And Essential Oilson Growth Performance And Cecal Microbiota Composition In Broilers, Mehmet Akan, Kadi̇r Serdar Di̇ker, Serdar Özlü, Murat Çelebi̇, Seyyi̇de Sariçam İnce, Barişhan Doğan, Okan Eli̇bol

Turkish Journal of Veterinary & Animal Sciences

Organic acids (OAs) and essential oils (EOs) have several positive effects on the gut microbiota of broilers. In this study, weaimed to determine the efficacy of a blend of protected OAs and EOs [P(OA+EO)] on the growth performance and cecal microbiota ofbroiler chickens. A total of 160 Ross 308 broiler chickens, including 80 male and 80 female birds, all 1 day old, were randomly distributedbetween the control group (basal diet) and the treatment group [basal diet + 300 g/t P(OA+EO)] according to an 8-pen arrangementwith 4 replicates of 20 birds. Body weight (BW), body weight gain (BWG), feed consumption (FC), …

School Counseling District Leaders' Experiences With Anti-Dei Laws And Policies: A Phenomenological Investigation, Emily Goodman-Scott, Darrell J. Sampson, Kaprea F. Johnson, Dehaven Sawyer-Mays

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

School counseling district leaders (SCDLs) are instrumental in shaping district policy, supporting school counselors, and interfacing with both internal and external constituents; as such, their systemic lens is of particular importance, given the K-12 pushback on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) occurring at the state- and district-levels. As a result, we conducted a critical application of Husserl’s phenomenology to understand the collective experience of a sample of SCDLs (N = 10) working in locations with anti-DEI laws and/or policies, specifically those restricting Black, indigenous, and people of color and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning rights and topics. Through the …

The Nohs 2024 Code Of Ethics Update, Kevin C. Snow, Christian Williams, Ed Neukrug, Kristin Barker, Kristin Ballard, Braxton A. Morrison, Leslie C.M. Mcclane, Meghan N. Morgan, Stephanie Collins

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

The NOHS Ethics committee engaged in a revision of the Ethical Standards for Human Services Professionals (2024). This update focused on significant changes in the field of human services as they relate to a broad group of human services professionals. The article explores interviews with key members of the revision committee sharing their thoughts on the necessity for the current revision and the ever-present importance for human service professionals to understand and engage with the NOHS ethics code as an essential living document for the benefit of client well-being, to promote the integrity of the human services profession, and to …

Organizational Accounting In Value-Based Care: How Are You Really Doing?, Stephanie Fischer Mba, Jennifer Stephens Do

Administration & Leadership

No abstract provided.

Charge Your Clients: Payable Secure Computation And Its Applications, Cong Zhang, Liqiang Peng, Weiran Liu, Shuaishuai Li, Meng Hao, Lei Zhang, Dongdai Lin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The online realm has witnessed a surge in the buying and selling of data, prompting the emergence of dedicated data marketplaces. These platforms cater to servers (sellers), enabling them to set prices for access to their data, and clients (buyers), who can subsequently purchase these data, thereby streamlining and facilitating such transactions. However, the current data market is primarily confronted with the following issues. Firstly, they fail to protect client privacy, presupposing that clients submit their queries in plaintext. Secondly, these models are susceptible to being impacted by malicious client behavior, for example, enabling clients to potentially engage in arbitrage …

The Gradient Puppeteer: Adversarial Domination In Gradient Leakage Attacks Through Model Poisoning, Kunlan Xiang, Haomiao Yang, Meng Hao, Shaofeng Li, Haoxin Wang, Zikang Ding, Wenbo Jiang, Tianwei Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In Federated Learning (FL), clients share gradients with a central server while keeping their data local. However, malicious servers could deliberately manipulate the models to reconstruct clients' data from shared gradients, posing significant privacy risks. Although such Active Gradient Leakage Attacks (AGLAs) have been widely studied, they suffer from two severe limitations: 1) coverage: no existing AGLAs can reconstruct all samples in a batch from the shared gradients; 2) stealthiness: no existing AGLAs can evade principled checks of clients. In this paper, we address these limitations with two core contributions. First, we introduce a new theoretical analysis approach, which uniformly …

Financial Named Entity Recognition: How Far Can Llm Go?, Yi-Te Lu, Yintong Huo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The surge of large language models (LLMs) has revolutionized the extraction and analysis of crucial information from a growing volume of financial statements, announcements, and business news. Recognition for named entities to construct structured data poses a significant challenge in analyzing financial documents and is a foundational task for intelligent financial analytics. However, how effective are these generic LLMs and their performance under various prompts are yet need a better understanding. To fill in the blank, we present a systematic evaluation of state-of-the-art LLMs and prompting methods in the financial Named Entity Recognition (NER) problem. Specifically, our experimental results highlight …

Summer Research Fellowship Project Descriptions 2025, Clark Science Center's Summer Research Fellows Program

SURF Abstracts (Women in Science)

A summary of research done by Smith College’s 2025 Summer Research Fellowship (SURF) Program participants. Ever since its 1967 start, SURF has been a cornerstone of Smith’s science education. Supervised by faculty mentor-advisors drawn from the Clark Science Center and connected to its eighteen science, mathematics, and engineering departments and programs and associated centers and units. At summer’s end, SURF participants were asked to summarize their research experiences for this publication.

Georgia Southern Magazine, Georgia Southern University

Georgia Southern Magazine

• News and Events
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2025 Program, Georgia Southern University

Georgia Educational Research Association Conference

2025 Schedule

2025-2026 Georgia Southern University Women's Tennis Roster, Georgia Southern University

Women's Tennis Records

No abstract provided.

Self-Regulated Strategy Development (Srsd) In Timed And Untimed Writing Tasks For Primary Learners, Candice Miller

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This PhD dissertation describes an action research study focused on implementing the Self Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model to teach writing to address the challenges faced by Year 5 students in persuasive writing, particularly under timed conditions, and decreasing motivation aligned with national trends and school performance data. The aim of the current study was to enhance students' persuasive writing skills, writing attitudes, and self-efficacy and to examine the social validity of SRSD in an Australian classroom. The study specifically focused on timed and untimed writing conditions to examine the efficacy of the implemented SRSD model. The research employed a …

Pfedrag: A Personalized Federated Retrieval-Augmented Generation System With Depth-Adaptive Tiered Embedding Tuning, Hangyu He, Xin Yuan, Kai Wu, Ren Ping Liu, Wei Ni

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Large Language Models (LLMs) can undergo hallucinations in specialized domains, and standard Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) often falters due to general-purpose embeddings ill-suited for domain-specific terminology. Though domain-specific fine-tuning enhances retrieval, centralizing data introduces privacy risks. The use of federated learning (FL) can alleviate this to some extent, but faces challenges of data heterogeneity, poor personalization, and expensive training data generation. We propose pFedRAG, a novel Personalized Federated RAG framework, which enables efficient collaborative fine-tuning of embedding models to address these challenges. The key contribution is a new Depth-Adaptive Tiered Embedding (DATE) architecture, which comprises a Global Shared Layer, combined using …

The Ethics Of Patient And Public Involvement Across The Research Process: Towards Partnership With People With Aphasia, Deborah Hersh, Mark Israel, Ciara Shiggins

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background: Conducting Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in health research is a way of building knowledge that incorporates the experience of service users, adds research impact, and helps avoid wasting resources on findings that have little relevance to people or cannot be implemented. We argue that there is a need to extend ethical considerations currently focused on research participants with aphasia to encompass and guide expectations of involvement in partnerships with people with aphasia across the research lifecycle.

Method: We use the 2018 revision of the Australian National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research as the framework for this …

From Waste To Worth: Advances In Energy Recovery Technologies For Solid Waste Management, Tarek Abedin, Jagadeesh Pasupuleti, Johnny Koh Siaw Paw, Yaw Chong Tak, Md Rakibul Islam, Mohammad Khairul Basher, Mohammad Nur-E-Alam

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Abstract: Clean, inexpensive, and renewable energy sources with zero adverse environmental impact are essential for long-term sustainability. Implementing waste-to-energy (WtE) technologies has been suggested to improve solid waste management and promote the development of clean and sustainable urban environments. This involves the retrieval of waste materials and their conversion to electricity. By 2050, the global rate of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) production is anticipated to rise to 2.01 billion tonnes annually. This study evaluated various WtE technologies that have been developed to date. These technologies can be categorized into three groups: thermochemical methods (incineration, pyrolysis, and gasification), biochemical methods (anaerobic …

Increased Nitrate Intake From Beetroot Juice Over 4 Weeks Changes The Composition Of The Oral, But Not The Intestinal Microbiome, Rebeka Fejes, Joana Séneca, Petra Pjevac, Martin Lutnik, Stefan Weisshaar, Nina Pilat, Romy Steiner, Karl Heinz Wagner, Richard J. Woodman, Catherine P. Bondonno, Jonathan M. Hodgson, David Berry, Michael Wolzt, Oliver Neubauer

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Inorganic dietary nitrate, metabolized through an endogenous pathway involving nitrate reducing bacteria, improves cardiovascular health, but its effects on the oral and intestinal microbiomes of older adults with treated hypertension are unknown. Our study investigated the effects of nitrate from beetroot juice on the oral and intestinal microbiomes of this population. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial was conducted with 15 participants (age range: 56–71 years), who consumed nitrate-rich or nitrate-depleted (placebo) beetroot juice for 4 weeks. The oral microbiome analysis revealed an increase in Neisseria and a decrease in Veillonella relative abundance (for both, PERMANOVA p < 0.001), with no significant changes in the intestinal microbiome composition. Our findings suggest that an increased dietary nitrate intake from a vegetable source may selectively modulate the oral microbiome and promote an increased abundance of nitrate-reducing species, which was previously associated with improved cardiovascular health outcomes.

The Impact Of Opening A Private Hospital Emergency Department On The Hospital And Patient Characteristics, Christiana Mustac, John Maxwell, Paola Chivers, Gordon Laing, Terry Bayliss

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Introduction Australian public hospital emergency departments (EDs) are under increasing pressure with higher patient volumes, failure to meet triage target times and increased ambulance wait times. Further, there is limited literature exploring how the opening of an ED affects Australian hospitals. This study focuses on Hollywood Private Hospital (HPH), a large private hospital in Western Australian which opened their ED in November 2021. The research aimed to examine how the introduction of the ED influenced the hospital’s service demands and resourcing. Method This study investigated hospital inpatient characteristics including admissions, clinical deterioration episodes, deaths, aft er-hours theatre activity and companion …

Towards Carbon Neutrality In Tourism: Pathways And Future Research Directions, Pezhman Hatamifar, Kourosh Esfandiar, Zahed Ghaderi

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Achieving carbon neutrality (CN) in tourism is essential for mitigating climate change, yet existing literature provides limited guidance on effective pathways. This review addresses this gap by examining key strategies for carbon-neutral tourism, integrating both mitigation and adaptation approaches across three pathways: individual actions, industry initiatives, and destination policies to advance CN goals in tourism. This review found that achieving CN in the tourism industry necessitates a multifaceted approach involving stakeholders at various levels, from individuals to destination managers and policymakers, on both the supply and demand sides. Additionally, addressing behavioral changes, ethical considerations, and transparent carbon offset programs are …

Securing Secrets: Exploring The Aes Encryption And Key Security Capabilities Of Chatgpt, Kayla Taylor

Student Works

The development and increasing accessibility of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools and large language models (LLMs) have allowed cryptographers to explore a variety of cryptanalysis problems in dynamic and interactive ways. Prompt engineering, the process by which input text is tested and refined to elicit a desired response from LLMs, is a nascent area of research that remains largely unexplored in many contexts, including cryptography. This study will explore the potential applications and limitations of prompt engineering in the context of Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption and key security with OpenAI’s ChatGPT (GPT-4o) through two main objectives: First, given a …