Digital Commons Network^™

A Story Of Oppression A Psychological And Creative Approach, Juan R. Morillo

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The aim of this project is to survey the manner in which oppression is expressed in selected works of literature. It is a topic that not only am I familiar with through my studies of literature and psychology, but one that I, as well as every Venezuelan expatriate has witnessed and felt for their country. The project focuses on social and political oppression, using the current Venezuelan crisis as a focal point, and selected literary sources as a framework. I will analyze dystopian classics such as George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, as well as Margaret Atwood’s The …

Exploring Electroweak Baryogenesis Within Real Scalar Models: Theoretical Foundations And Collider Phenomenology, Corine M. Smith

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The matter–antimatter asymmetry and the hierarchy problem related to the Higgs boson mass remain key open questions in high energy physics. Electroweak Baryogenesis offers a solution to the asymmetry by modifying the Higgs sector to allow a strongly first-order phase transition. This work investigates two real singlet scalar extensions of the Standard Model, incorporating novel quartic and triple couplings between the new scalar fields, providing a testable framework for vacuum-induced scalar mixing effects and enhanced multi-Higgs boson production. These interactions modify the scalar self-coupling and can induce resonant enhancements in multi-Higgs boson production processes. The theoretical constraints are derived from …

The National Survey Of Donor Advised Fund Managers: Executive Summary And Key Findings, Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative (Dafrc), H. Daniel Heist, Danielle Vance-Mcmullen, Rachel Sumsion, Jeff Williams

Research, Reports, and Publications

The Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative (DAFRC) is a group of academic and nonprofit researchers leading a 4-year, comprehensive research initiative to provide empirical data and insights on the characteristics and activities of donor advised funds (DAFs) in the United States.

This report, which is the second of three reports by the DAFRC, provides insights into DAF sponsors’ perceptions, policies, and practices. The report’s findings are based on a 2023 management survey of 128 DAF sponsors. This survey covered topics related to DAF strategy, operational capacity, philanthropic advising, internal policy execution, and the marketing of DAF sponsors.

The National Survey Of Donor Advised Fund Managers, Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative (Dafrc), H. Daniel Heist, Danielle Vance-Mcmullen, Rachel Sumsion, Jeff Williams

Research, Reports, and Publications

Donor advised funds (DAFs) are the fastest-growing form of philanthropy. In 2023, nearly 1.8 million DAF accounts received about $59 billion in contributions, distributed about $55 billion in grants, and ended the year with about $252 billion in assets (National Philanthropic Trust, 2024).

The Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative (DAFRC) is a group of academic and nonprofit researchers leading a 4-year, comprehensive research initiative to provide empirical data and insights on the characteristics and activities of donor advised funds (DAFs) in the United States. One of the initiative's main goals is to gather and analyze information about DAFs that is …

Determinants Of Success On The Bar Exam: One Law School’S Experience 2010–2023, Morris Ratner, Stephen N. Goggin, Stefano Moscato, Margaret Greer, Elizabeth Mcgriff

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fewer Wetlands, More Drainage: Forensic Mapping Of Wetland Loss And Drainage Alteration Illustrates The Hydrological Transformation Of Coastal Watersheds, Kai C. Rains, Seanacy A. Lawlor, Edgar J. Guerron-Orejuela, Shawn M. Landry, W J. Kleindl, Mark C. Rains

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Land use-land cover (LULC) change is widely implicated in coastal water quality degradation, but we often lack understanding of how LULC change has varied spatiotemporally because so much change occurred before the advent of modern mapping. In this study, we overcome this challenge by using forensic mapping techniques of LULC change over the past 175 years in coastal watersheds on the Atlantic Coast of Florida, USA. We benchmark historical mapping products to modern mapping standards using historical products. These include maps and notes from the Public Land Survey System, military campaigns, and navigation surveys from the nineteenth century, and aerial …

Aquatic Invasive Species Survey And Treatment On Lake Umatilla And Lake Celilo 2023-2024 Report, Garbiel E. Campbell, Jacob Rose

Center for Lakes and Reservoirs Publications and Presentations

Flowering Rush (Butomus umbellatus) is an invasive aquatic plant in the Pacific Northwest that threatens salmon habitat. The Center for Lakes and Reservoirs staff surveyed for this and other aquatic species from 2023 and 2024 in the Columbia River in Lake Umatilla and Lake Celilo. This document summarizes their survey efforts including their protocols, data, and small-scale removal efforts.

Problems Of Compliance In Election Law, Lisa Marshall Manheim

Articles

Elections do not operate in perfect compliance with the law. Instead, irregularities are routine and, to some extent, inevitable. The law of elections responds to this tension by recognizing that only some legal irregularities, under only some circumstances, have even the potential to invalidate an electoral process. One manifestation of this response involves variable standards of compliance. Doctrines implicated by these standards recognize that some election rules require only substantial compliance, rather than strict compliance, to be considered fulfilled. These compliance standards serve a vital role in election law regimes across the country. The basic operation of these standards is, …

State Constitutional Duty And Public Employee Speech, Scott R. Bauries

Georgia Law Review

Public employees do not sacrifice their constitutional rights by accepting public employment, but the doctrines surrounding public employee constitutional rights present a unique amalgam of rights and duties. Nowhere is this amalgam clearer than in the doctrine of public employee free speech. Under the federal Constitution’s First Amendment, public employees, notwithstanding their government roles, may speak out as citizens on matters of public concern, and any restrictions a government employer places on that speech must be justified by compelling workplace concerns that outweigh the speech interests of the employee and the interests of the public in access to relevant information. …

Social Justice In Higher Education: The Forgotten Needs Of Students With Visual Impairments In Bangladesh, Mohammed Mozadded Hossen, Roy K. Chen, Nahal Salimi, Jane L. Nichols

School of Rehabilitation Services & Counseling Faculty Publications

Students with disabilities face myriad barriers and hurdles to success in higher education settings. Institutions in developing nations often lack the necessary resources to provide accessible instruction, and the absence of clearly defined policies further impedes upholding the educational rights of such a special population. The purpose of this study was to examine how undergraduate students with visual impairments in Bangladesh felt about their experiences related to social justice and challenges in learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. A convenience sample of 133 students was recruited from two public universities. The authors developed two instruments, namely, the Social Justice Experiences in …

Towards Understanding Thermal Management In Unsteady Boundary Layer Flow With Ac/Dc Electric Fields, Sara Abdelsalam, M. A. Dagher, Y. A. Elmaboud, A. I. Abdellateef

Basic Science Engineering

Unsteady boundary layer flow induced by alternating current (AC) or direct current (DC) electric field through a porous layer is investigated numerically. The finite difference method based on Crank-Nicolson is applied to solve the nonlinear system. The governing equations are built with fractional shear stress and the Cattaneo heat flux model, and time fractional derivatives are computed using the Caputo fractional derivative. The numerical results are presented to demonstrate the effects of varying parameters on momentum and thermal boundary layer. The results reveal that the time delay in the velocity profile occurs for larger values of both the velocity fractional …

Educational Case: Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation In A Patient With Cancer, Kripa Ahuja, Richard M. Conran

Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences Faculty Publications

The following fictional case is intended as a learning tool within the Pathology Competencies for Medical Education (PCME), a set of national standards for teaching pathology. These are divided into three basic competencies: Disease Mechanisms and Processes, Organ System Pathology, and Diagnostic Medicine and Therapeutic Pathology. For additional information, and a full list of learning objectives for all three competencies, see https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/academic-pathology/about/pathology-competencies-for-medical-education-pcme.

Customer Service Operations: A Gatekeeper Framework, Maqbool Dada, Brett A. Hathaway, Evgeny Kagan

Faculty Publications

Customer service has evolved beyond in-person visits and phone calls to include live chat, AI chatbots and social media, among other contact options. Service providers typically refer to these contact modalities as “channels”. Within each channel, customer service agents are tasked with managing and resolving a stream of inbound service requests. Each request involves milestones where the agent must decide whether to keep assisting the customer or to transfer them to a more skilled – and often costlier – provider. To understand how this request resolution process should be managed, we develop a model in which each channel is represented …

New Family Law Statutes In 2024: Selected State Legislation, Family Law Quarterly 2024–25 Editors, New York Law School

Redefining Family Law: State Legislative Updates

This article provides summaries and context for 35 changes to family law that were enacted in 2024 by legislatures in 25 states and the District of Columbia. The topics include (1) Equal Protection, (2) Child Custody and Visitation, (3) Nonparent Custody and Visitation, (4) Child Welfare, (5) Domestic Violence, (6) Juvenile Justice, (7) Parentage, (8) Age of Marriage, (9) Companion Animals, (10) Education, (11) Criminal Justice, and (12) Provision of Legal Services. More specifically, the topics of the laws featured in this article include (among others) supervised visitation; increased protections for LGBTQ+ families; pet custody in divorce proceedings; and strengthened …

A Comprehensive Guide To Construction Documentation: From Hand Drafting To Bim, Cesar Salazar

Open Educational Resources

The construction industry relies heavily on precise and clear documentation to ensure the successful completion of projects. This book is a comprehensive guide to creating construction drawings, focusing on the principles and best practices that lead to high-quality outputs. Unlike manuals that teach specific software tools, this book emphasizes the effective use of various drawing tools to produce detailed graphic narratives that support the entire construction process, from inception to completion.

Business Communication And Editing Students’ Evaluations Of Written Error: An Eye-Tracking Study, Matt Baker, Grant Eck, Ana Barraza, Benjamin Duffield

Faculty Publications

Using eye-tracking and interview methods, this study investigates how business communication students and editing students attend to and evaluate writing. Participants reviewed blog posts embedded with errors and judged publication readiness. While both groups visually fixated longer on errors than non-errors, business communication students were more likely to approve error-containing texts for publication. Qualitative data revealed that business communication students prioritized content while editing students prioritized surface-level issues. These findings suggest that disciplinary background informs evaluative standards, even when error-detection behavior is similar. The results carry implications for instruction in business writing and editing, especially concerning collaborative, cross-disciplinary workplace writing.

Generalizations Of Some Q-Product Identities Of Ramanujan And Others, Timothy J. Huber, James Mclaughlin, Dongxi Ye

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

By considering certain limiting cases of a WP-Bailey chain discovered by Andrews, and also limiting cases of certain classical summation formulae for basic hypergeometric series, we derive new expressions for certain Lambert series in terms of basic hypergeometric series. In some cases, the resulting series involve an arbitrary Bailey pair. This allows for the derivation of new basic hypergeometric expansions for some q-products and series that Ramanujan expressed in terms of Lambert series. Some of Ramanujan’s identities are extended to more general relations containing one or more free parameters.

Douglas K. Newell Oral History, Douglas K. Newell, Katherine O'Neil

50 Years of Douglas K. Newell

The following is the written transcript of the oral history of Edmund O. Belsheim Professor of Law Emeritus Douglas K. Newell. This transcript has been slightly edited by Professor Newell for accuracy.

The interviews capturing the oral history were conducted by Katherine O'Neil '77 during 2023-2024, transcribed and then edited by Professor Newell in 2025.

The history chronicles Professor Newell's life from his early humble beginnings in Glendale, California, attending Pomona College, being accepted into Harvard Law School, his Clerkship with U.S. District Judge for Los Angeles' Central District William M. Byrne, his brief foray into private practice, and his …

The Rights Of Englishmen, A Primary Source Reader For Students Of Early Modern British History & Early American History, Robin Brooks Ishler

Open Touro Created

2025

This book is a collection of primary sources from the United Kingdom and English-Speaking North America from the Magna Carta in 1215 through the middle of the 19th Century, with commentary and an introduction from Dr. Robin Ishler. The purpose of the book is not only to act as a resource for students of Early Modern British history and early American history, but also to demonstrate the deep political and philosophical connections between the United States and the larger English legal and societal context from which it emerged. Dr. Ishler argues that it is an unfortunate reality that many …

Practical Experimental Microbiology: Laboratory Manual, Rivka Levron

Open Touro Created

2025

Microbiology, especially the laboratory component, is a highly practical and useful course for students pursuing many career options. While a number of excellent microbiology laboratory manuals are available, many are more suitable for a full-year course in microbiology or for more advanced studies.

Microbiology Experimental Laboratory Manual is comprehensive in teaching students basic microbiological techniques, i.e., how to grow and stain bacteria, how to identify bacteria and fungi, and means of identifying different species of bacteria microscopically. Further experiments enable students to identify the most effective soap/detergent from those readily available; to discover which spices have the most anti-bacterial …

Debating Justice, Tom Rozinski

Open Touro Created

2025

This book introduces students to a modified form of Lincoln-Douglas debate that is suitable for use in college philosophy or political science courses. Students will learn how to make good arguments and identify bad ones. They will learn how to structure the affirmative and negative cases in debate and the specific duties of each speech in the debate. There is also a section on preparing for, conducting, and defending against cross-examination. Students learn about four value systems to use in their debates: utilitarianism, libertarianism, Kantian justice, and Rawlsian justice. The text includes two full debates to illustrate how students …

Indigenous Communities Suffer Multigenerational Trauma (“Susto”) From The Trafficking And Slavery Of Native Women And Children, Bill Piatt, Karagan Carson, Meghan Monahan, Makayla Perez

Faculty Articles

Trafficking and slavery have probably existed as long as humanity has existed. Despite efforts on many fronts, it will likely not be eradicated in our lifetimes. Bondage and abuse impose unthinkable suffering upon the immediate victims caught in the clutches of trafficking. Yet Native people and communities suffer unique, multi-generational, and almost permanent trauma, often referred to as susto. Our domestic law and policies have even resulted in the extinguishing of the formal legal Indian identity of Native victims and the destruction of their tribal connections. There is hope that the application of traditional prayer and ceremonies can provide some …

Validation Of Nutrition Focus Physical Assessment Via Telehealth, Ann Flickinger Ms, Rd, Ldn, Melissa Faura Rd, Ldn, Shae Duka Mph

Clinical Nutrition Service

No abstract provided.

Synthesising Cross-Speaker Data For Low-Resource Pathological Speech Recognition With Peft, Kesego Mokgosi, Milad Dadgar, Cathy Ennis, Robert Ross

Conference papers

Dysarthric speech recognition is essential for enhancing communication and accessibility for individuals with speech impairments, yet its development is hindered by a scarcity of robust, speaker-specific datasets. This study explores low-resource dysarthric speech recognition through cross-speaker transfer using synthetic data and parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT). We integrate SpeechT5 text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis with x-vector speaker embeddings to generate speaker-specific dysarthric speech, enabling model adaptation while preserving pathological speech characteristics such as prosodic irregularities. Experiments on the TORGO dataset show that mixed cross-synthetic data with LoRA fine-tuning achieves a WER of 0.17, representing a 71.7% improvement over the standard model (0.60 WER) without …

Myopia Correction, Myopia Control And Myopia Management: Definitions And Recommended Usage, International Myopia Institute (Imi), Ian Flitcroft, Mark A. Bullimore, Kate L. Gifford, Jost B. Jonas, Deborah Jones, Lyndon W. Jones, Pauline Kang, Serge Resnikoff, Jeffrey Walline, Christine F. Wildsoet

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

No abstract provided.

Suitability Of Existing Photovoltaic Degradation Models For Agrivoltaic Systems, Adam Fennessy, Vasile Onea, James Walshe, John Doran, Marius Purcar, George Amarandei

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

No abstract provided.

A Review On Knowledge And Information Extraction From Pdf Documents And Storage Approaches, Salvador D. Atagong, Henri Tonnang, Kennedy Senagi, Mark Wamalwa, Komi M. Agboka, John Odindi

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Introduction: Automating the extraction of information from Portable Document Format (PDF) documents represents a major advancement in information extraction, with applications in various domains such as healthcare, law, or biochemistry. However, existing solutions face challenges related to accuracy, domain adaptability, and implementation complexity. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology to examine approaches and trends in PDF information extraction and storage approaches. Results: The review revealed three dominant methodological categories: rule-based systems, statistical learning models, and neural network-based approaches. Key limitations include the rigidity of rule-based …

If You Have Nothing To Hide, You Still Have Something To Fear: How Libraries Can Support Alternative Information Channels, Abbie Steuhm

Annual Research Symposium

Libraries in the U.S. have seen massive increases in book challenges in recent years. Since books are one of the library’s vital resources, censoring books can have a great impact on libraries and patrons. To counteract the effects of censorship, libraries need to adopt and support alternative information channels so information can still be accessed through other channels even if one is shut down.

An Optimized Generalized Multi-Color Point Implicit Solver For Intel Gpus Using Oneapi Esimd, Joseph Wassell, Mohammad Zubair, Aaron Walden, Gabriel Nastac, Eric Nielsen, Timothée Ewart

Computer Science Faculty Publications

This paper presents an efficient implementation of a linear-solver kernel relevant to FUN3D, a suite of computational fluid dynamics software developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center. The linear solver is optimized for a range of block sizes commonly used in FUN3D. The implementation targets Aurora, the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility’s (ALCF) exascale machine featuring Intel Data Center Max 1550 GPUs. The linear solver’s performance is memory bandwidth-bound due to its low arithmetic intensity. The primary performance challenges stem from variable matrix row lengths and indirect memory access patterns inherent in unstructured-grid applications. Variable block sizes introduce additional complexity through differing …

Self-Awareness And Self-Efficacy In The Novice Professional Phase Of Marriage And Family Therapists After Person Of The Therapist Training, A Comparative Survey, Rubio Betsabé

Dissertations

The study focuses on examining the influence of person-of-the-therapist or self-of-the-therapist training on therapists’ self-reports of self-awareness (as a conscious awareness of one’s internal states and interactions with others) and self-efficacy (perceived beliefs in personal capabilities to perform in ways that give control over events that affect their lives) at the novice professional stage of their career. The study will examine the experiences reported by mental health providers actively providing clinical care by utilizing a survey design focusing on person of the therapist connecting through alumni lists and online solicitation. This research adds to the current literature by using a …