Digital Commons Network^™

Lumbar Spine Orientation Affects Compressive Fracture Outcome, Rachel Cutlan, Muhammaed Khokhar, Nader Shammout, Alok Shah, Lance Frazer, Narayan Yoganandan, Barry S. Shender, James Sheehy, Glenn Paskoff, Daniel Nicolella, Timothy B. Bentley, Saman Shabani, Brian D. Stemper

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose

Understanding how spinal orientation affects injury outcome is essential to understand lumbar injury biomechanics associated with high-rate vertical loading.

Methods

Whole-column human lumbar spines (T12–L5) were dynamically loaded using a drop tower to simulate peak axial forces associated with high-speed aircraft ejections and helicopter crashes. Spines were allowed to maintain natural lordotic curvature for loading, resulting in a range of orientations. Pre-test X-rays were used to quantify specimen orientation at the time of loading. Primary fracture types were identified (wedge, n = 6; burst, n = 4; hyperextension, n = 4) and compared for loading parameters and lumbar orientation. …

New Ways Of Teaching Adat (Customary) Law At Indonesian Law Schools, Tody S.J. Utama, Rikardo Simarmata, Jacqueline A.C. Vel, Adriaan W. Bedner

The Indonesian Journal of Socio-Legal Studies

While customary law typically is not the sole legal system regulating people's daily lives, it still plays a big role in shaping the behavior of countless individuals worldwide. For this reason, law schools in many countries teach customary law courses, but these courses often present customary law as a sterile set of principles and norms detached from studying social reality. This approach associates customary law with traditional communities whose members live in relative isolation from the world, ignoring the fact that customary law operates in a legally pluralistic universe, interacting with religious and state law systems, and that it adapts …

Innovation Challenges In The Air Force Sbir Program: From The Small Businesses’ Perspective, Hart J. Holt, Amy M. Cox, Scott Drylie, David S. Long, Alfred E. Thal Jr., R. David Fass

Faculty Publications

Every year the United States invests $3.2 billion in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to promote innovation among the nation’s small businesses. Half of this investment is from the DoD. This research considers the challenges faced by small businesses innovating with the DoD, particularly those awarded SBIR contracts with the United States Air Force. The authors surveyed 286 unique small businesses that were previously awarded an Air Force SBIR contract. By asking the survey respondents open-ended questions and categorizing their responses, they pinpoint unaddressed challenges from the small business perspective. By categorizing survey responses through Qualitative Content Analysis, …

The False Choice Between Digital Regulation And Innovation, Anu Bradford

Faculty Scholarship

This Article challenges the common view that more stringent regulation of the digital economy inevitably compromises innovation and undermines technological progress. This view, vigorously advocated by the tech industry, has shaped the public discourse in the United States, where the country’s thriving tech economy is often associated with a staunch commitment to free markets. U.S. lawmakers have also traditionally embraced this perspective, which explains their hesitancy to regulate the tech industry to date. The European Union has chosen another path, regulating the digital economy with stringent data privacy, antitrust, content moderation, and other digital regulations designed to shape the evolution …

The International Legal Framework Of Oceanic Shipping Of Carbon Dioxide For Permanent Storage, Carolina Arlota, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) as “a process in which a relatively pure stream of carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial and energy-related sources is separated (captured), conditioned, compressed, and transported to a storage location for long-term isolation from the atmosphere.” Therefore, CCS encompasses a series of steps, at minimum: capturing carbon dioxide, its transportation to a storage site, and its injection into the subsurface for permanent storage. As such, CCS does not refer to any single activity or technology. This Article focuses on the transportation aspect of CCS and, more precisely, …

The 2023 Merger Guidelines: An Assessment, Herbert Hovenkamp, Tim Wu, James Keyte

Faculty Scholarship

The 2023 Merger Guidelines1 are ten months old, but they still need some unpacking. To help our readers think through the issues that the Guidelines raise, Antitrust magazine asked two experienced legal scholars — Professors Tim Wu and Herbert Hovenkamp — to discuss the Guidelines with Antitrust editorial board member James Keyte. This discussion took place on May 28, 2024. The transcript has been edited for length and readability.

The State Statutes Project, Neel Guha, Diego A. Zambrano

Faculty Scholarship

State statutes are having a moment in national debates. Partly fueled by polarization, state legislatures have pushed the boundaries on almost every important national question, from abortion and regulation of social media, all the way to police lawsuits and drug use. Take, for instance, the by now well-known example of Texas Senate Bill 8. To avoid Roe v. Wade, the Texas Legislature enacted a statute that allowed private parties (really, anyone) to sue abortion providers. The kicker was that the statute prohibited government enforcement in order to prevent Ex parte Young style challenges in federal court. Or take Montana’s attempt …

Nh 4-H Youth Enrollment Paper Form, Unh Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Genomic Biomarkers To Predict Response To Atezolizumab Plus Bevacizumab Immunotherapy In Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Insights From The Imbrave150 Trial, Sun Young Yim, Sung Hwan Lee, Seung-Woo Baek, Bohwa Sohn, Yun Seong Jeong, Sang-Hee Kang, Kena Park, Hyewon Park, Sunyoung S Lee, Ahmed O Kaseb, Young Nyun Park, Sun-Hee Leem, Michael A Curran, Ji Hoon Kim, Ju-Seog Lee

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background/aims: Combination immunotherapy, exemplified by atezolizumab plus bevacizumab, has become the standard of care for inoperable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the lack of predictive biomarkers and limited understanding of response mechanisms remain a challenge.

Methods: Using data from the IMbrave150plus cohort, we applied an immune signature score (ISS) predictor to stratify HCC patients treated with atezolizumab plus bevacizumab or with sorafenib alone into potential high and low response groups. By applying multiple statistical approaches including a Bayesian covariate prediction algorithm, we refined the signature to 10 key genes (ISS10) for clinical use while maintaining similar predictive power to the full …

Feasibility Of Quantitative Relaxometry For Prostate Target Localization And Response Assessment In Magnetic Resonance-Guided Online Adaptive Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy, Ergys Subashi, Eve Locastro, Sarah Burleson, Aditya Apte, Michael Zelefsky, Neelam Tyagi

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Purpose: Multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is known to provide predictors for malignancy and treatment outcome. The inclusion of these datasets in workflows for online adaptive planning remains under investigation. We demonstrate the feasibility of longitudinal relaxometry in online MR-guided adaptive stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) to the prostate and dominant intra-prostatic lesion (DIL).

Methods: Fifty patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer were included in the study. The clinical target volume (CTV) was defined as the prostate gland plus 1 cm of seminal vesicles. The gross tumor volume (GTV) was defined as the DIL identified on multiparametric MRI. Online adaptive radiotherapy was …

Small-Molecule Ccr4 Antagonists In Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma, José S Enriquez, Xiaohong Wang, Loka Reddy Velatooru, Wei Han, Pedram Bijani, Xiao Ni

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Mycosis fungoides (MF) and Sézary syndrome (SS) are two most common types of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL). Despite advances in understanding the pathogenesis of MF and SS, effective treatments remain limited. CC chemokine receptor-4 (CCR4) is highly expressed on CTCL cells and serves as a great therapeutic target. Mogamulizumab, an FDA-approved anti-CCR4 antibody, has shown efficacy in treating MF/SS; however, its side effects have raised concerns, underscoring the need for more effective and less toxic CCR4-targeted therapies. Although small-molecule CCR4 antagonists have been studied in other diseases involving CCR4⁺ Th2 cells and regulatory T cells, their effects in CTCL …

Evaluating Dynamic And Predictive Discrimination For Recurrent Event Models: Use Of A Time-Dependent C-Index, Jian Wang, Xinyang Jiang, Jing Ning

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Interest in analyzing recurrent event data has increased over the past few decades. One essential aspect of a risk prediction model for recurrent event data is to accurately distinguish individuals with different risks of developing a recurrent event. Although the concordance index (C-index) effectively evaluates the overall discriminative ability of a regression model for recurrent event data, a local measure is also desirable to capture dynamic performance of the regression model over time. Therefore, in this study, we propose a time-dependent C-index measure for inferring the model's discriminative ability locally. We formulated the C-index as a function of time using …

Mhc Hammer Reveals Genetic And Non-Genetic Hla Disruption In Cancer Evolution, Clare Puttick, Thomas P Jones, Michelle M Leung, Felipe Galvez-Cancino, Jiali Liu, Manuel Varas-Godoy, Andrew Rowan, Oriol Pich, Carlos Martinez-Ruiz, Robert Bentham, Krijn K Dijkstra, James R M Black, Rachel Rosenthal, Nnennaya Kanu, Kevin Litchfield, Roberto Salgado, David A Moore, Peter Van Loo, Mariam Jamal-Hanjani, Sergio A Quezada, Tracerx Consortium, Charles Swanton, Nicholas Mcgranahan

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Disruption of the class I human leukocyte antigen (HLA) molecules has important implications for immune evasion and tumor evolution. We developed major histocompatibility complex loss of heterozygosity (LOH), allele-specific mutation and measurement of expression and repression (MHC Hammer). We identified extensive variability in HLA allelic expression and pervasive HLA alternative splicing in normal lung and breast tissue. In lung TRACERx and lung and breast TCGA cohorts, 61% of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD), 76% of lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) and 35% of estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) cancers harbored class I HLA transcriptional repression, while HLA tumor-enriched alternative splicing occurred in 31%, 11% …

Biomarker Trajectory For Earlier Detection Of Lung Cancer, Ehsan Irajizad, Johannes F Fahrmann, Iakovos Toumazis, Jody Vykoukal, Jennifer B Dennison, Yu Shen, Kim-Anh Do, Edwin J Ostrin, Ziding Feng, Samir Hanash

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: To determine whether an algorithm based on repeated measurements of a panel of four circulating protein biomarkers (4 MP) for lung cancer risk assessment results in improved performance over a single time measurement.

Methods: We conducted data analysis of the 4 MP consisting of the precursor form of surfactant protein B, cancer antigen 125, carcinoembryonic antigen, and cytokeratin-19 fragment in pre-diagnostic sera from 2483 ever-smoker participants (389 cases and 2094 randomly selected non-cases) in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, Ovarian (PLCO) Study who had at least two sequential blood collections over 6 years. A parametric empirical Bayes (PEB) algorithm, which …

Meta-Analysis Of Censored Adverse Events, Xinyue Qi, Shouhao Zhou, Christine B Peterson, Yucai Wang, Xinying Fang, Michael L Wang, Chan Shen

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Meta-analysis is a powerful tool for assessing drug safety by combining treatment-related toxicological findings across multiple studies, as clinical trials are typically underpowered for detecting adverse drug effects. However, incomplete reporting of adverse events (AEs) in published clinical studies is frequently encountered, especially if the observed number of AEs is below a pre-specified study-dependent threshold. Ignoring the censored AE information, often found in lower frequency, can significantly bias the estimated incidence rate of AEs. Despite its importance, this prevalent issue in meta-analysis has received little statistical or analytic attention in the literature. To address this challenge, we propose a Bayesian …

The Spiritual Well-Being Scale In The Polish Catholic Setting: Construct, Structure, And Relationships With Psychological Well-Being, Beata Zarzycka, Kamil Tomaka, Michał Grupa, Raymond Paloutzian, Rodger K. Bufford

Faculty Publications - Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Program

The population of Poland could be of particular interest to researchers studying religion and spirituality. Catholicism has played a significant role in shaping the country’s culture, history, and tradition and is considered a national religion. More recently, however, the processes of moving away from regular participation in religious services and loosening ties with the institution of the Catholic Church are marked (Polish Public Opinion Research Center, CBOS). The Polish Catholic setting may modify the associations between psychological variables that have been studied in their relationships with spirituality, which have been investigated in religious contexts differing from a Polish Catholic one. …

Renewing Our Vows: The Lawyer's Oath And Our Pledge To Democracy, Colin M. Black

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

For centuries, lawyers have sworn to an oath as a prerequisite to admission. The oath, barely evolved from their historical roots, represents the guiding commitment lawyers make to democratic principles of honesty, integrity, fairness, and the rule of law. This commitment is in exchange for the power and privilege of belonging to the legal profession. However, the ethical landscape for legal practitioners has evolved, particularly in response to the alarming events of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. These events revealed significant lapses in the judgment and conduct among some lawyers, exposing the need for a recommitment to the democratic principles …

The Use Of Insect Cell Line Sf21 For Ecotoxicity Testing, Trevor Grigg, Richard D. Handy, Richard A. Billington

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Insect cell lines are finding utility in many areas of biology, but their application as an in vitro tool for ecotoxicity testing has been given less attention. Our study aimed to demonstrate the utility and sensitivity of Sf21 cells to commonly used fungicides: Propiconazole and CuSO₄, as well as dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) an industrial solvent. Sf21 cells were readily cultured from frozen stocks in 3-4 days and showed utility as an invertebrate in vitro acute toxicity test. The data showed the threshold levels of cell survivability against propiconazole and CuSO₄. The EC₅₀ values were 135.1 …

Characterization Of Stealth Liposome-Based Nanoparticles Encapsulating Acat1/Soat1 Inhibitor F26: Potential Therapeutics For Niemann-Pick Type C And Other Neurodegenerative Diseases., Junghoon Lee

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Cholesterol dysregulation is implicated in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), Huntington’s disease (HD) and Niemann-Pick type C disease (NPCD). This study focused on evaluating the potent ACAT1 inhibitor, F26, as a therapeutic strategy for NPCD. F26 demonstrated superior ACAT1 inhibition and efficacy compared to the previously studied inhibitor, F12511, both in vitro and in vivo. Notably, F26 exhibited enhanced pharmacokinetic properties, including prolonged duration of action and better brain retention, making it a more promising candidate for treating neurodegenerative diseases.

F26 was encapsulated in a liposome-based nanoparticle system, DSPE-PEG2000 with phosphatidylcholine (PC), for enhancing its …

Precision Imaging For Prostate Cancer Localization: How Multiparametric Ultrasound Stands Against Multiparametric Mri, Amr Mohammed, Priscilla Machado, Tania Siu Xiao, Aylin Tahmasebi, Mostafa Alnoury, Edouard Trabulsi, Ethan J. Halpern, John R. Eisenbrey, Flemming Forsberg

Department of Radiology Faculty Papers

Multiparametric MRI (mpMRI) is currently the standard imaging modality for the diagnosis of prostate cancer; however, studies have reported that targeted biopsy based on mpMRI may miss approximately 30% of clinically significant cases. Recent advances in ultrasound imaging have improved its accuracy for detection of prostate cancer. Newer techniques such as MicroUS, elastography, contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS), and contrast ultrasound dispersion imaging (CUDI) have enabled a comprehensive, real-time, and relatively inexpensive approach to evaluate the prostate gland. Multiparametric ultrasound (mpUS) integrates multiple parameters from these techniques to generate multiparametric maps akin to those produced by mpMRI, to localize prostate cancer. This …

Evaluation Of Liver Fibrosis On Grayscale Ultrasound In A Pediatric Population Using A Cloud-Based Transfer Learning Artificial Intelligence Platform, Amr Mohammed, Aylin Tahmasebi, Sooji Kim, Mostafa Alnoury, Corinne E. Wessner, Tania Siu Xiao, Sharon W. Gould, Lauren A. May, Heidi Kecskemethy, David T. Saul, John R. Eisenbrey

Department of Radiology Faculty Papers

Objectives: The incidence of chronic liver diseases in children is increasing worldwide due to congenital, metabolic, autoimmune and viral diseases. Currently, liver biopsy for fibrosis assessment is considered the gold standard. However, this procedure is invasive, may result in unavoidable complications and is prone to sampling errors. These limitations have led to an increasing demand for noninvasive methods for fibrosis screening. Artificial intelligence integration in ultrasound diagnosis of liver fibrosis has gained interest in clinical research. In the current study we used a cloud-based artificial intelligence platform utilizing transfer learning to evaluate the accuracy of B-mode ultrasound based AI model …

A Guideline For Open-Source Tools To Make Medical Imaging Data Ready For Artificial Intelligence Applications: A Society Of Imaging Informatics In Medicine (Siim) Survey, Sanaz Vahdati, Bardia Khosravi, Elham Mahmoudi, Kuan Zhang, Pouria Rouzrokh, Shahriar Faghani, Mana Moassefi, Aylin Tahmasebi, Katherine Andriole, Peter Chang, Keyvan Farahani, Mona Flores, Les Folio, Sina Houshmand, Maryellen Giger, Judy Gichoya, Bradley Erickson

Department of Radiology Faculty Papers

In recent years, the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medical imaging has become increasingly prominent, with the majority of AI applications approved by the FDA being in imaging and radiology in 2023. The surge in AI model development to tackle clinical challenges underscores the necessity for preparing high-quality medical imaging data. Proper data preparation is crucial as it fosters the creation of standardized and reproducible AI models while minimizing biases. Data curation transforms raw data into a valuable, organized, and dependable resource and is a fundamental process to the success of machine learning and analytical projects. Considering the plethora …

Proteomic Analysis Reveals Major Proteins And Pathways That Mediate The Effect Of 17-Β-Estradiol In Cell Division And Apoptosis In Breast Cancer Mcf7 Cells, Zhenqi Zhou, Brihget Sicairos, Jianhong Zhou, Yuchun Du

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Despite extensive research, the genes/proteins and pathways responsible for the physiological effects of estrogen remain elusive. In this study, we determined the effect of estrogen on global protein expression in breast cancer MCF7 cells using a proteomic method. The expression of 77 cytosolic, 74 nuclear, and 81 membrane/organelle proteins was significantly altered by 17-β-estradiol (E2). Protein enrichment analyses suggest that E2 may stimulate cell division primarily by promoting the G1 to S phase transition and advancing the G2/M checkpoint. The effect of E2 on cell survival was complex, as it could simultaneously enhance and inhibit apoptosis. Bioinformatics analysis suggests that …

Theistic Illiberal Constitutionalism: A Review Of Adrian Vermeule’S Common Good Constitutionalism, Kyron J. Huigens

Articles

Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism drew a remarkable amount of attention from constitutional law scholars when it was published in 2020. About eighteen months later, Vermeule published a piece complaining that the critics had missed the point, that they had ignored the natural law jurisprudence that grounds the work. He was correct. This Review addresses Vermeule’s natural law jurisprudence, emphasizing the fact that it is a religious natural law jurisprudence. His arguments are in the tradition of ScholasticismAristotelian logic incorporated into Christian theology by St. Thomas Aquinas. Scholasticism is a remarkably weak foundation for constitutional jurisprudence. It is a vast …

Yeats And Bagels, Joanne L. Detore

Publications

No abstract provided.

My Sister And Our Dandelion Dreams, Joanne L. Detore

Publications

No abstract provided.

Multi-Generation Queer Families: Foregrounding The Lgbtqia+ Children Of Lgbtqia+ People, Bella Mancini Pori, Edward Stein

Articles

In the last several years, state legislatures have passed a disturbing array of anti-queer laws that target queer (especially trans) children. The basic fear animating these laws is that exposure to LGBTQ people or LGBTQ supportive ideas will somehow turn straight children queer. LGBTQ activists have responded to the concern that exposure to queer people or ideas will make children queer by arguing that sexual orientations are innate or immutable. This immutability argument is problematic, first, because it avoids confronting the normative judgment at the heart of the fear of a queer child by failing to say that there is …

Fully Digital Workflow From Bone Augmentation To Implant-Supported Prosthetic Reconstruction, Ufuk Tatli, Koray Soygun, Orcan Yuksel

School of Dentistry Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

No Need To Wait: Congress Has The Power Under Section Five Of The Fourteenth Amendment To Abolish The Death Penalty In The States, Eric M. Freedman

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Congress has the authority to abolish the death penalty in the states, and good reason to exercise it.

This Article takes as a given the Supreme Court’s view that the death penalty is not itself unconstitutional.

But under existing law Congress would have no difficulty in compiling a record that would support the use of its enforcement power under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to enact a statute forbidding the imposition of capital punishment by those states that retain the practice. The statute would be congruent and proportional legislation to remedy and prevent an amply documented history of violations …

The Nature Of Adverse Events In Dentistry, Bunmi Tokede, Alfa Yansane, Muhammad F. Walji, D. B. Rindal, Don Worley, Joel White, Elsbeth Kalenderian

School of Dentistry Faculty Research and Publications

Objectives

Learning from clinical data on the subject of safety with regards to patient care in dentistry is still largely in its infancy. Current evidence does not provide epidemiological estimates on adverse events (AEs) associated with dental care. The goal of the dental practice study was to quantify and describe the nature and severity of harm experienced in association with dental care, and to assess for disparities in the prevalence of AEs.

Methods

Through a multistaged sampling procedure, we conducted in-depth retrospective review of patients’ dental and medical records.

Results

We discovered an AE proportion of 1.4% (95% CI, 1.1% …