Digital Commons Network^™

2026-05-20 Sullivan Scholarship Returns With Narrow Scope, Tristan Scott

The Spectator Online

No abstract provided.

2026-05-20 Volleyball Gears Up For Fall Season With A Revamped Roster, Maddie Rodriguez

The Spectator Online

No abstract provided.

Bridging The Vaccine Gap: Multilingual Vaccine Education For Families In Transitional Housing, Isaac Olaes, Alexia Sandoval, Kassandra Solano, Rachael Termure, Sydney Webber, Jordan West, Maya Parman

Nursing Leadership in Community Engagement Projects

As part of a health promotion initiative in the community, our leadership team of seven nursing students is partnering with an agency that supports families experiencing housing instability by providing transitional housing. According to agency staff, some families have limited health literacy regarding vaccinations. Common concerns include illness following a vaccination, perceived risks of autism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. To address these concerns, we have developed a vaccine education binder containing materials in handout form. To accommodate language accessibility, we provided handouts in the four most spoken languages including English, French, Amharic, and Tigrinya. Through this initiative, we aim …

Unfair And Deceptive Pay: A Consumer Protection Approach To Algorithmic Personalized Wages, Noah Madoff

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

The rise of digital commerce, consumer surveillance, and bigdata analytics have given rise to a new set of pricing techniques in the first quarter of the 21st century. Much has been made of algorithmic price discrimination—the commercial practice of charging consumers individualized prices for identical goods and services. Considerably less attention has been paid to parallel development in the world of work—the emergence of “algorithmic personalized wages” that individualize worker pay for identical work. Algorithmic personalized wages are not a significant development because they are ubiquitous in contemporary employment arrangements—they are not—but because they contain the kernel of a harsh …

Introduction, Jaxon Alston, Jessica Payne, Kaylie Vasquez

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

‘Mic Fright’: The Dire Reality Of Employment Classification In Unscripted Television, Jessica A. Payne

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

Reality television has grown over the last near-century into both a staple of popular culture and an overwhelmingly lucrative industry. While the genre had a relatively innocent beginning, what shows have become is an increasingly extreme set of formats seeking to illicit shock, jealousy, and, above all, loyal viewership from its audience. These aims are driven entirely upon the participants who vie for a place within the cast to compete for love, money, and fame. However, the participants whom audiences adore or love to critique face significant barriers in their pursuit in addition to life-altering post-production realities; in part based …

Dynamic Displacement: How Algorithmic Rent Pricing Threatens To Exacerbate Barriers To Housing Voucher Use And Mobility, James W. Matthews

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

Tenant-based rental vouchers have long played a central role in efforts to expand affordability and economic mobility. Despite growing demand amid a deepening housing crisis, funding for federal rental assistance is under attack. Meanwhile, longstanding barriers, such as rising rents, source of income discrimination, and program design limitations, continue to restrict access to housing, especially in high-opportunity neighborhoods. These challenges are now compounded by the growing influence of private equity firms and other institutional investors, whose rapid acquisition of rental properties is reshaping the market by prioritizing extractive profits over affordability and tenant stability. At the same time, consolidation among …

Lend Me Your Interest Rates: Rent-A-Bank, Fintech, And True Lenders, Reeves Singleton

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

The rise of fintech has bolstered so-called rent-a-bank lending, a scheme through which online lenders partner with national banks in order to take advantage of the banks’ ability to “export” high interest rates to states with strict usury laws. This framework allows lenders to more freely target financially vulnerable populations with high-cost loans. Courts currently tend to consider three often conflicting doctrines to assess the legality of such loans. This Note first reviews these three strands of analysis: (1) the valid-when-made doctrine, which is the least protective of consumers and upholds a loan’s initial legality regardless of transfer; (2) the …

Rna Interference Of Torsina In Acyrthosiphon Pisum, James Balthazor Ph.D., Braden Allphin

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Undergraduate research using dsRNA to knockdown TorsinA in pea aphids sponsored by the K-INBRE NIH Grant.

Deep Screens (1): Reliability-Driven Correction Of 3d Pose Estimation For Animation, Emma Vejcik

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Modern 2D and 3D human pose estimators silently fail on archival film footage. Their confidence channels do not surface these failures, and no annotated ground truth exists in the domain against which to evaluate or correct them. The result, in pipelines that lift archival 2D detections to 3D for downstream applications, is animation output with jittering limbs, hallucinated skeletons, and anatomically implausible poses. This thesis addresses these failures through three interventions, working from the data foundation upward.

First, we construct a hand-annotated reliability dataset of over 50,000 joint-frame rows across six segments from four films spanning multiple eras (1910, 1960, …

An Unusual Culprit: Right Coronary Artery Aneurysm And Coronary Sinus Fistula Presenting As Acute Heart Failure, Emmanuel Olumuyide Md, Alfredo Toll Md

Scientific Day

Background/Significance:

Coronary artery aneurysms associated with coronary fistulae are rare and may cause shunt physiology, ischemia, and heart failure. Multimodality imaging and invasive hemodynamics are essential for diagnosis and management planning.

Description:

A 78-year-old man with hypertension and hyperlipidemia presented with new-onset decompensated heart failure. Transthoracic echocardiography revealed severe biventricular dysfunction (LVEF 10%) with severe aortic and mitral regurgitation. Coronary angiography demonstrated severe multivessel coronary artery disease and a markedly aneurysmal right coronary artery (RCA) with suspected fistulous communication. Right-heart catheterization revealed elevated filling pressures, a reduced cardiac index, and a right atrial oximetry step-up, indicating a left-to-right shunt. Coronary …

When Stress Cardiomyopathy Meets Iron Deficiency: A Retrospective Cohort Study, Emmanuel Olumuyide Md, Alfredo Toll Md, Lukan Abdulraheem Md

Scientific Day

Background/Significance:

Iron-deficiency anemia (IDA) commonly complicates cardiovascular disease, but its association with outcomes in stress cardiomyopathy (SC) is not well defined.

Purpose:

We examined whether IDA in SC is associated with higher in-hospital mortality and greater resource utilization.

Methods:

Using the National Inpatient Sample (2016–2022), we identified adult SC hospitalizations and stratified admissions by IDA status. Survey-weighted multivariable logistic regression evaluated the association of IDA with in-hospital mortality (primary outcome).Key secondary outcomes—cardiogenic shock (CS), mechanical circulatory support (MCS), acute kidney injury (AKI), vasopressor use, length of stay (LOS), and total hospital charges (THC)—adjusting for demographics, comorbidities, and hospital characteristics.

Results: …

Nikgjonaj Realty Corp. V. Garber

All Decisions

The Appellate Term affirmed the Civil Court's dismissal of the landlord's holdover petition. The court found that the landlord's notice to cure and notice of termination were defective because they failed to cite any specific lease provision violated by the alleged conditions in the tenant's apartment. This procedural defect in the predicate notices rendered the petition legally insufficient, leading to the tenant's successful cross-motion to dismiss. The decision emphasizes the strict requirement for landlords to provide specific lease violations in their notices for holdover proceedings.

A Qualitative Case Study Of Equine Assisted Services At Healing Strides Facility, Erica Lynn Gray

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to portray how a well-run facility conducting equine assisted services works from an intra-organizational perspective. It is a bounded qualitative case study that focuses on the equine assisted services provided, the program and services designed and the rationale for choosing those programs, how services are operationalized and facilitated by practitioners, how equine welfare is considered, and the experiences and perspectives of those participating in the organization, development, or facilitation of equine assisted services at Healing Strides. This study uses Robert K. Yin’s theory driven methodological approach to qualitative case studies that focuses …

Beyond The Pulpit: How Theological Training Equips Believers To Discern Their Ministry Calling, Gladys Elizabeth Moy

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation will examine the theological and practical dimensions of ministry calling through the framework of the Fivefold Ministry as indicated in Ephesians. “And He gave some, apostles, and some, prophets, and some, evangelists, and some, pastors and teachers” (King James Bible, 1769/2017, Ephesians 4:11-12). It will challenge the prevailing assumption that a divine call to ministry is primarily expressed through pulpit-centered roles, arguing instead that ministry encompasses a broader spectrum of functions within the body of Christ. Grounded in theological reflection and contemporary scholarship, the study will contend that while all believers are called to ministry, their specific callings …

The Postwar American Occupation Of Japan: A Re-Evaluation In The Context Of The Cold War, Karen E. Knudson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

It was all about the Cold War, when as soon as Germany and Japan surrendered in World War Two, Soviet Premier Stalin abandoned the alliance and became an enemy of the West. In Japan, he attempted to acquire Japanese territory as the spoils of war. However, President Harry S. Truman was determined that Japan would be reformed into a democratic, capitalist state firmly situated in the Western political and economic sphere. During the seven years of the American occupation of Japan, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) and the Japanese government extensively remodeled the Japanese government, economy, and …

Second Temple Period Foundations Of The New Testament: A Teaching Model At Longview Evangelical Community Church, Stephen T. Dixon

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This action research project examined whether a structured Bible study focused on the Second Temple Period could improve participants’ ability to recognize historical context in the New Testament and apply that knowledge to a more Christocentric understanding of Scripture. The project was conducted at a local church and involved adult participants from diverse educational and spiritual backgrounds. The study used a six-week instructional model that integrated historical background, theological reflection, and guided discussion. Data were collected through an initial questionnaire and Likert-scale surveys administered before the study began, observational notes and recordings during the study, and a final assessment after …

Non-Denominational Female Ministry Leaders' Disciple-Making Experience Using Digital Platforms: A Phenomenological Study, Vorlea C. Chaney

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

A global pandemic in the winter of 2020 forced the faith community to close its doors in the interest of public safety. Due to the closings, the faith community resorted to digital platforms to continue to make disciples, according to Matthew 28:19-20 (King James Version, 1991). Jun (2020) asserts the current digital age is poised to be the next industrial revolution used by the church to make disciples. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to investigate female ministry leader’s digital disciple-making experience. According to Leedy and Ormrod (2019), “the term phenomenology refers to a person’s perception of the …

The End Is Proof Of The Beginning: Heloise And Abelard The Unseen Architects Of Intention In Medieval Philosophy, Abby Brook Edwards

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The scandal surrounding the eleventh century love story of Peter Abelard and Heloise has eclipsed the depth of their individual intellects which has resulted in many scholars devoting their writings to the couple’s overly eroticized narrative. Following the castration, public humiliation, and academic ignominy of Abelard and after Heloise, a “fallen woman,” commissioned herself into a convent, the connection between tutor and tutee continued through written correspondence. Through an examination of their personal writings, this dissertation aims to expand upon the notion that Abelard was an eclipsed philosopher who should be standing alongside “giants in the field” of philosophy, but …

African American Clergywomen's Leadership Experiences In Protestant Churches In Jacksonville, Florida, Felicia M. Simon

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

As Christian leaders, African American clergywomen have encountered obstacles and victories while serving in Protestant denominations. However, the challenges of Black women largely reflect those of Black clergywomen. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of African American clergywomen functioning in Christian leadership roles within Protestant churches in Jacksonville, Florida. At this stage in the research, lived experiences were generally defined as the personal, spiritual, professional, and social realities the clergywomen faced as they led congregations, networked with other denominations, and managed environmental factors in ministry. The theory guiding this study was Womanist theory, developed …

The Nexus Between Sino-African Economic Engagement, Us-African Security Cooperation And Foreign Direct Investment: National Security Implications Using A Comparative Analysis Of Nigeria And Other Selected African Countries, Chine Sp Logan

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study examines the intricate interplay between the United States-African Security Partnership, China’s African Economic Partnership-Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI), and the influx of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa. It delves into the nuances of the US-African Security Partnership, focusing on US military training and security assistance through the United States African Command (AFRICOM) and the China-Africa BRI initiative, which centers on loan funding. Moreover, it analyzes how national security considerations influence FDI inflow. By scrutinizing the roles of robust institutions, the study evaluates how these factors impact the long-term achievement of the United Nations' sustainable development goals for …

Infinite Regress Argument: Nāgārjuna Vs. The Naiyāyikas, Aastha Pujara

Honors College Theses

Infinite regress arguments are commonly employed within philosophical texts as an ad infinitum fallacy to disprove an argument. This argumentative tactic is described as a chain of never-ending explanations that has no beginning. In this paper, I explore the Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna and how he utilizes the infinite regress argument to disprove the existence of svabhāva, or essence. Unlike other philosophers, he indicates that the infinite regress argument is not a problem for him due to his philosophy, which explains that everything is devoid of essence or substance and is inherently empty, also known as śūnyatā. Nāgārjuna examines these infinite …

Music Therapy For The Treatment Of Body Image Dissatisfaction: Implications For Future Practice, Elizabeth Hope Vance

Honors Projects

Body image dissatisfaction has become a growing concern in recent decades. Negative body image has been linked to anxiety, depression, elevated stress, eating disorders, and relational problems (Smith et al, 2024). Body image can negatively affect a wide variety of populations such as cancer survivors, people diagnosed with eating disorders, and adolescents. Fortunately, recent studies have investigated ways to improve body image perceptions among those affected.  Common treatments for body image dissatisfaction include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), and alternative therapies (Peng & Xie, 2021).  Despite social efforts to reduce negative body …

May 20, 2026 Blazer Weekly, University Of Alabama At Birmingham

Blazer Weekly (student newsletter)

No abstract provided.

Conditional Product Sampling For Gaussian Process Implicit Surfaces, Song Shi

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Gaussian Process Implicit Surfaces (GPISes) provide a powerful and unified stochastic geometry representation for rendering surfaces, volumes, and the rich continuum between them. Recent work has shown that GPISes can model a broad space of visual appearances under a unified light transport framework. However, practical rendering with GPISes remains challenging: existing estimators can become inefficient for particular correlation structures, and highly anisotropic or heightfield-like GPISes require specialized treatment to obtain robust variance reduction.

This thesis extends recent work on GPIS rendering by introducing a new next-event estimation (NEE) technique for anisotropic GPISes.We show that standard NEE provides diminishing benefits as …

Spark (Seizure Plan For Action And Readiness In Kids): Improving Seizure Action Plan Completion For Hospitalized Children Using Quality Improvement Methodology, Lauren Amendola Do, Faap, Jennifer W. Glusman Do, Mat, Faap, Sheena Mckenzie Md, Mba, Faap, Kayla Howard Do, Radhwa Ramadan Md, Loredana Huma Phd, Acrp-Cp, Usha Appalaneni Md

Scientific Day

Background/Significance:

A Seizure Action Plan (SAP) provides individualized seizure management instructions, including medication administration and emergency protocols. SAPs are inconsistently completed at Advocate Children’s Hospital – Oak Lawn (ACH-OL) leading to missed opportunities for patient/caregiver education and potential safety risks during care transitions.

Purpose:

Using quality improvement (QI) methodology, we aimed to improve the SAP completion rate for patients admitted to ACH-OL with seizure from 13% to 75% between 9/1/2025-12/31/2025.

Methods:

English and Spanish speaking patients 0–18 years admitted to ACH-OL with seizure-related diagnoses (identified by ICD-10 codes) and discharged from a general pediatric service between 9/1/25- 12/31/25 were included. …

Improving Integration Of Intake And Output Into Patient Care For Hospitalized Pediatric Patients, Seetal Mishra Md, Sheena Mckenzie Md, Mba, Faap, Svetlana Kravtchenko Md, Jessica Panice Msn, Aprn, Pcns-Bc, Aprn, Jessica Dukats Msn, Rn, Cpn, Danielle Prate Msn, Rn, Cpn, Joel Anderson Mph

Scientific Day

Background/Significance:

Lack of a universally accepted definition of strict vs standard intake and output (Ia&nO) has led to variability in documentation and orders across the pediatric hospital medicine (PHM) team. A serious safety event (SE) occurred when severe dehydration in an infant was not recognized, resulting in hypovolemic shock. Chart review showed minimal output documentation and failure to recognize I&O imbalance.

Purpose:

We aimed to decrease the I&O SE rate by 10% over 2 years by improving the integration of I&O into the clinical care of general pediatric patients at two campuses of Advocate Children’s Hospital.

Methods:

A multidisciplinary team …

Maternal Fever And Pprom Are Associated With Early Neonatal Illness Severity: A Composite Score Analysis In Nicu Admissions, Zoya Khan Do, Alexandra Wilson Md

Scientific Day

Background/Significance:

Maternal complications during delivery may predispose neonates to early clinical instability. Identifying specific maternal risk factors can help stratify neonatal risk and guide early postnatal care.

Purpose:

To assess the relationship between maternal complications and early neonatal illness severity using a composite clinical illness score.

Methods:

This retrospective cohort study included neonates admitted to a level IV NICU. Maternal factors analyzed included chorioamnionitis, fever, PPROM, preeclampsia, and intrapartum antibiotic exposure. Neonatal illness severity was defined using a 5-point composite score incorporating hypotension, need for hydrocortisone, elevated CRP, presence of multiple central lines, and ≥5 days of central line use. …

The Node Knows: Histopathology As The Key To Fever Of Unknown Origin In An Adolescent, Annette Mathew Do, Dana Nezon Md, Shalini Vootkur Md, Melissa Tesher Md

Scientific Day

Introduction/Background:

Fever of unknown origin (FUO) is a common pediatric presentation with a broad infectious and noninfectious differential. Histiocytic necrotizing lymphadenitis (HNL), also known as Kikuchi-Fujimoto disease (KFD), is a rare, self-limited condition characterized by prolonged fever and cervical lymphadenopathy. Diagnosis is often delayed due to nonspecific findings, with definitive confirmation requiring histopathologic evaluation. We describe a case of FUO and cervical lymphadenopathy ultimately diagnosed as HNL.

Description:

A 14-year-old female presented with one month of neck pain, tender cervical lymphadenopathy, and fevers. Initial outpatient treatment with amoxicillin-clavulanate did not result in improvement. Reevaluation demonstrated leukopenia and neutropenia, prompting hospital …

Baseline Ntprobnp As A Predictor Of 1-Year Heart Failure Hospitalizations In Cardiac Amyloidosis, Hannah Runnoe Do, Anne Marie Bonaguro Do, Valentina Turbay Caballero Md, Cindy Ndiaye Mph, Mark Dela Cruz Md

Scientific Day

Background/Significance:

Patients with cardiac amyloidosis (CA) are at high risk for morbidity. It remains unclear which biomarkers or echocardiographic parameters can help identify CA patients at the highest risk of short-term hospitalization.

Purpose:

We investigated whether biomarkers or echocardiographic parameters could help identify CA patients at the highest risk of hospitalization within one year.

Methods:

We performed a single-center cohort study of all CA patients from 2019 to 2025 who had a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and right ventricular- pulmonary arterial pressure coupling (RV-PA coupling ratio) reported at baseline. Patients were divided into groups based on number of heart …