Digital Commons Network^™

From Risk Factor To Cause Of Death: Hypertensive Heart Disease And The Changing Composition Of Heart Disease Mortality In Texas Compared With The United States, 1999–2020, Jose J. Loayza Pintado, Angelica Lopez Jesus, Aura Calderon, Jorge Aboytes Trevino, Daniela Hernandez

Research Symposium

Background: Heart disease mortality has declined nationwide, but Texas continues to experience higher rates than the United States overall. At the same time, hypertensive heart disease (HHD) has become more prominent within cardiovascular mortality statistics. Whether this shift reflects a growing hypertension-driven contribution to the Texas–U.S. gap has not been well quantified. We compared long-term trends in HHD mortality and the presence of HHD on death certificates among heart disease deaths in Texas versus the United States.

Methods: We analyzed CDC WONDER Underlying Cause of Death and Multiple Cause of Death files, 1999–2020, restricted to decedents aged ≥25 years. HHD …

Gper As A Therapeutic Target In Breast Cancer: Pharmacologic Inhibition And Microbiome Associations, Sierra E. Vidaurri, Shweta Singh, Valerie E. Ledezma, Rajesekhar Baru, Emma Garza, Francisco Flores, Muhammad Noorani, Shubhank Goyal, Aura Calderon, Alexander Lim, Anupam Dhasmana, Swati Dhasmana, Murali Yallapu, Subhash Chauhan, Diane Nguyen, Sheema Khan

Research Symposium

Background: The G protein–coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) mediates rapid estrogen signaling that promotes proliferation, migration, and therapeutic resistance in breast cancer, including in hormone receptor–negative subtypes. Notably, standard endocrine therapies may inadvertently activate GPER, highlighting the need for direct targeting of this pathway. The objectives of this study were to evaluate GPER as a therapeutic target using pharmacologic modulators and to determine how GPER-driven tumor behavior relates to tumor microbiome composition across breast cancer subtypes.

Methods: Breast cancer cell lines representing Luminal A (MCF7), Luminal B (BT474), HER2-enriched (SKBR3), and triple-negative (HCC38, MDA-MB-453, MDA-MB-231) subtypes were treated with Ormeloxifene (ORM). …

When A Pain Crisis Isn’T Only A Crisis: Delayed Hemolytic Transfusion Reaction With Hyperhemolysis In Adult Sickle Cell Disease., Bharat K. Peddinani, Conrad Chouinard, Aura Calderon, Maria I. Lopez, Diane Nguyen

Research Symposium

Introduction: Delayed hemolytic transfusion reaction (DHTR) in adults with sickle cell disease (SCD) is frequently mistaken for vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) or evolving acute chest syndrome (ACS). New alloantibodies may be absent or delayed, so reflex transfusion can worsen hemolysis. Programs now emphasize routine post-transfusion surveillance and a protocolized, transfusion-sparing response when DHTR is suspected.

Case Presentation: A 35-year-old man with hemoglobin SS SCD, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, and recurrent priapism presented with severe left-leg pain two weeks after receiving two units of packed red blood cells for pre-operative optimization. Baseline hemoglobin (Hb) was ~6 g/dL; he was off disease-modifying therapy. …

Seeing The Pattern: Optic Neuritis, Multifocal Mri Lesions, And The Early Diagnosis Of Multiple Sclerosis, Jose J. Loayza Pintado, William Reckley, Aura Calderon, Luis Gaitan

Research Symposium

Background: Optic neuritis is a common neuro-ophthalmic emergency and may be the first clinical manifestation of inflammatory demyelinating disease. In the acute setting, clinicians must rapidly distinguish multiple sclerosis (MS) from important mimics, particularly when optic nerve involvement is accompanied by spinal cord lesions. A structured approach integrating phenotype, MRI lesion distribution and activity, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) markers can support timely diagnosis and guide counseling regarding long-term management. We report a young man presenting with unilateral optic neuritis and prior transient neurologic episodes, highlighting a practical diagnostic framework applicable to emergency and inpatient care.

Case Presentation: A 27-year-old man …

Rural–Urban Disparities In Monkeypox-Related Behaviors And Attitudes Among Men Who Have Sex With Men, Patcharaporn Krainara, Benjamas Klahan, Rungrot Jaiyong, Jitti Hanprasertpong

Journal of Health Research

Background: Monkeypox (Mpox) is a global health threat, particularly among men who have sex with men (MSM). Despite the predominance of urban cases in Thailand, rural–urban disparities in Mpox-related attitudes and behaviors remain underinvestigated. This study aimed to compare Mpox-related attitudes and preventive behaviors among urban (Chonburi) and rural (Nakhon Nayok) MSM and identify their influencing factors.

Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted between March and April 2025. A total of  842 MSM (421 urban; 421 rural) were recruited via convenience sampling. Data were collected using paper-based, self-administered Health Belief Model (HBM) questionnaires and analyzed using descriptive statistics and multivariable …

The Waqf (Amendment) Act 2025: Policy, Politics, And Performance, Noor Ameena

Journal of Law and Public Policy

This legislative note examines The Waqf (Amendment) Act at the intersection of religious minority rights and state control. It begins by outlining the concept of waqfs, their significance in the Muslim world, types of waqfs, and modalities of their creation. Providing a brief history of the regulation of waqfs, it highlights the close connection of these Muslim religious endowments with the history of Hindu religious endowments. It evaluates the 2025 legal developments across three key areas: (i) family waqfs, testamentary succession, and gender, (ii) ‘government property’, waqfs, and state appropriation, and (iii) waqf regulation as a potential infringement on religious …

Driving Development: Coalitions, Policies, And Upgrading Brazilian Automotive Technology (1988–2025), Henrique Estides Delgado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Among industrial activities in Brazil, the automotive sector generates some of the most significant and multifaceted multiplier effects on the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The sector integrates activities ranging from raw materials to high-tech services, incorporating advanced technologies that influence innovation and positioning in global value chains (GVCs). Remarkably, this industry has been structured over time by public policies that have decisively shaped incentives for its participants. The world’s largest automotive multinationals have been attracted to operate in the country through varied institutional arrangements involving domestic capital and incentives across federative units. This dissertation analyzes how variations in institutional …

Untitled (Back Cover), Eli Haddad

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Eli worries us. He likes explosives and burying himself in the sand. A little dangerous, eh?

Untitled, Amber Bowers

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Amber is from Brazil. Yet another Indiana town that wishes it wasn't where it is.

Untitled (Front Cover), Mike Brooks

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Mike is currently restrained in the basement of an as yet unnamed greek house. He was unavailable for comment.

Untitled, Tara Karasch

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Tara, from Bloomington, Minnesota, wants to be sure that we are all aware of the fact that Fargo is in North Dakota. Yeah, we were confused too.

Socioeconomic And Cultural Factors In Shared Book Reading Interactions, Jessica Wood Folsom

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined socioeconomic and language factors influencing the implementation of shared book reading behaviors following participation in caregiver-trained shared book reading workshops. While shared book reading is known to support language and literacy outcomes of children, less is known about how socioeconomic and language differences affect its implementation. Eighteen participants were recruited from a local preschool and completed a 34-question pre-survey prior to attending a 2-week shared book reading workshop, followed by a 27-question post-survey. Parents reported on literacy practices, confidence level, and shared book reading behaviors. Results indicated increased positive shared book reading behaviors and caregiver confidence following …

2022 Pitcher Tells Rebels To Enjoy Every Moment In Omaha, Clara Turnage

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – For Rebel fans, it is a moment seared in memory: No. 37 Brandon Johnson stands on the mound in Omaha. Two strikes are on the board, and one more will win the 2022 College World Series.

Omaha Ready For Rebel Fans' Return, Jacob Batte

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – Three years after Ole Miss fans painted Omaha red and blue, the city is ready for a fresh coat.

Examining Connections Between Off-Reservation Boarding Schools And Contemporary Mental Health Crises In Indigenous Communities, Amelia Benware

Arts & Sciences Undergraduate Showcase

Intergenerational trauma in Indigenous communities dates to the early fifteenth century with the beginning of European colonization and continues to affect Indigenous communities through the present day. This project specifically examines the manifestations of intergenerational trauma in the Lakota community throughout North Dakota stemming from the off-reservation boarding school era. This research relied on a collection of oral histories gathered between 2016 and 2020 of enrolled members of the Lakota community who shared their personal experiences of coping with intergenerational trauma, and that of their close family and friends. This research establishes interdisciplinary connections among the fields of history, psychology, …

Escaping Quarantine: Marine Hospitals, The Constitution Act, 1867 And Canada’S First Federal Health Care Program, Dan Dwyre

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Previous scholarship has argued that the enumeration of marine hospitals as a federal head of power in the Constitution Act, 1867 reflected a national concern over immigration and quarantine. This article disputes that. Using primary sources, this paper demonstrates that Canadian marine hospitals were established in port communities to provide for the general health of itinerant merchant sailors, who would otherwise be a burden on local hospitals and charitable organizations. The article concludes that marine hospitals can be viewed in retrospect as one of Canada’s first federal health care programs.

One Step Further: An Overview Of Canada’S Past And Present Responses To Homelessness And The Argument For Alternative Conceptions Of Property Ownership, Logan Billard

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Homelessness in Canada continues to worsen year after year. Despite the shift from punitive, neoliberal policies to a human rights-based model, homelessness remains a national crisis. Federal initiatives like the National Housing Strategy Act and the Housing First Model aim to provide stable housing, but their impact remains limited. This paper explores the structural factors contributing to homelessness, including poverty, housing financialization, and systemic discrimination, particularly against Indigenous communities. It also highlights the limitations of the current human rights-based approach, focussing on the lack of enforceability and failure to create substantial, sustainable change due to systemic reliance on the financialization …

An Extension To A. Goldshtein, Et Al, 2025, Manish Rami

Communication Sciences & Disorders Faculty Publications

This note extends the findings reported in “Onboard recordings reveal how bats maneuver under severe acoustic interference” available at:

Goldshtein, Aya, et al. “Onboard Recordings Reveal How Bats Maneuver under Severe Acoustic Interference.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 122, no. 14, Apr. 2025, p. e2407810122. pnas.org (Atypon), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2407810122.

A Case Study Of Principal Preparation In A Social Justice-Informed Principal Preparation Program, Katie Golieb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study examined how a social justice-informed principal preparation program fostered the development of socially just school leaders and how graduates perceived their capacity for resilience as educational leaders in the contemporary PK–12 context. The Mountain Range Principal Preparation Program (MRP3), a university–district partnership designed to prepare educational leaders to be transformative leaders equipped to improve student achievement and address challenges in low-performing schools, served as the site of inquiry. The study explored how principals made meaning of their preparation experiences and how those experiences shaped their enactment of equity-focused leadership and their ability to sustain such work. …

A Theoretical And Empirical Framework To Estimate The Impact Of Conflict On The Economic Resilience Of Clustered Firms In Ukraine, Alexander D. Ginn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I develop a theoretical and empirical framework to estimate whether participation in industrial clusters contributes to firm-level economic resilience to conflict-based shocks. Focusing on Ukraine following the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, the study situates industrial organization and firms’ resilience to conflict within a dynamic environment characterized by spatially heterogeneous exposure to conflict events and persistent institutional constraints. I document how Ukraine’s contemporary economic geography reflects the interaction of Soviet-era industrial path dependence, uneven post-transition institutional development, and conflict-induced reconfiguration, evaluating how these dynamics generate systematic variation in both firms’ baseline vulnerability and their exposure to …

A Computational Micropatterning Approach To Study Caveolae And Protein Localization In Vascular Biology, Andrew B. Grespin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Caveolae are specialized, flask-shaped membrane invaginations highly expressed in endothelium and dysregulated in atherosclerosis. Caveolae play a central role in buffering membrane tension, yet the principles governing their spatial organization remain elusive. Thus, we sought to generate the most comprehensive and systematic analysis of blood vessel caveolar spatial organization. However, cell culturing, the backbone of human-focused biological research, does not standardly do well to model physiologically relevant cell behaviors such as migration or polarity-based tissue formation, particularly for punctate proteins and structures like caveolae. Micropatterns are cell-adhesive shapes that biophysically confine cell(s) to a user defined geometry which stereotype organelle …

The Growth Of Green Marketing Studies In Southeast Asia: A Bibliometric Review, Muh Erwin Syah, Nuryakin Nuryakin

ASEAN Marketing Journal

Research Aims: This study maps the intellectual structure and development of green marketing research in Southeast Asia. It identifies dominant research clusters and knowledge gaps and provides directions for future research.

Design/methodology/approach: The method used in this study is qualitative research with a literature study approach. The method used in this study is qualitative research with a literature study approach. The data source used in this study was taken from the Scopus database on May 25, 2025, with a publication timeframe (2014–2024). As for the data found, 3,872 publications were obtained and analyzed. Finally, this dataset was converted to RIS …

June 12, 2026 Ereporter, University Of Alabama At Birmingham

eReporter (campus newsletter)

No abstract provided.

Social Network Assessment For Adult Protective Services (Snaaps), Version 1.0: A Network Canvas Data Collection Instrument, Rebecca L. Mauldin, Laura E. Carter

Social Networks for Social Good Collection-Archive

The Social Network Assessment Protocol for Adult Protective Services (SNAAPS) is a Network Canvas interview protocol designed to support the collection, organization, visualization, and interpretation of social network data from older adults. The protocol was developed for use by Adult Protective Services practitioners, social workers, first responders, and other service providers who assess, refer, and intervene on behalf of older adults' well-being. The protocol facilitates the identification of social network characteristics associated with risk and protection related to elder mistreatment, including support relationships, financial involvement, conflict within the network, frequency of contact, connections to formal services, and patterns of network …

Assessing Planetiq Gnss-Ro Ionospheric Electron Density And Tecusing Ground-Based Ionosondes And Cosmic-2, Mohammed Alheyf, Mohamed S. Yamany, Ibrahim F. Ahmed

Faculty Publications

Radio occultation (RO) has become a key technique for monitoring the ionosphere by deriving electron density (Ne) profiles and total electron content (TEC) from GNSS signals. This study assesses the newly deployed PlanetiQ GNOMES constellation by validating its ionospheric Ne profiles and profile-based TEC against collocated measurements from ionosondes and the COSMIC-2 mission under both quiet and disturbed geomagnetic conditions. Data matching for the statistical validation uses conservative spatial thresholds of less than 1◦ in latitude and longitude and temporal limits of 30 min for ionosondes and 1 hfor COSMIC-2, supported by a dedicated sensitivity analysis, whereas storm-time case studies …

Conceptual Thermal Constraints On The Growth Of The First Tree On A Terraformed Mars, Agnieszka Wendland, Piotr Pałka, Robert Olszewski, Alison F.C. Bridger, Melinda A. Kahre, Christian Körner, Christopher P. Mckay

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The environmental conditions on present‑day Mars are far outside the range tolerated by known complex terrestrial life. Conceptual climate studies have suggested that, in hypothetical terraforming scenarios, artificially enhancing the greenhouse effect could restore Mars to more habitable surface conditions. Early colonizing terrestrial life on a warming Mars would plausibly consist of lichens and high‑alpine or high‑arctic plants. Here, we consider a later, more demanding step and investigate the thermal conditions under which the first tree could, in principle, grow on the Martian surface. Based on empirical treeline studies, we adopt thermal thresholds for a representa‑ tive high‑elevation conifer: a …

Using Ai To Add Tables Of Contents To Cataloging Records, Marissa Bischoff, Lance Hansen

Faculty Publications

A table of contents and summary are important metadata that improve the discoverability and description of our materials. They are optionally included in catalog records, though, because transcribing these by hand is time intensive.

We sought the most efficient way to scan and AI format the table of contents pages for inclusion in the 505 field of catalog records.  We explored different AI software, iterative prompting and the time-effectiveness of the process, in comparison to hand-typed metadata fields.

Dodosolsollalasol: Theme And Variations, Myrna J. Layton

Faculty Publications

The 2020 Korean Drama DoDoSolSolLaLaSol takes its name from, and makes substantial use of, the tune otherwise known as “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman,” the French Folk Song whose tune Mozart used in his twelve variations, and in English as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

The text of “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman,” focuses on the relationship between parent and child, which is one of the thematic applications of the music in the Korean drama. However, the French children’s song’s tune is taken from an earlier French song intended for adults, “La Confidence Naïve,” which is about a romantic relationship. This is another …

Maintaining Student Support During A Library Restructure, Ashley Purvis, Jenn Ann Monnin

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This talk presents a brief, collaborative autoethnography of a health science library downsizing due to budgetary constraints. Prior to Fall 2024, the library consisted of five librarians, with one liaison to each school on the Health Sciences Campus. After staff downsizing, a functional model was instituted with two librarians serving students, faculty, and research. One librarian focuses on support of the research enterprise, while the other focuses on student success, completing the majority of health sciences instruction. Presenters will briefly describe the new library structure and spend the majority of time presenting their reflection on the division of labor; deciding …

Staff Education To Improve Knowledge On Delirium Assessment, Prevention, And Treatment, Michelle Lee Coll

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.