Digital Commons Network^™

June 2026, Swosu Rural Health Center

RURAL ROCKS

Rural Rocks

Second Generation Antipsychotics in the Treatment of Depression

Dr. Debra L. Stevens, Pharm.D., BCPP 

Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as depression, affects 1 in 5 individuals in their lifetime.¹ Worldwide approximately 246 to 286 million individuals are afflicted with MDD.² MDD may cause significant morbidity and disability. The World Health Organization estimates that MDD will be one of the leading causes of disease burden by 2030.²

A significant number of patients diagnosed with MDD do not respond adequately despite appropriate treatment with antidepressants.² Treatment resistance may occur in up to one-third of patients …

Brain Death And End-Of-Life Decision Making: An Islamic Perspective, Safa Younis, Mohammad Wasay, Abdurrahman Husain, Rafaqat Rashid

Pakistan Journal of Neurological Sciences (PJNS)

No abstract provided.

Exploring Csf Microrna Signatures As Diagnostic Biomarkers In Adult-Type Diffuse Gliomas, Maryam Pirhoushiaran, Kamilah Walker-Charles, Tsung-Hung Yao, Satwikreddy Putluri, Nehal Patel, Isabel Wang, Antonio Dono, Angel Bueno, Sophia Nguyen, Ashish P Balar, Jason T Huse, Suprateek Kundu, Yoshua Esquenazi, Chirag B Patel, Sujit S Prabhu, Frederick F Lang, Leomar Y Ballester

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Mutations in isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) genes, specifically IDH1 and IDH2, are frequently observed in diffuse gliomas (DG) and define distinct molecular subtypes, namely IDH-wildtype and IDH-mutant. Abnormal expression of extracellular vesicle-derived microRNAs (EV-miRNAs) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of DG patients may serve as minimally invasive diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. To investigate this potential, we employed miRNA-sequencing (miRNA-seq), quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR), and multivariable logistic regression (MLR) to identify differentially expressed microRNAs (DE-miRNAs) in CSF samples from DG patients. qRT-PCR analysis demonstrated that EV-miR-21-5p effectively differentiated CSF from glioblastoma (GBM) patients versus controls (p = 0.012, AUC = 0.84) and …

Exploring Csf Microrna Signatures As Diagnostic Biomarkers In Adult-Type Diffuse Gliomas, Maryam Pirhoushiaran, Kamilah Walker-Charles, Tsung-Hung Yao, Satwikreddy Putluri, Nehal Patel, Isabel Wang, Antonio Dono, Angel Bueno, Sophia Nguyen, Ashish P Balar, Jason T Huse, Suprateek Kundu, Yoshua Esquenazi, Chirag B Patel, Sujit S Prabhu, Frederick F Lang, Leomar Y Ballester

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Mutations in isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) genes, specifically IDH1 and IDH2, are frequently observed in diffuse gliomas (DG) and define distinct molecular subtypes, namely IDH-wildtype and IDH-mutant. Abnormal expression of extracellular vesicle-derived microRNAs (EV-miRNAs) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of DG patients may serve as minimally invasive diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. To investigate this potential, we employed miRNA-sequencing (miRNA-seq), quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR), and multivariable logistic regression (MLR) to identify differentially expressed microRNAs (DE-miRNAs) in CSF samples from DG patients. qRT-PCR analysis demonstrated that EV-miR-21-5p effectively differentiated CSF from glioblastoma (GBM) patients versus controls (p = 0.012, AUC = 0.84) and …

Scaling The Production Of Bromine-76 And Bromine-77 Labeled Poly-Adp-Ribose-Polymerase-Targeted Theranostics For Preclinical Use, Todd E Barnhart, Jonathan W Engle, Paul A Ellison

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Bromine-76, a positron emitting radionuclide for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, and bromine-77, an Auger electron (Ae) emitting radionuclide, make a unique halogen theranostic pair. These isotopes have previously been used to synthesize a rucaparib-derived, poly-ADP-ribose polymerase inhibitor ([76/77Br]RD1). As [77Br]bromide activity in [76/77Br]RD1 radiosyntheses increased, coincident with solid target hardware changes in our facility, radiopharmaceutical yield became less reproducible. This work describes the modifications to this hardware, distillation procedures, and [76/77Br]bromide solution chemistry to enable reproducible production of preclinical quantities of [76/77Br]RD1.

Results: Isotopically enriched cobalt selenide targets had production yields of 50.7 ± 8.7 MBq/µAh for bromine-76 …

Myocellular Adaptations To Short-Term Weighted Wheel-Running Exercise Are Largely Conserved During C26-Tumour Induction In Male And Female Mice, Stavroula Tsitkanou, Pieter Jan Koopmans, Calvin Peterson, Ana Regina Cabrera, Ruqaiza Muhyudin, Francielly Morena, Sabin Khadgi, Eleanor R. Schrems, Tyrone Washington, Kevin Murach

Health, Human Performance and Recreation Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study investigated whether performing a translatable murine model of concurrent training after tumour induction affects adaptations in juvenile male and female tumour-bearing mice. Male and female Balb/c mice were injected bilaterally with colon-26 adenocarcinoma (C26) cells or PBS at 8 weeks of age. Half the mice then performed 24 days of voluntary wheel running with progressively increased load (PoWeR training), whereas the rest remained sedentary. Deuterium oxide-based protein synthesis, muscle fibre-type composition and size, protein turnover and mitochondrial markers were assessed 25 days after tumour induction. Average gastrocnemius muscle fibre size was smaller with PoWeR regardless of tumour in …

Full-Body Ai Agent: A Perspective On Multi-Scale Collaborative Ai For Systemic Biology And Precision Medicine, Zhiwei Fan, Liren Yang, Xi Hu, Ruihan Luo, Yankai Yu, Sophia Li, Weiling Zhao, Xiaobo Zhou

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly applied to biomedical research, but most current systems remain limited to specific tasks, data types, or biological scales. This makes it difficult to connect molecular alterations, organelle dysfunction, cellular behavior, tissue remodeling, organ physiology, systemic regulation, and whole-body phenotypes into coherent biological reasoning. In this Perspective, we propose the Full-Body AI Agent as a hypothetical multi-agent framework and conceptual blueprint for future systemic biology and precision medicine, rather than a fully implemented software platform. This framework envisions a supervisory Full-Body AI Agent coordinating seven biological-level agents, namely Molecule, Organelle, Cell, Tissue, Organ, Organ System, and …

Environmental Repair In The Energy Transition, Martin Lockman

Faculty Publications

For nearly a century, American laws have required mines, oil and gas companies, and other potentially hazardous industries to restore land affected by their activities to a safe condition when they are done with it. These laws represent a grand bargain—they allow operators to make profitable but damaging use of land today in exchange for the promise of expensive remediation tomorrow. However, this bargain has proven hard to enforce. Dozens of “zombie” mines scar mountains in Kentucky. Unrecorded “orphaned” wells poison groundwater in Texas. Over the past century, these laws have become the center of a legal arms race. Fossil …

Ldm-Morph: Latent Diffusion Model Guided Deformable Image Registration, Jiong Wu, Tinsu Pan, Kuang Gong

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Deformable image registration plays an essential role in various medical image tasks. Existing deep learning-based deformable registration frameworks primarily utilize convolutional neural networks (CNNs) or Transformers to learn features to predict the deformations. However, the lack of semantic information in the learned features limits the registration performance. Furthermore, the similarity metric of the loss function is often evaluated only in the pixel space, which ignores the matching of high-level anatomical features and can lead to deformation folding. To address these issues, in this work, we proposed LDM-Morph, an unsupervised deformable registration algorithm for medical image registration. LDM-Morph integrated features extracted …

The Color Of Combat: How Subtleties Of Resource Value Alter The Effects Of Fighting Ability In Hermit Crab Contests: How Subtleties Of Resource Value Alter The Effects Of Fighting Ability In Hermit Crab Contests, Thomas M. Chatfield, Mark Briffa

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

During contests over resources, the intensity of fighting and the outcome is often influenced by an interaction between the difference between opponents in the fighting abilities (resource holding potential [RHP]) and the difference in how they subjectively value the resource. Additionally, because fighting can involve vigorous activity, engaging in a fight can make the opponents more noticeable to predators. Thus, predation risk, alongside resource value (RV), may interact with the effects of RHP difference. During hermit crab contests over the ownership of empty gastropod shells attackers perform vigorous shell rapping, whereas defenders adopt a protective posture inside their shells. This …

Aphrodite In Movement And Miniature: Knidian Statuettes Of The Ancient And Modern, Jacqueline M. Lewis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines Hellenistic statuettes of the Knidian Aphrodite as independent works of art with distinct ancient contexts and modern collecting histories. Drawing on archaeological evidence from Delos, archival and public records from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a comparative framework that places Hellenistic and modern collecting cultures in dialogue, this thesis aims to present the Knidia within the dynamic, interactive history of statuettes. Evaluated on its own terms rather than in relation to a lost original, Knidian Aphrodite statuettes illuminate both the richness of Hellenistic domestic religious life and …

“A Chill Wind Sweeps The High Places”: Audre Lorde’S And June Jordan’S Black Feminist Pedagogies For Remaking Higher Education, Maddie Albanese

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this paper, I center the University as one site for radical pedagogy towards social justice.  This paper examines texts written on anti-racist, anti-sexist educational movements within the City University of New York, as well as archival materials from CUNY professors on the topic of radical, social justice-oriented learning. Conor Tomás Reed’s 2023 book New York Liberation School is one recent text on how CUNY activists dismantled the distinction between the University and its surrounding community, inextricably linking academic work with social-political activism. I take his extensive history of CUNY in tandem with various pedagogies developed by CUNY feminist educators …

An Absolute Manner Of Seeing: Flaubert, 1848, And The Development Of Modernist Style, Nicholas Olson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education as a key work in the emergence of literary Modernism from the tradition of Realism. I begin by exploring the intellectual background of Realism in the works of Honoré de Balzac and the ties between this aesthetic theory and the theory of representative government: here I discuss the work of François Guizot, Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Schlegel, J.W. Goethe, and Walter Scott as well as later thinkers like György Lukács, Pierre Bourdieu, Jürgen Habermas, and Jacques Rancière. From this, I demonstrate a commonly held theory of the social as a discreet totality, which makes …

Whitney Extension Problem For Fractional Sobolev Spaces And Besov Spaces, Han Li

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the dissertation, we go through the development of the Whitney extension problem and prove a type of results for the Whitney extension problem for homogeneous fractional Sobolev spaces and homogeneous Besov spaces.

This dissertation consists of four chapters:

Chapter 1: We recall the history of the Whitney extension problem and talk about some early works which have been done for the Whitney extension problem. We also mention our new results.

Chapter 2: We introduce some basic notations, definitions and preliminary results.

Chapter 3: We show the existence of a bounded linear extension operator for homogeneous fractional Sobolev space L …

Kitchen Table Press: A Case Study Of Regression To The Neoliberal Mean, Alaina Disalvo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the idealistic founding of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980 and its slow downfall, culminating in the cession of ownership of the Press to a university in 1992. It traces the ideological development of Kitchen Table Press’s key founders, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde, and their respective relationships to the ideologies of other renowned feminist figures of the era, specifically June Jordan and Adrienne Rich. It examines the history of the Press through historical, intersectional, affective, and socialist lenses. This thesis argues that neoliberal pressures can bend even the most radical organizations away from their …

Buttressing Britain’S Financial Rise: Anglo-Dutch Brokers In Eighteenth-Century London, Jiwon Han

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the course of the eighteenth century, British financial markets developed remarkably and London established itself as the financial center of Europe, replacing Amsterdam. Scholarship on Britain’s financial developments in the eighteenth century has largely understood it as the result of British efforts and innovation. This dissertation complicates that understanding by investigating the Anglo-Dutch merchants in eighteenth-century London and their contributions to the development of British financial markets. In particular, their support was essential for the British government’s war finances, because Britain’s continuous wars against France demanded an immense amount of money and credit while its financial markets were still …

Le Féminin-Fantastique: Entre Construction Symbolique Et Figuration De L’Altérité. Étude Des Figures Féminines Surnaturelles Dans La Littérature Fantastique Française Du Xixe Siècle, Ivana Prelevic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the féminin-fantastique in nineteenth-century French literature, arguing that supernatural female figures—vampires, animated objects, and revenantes—form a symbolic system through which the century negotiates anxieties surrounding sexuality, materiality, subjectivity, capitalism, mortality, and historical memory. Drawing on theoretical frameworks including Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection, Barbara Creed’s monstrous-feminine, Marxist analyses of commodity fetishism, Freudian mourning, Derridean hauntology, and Georges Bataille’s theory of eroticism, the study analyzes works by Gautier, Féval, Mérimée, Maupassant, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, and Nodier. Through three thematic axes—the female vampire, the animation of feminine objects, and the female revenant—the dissertation demonstrates how the supernatural feminine destabilizes …

New York State Excelsior Scholarship Program: A Post-Implementation Analysis Of Student Success, Eligibility, And Indebtedness – An Intersectional Study Of Black And White Female Students, Marcus I. Richardson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The New York State (NYS) Excelsior Scholarship Program, introduced in 2017, was designed as a “first-in-the-nation” tuition-free initiative intended to expand college affordability for undergraduate students attending public institutions in New York State. While the program aims to increase access to higher education, its eligibility requirements, particularly the expectation that students complete 30 credits annually through continuous full-time enrollment, may disadvantage students whose academic pathways diverge from traditional enrollment patterns. This study examined the relationship between structural, financial, and academic factors and students’ ability to retain Excelsior Scholarship eligibility at the City University of New York (CUNY). Using institutional data …

An Inferential Analysis Of Lexical Networks, Christopher D. Gravelle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lexical networks are graphs where words are treated as nodes, and relations between words are treated as edges. The adoption of lexical networks in psycholinguistics is impeded by a lack of readily available inferential methods, which limits work to purely descriptive analyses with little ability to make inferences about what variables account for lexical network structure. The current research explores the use of latent space network models as a method for analyzing lexical networks. Latent space network models are latent variable regression models, which model the presence or strength of edges by estimating pairwise distances between nodes in a latent …

Managing Migration And Political Change: Lessons From Sweden’S 2015 Asylum Crisis For South Korea’S Emerging Immigration Era, Sean Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this capstone project is to analyze how two nations that have little in common in terms of geography or politics have been required to deal with immigration issues in ways that their institutions did not anticipate. One nation has been dealing with immigration-related issues for some time now, while the other nation has yet to do so. In 2015, when Sweden received approximately 162,000 asylum applications in one year alone, Sweden’s housing systems were strained, many of the municipalities were unable to keep up with the demand, and the political climate began to shift in ways that …

Goddess In A Trash Can: Religious Ritual Disposal In New York City Public Parks, Zoe Oro-Hahn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Practitioners of Afro-Caribbean religions, including Santería, Vodou, Espiritismo, and Las 21 Divisiones, utilize the New York City Public Parks system to hold rituals, connect with spirits and ancestors, and dispose of religious remains leftover from trabajos (workings) and brujería (witchcraft). Utilizing photos from Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, my thesis considers the religious, political, social, and practical rationale behind this phenomenon, explores the rituals occurring, and provides policy suggestions that balance religious needs of practitioners with the safety and wellbeing of New York City’s parks.

New Age Spirituality In Post-Secular Turkey: Navigating Secular Sensibilities And Class Privilege, Zeynep Ozbarlas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The conflict between religion and secularism has been one of the major forces shaping Turkey’s socio-political landscape since the late nineteenth century. With the radical secular turn during the founding of the Turkish Republic, secularism remained the dominant force until the rise of political Islam in the 1980s. This dissertation, grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, argues that New Age spirituality, adopted by the secular upper-middle class, has become an alternative venue for the reproduction of secular sensibilities and socio-economic privilege in contemporary Turkey, at a time when the two-decade tenure of the Erdoğan regime has undermined secular hegemony.

Although New Age …

Reimagining Puerto Rican Sonic Identity: Musical Style And Creation After Hurricane María., Gabriel E. Bouche Caro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the manifestation of Puertorriqueñidad (Puerto Rican identity) in concert music composed after Hurricane María (2017), a catastrophe that catalyzed a profound shift in Puerto Rico's cultural consciousness. Focusing on four composers whose early careers were shaped by this period—Johanny Navarro, John Rivera Pico, Iván E. Rodríguez, and Christian Quiñones—the study combines close readings of scores and recordings with extensive original interviews to understand how musical identity is constructed in the wake of collective trauma. The analysis reveals that while the composers share a generational bond, their aesthetic practices are strikingly diverse: Navarro preserves Afro-Caribbean rhythmic structures, Rivera …

Que Tus Ojos No Se Cansen De Brillar, Gabriel E. Bouche Caro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Que tus ojos no se cansen de brillar is a nine-song song cycle for soprano, saxophone, clarinet, percussion, electric guitar, violin, viola, and cello. Setting texts by Giannina Braschi alongside selected poems by Ángela María Dávila, Julia de Burgos, and Pedro Pietri, the work explores Puertorriqueñidad through musical hybridity. Drawing on Puerto Rican musical traditions and the island’s diasporic experience as core structural elements, the cycle constantly shifts styles, weaving together lyrical, experimental, and vernacular elements to reflect the resilience, fragmentation, and diversity of Puerto Rican identity across its literary, musical and experiential voices.

Technology Disruptions In Platform Ecosystems: Ai, Market Adaptation, And Digital Resignation, Eunah Cho

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how technological disruptions reshape behavior, competition, and user response in platform ecosystems. Bringing together two studies of generative AI in digital labor market and one study of mandatory privacy disclosure in mobile app ecosystems, it argues that platform technologies do not affect participants uniformly. Instead, their effects are mediated by market structures, competitive dynamics, and platform dependence.

The first study shows that ChatGPT shifts workers’ human capital strategies by reducing investment in specialized depth while increasing skill diversity, revealing a move from exploitation toward exploration. Yet market rewards remain uneven, as workers who integrate AI with deep …

Radiotheranostics For Gynecological Pathologies, Joni Sebastiano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Molecular imaging, specifically positron emission tomography (PET), is vital for detecting disease and understanding its biological makeup. The exploitation of radiolabeled antibodies for PET imaging has proven to be indispensable to the field of molecular imaging over the last several decades. The development of radioimmunoconjugates for use in immunoPET has not only allowed for the sensitive, specific, and high-resolution detection of disease, but has also enabled a deeper understanding of the disease biology, ultimately guiding more personalized therapeutic strategies. Most typically, this technology is harnessed for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, however more recently, the field has explored the …

Contesting The Sacred: Ideology And Church Music Reform In Spain, 1850–1900, Francisco J. Legasa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that sacred-music reform in Spain between 1850 and 1900 was not a unified movement culminating in the 1903 Motu proprio, but a contest between two distinct and contemporaneous programs. The first, associated with Hilarión Eslava, affirmed musical expression and artistic progress, embraced stylistic eclecticism, and sought to rebuild musical institutions, modernize pedagogy, and forge alliances with civic life. It drew on Romantic thought that attributed to music a distinctive capacity to mediate religious experience. The second, aligned with Roman ultramontanism, held that Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony were the only legitimate models for sacred music and that …

Who Is Invited To The National Family? A Brazilian Autoethnography Of Being A Woman Under The U.S. O-3 Visa, Bruna Lauermann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis lives in the borderlands between Brazil and the United States, during the nine years of my immigration to the United States. Using autoethnography, I analyze the O-3 visa as a tool that controls and alienates foreign women and devalues knowledge produced outside U.S. borders. This visa, for spouse or children of O-1 holders, which are people considered to have extraordinary abilities to work in the U.S. showcases the reasons why one is invited to be part of the national family and under what obligations and circumstances. A decision that is shaped far more by the interests of the …

Alive And Thriving: Ancestral Wisdom Usage Among Us Based Latine Clinical Social Workers In Psychotherapy Practice, Yaneth Lombana

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At a time when the United States is rolling back protections to vulnerable communities, this dissertation investigates experiences of Latine clinical social workers in New York and New Jersey as it relates to the intersection of ancestral wisdom and their profession. It addresses how Latine clinical social workers, who incorporate ancestral wisdom in their practice determine when, with which clients and with which methods to do so. This work advances current scholarship on how clinical social workers can combat racism and white supremacy. It highlights resistance practices that have been critical in keeping people indigenous to colonized lands alive and …

Music Appreciation In Cochlear Implant Users: A Questionnaire, Hanna Davidson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cochlear implants provide significant benefits for speech perception in individuals with severe to profound hearing loss; however, music perception and appreciation remain challenging due to limited spectral and temporal resolution. This study examined music appreciation in post lingually deafened adult cochlear implant users, focusing on changes in enjoyment, listening behaviors, and subjective experiences following implantation. Sixteen adults completed a 36-item questionnaire assessing pre- and post-implant music engagement, perceived sound quality, and emotional responses to music. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics, and qualitative responses were analyzed thematically.

Results indicated a moderate decline in music enjoyment following …