Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluating The Effect Of Rna Interference Of X-Box Binding Protein 1 (Xbp1) On Survival And Fecundity In Acyrthosiphon Pisum, James Balthazor, Jacob Lutgen

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Acyrthosiphon pisum (pea aphid) is a major pest of Fabaceae (legume) crops, causing direct feeding damage and transmitting plant viruses. Conventional control relies on broad-spectrum insecticides and natural enemies, both of which can harm non-target organisms and ecosystems. RNA interference (RNAi) offers a promising, species-specific alternative by silencing essential genes via double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). This study targeted X-Box Binding Protein 1 (XBP1), a key transcription factor in the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) pathway that regulates proper protein folding in the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER). This chaperone promotes folding of newly synthesized polypeptides and helps manage misfolded proteins. Silencing the XBP1 gene …

Awe Only At What You See, Thomas Marinelli

Philosophy Student Scholarship

The sublime, as developed by Immanuel Kant in Critique of Judgment and later framed and deconstructed by Jacques Derrida in The Truth in Painting, is much like admiring a view—standing before the ocean, seeing nothing but an endless expanse of water stretching beyond the horizon. Yet this vastness is only visible through the lens of our own perception. Imagine being placed in the middle of that ocean, surrounded by nothing: a sensation of weight, anxiety, perhaps even freedom and clarity, might emerge—a powerful emotion never before felt. That situation itself is not the sublime; rather, it is the feeling, the …

Gnsi Decision Brief: The Three-Body Trap: The New Geometry Of Nuclear Deterrence, Seong-Hyon Lee

GNSI Decision Briefs

In the astrophysics of orbital mechanics, the “Two-Body Problem” – predicting the gravitational interaction between two objects, such as the Earth and the Moon – is mathematically solvable. The system is stable, the orbits are predictable, and the variables are calculable. However, if a third independent object of sufficient mass is introduced, the system becomes non-linear and highly unpredictable. As proven by mathematician Henri Poincaré in 1887, no single formula can solve for long-term stability in a three-body system. For eight decades, since the dawn of the nuclear age, global security operated on “Two-Body” physics. The United States and the …

Pearl Burns

African American Funeral Programs

Program for the funeral of Pearl Burns, held at Simmons Branch Missionary Baptist Church on March 21, 2026.

Daniels Distinction Portfolio By Maeve Hoffert, Maeve Hoffert

Business Information and Analytics: Undergraduate Distinction Portfolios

A Daniels Distinction Portfolio of experiential education by Maeve Hoffert.

Severe Familial Chylomicronemia Syndrome With Refractory Hypertriglyceridemia And Multisystem Complications Managed With Chronic Plasmapheresis And Olezarsen: A Case Report, Christopher M. Ahmad, Rae-Anne Kastle, Hima Patel, Samira R. Haberman, Miriana Youkhana

Student Publications

Familial chylomicronemia syndrome (FCS) is a rare, inherited lipid disorder characterized by severe hypertriglyceridemia and a risk of recurrent pancreatitis. Patients with biallelic pathogenic variants affecting lipoprotein lipase (LPL)-mediated triglyceride metabolism may remain refractory to conventional lipid-lowering therapies and strict dietary control, leading to recurrent critical illness and progressive multisystem complications.

We report a female patient with genetically confirmed FCS and persistent triglyceride levels typically in the 4,000-5,000 mg/dL range despite adherence to diet and lipid-lowering therapy, without clear secondary contributors to severe hypertriglyceridemia. Her course included recurrent intensive care unit (ICU) admissions for hypertriglyceridemia-associated pancreatitis requiring insulin drips, with …

Vetter V. Resnik: An International Dilemma, Catherine Stagliano

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (AELJ) Blog

Typically, copyright lawyers around the nation look to the Second Circuit, presiding over New York City, and the Ninth Circuit, similarly moderating Los Angeles, for pivotal intellectual property legal decisions. On January 12, 2026, however, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit released an opinion that has upended seemingly settled music publishing principles. Donald Passman’s textbook “All You Need to Know About the Music Business”, a source read by aspiring music industry professionals, describes termination rights as:

One of the best goodies that creators got in the 1976 Copyright Law is the right of termination. The termination provisions say …

Holding Isps Accountable? Secondary Liability And The Impact Of Cox V. Sony, Emma Steffes

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (AELJ) Blog

The Supreme Court is currently considering a case that could significantly affect current secondary liability principles under copyright law: Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment. The case poses a deceptively simple question: asking when an internet service provider should be legally responsible for the illegal actions of its users? The answer could reshape the relationship between copyright owners, internet companies, and all online users.

Graduate Honors Former Professors, Bill Dabney

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – A $100,000 gift to the University of Mississippi will name two faculty offices in the new Patterson School of Accountancy.

Taller Para Maestros: La Música Como Espejo De La Identidad Hispana En Ee.Uu., Dra. Sonia Balasch

LAII Events

En este taller interactivo se compartirán recursos prácticos y estrategias dinámicas para explorar la identidad personal y la colectiva de estudiantes de Spanish Language Arts (SLA). Usando música fronteriza y otros géneros creados por hispanos en suelo estadounidense, se invita a reflexionar sobre el papel de la música como espejo de la identidad hispana en los Estados Unidos. Los asistentes contarán con herramientas concretas y adaptables a diferentes contextos para integrar la dimensión cultural en el aula, fortaleciendo el sentido de pertenencia y comunidad.

Sonia Balasch es doctora en Lingüística Hispánica por la Universidad de Nuevo Mexico y tiene una …

Restoring Relational Connection At South Side Christian Church: Group Spiritual Direction For Burnout Prevention Among Lay Leaders, Brooks Wilson

DMin Project Theses

Relationships form the bedrock of authentic church community. According to Jesus, the greatest commandment entails a holistic love for both God and neighbor.1 Anything less than relational connection ceases to accomplish the new creation goals of Christ’s mission. Thus, building, maintaining, and repairing relational connection remains central to the church’s aim.

Junior Recital: Sam Kapus, Flute; March 21, 2026, Sam Kapus, Lu Witzig

School of Music Programs

This is the one hundred and twenty-second program of the 2025-2026 season.

Kemp Recital Hall

March 21, 2026

Saturday Evening

6:00 p.m.

Problematizing The Critical Dimensions Of Whiteness With Educational Leaders, Lerita Yvette Cavness

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This action research examines whether and how whiteness is “weaponized” by a P-12 educational leader, the impact whiteness has on their identities, and whether engagement with Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) will increase pro-equity behaviors. The research employs a layered mixed-methods approach, and a deductive analysis triangulation plan framed by the Critical Dimensions of Whiteness Model (CDWM). This N-of-1 case study included a four-phase intervention workshop series and one post interview. The findings identify how one educational leader engaged in the selfweaponization of whiteness. The findings identify that CWS supported by the CDWM is a disruptive but healing path to awareness …

Analyzing Methods To Support Students Left Behind In Colorado Primary/Secondary Schools, Grace Hudson

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

In the United States, there has been an increase of deportations, since 2024, of undocumented immigrants. This has disproportionally affected Mexicans and others from Latin American countries (Dreby 2012) due to them being the largest group of undocumented people in the United States. One effect of these deportations is an increase in children that are left in the United States while their parent(s) are in detention or have been deported. Some of these children are in mixed-status families, which means that the child has a different citizenship status than their parents or other members in their family, which allows for …

Unearthing "Storied Lives:" Building Resilient And Recontextualized Collections At Unh Library Through Community Archives Collaborations, Kai H. Uchida, Eleta Exline, Morgan Wilson

Faculty Publications

A strength of the University Archives at the University of New Hampshire is its strong administrative and institutional history collections through the mid 20th century, with hundreds of linear feet of manuscripts from offices across campus. However, some of these collections were processed more than 30 years ago and are missing descriptive work that would ideally highlight communities of color on campus and their inclusion and self-advocacy in the history of higher education.

In the absence of resources that would prioritize reprocessing these collections, the University Archives has partnered with the Digital Collections Team at UNH to broaden the access …

Takiea Shontae Webb

African American Funeral Programs

No abstract provided.

Christine Polk Moore

African American Funeral Programs

Program for the funeral of Christine Polk Moore, held at Old Bethel Primitive Baptist Church on March 21, 2026.

Addressing The Problems Of Data Variations, Quality, And Scarcity In Training Deep Neural Networks, Jian Sun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The performance of deep neural networks (DNNs) is strongly influenced by the characteristics and quality of the underlying datasets. This Ph.D. dissertation addresses three pervasive data challenges-imbalance, quality degradation, and scarcity-that commonly hinder the effectiveness of DNNs in computer vision (CV) and natural language processing (NLP) applications.

Class imbalance remains one of the most frequent causes of degraded model generalization. While Focal Loss effectively mitigates inter-class imbalance by assigning higher weights to minority classes, it struggles with intra-class imbalance, particularly in video datasets where longer clips dominate feature representation. To address this, I implement and utilize …

Contribution Of G4 Structure To Alzheimer’S Disease And Tau Pathology, Lena Michaela Kallweit

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The occurrence of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is rapidly increasing as our global population ages. With the majority of therapeutic drugs in the last couple of decades failing clinical trials, new molecular targets are needed to combat the expected influx of new AD cases. AD pathogenesis is associated with abnormal protein aggregation, characterized in part by intracellular accumulation of hyperphosphorylated tau (p-tau) in neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs). RNA has been identified as a major non-proteinaceous component of NFTs and has been implicated as an active cofactor in tau aggregation and spread. Recent work has shown that aggregates from AD brains contain almost …

Critical Roles And Critical Rolls: A Frame-Analytical Perspective Of Self-Making, Safe Spaces, And Worldbuilding In Tabletop Role-Playing Games, Cal Quayle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many gamers prefer to play tabletop roleplaying games, or TTRPGs, in order to a) join a community, and b) tell a story collaboratively with friends and acquaintances. This thesis discusses selfhood-making, safe spaces, and allegory in imaginary worlds from the perspective of Erving Goff man’s frame analysis. It relies on a theoretical framework of imagined communities, the magic circle, and subcreation. This research culminated in the understanding that people play TTRPGs for a variety of reasons - collaborative storytelling and exercising critical thinking skills, but respondents overwhelmingly reported that they enjoyed the ability to socialize with friends and strangers, and …

Bridging Professional Development Gaps In Pacrao Through Gamification, Chad Everett Saunders

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the extent to which a gamified professional development platform can foster skill development, knowledge application, and engagement among members of the Pacific Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (PACRAO). Grounded in the principles of humanism (Rogers, 1969) and andragogy (Knowles, 1990), and operationalized through gamification (Kapp, 2012), this study evaluated whether game-based mechanics aligned with adult learners’ professional development needs within a geographically dispersed regional association. To address these constraints, a prototype gamified platform, PACRAO University, was developed to provide a flexible, self-paced, and contextually relevant learning environment. Using a quantitative, within-subjects repeated measures design, …

Optimizing Warranty Policies For Remanufactured Products: When Should They Be Longer, Shorter, Or Identical To New Product Warranties?, Kunpeng Li, Jun-Yeon Lee

Faculty Publications

Manufacturers adopt different warranty strategies for remanufactured products, offering shorter, identical, or longer warranty periods compared to new products. However, prior research has only focused on manufacturers offering either shorter or identical warranties. In addition, the existing literature has not captured the diminishing returns of warranties, i.e., as the warranty coverage increases, its incremental benefits begin to decrease but the costs continue to increase. To address these gaps, we develop an optimization model that jointly considers pricing and warranty decisions while accounting for warranty’s diminishing effect on consumer’s willingness to pay for remanufactured products. We show that all three observed …

Secureai: Toward Experiential Security And Privacy Training For Ai Practitioners, Mujtaba Nazari, Eric Chan-Tin, Loretta Stalans, Mohammed Abuhamad

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence across industries has outpaced security and privacy training for AI practitioners. This paper presents methods, modules, and findings from an experiential training program designed to address security and privacy challenges in AI systems development and deployment. We conducted two program iterations: a comprehensive 12-workshop series (May-October 2024) and a condensed 6-workshop format (January-February 2025). The program combined expert-led panel sessions with hands-on laboratory activities, engaging 78 participants from diverse professional backgrounds. Evaluation through pre- and post-evaluation surveys and qualitative observations revealed improvements in cybersecurity knowledge and AI security awareness. Participants demonstrated enhanced ability to …

Modelling Enablers And Barriers To Improve Uptake Of A Fruit And Vegetable Voucher Scheme (The Fresh Street Community) In England:: A Tism-Micmac Approach, Jiang Pan, Clare Relton, Lisa Howard, Lisa Howard, Aira Ong, Louise Hunt, Paridhi Garg, Jane Bradbeer, Manik Puranik, Rachel Sutton, Carol Wagstaff, Clare Pettinger

School of Health Professions

Background: Improving equitable access to fresh fruit and vegetables (FV) remains a critical public health priority in the UK, particularly in low-income communities where affordability, accessibility, and social barriers limit healthy food choices. The Fresh Street Community scheme, a place-based FV voucher initiative in England, aims to enhance dietary equity by enabling households to purchase fresh produce from local community centres. Building on prior feasibility research, this study applies a systems-modelling approach to explore how multiple enablers and barriers interact to influence scheme uptake and sustainability.Methods: Using Total Interpretive Structural Modelling (TISM) combined with MICMAC analysis, we engaged research team …

Equity Evaluation Of Residents’ Transit+Walk Accessibility To Sacramento Healthcare Facilities, Masoud Ghodrat Abadi, Ahoura Zandiatashbar, Aaron Pickett, Stephanie Nemet, Soheil Sharifi

Mineta Transportation Institute

Access to healthcare is a key component of public health equity, yet many U.S. communities remain dependent on private vehicles for medical travel. This study introduces an integrated framework, the Transit+Walk Score (TWS), to evaluate how effectively residents of Sacramento, California, can reach healthcare facilities via public transit and how safely, comfortably, and conveniently they can walk from transit stops to those facilities. The research aims to inform planners, transit agencies, and policy makers in designing equitable and multimodal transportation systems. The research team combined geospatial network modeling and field-based walkability audits to assess 123 healthcare facilities across Sacramento, with …

Senior Recital: Neil Alford, Voice; March 21, 2026, Neil Alford, Pepe Guillen Prados

School of Music Programs

This is the one hundred and twenty-third program of the 2025-2026 season.

Kemp Recital Hall

March 21, 2026

Saturday Evening

7:30 p.m.

The Difficulty With Setting A Standard Based On Difficulty: The Role Of Validity In Determining Assessment Standards., Steven Burr, Daniel Zahra, Iain M Robinson

Peninsula Medical School

When setting standards for high-stakes assessments, it is necessary to be clear whether the primary criterion should be importance or difficulty. While standard setting practices frequently rely on the difficulty to determine passing or failing thresholds, this can undermine the intended inferences and uses of assessments. Standard setting based on difficulty conflates importance with subjective perceptions of difficulty, misguiding decisions about what candidates need to demonstrate for safe and effective practice. We explore several reasons why difficulty does not align with the aims of assessment and how prioritising importance can better reflect the intended uses and inferences of a test. …

Adaptations Of Collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment With Survivors Of Torture: Clinical Insights From Shareback Conversations, Samantha Correa

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Survivors of Torture (SoT) experience disproportionately high rates of PTSD, depression, and anxiety (Steel et al., 2009). Many SoT treatment programs use brief assessments to monitor symptoms (McFarlane & Kaplan, 2012). However, research on integrating feedback into treatment had been limited until Colpas et al.'s 2024 study on Sharebacks, a novel approach where clients review their progress with their clinician in structured feedback sessions. Given the therapeutic potential of assessment feedback (Tarocchi et al., 2013; Smith & George, 2012; Poston & Hanson, 2010) and Colpas et al.'s findings on Sharebacks' importance, this study explores how practitioners can most effectively incorporate …

Optimization Of Contact Time, Adsorbent Dosage, And Initial Ph For Methylene Blue Removal In Aqueous Solution Using Citrus Aurantium Peels, John Rich M. Adorna, Maria Carmela M. Lajara, Aldrin James F. Tolentino, Hiromi O. Yazaki

DLSU Senior High School Research Congress Conference Proceedings

The growing contamination caused by the dye and textile industries has generated serious environmental issues due to the release of chemically synthesized dyes such as methylene blue (MB), which are toxic and resistant to biodegradation. This study examines the impact of contact time, adsorbent dosage, and initial pH on the removal efficiency of MB using Citrus aurantium peels as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly adsorbent. The Box-Behnken design methodology was employed to identify optimal conditions for maximum removal. The research consisted of 15 experiments to determine the adsorption capacity under various conditions. Results showed that the removal efficiency was highest …

Optimization Of Bioethanol Production From Potato Peel Waste: A Study On Yield Enhancement And Efficiency Improvement Through The Application Of Biosynthesized Silver Nanoparticles (Agnps), Prestan Eli Galang Antonio, Darlene Kaye Logao Ampoc, Jim Raegan Damot Galdones, Raven Mars J. Gines, Kyle Wilner Anoyan Mangiwet, Mary Grace D. Diso

DLSU Senior High School Research Congress Conference Proceedings

This study explores the potential of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) to enhance bioethanol production from potato peel waste. By using the abundant and low-cost nature of potato peels and the catalytic properties of AgNPs, this research aims to contribute to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly energy solution. The study examines the effect of varying AgNP concentrations on bioethanol yield and its other properties, including sugar content, purity, and yield percentages. A comprehensive methodology was employed for milling, nanoparticle synthesis, pretreatment, fermentation, and purification. The results, supported by ANOVA analysis, will demonstrate whether the AgNP concentrations significantly improve bioethanol yield. The …