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Book Review: The Raider: The Untold Story Of A Renegade Marine And The Birth Of U.S. Special Forces In World War Ii, Wylie W. Johnson

Parameters Bookshelf – Online Book Reviews

Author: Stephen R. Platt

Reviewed by: Dr. Wylie W. Johnson, chaplain, US Army War College class of 2010

In this gripping narrative, Stephen R. Platt uncovers the forgotten legacy of a rebellious Marine whose daring vision helped shape the future of US Special Forces. Blending biography with battlefield drama, the book reveals how unconventional tactics and bold leadership redefined America’s approach to warfare. A must-read for anyone interested in the origins of elite military units and the individuals who defied tradition to forge them.

©2026 Wylie W. Johnson

Microalgae-Based Probiotic Delivery Systems: Nutritional, Functional, And Synbiotic Potential – A Review, Azza Silotry Naik

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Purpose of review: This review aims to evaluate current probiotic encapsulation strategies, with a particular focus on the potential of microalgae-based systems. It seeks to answer how microalgae can enhance probiotic viability during processing and gastrointestinal transit, and what advantages they offer over conventional encapsulation agents, thereby supporting the development of more effective, sustainable probiotic delivery solutions.Recent findings: Recent research highlights that microalgae such as Chlorella vulgaris and Isochrysis galbana possess robust cell structures and bioactive compounds, including polysaccharides, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and antioxidants, which confer protection to probiotics and contribute beneficial prebiotic effects. Innovative approaches like synbiotic formulations,direct fermentation …

2026-04-15 Evan Honer Brings ‘Sad Folk’ To The Showbox, Diego Dumlao

The Spectator Online

No abstract provided.

2026-04-15 Timeout Session: Travis Farrell Throws Curveball At University Of Portland, Julia Pilch

The Spectator Online

No abstract provided.

2026-04-15 Redhawk Dining Announces Spring Changes, Maya Deguzman

The Spectator Online

No abstract provided.

2026-04-15 Investigative Debater, Dylan Berman Is The Spectator’S Next Editor-In-Chief, Kaitlyn Delfs

The Spectator Online

No abstract provided.

The Parthenon, April 15, 2026, Baylee Parsons, Kaitlyn Fleming, Abby Ayes, Ella Hatfield, Davina Snyder, Scott Price, Trista Honaker, Tally Mamula

The Parthenon

No abstract provided.

Anesthetic Management In Patients With Impella Devices: A Retrospective Review And Clinical Guide, Harrison Yang, Divakara Gouda, Kent B. Berg, Katherine Green, Suvan Sundaresh, Basavana Goudra

Department of Anesthesiology Faculty Papers

Background: The Impella family of percutaneous a left ventricular assist devices are increasingly used for hemodynamic support in patients with cardiogenic shock or advanced heart failure. However, guidance on anesthetic management for patients with Impella support undergoing noncardiac procedures remains sparse. This study reviews perioperative practices and outcomes to inform clinical management.

Methods: Following institutional review board approval, a retrospective analysis was performed of adult patients receiving an Impella device (2.5, CP, 5.0, or 5.5) at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, USA, between December 2017 and October 2024. Patients, who subsequently underwent procedures involving anesthesia care were included. Demographics, procedure …

Structure-Property Relationships In Chalcones With Extended Π-Conjugation: Ict Perturbation And Far-Red Fluorescence, Yi Pang, Christopher J. Ziegler, Wei-Yuan Chen, Paityn Houglan

University Research

4-Dimethylamino-2′-hydroxychalcone (DHC) derivatives are known to exhibit distinctive photophysical properties for various applications, including highly fluorescent crystals and molecular imaging. In a continuous effort to establish the structure–property correlation of this class of materials, a series of methoxy-substituted chalcone derivatives with extended π-conjugation have been synthesized to understand the effect of methoxy substituents on the intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) along the backbone. These derivatives displayed low fluorescence in protic solvents (e.g. ϕfl ≈ 0.003–0.009 in H2O), but high fluorescence in a polar aprotic solvent (ϕfl ≈ 0.2–0.35 in DMSO), with emission maxima up to 658 nm. Fluorescence lifetime measurements revealed …

An Investigation Into The Student And Faculty Knowledge, Perception, And Usage Of Chatgpt, Isabella Burns

Honors Theses

Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT) has become a significant topic in academia. Professors and university officials have been contemplating an all-out ban on utilizing such tools for undergraduate academic work. Sullivan et al (2023) noted “…student behaviors led some universities to ban the use of ChatGPT…” (p. 32). Instead of teaching students how to leverage ChatGPT as a powerful resource to enhance the learning process, universities have deemed use of ChatGPT unacceptable, equating its use with serious academic dishonesty offenses consistent with plagiarism (Hawdon et al., 2025). Directly copying from ChatGPT can constitute plagiarism and poses a significant issue for college-level studies, …

Exploring Undergraduate Student’S Perceptions Of Agriculture, Cayden J. Barton

Honors Theses

Americans today, both young and old, face issues with agricultural knowledge regarding the food and fiber industry and production agriculture as a whole (Frick et al., 1995). In a society where consumers are separated from production agriculture, public interaction with agriculture is less prevalent and the importance of agriculture is undervalued. A person’s knowledge of agriculture, or agricultural literacy affects the way that they perceive agricultural commodities and the agricultural industry (Specht, McKim, & Rutherford, 2014). Without adequate knowledge of the agricultural industry consumers cannot make well informed decisions about food safety or processing methods. In addition to consumers, government …

Empowering Futures: Inspiring Young Girls In Stem Through Comics, Angel M. Griggs

Honors Theses

Women have historically been underrepresented in STEM fields. In my analysis, I explored how children’s literature representing historical women role models empower young girls to possibly pursue STEM careers. I applied Vekiri’s et. al (2024) research on attracting girls to STEM through interactive video games displaying STEM role models to comic books. In this project, I review academic literature, historical sources, and research articles to develop an educational comic book about historical women in STEM to help support the idea that creative activities and resources displaying role models can be influential to young children, specifically young girls. I focused on …

Strategic Digital Adaptation Among Small And Medium-Size Enterprise Leaders In Grenada For Implementing Digital Technologies To Achieve Long-Term Sustainability, Competitive Advantage, And Scalability, Devon Junior Charles

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) leaders in Grenada struggle to implement digital technologies effectively, which limits business sustainability, competitive advantage, and scalability. This issue is particularly concerning for SME leaders, as ineffective digital implementation threatens business survival, workforce stability, and economic resilience in small island developing states (SIDS). Grounded in a composite conceptual framework integrating the technology–organization–environment framework and dynamic capabilities theory, the purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry was to explore strategies SME leaders in Grenada used to implement digital technologies to achieve sustainability, competitive advantage, and scalability. The participants were six SME leaders in Grenada with at …

A Multilevel Analysis Of Prescriber-Reported Buprenorphine Induction Challenges In Fentanyl-Endemic Settings, Alyssa Vawn Long

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The emergence of illicitly manufactured fentanyl has increased clinical uncertainty during buprenorphine induction in medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder. The purpose of this quantitative, retrospective cohort study, guided by the Transtheoretical Model (TTM), was to examine whether prescriber-level buprenorphine induction practices and experiences with precipitated withdrawal were associated with reported buprenorphine induction challenges, and whether county-level fentanyl prevalence contributed to these challenges after accounting for geographic clustering. Secondary, de-identified archival data were obtained from the National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network study CTN-0134 and included 64 prescribers practicing in fentanyl-endemic settings. Buprenorphine induction challenges were operationalized as …

Black Essential Workers Experiences With Long-Term Covid-19 Symptoms, Jeremiah Cedric Campbell

Doctorate in Kinesiology

The purpose of this dissertation study was to understand the perceived effects of long-term COVID-19 on Black essential workers at the height of the pandemic and overall impact on mental health. The researcher interviewed 19 Black essential workers from Texas, across economic sectors (e.g., healthcare, sanitation), and who experienced long COVID symptoms. Findings centered across four themes: asking for help during the pandemic, COVID symptoms, being Black, and mental health. Using a theoretical approach incorporating critical race theory and social determinants of mental health, findings revealed the ways systemic racism affected these Black essential workers. This research can inform culturally …

The Effects Of An Eight-Week “Move Your Wayⓡ” Physical Activity Intervention On Quality Of Life And Exercise Motivation Among University Faculty Mothers, Stephanie Perez Beaudion

Doctorate in Kinesiology

The purpose of this dissertation was to expand the body of knowledge on physical activity (PA) interventions and their impact on quality of life (QoL) and motivation among university faculty mothers, a population facing unique challenges in balancing professional and caregiving responsibilities. This study utilized an eight-week "Move Your WayⓇ" (MYWⓇ) PA intervention grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to explore its effects on QoL, PA levels, and exercise motivation. A total of 22 university faculty mothers participated in the study, completing pre-, mid-, and post-intervention assessments using validated tools, including the WHOQOL-BREF, IPAQ-SF, and BREQ-3. Results demonstrated statistically significant improvements …

Promoting Mental Wellness And A Calm Learning Environment In A 2nd Grade Classroom, Grace Tone

Capstone Projects

Promoting mental wellness and implementing cognitive behavioral strategies brings awareness to staff and students and helps to promote a calm learning environment. School-based occupational therapists support students to participate in school occupations that they may be struggling with and provide them with cognitive behavioral strategies to regulate their emotions. The ACOTE concentration area for this capstone included education to staff members on the impact of mental wellness on student participation in school occupations and education on the Calm Moment Cards program from Every Moment Counts. The second ACOTE concentration area for this capstone was program development for sustainability of the …

Socially Constructing ‘Climate Change’ In Fishing Communities Of Sarangani, Philippines, Samantha Geraldine G. De Los Santos, Ma. Larissa Lelu P. Gata

Journal of Public Affairs and Development

The intensifying impacts of climate change have become more evident in recent years. While policies and programs have been implemented in the Philippines for decades, questions remain about how climate change is understood and experienced by fishing communities, the country’s poorest sector. By applying the Ecological-Symbolic Approach, this paper inquired into the fisherfolk’s social definition of climate change. A Qualitatively Driven Sequential Explanatory (QualDSE) mixed-methods design guided the study in developing an informed, substantiated, and context-based definition of climate change. This definition was also analyzed vis-a-vis the widely held definitions in national climate policy.

The terminology “climate change” remains unknown …

The Impact Of Sex Education On College Student’S Perceptions Of Sexual Taboos, Noel Gamon

Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to explore how college students' differing levels of sex education are associated with their views about sexual behavior, particularly behaviors defined as taboo. In comparison to 25 years ago, adolescents are less likely to receive important sex education today; and are unlikely to receive valuable information until after their first sexual experience. Conventionally, the benefits of a sex education program are linked with its ability to lower STI rates, unplanned pregnancies, unwanted behavior, etc. Sexual taboos are sexual practices excluded from the hegemonic heterosexual monogamous relationship model. Presently, society acknowledges a wider range of …

G1p3 Dysregulates Interferon-Stimulated Gene Expression In Er (+) Breast Cancer Cells, Karina Santana

Honors Theses

Even with advances in diagnosis and treatment, breast cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer-related death in women, with nearly 90% of fatalities linked to drug resistance driven by metastasis and recurrence. G1P3, an anti-apoptotic mitochondrial protein, is upregulated in breast cancer and has been associated with increased metastatic potential and poor prognosis. Recent findings show that G1P3 enhances interactions between Rab5-containing endosomes (RCEs) and mitochondria, and emerging evidence suggests that mitochondria play a critical role in initiating interferon (IFN) responses. Based on this, we hypothesized that G1P3-mediated interactions between RCEs and mitochondria promote interferon-stimulated gene (ISG) expression in …

A Comparative Study Of Plans For Residential Building Construction In The United States And Mexico: Analysis Of Processes, Systems, And Materials, Juan Hernandez

Honors Theses

Residential building construction is an essential part of a country’s economy and development. Finding ways to improve aspects of residential building construction can greatly impact the performance and sustainability of residential buildings. This study analyzes the plans for residential building construction in the United States and Mexico. The processes, systems, and materials in each country were investigated to form comparisons between the two countries. Journals and articles containing data on residential building construction in each country were used to gather information on each area of study. Factors such as climate, economy, and politics were also considered as they have direct …

Behind The Scenes: An Examination Of The Realities, Misconceptions, And Practices Of Graphic Design, Abby Harris

Honors Theses

Graphic design is an often-misunderstood field of work, generally understood through its outcomes, such as logos, posters, and digital interfaces. However, the extensive creative and strategic processes behind these projects remain largely unseen and unappreciated. While it is not a STEM or medical discipline, graphic design is still a rigorous field in its own right. However, people generally consider a degree in graphic design as easy or a waste of time because they view the arts as hobbies. The public only ever sees the finished visuals, not the labor, thinking, and countless hours of revision behind them. The growing wave …

Exploring The Synthesis, Characterization, And Aggregation Properties Of Perylene Diimide Derivatives, Erica Salinas

Honors Theses

Once widely used for its vivid presence in an array of industrial dyes, perylene-3, 4, 9, 10-tetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCDA) is a known precursor for perylene diimides (PDIs). These compounds are an alternative for sustainable energy within organic solar cells (OSCs) and for improving organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). PDIs are a great candidate for organic semiconductor applications because of their overall flexibility and low manufacturing cost as an organic photovoltaic. Its extended π-conjugation results in a planar structure promoting strong π- π intermolecular stacking, giving aggregated PDIs high electron mobility, allowing a flow of electrons to move through these stacked …

Nutritional Knowledge Of Collegiate Track Athletes, Haleigh Risner

Honors Theses

There are rising concerns on whether collegiate athletes are being diligent with their nutritional practices. With an increase in RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in sports) cases in athletes, their knowledge about their nutritional needs comes into question. Nutrition has a significant impact on athletic performance and the development in an athlete’s specialty. To assess the current knowledge of athletes, the track athletes of East Texas A&M University were asked to participate in a nutritional assessment to determine their knowledge of nutrition in regard to their sport. It was hypothesized that the majority of athletes surveyed would not possess adequate knowledge …

Enhancing E-Learning Recommendation Systems Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (Lda), Zanbaq Hikmet Thanon, Javad Salimi Sartakhti

Mesopotamian Journal of Big Data

Although the wide range of instructional materials, might overcome students and limit their capability to learn effectively, platform of education become important for providing personalized learning. Traditional recommendation systems (RS) try to resolve this issue; yet, they fail in understanding learning content semantically. This restriction makes it more difficult for them to deliver accurate, useful, and clear recommendations. The aim of this study is to enhance E-learning RS using topic modeling, specially the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) method, to discover latent structures within educational content. The ``20 Newsgroups'' dataset that containing over 20,000 items across 20 categories used to evaluate …

When Flood Warnings Fail: Psychological Predictors Of Information Clarity And Evacuation Intention, Katsuya Tanaka, Tadashi Kito, Kohji Tanaka

Center for Public Service Publications and Reports

Flood warnings are often assumed—particularly within traditional average-effect models—to prompt uniform behavioral responses, yet real-world evidence suggests that message effectiveness varies widely across the population. This study empirically identifies and explains such heterogeneity using a factorial survey experiment (n = 1671) conducted among residents in flood-prone regions of Japan. We estimate finite mixture beta regression models to disentangle the distinct behavioral patterns underlying information clarity and evacuation intention. Results reveal two psychological segments: a Responsive majority, whose decisions are shaped by concrete and credible warning attributes (e.g., specific breach point, forecast basis, large-font display), and a Non-Responsive minority, who remain …

Essays In Macroeconomics, Sihyun Kim

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation consists of two research projects in macroeconomics. The first chapter studies a topic in fiscal policy and sovereign debt. I became interested in this topic during my third year of the Ph.D. program while working as a research assistant for Professor Manuelli. He recommended several papers on debt sustainability in the U.S. and Japan. I initially struggled to reconcile the coexistence of low default risk and persistent fiscal deficits in these countries. This led me to think that, in addition to the realized fiscal path, the fiscal capacity---such as the tax base---can also play an important role in …

Ftsz Forms Biomolecular Condensates In A Polar-Growing Alphaproteobacterium, Todd A Cameron, Miguel Ángel Robles-Ramos, Lorenzo Suigo, Silvia Zorrilla, William Margolin

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The conserved tubulin homolog FtsZ assembles into GTP-dependent protofilaments that organize the bacterial cell division machinery. Purified Escherichia coli FtsZ (FtsZEc) can form biomolecular condensates in the absence of GTP in macromolecular crowding conditions, but FtsZ condensates have not yet been confirmed in vivo. FtsZ from the Alphaproteobacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens (FtsZAt) localizes to distinct polar foci during growth and contains an intrinsically disordered region much longer than FtsZEc, suggesting a greater tendency to form condensates. Here, we show that purified FtsZAt readily formed dynamic condensates in vitro under molecular crowding conditions, and the addition of GTP induced the formation …

Space-Time Coded Pcm/Fm For Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry, Zachary B. Hilton

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes the application of a space-time block code for the legacy continuous phase modulation called "PCM/FM" in the IRIG 106 standard to solve the "two-antenna problem". This problem arises when two transmit antennas are used for full spatial coverage at the cost of self-interference caused by the different delays between the transmit antennas and the ground-based antenna. The space-time block encoder is described using bit-level operations on the input data stream. The space-time decoder uses coherent combining and maximum likelihood sequence estimation to produce an estimate of the data sequence. Simulation results for zero and various non-zero differential …

Sex-Specific Autosomal Susceptibility Loci In Systemic Sclerosis: A Genome-Wide Association Study, Inmaculada Rodriguez-Martin, Martin Kerick, Carlos Rangel-Peláez, Carlos Rosa-Baez, Gonzalo Borrego-Yaniz, Lourdes Ortiz-Fernández, Alfredo Guillen-Del-Castillo, Carmen P Simeón-Aznar, José Luis Callejas, Oliver Distler, Susanna M Proudman, Mandana Nikpour, Nicolas Hunzelmann, Jeska K De Vries-Bouwstra, Ariane L Herrick, Yannick Allanore, Marta E Alarcón-Riquelme, Lorenzo Beretta, Shervin Assassi, Christopher P Denton, Maureen D Mayes, Javier Martin, Marialbert Acosta-Herrera

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Systemic sclerosis is an immune-mediated inflammatory disease with marked sex differences in prevalence and severity. Although genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have advanced the understanding of systemic sclerosis genetics, sex-aware approaches remain scarce. We aimed to address this gap by examining autosomal sex-specific genetic factors in systemic sclerosis.

Methods: Based on a chromosomal definition of sex, we conducted a sex-stratified autosomal meta-analysis of GWAS in systemic sclerosis. We retrieved patient-level and control data from a previous GWAS for systemic sclerosis and newly recruited participants from an international multicentre collaboration (data cutoff June 1, 2024). Adult patients (aged ≥18 years) were …