Digital Commons Network^™

How Do We Ensure That Elections Are Free And Fair?: An Inquiry-Based Mini-Unit, Brett L.M. Levy, Megan E. Cook, Nora D. Schaffer

Educational Theory and Practice Faculty Scholarship

Teaching students about the U.S. processes and security safeguards that ensure fair elections can foster youth civic engagement and help counter voter suppression.

From Black Lives Matter To Covid-19: Daily News Podcasts And The Reinvention Of Audio Reporting, Kyle J. Miller, Kim Fox, David O. Dowling

Faculty Journal Articles

Globally daily news podcasts have exponentially grown in popularity. To build on the increased interest in this podcast format, this study examines three distinct programmes in this genre. The focus of our research specifically highlights the significant news events during the summer of 2020: the killing of George Floyd, and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a set of genre conventions adapted and expanded from previous podcast and radio news scholarship, this research analyses the impact podcasting has on daily audio news production. Our findings indicate the podcast host’s empathy and intimacy, coalesced into powerful, immersive …

Multicultural Populations And Mixed Legal Systems In The United States: Louisiana And Puerto Rico, Olivier Moréteau, Luis Muniz Arguelles

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Supported Metal Bifunctional And Bimetallic Catalysts With Precisely Controlled Structures And Properties, Anhua Dong

Theses and Dissertations

In heterogenous catalysis, metallic nanomaterials play vital roles in numerous chemical processes. However, monofunctional catalysts are greatly impeded in their applications especially in the systems including tandem and/or sequential reaction steps. Besides, the catalytic performance can also be greatly influenced by the particle size, morphology, and geometry of the surface metal atoms.

The goal of this work is to synthesize bifunctional or bimetallic nanoparticles with high metal dispersion and homogenous alloys by rational synthetic strategies to facilitate the catalyst function. Strong electrostatic adsorption (SEA) is an effective and facile methodology to produce well dispersed and uniform nanoparticles. Metal-acid bifunctional catalysts …

A Multiple-Case Study: Motivating Students With Disabilities In Personalized Literacy Instruction, Courtney Kozelski

Theses and Dissertations

Adolescents often experience a decline in motivation, yet support for basic psychological needs can prevent such a decline. Individuals with disabilities face particularly high motivational obstacles, placing them at the center of this action research study. This study took place within a special education classroom during one school year. The intervention unfolded over the course of the year, using personalized learning to support students’ basic psychological needs and provide sources of self-efficacy. The findings lend support to previous studies, indicating literacy motivation can be promoted through implementation of a needs-supportive personalized learning intervention that builds upon both self-efficacy and self-determination …

A Critique Of Scanlon’S Contractualism, Ashley Purdy

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Part of T. M. Scanlon’s project in What We Owe to Each Other (1998) is to explain the importance and priority of moral reasons. But Scanlon also argues that this priority of moral reasons is compatible with the pursuit of other things we value, such as friendship. To this end, Scanlon claims that contractualist moral reasons internally accommodate our interests in such values. In this paper, I argue that Scanlon is unsuccessful in showing the compatibility of morality and the pursuit of our other values. The contractualist may not be able to be a good friend.

Protecting What Matters: Reflections On A Central Bank's Role At Times Of War, Iris H-Y Chiu, Alan H. Brener

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article explores the important and multifaceted roles of a central bank in extraordinary times of crisis such as war, focusing on the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and its responses in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine which began on February 24, 2022. During a time of martial law, institutional preservation and legitimacy can be threatened, but preserving these very institutional tenets is important in defending the nation under siege and in securing future restoration and rebuilding. In this light, we examine the NBU's difficult and conflicting choices in three respects: providing war finance, preserving banking and …

Security Council Resolutions And The Double Function Of Explanation Of Votes, Mark Klamberg

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

UN Security Council resolutions are not always clear: they sometimes need to be interpreted. Members of the Security Council may make statements in connection with their votes, termed explanation of votes. Explanation of votes may have at least two functions. First, they may contribute to the formation of customary international law. Secondly, they can be used as a means for interpreting Security Council resolutions in relation to a specific situation or dispute. The present Article examines different trajectories of conversations to show how Security Council resolutions and explanation of votes may protect the status quo in some instances and act …

Investigating The Impact Of Endothelial Dysfunction And Aging On Vascular Remodeling Using Mouse Models, Liya Du

Theses and Dissertations

Endothelial dysfunction, characterized by a reduction in the bioavailability of nitric oxide (NO), is a major factor in the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis, an age-related chronic inflammatory process in the arterial wall and the leading cause of mortality and morbidity globally. A better understanding of alterations in vascular structure and function associated with endothelial dysfunction can facilitate the early detection of atherosclerosis and the development of potential pharmaceutical interventions. This study aims to clarify the impact of endothelial dysfunction in conjunction with aging on the microstructure of aortic extracellular matrix (ECM) and to elucidate the relationship between microstructural adaptation …

Spatial And Age Disparities In Covid-19 Outcomes, Qian Huang

Theses and Dissertations

COVID-19 has caused significant social, economic, environmental, and political impacts globally and affected communities unequally in the U.S. The pandemic has also sparked interest in age-specific manifestations of infection, for example, studies confirmed the risk of increasing age with COVID-19 severity. However, the nonstationarity effects of health determinants among age groups have not been well examined. This study aims to explore the nonstationarity effects of social, behavioral, environmental, health care access, and political contexts on COVID-19 outcomes. This study poses three broad questions: 1) how did COVID-19 vaccinations align with COVID-19 daily cases and deaths in the United States; 2) …

Molten Salt Thermal Properties Database – Thermochemical Development And Thermodynamic Assessment Of Various Molten Salt Systems, Johnathon Chandler Ard

Theses and Dissertations

The Molten Salt Thermal Properties Database – Thermochemical (MSTDB-TC) is a validated open-source database for thermochemical modeling of molten salt reactor (MSR) relevant fluoride and chloride salt systems. The database has been created and populated by leveraging available models from literature as well as completing novel system assessments. The development and contents of the MSTDB-TC v1.2 initial release are detailed along with various system assessments performed in the course of the work. The database utilizes a major strength of the CALPHAD thermodynamic modeling method. This is the ability to estimate higher-order system behavior by combining modeled lower-order systems, …

There’S Action In Silence: An Action Research Study On The Impacts Of Diverse Narratives In An Advanced Placement United States Government Class, Ashley Kristen Wright

Theses and Dissertations

In this action research study, I facilitated and evaluated student exposure to politically, socially, and economically diverse source material within my Advanced Placement United States Government classroom, seeking to resolve students’ apparent disconnect from experiences that differ from their own, which had made connections to topics like civil rights challenging to grasp. Because the supplemental material I had chosen for my government classes failed to provide opposing narratives for my students to make these connections, this study arose as a way to research and ultimately correct this problem from within my government classroom.

Over the course of a semester, I …

Digital Twins In Advanced Manufacturing To Enhance Manufacturing Efficiency, Max Kirkpatrick

Theses and Dissertations

Digital Twins of manufacturing systems are an emerging tool for improvement, optimization, and monitoring of physical manufacturing systems. The idea of representing physical systems with digital depictions has been prevalent since the early days of Computer Aided Design (CAD), but recently the concept of a Digital Twin has been expanded to encapsulate more than just a digital model of a design. Instead, the Digital Twin offers a unique, comprehensive, and real-time toolset for analysis and improvement of physical systems. These tools can be used to improve system efficiency, perform “what-if” analyses, virtually commission manufacturing equipment, analyze system performance in real …

The Use Of Social Justice Socioscientific Issues In Secondary Biology Classes: An Action Research, Stephanie Marilyn Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. Education system is founded on a Eurocentric focus of curriculum, and students of color are not achieving as high as white students on the National Assessment for Education Progress in science. This research aims to repay the education debt owed to students of color by decolonizing science curriculum through the implementation of lessons centered around socioscientific issues grounded in social justice. An action research study was implemented in which 9 ^th grade Biology students participated in three instructional units centered on social justice issues. Data was collected through surveys, focus group interviews, student work, and journal reflections from …

Orthographic Knowledge And Phonological Awareness In Children With Speech Sound Disorder, Anna Marie Ehrhorn

Theses and Dissertations

Speech sound disorder (SSD) puts children at risk for word reading difficulties but does not guarantee them. Research on early literacy skills in children with SSD has primarily focused on phonological awareness due to speech sound deficits associated with SSD. Researchers have begun to examine multiple factors beyond phonological awareness that may impact word reading and spelling development. Orthographic knowledge is another essential factor understudied in children with SSD. Previous research has shown that orthographic properties of words influence phonological awareness performance in skilled readers and children with reading difficulties. No known previous studies have examined whether orthography influences phonological …

Synthesizing Self-Stabilizing Parameterized Protocols With Unbounded Variables, Ali Ebnenasir

Michigan Tech Publications

The focus of this paper is on the synthesis of unidirectional symmetric ring protocols that are self-stabilizing. Such protocols have an unbounded number of processes and unbounded variable domains, yet they ensure recovery to a set of legitimate states from any state. This is a significant problem as many distributed systems should preserve their fault tolerance properties when they scale. While previous work addresses this problem for constant-space protocols where domain size of variables are fixed regardless of the ring size, this work tackles the synthesis problem assuming that both variable domains and the number of processes in the ring …

Intraductal Papillary Mucinous Neoplasm In An 18-Year-Old With Recurrent Pancreatitis, Nadia Ibrahimi, Thomas M. Attard, Moises Alatorre-Jimenez, Karie Robinson, Syed Jafri

Posters

Introduction: Intraductal Papillary Mucinous Neoplasms (IPMNs) of the pancreas are premalignant, intraductal, mucin secreting cystic lesions. IPMNs are a rare entity in the pediatric population and commonly seen in men in their 6 to 7 decade. Pediatric IPMN has been previously reported in a 14-year-old and a neonate, who also had hyperinsulinism and a de novo germline SKIL gene mutation. . Kim et al. did a ten-year single centered pediatric pancreatic malignancy study discovering IPMN in one patient of 35 with pancreatic mass removals . Case: Our patient is an 18-year-old male who initially presented at the age of 15 …

Increased Eosinophils In The Muscularis Propria Of Appendix May Indicate Early Symptomatic Appendicitis, Ping L. Zhang, Zhenhong Qu

Conference Presentation Abstracts

Background: The presence of neutrophils in muscularis propria is known to best correlate with clinical symptoms of acute appendicitis. Eosinophils present in the muscularis propria were noted in cases of acute appendicitis in 2000 (Carr, NJ. Annal of Diagnostic Pathology 2000;4:46–58), but the significance of their presence there has been unclear. The goal of this study was to investigate whether increased eosinophils in muscularis propria could be correlated with early symptoms of patients with clinical diagnosis of symptomatic appendicitis.

Methods: Seventeen patients with clinical diagnosis of acute appendicitis were identified as having acute symptomatology, but the resection specimens displayed a …

Paneth Cell-Like Granules In Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinomas Are Cd68 And Lysozyme Positive Lysosomes, P L. Zhang

Conference Presentation Abstracts

Background:Paneth cells with features ofneuroendocrine differentiation can be seen inmultiple organs and various tumours. Paneth cell-likegranules in clear cell renal cell carcinomas (RCC)have previously been reported, but are found noexpression of neuroendocrine markers. Given thatclear cell RCC are rich in phagocytic factors, wehypothesized that the Paneth cell-like granules inclear cell RCC were associated with lysosomes.Methods:In this study, 72 different renal tumoursincluded 42 clear cell RCC, 16 papillary RCC, 5 clearcell papillary RCC, 6 chromophobe RCC, 2 urothelialcarcinomas and one unclassified RCC. All tumourswere evaluated for the Paneth cell-like granules onhaematoxylin & eosin stained sections. In addition,PAS-D staining, immunohistochemical stains andelectron …

Psy 2813: Cross Cultural Psychology, Desiree Byrd

Open Educational Resources

This course is designed to cover developmental, social and cognitive psychological processes through the lens of various international and domestic cultural orientations. Process learning will focus on self-exploration of students’ individual cultural identity and developing an understanding and self-awareness of how oppression, prejudice, and bias (explicit and implicit) impact the practice of psychology from personal, professional, and socio- political perspectives.

Press Release - New Associate Dean, Tom Caswell, University Libraries

Libraries' Documents

Press Release announcing the appointment of a new Libraries Associate Dean of Academic Engagement, Thomas Caswell.

Soils Of The Central Nebraska Loess Hills And Central Loess Plains, Judith Turk, Rebecca Young, Nicolas A. Jelinsky, Amber D. Anderson, Ashlee Dere, Colby J. Moorberg, Rachel K. Owen

Conservation and Survey Division: Faculty and Staff Publications

Understanding soil systems that characterize a region is critical to natural resource management. However, the knowledge gained through intensive study of local soil systems, which takes place annually as part of collegiate soil judging contests, is often poorly preserved for future use. In this study, field descriptions and laboratory data for 16 soil profiles described for the 2019 Region 5 Soil Judging Contest were used to characterize the soil system of the Central Nebraska Loess Hills and Central Loess Plains. Three landscape components of this soil system were analyzed: the loess uplands and rainwater basins, the transitional zone, and bottomlands. …

Icebar: Feedback-Driven Iterative Repair Of Alloy Specifications, Simón Gutiérrez Brida, Germán Regis, Guolong Zheng, Hamid Bagheri, Thanhvu Nguyen, Nazareno Aguirre, Marcelo Frias

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Automated program repair (APR) techniques have shown great success in automatically finding fixes for programs in programming languages such as C or Java. In this work, we focus on repairing formal specifications, in particular for the Alloy specification language. As opposed to most APR tools, our approach to repair Alloy specifications, named ICEBAR, does not use test-based oracles for patch assessment. Instead, ICEBAR relies on the use of property-based oracles, commonly found in Alloy specifications as predicates and assertions. These property-based oracles define stronger conditions for patch assessment, thus reducing the notorious overfitting issue caused by using test-based oracles, …

The Road Not Taken: Exploring Alias Analysis Based Optimizations Missed By The Compiler, Khushboo Chitre, Piyus Kedia, Rahul Purandare

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Context-sensitive inter-procedural alias analyses are more precise than intra-procedural alias analyses. However, context-sensitive inter-procedural alias analyses are not scalable. As a consequence, most of the production compilers sacrifice precision for scalability and implement intra-procedural alias analysis. The alias analysis is used by many compiler optimizations, including loop transformations. Due to the imprecision of alias analysis, the program’s performance may suffer, especially in the presence of loops.

Previous work proposed a general approach based on code-versioning with dynamic checks to disambiguate pointers at runtime. However, the overhead of dynamic checks in this approach is 𝑂(𝑙𝑜𝑔 𝑛), which is substantially high to …

Natural Enemies And Biological Control Of Stink Bugs (Hemiptera: Heteroptera) In North America, Blessing Ademokoya, Kacie Athey, John R. Ruberson

Department of Entomology: Faculty Publications

Stink bugs comprise a significant and costly pest complex for numerous crops in the United States, including row crops, vegetables, and tree fruits and nuts. Most management relies on the use of broad-spectrum and disruptive insecticides with high human and environmental risks associated with them. Growing concerns about pesticide resistance in stink bugs are forcing pest managers to explore safer and more sustainable options. Here, we review the diverse suite of natural enemies of stink bugs in the US, noting that the egg and the late nymphal and adult stages of stink bugs are the most commonly attacked by parasitoids, …

Mate Sampling Behavior Determines The Density Dependence Of Sexual Selection, J. Colton Watts, Eileen A. Hebets, Brigitte Tenhumberg

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Theory predicts that the strength of sexual selection (i.e., how well a trait predicts mating or fertilization success) should increase with population density, yet empirical support remains mixed. We explore how this discrepancy might reflect a disconnect between current theory and our understanding of the strategies individuals use to choose mates. We demonstrate that the density dependence of sexual selection predicted by previous theory arises from the assumption that individuals automatically sample more potential mates at higher densities. We provide an updated theoretical framework for the density dependence of sexual selection by (1) developing models that clarify the mechanisms through …

Suspicious Retinal Lesion With A Distinctive Appearance, G Brandon Caudill, Mrittika Sen, Carol L. Shields

Wills Eye Hospital Papers

No abstract provided.

In This Issuereview Articleoriginal Articlescase Report

Saudi Medical Journal

No abstract provided.

Adipose-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells And Wound Healing: Potential Clinical Applications In Wound Repair, Sami G. Almalki

Saudi Medical Journal

Delayed and chronic wounds result from the dysregulation of molecular and cellular events associated with wound healing, including migration, inflammation, angiogenesis, extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling, and re-epithelialization. Adipose tissue is an abundant, easily accessible, and rich source of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) with high therapeutic potential. In addition to their capability to differentiate into various lineages with specialized functions, adipose-derived MSCs (AMSCs) can mediate to the wound repair process through the secretion of different growth factors and mediators rather than making structural contribution alone. Adipose-derived MSCs mediate the formation of blood vessels, recruit progenitor cells, stimulate cell differentiation and ECM …

Testis-Specific Protein Y-Encoded 1 Regulates Androgen Receptor Expression Through The Mapk/Erk Pathway In Male Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Zhaolu Lu, Dongmei Yang, Shanzi Qin, Cuiju Mo, Linyan Zhang, Yingying Ou, Shan Li

Saudi Medical Journal

Objectives: To analyze the mechanism of testis-specific protein Y-encoded 1 (TSPY1) in male hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods: This experimental study was carried out at Guangxi Medical University’s First Affiliated Hospital, Guangxi, China, between January 2016 and December 2019. The expression of TSPY1, androgen receptor (AR), messenger ribonucleic acids (mRNAs), and proteins were detected by qRT-PCR and Western blotting. The co-localization and interaction of TSPY1 and AR were observed by immunofluorescence assay and co-immunoprecipitation. Hepatocellular carcinoma cells overexpressing and silencing TSPY1 were constructed, and the expression and phosphorylation levels of TSPY1, AR, and mitogen-activated protein kinases/extracellular signal-regulated kinases (MAPK/ERK) signaling pathway-related …