Digital Commons Network^™

Engaging Millennials In Missions, Annell Adams James

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The millennial members of the Power of God Church have shown a lack of interest in participating in the local church's mission ministry. This lack of interest has caused the Missions Department and the church concern because fulfilling the mission of God is the mission of the church. The mission statement of the church is the focus of the ministry programs. Suppose the mission department creates a missions training program designed to focus on a technological learning style in which millennials thrive. Could it attract, involve, and engage millennials in future mission trips while educating them? It is this question …

Facilitating Conditions That Increase Faculty Perceived Usefulness Of Learning Management Systems: A Multiple-Case Study, Darnell S. Kemp

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this research study designed as a multiple-case study was to discover the facilitating conditions that led faculty at the higher education level to create activities using student-centered learning tools in the learning management systems (LMSs). The theories guiding this study were Davis’ technology acceptance model and two versions of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology. Both theories looked at how perceived ease of use (PEU) and perceived usefulness (PU) determine a user’s use of a technology. The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology added facilitating conditions as a primary determiner of technology …

A Case Study Examining School Leadership And General Education Teachers' Perceived Preparedness For Inclusion Of Students With High-Functioning Autism, Melony Yvonne Marciniak

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this case study in a Pre-K-12 Christian school environment was to understand the perceived preparedness and perceived efficacy of education professionals and general education middle- and high-school teachers for inclusion of students with high-functioning autism (HFA). The education professionals included a school nurse, one special education teacher, a director of special education and a religion teacher. Three theories guiding the research were self-fulfilling prophecies as defined by Merton (1948), Gilbert and Wilson’s (2007) theory of prospection, and Bandura’s (1995) theory of self-efficacy. The central research question was: How do education professionals and general education teachers in a …

A Step Toward An Interfaith Visitation Ministry To Provide Spiritual, Social, And Emotional Support To The Seriously Ill And Elderly At Their Homes In The Community Served By Good Samaritan Medical Center Lafayette, Colorado, Grant Gill Kirksey

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this Doctor of Ministry action research thesis is to identify the support offered to the seriously ill and elderly by local faith-based communities, to compare the identified interventions provided, to discuss the population’s needs and satisfaction with their local hospitals, and to discuss the results in the context of the population of seriously ill and elderly community members, and explore opportunities for Good Samaritan Medical Center (GSMC), Lafayette, Colorado, to partner with local religious communities to improve the well-being of the seriously ill and elderly in their community. This project will include the analysis of needs and …

Impacts Of A Workplace-Based Weight-Control Intervention On Objective And Perceived Physical Activity Among A Subgroup Of Workers, Rachel Tabak, Ryan Colvin, Jaime R Strickland, Ann Marie Dale, Maura Kepper, Tara Ruggeri, Bradley Evanoff

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Physical activity (PA) has many benefits; however, groups facing barriers to health-promoting behaviors are less likely to be physically active. This may be addressed through workplace interventions. The current study employs objective (accelerometry) and perceived (International Physical Activity Questionnaire [IPAQ]) measures of PA among a subset of participants from the "Working for You" study, which tests a multi-level (work group and individual) workplace intervention targeted at workers with low-incomes. Linear mixed and hierarchical logistic regression models are used to determine the intervention's impact on moderate- to vigorous-PA (MVPA) and achieving the PA Guideline for Americans (≥150 minutes MVPA/week), respectively from …

Modelling Neurological Diseases In Large Animals: Criteria For Model Selection And Clinical Assessment, Samantha L Eaton, Jonathan D Cooper, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

Virtual Care And The Inverse Care Law: Implications For Policy, Practice, Research, Public And Patients, H Alami, P Lehoux, Se Shaw, Et Al

Peninsula Medical School

Virtual care spread rapidly at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Restricting in-person contact contributed to reducing the spread of infection and saved lives. However, the benefits of virtual care were not evenly distributed within and across social groups, and existing inequalities became exacerbated for those unable to fully access to, or benefit from virtual services. This “perspective” paper discusses the extent to which challenges in virtual care access and use in the context of COVID-19 follow the Inverse Care Law. The latter stipulates that the availability and quality of health care is inversely proportionate to the level of population …

Announcing The Minderoo – Monaco Commission On Plastics And Human Health, Philip J. Landrigan, Hervé Raps, Christos Symeonides, Thomas Chiles, Maureen Cropper, Judith Enck, Mark E. Hahn, Richard Hixson, Pushpam Kumar, Adetoun Mustapha, Yongjoon Park, Margaret Spring, John Stegeman, Richard Thompson, Zhanyun Wang, Megan Wolff, Aroub Yousuf, Sarah Dunlop

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Plastic is the signature material of our age. In the 75 years since large-scale production began in the aftermath of World War II, plastic has transformed our world, supported many of the most significant advances of modern civilization, and enabled breakthroughs in virtually every field of human endeavor. But plastic also poses great and growing dangers to human health and the environment, harms that fall disproportionately on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations. The extent and magnitude of these dangers are only beginning to be understood.

Performance Of Deep-Sea Habitat Suitability Models Assessed Using Independent Data, And Implications For Use In Area-Based Management, Kerry L. Howell, Kyran Graves, Giulia La Bianca

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Marine spatial management requires accurate data on species and habitat distributions. For the deep sea, these data are lacking. Habitat suitability modelling offers a robust defensible means to fill data gaps, provided models are sufficiently reliable. We tested the performance of published models of 2 deep-sea habitat-forming taxa at low and high resolutions (~1 km and 200 m grid-cell size), across the extended exclusive economic zones of the UK and Ireland. We constructed new data-rich models and compared new and old estimates of the area of habitat protected, noting changes in the protected area network since 2015. Results of independent …

Tammuz, Jiří Moskala

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Years Of Life Lost Associated With Covid-19 Deaths In The Usa During The First 2 Years Of The Pandemic, Troy Quast, Ross Andel, Sean Gregory, Eric A Storch

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

Background: Prior estimates of the years of life lost (YLLs) in the USA associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) were 1.2 million through 11 July 2020 and 3.9 million through 31 January 2021 (which roughly coincides with the first full year of the pandemic). The aim of this study is to update YLL estimates through the first 2 years of the pandemic.

Methods: We employed data regarding COVID-19 deaths through 5 February 2022 by jurisdiction, gender and age group. We used actuarial life expectancy tables by gender and age to estimate YLLs.

Results: We estimated roughly 9.7 million YLLs due …

The Roles Of Gut Microbiome And Plasma Metabolites In The Associations Between Abo Blood Groups And Insulin Homeostasis: The Microbiome And Insulin Longitudinal Evaluation Study (Miles), Kristi L Hoffman, Joseph F Petrosino, Gautam Ramesh, Martin Wu, Jerome I Rotter, Yii-Der Ida Chen, Anne M Evans, Richard J Robinson, Laura Sommerville, Dennis Mook-Kanamori, Mark O Goodarzi, Gregory A Michelotti, Patricia A Sheridan

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Non-O blood groups are associated with decreased insulin sensitivity and risk of type 2 diabetes. A recent study pinpointed the associations between ABO blood groups and gut microbiome, which may serve as potential mediators for the observed increased disease risks. We aimed to characterize associations between ABO haplotypes and insulin-related traits as well as potential mediating pathways. We assessed insulin homeostasis in African Americans (AAs; n = 109) and non-Hispanic whites (n = 210) from the Microbiome and Insulin Longitudinal Evaluation Study. The ABO haplotype was determined by six SNPs located in the ABO gene. Based on prior knowledge, …

Introduction To "Romans", Félix H. Cortez, Keldie Paroschi

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Comparing Kidney Health Outcomes In Children, Adolescents, And Adults With Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis., Debbie S. Gipson, Jonathan P. Troost, Cathie Spino, Samara Attalla, Joshua Tarnoff, Susan Massengill, Richard Lafayette, Virginia Vega-Warner, Sharon Adler, Patrick Gipson, Matthew Elliott, Frederick Kaskel, Damian Fermin, Marva Moxey-Mims, Richard N. Fine, Elizabeth J. Brown, Kimberly Reidy, Katherine Tuttle, Keisha Gibson, Kevin V. Lemley, Larry A. Greenbaum, Meredith A. Atkinson, Sangeeta Hingorani, Tarak Srivastava, Christine B. Sethna, Kevin Meyers, Cheryl Tran, Katherine M. Dell, Chia-Shi Wang, Jennifer Lai Yee, Matthew G. Sampson, Rasheed Gbadegesin, J J Lin, Tammy Brady, Michelle Rheault, Howard Trachtman

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Importance: Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) is a common cause of end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) across the lifespan. While 10% to 15% of children and 3% of adults who develop ESKD have FSGS, it remains uncertain whether the natural history differs in pediatric vs adult patients, and this uncertainty contributes to the exclusion of children and adolescents in clinical trials.

Objective: To examine whether there are differences in the kidney health outcomes among children, adolescents, and adults with FSGS.

Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study used pooled and parallel analyses, completed July 5, 2022, from 3 complimentary data sources: (1) …

Measuring Audio Smoothness, Richard Zhang, Colin Downs-Razouk

Defensive Publications Series

A computing device (e.g., a smartphone, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a smartwatch, etc.) may determine audio smoothness (e.g., an aspect of audio quality) of an application session based on an audio smoothness metric that measures the number of bytes of an audio sample that arrive at audio output device (e.g., a headset, an earpiece, a speaker, etc.) on time. For example, the computing device may determine the audio smoothness metric based on the number of buffer overruns (e.g., an anomaly that occurs when a program writes data to a buffer at a faster speed than the data is …

Behavior Of A Multi-Planetary Search Engine, Ashish Duggal

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure describes computer-implemented systems and methods for providing search results to users located in remote areas utilizing local hardware and locally cached data to return search results at little or no cost and providing a greater search breadth tier that utilizes remote hardware and data with an associated cost. User profiles associated with the users located in the remote areas may drive an aggregate, anonymized and frequency adjust model to determine subjects of interest to the plurality of users.

Automating Network Device Configuration Template Discovery, Derek Engi, Gonzalo Salgueiro, Ravi Garg, Bradley Wise

Defensive Publications Series

Establishing network device "golden" configuration templates typically relies on largely manual efforts and a dialogue between network consulting engineers and customers. Techniques are presented herein that streamline the process of discovering and baselining network standards by examining underlying themes and relationships between micro-templates in customer environments. Aspects of the presented techniques employ a Masked-Language Model (MLM), in a way that an MLM was not necessarily intended, to detect locally significant attributes in network device configurations for the express purpose of identifying structures that are common across a set of devices. Under further aspects of the presented techniques, the creation of …

Predictive Ev Mode Drop In Phev To Prevent Mileage Collapse, Axel Unger

Defensive Publications Series

No abstract provided.

Standard Combination Of Charging Columns With Washing Water Filling Stations, Axel Unger

Defensive Publications Series

No abstract provided.

Horizontal Storage Module With Bow And Arrow Ejection Principle Mechanism

Defensive Publications Series

No abstract provided.

Method To Simplify Detailed Testing In Distributed Microservice Architectures, Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes a mechanism in which a user action(s) can be executed, and the internals of the system recorded when the actions are manually run, so that the system behaviour through to completion of the action(s) can be captured, analyzed, modified, shared, and compared against in subsequent iterations.

Method For Minimizing Over Booking Of Resources In Rhp Enabled Control Plane Networks, Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure proposes a mechanism to improve network efficiency and resource utilization in Retain Home Path (RHP) enabled control plane networks. With optimized resource allocation, networks will be allowed to accommodate a larger number of services without losing RHP capability of existing services. The disclosure provides a way to work with overbooking of RHP efficiently by selecting protect paths which lead to the lowest spectrum utilization in the network for RHP enabled services. Current RHP solutions do not consider spectrum usage. This can lead to usage of extra spectrum, which could have otherwise been saved.

Battery Swelling Defender By Pogo Pins Detection To Discharge The Swelling Gas, Hp Inc

Defensive Publications Series

This innovation method is integrated electrical circuitry with pogo pins placement to sense battery swelling area and then mitigate it by an automatic control flow. For control methodology, the battery defender design in system background and monitor the battery swelling status. Once pogo pins trigger a battery swelling alert then start to calculate the affected area to further turn on the mesh shutter until mitigating the battery swelling circumstance. One step further, this solution can detect battery swelling earlier and analyze long term user charging usage in the data lake then properly adjust charging behavior on tagged system for preventing …

Automatic Detection Of A Non-Effective Prime, Hp Inc

Defensive Publications Series

Some printheads require some servicing routines during the normal operation in order to keep the printheads in good conditions. Typically, the servicing routines consist of a combination of spitting, where the resistors are activated to spit ink, and blow primes, that consist of applying air pressure on the printhead vent to open the printhead regulator and eject some ink. Typically, the result of performing a non‐effective prime is a defect on the Image Quality, since during the servicing routines, the amount of ink ejected during a prime is lower than the required. This situation could occur if there is an …

Simply Constructed, Robust, Novel Combined (Flooded And Sprayed) Cooling System Of An E-Machine, Axel Unger

Defensive Publications Series

No abstract provided.

ˮAicsˮ Audi Intelligent Car Smell, Axel Unger

Defensive Publications Series

No abstract provided.

Blazed And Slanted Grating Mastering Using Crystallography-Based Silicon Etching, Lu Tian, Joe Lowney, Tom Mercier, Wei Jin

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes crystallographic etching techniques to manufacture blazed or slanted silicon gratings such that their characteristic angles are defined by the facet angles of the silicon crystal substrate. The techniques enable the manufacture of precisely formed and uniform gratings with smooth surfaces over large areas. The grating pattern is achieved by using anisotropic, potassium hydroxide based, crystallographic etching of a silicon wafer along selected crystal planes. The grating structures manufactured by the described techniques can be used as master molds for replicated fabrication of nano-imprint optical devices such as waveguides.

Widening The Spectrum For Monochrome Led Displays With Occasional Voltage Spikes, Ian Rickard Muldoon

Defensive Publications Series

Monochrome LED displays, such as those used for augmented reality (AR) applications, can be unpleasant to view because of the single color used, which is often quite saturated. Approaches to address the issue with the use of phosphors or of LEDs of multiple colors are ineffective or impractical. This disclosure describes techniques to widen the spectrum of colors displayed via monochrome LED displays by occasionally spiking the voltage driving the LED to a higher level. The result is a display appearance that is less saturated and softer.

Assessment Moderation: Is It Fit For Purpose?, Lenore Adie

2021-2030 ACER Research Conferences

This presentation outlines the different practices and purposes of assessment moderation and analyses the benefits and issues of these. Two projects are presented; each seeks to improve teacher judgement. Both attempt to redefine what we mean by moderation and how moderation can be conducted to reach diverse and dispersed groups. The first draws on a current Australian Research Council project that is exploring the development of scaled exemplars, the use of commentaries of judgement decisions, and the use of digital platforms to support teachers grading student work. The second draws on the work of the Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment (GTPA) …

The Transformational Change Of Adaptive Assessment, Jarrod Hingston, Toby Newton

2021-2030 ACER Research Conferences

Organisational change theory often discusses the differences between adaptive change and transformational change; adaptive change being the process of incremental shifts that are intended to drive improvement, while transformational change requires major alterations in processes. In 2019, ACER embarked on a mission to develop a new adaptive testing and reporting system, with the goal of delivering an assessment that would improve the precision of results for every student. While the intention was to introduce an adaptive change in the assessments, the project truly transformed the way that ACER delivers assessments and reports results, a result recognised by the project being …