Digital Commons Network^™

Changes In Marriage, Divorce And Births During The Covid-19 Pandemic In Japan, Cyrus Ghaznavi, Takayuki Kawashima, Yuta Tanoue, Daisuke Yoneoka, Koji Makiyama, Haruka Sakamoto, Peter Ueda, Akifumi Eguchi, Shuhei Nomura

Open Access Publications

INTRODUCTION: Marriage, divorce and fertility are declining in Japan. There is concern that the COVID-19 pandemic may have accelerated the decrease in marriages and births while increasing the number of divorces. Changes in partnership behaviours and fertility have significant implications for mental health, well-being and population demographics.

METHODS: Japanese vital statistical data were collected for December 2011-May 2021. We used the Farrington algorithm on the daily numbers of marriages, divorces and births (per month) in order to determine whether any given month between January 2017 and May 2021 had a significant excess or deficit. Analyses were conducted at the national …

Outcomes Of Diabetic Ketoacidosis In Adults With End-Stage Kidney Disease: Retrospective Study Based On A National Database, Karthik Gangu, Sanket D. Basida, Anitha Vijayan, Sindhu Avula, Aniesh Bobba

Open Access Publications

INTRODUCTION: The prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) in the United States has steadily increased over the past few decades. End-stage kidney disease (ESKD) and diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) are among the most common chronic and acute complications of DM. Guidance on the management of DKA in ESKD is limited by lack of evidence. We investigated the in-hospital outcomes of patients hospitalized for DKA with underlying ESKD. Methods: We carried out a retrospective cohort study and utilized the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database from 2016 to 2018. International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10 CM) codes were used to identify …

Preoperative And Postoperative Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System Scores In Patients Treated For Benign Versus Malignant Soft Tissue Tumors, Jonathan F. Dalton, Ryan Furdock, Landon Cluts, Bharadwaj Jilakara, Douglas Mcdonald, Ryan Calfee, Cara Cipriano

Open Access Publications

BACKGROUND: The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) assesses multiple aspects of patient well-being but has not been thoroughly studied amongst orthopedic oncology patients.

QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: How do preoperative/early postoperative PROMIS scores compare in patients with benign versus malignant soft tissue tumors (STTs) for (1) physical function, (2) pain interference, and (3) depression? Are the differences clinically relevant? What other patient/tumor factors impact PROMIS?

METHODS: This retrospective cohort study included 314 STT patients who underwent resection of a benign (n = 187) or malignant (n = 127) STT over a period of 4.25 years at a single institution. PROMIS physical function, …

Analysis Of X-Inactivation Status In A Rett Syndrome Natural History Study Cohort, Xiaolan Fang, Robin C Ryther, Et Al

Open Access Publications

BACKGROUND: Rett syndrome (RTT) is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder associated with pathogenic MECP2 variants. Because the MECP2 gene is subject to X-chromosome inactivation (XCI), factors including MECP2 genotypic variation, tissue differences in XCI, and skewing of XCI all likely contribute to the clinical severity of individuals with RTT.

METHODS: We analyzed the XCI patterns from blood samples of 320 individuals and their mothers. It includes individuals with RTT (n = 287) and other syndromes sharing overlapping phenotypes with RTT (such as CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder [CDD, n = 16]). XCI status in each proband/mother duo and the parental origin of the …

A Community-Based Approach To Cervical Cancer Prevention In Western Kenya: An Ampath Feasibility Project, Elkanah Omenge, Philip Tonui, Kapten Muthoka, Stephen Kiptoo, Titus Maina, Mercy Agosa, Aaron Ermel, Yan Tong, Darron Brown

Obstetrics and Gynaecology, East Africa

Objectives: Centralized programs have been ineffective in reducing the burden of cervical cancer among Kenyan women. A community-based pilot study was initiated to screen Kenyan women for cervical cancer and to vaccinate their children against human papillomavirus (HPV).

Methods: Women were educated about cervical cancer prevention at community meetings. Women then provided self-collected vaginal swabs for oncogenic HPV testing using the Roche Cobas Assay. All women were then referred to the local clinic for Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid (VIA). Women were offered the quadrivalent HPV vaccine for their children if and when it became available for the …

University Education Model: Socialisation Report 2022, Shaun Ferns, Barry J. Ryan, Fionnuala Darby

Group Reports

The UEM Socialisation Report provides an in-depth analysis of the early-stage engagement with the University Education Model (UEM) at TU Dublin, exploring how key stakeholders—including staff, students, and external partners—interpret and apply its 10 Guiding Principles. The report draws on inputs from 32 online events involving 235 participants, analysing the thematic contributions to identify four emergent themes: Connected, Learner-Centred, TU Dublin Enablers, and Graduate Employability. These themes, aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education), highlight the need for an inclusive, student-focused, and flexible education model that enhances employability and fosters a sense of belonging. The findings will inform the …

Studying Acetylation Of Aconitase Isozymes By Genetic Code Expansion, Jessica Araujo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle is a very important, centrally located, energy-producing pathway that connects numerous other metabolic and regulatory pathways. Enzymes of this cycle have been more recently implicated in various cancers and neurometabolic disorders, however, the exact mechanism by which this happens becomes quite complex when considering the potential modification of these enzymes and the presence of multiple forms of the enzymes and therefore there is much to be studied in this area.

Aconitase has become a recent enzyme of interest as its substrate, citrate, has been found to play a major role in many vital processes within …

Speaking The Truth In Love, Nicholas Miller

Lake Union Herald

No abstract provided.

Imparting A Knowledge Of God, Linda Fuchs, Ruth Horton

Lake Union Herald

No abstract provided.

It Is Not A Boerhaave! A Case Of Spontaneous Pneumothorax, Imran Khan, Rukma R Govindu, Hussam Ammar

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Spontaneous pneumothorax is a pneumothorax that is not caused by trauma or an apparent precipitating factor. This report presents a case of a 91-year-old man with no history of lung disease who developed pneumothorax after two days of persistent nausea and vomiting. He was misdiagnosed as a case of Boerhaave's syndrome. A chest computed tomography with iohexol oral contrast showed no evidence of esophageal rupture, and an upper endoscopy revealed a small gastric ulcer and no gastric outlet obstruction. The patient was managed conservatively; his spontaneous pneumothorax, nausea, and vomiting resolved.

Embedding ‘Holistic Intelligence’ Education At Tu Dublin, Fionnuala Darby, Shaun Ferns, Barry J. Ryan

Group Reports

This document outlines the integration of Holistic Intelligence (HI) education within Technological University Dublin’s (TU Dublin) University Education Model (UEM). Holistic Intelligence education aims to foster a culture of well-being and productivity by addressing eight dimensions: personal, social, occupational, physical, economic, intellectual, emotional, and environmental. The document emphasises the importance of embedding HI education into the curriculum to support transformative learning experiences and align with TU Dublin’s strategic intent. It discusses the principles and enablers of HI education and highlights the benefits of HI education for learners, staff, and the community.

Contents, North Carolina Journal Of International Law

North Carolina Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

What's Not To Like?: The Eu's Case Against Big Tech And Important Lessons For The United States, Parker Williams Hassard

North Carolina Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

"Beef -- It's Not What's For Dinner": The Implications Of France's Newest Law For The Future Of Labeling Cultured Meat In The European Union, Nick Verderame

North Carolina Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Clean Air In Italy: A History Of Pollution, Topographical And Economic Challenges, And Recommendations On How The European Union Should Proceed, Emily Jones

North Carolina Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

"Europe's Last Dictator": Police Brutality And Human Rights Violations In Belarus, Samantha Lejune

North Carolina Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

The Rhetorical Landscape Of Public Memory, Brendan Lang

Perpetua: The Journal of Undergraduate Research at UAH

Public memory is a complex concept that concerns the events and individuals that are present or important in the minds and lives of groups of people. Public memory can put certain ideas or narratives on display about these events and people that further influence the public mind. For example, there has recently been much controversy surrounding public sites of history, namely those commemorating the Civil War era Confederacy. This has sparked much debate about the way we commemorate histories and how we choose what histories are commemorated. The aim of this project is to examine and understand not only the …

The Dense Gas Mass Fraction And The Relationship To Star Formation In M51, Mark Heyer, Benjamin Gregg, Daniela Calzetti, Bruce G. Elmegreen, Robert Kennicutt, Angela Adamo, Aaron S. Evans, Kathryn Grasha, James D. Lowenthal, Gopal Narayanan, Daniel Rosa-Gonzalez, F. P. Schloerb, Kamal Souccar, Yuping Tang, Peter Teuben, Olga Vega, William F. Wall, Min S. Yun

Astronomy: Faculty Publications

Observations of 12CO J = 1 - 0 and HCN J = 1 - 0 emission from NGC 5194 (M51) made with the 50 m Large Millimeter Telescope and the SEQUOIA focal plane array are presented. Using the HCN-to-CO ratio, we examine the dense gas mass fraction over a range of environmental conditions within the galaxy. Within the disk, the dense gas mass fraction varies along the spiral arms but the average value over all spiral arms is comparable to the mean value of interarm regions. We suggest that the near-constant dense gas mass fraction throughout the disk arises from …

Alma Discovery Of A Disk Around The Planetary-Mass Companion Sr 12 C, Ya Lin Wu, Brendan P. Bowler, Patrick D. Sheehan, Laird M. Close, Joshua A. Eisner, William M.J. Best, Kimberly Ward-Duong, Zhaohuan Zhu, Adam L. Kraus

Astronomy: Faculty Publications

We report an Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array 0.88 mm (Band 7) continuum detection of the accretion disk around SR 12 c, an ∼11 M Jup planetary-mass companion (PMC) orbiting its host binary at 980 au. This is the first submillimeter detection of a circumplanetary disk around a wide PMC. The disk has a flux density of 127 ± 14 μJy and is not resolved by the ∼0.″1 beam, so the dust disk radius is likely less than 5 au and can be much smaller if the dust continuum is optically thick. If, however, the dust emission is optically thin, then …

Polarizations Of Powers Of Graded Maximal Ideals, Ayah Almousa, Gunnar Fløystad, Henning Lohne

Mathematics Faculty Publications

We give a complete combinatorial characterization of all possible polarizations of powers of the graded maximal ideal (x₁,x₂,…,x_m)ⁿ of a polynomial ring in m variables. We also give a combinatorial description of the Alexander duals of such polarizations. In the three variable case m=3 and also in the power two case n=2 the descriptions are easily visualized and we show that every polarization defines a (shellable) simplicial ball. We give conjectures relating to topological properties and to algebraic geometry, in particular that any polarization of an Artinian monomial ideal defines a simplicial ball.

Waiting Room, Hannah White

Master’s Theses and Projects

The short stories and essays in this hybrid creative collection, Waiting Room, aim to add to critical conversations in both creative nonfiction and fiction about identity in relation to physical places and the body. In this collection, I particularly explore how notions of “home” shape one’s identity: grief, mental/physical illness, displacement from home, and other topics pertaining to the body and physicality.

An Efficient End-To-End Deep Neural Network For Interstitial Lung Disease Recognition And Classification, Masum Shah Junayed, Afsana Ahsan Jeny, Md Baharul Islam, Ikhtiar Ahmed, Afm Shahen Shah

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The automated Interstitial Lung Diseases (ILDs) classification technique is essential for assisting clinicians during the diagnosis process. Detecting and classifying ILDs patterns is a challenging problem. This paper introduces an end-to-end deep convolution neural network (CNN) for classifying ILDs patterns. The proposed model comprises four convolutional layers with different kernel sizes and Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) activation function, followed by batch normalization and max-pooling with a size equal to the final feature map size well as four dense layers. We used the ADAM optimizer to minimize categorical cross-entropy. A dataset consisting of 21328 image patches of 128 CT scans with …

The Impact Of Hurricanes On The Acoustic Detection Of Cetaceans, Aditi Tripathy

Master's Theses and Capstones

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is valuable for understanding the presence, behavior, distribution, and population density of marine mammals. While long-term variability of ambient sound is typically evaluated, the impact of short-term variability due to episodic events has not been assessed until now. Hurricanes Dorian (Category 5; 2019), Florence (Category 4; 2018), and Humberto (Category 3; 2019) impacted the soundscape as observed from the passive acoustic data at the Atlantic Deepwater Ecosystem Observatory Network (ADEON) locations in the US Mid- and South Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf. Hurricanes are increasingly prevalent in the North Atlantic and increase the ambient sound level at …

Black Carbon Dominated Dust In Recent Radiative Forcing On Rocky Mountain Snowpacks, Kelly E. Gleason, Joseph R. Mcconnell, Monica M. Arienzo, Graham Sexstone, Stefan Rahimi

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The vast majority of surface water resources in the semi-arid western United States start as winter snowpack. Solar radiation is a primary driver of snowmelt, making snowpack water resources especially sensitive to even small increases in concentrations of light absorbing particles such as mineral dust and combustion-related black carbon (BC). Here we show, using fresh snow measurements and snowpack modeling at 51 widely distributed sites in the Rocky Mountain region, that BC dominated impurity-driven radiative forcing in 2018. BC contributed three times more radiative forcing on average than dust, and up to 17 times more at individual locations. Evaluation of …

Linking Bad Credentials To Safety Issues, Andrew Martin, Jeeyen Koo, Valerie Keathley-Helil, Mallory Brown, Jennifer Walton

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This study assesses (1) the effectiveness of the Kentucky Automated Truck Screening (KATS) system, (2) the relationship between credential and vehicle safety violations, (3) the relationship between credential and driver safety violations, and (4) the relationship between credential violations and crashes. The KATS system, which is installed at weigh stations throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is highly effective at detecting KYU, IFTA, and UCR violations with sensitivities of 80.54, 87.56, and 88.28 percent, respectively. However, the system is less effective at detecting IRP violations (sensitivity = 20.83 percent). There is a statistically significant relationship between credentialing and vehicle safety violations, …

The "Law To Use The Mark The Delpaís," Act 195-2016: Case Study Of A Puerto Rican Certification Mark With Potential Of Becoming A Geographic Indication For Economic Development, Paola Gabriela Zaragoza Cardenales

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

In 2016, the Puerto Rican Congress codified the “Law for the use of the DelPaís Mark” (the DelPaís Law), creating a composite certification mark called Productos DelPaís de Puerto Rico (the DelPaís Mark) for raw fruits, milk, honey, meats, egg, fish, ornamental plants, spices, vegetables, starches, and value-added products. The Puerto Rican Department of Agriculture intended the DelPaís Mark to function as a certification mark and Geographical Indication (GI) to differentiate local from imported products to promote purchasing of locally produced items and eventually export internationally. A GI is a source identifier identifying that a place makes a particular product …

Associations Of Public Open Space Attributes With Active And Sedentary Behaviors In Dense Urban Areas: A Systematic Review Of Observational Studies, Minica Motomura, Mohammad Javad Koohsari, Chien-Yu Lin, Kaori Ishii, Ai Shibata, Tomoki Nakaya, Andrew T. Kaczynski Ph.D., Jenny Veitch, Koichiro Oka

Faculty Publications

In the context of rapid urbanization, public open spaces in dense urban areas are critical built environment elements to support active lifestyles. Several reviews have explored the associations of public open space attributes with physically active and sedentary behavior. However, few reviews have included studies from Asia, and no studies have focused on dense urban areas. This systematic review analyzed 18 observational studies investigating associations between public open space attributes with physical activity and sedentary behavior in dense urban areas of East Asian countries, including Japan, Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong. We found that closer distance to and a greater …

Using Height-Adjusted Stunting Prevalence Will Fail Disadvantaged Children Worldwide, Jef L. Leroy, Edward A. Frongillo Jr. Ph.D., Elaine Borghi

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Physical Model Of Deadmans Run, Quinn Brandt

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A physical model of Deadmans Run and a pair of railroad bridges was constructed to assess the impacts of the bridges on flood flows. Lower Platte South Natural Resources District is planning a series of improvements to Deadmans Run to improve flood conveyance capacity and remove approximately 500 homes and businesses from the floodplain. The rail bridges are located less than a mile from the confluence of Deadmans Run and Salt Creek, meaning the bridges present a significant bottleneck to the planned improvements. The physical model was used to characterize the drag effects caused by the bridges, which was used …

Comparative Analyses Of De Novo Transcriptome Assembly Pipelines For Diploid Wheat, Natasha Pavlovikj

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Gene expression and transcriptome analysis are currently one of the main focuses of research for a great number of scientists. However, the assembly of raw sequence data to obtain a draft transcriptome of an organism is a complex multi-stage process usually composed of pre-processing, assembling, and post-processing. Each of these stages includes multiple steps such as data cleaning, error correction and assembly validation. Different combinations of steps, as well as different computational methods for the same step, generate transcriptome assemblies with different accuracy. Thus, using a combination that generates more accurate assemblies is crucial for any novel biological discoveries. Implementing …