Entire DC Network | Open Access Articles | Digital Commons Network™

Up: A Mountain Legacy, Sandy Stott

Appalachia

Mount Cardigan and its adjacent ridges became the writer’s parent mountain.

Go to article

Maps For Wandering: Lessons From My Father On Mount Monroe, Katie Ives

Appalachia

A father’s sudden illness brings up the connection his daughter felt with him in the mountains

Go to article

The Loss Of Guy Waterman, A Quarter-Century Later: Friends Climb Franconia Ridge To Remember Their Mountain Mentor, Doug Mayer

Appalachia

A man who helped recovered the body of his friend talks about his giant legacy.

Go to article

The Long Way Home: What The Appalachian Trail Taught Me About Real-Time Dispatches, Christine Woodside

Appalachia

The outgoing editor-in-chief tells how she sent home dispatches for publication during the early weeks of her thru-hike, and then realized she didn’t need to tell everyone what she was doing.

Go to article

Appalachia Summer/Fall 2026: Complete Issue

Appalachia

Summer/Fall 2026 - Volume LXXVII, Number 2 - Issue #262. Legacies.

Go to article

Decentralized Ambient Media Orchestration Via Semantic State Broadcasts, Vivek Kushwaha

Defensive Publications Series

Some ambient media orchestration systems can be limited by centralized architectures that may require a primary controller to have pre-programmed knowledge of connected peripheral devices, which can present scalability challenges. A decentralized system can feature a primary media device (e.g., a smart television, speaker, or mobile computing device) that analyzes media content to generate and broadcast an abstract semantic state, such as mood or setting, over a local network (e.g., Wi-Fi or Bluetooth). Autonomous peripheral devices, for example, smart lights or haptic feedback units, can receive this semantic broadcast. These devices can then determine appropriate actions based on their hardware …

Go to article

Proactive Generation And Interface-Binding Of Parameterized Executable Prompts From Backend State Events, Jayant Sharma

Defensive Publications Series

Conversational assistant interfaces are reactive. No processing is performed until a session has been opened and a well-formed request has been typed into an open input field. Operational problems must therefore be found first on separate monitoring surfaces. Described here is an asynchronous technique by which unstructured backend state events are converted into pre-parameterized, executable natural language prompts. A remote procedure call is issued against a decoupled state database, and returned anomalies are mapped to category and priority constants. A fully formed prompt string is then compiled for each anomaly, with live record variables injected during compilation. Each compiled string …

Go to article

Three-Mode Audio-Selection Chip With Account-Level Viewer Opt-Out, Local Communities Management Company (D/B/A Horsenly)

Defensive Publications Series

A user interface and method for adding audio to user-generated video in a content-sharing platform, in which the content creator selects only one of a small fixed set of audio modes — for example (1) keep original audio, (2) layer platform-provided music beneath the original audio, or (3) replace the original audio with platform-provided music — via a compact three-option control ("chip"), without browsing or selecting from an audio catalog; and in which a viewer may disable platform-provided audio across their experience via an account-level preference and/or a per-play toggle.

Go to article

Metric-Affine Engineering (Mag) And Complex Continuum Physics: Global Invention Portfolio, Xavier Pillet

Defensive Publications Series

This document, produced with the assistance of Gemini 3.6 Reasoning, is released under the Apache License 2.0. It is a voluntary defensive publication (prior art) and therefore enters the prior art upon release under the applicable patent statutes : EPC Art. 54(2) (European Patent Convention), French IPC Art. L 611-11 (French Intellectual Property Code), 35 U.S.C. §102(a) (United States Patent Act), Chinese Patent Law Art. 22(5) (中华人民共和国专利法), and Japanese Patent Act Art. 29(1) (特許法). This comprehensive portfolio discloses 48 enabling technical innovations derived from metric-affine engineering (MAG), covering odd-viscosity micropolar fluids, hyper-shear metamaterials, Weyl semimetals, quantum/cryogenic instrumentation, healthcare applications, software …

Go to article

The Incommensurability-Preserving Coupler: A Non-Purchasable Recognition Balance Sized Only From The Thank-You Message, Beside Money Gifts, Time Pledges And Prepaid Item Gift Codes, With The Merchant's Own Item Price As The Only Exchange Rate And One Payment Type Per Gift Message, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

This defensive publication's revision adds a third gift cargo and claims 8–11 to a dual-currency gift system in which peer-to-peer money gifts and non-transferable, expiring time pledges run as one economy with no exchange rate. The system also carries prepaid item gift codes, bought at a shop's own price, beside per-person recognition balances that cannot be bought, transferred or cashed. Each thank-you message's recognition amount is computed only from the message (its words, a sender-chosen sentiment marker, its recorded length, the parties it names, and a model's refinement within a fixed band), never from any money amount, item, price, length …

Go to article

The B-Tag Recommendation Function: Privacy-Preserving Methodology For Ai-Mediated Commercial Tip Recommendation — Suggested Tip Amounts With Stated Reasons From Confidential Merchant Costs, Without Customer Tracking, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

This paper discloses a method by which an AI agent recommends a voluntary payment amount, a suggested tip in a pay-what-you-want sale, and shows it with stated reasons, without tracking the customer and without revealing the merchant's costs. Six components are specified. (1) The merchant confidentially discloses a cost breakdown by category (materials, labor, a skill premium, overhead, regulatory cost and margin) to the recommender; the customer never sees it. (2) The recommended amount is a non-binding anchor: paying it, more, less or nothing completes the sale, and whether a customer accepted or overrode past suggestions is not recorded. (3) …

Go to article

Autonomous Capability Acquisition For Decentralized Ai Agents, Gaurav Gupta

Defensive Publications Series

Systems and methods are described for the autonomous acquisition of procedural capabilities by decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) agents operating on client edge devices. For example, a hybrid hub-and-spoke architecture could be used, comprising a centralized platform functioning as a marketplace and decentralized agents on client devices, such as smartphones, wearable devices, or smart home appliances. An agent may identify a functional gap, discover a suitable capability on the platform via a standardized agent-to-agent communication protocol, and procure it using an agent-native payment protocol via cryptographically signed intent and cart mandates, potentially without human-in-the-loop confirmation. An acquired capability can then be …

Go to article

Stakes-Adaptive Verification And Origin-Traced Rollback In Autonomous Agent Workflows, Glen Messenger

Defensive Publications Series

In autonomous agent workflows, agents can produce plausible-but-wrong intermediate outputs that are syntactically valid and pass local validation checks but semantically diverge from a requester's intent, and subsequent steps can compound the error. The described technology may establish, from the initial request, a machine-checkable intent contract that the agent cannot modify, may checkpoint workflow state after each verified step, and may evaluate agent-produced artifacts using a tiered detector. Upon detecting a divergence, the system may attribute it to the earliest step whose artifact diverges from the intent contract (the origin step), which may precede the step at which the divergence …

Go to article

Discreteness, Adjacency And Order: A Structural Comparison Of The Theravāda Abhidhamma With Causal Sets And Loop Quantum Gravity — Partial Orders, Spin-Network Boundaries And Discrete Time In Buddhist Philosophy Of Matter, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

This study compares the Theravāda Buddhist Abhidhamma with two discrete approaches to quantum gravity, causal set theory and loop quantum gravity, as formal structures, on three axes: order, adjacency and ratio. No row predicts a measurement, and none says that a Buddhist text anticipated a theory of quantum gravity. On order, the twenty-four conditioning relations of the Paṭṭhāna, taken whole, are not a partial order. The condition-modes that always run from earlier-arising to later-arising form an acyclic typed relation over which a strict order can be read: acyclic by selection, not yet a causal set, and ordering some moments of …

Go to article

Metric-Affine Engineering: Transverse Domains And Comprehensive Applicative Variants, Xavier Pillet

Defensive Publications Series

This document, produced with the assistance of Gemini 3.6 Reasoning, is released under the Apache License 2.0. It is a voluntary defensive publication (prior art) and therefore enters the prior art upon release under the applicable patent statutes : EPC Art. 54(2) (European Patent Convention), French IPC Art. L 611-11 (French Intellectual Property Code), 35 U.S.C. §102(a) (United States Patent Act), Chinese Patent Law Art. 22(5) (中华人民共和国专利法), and Japanese Patent Act Art. 29(1) (特許法). This unified disclosure exhaustively compiles all 62 patentable concepts arising from the operational control of spacetime and hypermomentum, covering quantum propulsion, topological materials, hyper-shear medicine, and …

Go to article

Causal Set Theory, The Growing Block, And The Buddhist Debate On The Three Times: What The Earliest Vibhajjavādin Records Say — Presentism, Eternalism And Beginningless Time In Abhidharma Texts Compared With Sequential-Growth Models, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

This study reads the Buddhist debate on whether past and future things exist (the "three times") against the growing-block view of time that causal set theory's sequential-growth models are offered to support. Rafael Sorkin (2007) remarked that the "accretive time" of these models seems close to C.D. Broad's and to the "Vibhajavadin" school's; Fay Dowker (2022) invited a scholar to determine that school's view of time from the earliest records. The records give no single view under the name. In the northern Abhidharma, the Vibhajyavādins hold that the present and past action whose fruit is not yet given exist, but …

Go to article

Machine-Checked Consistency Of A Buddhist Classification: Lean Theorems For The Abhidhamma's 89 And 121 Types Of Consciousness — Formal Verification Of A Class–Feature Incidence Structure Against Both Stated Projections, With Mutation Testing, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

This paper reports a machine-checked consistency test of a classification that its source states twice, once feature by feature and once class by class. The source is chapters 1–3 of the Abhidhammattha-saṅgaha, a standard manual of the Theravāda Buddhist Abhidhamma, which classifies consciousness into 89 types (121 when the supramundane types are reckoned by meditative absorption) and states which of 52 mental factors combine with each type. In the Lean 4 theorem prover, a nine-clause generator builds the types as a product of chapter 1's classification axes, and eighteen rules over those axes, none naming an individual type, assign each …

Go to article

Leaf Certificate Validation For High-Volume Services Using An Encrypted Device Mapping Token Carried In The Certificate Issuer Name, Aditya Sanjay Belsare, Vikram Gaur

Defensive Publications Series

A relying party that authenticates devices in the field ordinarily receives a full certificate chain and verifies a signature at each link up to a trusted root certificate. Alternatively, individual certificate records from the chain may be preserved by the issuer, which may be queried by a relying party on each request. The first approach consumes bandwidth and processor time, and the second adds latency and storage. To address these deficiencies, this disclosure describes a certificate validation system that carries an encrypted token in the subject name of an intermediate certificate issued to a device. A leaf certificate generated on …

Go to article

Fingerprint Enrollment Guidance Using Stitched-Island Outline Feedback And Dynamic Touch-Count Reduction For Narrow-Aspect Sensors, Justin Eltoft, Eddie Lan

Defensive Publications Series

A fingerprint sensor with a narrow sensing area, for example a side-mounted sensor on a mobile device, images only a small slice of a finger with each touch, so an enrollment process stitches a series of touches into a composite template. A user who repeatedly touches the sensor with the same part of the finger fills one region of the template while leaving other regions uncovered, which can cause authentication failures after enrollment. This document describes an enrollment guidance method that receives per-touch stitching metadata from a fingerprint matcher and presents each contiguous stitched region on a display as an …

Go to article

Measuring The Lens Distortion Of A Fixed Tracking Camera From Operator-Traced Straight Lines, With Edge Snapping, An Uncertainty-Based Coverage Rating And Grid-Side Correction, Michel Honold, Paul Hermann

Defensive Publications Series

A method measures the lens distortion of a camera that maps image positions onto a surface, such as a fixed camera tracking performers on a stage, without a calibration target. The operator indicates a feature that is straight in reality, for example a stage edge, tape, truss or LED-wall edge, by clicking its two ends. The software places sample points between the clicks and snaps each one across the line onto the strongest image edge, using one edge polarity for the whole line so that both edges of a strip of tape are never mixed. The operator can correct individual …

Go to article

Selectable Vocal-Isolated Audio Tracks For Video Content, Abdulrahman Alhazmi, Najeeb Jarrar

Defensive Publications Series

Selectable vocal-isolated audio tracks are provided for video content. A media item including video content and audio content is obtained. One or more speech components and a set of musical components are extracted from the audio content. Modified audio content including the one or more speech components and a subset of the set of musical components is generated. A common media identifier is assigned to the video content, the audio content, and the modified audio content. Based on the common media identifier, the video content is provided for playback with the audio content and the modified audio content as selectable …

Go to article

Onboard Method For Detecting And Mitigating Vehicle Encounters With Downed Electrical Power Lines, Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

Severe weather can cause energized power lines to fall onto or near roadways. Some downed lines produce visible sparks or audible noise, others may provide no obvious warning. An energized line may also create a hazardous voltage gradient in the surrounding ground. Human drivers may recognize visible indications and avoid the area, but an autonomous vehicle (AV) requires an onboard method to identify this uncommon condition and respond safely. The proposed method enables an AV to detect indications of this potential hazard, avoid approaching or crossing a suspected downed power line when conditions permit, alert occupants not enter a suspected …

Go to article

Contextual Media Overlays Using Playback Signals And Retrieved Information, Michael Paul Soland

Defensive Publications Series

Generating synchronized contextual information for live or prerecorded media can require substantial manual research and production effort, and viewers may lack timely facts related to what is being shown or discussed. A computer-implemented technique uses a language model with media signals and external knowledge sources to generate informational overlays or annotations relevant to a playback timestamp or live event moment. Audio, caption text, keyframes, viewer-interest signals, and retrieved facts may be used to select, cache, segment, update, and present annotation candidates. Selected annotations may be displayed during playback, surfaced on a companion device, or provided as audio commentary. The technique …

Go to article

Generating Contextually Grounded Virtual Worlds Using Hierarchical Video Analysis, Anthony Lui

Defensive Publications Series

Generative world models may produce virtual environments that can be generic and lack grounding in specific, pre-existing contexts, or require significant resources and effort to enrich and articulate. A technique is described for generating a contextually grounded interactive environment from a source video. The method can involve a hierarchical analysis of the video, deconstructing it into scenes, shots, and frames and extracting multi-level contextual information using machine learning models. A representative composite image can be synthesized from distinct frames within a scene. This image, combined with textual context, may form a structured, multi-modal prompt. This prompt can then guide a …

Go to article

Brand Identity As Architecture: The B-Heart Logo, B-Prefix Naming, Heartbeat Animation As Display Of A Proof-Of-Humanity Attestation, And Aura-Color Two-Ledger State Primitive — Rotated-Heart Bistable Logo, Single-Letter Product Prefix, Logo Animation Bound To Proof-Of-Personhood Attestation, And Avatar Ring Color From Balance Zero-Crossing Frequency, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

This paper discloses a brand-identity system in which each element of a logo does functional work beyond recognition. (I) A logo made by rotating an unmodified heart silhouette 45° clockwise, so that it reads at once as a heart and as the capital letter B — a reading that survives at favicon size because it depends on no internal whitespace. (II) A product-naming convention in which every product takes a one-letter prefix that is the logo's own letter reading, so the prefix cannot come apart from the mark. (III) A logo animation with a cardiac morphology — two pulses, the …

Go to article

Closed-Loop Refinement Of Generative Ai Using Claim Decomposition And A Hierarchical Evidence Ledger, Susanta Biswas

Defensive Publications Series

Large language models operating in multi-turn agentic workflows can generate unverified statements or struggle to resolve conflicting information across disparate session sources. This disclosure describes systems and methods for a closed-loop refinement architecture to address these challenges. A system can programmatically decompose generated text into atomic claims and verify them against an evidence ledger. This ledger can organize session-specific information and use a configurable source-of-truth hierarchy to resolve potential conflicts. Based on the verification, a machine-readable correction prompt can be generated and sent to the model, enabling automated self-correction. This process can improve the verifiability and factual grounding of the …

Go to article

Factual Verification Of Generated Content Using Iterative Refinement And Incremental Processing, Susanta Biswas

Defensive Publications Series

Systems that can use large language models to generate content may inefficiently re-evaluate entire documents during iterative editing. A disclosed technology may address these issues through a verification and refinement process where a system can decompose generated text into atomic claims and validate them against a prioritized evidence ledger. For iterative workflows, the system can cache verification results and use incremental processing to re-evaluate primarily the modified portions of the text. This approach can improve the factual grounding of generated content while reducing latency and computational overhead associated with full re-evaluation, which may be beneficial in complex, multi-turn agentic systems.

Go to article

Transparency As Enforcement: Anti-Abuse Without Legal Contract Machinery — Community Disclosure In Place Of Terms-Of-Service Enforcement, Limited To Incurred Obligations, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

This paper discloses a design pattern for abuse prevention in online platforms and shared-fund applications that replaces terms-of-service enforcement, dispute resolution and account termination with disclosure: the conduct to be policed is made visible to the bounded community it affects, and that community's own response is the sanction. Three properties make disclosure work as enforcement: the visibility itself is the mechanism, the response is proportioned by the community rather than by a binary rule, and participants join knowing what will be visible. Two deployments are specified: disclosure to a family of every reward its steward receives from the family's shared …

Go to article

Ambient-Based Audio Adjustment Using Remote Control Sensors And Acoustic Response Modulation Using Audio Input Analysis, Nikita Agarwal

Defensive Publications Series

Systems and methods adjust audio presentation based on acoustic conditions detected near a user or characteristics of a voice command. A remote-control microphone can distinguish environmental sound from television audio and provide a control signal that causes temporary changes to volume, dialogue enhancement, or subtitle presentation. A voice-controlled device can analyze spectral characteristics of a command, classify a speaking condition such as whispering, and, in response to detecting whispering, switch an audio-response voice model or speech synthesizer to a whisper-specific profile that produces a breathy and softer voice, rather than merely reducing output volume. The selected voice model or synthesizer …

Go to article

Dependency-Aware Speculative Proxy Cache For Multi-Turn Llm Agentic Workflows, Rajkumar Baskaran, Ishani Basu, Sudhindra Desai

Defensive Publications Series

Systems and methods are described for caching and processing requests associated with a multi-turn agentic workflow. A proxy between a client and a large language model (LLM) API receives a request associated with a turn of the multi-turn agentic workflow and determines a cache key based on input information associated with the turn and an index of the turn. The proxy determines whether a cache entry corresponding to the cache key is valid based on a dependency of the cache entry on one or more external resources and, when valid, provides a cached response to the client. The proxy further …

Go to article

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Up: A Mountain Legacy, Sandy Stott

Appalachia

Maps For Wandering: Lessons From My Father On Mount Monroe, Katie Ives

Appalachia

The Loss Of Guy Waterman, A Quarter-Century Later: Friends Climb Franconia Ridge To Remember Their Mountain Mentor, Doug Mayer

Appalachia

The Long Way Home: What The Appalachian Trail Taught Me About Real-Time Dispatches, Christine Woodside

Appalachia

Appalachia Summer/Fall 2026: Complete Issue

Appalachia

Decentralized Ambient Media Orchestration Via Semantic State Broadcasts, Vivek Kushwaha

Defensive Publications Series

Proactive Generation And Interface-Binding Of Parameterized Executable Prompts From Backend State Events, Jayant Sharma

Defensive Publications Series

Three-Mode Audio-Selection Chip With Account-Level Viewer Opt-Out, Local Communities Management Company (D/B/A Horsenly)

Defensive Publications Series

Metric-Affine Engineering (Mag) And Complex Continuum Physics: Global Invention Portfolio, Xavier Pillet

Defensive Publications Series

The Incommensurability-Preserving Coupler: A Non-Purchasable Recognition Balance Sized Only From The Thank-You Message, Beside Money Gifts, Time Pledges And Prepaid Item Gift Codes, With The Merchant's Own Item Price As The Only Exchange Rate And One Payment Type Per Gift Message, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

The B-Tag Recommendation Function: Privacy-Preserving Methodology For Ai-Mediated Commercial Tip Recommendation — Suggested Tip Amounts With Stated Reasons From Confidential Merchant Costs, Without Customer Tracking, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

Autonomous Capability Acquisition For Decentralized Ai Agents, Gaurav Gupta

Defensive Publications Series

Stakes-Adaptive Verification And Origin-Traced Rollback In Autonomous Agent Workflows, Glen Messenger

Defensive Publications Series

Discreteness, Adjacency And Order: A Structural Comparison Of The Theravāda Abhidhamma With Causal Sets And Loop Quantum Gravity — Partial Orders, Spin-Network Boundaries And Discrete Time In Buddhist Philosophy Of Matter, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

Metric-Affine Engineering: Transverse Domains And Comprehensive Applicative Variants, Xavier Pillet

Defensive Publications Series

Causal Set Theory, The Growing Block, And The Buddhist Debate On The Three Times: What The Earliest Vibhajjavādin Records Say — Presentism, Eternalism And Beginningless Time In Abhidharma Texts Compared With Sequential-Growth Models, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

Machine-Checked Consistency Of A Buddhist Classification: Lean Theorems For The Abhidhamma's 89 And 121 Types Of Consciousness — Formal Verification Of A Class–Feature Incidence Structure Against Both Stated Projections, With Mutation Testing, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

Leaf Certificate Validation For High-Volume Services Using An Encrypted Device Mapping Token Carried In The Certificate Issuer Name, Aditya Sanjay Belsare, Vikram Gaur

Defensive Publications Series

Fingerprint Enrollment Guidance Using Stitched-Island Outline Feedback And Dynamic Touch-Count Reduction For Narrow-Aspect Sensors, Justin Eltoft, Eddie Lan

Defensive Publications Series

Measuring The Lens Distortion Of A Fixed Tracking Camera From Operator-Traced Straight Lines, With Edge Snapping, An Uncertainty-Based Coverage Rating And Grid-Side Correction, Michel Honold, Paul Hermann

Defensive Publications Series

Selectable Vocal-Isolated Audio Tracks For Video Content, Abdulrahman Alhazmi, Najeeb Jarrar

Defensive Publications Series

Onboard Method For Detecting And Mitigating Vehicle Encounters With Downed Electrical Power Lines, Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

Contextual Media Overlays Using Playback Signals And Retrieved Information, Michael Paul Soland

Defensive Publications Series

Generating Contextually Grounded Virtual Worlds Using Hierarchical Video Analysis, Anthony Lui

Defensive Publications Series

Defensive Publications Series

Closed-Loop Refinement Of Generative Ai Using Claim Decomposition And A Hierarchical Evidence Ledger, Susanta Biswas

Defensive Publications Series

Factual Verification Of Generated Content Using Iterative Refinement And Incremental Processing, Susanta Biswas

Defensive Publications Series

Transparency As Enforcement: Anti-Abuse Without Legal Contract Machinery — Community Disclosure In Place Of Terms-Of-Service Enforcement, Limited To Incurred Obligations, Thon Ly

Defensive Publications Series

Ambient-Based Audio Adjustment Using Remote Control Sensors And Acoustic Response Modulation Using Audio Input Analysis, Nikita Agarwal

Defensive Publications Series

Dependency-Aware Speculative Proxy Cache For Multi-Turn Llm Agentic Workflows, Rajkumar Baskaran, Ishani Basu, Sudhindra Desai

Defensive Publications Series