Digital Commons Network^™

The New Legal Tender Debate: Surveying State-Level Attempts To Regulate Central Bank Digital Currencies, Jacob Gerszten

Michigan Technology Law Review

This Note explores the growing wave of state-level legislation aimed at regulating Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). CBDCs, digital forms of central bank-issued money, have sparked intense political debates between proponents who see them as the logical next development in monetary technology and critics who perceive them as threats to privacy and financial system stability. Although a widely available CBDC appears unlikely without Congressional authorization, sixteen states have enacted laws designed to preempt its development, with more statutes likely to follow. These state statutes employ various legal mechanisms, including redefining terms in the Uniform Commercial Code, prohibiting CBDC-related payments to …

Supplemental Bibliographic Details. From 2001 Mars Odyssey To Earth’S Climate Crisis: Integrating Gamma Spectroscopy, Martian Soil Simulants, And Plant Genomes For Agroecology, Anchored In Sri Lanka’S Mars-Context Serpentinites, Suniti Karunatillake, Maheshi Dassanayake, Carlos Gary Bicas

Planetary Science Lab

Bibliographic details follow to supplement hyperlinked citations in the multinational GANGOTRI-supporting project conceived by Karunatillake, Dassanayake, and Gary-Bicas

Delaying Cancer Progression By Integrating Toxicity Constraints In A Model Of Adaptive Therapy, Jana L. Gevertz, Harsh Vardhan Jain, Irina Kareva, Kathleen P. Wilkie, Joel Brown, Yitong Pepper Huang, Eduardo Sontag, Vladimir Vinogradov, Mark Davies

Mathematics Sciences: Faculty Publications

Cancer therapies often fail when intolerable toxicity or drug-resistant cancer cells undermine otherwise effective treatment strategies. Over the past decade, adaptive therapy has emerged as a promising approach to postpone emergence of resistance by altering dose timing based on tumor burden thresholds. Despite encouraging results, these protocols often overlook the crucial role of toxicity-induced treatment breaks, which may permit tumor regrowth. Herein, we explore the following question: would incorporating toxicity feedback improve or hinder the efficacy of adaptive therapy? To address this question, we propose a mathematical framework for incorporating toxic feedback into treatment design. We and that the degree …

Rules Of The Road: Toward National Regulation Of Autonomous Vehicles, Adam Raviv

Journal of Law and Mobility

After decades of promise, self-driving cars are now becoming a meaningful reality on our roads. Yet not a single federal law or regulation governs autonomous vehicle operation in the United States—despite widespread agreement among policymakers, advocates, and industry stakeholders that a national safety framework is necessary. This article provides the first comprehensive legal analysis of what a federal safety regulation for autonomous vehicles can and should look like. It describes the current landscape of autonomous technology. It analyzes both the existing federal legal regime for vehicle safety regulation as well as state, local, and international standards that apply to autonomous …

The Hard Law-Soft Law Nexus: Autonomous Vehicles As A Case Study, Gary Marchant, Chase Martins, Vrinda Gupta

Journal of Law and Mobility

The technology governance debate often focuses on the dichotomy of hard law versus soft law as competing models. Both hard law and soft law have their strengths and weaknesses. But framing soft law versus hard law as a dichotomous choice is often unrealistic—every technology will be governed by a mix of hard law and soft law. So, the more realistic questions are where hard law works best and where soft law succeeds, and how these two types of governance interact and integrate. After reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of hard law and soft law, this Article identifies six different hybrid …

The Impact And Sustainability Of A School Improvement Grant On Student Outcomes In An Elementary Setting, Tiesha Denise Reed

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to examine the impact and sustainability of the School Improvement Grant (SIG) Transformation Model and to determine its impact on a low-performing elementary school. The research study used a quantitative research design to investigate the effects of the SIG on student achievement and school annual reporting data across three time periods: pre-intervention (2014-2015), post-intervention (2016-2017), and six years after the grant ended (2022-2023). The research design was appropriate because it allowed the researcher to collect archival data and examine potential differences across time periods. The independent variable was the three time periods, and the …

Growstem At Dsu Year Two Summary Report, Richard I. Avery, Tom Halverson, Viki Johnson

Grant Reports

Increasing participation, improving research infrastructure, and enhancing educational support for students were the core goals of the GROWSTEM program. GROWSTEM recruitment in Computer Science, Cyber Operations, Math, and Artificial Intelligence was targeted to underrepresented populations in an effort to increase participation in STEM at DSU. Undergraduate research is a high-impact educational practice and the undergraduate research seminar was created to provide the infrastructure to nurture and disseminate the results of undergraduate research. The study tables were developed using a backward design to provide personalized, one-on-one tutoring in the preferred format, e.g., face-to-face, online, etc. during convenient times for GROWSTEM scholars.

Evaluating Impact Of Occupational Exoskeletons On Physical Fatigue Using Wearable Sensors And Deep Learning, Hardik Vora, Fatemeh Davoudi Kakhki, Armin Moghadam

Mechanical Engineering

Musculoskeletal disorders remain a leading source of occupational injury in manufacturing and logistics industries, often resulting from repetitive lifting and load transfer tasks. While back-support exoskeletons have shown promise in alleviating physical strain, their biomechanical impact under realistic task conditions and their integration with intelligent monitoring systems require further exploration. This study investigates the efficacy of a passive lumbar-support exoskeleton in reducing muscle fatigue during manual material handling tasks by combining high-resolution surface electromyography (sEMG) data with a deep learning-based classification framework. Ten participants performed lifting and rotational (twisting) tasks with and without exoskeleton assistance, while EMG signals were collected …

Reliability-Based Performance Evaluation Of Slurry Wall For Leakage Control At Chakaria Landfill, Bangladesh, Shishir Bhandari

Civil Engineering Theses

Landfill leachate threatens groundwater quality in low-lying coastal Bangladesh, where a shallow water table and a discontinuous natural clay barrier heighten contamination risk beneath municipal solid waste sites. At the Chakaria Landfill in Cox's Bazar District, a cement-bentonite slurry wall was proposed as a vertical cutoff to control seepage, but its reliability under the site's high-groundwater condition had not previously been evaluated in probabilistic terms.

This study evaluated the wall's performance using a two-dimensional SEEP/W finite-element seepage model, a validated response surface (RSM) equation relating seepage rate to wall permeability, thickness, depth, and a Hasofer-Lind first-order reliability (FORM) analysis built …

Investigating Ui Based And Ai Based Interactions In Vr Environments For Human Anatomy Education, Siddharth Sondhi

Master's Projects

Traditional approaches to learning and simulation often struggle to convey the complexity of three dimensional structures. In anatomy education, methods such as textbooks, lectures, and cadaver based learning are used, but can make it difficult to understand the complex structure of organs within the human body. Virtual Reality (VR) offers a promising alternative by providing immersive and interactive 3D environments that allow users to explore and manipulate anatomical structures more intuitively. These environments can be further enhanced by integrating large language models (LLMs) as intelligent agents capable of guiding users through natural language interaction. This project presents a Unity-based VR …

Laser Versus Fluoride Varnish In Management Of Dentine Hypersensitivity In Non-Carious Lesions: A Randomized Clinical Trial, Hend Sayed Ahmed, Mohamed Fouad Haridy, Hoda Fouda, Amr Adham Shalaby, Youssef M. Haridy

Dentistry

No abstract provided.

Effect Of Different Finishing And Polishing Systems On Surface Roughness And Color Stability Of Composite Cad/Cam Blocks (In-Vitro Study), Hend Sayed Ahmed, Mohamed Fouad Haridy, Noura Alzayyat, Reem Mohamed Gadao

Dentistry

No abstract provided.

Improving Pid Control With Bayesian Optimization For Adversarially Robust Federated Learning, Adrian Pena, Sergei Chuprov, Raman Zatsarenko, Leon Reznik

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Federated Learning (FL) often suffers from unstable convergence and reduced robustness under non-IID data and malicious attacks. In this paper, we present FedPIDAvg_tuned, a control-theoretic aggregation framework for improving stability and adversarial robustness in FL. In particular, our approach combines a server-side Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PID) controller with Bayesian optimization to tune controller gains for different data and attack conditions. The PID controller regulates global model updates through feedback on loss dynamics, providing adaptive scaling that improves stability and convergence. The tuned gains are applied within a trust-weighted trimmed-mean mechanism to remove adversarial or outlier updates. Using the Flower framework, we evaluate …

Are Skip Laminectomy And Oblique Corpectomy Effective Options To Treat Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy While Preserving Motion? Results Of A Scoping Review, Justin L Lomax, Ankit Mehta, Aditya Vedantam, Rory Goodwin, Nathan Evaniew, Mario Ganau, Chris J Neal, Rex A W Marco, Ryan Quisling, Jonathan Palmer, Adam T Archie, Keith L Jackson, John G Devine, Jefferson R Wilson, Uzondu F Agochukwu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Study Design

Scoping Literature Review.

Objective

The aim of this literature review is to examine the results of both skip laminectomy and oblique corpectomy in the setting of degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM).

Methods

A scoping review of the relevant literature examining the efficacy of cervical skip laminectomy and oblique corpectomy in patients with DCM was conducted using the Medline database. Our review strategy aimed at answering two research questions. #1: Do clinical outcomes differ between patients undergoing cervical laminoplasty vs skip laminectomy in the setting of myelopathy. #2: Which outcomes can oblique corpectomy provide, and how its related complication profile …

Utilizing A Suction Catheter As A Makeshift Tracheostomy Tube In A Premature Infant: A Case Report., Ashwini V Bandi, Shaina W Gong, Gabriela G Cruz, Alicia S Lore, Kunal Shetty, Sancak Yuksel

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

One of the most challenging aspects regarding pediatric tracheostomy tube placement is the size selection, particularly in preterm infants. We present the first reported case of a makeshift tracheostomy tube using a 6-French suction catheter in a 31-week-old premature infant in an emergent situation. This approach holds promise as a potentially life-saving intervention for extremely small preterm infants. Furthermore, this case emphasizes the size discrepancy between the premature neonatal airway and the smallest tracheostomy tubes available. Further research is warranted to allow for more diverse clinical solutions that can accommodate similar cases in acute settings.

Building A Better Clinical Competency Committee: A Multi-Institutional Approach To Improving The Quality Of Resident Feedback Through Appreciative Inquiry, Nikita Khetan, Emma Omoruyi, Elizabeth Hanson

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires pediatric faculty to convene twice yearly as a Clinical Competency Committee (CCC) to review resident performance and provide feedback. Variability in review processes and limited feedback quality remain common challenges. Incorporating Appreciative Inquiry within a Deliberate Practice framework may enhance the quality of summative feedback provided to residents.

Methods: This project was conducted with pediatric residents and faculty during the 2019-20 academic year at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Health San Antonio (UTHSA) and during the 2021-22 academic year at The University of Texas Health Science Center …

Contemporary Trends In Pediatric Extubation Failure And Noninvasive Respiratory Support Use, Jeremy M Loberger, Mitchell Moore, Matthew Scanlon, Robinder G Khemani, Samer Abu-Sultaneh, Colin M Rogerson

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Prolonged invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) is associated with morbidity and mortality in children. Timely extubation is essential and must balance the competing risks of extubation failure (EF) and prolonged use of noninvasive respiratory support after extubation.

Research question: Did EF risk factors, EF rates, noninvasive respiratory support after extubation practices, and patient-centered outcomes changed between 2013 and 2022?

Study design and methods: Retrospective cross-sectional study of patients younger than 19 years receiving IMV for ≥ 24 hours and extubated between 2013 and 2022 from 158 North American sites in the Virtual Pediatric Intensive Care, LLC, quality improvement database.

Results: …

Ventilation-Perfusion Scan: A Functional Imaging Approach To Regional Lung Disease In Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia, Gabriel Román-Ríos, Gabriel Rosario-Ortiz, Marcos J Ramos-Benitez, Ricardo A Mosquera, Wilfredo De Jesús-Rojas

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: As a rare genetic disorder defined by defective ciliary motility, Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD) leads to chronic respiratory complications. A founder variant in the RSPH4A [c.921+3_921+6delAAGT] gene, common in Puerto Rico, impairs ciliary function and contributes to progressive lung disease. Today, the clinical value of ventilation/perfusion (V/Q) scans in PCD has not been thoroughly investigated as well as pulmonary function tests (PFTs) and chest imaging. To explore the role and clinical utility of V/Q scans in PCD.

Methods: Retrospective evaluation of pulmonary function tests, chest imaging, and Tc-99m DTPA ventilation and Tc-99m MAA perfusion scans in ten patients with …

Enhancing Mri Accessibility Through Community Engagement For Autistic Young Adults, Antonio F Pagán, Grace Gogola, Ashley Huang, Katherine A Loveland

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The present study, a community-engaged research initiative, was specifically designed to enhance MRI accessibility and optimize the overall experience for autistic Latino young adults. Crucially, we employed a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach, ensuring that the voices and perspectives of the target community were central to every stage of inquiry. Insights were gathered from Community Scientist meetings and 18 autistic Latino young adults (ages 18-25) through focus groups with nine MRI-naïve individuals and individual interviews with a separate cohort of nine individuals who had prior MRI experience. Transcripts from these sessions underwent thematic analysis to identify key patterns related to …

"Art, Esthetics, Ideal": An Ethics For Literary Translators In The Age Of Translating Machines, Gabriel González Núñez

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

The advent of effective machine translation has raised several issues for translators, including the question of how a human translator ought to translate in this age of translating machines. In this context of new ethical questions, the present essay argues that an answer may be found in Pedro Figari’s (1912) philosophical essay on esthetics. Following Figari, the current essay argues that literary translation is art, that as such it can produce an esthetic emotion on readers and that the purpose of such art and esthetics is an ideal in the form of the continuous betterment of the human condition.

Creating A University-Based Accessible Makerspace For Use By Local Community Members Through Participatory Design Workshops, Erin Higgins, John J. Magee Iv, Foad Hamidi

Computer Science

While Do-It-Yourself Assistive Technology (DIY-AT) has been shown to provide needed AT for individuals who might not otherwise have access, the makerspaces utilized to create these technologies have proven to be inaccessible. A promising direction for creating accessible makerspaces is to utilize participatory methods to develop new spaces for use by a diverse community of individuals. We explored these possibilities through participatory design workshops focused on building a new accessible community makerspace situated within a university campus setting. Through these workshops, we found that there are unique physical, technical, and human supports needed to create an accessible space for the …

Climate Change And Species Interactions Jointly Shape Migration Timing And Growth At A Critical Ontogenetic Transition In Juvenile Sockeye Salmon, Margaret E. Veatch

Honors Theses

Climate change is shifting the timing of biological events globally, but the mechanisms linking environmental variation to phenological changes are poorly understood in many systems, particularly those where individuals undergo ontogenetic habitat shifts. Here, I examined the join influence of climate-driven environmental variability and species interactions migration timing and body size at migration in juvenile sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) in Lake Aleknagik, Alaska, using a multi-decadal dataset (1967–2024). Migration timing varied widely among years and was best explained by a combination of ice-out phenology, epilimnetic temperature, and fish densities in littoral habitats. Juvenile sockeye salmon migrated earlier in …

From Sorochyntsi To St. Petersburg: National Identity In The Works Of Nikolai Gogol, Gary Jay Kogoy Jr.

Honors Theses

Nikolai Gogol's extant works depict a man torn between his birthplace of Ukraine and the nineteenth-century milieu of Imperial Russia. Notably, he did not reveal his name for some time after publishing his first story collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka; as a result, readers attributed the tales of Ukrainian life within not to Gogol, but to the charming "Ukrainian jester" persona of Rudy Panko. Even after revealing his identity and garnering respect in the St. Petersburg literary scene, his contemporaries often viewed him as sly and suspicious because of his ancestry. Perhaps due to external doubts regarding …

"It's A Dance": Examining Midwives As Choreographers Of Reproduction In Maine, Annie Goldstein

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the contemporary work of community-based Maine midwives through the theoretical framework of choreography. In the context of this work, choreography can be understood as the well-thought-out, purposeful undertaking of a process during which negotiation, coordination, and improvisation are required to adapt to constantly changing circumstances. Using choreography, this thesis attempts to understand how Maine midwives navigate global market processes and practice under authoritative forms of biomedicine, ultimately linking them to other midwives across various global sites. Situated within Maine’s maternal health landscape that is characterized by the ongoing closure of labor and delivery units and rural hospitals, …

Ultra-Processed Or Ultra-Addictive? A Demand-Based Redefinition Of Ultra-Processed Foods, Braden Jondro

Honors Theses

Ultra-processed foods now comprise the majority of the U.S. food supply and have been directly associated with 32 chronic diseases including obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. Current classification systems such as NOVA provide a useful framework for identifying food processing, but rely on broad and subjective categorizations that may not capture the mechanisms most closely associated with promoting persistent overconsumption. In particular, existing classification systems remain limited in their ability to evaluate addiction-like behaviors associated with highly processed foods, including persistent purchasing patterns, reinforcement effects, and substitution responses. This paper introduces the Ultra-Processed Food Intensity (UPFI) index, an objective, …

Between Commodity And Culture: Tea Advertising As A Site Of Imperial Ideology And Anti-Colonial Resistance In India, Sydney Pascal

Honors Theses

Between the late nineteenth century and Indian independence in 1947, tea advertising became a key site through which imperial authority and Indian nationalism were negotiated. Drawing on advertisements, trade journals, and visual marketing campaigns produced from the 1880s through the 1950s, this honors thesis argues that tea advertising was a cultural and political mechanism through which the British Empire attempted to normalize imperial consumption and legitimize colonial authority. British campaigns framed tea as modern and routine while obscuring the exploitative labor systems and landscape transformations that sustained plantation production in Assam. As nationalist movements expanded in the early twentieth century, …

Blood And Belonging: Remembering Massacres Of The American West In The Twentieth Century, Mountain Meadows And Sand Creek, Kenzie Burns

Honors Theses

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a turning point in mainstream America’s sense of national identity. A wave of nostalgia for the American Frontier enshrined the region’s idealized nineteenth-century past as myth. A key part of the story is romanticized violence—often depicted through cultural imagery of cowboys, gunfights, and battles with American Indians. This project seeks to understand more about how violence is represented in the cultural memory of the American Western past. Within the past twenty years, scholars of the American West have begun to incorporate the study of memory into their scholarship, frequently with how cultural …

Brewing Resilience: Cooperatives, Micro-Mills, And The Quest For Survival In Costa Rica's Changing Coffee Landscape, Leila N. Iredell

Honors Theses

This thesis examines how different organizational models in Costa Rica's coffee sector shape producers’ ability to capture value, build resilience, and sustain rural livelihoods in a rapidly changing global market. In comparing traditional cooperatives and new micro-mills, I examine specifically how control over the value chain, access to markets, and social infrastructure differ across models and what these differences mean for the farmers who depend on them. This project analyzes how the collapse of international price agreements and decades of market volatility drove producers toward new strategies, from independent processing and direct trade to coffee tourism. Costa Rica stands as …

Datum Reference Photos From Sylvester Manor Umass Boston Archaeological Work, Shelter Island, Ny, John M. Steinberg, John Schoenfelder, Chiara M. Torrini, Joseph E. Kinney, Stephen Mrozowski, David B. Landon, Nedra Lee

Data and Datasets

Photographs of site datums used during UMass Boston archaeological work at Sylvester Manor. File names contain the datum name followed by a sequential number. Each datum contains a set of multiple photographs showing its location at a near and far scale, illustrating its exact spot and place in the broader landscape, respectively. Some datums have photographs showing how the survey rod needs to be placed, and some have images that include a pin flag with the datum name written on it. Includes zipped folder.

Excavation Units From Sylvester Manor Umass Boston Archaeological Work, Shelter Island, Ny, John M. Steinberg, John Schoenfelder, Chiara M. Torrini, Joseph E. Kinney, Stephen Mrozowski, David B. Landon, Nedra Lee

Data and Datasets

Excavation units from Sylvester Manor archaeological work (1998-2025). Includes zipped polygon shapefile with outlines of excavation units.