Buena Vista University

The number of students with disabilities has increased significantly in recent years, with up to 21% reporting a disability in 2020. These students continually face challenges in completing their college education. Universal design for learning (UDL) has been proposed to help such students overcome these challenges. UDL maximises accessibility by considering the diverse learning needs of a wide range of learners and leads educators to appreciate the uniqueness of each student. The purpose of this study was to investigate the perspectives of students with disabilities on UDL teaching practices in a higher education setting. The study used interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore participants' learning experiences with UDL teaching practices. We conducted three online focus groups with an overall total of 10 participants to collect data. The results demonstrated seven themes describing how UDL teaching practices benefited participants' learning experiences and addressed their learning needs. Related discussions and future research implications are presented.

Recent policies prohibiting queer content and conversations in schools represent a new approach to curricular censorship and prejudice by combining parental rights advocacy framing with historical discrimination against and fear of queer identities. Impacts of these policies move beyond tangible classrooms and problematize the foundational ideals of democratic education. Guided by Levinson et al.’s (2009) conceptualization of policy as power and Werts & Brewer’s (2014) understanding of policy implementation as a political act, this critical discourse analysis study used Bacchi’s (2009) what’s the problem represented to be (WPR) policy analysis approach to identify and analyze problematizations, categorizations, and assumptions made by queer content prohibition policies passed and implemented in the United States between January 2022 and May 2025. All 15 polices present, encourage, and/or extend the problem that public schools are untrustworthy because (1) schools are indoctrinating vulnerable students by providing inappropriate sexual orientation and gender identity content and forcing the use of gender-affirming pronouns; (2) parents are purposefully uninformed about classroom curricular content, health services, and the content of or motivations behind conversations between school personnel and students; and (3) schools prevent parental involvement and do not provide safe opportunities for parents to combat disagreeable content.

Electroencephalography (EEG) signal classification often uses convolutional neural networks (CNNs) because of their strength in pattern recognition across multidimensional data. These models usually consist of several convolutional layers, followed by a multilayer perceptron (MLP). Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs), inspired by the Kolmogorov-Arnold Representation Theorem, offer a promising alternative to MLPs. They have shown both accuracy and interpretability for small-scale tasks. In this study, we investigate the use of KAN layers for EEG classification in a real-world setting. We use data from 29 cognitively normal individuals and 29 individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease obtained from the public OpenNeuro data repository. The goal is to improve early detection and support more effective treatment for those with Alzheimer's disease. We compare four KAN-based models with five CNN architectures. The task involves binary classification of Alzheimer's patients and healthy controls. The classifications produced by our models are validated with leave-one-subject-out cross-validation (LOO). The results show that EEGNetKAN achieves 86.25% accuracy, which is comparable to the best CNN model, EEGNetSSVEP, achieving an accuracy of 87.95%. However, the KAN-based models outperformed the CNN models in terms of speed, being approximately twice as fast. These models, in terms of accuracy, outperform the original study of Miltiado and colleagues. Overall, KANs provide a viable alternative to traditional CNNs for EEG classification. They combine computational efficiency with competitive accuracy and improved interpretability.

The peptidoglycan (PG) cell wall is a mesh-like layer that shapes bacteria and protects against osmotically induced lysis. PG is composed of glycan strands and peptide chains that link together to form a continuous layer that surrounds the cell. PG hydrolases are required for cell wall maturation, and many are employed during cell separation. During cell division, amidases remove peptides from the glycan backbone, and the resulting denuded glycans (dnGs) are degraded by lytic transglycosylases (LTs). The gram-negative bacterium Escherichia coli encodes eight functional LTs (mltA-G and slt) and one putative LT (rlpA), and a mutant strain lacking six (ΔmltACDEΔsltΔrlpA), which we refer to as ΔLT cells, accumulates dnGs and produces short chains of cells. A morphological suppressor of the ΔLT chaining defect was isolated, and deletion analysis indicated that suppression relied primarily on increased activity of DigH, a denuded-specific hydrolase that accumulates at the midcell during cell division. Further analyses revealed that DigH is critical for cell separation in ΔLT but not wild-type cells and that dnGs accumulate even more in ΔLT cells when DigH is absent. Thus, DigH is a denuded-specific hydrolase that is conditionally required for cell separation in E. coli. Altogether, our findings deepen our understanding of the specific cellular function of DigH and of PG maturation in E. coli. Most bacteria are surrounded by an essential polymer known as the peptidoglycan cell wall. During cell division, a transient form of peptidoglycan is generated between the developing daughter cells that must be cleaved so that cells can separate. Here, we show that the DigH hydrolase is conditionally required for cell separation when this transient cell wall structure accumulates in the gram-negative bacterium Escherichia coli. These findings deepen our understanding of how the peptidoglycan layer is remodeled during cell division.

Research Question/Issue The impact of board structures on firm performance remains a contentious governance topic with competing theoretical paradigms and inconclusive empirical support. Scholars propose that national culture could reconcile contradictory evidence; yet, argumentation is fragmented and direct tests are rare. We meta-analyzed 513 samples across 54 countries to examine relationships between board structures (i.e., board size, board independence, and CEO duality) and firm performance. We model national culture, using Hofstede's six cultural dimensions, as moderators to test whether these relationships align with agency or stewardship theory across different cultural settings.Research Findings/Insights Findings indicate a substantial moderating role of national culture on board structure-firm performance relationships. However, the performance implications of board structures are contingent, varying by the specific board attribute, cultural dimension, and performance metric considered (accounting-based, market-based, or growth). For example, cultural moderators often have opposite effects on accounting versus market outcomes, and certain board features (notably, CEO duality) are more strongly influenced by culture than others. Our study is the first to meta-analyze board structure effects on growth-oriented performance measures and provides the most comprehensive meta-analytic estimates, sharpening understanding of the boundary conditions between agency and stewardship logic.Theoretical/Academic Implications Integrating national cultural values into competing agency versus stewardship paradigms, our research offers a nuanced, culture-contingent governance framework. Synthesizing theoretical arguments and empirical evidence, we present a roadmap of saturated, contested, and nascent research questions to steer future corporate governance scholarship.Practitioner/Policy Implications Our findings counter one-size-fits-all approaches, suggesting that boards, investors, and regulators tailor board architecture and governance codes to local cultural norms.