Institutional Repository
The UDSpace Institutional Repository collects and disseminates research material from the University of Delaware.
- Faculty, staff, and graduate students can deposit their research material directly into UDSpace. Faculty may use UDSpace to fulfill the University of Delaware Faculty Senate Open Access Resolution, and in many cases may use it to fulfill open access requirements from grant funding agencies.
- Departments can use UDSpace to publish or distribute their working papers, technical reports, or other research material.
- UDSpace also includes all doctoral dissertations from winter 2014 forward, and all master's theses from fall 2009 forward.
To learn more about UDSpace, and how you can make your research openly accessible to the public, visit our UDSpace Policies website.
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Recent Submissions
Rhetoric Versus Reality? A Comparative Study of Public and Non-Public Sector Employees' Perceptions of Discrimination
(Public Administration Review, 2025-12-05) Lahat, Lihi; Sharony, Chen; Sowa, Jessica E.
How people are treated in the workplace is of increasing concern, with many scholars arguing that the government, as an em-ployer, should set the standard for equitable treatment. While attention to equity in public administration has grown in researchand practice, minimal work has comparatively explored discrimination in the public and non-public sectors. Drawing on datafrom the 2018 European Social Survey, this study explores possible differences in how public and non-public employees perceivediscrimination and how perceptions vary across countries. In most countries, the differences between the sectors were not signif-icant, but the findings show that the country, administrative culture, and sociodemographic variables play a role in perceptionsof discrimination. This exploratory study makes an important empirical contribution by accumulating evidence of perceptions ofdiscrimination across countries and has practical implications for human resource management practitioners.
2025, 50th Issue, part 2
(Newark, Del.: Chesapeake Pub. Corp., 2025-12-12) Newark post
2025, 50th Issue, part 1
(Newark, Del.: Chesapeake Pub. Corp., 2025-12-12) Newark post
Thermo-reversible gelation of self-assembled conducting polymer colloids
(Nature Communications, 2025-12-05) Damani, Vidhika S.; Xie, Xinran; Daso, Rachel E.; Suman, Khushboo; Ghasemi, Masoud; Xie, Weiran; Wu, Ruiheng; Wu, Yuhang; Chao, Calvin L.; Alberto, Julian E.; Lorch, Casey M.; Yang, Ai-Nin; My Nguyen, Dan; Shrestha, Tulaja; Otero, Kayla; Chun-Yuan Lo; Pochan, Darrin J.; Gomez, Enrique D.; Rivnay, Jonathan; Kayser, Laure V.
Electrically conductive hydrogels based on conducting polymers have found increased use in bioelectronics due to their low moduli that mimic biological tissues, their ability to transport both ionic and electronic charges, and their ease of processing in various form factors via printing or injection. Current approaches towards conductive hydrogels, however, rely on covalent and therefore irreversible crosslinking mechanisms. Here, we report a thermo-responsive conducting polymer (TR-CP) that undergoes a fully reversible non-covalent crosslinking at 35 °C within less than a minute to form conductive hydrogels. The TR-CP is based on a block polyelectrolyte complex, that self-assembles into well-defined colloidal particles in water which undergo an isovolumetric sol-gel transition just below physiological temperature. The hydrogels have tunable mechanical properties in the 20 to 200 Pa range, are stable at various pH and salt conditions, self-healing, injectable, and biocompatible in vitro and in vivo. We demonstrate that the TR-CPs can be used to fabricate sensitive, conformal and reusable electrodes for surface electromyography. This thermo-responsive material provides exciting opportunities for stimuli-responsive and adaptive bioelectronics.
Violent deaths following disasters: A retrospective analysis
(PLOS ONE, 2025-12-04) Scales, Sarah Elizabeth; Camphausen, Lauren C.; Horney, Jennifer A.; Kintziger, Kristina W.
Introduction
Negative mental health outcomes associated with disaster exposure can increase risks of interpersonal and self-directed violence. However, the link between disaster exposure and increased incidence in violent deaths is not clearly established.
Study objective
The objective of this work is to assess the incidence of violent deaths in non-disaster and disaster periods across five distinct disaster events.
Methods
This study uses an ecological, quasi-experimental design to assess violent deaths in pre-disaster and disaster periods across five U.S. states (e.g., North Carolina, Oregon, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Colorado) with federally declared disasters resulting from natural hazards (e.g., flood, wildfire, tropical cyclone, storms). Deaths recorded in the National Violent Death Reporting System were used to describe violent deaths with injuries occurring three-months prior to and after disaster onset. Poisson regression with population offsets and fixed effects was used to calculate incidence rate ratios for disaster affected and unaffected counties within the same state, comparing violent death rates in disaster periods with non-disaster periods.
Results
Most of all deaths were White (80.75%), male (76.87%), and unmarried (65.03%); the median age of decedents was 41.5 years (IQR: 28–55). Overall, the incidence of violent deaths was consistent between disaster and non-disaster periods for both affected (IRR: 0.985; 95% CI: 0.760–1.276) and unaffected counties (IRR: 1.062; 95% CI: 0.975–1.158). Rate ratios were heterogenous but not significant across individual disasters, with only non-suicide and all-cause violent deaths increasing significantly following severe storms and flooding in Wisconsin for counties ineligible for public assistance
Conclusion
The results of this study are consistent with the heterogenous findings on violent deaths and disasters throughout literature. As disasters become more frequent and severe, it is important to further consider the relationship between disaster impacts and negative mental health outcomes, including violent deaths.