Northern Arizona University

The anatomy of hitting: assessing age-related changes in MLB performance via layered Dirichlet modeling

Abstract The productive career of a professional athlete is short relative to the human lifespan, with most Major League Baseball (MLB) players retiring by age 40. Although younger players often possess superior physical tools, older players may differ in the composition of plate...

Aquatic vegetation promotes prey diversity but not the diversification of predator phenotypes

Freshwater fish have evolved to forage in a range of habitats, from open water in lakes to benthic shorelines and streams. Much research has focused on how prey differences, such as zooplankton versus benthic macroinvertebrates, might select for divergence in predator traits acro...

Feminist anthropologies in the contemporary world: A conversation on theory, praxis, and politics

Abstract This article brings together the voices of members of three major feminist anthropological associations to discuss the state of feminist anthropology as a distinct subfield of anthropology, as well as its state of affairs as an increasingly expanding, as well as increasi...

Rehabilitation needs/state of rehabilitation in hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) and hypermobility spectrum disorder (HSD)

Date presented: April 25, 2026 Primary Author and Speaker: Kelliann Walker, kw2385@nau.edu

Beyond Hill-Type Models: Aligning Experiments and Modeling to Understand Dynamic Muscle Function

Muscle models underpin how exercise, rehabilitation, and human-movement sciences infer muscle force during activity, yet profound gaps remain between traditional measures and models of muscle function and the dynamic features of muscle in natural movement. We review evidence for...

Enhancing security in LLM applications: a performance evaluation of early detection systems

Abstract Prompt injection (PI) attacks threaten novel software applications, which have LLM-based functionality. Prompt leakage, a variant of prompt injection, constitutes a serious confidentiality risk to those applications. Existing defenses against PI attacks currently cannot...

Right on time: evaluating accuracy and timing of burn-severity assessments to support post-fire management

Abstract Effective wildfire impact assessment and post-fire management rely on burn-severity maps that accurately characterize fire effects on vegetation and soils. These maps inform time-sensitive activities such as post-fire flood and debris-flow modeling, risk mitigation for h...

Investigating Variability and Malleability of Speech-Language Pathologists' Responsive Talk With Children: An Early-Efficacy Trial

Purpose: The purposes of this early-stage efficacy study were to examine speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') use of responsive talk with children and to determine the extent to which responsive talk can be modified through brief clinician education or an in situ, tablet-based f...

The Dream Garden Game: Integrating Gamification and Playful Design to Support Public Participation in Urban Greening Policymaking

As greening initiatives are increasingly implemented by public agencies to enhance climate resilience in urban environments, meaningful engagement with communities to support public participation becomes critical. While it has been well-documented that effective community engagem...

Blue-sky thinking about pronunciation research and teaching

Abstract In the fall of 2024, Ron Thomson and Tracey Derwing invited 15 pronunciation scholars representing several subspecialties to participate in a full-day symposium to discuss directions for pronunciation research. To prepare for the symposium, held in conjunction with the P...

Two C3/C4 vegetative boundaries and an expanding/contracting Chihuahuan Desert during the past 4000 yr at the Cañada Alamosa Archaeological Project Area, New Mexico

Carbon isotopic measurement (δ13C) as an indicator of C3 or C4 vegetation preserved in soil organic matter and pedogenic carbonate is an important tool for reconstructing paleoclimate. However, while δ13C values of C4 plants (−14‰) generally indicate warm-season grass, δ13C value...

The Luminosity Function of Ultrafaint Trans-Neptunian Objects Detected by JWST

Abstract We present a definitive discovery of 27 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) using the Near-Infrared Camera aboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). By employing a shift-and-stack technique and a machine learning network geared specifically to identifying false-positive d...

Accounting for register-internal variation

Abstract Registers are text varieties associated with situations of use. It has now been documented, however, that texts within registers are not situationally homogeneous — just as they are not linguistically uniform. This led Biber and Egbert (2023) to propose that linguistic v...

Model Falsification for Predicting Dynamical Responses of Uncertain Structural Systems

Abstract Accurate prediction of the dynamical response of a structural system depends on appropriate modeling of that system. However, modeling becomes increasingly challenging when numerous candidate models are available to describe the system behavior. Although different model...

Using Tower‐Based Observational Networks to Assess the Impact of COVID‐19 Lockdowns on Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Six North American Cities

Abstract The onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic in North America and the lockdowns that followed in March 2020 brought forth a rapid change to societal functions disrupting many aspects of normal life, including the greenhouse gas emissions associated with them. In this work, we exam...

What Needs Attention? Prioritizing Drivers of Developers’ Trust and Adoption of Generative AI

Generative AI (genAI) tools promise productivity gains, yet developers still struggle to determine when to trust and effectively integrate these tools into their everyday work. Moreover, genAI can be exclusionary, failing to adequately support developers across individual differe...

Evidence charts the future of freshwater biodiversity conservation

Evidence is essential for promoting freshwater conservation and selecting appropriate conservation actions. This article examines the importance of evidence for freshwater conservation, available sources, how evidence is used, geographical coverage, and the challenges in obtainin...

Provider-Identified strategies to address homelessness in Arizona: a summary of strategies, evidence, and impact

Few sources have reviewed the state of the evidence on commonly implemented and emerging strategies to prevent and respond to homelessness in the United States. We conducted focus groups with 58 homeless service providers and administrators across Arizona about strategies used to...

Wavelength Requirements for Life Detection via Reflected Light Spectroscopy of Rocky Exoplanets

Searching for signs of life is a primary goal of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). However, merely detecting oxygen, methane, or other widely discussed biosignatures is insufficient evidence for a biosphere. In parallel with biosignature detection, exoplanet life detection...

Passages

Richard P. Gabriel's Patterns of Software: Tales from the Software Community is the kind of book that Passages, as a column, aspires to bring back to the attention of the software community. I am fairly sure this book, from 1996, is largely forgotten, but I think it deserves a wi...