Article shares the leadership lessons learned by a librarian who once served as a faculty member but then became an Associate Dean. Transitioning from a faculty role to an administrative one creates a landscape of learning that promotes growth and exposes challenges. This is the submitted/accepted manuscript version of the article.

Article documenting the results of surveying 126 physician trainees regarding their beliefs about metaphysical experiences (e.g., near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, shared-death experiences, and after-death communication) and experiences shared with them by patients. It also discusses results about the trainees' attitudes toward transcendental explanations and caring for end-of-life patients.

Article describing the findings regarding thematic analysis of seventeen near-death experience accounts provided by Iranian Shia Muslims to determine how these experiences overlap or diverge from accounts given by experiencers from Western cultures.

Article documenting the findings of research that employed web-scraping of personal narratives to analyze the level of positive or negative sentiment expressed by experiencers regarding their near-death experiences.

Article reporting on a selection of presentations from the 2020 Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference.

This article discusses how the UNT Media Library developed a video game collection to support student retention, student recreation, and classroom instruction. The article also will explain how the Library successfully met challenges involved in collection development, related technology, space needs, and the challenges it sees ahead.

This paper focuses on how the University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries was able to develop a successful partnership with the UNT Office of Innovation and Commercialization (OIC) and move outside the Libraries’ normal sphere of influence to help create a patent internship program for students. The paper is published in the Texas Library Journal Special Edition for Summer 2020, and it was a contributed paper at the Texas Library Association 2020 Virtual Summer of Learning conference.

Abstract: People diagnosed with cancer frequently report deleterious psychological experiences because of their diagnosis and subsequent medical treatment. One particularly helpful coping strategy reported by cancer patients is psychoeducational on spiritual topics. Anecdotally, cancer survivors reported that psychoeducation about near-death experiences (NDEs) has been a source of great comfort. In this article, we present two case studies on cancer survivors who reported that learning about NDEs helped them cope with cancer successfully by enabling them to face with greater peace both ongoing medical treatment and a potential for death.

Abstract: Findings from several studies suggest near-death experiences (NDEs) may influence sleep quality. In this study, we examined self-reported duration, latency, and quality of sleep in those who had experienced a life-threatening event and who had and had not reported an associated NDE. Participants were 154 members of the general New Zealand population who completed an online quantitative questionnaire that included the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Near-Death Experience Scale, Impact of Event Scale-Revised, and Life Changes Inventory-Revised. Both the NDE and non-NDE groups indicated sleep habits had changed after their close encounter with death. Participants slept less, took longer to fall asleep, and experienced more sleep disturbances. However, we found no differences between the groups, suggesting sleep alterations occurred in response to the near-death event rather than specifically to the NDE.

This article looks at the role of the UNT Libraries as an essential service during the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-at-home declaration in Denton County, Tx in the Spring of 2020.

Article explores dynamic fusion models to find, on the fly, the model or combination of models that performs best on a variety of document types. The experimental results show that the approach that fuses different models outperforms individual models and other ensemble methods on three datasets.

Abstract: Despite their different etiologies, three types of spiritually transformative experiences (STEs)--near-death experiences, psilocybin experiences, and meditative experiences of cosmic consciousness--appear to have attributes that are common to a broad range of mystical experiences, including an experience of expanded awareness. In addition, all three appear to be associated with profound and lasting transformations in the lives of experiencers. Finally, these three experiences appear to share some common neural correlates. In this article, we discuss similarities in case studies of these STEs, in data from controlled clinical research studies on their transformative effects, as well as from neurophysiological data correlated with the occurrence of STEs themselves. In all three STEs, research shows a reduction in neural activity in the major centers of the brain, including the Default Mode Network, the foundation of egoic stories involving the narrative related to oneself and the world in which one lives. It is proposed that during these STEs, reduced neural activity in areas of the brain that normally act as a filter or reducing valve mechanism opens the capacity to expanded awareness, which is associated with lasting transformation in the lives of experiencers.

Abstract: The physiological and psychological underpinnings of near-death experiences (NDEs) are not yet understood. In this article, we show that for "critical" NDEs reported after cardiac arrest, two different neurophysiological models have been proposed that, in the literature so far, have not been adequately distinguished from each other. In the real-time model, it is postulated that during critical NDEs, residual activities in the cerebrum were sufficient to generate NDEs in real time. In the reconstruction model, it is assumed that due to severe oxygen deficiency, critical NDEs could not have occurred at the time in question but were reconstructed later during the regeneration phase of the brain. To assess the plausibility of these two models, we analyzed the phenomenology of the view of one's own body from above (autoscopy) that frequently occurs in the beginnings of NDEs. In addition to the available literature, we used original descriptions of autoscopies obtained in an online survey conducted in 2015. We found that the reconstruction model is not supported by empirical findings and that some findings even speak against it. We therefore conclude that future discussions of explanatory models of NDEs should focus primarily on the neurophysiological real-time model and a third alternative …

Article describes study evaluating small-scale mechanical behavior was for AlCoCrFeNi2.1 eutectic high entropy alloy, consisting of a lamellar arrangement of L12 and B2 solid-solution phases.

Article discussing the effectiveness of network analysis for evaluating digital library metadata records. It provides count- and value-based statistics as well as network metrics for each of the two collections identified for this research and compares the usefulness of various data values for metadata quality analysis.