Digital Commons Network^™

Analysis Of Solutions To Research Methods: Navigating The Infinite Content Of Mathematics, Jesus Navarro

Student Scholar Symposium

In the infinite realm of mathematical research, understanding and communicating complex concepts require structured and logical approaches. However, a variety of research methods are employed in mathematical studies; these may differ in approach, historical context, and other important considerations which can contribute to confusion and a lack of effective communication. The genesis of this research began with personal confusion during my research on "Counting the Uncountable: Life in a World Without Numbers", setting the stage for the central challenge: How do mathematicians explain their research? To answer this issue, we analyzed a variety of mathematical research articles to highlight their …

A Teacher, Medical Advisor, And Comedian Walk Into A Bar: Table For One, Everything Ai Can Do, Lorelai M. Kline

Student Scholar Symposium

As Generative AI continues to rise in popularity, AI chatbots have emerged as a promising solution for addressing students’ real-world needs. This presentation investigates the development process behind a series of specialized, personality-driven AI assistants—created via the Boodlebox platform—and examines how these chatbots enhance educational experiences and practical applications. The research uses progressive design methodologies, including persona development, natural language processing optimization, and user-centric testing protocols. Examples of personal bots include a historical assistant that interprets contemporary social scenarios through an 18th- to 19th-century perspective and a Spanish-speaking chatbot that leverages playful sarcasm to foster deeper engagement. Preliminary findings show …

What Does Graptolite Origination And Extinction Reveal About The Cause Of The Late Ordovician Mass Extinction?, Charles E. Mitchell, H. David Sheets, Michael J. Melchin, Chris Holmden

Computer and Data Science Faculty Publications

Assesses the macroevolutionary turnover of paleotropical planktic graptolites during the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME) via automated sequencing and capture-mark-recapture modeling. Graptolites exhibited a succession of turnover pulses (sensu Elizabeth Vrba) that were coincident with the main phases of the Hirnantian glaciation and during which the Diplograptina experienced declining metapopulation size, elevated extinction, zero species originations, and ultimately, complete extermination. Concurrently, the Neograptina (latest Katian temperate zone immigrants) exhibit pulses of both extinction and adaptive radiation. Thus, the LOME involved intense species selection and the wholesale alteration of the clade diversity structure of a major element of the zooplankton. The …

A Systematic Study Of Passkey User Experience Consistency, Bernhardt Ramat

Theses and Dissertations

Passkeys have emerged as a more secure authentication method than passwords, providing a passwordless alternative resistant to phishing and credential theft attacks. Despite their growing adoption, a systematic study into the user experience of passkeys across various websites has yet to be conducted. Usability heuristics suggest that users transfer their expectations from one product to another, and therefore, inconsistencies in passkey deployments can increase cognitive load, resulting in frustration and possible rejection. To address this knowledge gap, this paper presents a comparative analysis of the external functional consistency of the passkey user experience across 111 websites. Our research reveals that …

Gauge Invariance And Repeated Time Isolated Solution Discontinuities, James Glimm, James Glimm, James Glimm

Department of Applied Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

The main conclusion of this paper is (a) a gauge structure for the underlying physics, at or above a critical dimension, forces multiple time isolated solution discontinuities (blowups). The main conclusion (b) is that the solution is one Sobolev index more singular that the natural Hilbert space H. Proofs are given for Navier-Stokes fluids.

The Role Of Dust Inputs And Sediment Phosphorus Diffusion Into Utah Lake, Utah, United States Of America, Kristen E. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Human activities have led to excessive nutrient enrichment which is greater than lake systems can naturally assimilate. This process is known as eutrophication and it is driving significant algae growth resulting in the more common release of harmful toxins. Utah Lake, located in Utah County, UT is one such water body that even after major reductions in anthropogenic phosphorus influent, continues to experience frequent, harmful algal blooms. The extent to which natural processes, like atmospheric dust deposition and sediment recycling, contribute to the lake's phosphorus budget is still poorly understood.

To address this gap of knowledge, this study quantified phosphorus …

Complex Numbers And Phone Signals, Ava Barrett, Rebecca Brazeal, Javier Gutierrez

Student Scholar Symposium

Though widely used, complex numbers are often introduced in coursework without real-world context. Our team examines their application in electromagnetic waves and communication systems, focusing on how they help model and analyze phone signals. By connecting concepts from physics and math, we demonstrate their role in signal modulation and transmission. Through this project, we aim to highlight the practical importance of complex numbers in modern technology and provide a clearer understanding of their use in communication systems that power everyday devices like smartphones.

Face Value: A Computational Approach To Subjective Impressions Of Faces, Kevin Kpankou

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Various computational models of first impressions have been developed to uncover the mechanisms driving these judgments. However, the implicit notion of a singular ``human'' often overlooks meaningful individual differences in beliefs, attitudes, and associations, as well as culturally grounded group-level constructs. In this paper, we extend Cultural Consensus Theory (CCT) to estimate culturally shared beliefs about faces by incorporating latent constructs structured around interpretable facial features extracted via computer vision algorithms. We apply our model to a large-scale dataset of people’s first impressions of faces. Our approach reveals a robust mapping between facial features and culturally constructed impressions, allowing us …

Nature Naturing In And As Place, Edward S. Casey

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

In this brief article, I single out two distinctly different kinds of natural place, attempting to show how these not merely contrast with each other but display larger patterns or tendencies that are also found in many other sorts of place. This is to take one integral step to a larger ecology of places provided by the natural world and from which human and nonhuman beings draw life and motion that sustain and support many ways of existing on earth. Without such places, we—and every other form of life—would perish or would not even exist to begin with. It is …

Connecting Business Innovation & Climate Impact, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, Alexander Pourfard, Aranza Ruvalcaba, Fowzia Farah

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

The La Mesa Green Business Network (GBN) is a City-led initiative developed in partnership with the San Diego Regional Green Business Network to advance local climate goals by engaging the business community in practical, measurable sustainability actions. Launched in 2022 as part of La Mesa’s Climate Action Plan, the GBN addresses common barriers faced by small and medium-sized businesses such as limited capacity, resources, and technical expertise by providing free, industry-specific consulting, certification, and public recognition. Through tailored guidance on energy efficiency, water conservation, waste reduction, and transportation practices, the program translates citywide climate objectives into on-the-ground action while delivering …

Enhancing Silicon Sampling In Large Language Models: Fine-Tuning Techniques Using Survey Data, Davis P. Forster

Theses and Dissertations

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to simulate responses of human demographic groups, a task known as silicon sampling. This paper investigates whether supervised fine-tuning can improve algorithmic fidelity in such settings. We construct a dataset from the General Social Survey (GSS), converting demographic attributes into natural-language backstories and randomly selecting one attribute as a held-out target. Fine-tuning a LLaMA-3.1-70B model on this dataset yields significant improvements on two tasks: (1) imputing missing attributes at the individual level, and (2) reproducing response distributions for demographic slices, such as racial and age groups. Notably, these improvements are achieved with minimal …

Cyber-Physical Framework For Smart Paint Manufacturing: Hybrid Integration Of Plc And Recipe Management Simulation, Stephen A. Michael, Anas M. Atieh, Emmanuel Nkwocha, Nathir A. Rawashdeh

Michigan Tech Publications

This study investigates the implementation of Industry 4.0 paradigms in the context of smart paint manufacturing, focusing on process control and recipe management through the integration of Ignition SCADA, a Siemens programmable logic controller (PLC), and a MySQL Workbench database. The developed architecture employs Ignition as an interoperable communication interface that facilitates bidirectional data exchange between the PLC and the database, thereby establishing a cyber-physical system for automated monitoring and control. The digital recipe management module formalizes paint formulations into parameterized datasets specifying paint and solvent ingredient ratios, process variables, and operational constraints, which are executed autonomously by the control …

Microbial Communities Of Selected Regions Of The Deep Springs Lake Aquifer System, Rania Zaki, Emma Bourne, Andrew Storino, Jay Nadeau

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Deep Springs Lake is a small, isolated, highly alkaline soda lake in Inyo County of Eastern California, USA. It is a seasonally filled salt lake or playa, and is part of a closed aquifer system. Such closed systems are globally rare, occurring only in arid zones where annual evaporation is greater than annual rainfall. Deep Springs Lake’s hydrology and geology have been well studied, and it is home to a unique toad species, but its microbiome remains unexplored. Here we perform 16S, 18S, and ITS amplicon sequencing of the lake water, dried salt crust at the edges the lake, and …

Tests Without Borders: A Global Approach To Measuring Visualization Literacy, Olivia A. Guess

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Visualization literacy assessments shape how we understand people's ability to interpret data, yet most existing instruments embed Western datasets and assumptions that limit their relevance for global audiences. This thesis argues that because data is personal, assessments must also be culturally grounded. We introduce a unified framework for adapting the Mini-VLAT into 22 regionally responsive short-form assessments, each retaining the structure of the original test while incorporating datasets and scenarios tailored to specific regions around the world. To demonstrate how such adaptations can be customized and validated, we present a detailed case study of a Ghana-adapted Mini-VLAT, developed in collaboration …

Indigenizing Aquaculture: In Pursuit Of An Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture System For Enhanced Self-Sufficiency In Akaroa Harbour, Aotearoa New Zealand, Cali R. Trainor

Capstone Collection

This study assessed the feasibility of integrating two pre-existing aquaculture activities in Akaroa Harbour, Aotearoa New Zealand into an integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) system. The cultivation of giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) presents an opportunity to improve the sustainability of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) farming by introducing alternative food sources for salmon, which can be used to produce fish feed locally, enhancing the self-sufficiency of the community and boosting the holistic efficiency of the system. Macroinvertebrates residing in giant kelp wrack were collected, identified, and quantified to determine if any of the Macrocystis-associated specimens could serve as …

Cv: Joseph Kozminski (Physics), Joseph Kozminski

Physics Department Faculty Curricula Vitae

No abstract provided.

Predicting The Attitudes Towards Mathematical Modeling Of Primary Math Teachers: The Role Of Self-Efficacy And Motivation, Brenden Rawls

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this non-experimental quantitative predictive correlational study was to investigate the extent to which efficacy for pedagogy in mathematics, efficacy for teaching mathematics content, effectance motivation in mathematics, years of experience, and access to statistics, data science, or mathematical modeling courses predict attitudes toward constructivist practices in mathematical modeling of Virginia primary school mathematics teachers. The goal of the research was to understand what affective characteristics support effective adoption Virginia's mathematics curriculum change. Higher levels of mathematics teacher self-efficacy have been associated with constructivist instructional practices and higher levels of student achievement. The sample included kindergarten through fifth-grade …

Advancing Cybersecurity Practice: Explainable Machine Learning For Network Intrusion Detection, Adam Grabowski, Shengjie Xu

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

This research investigates explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) integration within machine learning (ML)-based intrusion detection systems (IDS), focusing on distinguishing malicious from benign network activities. We employed Random Forest and XGBoost models evaluated on widely recognized datasets, including NSL-KDD and UNSW-NB15, using both binary and multi-class classification tasks. The objective was to enhance cybersecurity operations through improved model transparency and interpretability. By integrating SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) and LIME (Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations), the study offers comprehensive global and local insights into model decision-making processes. Results demonstrate SHAP's effectiveness in providing a broad, dataset-wide understanding of feature interactions and importance, while …

Intrinsic Stability Of Controlled Systems Via Gershgorin-Type Estimates, David Friedbaum

Theses and Dissertations

Time delays are an inherent feature of real-world dynamical systems, arising whenever information, matter, or energy requires non-negligible time to propagate. Even small delays can destabilize systems that are otherwise well behaved, yet most standard control designs--such as PID or LQR--do not explicitly account for them and may fail when delays are present. This thesis investigates the stability of controlled dynamical systems subject to arbitrary time delays and develops new tools to determine when such systems remain stable. Our approach builds on the notion of intrinsic stability, a strong form of global stability introduced by Webb and Bunimovich, which guaranties …

Play-Based Assessment Of The Cardinal Principle, Allyssa Sonnefeld Leavitt

Theses and Dissertations

Gelman and Gallistel (1986) determined five counting principles that are essential for successful counting, including the cardinal principle where children understand that the last number counted represents the quantity of a set of objects. The traditional How many? task and the Give-n task are the most common tasks that have been used to assess whether children understand the cardinal principle. However, many researchers claim that these tasks either overestimate or underestimate children's understanding of the cardinal principle. Some researchers (Baroody & Pellegrino, 2023) suggest that embedding the traditional How many? task in a game may improve its validity. In this …

Achieving More Accurate And Interpretable Fraud Detection With Double Machine Learning, Jeremy Andrew Berry

Theses and Dissertations

Fraud detection remains a critical challenge across industries such as insurance, healthcare, finance, and government. Global losses from fraud and financial crime are estimated in the trillions annually, including billions in healthcare and insurance fraud alone. While effective for prediction, traditional machine learning methods often lack causal interpretability and struggle to adapt to evolving fraud tactics. This dissertation investigates the application of Double Machine Learning (DML), an emerging causal inference technique, to enhance both the accuracy and interpretability of fraud analytics. The research compares DML against established causal inference approaches, leveraging a meta-learning framework to evaluate model performance on accuracy, …

Mapping Climatic And Environmental Determinants Of Parasitic Helminth Prevalence In Southeast Asia, Angelica Avisado

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Climate change is reshaping environmental conditions across Southeast Asia (SEA) through rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and increased droughts. These changes alter transmission dynamics of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) by shifting spatial distribution, increasing larval development rates, faster pathogen growth development, and increasing transmission rates. NTDs are a group of preventable and treatable infections that disproportionately affect more than 1 billion people globally, specifically in tropical and subtropical regions. A subgroup of NTDs, parasitic helminth infections (PHIs) - particularly schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminths, and lymphatic filariasis remains a public health concern in the Southeast Asian region. PHIs and their ecological responses …

Geometric And Proximity Based Substrate Targeting By Cullin-Ring Ligases, Jerry Li

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Homeostasis, the process of maintaining stable biochemical and biophysical conditions, is a fundamental facet of cellular viability. Biochemical homeostasis is critical to support the biological functions that sustain living organisms. Protein ubiquitylation is one of the primary cellular pathways that regulate protein homeostasis and turnover. Ubiquitylation is initiated through the conjugation of a small globular protein known as ubiquitin, onto a given substrate. There exists a myriad of cellular fates that ubiquitylated proteins may undergo, but the most widely studied pathway is protein degradation, whereby a ubiquitylated protein substrate is shunted to a large macromolecular protease known as the proteasome, …

Reconstructing Central American Hydroclimate Changes Across Time From Isotopic Signatures In Modern And Paleo-Rainfall Records, Giuseppe Lucia

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Tropical monsoon rainfall is a key component of Earth’s climate system and supports the livelihood and economy of billions of people. Yet, projections of future monsoons remain highly uncertain, particularly in regions with distinct physiography and complex land-ocean-atmosphere interactions like Central America, where long and continuous high-resolution paleoclimate data to test climate model simulations are still limited. This series of studies aims to reconstruct monsoon dynamics and underlying forcing controls in Central America on multiple timescales by the analysis and integration of stable isotope data in modern and paleo-rainfall records from Guatemala.

In Chapter 2, I present a daily-resolution, two-year-long …

Integrating Post-Quantum Cryptography Into A Cdn-Style Pki: Tls And Quic Performance Across Pqc Suites, Katrina Mary Parsom

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) adds larger certificates and extra workload to the Transport Layer Security (TLS) handshake. In order to analyze the effect of that change on content delivery, a controlled testbed with conditions replicating a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is used. The system uses a standard X.509 certificate chain over TLS 1.3. It compares RSA with classical key exchange, RSA with hybrid key encapsulation mechanism (KEM), and Module Lattice-based Digital Signature Algorithm (ML-DSA) with hybrid KEM. The test harness generates and provides certificates and establishes TLS parameters. The test harness also supports mixed web workloads and records key metrics, including …

A Comparison Of Airborne Tree Pollen In The Las Vegas Valley From 2017 – 2021, Asma Tahir

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Airborne pollen are a predominant cause of asthma, allergic disease, and respiratory infections. The strong allergenic potential of tree pollen is of a public health concern. Several allergenic trees grow in the Mojave Desert, but not all are native to the region. Concentrations of airborne tree pollen are affected by atmospheric, environmental, ecological, and geospatial factors. Previous research has reported high tree pollen concentrations in the Las Vegas Valley, but long-term comparison studies are lacking. This study measured and compared tree pollen concentrations from five different collection stations in Las Vegas. Pollen samples collected from January 1, 2017, to December …

Gpu-Accelerated Effective Hamiltonian Calculator, Abhishek Chakraborty, Taylor L. Patti, Brucek Khailany, Andrew N. Jordan, Anima Anandkumar

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Effective Hamiltonian calculations for large quantum systems can be both analytically intractable and numerically expensive using standard techniques. In this manuscript, we present numerical techniques inspired by Nonperturbative Analytical Diagonalization (NPAD) and the Magnus expansion for the efficient calculation of effective Hamiltonians. While these tools are appropriate for a wide array of applications, we here demonstrate their utility for models that can be realized in circuit-QED settings. Our numerical techniques are available as an opensource Python package, qCHeff, which is available on GitHub (https://github.com/ NVlabs/qCHeff) and PyPI (https://pypi.org/ project/qcheff/). We use the CuPy library for GPU-acceleration …

Dense Temporary Array Investigation Of Jemez Uplift Seismicity, Jillian D. Podmore

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

A protracted multi-stage tectonic and magmatic evolution combined with low regional crustal strain rates make it challenging to characterize active structure that may host earthquakes in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. Here, we leverage temporary 1-month deployments of nodal seismometers to gain new insights into seismicity of the Jemez Mountains, which only have continuous seismic monitoring on their eastern flank as a result of the Los Alamos Seismic Network. Our catalog is built using 4 steps: phase picking in continuous seismic data, association of picks to detect unique events, event magnitude estimation, and absolute hypocenter estimation. We detect and …

Adapting Master’S-Level Chemistry Education In The United States: Insights From Industry, Academia, And The Literature, Brian Johnson, Amanda Lindell, Nina M. Goodey

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

As the chemical industry evolves in response to technological and global challenges, Master’s-level chemistry programs must adapt to prepare graduates for workforce success. This article explores how such programs can better integrate professional skills such as communication, collaboration, and research. Drawing on literature and stakeholder interviews from a review of the Chemistry M.S. and Pharmaceutical Biochemistry M.S. programs at Montclair State University, a Hispanic Serving Institution in New Jersey’s pharmaceutical hub, we identified four key themes: the importance of hands-on research experiences, the integration of professional skills development, the need for flexible course and credit requirements, and the challenges of …

Microbial Metabolism Amplified Warming In Three Phanerozoic Hyperthermal Events, Yuyang Wu, Haijun Song, Daoliang Chu, Ying Cui, Jacopo Dal Corso, Genming Luo, Huyue Song, Li Tian, Hanchen Song, Enhao Jia, Jinnan Tong

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The ocean’s biological carbon pump (BCP) plays a crucial role in climate regulation by facilitating long-term removal of atmospheric CO2. However, BCP changes during past hyperthermals remain poorly understood. Here we use the vertical carbon isotope (δ13C) gradients between surface and mid-waters to trace the BCP changes during the Permian−Triassic, early Toarcian, and Palaeocene−Eocene hyperthermals, detecting a two- to three-fold increase in the vertical δ13C gradients. We found that enhanced organic matter remineralization, driven by increased microbial respiration under warming, are the primary trigger for increased vertical δ13C gradients. Warming-induced enhancements in microbial metabolism caused a two- to six-fold reduction …