Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluation Of Bottom Ash For Beneficial Use, Danielle Sylvia Cofelice, Thomas Haskins

World of Coal Ash Proceedings

Historically, bottom ash has been beneficially used as a drainage layer within the final cover system for a coal combustion residual (CCR) landfill, positioned above the linear low-density polyethylene liner and below the protective soil cover and topsoil layers. This sustainable approach not only diverts bottom ash from waste management streams but also conserves natural resources by replacing the need for virgin materials, resulting in significant cost savings for ratepayers. To support the continued use of bottom ash in this application, an environmental assessment was completed. The assessment included sampling of bottom ash, an alternative drainage layer composed of virgin …

Psychiatry Meets Ai: Are Residents Ready?, Jacob De Castro, John Case

Rowan-Virtua Research Day

Artificial intelligence (AI) use is increasing in healthcare, but psychiatry residency training remains unstructured. In a 20-resident pilot survey, AI was frequently used for literature review and clinical support, with limited confidence and institutional guidance. We found most residents desired formal training and would use AI more if institutionally supported. Findings highlight a gap between rapid adoption and structured education.

Ai-Augmented Digital Auscultation For Point-Of-Care Screening Of Valvular Heart Disease: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Harshal Parmar, Akhila Archakam, Nikhila Archakam, Wesley Kim, Eduard Koman Md

Rowan-Virtua Research Day

Background: Valvular heart disease (VHD) affects >10% of adults aged 75+ yet remains underdiagnosed when asymptomatic due to declining auscultatory proficiency. AI-augmented digital auscultation offers a point-of-care screening solution, though no meta-analysis has pooled diagnostic accuracy across VHD subtypes in adults using echocardiography as the reference.

Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted per PRISMA guidelines. PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, IEEE Xplore, and Scopus were searched without date restriction. Studies applying AI or machine learning to digital auscultation or phonocardiography for VHD classification in adults with echocardiographic reference and patient-level diagnostic metrics were included. Studies using only public datasets, pediatric …

Developing A Comprehensive Resource Guide For Caregivers Within The Area Agency On Aging, Aiden R. Murphy

Public Health Capstone Projects

This project developed a new universal caregiver resource guide for caregivers within the Area Agency on Aging, in order to improve resource navigation and workflow efficiency. Resources were collected, verified, and organized into a new, streamlined guide via the ARIA chatbot, covering multiple needs. Caregiver resources were collected and verified by the capstone student and mentor, Michael Kroeker, and organized into a centralized knowledge base within the ARIA chatbot. A mixed methods evaluation was conducted utilizing a 5-point Likert scale with three quantitative questions and one open-ended qualitative question. The data was given to the SeniorLine staff, who wanted to …

Air Quality, Atmospheric Pressure, And Migraine Presentations In The Emergency Department, James Espinosa, Alan Lucerna

Rowan-Virtua Research Day

Background: Migraine is a leading cause of Emergency Department (ED) visits and global disability. Weather has long been reported by patients as a trigger, yet the literature remains inconsistent. Prior ED-based data demonstrated an association between higher mean barometric pressure and increased migraine presentations, without a relationship to short-term pressure change. Because high-pressure systems are frequently associated with atmospheric stagnation and pollutant accumulation, air quality may represent a biologically plausible mediator.

Objective: To examine the relationship between air quality and ED migraine presentations within the existing body of literature and to explore whether air quality may help explain previously observed …

Listening To The System: Reframing Emergency Department Noise: The Case For Noise As A Real-Time Operational Signal In A Complex Adaptive System (Cas), James Espinosa, Alan Lucerna, Henry Schuitema

Rowan-Virtua Research Day

Emergency Department (ED) noise has historically been framed as an occupational and environmental hazard requiring mitigation. And this is still true—but not complete. Early work focused on exposure reduction and spike identification. Subsequent mapping studies demonstrated spatial and temporal differentiation in ED acoustic load. We propose an expanded conceptual model: acoustic variability may function not only as a hazard, but also as a real-time signal of operational turbulence within the ED as a complex adaptive system (CAS). Drawing on human factors, alarm fatigue, resilience engineering, and complexity science, we synthesize existing literature and institutional experience to identify a critical gap—noise …

The Physics And Biology Of High-Risk Falls: Biomechanical Analysis And Physics Assists In Understanding Why The Threshold For High-Risk Was Lowered To 10 Feet, James Espinosa, Alan Lucerna

Rowan-Virtua Research Day

Background: Recent revisions to the National Guideline for the Field Triage of Injured Patients lowered the high-risk fall threshold from >20 feet  to >10 feet for all ages. Guideline changes are multifactorial and typically reflect epidemiologic registry data, injury severity trends, and systems-level performance feedback. However, biomechanical analysis assists in understanding the importance of the change.

Objective: To demonstrate that a 10-foot fall generates sufficient kinetic energy and deceleration forces to exceed structural tolerance thresholds in multiple human tissues, and to show that fundamental physics independently supports the recent trauma protocol change.

Methods: Application of gravitational motion equations (v = …

Predicting And Decoding Allosteric Binding Sites Using Protein Language Models And Structure-Based Machine Learning: An Energy Landscape-Guided Explainable Ai Framework, Kamila Riedlová, Vít Skrhák, William G. Gatlin, Max Ludwick, Lucas Turano, Marian Novotný, David Hoksza, Gennady M. Verkhivker

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Computational prediction of allosteric binding sites in protein structures remains a persistent challenge, as these regulatory pockets evade detection by both sequence-based and structure-based algorithms. Both computational and physical origins of this predictive asymmetry remain insufficiently understood. In this study, we systematically examine the determinants of binding site predictability using a dual framework that integrates a fine-tuned protein language model and the structure-based method P2Rank as complementary tools probing a diverse data set of 453 human kinases, together with a physics-based interpretability layer derived from energy landscape frustration analysis. Both predictors exhibit a sharp and reproducible dichotomy on protein kinases, …

Toward Vehicle-Agnostic Driving Signatures For Cognitive Impairment Prediction From Naturalistic Driving Data, Aadarsha Gopala Reddy

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

This thesis studies whether naturalistic driving data can help predict binary Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) status while accounting for differences across vehicles. The final analytic dataset comprised 26,968 participant-weeks from 304 participants. Weekly driving features were derived from real-world telematics data and combined with four demographic covariates. Primary model comparisons used leave-one-participant-out (LOGO) cross-validation, with one individual held out at a time and pooled participant-level metrics used as the main reporting surface.

The main comparison includes six model families evaluated on the same dataset under a shared LOGO framework. Performance remained modest overall. GRU-DANN had the highest participant-level ROC AUC …

Interpreting American Sign Language: A Literature Review Of Assistive Technologies, Natalie Louise Paradiso, Emma Grace Kochenderfer

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

American Sign Language (ASL) is a visually elaborate, spatially oriented linguistic methodology that relies on combinations of hand movements, body positioning, facial expressions, and motion/spatial perception, aspects of which make interpretation difficult for automated machine recognition. Current assistive technology approaches to ASL interpretation are generally within the categories of computer vision models (including deep learning, multi-focus image fusion, and keypoint tracking) and wearable, multimodal/sensor-based approaches (such as smart glasses and inertial-sensor gloves). Within controlled environments, computer vision models perform well. However, when applied to conditions such as non-manual signs/features, signer variability, and rapid assimilation, they falter in processing all aspects …

Freshman 15? Freshman 50?? The Reality Of Daily Life Habits Of A First Year College Student, Gregorio R. Salgado

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This project presents a personal data tracking study in which I collected daily self-reported metrics over the course of the Spring semester using Excel. The variables tracked include sleep duration, caloric intake, screen time, social media usage, phone checks per day, family communication, and personal spending. The goal of this project is to identify meaningful patterns and correlations between daily habits and personal well-being.

Data was collected through a combination of manual logging and smartphone-generated daily reports. This study explores potential relationships between variables such as sleep duration and social media usage, as well as the association between family communication …

Plasma Coal Ash Processing For Enhanced Recovery Of Rare Earth Elements & Precious Metals: Proven From R&D To Commercial Plants, George Paskalov, Victoria Campbell, Jason Honigberg

World of Coal Ash Proceedings

Our Radio-frequency Plasma System is an ash pretreatment before the application of extractive metallurgy and addresses current elemental, methodological, and technological limitations of complex and refractory coal ash. Our system data shows from 10-20% improved recovery, to 9x-100x. RFP can access all metals contained in coal ash. Our focus is not on the alteration of established methodologies, such as cyanidation for non-refractory ore, which has a proven return and capacity to achieve target revenue at-scale. Using the RFP systems, no waste is created, overburden can be more easily dealt with, and no metal content will be left behind. We assert …

Standardization Of Coal Ash Testing, Classification, And Harvesting, Benjamin Gallagher, Chris Frishcosy, Eric Hageman

World of Coal Ash Proceedings

Standards such as product specifications, test methods, practices and guides play a crucial role in supporting both commerce and science. Standardization helps build consistency and reliability whether it pertains to the performance of an ingredient in a product or in the measurement of a material characteristic. Coal combustion products, such as coal ash and synthetic gypsum, exhibit unique characteristics and many standard have been developed to characterize these materials and support their beneficial use. ASTM is a voluntary, consensus-based organization, and publishes many standards related to coal combustion products. Currently, there are seven ASTM standards related to chemical analysis of …

Impacts Of Updating Background Groundwater Statistics For Ccr Compliance, May Raad, Molly Reeves

World of Coal Ash Proceedings

In 2017, many power utilities adopted statistical methods to comply with the EPA’s Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR) Rule under the Hazardous and Solid Waste Management System. By 2017–2018, most owners completed initial statistical evaluations for detection and assessment monitoring to meet CCR deadlines. Groundwater sampling and analysis requirements in Parts 257.95, 257.98, and 257.102 are critical for compliance, yet implementation is complex. Subsections 257.93(f) and (g) lack clarity on which statistical tests to apply or how to address distributions and outliers. Additionally, the Rule does not specify when or how to update background threshold values (BTVs), though EPA’s Unified Guidance …

Advancing Ccr Site Management With Rapidly Deployable Gccm Technology For Runoff And Drainage Control, Nathan Ivy

World of Coal Ash Proceedings

GCCM’s were first invented over 20 years ago. These products combine both a concrete – hard armor – top surface for protection and durability and a geomembrane bottom surface for lower permeability. Originally used for erosion control, smaller drainage channel and remediation projects, this presentation discusses the newest iteration in GCCM technology. This product incorporates a 12 mil LLDPE backing which allows for thermal bonding and significant reduction in seepage at the joints. It can be used in a wide variety of applications from drainage ditches and swales to water and wastewater conveyance along with slope protection and erosion control …

Risk Evaluation Of Small Coal Combustion Residual Management Unit (Ccrmu) Fills, Andrew Bittner, John Kondziolka, Qian Zhang, Masoud Arshadi

World of Coal Ash Proceedings

US EPA expanded the scope of CCR regulations in 2024 to areas of historical CCR placement not regulated under the 2015 CCR rule, including CCR used as fill. US EPA presented new risk analyses specific to CCRMU fills and defined different regulations for CCRMU fills from 1 to 1,000 tons, noting uncertainty as to whether there was a size of CCRMU fill below which acceptable risks could be expected. This research fills US EPA's stated data gap by modeling and analyzing impacts from small CCRMU fills. Modeling was conducted using the same methods, models, and most of the same inputs …

Alternative Cover Permitting And The Ccr Rule, Evan Andrews, Victor Damasceno

World of Coal Ash Proceedings

Federal rules (40 CFR Parts 9, 257 and 261) that regulate coal combustion residuals (CCR) created a significant demand associated with closure of coal ash management and storage facilities using liner systems. Timelines associated with these facility closures combined with substantial project scale and potential for future mining /reuse has driven the need for closure systems that perform beyond the prescriptive soil / geomembrane caps outlined in the federal regulations. As outlined in section 257.102 (d)(3)(i) of the CCR Rule, the standard cover system must include an infiltration layer of at least 18 inches of earthen material and an erosion …

Herbularyo (Folk Healer): An Herbal Medicine Card Game, Maryjane T. Magsino, Inah Marie Q. Rivera, Armando M. Guidote, Genejane M. Adarlo

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Herbularyo, a card game teaching about herbal plants (HPs), was created and evaluated as a viable educational card game based on Tuomisto and Aksela’s criteria. A quasi-experiment was performed on 81 Grade 8 students from a private high school and 50 Grade 11 from a public high school. Independent t-test revealed that the control group (CG) and experimental group (EG) (p=0.386), and EG1 (played ≤5) and EG2 (played >5) (p=0.681) are not comparable with each other. Paired t-test showed EG performed better (p=0.001) than CG (p=0.901) whereas ANCOVA showed that playing Herbularyo improved students’ information retention (p=0.006). EG1 and EG2 …

Sustainability In The Fashion Industry: Environmental Effects & Analyzing Innovative Approaches To Reducing Environmental Impact While Maintaining Profitability And Effectiveness, Haley Castillo Rebollar

Senior Honors Theses

The fast-fashion business model has several severe environmental impacts, including resource overconsumption, chemical pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and solid waste consumption. Hence, the sustainable fashion alternative is questioned as to whether it can be applied with recoverable economic value and limited consequential impact when considering novel approaches in business model innovation, supply chain transformation, and the adoption of digital technologies. Evidence suggests that sustainability and profitability need not be mutually exclusive when strategic intervening actions are effectively managed. The set of principles of the circular economy, sustainable enterprise architecture frameworks, green supply chain management, advanced systems of forecasting, and three-dimensional …

Pest Risk Modelling For Climate-Smart Vegetable Production In East Africa, Marc Marin Agbodjan, Komi Mensah Agboka, John Odindi, Elfatih Abdel-Rahman, Onisimo Mutanga, Frank Chidawanyika, Chrysantus Tanga, Daniel Munyao Mutyambai, Sevgan Subramanian, Bonoukpoè Mawuko Sokame

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Agricultural productivity in East Africa is increasingly threatened by climate-sensitive insect pests. This study investigates the occurrence of key vegetable pests: Brevicoryne brassicae, Plutella xylostella, Maruca vitrata, and Liriomyza mik. A comparative species distribution modelling evaluated pest risk projections under climate change. Four variable selection strategies were tested: case 1 (correlation and variance inflation factor [VIF] filtering across all predictors), case 2 (correlation and VIF filtering of bioclimatic variables merged with other predictors), case 3 (filtering based on environmental values at species occurrence point to approximate realized niches), and case 4 (dimensionality reduction using principal component analysis). These strategies were …

Evaluation In Applied Ai: Predictive Modeling, Agent Safety, And Model Validation, Tanmay Sah

Harrisburg University Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation focuses on three applied challenges in machine learning and artificial intelligence: predicting social media content virality, evaluating safety in tool using large language model agents, and standardizing model validation in regulated settings. Across these domains, the dissertation argues that evaluation in applied AI must be matched to context, combining predictive performance with the relevant evidence needed for interpretability, safety, reproducibility, and governance readiness. First, Decoding Reddit Memes Virality extracts and analyzes 16,968 posts using computer vision, natural language processing, and gradient boosting to identify visual, textual, and temporal signals associated with virality. Second, The Verifier Tax designs and …

The Impatience Of Winning: An Analysis Of Time Discounting, Predictive Modeling, And The Nba Draft, Alec R. Plante

Business and Economics Honors Papers

This paper examines whether NBA draft decisions can be better explained by incorporating non-geometric time discounting into a model of general manager decision making. Using a dataset of 285 NBA draft prospects over a 12-year period, the impact of college statistics on Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) is determined, and these impact values are then used to create a “predicted” VORP for the first 4 seasons of each player’s career: a projection of what a general manager might think of a prospect’s future value given their college statistics. Following this, geometric and hyperbolic time discounting models are applied to estimate …

Leveraging Information Theory And Ecological Network Analysis To Monitor Communication Networks In A Student Aerospace Team, Christine Sessions

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Effective communication is a critical component of successful collaboration in group projects and team settings. However, systematically tracking and analyzing team communications can be challenging, especially in complex, multi-member teams such as those found in the aerospace industry. This paper explores an information-theoretic approach that leverages encoding techniques and graph theory to analyze communication networks within a university’s multi-year, student-led cubesat design project (Project COMET). By utilizing Shannon Entropy as a measure of information flow, encoding communication patterns, and analyzing Ecological Network Analysis parameters, this research aims to understand how an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University student project team evolves over the …

Do National Parks Significantly Improve Air Quality?, Xinyi Liu

Honors Capstones

Healthy living has long been a goal pursued by individuals. In an era where PM2.5 concentrations and greenhouse gas levels are steadily increasing, many people prefer to live in areas with relatively lower levels of air pollution. National parks, as well-known protected areas, typically contain more vegetation and water resources, along with lower levels of human activity. This suggests two potential mechanisms: first, pollutant emissions are expected to be lower; second, vegetation, water bodies, and non-urban land may contribute to the removal or deposition of airborne pollutants, including particulate matter. In everyday experience, people often perceive the air to be …

Automated Analysis Of Radiation Oncology Incident Reports Using Large Language Models, Nathan A. Dobranski

LSU Master's Theses

Patient safety incident reporting in radiation oncology requires expert analysis that is time-intensive and subject to variability. This thesis presents the development and technical validation of a locally deployed large language model (LLM) system for automated incident report analysis across multiple cancer centers. The system was designed for automated summarization and taxonomy assignment of Radiation Oncology Incident Learning System (RO-ILS) reports, operating entirely on local infrastructure to preserve patient privacy. A two-round, multi-rater evaluation methodology was employed, incorporating 600 total expert evaluations from two academic cancer centers. Round 1 established baseline performance using Mistral 7B and Mixtral 8x7B models with …

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?: Evaluating The Role Of Climate And Weather Stressors On Moving Decisions In Southeast Florida, Arielle Perry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As climate and weather hazards intensify, Southeast Florida communities face mounting pressures that increasingly influence patterns of migration and immobility. This research examines evidence of climate migration in high flood-risk neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale by exploring why some populations choose to stay, while others leave, in the context of a changing climate. Using focus group discussions, I investigate how climate and non-climate related factors shape mobility outcomes among residents in the city. Migration outcomes were primarily influenced by negative climate and weather hazard experiences, discontent with existing public in-situ adaptations, and non-climate disamenities, which eroded participants’ sense of place. Voluntary …

Faircarenlp: An Ai-Driven Patient Review Analyzer For Healthcare, Sayyed Mohammad Pourya Momtaz Esfahani, Davey Seeman, Christoffer Dharma, Mohammad Noaeen, Shion Guha, Zahra Shakeri

Health Services and Informatics Research

Objective

To develop and evaluate an automatic patient review analyzer that applies advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning methods to improve the efficiency, fairness, and accuracy of healthcare feedback analysis.

Materials and methods

We designed a multi-component pipeline incorporating sentiment analysis, key theme extraction, clinical Named Entity Recognition (NER), and fairness modules. Bias mitigation was addressed through the integration of three complementary approaches: adversarial debiasing, Hard Debiasing, and Iterative Null-space Projection (INLP). Multiple BERT-based models (DistilBERT, BioBERT, RoBERTa-base, BERT-base-uncased) were trained and evaluated under varying hyperparameters and fairness/adversarial loss configurations. Model performance was assessed using accuracy, F1, recall, …

Red Lines, Green Blooms: Assessing The Effects Of Historical Environmental Disparity On Algal Communities In The Twin Cities, Mn, Georgia C. Akins

Environmental Studies Honors Projects

Redlining, a discriminatory housing policy from the 1930s, shaped lastng urban inequalites that may extend to environmental conditons. This study examines links between redlining and urban water quality in the Twin Cites using algal communites as indicators. Across 28 water bodies sampled in 2022 and 2024, physical, chemical, and biological metrics were compared by redlining grade. Results show limited relatonships between redlining and most variables, with only surface water temperature differing significantly. Nutrients and algal diversity were unrelated to redlining, instead reflectng present-day conditons. These findings suggest contemporary factors play a stronger role than redlining in shaping urban freshwater ecosystems.

Fossil-Fuels In A Decarbonized Country? Modeling The Drivers Of Icelandic Oil Sales, Inbal Armony

Environmental Studies Honors Projects

Although 100% of Iceland’s electricity comes from renewable energy sources, it still relies on fossil fuels for land transportation, marine transportation, aviation, and some industry. Understanding geographic nuances in oil use is critical to achieving Iceland’s goals of carbon neutrality by 2040. As the island has one primary urban center with two thirds of the population, information is lacking about oil use in non-Capital areas and a gap between state and municipal climate plans. Using newly available data of oil sales at the municipality-level in a Small Area Estimation model, we analyze drivers of oil sales across Icelandic municipalities. We …

Ais26s: Ai In Biomedicine, Shiqian Shen

Paul English Applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institute Publications

This presentation explores the role of artificial intelligence in advancing biomedical research and clinical practice from the perspective of a physician-scientist. Dr. Shiqian Shen discusses current challenges in neuroscience and medicine, including limitations in human observation, data analysis, and decision-making across complex biological systems. The talk highlights how AI-driven approaches such as computer vision, neural signal processing, and large-scale data modeling can improve the understanding of disease mechanisms, enhance experimental workflows, and enable more precise, patient-centered care. Specific applications include automated classification of neural activity, behavioral analysis in animal models, and multimodal data integration. A key concept introduced is “shadow …