Digital Commons Network^™

Developing A Framework For Microchip Design Recovery, Eric Diep

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

Due to the increase in diverse chip production over the past decade, reverse engineering has become a difficult and daunting task. This research develops a methodology for microchip design recovery, seeking to validate and reproduce prior approaches to physical reverse engineering using low-cost tools and techniques. We used mechanical hardware abrasion tools and techniques to delayer and capture silicon integrated chip (IC) layout. We focused on the Mifare Classic EVl microchip, commonly implemented in public transit/transportation cards, to extract information for design recovery. The research explores limitations and advantages of mechanical abrasion and optical microscopy in context to modem chip …

Passive Microwave Remote Sensing Of Flash Drought Impacts On Vegetation, Quinton R. Deppert

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In 2002, Dr. Mark Svoboda characterized a new form of drought known as flash drought. Flash drought was defined as a rapid decline in vegetation health caused by severe heat and drought. In recent years, attempts to quantify the impacts of flash drought via precipitation, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and temperature indicators have proliferated. What has rarely been quantified is what the rapid decline in vegetation health amid flash drought looks like through remote sensing. This is because vegetation health indices like the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) are derived from the visible and infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum and …

Landscape Connectivity And Wildlife Access To Water Across An International Border: Barriers And Opportunities For Facilitating Transboundary Movement, Bogdan Chivoiu, Erin L. Koen, Michael J. Osland, Christopher A. Gabler, Jerald T. Garrett, Ernesto Reyes, Stephanie A. Bilodeau, Mitch A. Sternberg, Jude A. Benavides, James Martinez

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Rapid global acceleration in the construction of physical barriers along international borders has greatly influenced biodiversity and animal movement. Physical barriers can fragment landscapes, hinder access to essential resources, impact long-distance migrations, and inhibit dispersal and gene flow. The effects of physical barriers on animal movement and landscape connectivity can be exacerbated in dryland environments where access to water is a limiting factor. In recent decades, the construction of border barrier infrastructure has accelerated along the international boundary between the United States and Mexico. Here, we used a landscape connectivity model to investigate the effects of barriers on wildlife access …

Isolation, Purification, And Characterization Of Α-Galactosidase From Watermelon (Citrullus Lanatus), Christopher Henley Jr.

Chemistry & Biochemistry Undergraduate Honors Theses

The enzyme α-galactosidase is a type of glycosidase that removes galactose sugar units from larger molecules in cells. Compounds that inhibit glycosidases have been useful for understanding the structure and function of the enzymes they inhibit, and some have been used to treat certain diseases. Using inhibitors of α-galactosidase to study its characteristics and mechanisms may provide insights into its role in disease and its general utility. Advances in fields such as agriculture, sustainable fuels, and biomedicine may be facilitated by inhibition studies of α-galactosidase, but the current library of known inhibitors is relatively lacking. Obtaining α-galactosidase enzymes from chemical …

Hollow Nickel-Iron Nanoshells As Electrocatalysts For The Oxygen Evolution Reaction, Jonathan Batey

Chemistry & Biochemistry Undergraduate Honors Theses

The development of highly active and affordable catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction is crucial to achieve a future where hydrogen is generated cleanly using renewable methods. Ni-Fe nanocatalysts show great promise in this area, as they are affordable and highly active. However, to overcome the industrial dominance of steam methane reforming, their activity needs improvement. This work aims to increase the activity of Ni-Fe nanocatalysts by making hollow nanostructures. Hollow Ni-Fe nanostructures were synthesized by coating a Cu template with Ni and Fe, followed by the etching of the Cu template. This left hollow Ni-Fe nanoshells, which were used …

Tunable Physical Color In Nanostructured Materials: Exploring Reversible Mechanisms For Active Optical Control, Matt Hughes

Chemistry & Biochemistry Undergraduate Honors Theses

Vanadium Dioxide (VO₂) thin films have been grown on silicon wafers using atomic layer deposition of TDMAV (tetrakis(dimethylamino)vanadium(IV)) and H₂O as precursors. A quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) measurement was used during deposition to confirm growth and resulted in a growth rate of approximately 0.6 Angstroms/cycle. X-Ray Reflectivity (XRR) was performed to confirm growth thickness and reported an approximately 30 nm thin film after 500 cycles of TDMAV precursor deposition. X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy was utilized to determine the phase of the vanadium samples and confirmed the presence of vanadium dioxide as prepared and after annealing under nitrogen …

Optimisation Of Photosensitive Recording Materials For Broadband Holographic Optical Elements, Michael Murray

Doctoral

The introduction of broadband (white) LED outdoor lighting has led to significant energy savings. However, this has come at the cost of increased light pollution which has negative impacts both on ecological systems and human health. This light pollution is largely the result of the lack of control measures for the directionality of the light emitted by outdoor LED lighting. The lack of directionality also results in higher energy consumption in order to compensate for the light scattered to the atmosphere and sufficiently illuminate the target area. In this thesis holographic optical elements (HOEs) are proposed as a complementary technology …

Digital Grief Technology To Support Bereavement: A Systematic Review Of Potential Benefits And Risks, Xun Ci Soh, Adalia Yin Hui Goh, Paye Shin Koh, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Grief is a universal and inevitable experience. However, the way we support the bereaved is changing, especially in the digital era. This systematic review examines the potential benefits and risks associated with various digital grief technologies, including online grief support groups, generative AI chatbots, online memorials, online therapy interventions, virtual reality, and digitally reproduced visuals or audio of the deceased. A systematic search was conducted in seven databases, and 30 articles were included in the final review. Findings indicate that digital grief technologies offer several benefits, such as reductions in grief and depressive symptoms, enhanced social support, greater accessibility, and …

Sumset Lower Bounds In Abelian Groups, Van T. Huynh

Honors Theses

This thesis investigates sumset lower bounds across discrete and continuous settings. We begin with general inequalities in torsion-free abelian groups and then specialize to the integers modulo prime p, where we present the Cauchy–Davenport Theorem, which establishes the bound ∣A+B∣≥min(p,∣A∣+∣B∣−1). The equality case is further examined via Vosper's Theorem, which characterizes subsets attaining this bound as arithmetic progressions under suitable conditions. The continuous analogue in Euclidean spaces is then considered, where cardinality is replaced by Lebesgue measure. In this setting, the Brunn–Minkowski Inequality provides a sharp lower bound for the Lebesgue measure of A+B and serves as a geometric counterpart …

When A Sum Of Cubes Equals The Square Of The Sum, Jessica M. Aguilar

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This thesis investigates extensions and structural generalizations of the classical identity \[ \sum_{k=1}^{n} k^3 = \left( \sum_{k=1}^{n} k \right)^2, \] traditionally attributed to Nicomachus of Gerasa. Despite its simple look, this cube - square identity reveals connections between combinatorics, multiplicative number theory, and Diophantine equations.

We begin by presenting an expanded combinatorial proof of the identity based on Stein’s rectangle - counting argument, clarifying the geometric structure underlying the formula. We then establish a multiplicative analogue using Euler’s divisor-counting function \( \tau(n) \), proving that \[ \sum_{d \mid n} \tau(d)^3 = \left( \sum_{d \mid n} \tau(d) \right)^2, \] thereby extending …

Examining Student Practices In A Technology-Mediated Math Classroom, Bradley T. Dodd

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

It is important for math educators to make sense of student thinking in the classroom. Without opportunities to practice this skill math educators struggle to improve, particularly when students are engaging in mathematics using technology. As such, there is a need for video artifacts of students engaging with mathematics using technology for use in professional development activities (Lovett 2020). In accordance with Lovett et al.'s (2020) design principles for examining student practices in a technology-mediated environment, I carried out a study to determine whether these artifacts of student work could be created working with college undergraduates as participants. Students engaged …

Post-Vote Tampering In Nigerian Elections And The Role Of Blockchain-Enabled Electoral Systems, Ransome Chukwubuikem Enechukwu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Post-vote tampering during the collation and transmission of election results remains a persistent challenge in Nigerian elections, enabling manipulation of already-cast votes and weakening public trust in electoral outcomes. Existing technological interventions, including biometric voter accreditation and digital result transmission systems, improve voter authentication but do not adequately secure the post-vote result collation process. This thesis proposes a blockchain-enabled framework designed to protect the integrity of election results during the collation and transmission stages. Using a Design Science Research methodology, the study develops a permissioned blockchain framework based on Hyperledger Fabric that records polling-unit results as immutable ledger entries and …

Comparing Awssi And Traditional Winter Metrics For Predicting Overwinter Survival Of Juvenile Walleye (Sander Vitreus), Camille N. Shifrin

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Winter conditions are an important driver of recruitment variability in freshwater fishes, yet winter severity is often characterized using single climate metrics. These simplified approaches may not capture the cumulative stress experienced by fishes during winter. The Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index (AWSSI) integrates multiple components of winter climate and may therefore provide a more biologically relevant indicator of overwinter survival. In this study, we compared AWSSI with traditional winter severity metrics to explain interannual variation in overwinter survival of juvenile Walleye (Sander vitreus) in Harlan County Reservoir, Nebraska. Model comparisons using Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) indicated that …

Real-Wastewater-Derived-Struvite Effects On Micronutrients In Runoff Water, Lauren E. Pruitt

Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient needed in agriculture for proper plant growth and development and is often introduced into agricultural systems in the form of synthetic P fertilizers. Mined rock phosphate is the primary P source for the production of synthetic P fertilizers and is a finite resource. Struvite (MgNH₄PO₄·6H₂O) is a compound that can be precipitated from municipal wastewater, recovering P, and is currently being evaluated for its potential use as an alternative fertilizer-P source. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of fertilizer-P source [i.e., synthetic electrochemically precipitated …

Construction Impacts On Nutrient Loads In An Urban Stream In The Ozark Highlands, Matthew B. Wilson

Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Degradation of water quality is primarily caused by human activity, including urbanization. Urban stream syndrome can be characterized as a stream that has undergone physical, chemical, and biological changes as a result of urbanization, which can include an influx of nutrients that can drive unwanted plant and algae growth. It is known that construction can result in untreated nutrients entering a stream; however, it is not understood how construction affects downstream nutrient transport. The objective of this study was to understand the impacts of construction on urban water quality in Tanglewood Branch in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in the Ozark Highlands, which …

2026 May - Tennessee Monthly Climate Report, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Monthly Reports

Hi All,

The main weather and climate story for May 2026 across Tennessee was the weather whiplash that many experienced with severe and extreme drought conditions giving way to flash flooding later in the month. Additionally, many saw large and rapid temperature swings with two strong blasts of cold air sending temperatures into the 30’s or low 40’s for many early in the month and again on May 14-15. Followed by a heat wave that brought an early taste of summer to the state from May 16-21. The Bristol/Tri-Cities airport experienced a 2-day span between freezing temperatures and 90-degree heat …

2026 May - Tennessee Climate Snapshot, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Monthly Reports

No abstract provided.

Datapeer: A Hybrid Interaction Model Web Application Integrating Llms For Human–Llm Collaboration In Data Analysis And Exploration, William I. Bumcum

Honors Theses

DataPeer is a web application that combines open-ended high agency (OHA) and structured low-agency (SLA) interaction paradigms to support human-LLM collaboration in exploratory data analysis. DataPeer integrates a large language model (LLM) with a React frontend and FastAPI backend, allowing both qualitative and quantitative analysis of user-uploaded CSV datasets through a chat-based interface. Users can attach datasets and provide natural language queries, while the LLM provides data analysis to the user. This thesis investigates the integration of LLMs into data analysis workflows and addresses gaps in interaction design and user agency in LLM-driven data tools by offering a responsive interface …

Effects Of Beaver Dams On Components Of Riverscape Health And Biodiversity In The Great Basin, Cashe C. Rasmussen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Networks of rivers and their floodplains (i.e., low-lying areas adjacent to rivers and streams that could plausibly flood) have been degraded, reducing the availability of freshwater and habitat for people and wildlife. Therefore, land managers are pursuing cost-effective restoration strategies, including partnering with beavers (Castor canadensis), to promote the health of these ecosystems and associated benefits. However, our understanding of beaver-mediated restoration benefits remains incomplete. Here, we compared locations along streams with and without beaver dams to measure the benefits of beavers in the Great Basin of the Western United States. We measured the effects of beaver dams …

Modeling Causal Interactions Across Brain Functional Systems For Population-Specific Disease Analysis, Alissen Moreno

Theses and Dissertations

Functional brain connectivity provides critical insight into neural mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative and affective disorders. Traditional neuroimaging studies rely on undirected or region-specific connectivity measures developed predominantly using racially homogeneous cohorts, limiting fairness and generalizability across diverse populations.

We propose a population-aware framework modeling directed causal interactions across large-scale brain functional subnetworks. Resting-state fMRI data from the HABS-HD cohort were used to construct subject-level causal connectivity matrices via ICA-LiNGAM, aggregated into interpretable system-level hyper-connectomes representing interactions among eleven canonical brain subsystems. These features trained nonlinear models for Alzheimer’s disease stage classification and trait worry prediction.

Results demonstrate that MLP models outperform …

Enhancing Walleye (Ogaa) Recruitment: Evaluating Assisted Reproduction As A Mitigation Strategy, Douglass Keiser

Biology Graduate Theses

Over the past several decades, cold- and cool-water fish populations across the Upper Midwest, including Minnesota and Wisconsin, have shown troubling signs of decline. Among the most affected is the walleye/Ogaa (Sander vitreus), a species deeply embedded in the ecological balance, cultural identity, and economic vitality of the region, and central to the lifeways, treaty-reserved rights, and resource stewardship of Tribal Nations, including Ojibwe communities across the Upper Midwest. Despite ongoing stocking efforts and harvest regulations, many lake systems have experienced persistent declines in natural recruitment, prompting resource agencies to investigate the underlying causes. One such system is …

Modeling Water Quality And Cyanobacteria Blooms In St. Lucie Estuary, Florida, Mohmmad Masudur Rahman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The St. Lucie Estuary (SLE) on Florida’s east coast is vital for diverse aquatic life and provides essential services to local communities. However, the estuary’s health is threatened by water quality deterioration due to nutrient-driven phytoplankton blooms, particularly cyanobacteria, which have increased in frequency over recent decades. These blooms may worsen water quality by reducing dissolved oxygen, altering pH, and increasing turbidity. Moreover, some phytoplankton species, including Microcystis aeruginosa, a freshwater cyanobacteria species, produce harmful toxins, posing risks to both marine aquatic life and human health in this area. Primary nutrient sources in this estuary include watershed freshwater discharges, …

Agentcite: Trustworthy Ai Agents For Information Verification Across Referenced Documents, Eymen Yigit

Master's Theses

This thesis presents AgentCite, a multi-agent framework for automated verification of referenced numerical data in research documents. The framework employs a hybrid design in which LLM-based agents handle document understanding and evidence retrieval, while deterministic components manage structured parsing and value comparison, improving consistency and reproducibility while reducing token consumption and execution time compared to fully agentic approaches.

AgentCite consists of three autonomous agents: a Negotiator, a Main Document Agent, and a Source Documents Agent, coordinated through a fixed tool-call pipeline. The Negotiator orchestrates verification by extracting tabular data from the main document, retrieving evidence from per-source vector stores, and …

Probing Representational Emergence In Large Language Models, Shawn Ismail

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates whether abrupt behavioral gains in large language models under scaling are accompanied by systematic changes in internal representations. It combines a behavioral screen of 65 tasks per family with targeted layerwise probing across eight decoder-only, open-weight model families. Behavioral emergence is defined for each family-task trajectory using an empirical jump detector, with segmented regression retained only as a diagnostic. The representational follow-up analyzes 27 selected MMLU subtasks shared across all families, spanning 37 checkpoints and 216 family-task units.

For each follow-up checkpoint, frozen linear probes are trained on every layer's hidden states to measure how much task-relevant …

Federated Neuromorphic Intelligence: Advancing Robustness, Efficiency, And Continual Adaptation In Edge Environments, Manh V. Nguyen

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how spiking neural networks (SNNs) can improve federated edge intelligence by advancing three interconnected goals: communication efficiency, adversarial robustness, and continual adaptation. As edge computing deployments expand across Internet of Things (IoT), sensing, and privacy-sensitive applications, conventional federated learning approaches built around artificial neural networks (ANNs) face growing limitations in power consumption, bandwidth demand, and resilience to real-world uncertainty. SNNs offer an alternative computational paradigm based on event-driven, sparse, and temporally structured processing that is naturally suited to constrained edge environments. However, their behavior in practical federated settings remains insufficiently understood.

To address this gap, this dissertation …

A Webcam Eye Tracking Infrastructure For Software Engineering Tasks, Zachary M. Kozak

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Performing eye tracking utilizing commodity webcams has been explored for over a decade, but limited camera quality and sensitivity to head movements have hindered its adoption in research settings. Recent advances in consumer-grade webcams and machine learning methods present an opportunity to improve the accuracy of webcam eye tracking and extend the feasibility of studies beyond controlled laboratory environments.

Current popular webcam eye tracking methods restrict implementations to the browser and rely on continuous user interactions for calibration, limiting the kinds of studies that can be conducted. This thesis presents a feature-based gaze prediction system that incorporates eye geometry and …

Leveraging Code Embeddings To Identify And Address Blind Spots In Benchmark Creation, Charles Moloney

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Formal software verification remains critical for early vulnerability detection, yet benchmarking these tools is costly and often reliant on centralized datasets such as SV-COMP. While such repositories enable standardized evaluation, they introduce risks of overfitting and bias, particularly due to first-party benchmark contributions. To address these limitations, we extend ARG-V, our tool for generating SV-COMP-compatible benchmarks from real-world Java code, with a novel approach of using code embedding techniques to selectively sample from mined code. By leveraging Nomic Embed Code and a cosine-based Minimum Hyperspherical Energy (MHE) objective, we systematically select and transform benchmarks from scraped GitHub code that …

Exploring The Evolution Of Preservice Elementary Teachers' Mathematics Identity And Possible Selves: A Multi-Case Study Approach, Christa R. Mawn

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study explores the nature of preservice elementary teachers’ mathematics identity and possible selves and identifies shifts in their mathematics identity or possible selves over the course of a place value unit during the semester during a course on mathematics content for elementary teachers. Drawing on narrative identity and possible selves theory, this qualitative multi-case study examined the mathematics identity and possible selves of preservice elementary teachers enrolled in a mathematics content course. Course assignments were used as data sources and included written narratives, future-oriented reflections, drawings, and course artifacts. Individual cases were analyzed, and were followed by a cross-cases …

Investigation Of Curing And Degradation Mechanisms In Lead White Oil Paint Systems: Impact Of Methyl Linoleate On Paint Matrix Formation And Solvent Extractability, Andrea Serrano Trujillo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Oil-based paints composed of drying oils and lead-containing pigments undergo complex chemical transformations during curing that influence long-term stability and degradation. Despite centuries of use, the molecular mechanisms governing oxidative polymerization and additive incorporation in lead white oil paint systems remain incompletely understood. This study investigates the role of methyl linoleate, a monoester analog of linoleic acid, in the curing and degradation pathways of lead carbonate and linseed oil paint films. A deep focus was placed on determining whether methyl linoleate becomes chemically integrated into the developing polymeric network or remains as an extractable and unbound component, as this distinction …

Fret Studies On The Binding Of Fibroblast Growth Factor (Fgf) Proteins To The Hard Corona Of Cuins2-Based Quantum Dots, Colette Robinson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fibroblast Growth Factor (FGF) has been shown to be an important protein in angiogenesis, which is critical in developmental biology and wound healing but has also been implicated in cancer metastasis. FGF interacts with an FGF Receptor (FGFR) to signal the onset of angiogenesis but the detailed mechanism of angiogenesis, and particularly its regulation, is still largely unknown. Imaging the interaction of FGF with FGFR in biologically-relevant environments, such as directly in cells, is key towards furthering this understanding and may eventually aid in the development of better cancer treatments. CuInS2/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) are an attractive fluorescent probe to …