Digital Commons Network^™

Feasibility, Acceptability, And Preliminary Efficacy Of A Pilot Study To Integrate Buprenorphine Into A Harm-Reduction Drop-In-Center In Kampala, Uganda, Julia Dickson-Gomez, Sergey Tarima, Wamala Twaibu, Dan Katende, Latifah Kyeswa, Laura Glasman, Arthur Kiconco, Sarah Krechel, Bryan Johnston, Moses Ogwal, Brian Byamah Mutamba, Peter Mudiope, Stella Alamo, Rhoda Wanyenze, Geofrey Musinguzi

Biostatistics Faculty Publications

Illicit drug use has been increasing rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa in the past decade. However, until recently HIV prevention has largely ignored people who inject drugs and medications to treat opioid use disorder (MOUD) were largely absent. This paper reports results of a pilot intervention that integrated buprenorphine into a harm-reduction drop-in-center for people with opioid use disorder (OUD) in Kampala, Uganda. We collected implementation outcomes and changes in self-reported drug use after buprenorphine initiation. We conducted qualitative interviews with a subset of 14 participants who had initiated buprenorphine. Sixty-two participants were screened for OUD, of whom 57 were eligible …

Artificial Intelligence In Biomedical Team Science: Perceptions, Practices, And Training Needs, Emily Slade, Kelsey N. Karnik, Caitline Phan, Megan E. Hall, Yana Feygin, Kristen J. Mcquerry

Biostatistics Faculty Publications

Introduction: Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in biomedical research, yet limited empirical work has described how researchers use AI tools on collaborative research teams and how they view their role within team-based research. This study examines researchers’ experience with and attitudes toward AI use in collaborative research environments.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was administered to 178 investigators engaged in collaborative research at the University of Kentucky. Questions assessed AI use across research and communication tasks, team-related decision-making practices, perceived benefits and concerns, and preferences for training and frameworks.

Results: Thirty-nine participants responded (22%). AI use was heterogeneous: 26% had …

Biochemical Investigations Of F420-Dependent Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase From Cryptosporangium Arvum, Sarah T. Al-Noubani

2026 Spring Honors Capstones Projects

F₄₂₀-dependent glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (FGD) catalyzes the conversion of glucose-6-phosphate to 6-phosphogluconolactone using the deazaflavin, Cofactor F₄₂₀. FGD from Mycobacterium tuberculosis has been investigated due to its health relevance to prodrug activation. More recently, FGD from Cryptosporangium arvum (Cryar- FGD) has been investigated due to its broader substrate specificity toward multiple sugar phosphates. Kinetic and NMR studies have shown that Cryar-FGD has dual catalytic activity as a dehydrogenase and isomerase. Further investigations are being conducted on Cryar-FGD to characterize key residues involved in catalysis.

To investigate the catalytically active residues of Cryar-FGD, …

Bursty Bulk Flows: The What, The Why, And Their Impacts On The Earth, Fariza Tanvir

2026 Spring Honors Capstones Projects

Due to solar wind-magnetosphere interactions, the Earth's magnetic field lines stretch into a long, comet-shaped magnetotail, which extends thousands of miles away from the Earth. Bursty Bulk Flows (BBFs) are transient, high-speed ion bulk flows in the magnetotail that play an essential role in energy and mass transport. Characterized by their short-lived duration, they are related to magnetic reconnection events. This investigation focuses on being able to identify BBFs using the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) probes, a mission consisting of four probes arranged in a tetrahedron to study the Earth’s magnetosphere. We examine parameters such as energy spectra, spin bulk velocity, …

Color-Blind Resilience: How Uniform Climate Standards Reproduce Environmental Inequality In The Rockaways, Aaryan M. Nair

Publications and Research

This paper examines how ostensibly uniform climate resilience standards can reproduce environmental inequality in socially uneven landscapes, using the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City as a critical case study. While flood-resistant building codes, zoning regulations, and insurance frameworks are designed to provide equal protection across flood-prone areas, this analysis argues that their “color-blind” application obscures and intensifies underlying disparities in financial capacity, housing conditions, and tenure. Drawing on environmental justice (EJ) theory, the paper identifies two key mechanisms through which inequality is reproduced. First, “code without capacity” demonstrates how uniform technical standards—such as elevation requirements under NYC Building Code …

Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Mountain Front Recharge Flow Paths And Their Contribution To Alluvial Aquifer Water Supply, Mikaela Bollag-Miller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Mountain Front Recharge (MFR) is a critical recharge source for alluvial basin aquifers throughout the Intermountain West, yet the spatial and temporal dynamics of distinct recharge pathways remain poorly constrained. This study investigates the seasonal and spatial dynamics of MFR pathways and evaluates their impact on the Missoula Aquifer, a sole-source alluvial aquifer in western Montana, USA. MFR includes both surface-water inflows from mountain areas and Mountain Block Recharge (MBR), the groundwater contribution to the basin aquifer. A valley-scale water balance was employed to estimate first-order contributions and temporal fluctuations of MBR flow paths. A three-layer steady-state MODFLOW groundwater model …

Application Of Organic Geochemistry To The Characterization Of Hydrochar And Biochar: Insights Into Composition And Optimization, Michael A. Kruge, Teresa A. Centeno, Alvaro Amado-Fierro, José Manuel González-Lafuente, Rubén Forján, José Luis Gallego

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Hydrothermal carbonization has garnered significant attention in recent studies due to potential applications of the hydrochar produced, which overlap with those of torrefied biochar, including soil improvement, carbon sequestration, and energy production. However, unlike the relatively uniform properties of biochar, hydrochar characteristics can vary greatly depending on the feedstock used. Advanced characterization techniques are essential to better understand these materials and enhance their practical applications. Research on hydrochar requires a multi-faceted approach, including molecular-level studies, to optimize production processes and identify specific applications.

In this regard, analytical methods commonly used in organic geochemistry could play a crucial role in deepening …

Clinical Subtypes Of Co-Morbid Insomnia And Obstructive Sleep Apnea (Comisa): Results Of A Cluster Analysis, Yuan Shi, Xujun Feng, Fengyi Hao, Yuru Nie, Yihui Zhang, Zhaohua Chen, Siqi Guan, Larry D. Sanford, Michael V. Vitiello, Xiangdong Tang

Department of Pathology & Anatomy Faculty Publications

Background

Variations in the bidirectional relationship between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and insomnia in co-morbid insomnia and OSA (COMISA) may form distinct subtypes of COMISA, which have not been previously characterized. This study aims to identify and characterize subtypes of COMISA.

Methods

From a community-recruited COMISA cohort 256 individuals who met diagnosis for COMISA were used to identify subtypes using a two-step clustering methodology. Demographics and multidimension clinical characteristics were collected and compared among obtained subtypes. Logistic models were used to evaluate whether these subtypes were associated with cardiometabolic and mental disorders. A clinical cohort of 1816 COMISA patients was …

Evaluation Of Potential Factors Limiting The Expansion Of Invasive Carp (Hypophthalmichthys Spp.) In The Ohio River Basin, Erin Shepta

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The introduction of aquatic invasive species is one of the greatest threats to freshwater biodiversity around the world. Two species of invasive carp, bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis) and silver carp (H. molitrix) have spread throughout much of the Mississippi River Basin, resulting in serious ecological impacts to native communities. Their spread in the Ohio River, a major tributary of the Mississippi River, appears to have slowed, with limited evidence of upstream advancements. Here, we investigated abiotic and biotic factors that may be contributing to the reduced spread of invasive carp in the Ohio River Basin. Generally, …

Dielectrophoretic Biomarkers For Cancer Detection And Cell Analysis: Integrating Microfluidics And Ai, Raphael Olumide Oladokun

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) carries a five-year survival rate of 13%, driven largely by late-stage diagnosis and the absence of sensitive noninvasive screening tools. Current diagnostic methods lack the sensitivity to detect disease-associated systemic changes at early and precancerous stages, representing a critical clinical gap. This dissertation addresses the central hypothesis that PDAC and its pathological subtypes induce measurable, disease-associated electrophysiological changes in circulating PBMCs that can serve as correlative liquid-biopsy biomarkers. To test this hypothesis, this work asks: can dielectrophoresis (DEP), impedance and zeta potential analysis with AI-assisted classification distinguish benign pancreatic conditions (non-malignant control), precancerous lesions (primarily IPMNs), …

General Relativity: Existence, James Glimm

Department of Applied Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

A mathematically rigorous renormalized perturbative expansion, truncated to all finite orders, establishes the existence of quantum general relativity theories with Fermion matter fields. The expansion is initialized with the selection of a vacuum state.

Distinct infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) vacuum states are considered. The IR vacuum state defines a cosmology model. The UV vacuum state defines a black hole model.

The vacuum state is initialized with a $\mathfrak{o}^3$ gauge Lie algebra defining a quark-gluon plasma. With this choice, string theory is avoided.

Finite order renormalized perturbation theory, defined using Bosons to avoid Fermion sign cancellation, is convergent to all …

The Yang-Mills Field: The Fermion Sign Problem, James Glimm

Department of Applied Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

A mathematical resolution of the Fermion sign problem is accomplished based on the theory of homology groups and thimbles. The original contribution of this paper is the mathematicly rigorous convergence of residual states. The residual states remain after use of a rigorous Picard-Lefschetz saddle point optimization.

The proofs depend on an assumed principle of a maximum rate of entropy production.

Two Yang-Mills gauge field theories are constructed, one based on short distance asymptotics and the other based on long distance asymptotics.

Inside Out: Improving Large Model Safety, Wei Zhao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

While Large Language Models (LLMs) and Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) are at the frontier of current advancements in artificial intelligence, demonstrating remarkable capabilities across diverse applications, there are growing concerns about their reliability and security. LLMs remain vulnerable to adversarial attacks through carefully crafted prompts that circumvent safety mechanisms, while MLLMs face additional security challenges stemming from their multimodal nature. Despite considerable efforts in reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) and supervised fine-tuning, existing safeguards have proven inadequate in addressing these critical vulnerabilities. This inadequacy stems from the fact that these models are inherently blackboxes that do not provide …

Western Massasauga (Sistrurus Tergeminus): A Species Conservation Assessment For The Nebraska Natural Legacy Project, Colleen Rothe-Groleau, Melissa J. Panella

Nebraska Game and Parks Commission: Publications

The Nebraska Natural Legacy Project recognizes the western massasauga (Sistrurus tergeminus) as a Tier I at-risk species. Provided are some general management recommendations regarding western massasaugas. Conservation practitioners will need to use professional judgment to make specific management decisions based on objectives, location, and a multitude of variables. This resource was designed to share available knowledge of this at-risk species that will aid in the decision-making process or in identifying research needs to benefit the species.

Criteria for selection as Tier I: State listed, G3

Estimated Population in NE: 1,000–2,500

Estimate based on: Field surveys

Trends since 2005 …

Microgravity-Induced Alterations In Left Atrial Hemodynamics And Thrombogenic Risk: Insights From Healthy And Atrial Fibrillation Models, Grace M. Hoeppner

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Background: Microgravity exposure alters cardiovascular loading, yet its impact on left atrial flow dynamics and thrombotic risk remains poorly understood. This study investigates how spaceflight-relevant microgravity-induced changes in cardiac outflow affect left atrial hemodynamics in healthy individuals and patients with atrial fibrillation.

Methods: Patient-specific left atrial models were generated for three healthy individuals and three AF patients. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were performed using each patient’s baseline mitral outflow waveform and two modified waveforms representing short- and long-duration post-flight cardiac loading changes derived from echocardiographic observations. Hemodynamic metrics included left atrial velocity, time averaged wall shear stress, oscillatory shear …

Designing A Research Study: Controlling For A Variable And Using Chatgpt, Fritz Umbach

Open Educational Resources

This assignment uses a hypothetical society to help students understand the idea of “controlling for a variable” and practice applying it to a real-world research question. Students design a research approach to examine whether income differences are better explained by family background or by systemic prejudice, working within clear data limits. ChatGPT is used as a research guide to help students brainstorm, test, and revise their methods, while encouraging them to critically evaluate the usefulness and limits of AI-generated suggestions. The assignment emphasizes careful reasoning, clear research design, and thoughtful use of AI as a support for learning rather than …

Af-Xray: Visual Explanation And Resolution Of Ambiguity In Legal Argumentation Frameworks, Yilin Xia, Heng Zheng, Shaun Bowers, Bertram Ludäscher

Computer Science Faculty Scholarship

Argumentation frameworks (AFs) provide formal approaches for legal reasoning, but identifying sources of ambiguity and explaining argument acceptance remains challenging for non-experts. We present AF-XRAY, an open-source toolkit for exploring, analyzing, and visualizing abstract AFs in legal reasoning. AF-XRAY introduces: (i) layered visualizations based on game-theoretic argument length revealing well-founded derivation structures; (ii) classification of attack edges by semantic roles (primary, secondary, blunders); (iii) overlay visualizations of alternative 2-valued solutions on ambiguous 3-valued grounded semantics; and (iv) identification of critical attack sets whose suspension resolves undecided arguments. Through systematic generation of critical attack sets, AF-XRAY transforms ambiguous scenarios into grounded …

Typology And Spatiotemporal Patterns Of Illegal Fishing Activities In The Philippines: Implications For Fisheries Management, Marlowe O. Acevedo, Tzu-Yun Ching, Chih-Shin Chen

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing activity is a global threat and continues to undermine the effectiveness of fisheries regulations and management measures. However, the extent of illegal fishing in Philippine waters remains unclear. This study aims to identify the types of illegal fishing in Philippine waters and analyzed their temporal and spatial patterns. Data were obtained from the records of the Philippine Coast Guards (PCG) and Maritime Law Enforcement Agencies from 2015 to 2020. A total of 602 apprehensions were recorded, resulting in 813 violations, of which 630 cases were fishery violations. Most of the watercrafts involved in the …

Soft-Constrained Variants Of T-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding For Global Structure Preservation, Joseph A. Balderas

Mathematics Dissertations

Dimensionality reduction (DR) is a fundamental tool in data science and machine learning that transforms high-dimensional data into a low-dimensional representation while preserving important structural properties of the original data. Among modern DR methods, t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) has become one of the most widely used techniques for visualization due to its strong ability to preserve local neighborhood structure and produce visually separated clusters. However, despite its popularity, t-SNE is well known to struggle with preserving global structure of data, often producing embeddings in which distances between clusters and neighborhoods do not accurately reflect relationships in the high-dimensional space. …

Eeg And Imu Gait Signal Processing: A Comparative Assessment Of The "Reza" Exponential Filter And Classic Filters, Reza Pousti, Daniel M. Russell, Derek C. Monroe, Christopher K. Rhea

Rehabilitation Sciences Faculty Publications

Noise degrades both EEG and gait signals, and classical IIR filters (Butterworth, Chebyshev, elliptic) involve trade-offs between passband flatness, ripple, and roll-off. This study compared a novel exponential "Reza" filter with these designs for neural and locomotor data. We analyzed an open-source mobile brain-body imaging dataset with EEG and gait data from 49 healthy adults (EEG: 256-channel, 512 Hz; IMUs: six APDM Opals, 128 Hz). EEG channels were grand-averaged and band-pass filtered at 0.5-50 Hz, while IMU axes were averaged and band-pass filtered at 0.5-5 Hz. The outcomes were signal-to-noise ratio SNR (dB) and band-integrated Welch PSD (EEG:0.5-50 Hz; IMU:0.5-5 …

Enlem: Ensemble Learning-Based Model To Detect Phishing Websites, Most Nilufa Yeasmin, Md Abu Rumman Refat, Bikash Chandra Singh, Zulfikar Alom, Zeyar Aung, Mohammad Azim

School of Cybersecurity Faculty Publications

Phishing involves manipulating individuals into revealing private data, e.g., user IDs, bank details, and passwords. The observed surge in fraud is related to increased deception, impersonation, and advanced online attacks. Thus, effective phishing detection methods are required to mitigate escalating global phishing threats. Existing methods (e.g., heuristics-based, signature-based, and visual similarity-based methods) attempt to detect phishing sites, and machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) methods are effective in the cybersecurity context in terms of learning from data, offering insights, and forecasting. However, independent ML algorithms are limited when handling complex data, and DL techniques surpass traditional ML methods in …

Toward Secure And Practical Machine Learning-Based Access Control: A Framework With Real-World Constraints And Adversarial Analysis, Olusesi Balogun, Mohammad Ghasemigol, Zhipeng Cai, Daniel Takabi

School of Cybersecurity Faculty Publications

Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) frameworks coordinate access requests based on subject, object, and environment attributes, as well as policy rules, and are widely used in corporate security systems. Recently, machine learning has been applied to ABAC to address policy-generation imbalances, misassigned privileges, and attribute leakages. However, existing MLBAC techniques do not consider the structural constraints and attribute interdependencies present in traditional ABAC systems. Moreover, these frameworks have not been extensively evaluated under black-box attack scenarios. To address these gaps, we propose extensions to MLBAC that integrate structural constraints, attribute dynamism, and attribute weighting into the MLBAC objective function. Additionally, we …

Exploring The Synergy Between Very Large Transformer And Lstm Models For Effective Medical Captioning From Videos To Text: The Impact Of Captioning In Healthcare, R. V. Aswiga, Moin Ahmed Zahir

Data Science Faculty Publications

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, the demand for accurate and contextually relevant subtitles for image and video content, particularly in the medical domain, is increasingly critical. Despite the proliferation of visual data across various platforms, existing captioning systems often struggle due to variations in visual settings, complex temporal relationships, and nuanced semantics. Additionally, challenges such as limited datasets, privacy issues, and specialized annotation requirements make medical image captioning particularly difficult. To tackle these challenges, we investigate cutting-edge deep learning methodologies, specifically Transfer Learning and Transformer models, through a comparative analysis. Specifically, we focus on Transfer Learning through the MedVisionCapturer …

A Hybrid Cnn-Lstm Surrogate Model For Hyper-Resolution Spatiotemporal Flood Forecasting In Norfolk, Virginia, Yidi Wang, Jonathan L. Goodall, Chetan Kumar, Diana Mcspadden, Sergio A. Barbosa, Binata Roy, Ali Shahabi, Navid Tahvildari

Data Science Faculty Publications

Study region

Norfolk, Virginia, United States

Study focus

Accurate and timely flood forecasting is essential for enhancing resilience in coastal urban areas in the context of increasing frequency and intensity of rainfall, sea level rise and urbanization. This study presents a hybrid deep learning-based surrogate model that integrates Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks to enable real-time spatiotemporal flood forecasting. The model leverages CNN to capture spatial features from inputs such as elevation and Topographic Wetness Index (TWI), while LSTM processes time-series inputs of rainfall and tide data to capture temporal features.

New hydrologic insights for …

Doikayt And The Ethics Of Belonging: Lessons In Place-Making From The Jewish Labor Bund, Zoë L. Jacobs

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis traces the evolution of doikayt—the Bundist principle of hereness—from its origins in the Jewish Labor Bund to contemporary applications in North America. Rooted in a refusal of both assimilation and nationalist escape, doikayt emphasizes cultivating safety, solidarity, and belonging through collective responsibility rather than territorial claims.

Building on this foundation, the exploration situates hereness within a settler-colonial context, where ethical dwelling is complicated by Indigenous dispossession. Drawing on Alexis Shotwell alongside Indigenous thinkers Vanessa Watts and Kyle Whyte, I examine how inhabiting place requires confronting historical injustices and ongoing relational responsibilities. Chapter 3 analyzes Linke Fligl (2016–2022) as …

Spectral Decimation On The Schreier Graphs Of The Basilica Group: A Thesis In Fractal Analysis, Anne D. Bannon

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the literature required to fully understand research conducted during the University of Connecticut's Fractals & Stochastics REU in the summer of 2025. The literature review includes a description of Robert Strichartz's seminal work pertaining to the Laplacian spectrum of the Sierpiński Gasket, which provides a framework for how we approach studying the spectrum of the basilica Julia set. Defining the basilica Julia set and the closely-related Basilica group involves graph theory, automata theory, iterated monodromy group theory, and amenable group theory. Further time is dedicated to defining the graph Laplacian …

Real Interpolation: An Approximate Introduction, Madeline Anderson

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis provides an introduction to real interpolation. We establish

relevant notions in functional analysis first, and use these concepts to study

real interpolation using J. Peetre’s 𝐾-functional in some detail. We also

explore the basics of approximation theory, in particular the connection

between approximation and interpolation results.

An Application Of Molecular Dynamics To Hed Plasma Physics: Point And Group Defect Diffusion In Coulomb Crystals, Levi Webb

Theses and Dissertations

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are used to explore the microscopic behaviors of complex systems that cannot be easily studied experimentally. In particular, the microphysics of high energy density (HED) astrophysical plasma environments remain inaccessible by modern experiment---even in laser facilities, these plasmas exist only on short timescales that do not lend easily to investigation. The diffusion of point and group defects through crystallized plasmas in the cores of white dwarfs and neutron star crusts, called Coulomb crystals, has potentially macroscopic implications for the evolution of these bodies. Thus, I employ the widely-used MD code LAMMPS to simulate small Coulomb crystal …

Feasibility Of Upcycling Spent Lithium-Ion Battery To Carbon Dioxide Capture Adsorbent, Chimezie Frank Onwudinjo

Master’s Theses

This study investigates the feasibility of repurposing spent lithium-ion battery (SLIB) to lithium orthosilicate (Li₄SiO₄), a high temperature carbon dioxide sorbent. Two synthesis pathways including conventional acid-leaching method (Scenario 1) and a pyrolysis-based route (Scenario 2) were explored. Additionally, techno-economic analysis (TEA) and lifecycle assessment (LCA) of the two processes were also performed. Different analytical characterization techniques were performed to understand the material properties of Li₄SiO₄ including surface area, crystallinity, morphology and thermal stability. CO₂ capture performance of the synthesized Li₄SiO₄ was tested in a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) using …

Overview And Methods Of Molecular Paleontology: A Review, Shelby Touchstone

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Molecular paleontology—the study of ancient biomolecules preserved in fossils and sediments, including ancient DNA, lipids, and proteins—has motivated researchers since the 1950s, inspiring both scientific inquiry and broader cultural imagination. Think Jurassic Park. This honors thesis presents a comprehensive review of the history, current state, and methods of the field of molecular paleontology. Drawing on peer-reviewed literature and scholarly resources accessed through databases such as EBSCO and Bierce library, this review examines key techniques such as Next Generation Sequencing and amino acid racemization and will go over limitations and controversies in the field. It will also explore potential new …