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Symmetry And Psychosocial Adaptation To Trauma, Illness And Disability Part I: Views From Physics, Medicine And Psychology, Hanoch Livneh

Leadership, Learning and Counseling Faculty Publications and Presentations

The aim of this two-part paper is to discuss the concept of symmetry and its derivatives, symmetry breaking and asymmetry, and the role they assume in elucidating the structure and processes that underlie psychosocial adaptation to traumatic experiences. To achieve this aim, in Part I, first, a cursory review of symmetry is undertaken as it applies to physics, including conservation laws, the forces of nature, and leading theories of nature. Second, the paper addresses how symmetry is perceived in biology and medicine, including symmetry within biochemical and genetic structures, the human body, and the onset of disease processes. Third, the …

Examining Parental Self-Efficacy And Its Impact On Teacher Ratings Of Student Adjustment, Moderated By Ses, Russell Craig

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Mnar Attrition On Estimation Of Latent Growth Curve Models With Binary Observed Variables, Jason T. Newsom, Brian T. Keller, Mallory R. Kroeck, Nicholas A. Smith

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

A Monte Carlo simulation was used to evaluate the performance of latent growth curve (LGC) modelswith binary observed variables when the attrition pattern was missing not at random (MNAR) for fivetime points. Parameter and standard error biases for three estimation methods were compared:weighted least squares with mean and variance adjustment (WLSMV), categorical robust marginal max-imum likelihood (categorical MLR), and Bayes. The results indicated that robust diagonal weightedleast squares paired with multiple imputation (MI) performed best when values were missing at ran-dom. When data were missing not at random, Bayesian estimates performed best.

Dreams Intervention Program: A Web-Based Classroom For Universal Human Values (Uhv), Roseline Florence Gomes, Lijo Thomas, Preethi Nanjundan

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

The study investigated the implementation and processes of the DREAMS Intervention Program (DIP) web-based classroom model for understanding Universal Human Values (UHV) among college-going youth mentors. The DREAMS (Desire, Readiness, Empowerment, Action, Mastery for Success) Intervention Program (DIP) is a transformative five-stage model that fosters psychosocial development and leadership skills among children and adolescents. This evidence-based three-year After-School-Program (ASP) was guided through the theoretical lens of motivation, goal-setting, and self-determination that pairs middle school underperformers with college-going youth mentors and senior adults from local communities. Universal Human Values (UHV) are deep-rooted values that are needed in the contemporary educational system …

Justice On Autopilot: Comparing Predictive Litigation And Data Justice In Bay Area Municipal Governments, Darris M. Thomas

Master's Projects and Capstones

This Capstone project examines how Bay Area municipal governments, specifically the City and County of San Francisco, Alameda County, San Mateo County, and Santa Clara County, are adopting and governing predictive litigation technologies, and what these practices reveal about the possibilities and limitations of data justice in advancing racial equity, transparency, and public accountability. Drawing on a qualitative, comparative case study methodology analyzing procurement contracts, AI governance policies, California Public Records Act (CPRA) disclosures, and semi-structured interviews gathered across fifteen municipal legal institutions, the research applies an interdisciplinary theoretical framework synthesizing John Rawls’s distributive fairness, Nancy Fraser’s recognition justice, Tom …

Linking Fishery Productivity To Child Health In The Coastal Tropics, Francisco Flores-Mejia

Master's Theses

Fish are a primary source of calories, macronutrients, and income for coastal communities around the world, but overfishing and environmental changes have dramatically reduced productivity in the majority of small-scale fisheries. The social costs of these losses are believed to be large, particularly in poorer communities, but most estimates of fishery productivity effects on households are contextual and difficult to generalize. We combine a remote sensing measure of pelagic fishery productivity with geolocated child health and growth data from 34 countries in the coastal tropics. We estimate that the difference between sustainedly good versus bad fishing conditions corresponds up to …

Decision-Making In Early-Stage Startups: How Venture Capitalists And Angel Investors Evaluate Uncertainty, Andrew M. Pence

Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how venture capitalists (VCs) and angel investors (AIs) make investment decisions regarding early-stage startups. Using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) framework—consisting of three core components: phenomenology, hermeneutics, and idiography—this study draws upon three decision-making models: the Rational Actor Model (RAM), the Heuristics and Biases model (H&B), and the Naturalistic Decision-Making model (NDM) to explore what motivates VCs and AIs to choose, for instance, “Company A over Company B.” Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 experienced venture investors to examine how they evaluate risk, assess founders and teams, and navigate the persistent uncertainty …

Finding A Way Out Of The Filter Bubble: The Confusion Of A Heavy Social Media User, Longwen Miao

Masters Theses

This thesis studies how algorithmic recommendation systems reshape visual perception, aesthetic judgment, and the construction of selfhood within contemporary digital culture.

Everything begins with the experience of repeatedly encountering algorithmically recommended content on everyday digital platforms. On these platforms, images, sounds, and social interactions are continuously selected, repeated, and reorganized by predictive systems, forming an environment in which perception is constantly structured and adjusted.

From this observation, the research raises two central questions: how do algorithmic recommendation systems reshape visual perception, aesthetic judgment, and self-recognition, and how might these systems be intervened in or made perceptible through artistic practice? Within …

The Evolution Of Economic Rhetoric And Its Correlation With The Marginalization Of Ethics In Economics, Mi Phan, Rhiannon Scharnhorst

Undergraduate Research (Journal)

Economic discourse has undergone a profound transformation from its moral-philosophical origins to contemporary mathematical formalism. This study examines whether the shift toward formalized economic writing resulted in the marginalization of explicit ethical reasoning. Through comparative textual analysis of twelve chapters from six influential works—spanning from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) to Milton Friedman’s methodological essays (1953)— the research identifies a pattern in which ethics is less and less prevalent. Pre-formalist economists like Smith and Marx integrated moral arguments directly into their analytical frameworks, examining questions of exploitation, justice, and social welfare as central to economic inquiry. Post-formalist economists, pursuing …

Productive Armature, Gabriel Ofem Peter

Masters Theses

What if water was all you had, what if your only source of survival was a body of water? I shudder to think that some people get to be put in this situation in the world we live in. As I understand the importance of water to survival, it is obvious that water can be the only lifeline of survival for a community. This is the experience for residents of Makoko, Lagos. Their survival depends on the Lagos Lagoon, a large body of water flowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. This research looks beyond the surface of what this community …

A Psycho-Spiritual Transformation In Covid-19 Crisis Narratives: A Comparative Study In Indonesia And Pakistan, Heru Prakosa, Nurlaela Widyarini, Johanes Seno Aditya Utama, Juan Carlos

Makara Human Behavior Studies in Asia

Although the COVID-19 pandemic ended as a global health emergency, its psychosocial legacy persists in many communities. This study examines how religion and spirituality support recovery in Indonesia and Pakistan by shaping crisis narratives. Faith-based language is treated as psychosocial data and interpreted through its functions in meaning-making, emotion regulation, social connection, value anchoring, and action commitment using Psycho-Spiritual Transformation (PST) as a guiding framework. Open-ended responses were collected from 274 participants via an online survey in July 2021 (Indonesia n = 236; Pakistan n = 38). Across both contexts, narratives typically moved from pressure and inner conflict toward spiritual …

American Paradise, Virginia Hanusik

Masters Theses

The following is a collection of stories and ideas about the making of our physical and emotional worlds, along with their fracturing, deconstruction, and degradation within the American industrial landscape.  It suggests the value of the unknown and the grace of mistakes, emotional and material friction, and the hiccups that come with learning.

For American Paradise, I’m bringing my interest in landscape extraction, and the people and families within them, to my own autobiography. In this work I turn to where I grew up, the people that brought me there, my connection to manual labor, and the use of specific …

Material Costs, Karima Weinman

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates how migration fatality and disappearance data can be reinterpreted through material craft to create a more reflective encounter with information. Working with the Missing Migrants Project's dataset, this project asks how design can communicate dimensions of human loss that conventional data visualization cannot reach.

The work situates contemporary border violence within a longer colonial history, arguing that the logics of surveillance and quantification that structured European imperial expansion persist in the databases that govern mobility in the Mediterranean today.

Terrazzo is a 15th-century Venetian flooring technique built from discarded fragments bound together into a unified surface. This …

Environmental Mercury Alters Immune Pathways Linked To Autoimmune Risk In Mice Mirroring Humans, Maurgan Lee, Paul Stemmer, Randall Gill, Allen Rosenspire, Anil Aranha, Heather Gibson

Medical Student Research Symposium

Background and Purpose: Mercury is a pervasive environmental contaminant, and human epidemiologic studies have linked chronic low-level exposure to increased autoimmune disease-risk. Dysregulated lymphocyte activation and impaired signaling tolerance are central mechanisms in human autoimmunity. Protein phosphorylation governs lymphocyte differentiation and function, alterations in phosphoproteomic networks may represent a signature of immune disruption. This study evaluates how low dose mercury exposure modifies B and T cell abundance and intracellular signaling patterns in BALB/c and Diversity Outbred (DO) mice.

Methods: BALB/c and DO mice were exposed to low dose HgCl2 in their water for two weeks or provided standard water controls. …

The Lawyer Is In!: Copyright Litigation Over Time, Ellen Amatangelo, Marissa Bischoff, Morgan Capitan, Jack Newman

Faculty Publications

This presentation is an overview of copyright litigation that has affected libraries. The session provides a hands-on look at specific cases and how they have affected and changed library work over time. A lawyer from the BYU Copyright Office provides commentary on each case and librarians discuss the impact of these cases on library policy. This helps to alleviate librarians' fear of copyright and legislation and provides guiding principles for the future.

This session was hosted by the Copyright Education Roundtable and presented at the Utah Library Association 2026 Annual Conference.

Labor Market Responses To Ai: Measuring Wage Effects Across U.S. Occupations, Kaitlin Pham, Karla Rodriguez

Undergraduate Economics Working Paper Series

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing economies around the world, with some experts predicting an impact greater than the Industrial Revolution. As AI becomes more common in daily life and business, questions have grown about how it might affect jobs, wages, and inequality. The rise of automation and highly capable AI models has made people wonder which occupations will benefit and which might be at risk. This study looks at how exposure to AI technologies affects wage trajectories in the United States. Using occupational-level data from O*NET and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, we build an AI exposure index …

Multimodal Analysis Of Content Drift And Algorithmic Bias In Youtube Recommendations, Mert Can Cakmak

Theses and Dissertations

Recommendation systems play a major role in shaping how users encounter information on digital platforms, yet their influence often unfolds through sequences of recommended content rather than isolated outputs. This dissertation investigates recommendation bias on YouTube by examining how recommendation pathways evolve across long-form videos and YouTube Shorts. Focusing on politically sensitive narratives, including the China–Uyghur conflict, the South China Sea dispute, and Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election, the dissertation develops a unified framework for understanding how recommendation systems reshape exposure across platform formats. Using an audit-based and multimodal methodology, the dissertation combines controlled recommendation collection, topic and relevance analysis, emotion …

Insights On The Origins And Repercussions Of Corruption In Haiti, Yves Louissaint

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Operational Responsibility In Ai Governance: A User-Centric Liability Framework, Zhengyang Chen

Faculty Publications

Who bears responsibility when artificial intelligence systems cause harm? This question has become central to AI ethics and governance. Most existing approaches focus on developers, yet this faces serious practical and theoretical problems. Drawing on tort law, agency law, and philosophy of technology, this paper argues that AI should be understood as an instrument whose outputs remain the responsibility of human operators rather than developers. We call this 'user-centric governance.' Placing accountability with deployers promotes public trust by creating clear lines of responsibility, a concern that governance approaches have often overlooked. It preserves democratic accountability by keeping human actors answerable …

Ecological Interest Theory Of “Lucid Waters And Lush Mountains Are Invaluable Assets” And Its Application In The Yellow River Basin, Guangqian Wang, Deyu Zhong

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

To address the core challenges of quantifying ecological value and converting it into economic gains, this study proposes a theoretical framework of ecological interest (EI) based on the principle that “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”. Three fundamental origins of ecological interest are explained, including the temporal value discount, the spatial ecological compensation, and the civilizational occupation-compensation balance. These three dimensions establish the logical connection between ecological and economic values. Setting a 5% annual simple interest rate as the benchmark and adopting “Lucid Waters and Lush Mountains” green certificates as the standardized ecological assets for property rights delineation …

Seizing Strategic High Ground Of Space Computing Power: Global Competition Landscape And China’S Path, Yan Chen, Wenbin Song, Ping Zhang

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

The deep integration of artificial intelligence and commercial aerospace is accelerating the transformation of space computing power from conceptual exploration to engineering verification, becoming a key direction for building an integrated space-air-ground information infrastructure. This study delves into its strategic value, global landscape, industrial chain bottlenecks, and advancement paths. The research reveals that the core value of space computing power does not lie in replacing ground data centers, but rather in focusing on network coverage blind spots, data transmission limitations, and high-timeliness scenarios, providing a new supply model of “in-orbit computing + space-ground collaboration”. Currently, the world has entered a …

Dialogue Between Mind And Algorithm: Deep Symbiosis Of Psychology And Artificial Intelligence, Xiaolan Fu, Zheng Yan

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

As artificial intelligence (AI) evolves from a supportive tool into a collaborative partner, the convergence of psychology and AI is gradually shifting from one-way application toward deep symbiosis. This study discusses the mutual empowerment resulting from their interaction, as well as the challenges they face and potential pathways to breakthroughs. On the one hand, psychology empowers AI by enhancing its human-like intelligence and social adaptability through cognitive modeling and ethical constraints; on the other hand, AI empowers psychology by leveraging multimodal data and algorithmic models to revolutionize psychological assessment and intervention methods. This deep symbiosis requires a clear-eyed acknowledgment of …

Non-Denominational Female Ministry Leaders' Disciple-Making Experience Using Digital Platforms: A Phenomenological Study, Vorlea C. Chaney

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

A global pandemic in the winter of 2020 forced the faith community to close its doors in the interest of public safety. Due to the closings, the faith community resorted to digital platforms to continue to make disciples, according to Matthew 28:19-20 (King James Version, 1991). Jun (2020) asserts the current digital age is poised to be the next industrial revolution used by the church to make disciples. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to investigate female ministry leader’s digital disciple-making experience. According to Leedy and Ormrod (2019), “the term phenomenology refers to a person’s perception of the …

Resilience In The Age Of Covid-19: A Phenomenological Study Of Survivors 65 And Older, Kwajulyn Onothia Rucker

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Few studies have examined resilience among those aged 65+ during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research fills that gap, offering data to guide policies and treatments for future pandemics. The pandemic revealed factors influencing psychological resilience, with stressors linked to health issues becoming chronic worldwide. Older adults faced heightened stress, and 95.5% of COVID-19 deaths occurred in those 50 and older. Lockdowns increased isolation and depression, yet many showed resilience by drawing on strengths, social networks, and circumstances. Key themes from this study included faith, engagement, adaptability, and adversity. Most (80%) adapted well, feeling 'fine' or 'okay' and finding hope through …

Beyond Stabilization: Biological Healing, Structural Exclusion, And The Recovery Gap After Border-Fall Trauma At The U.S.-Mexico Border, Julia Robinson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This honors thesis examines the biochemical, ethical, and public health consequences of insufficient post-operative follow-up care for undocumented immigrants injured in border falls. Discussing pathways of inflammation resolution, wound healing, and bone remodeling, this thesis argues that recovery depends on tightly regulated molecular and cellular processes that are highly vulnerable to disruption without continued monitoring and rehabilitation (Loi et al., 2016; Maruyama et al., 2020). When follow-up care is absent, these processes can be predicted to derail, leading to infection, impaired healing, and permanent disability (Chung & Sohn, 2025; Howard et al., 2020; Kruidenier et al., 2018). Framed through principles …

Storyteller: Training-Free Narrative Grounding And Forseebench: Evaluation For Long Form Audio Description, Seung Hyun Hahm

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Understanding long-form video requires tracking events, motivations, and relationships across time rather than describing isolated frames. However, existing video--language models (VLMs) and audio description (AD) systems often generate short-horizon descriptions that omit narrative context, causal intent, and story continuity, limiting accessibility for blind and low-vision (BLV) audiences. This thesis investigates how long-form AD can be grounded in narrative memory without relying on expensive supervised training pipelines or heavily curated annotations.

We propose StoryTeller, a training-free retrieval-augmented framework for long-form audio description. Instead of depending solely on frame-level perception, StoryTeller summarizes observations into structured narrative facts that capture who did what …

Approval Motivations In Sharing Humorous Tiktok's, Mariam Al-Areedy

InnovateHER Meeting 2026

TikTok is a short-form video platform where users create and share content that is often centered around humor, trends, and everyday social experiences. In face-to-face interactions, people typically rely on immediate feedback to navigate conversations, often using approval seeking behaviors to gain positive reactions and rejection-avoidant behaviors to reduce the risk of negative judgement. While these motivations are well-established in in-person settings, less is known about how they function in digital environments like TikTok, where teens privately share humorous content without immediate social cues to guide their interactions. My general hypothesis was that both rejection avoidance and approval-seeking behaviors will …

Electoral Threshold: Pros-Cons And Political Party Consensus In Indonesia, Azka Abdi Amrurobbi, Donis Daviska, Alam Mahadika

Jurnal Wacana Politik

The debates surrounding the parliamentary threshold and presidential threshold have become a recurring phenomenon, particularly in the period leading up to general elections in Indonesia. This paper aims to examine the pros and cons of the implementation and determination processes of both thresholds. Employing a qualitative research method and library research as the primary data collection technique, to validate the data then this research used data triangulation technique. In the Indonesian context, the thresholds applied constitute a form of formal threshold, namely thresholds determined through political and legislative processes in parliament. Consequently, threshold policies are heavily influenced by the configuration …

Uneven Ranks: Geographic Deepening Of The All-Volunteer Force, Christine Hogestyn

Master in Public Policy Theses

Who is enlisting in Fiscal Year 2025, and what state-level characteristics are associated with military enlistment rates, service selection, and recruit quality? This study documents the geographic landscape of U.S. military accessions during a period of recruiting recovery, filling a gap in the literature by providing a current, empirical description of who enlists and from where in today’s All-Volunteer Force. Drawing on personnel data from the Department of War, the U.S. Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates, and a federal dataset of military installations, I analyze 203,987 new accessions across the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps from …

The Environmental Cost Of Artificial Intelligence, Ava G. O'Connor

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper addresses the increasingly innovative and evolving world of artificial intelligence. As artificial intelligence becomes more integrated within global economies and infrastructures, its  environmental and economic impact has grown significantly, but still remains understudied in the conversation surrounding societal advancement and growth. This thesis delves into the history and development of artificial intelligence, AI's integration into modern life, Big Tech jumping to get ahead of AI development through investment, the cost of artificial intelligence, and the ethical and environmental implications of increasing artificial intelligence usage. Using multiple case studies, this thesis deeply explores the emergence of artificial intelligence as …