Digital Commons Network^™

Social Attributions Of Moving Shapes: Comparing Qualitative Analyses Of Humans Vs. Ai, Angel Hinojosa

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

As technology becomes more intelligent, the relationship between humans and machines is rapidly shifting. Whether a machine is perceived as a capable partner or a source of wariness often depends on the intentions and abilities, we attribute to it. My research in the InTeRACT Lab seeks to empirically assess these perceptions by comparing how we view different nonhuman agents, ranging from animals to robots.   This study analyzes qualitative data from a task where participants viewed animations of moving triangles. While the videos remained the same, participants were told the shapes represented either humans, robots, dogs, or inanimate shapes. Previous quantitative …

Stress-Triggered Automation Reliance, Jazmin Elek

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Automation is widely used in complex systems and includes any process that replaces human motor, sensory, or cognitive functions with machines or computers (Norman, 1996). As automation becomes more common, understanding how humans trust and interact with these systems is critical. Trust can be measured by whether users override automation or blindly follow its prompts (Norman, 1996).   Artificial intelligence (AI) introduces additional complexity by enabling systems to learn patterns from data it generates. AI performs tasks with the ability to learn from experience (NASA, 2024). AI builds internal databases that can mimic human-like responses (Norman, 1996). However, AI systems can …

Greenwall Use For Air Repair And Depollution (G.U.A.R.D.), Sophia Elwood, Sophia Piro, Maura Barrada, Kathrine Lopez, Wendi Goffer

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Creating habitable indoor environments for long-duration space missions and extraterrestrial habitats requires reliable, sustainable air quality improvement. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s ACE Lab provides a unique opportunity to investigate plant-based purification in a controlled environment while addressing campus air quality concerns linked to a high-traffic airport and exposure to jet fuel particulate matter and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). This collaborative project between Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering researchers and the Botanical Society evaluates whether a green wall can improve indoor air quality as a scalable model for future closed-loop habitats. In the study's first phase, student researchers documented ACE Lab dimensions to …

Fall Hazard Prevention: A Zero-Fatality Goal For Health, Safety, And Well-Being On Construction Sites, Alena Richardson, Chaidaliz Minguela Alicea, Nicola Kaehler, Charlene Weaver

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Jobsites face hazards like falls, which threaten the health, safety, and well-being of construction workers. Falls are the leading cause of all accidents and fatalities in construction, accounting for approximately 40% of all worker deaths in 2023. While achieving a zero-accident rate for falls is inherently challenging, prioritizing a zero-fatality objective represents a practical and impactful starting point. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recommends a six-step action approach for the prevention and control of hazards like falls. Of particular interest, the State of Florida is consistently ranked among the highest for construction fall fatalities, often attributed to insufficient …

Effects Of Sleep Duration And Perceived Stress Of Reaction Time In Undergraduate Students, Caitlin Wescott, Edna Urrutia, Ryan F. Rednick, David Still

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Sleep deprivation and psychological stress are common among undergraduate students and can negatively affect cognitive performance. Reaction time is an important indicator of attention and processing speed and plays a critical role in both everyday activities, such as driving, and high-performance environments where rapid responses are required. This study aims to examine how sleep duration and perceived stress levels influence reaction time in undergraduate students. Participants will report their sleep duration and perceived stress levels through short surveys and wearable sleep data, while reaction time will be measured using a standardized computerized reaction time test. By comparing reaction time across …

Bridging The Gap: Cybersecurity And Occupational Safety Frameworks In Ai Data Centers, Athena Leader

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Bridging the Gap: Cybersecurity and Occupational Safety Frameworks in AI Data Centers   As artificial intelligence infrastructure expands, AI data centers represent a critical and underexamined convergence of cybersecurity and occupational safety risk. Existing frameworks such as NIST, OSHA, and ISO standards were largely developed in isolation, leaving significant gaps in how organizations manage risks that are simultaneously digital and physical in nature. This study investigates the gaps and overlaps between cybersecurity and occupational safety frameworks as they apply specifically to AI data center environments. Drawing on a targeted literature review of established regulatory and standards-based frameworks, this research identifies where …

Photo Essay: Affective Infrastructures Of Migration In Mindanao, Philippines, Marion Breteau

Asia Pacific Perspectives

This photo essay explores the affective infrastructures that sustain and shape return migration between the Philippines and the Arab Gulf states. By affective infrastructures, I refer to the material, moral, economic, and relational arrangements that make migration possible, and that continue to structure life after return. Rather than addressing migration as a linear trajectory (departureemployment-return), the essay presents it as processual, and encrypted in houses, debts, bodies, aspirations, and memories. The fieldwork is grounded in Tampakan, a rural municipality in South Mindanao, a region that contains one of the largest Filipino emigration basins to the Gulf. Illustrating how return reshapes …

Spring Issue, Volume 36, Number 1

CompassPoint

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Motivations Of Undergraduate Sport Management Students, Kyle J. Brannigan, Tyler J. Hajek

The COSMA Journal

This study explored the motivations of undergraduate sport management in four university programs. Convergent mixed-methods research through the theoretical framework of Self-Determination Theory was incorporated with an adapted questionnaire of the Academic Motivation Scale and semi-structured interviews through Thematic Analysis. Ninety-six surveys with nine interviews were deemed usable across four regionally focused, vocationally minded, and accessible universities. Overall, students reported higher levels of extrinsic motivation than intrinsic motivation. The findings suggested intrinsic motivation to know and extrinsic motivation through regulation for identification scored highest with the participants. No significant differences were found between classes and ethnicities. However, male students experienced …

Revisiting The Flutie Effect: The Impact Of Collegiate Athletics On College Choice, Robin Hardin, Michelle L. Childs, Win G-Y Koo

The COSMA Journal

This study revisits the Flutie Effect by examining factors that influence a student’s college choice which includes the role of athletics and its brand. The study assessed items related to academics, interpersonal influences, campus culture, and athletics through a survey of first-year students. An exploratory factor analysis produced a seven-factor model explaining 71.51% of the variance. The strongest factor was emotional and behavioral identification with university athletics, reflecting fandom, affiliation, and pride in athletic success. Athletics significantly influenced college choice, but their impact extends beyond athletic success to include broader dimensions of branding, fandom, and affiliation. For institutions seeking to …

Lanthorn, Vol. 61, No. 01, August 10, 2026, Grand Valley State University

Volume 61, August 10, 2026 – current

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Home Is Within Me, Essraa Nawar

Library Articles and Research

"For someone accustomed to measuring days by what gets accomplished, there was something liberating about realizing that a day does not have to be productive to be meaningful."

Automated Classification, Measurement, And Semantic Segmentation Of Open-Web Joists From Point Cloud Data, Justin Raymond Dworacek

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a BIM-oriented methodology for the automated classification, measurement, and segmentation of structural trusses from point cloud data. A real truss point cloud and a complementary synthetic dataset derived from CADBIM Revit families were used to develop and evaluate the workflow. Classification was performed using a rule-based Python algorithm based on principal component analysis, side-view feature extraction, and family-specific geometric decision logic, while a separate family-aware script was used to extract key truss dimensions. Semantic segmentation was evaluated using a PointTransformerV3 model to separate truss and non-truss points in mixed point cloud scenes. The results demonstrated strong performance …

How We Benefit From Job Satisfaction: The Moderating Effect Of Informal Caregiving On The Associations Between Job Satisfaction And Physiological And Psychological Stress, Jensine Paoletti-Hatcher, Vincent D. Lai, Christopher P. Fagundes

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Job satisfaction and the resource-building processes it supports may have meaningful implications for health and well-being. These processes may work differently for employees who have informal (i.e., unpaid) caregiving duties outside of work. Guided by conservation of resources theory, we examined two indirect stress-buffering pathways in a sample of 799 nursing home workers, measured four times over 18 months. We tested how job satisfaction affects gain strengthening (via higher positive spillover) and loss weakening (via lower work-family conflict), how these processes impact indices of physiological (i.e., C-reactive protein) and psychological (i.e., perceived) stress, and how informal caregiving status may moderate …

Measuring The Tokenization Premium: A Cost Audit For Underserved Language Communities, Avijit Roy, Proma Roy, Hrishitva Patel

Publications and Research

Large language models are increasingly deployed as general-purpose educational and technical assistance systems, but their basic infrastructure does not treat languages equally. One underexamined source of disparity is tokenization: semantically equivalent content can require substantially different token counts across languages, affecting API cost, latency, and usable context length before a model is even invoked. We introduce the Tokenization Equity Audit (TEA), a reproducible benchmark for measuring tokenization premiums in technical tutoring content. TEA evaluates three widely used tokenizers, GPT-4o’s o200k base, Qwen2.5-7B, and Mistral-7B, on a 120-item Python debugging corpus translated from English into Bengali, Hindi, Arabic, Tamil, and Yoruba. …

Functionality Risk Assessment And Risk-Based Management For Critical Infrastructure Systems, Anteneh Zewdu Deriba

Dissertations and Theses

Critical infrastructure systems such as transportation networks serve as the lifelines of modern society, supporting economic activity and ensuring access to critical services. Their disruption under extreme events can produce consequences extending far beyond physical damage to individual assets. In transportation networks for instance, failures of critical assets such as bridges and tunnels can reduce accessibility of communities, limit freight capabilities for commerce, and increase travel distance and travel time of road users. These consequences associated with the system functionality loss are tied not only to the physical vulnerability and failure of individual assets, but also to the system configuration …

Corruption In The Service Of The Common Good: The Legitimation Of Traditional Practitioners In Cameroon, Victorine Oyane Ossah

Journal of Law and Public Policy

This article shows how health law and public policy, in seeking to regulate traditional medicine, without fully recognising it, paradoxically end up producing the very social conditions for the corruption that they are supposed to combat. The aim is to identify, based on the experience of traditional healers, the various factors that contribute to establishing corruption not as a moral choice, but as a pragmatic strategy for preserving their knowledge, resources, and place in the healthcare system. The analysis presented is based on a qualitative survey of 30 traditional medicine practitioners in Yaoundé and Douala between 2021 and 2026, in …

Information Resources Utilization, Organisational Culture And Motivation As Determinants Of Quality Service Delivery Of Researchers In Nigerian Institute For Trypanosomiasis Research, Kaduna State, Nigeria., Alegbeleye Gabriel Olubunmi, Ibrahim Awodi, Yemisi Tomilola Babalola

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study investigated the combined influence of information resources utilization, organizational culture, and motivation on quality service delivery in the Nigerian Institute for Trypanosomiasis Research (NITR), Kaduna State. The population comprised 206 researchers across the six research departments of NITR, and a total enumeration technique was employed to include all the researchers. Using a structured questionnaire, 172 valid responses were obtained representing an 83.5% response rate. Data were analyzed using descriptive and multiple regression statistics. Anchored on Uses and Gratification Theory of Information behavior, the Denison Organizational Culture Model, and Self-Determination Theory, the findings revealed that the independent variables jointly …

Knowledge Organization As A Cognitive Framework: Integrating Metacognition And Executive Function In Higher-Order Thinking, Arwa Alsultan

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This paper proposes a theoretical framework that positions knowledge organization as a cognitive mechanism rather than merely a technical or informational process. Drawing on an integrative review of literature across knowledge organization, metacognition, executive function, and schema theory, the study examines how structured knowledge environments may support higher-order thinking among researchers. The proposed model suggests that knowledge organization, metacognition, and executive function operate as an interconnected cognitive system: knowledge organization provides the structural foundation for processing information, metacognition enables monitoring and reflective regulation, and executive function supports cognitive control processes such as working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. Four theoretical …

Understanding And Responding To Childhood Trauma In The Classroom, Kara L. Ganzer

Master of Arts in Human Services

This capstone explored childhood trauma as a significant public health and educational issue because of its widespread impact on children’s development, learning, behavior, and educational experiences. A review of the current literature was conducted to examine adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), the neurobiological and developmental effects of childhood trauma, its impact within educational settings, and the trauma-informed approaches for supporting students who have experienced adversity. The literature suggested that childhood trauma can disrupt brain development, executive functioning, emotional regulation, attention, memory, and stress-response systems, contributing to academic, behavioral, and social-emotional challenges within the classroom. Findings also highlighted the important role schools …

Mountain Development In Nepal: Settlements, Infrastructure, And Economic Transformation, Keshav Bhattarai, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

As Nepal urbanizes, expands infrastructure, strengthens local governments, and explores deeper connectivity with India and China, climate change is increasing floods, landslides, heat, and water insecurity. Rapid internal migration, rising disaster risks, youth outmigration, and dependence on remittances are also revealing the limits of conventional urban development, especially in the mountainous region. The central challenge for Nepal is no longer just to accommodate growing towns and cities, but to build settlements that are safe, productive, environmentally resilient, and capable of sustaining long-term prosperity.

This paper argues that Nepal's urban future must be guided by a new development paradigm centered on …

Becoming A Therapist In A Foreign Land: Narratives Of International Trainee Clinicians Of Color In The U.S., Prathma Sharma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation project is on the community of trainee clinicians of color, who have been consistently overlooked in the literature on mental health. This dissertation employed narrative analysis as a methodological framework to explore the experiences of international trainee clinicians of color as they navigated the complex landscape of mental health training in the United States. In an increasingly globalized world, the voices and perspectives of these individuals offered critical insights into the challenges, triumphs, and unique pathways that shaped their professional development. Much of the literature on diversity and inclusion tends to individualize the challenging experiences, …

Lessons From Tanzania’S Ujamaa For Smart Settlements In Nepal: Social Justice And Economic Development, Keshav Bhattarai, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Nepal’s constitutional commitment to a “socialism-oriented” state places social justice, equitable access to resources and housing, and protection of marginalized populations at the center of national development discourse. However, persistent landlessness, informal settlements, unemployment, youth outmigration, and unequal access to infrastructure reveal a significant gap between constitutional aspirations and socioeconomic realities.

This article examines lessons Nepal can draw from Tanzania’s experience with Ujamaa, the African socialist development model initiated by President Nyerere in 1967. Using comparative policy analysis, published research, official documents, and exploratory field observations from selected Tanzanian locations, including the capital and villages in the Iringa Region, the …

From Militarization To Military Enforcement: The U.S. Armed Forces And Immigration Control In The Second Trump Administration, Kit Johnson

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Deportation After Death By Incarceration: A Right To Redemption, Jennifer Lee Koh, Tin Nguyen

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Efficacy Of Fintech Solutions In Advancing Financial Inclusion For The Financially Underserved In South Africa, Tebogo S. Legodi, Wallace Chigona, Adheesh Budree

African Conference on Information Systems and Technology

Fintech growth in South Africa has expanded access to digital financial tools. However, financially underserved communities continue to experience persistent and evolving forms of financial exclusion. This paper presents preliminary findings from an ongoing qualitative study assessing the efficacy of fintech solutions in advancing financial inclusion among underserved communities in South Africa. The study is grounded in an interpretivist philosophy, Sen’s Capability Approach, Critical Theory, and employs Constructivist Grounded Theory. We collected data for the study using semi-structured interviews with underserved users and key stakeholders. Building on a five-domain fintech efficacy framework developed through a prior systematic literature review, early …

The Effects Of Mindless Scrolling On Tiktok On The Daily Functioning Of Young Adults In South Africa, Chulumanco Magwa, Tendani Chimboza, Papama Mtambeka

African Conference on Information Systems and Technology

The rise of short-form content platforms such as TikTok has introduced a pervasive behavioural challenge among young adults called mindless scrolling. Unlike intentional social media use, mindless scrolling involves prolonged, often automatic consumption of content with limited conscious decision-making about when to stop. This study explores how mindless scrolling on TikTok affects the daily functioning of young adults in South Africa. Through semi-structured interviews with 14 participants aged 18-25, the study examines the drivers of prolonged use and the consequences for productivity, sleep, time management, and social engagement. Thematic analysis revealed that TikTok’s platform architecture, including infinite scroll, algorithmic personalisation, …

“No Te Metas, Eso Es De Hombres”: How Gendered Barriers Shape Women’S Income And Success In Rural Mexico’S Livestock Sector, Sofia Gaeta Garcia

McNair Summer Research Program

Women play a significant role in Mexico’s livestock sector, contributing to production, breeding, animal care, and local market activity. However, their labor is often overlooked and undervalued. Women’s work is often treated as “help” rather than recognized as real labor. The calls for “No te metas, eso es de hombres” and “La mujer ayuda, el hombre decide” reflect the gendered ideas this project examines. This research argues that financial, structural, and cultural barriers limit women’s participation in rural Mexico’s livestock industry by restricting their access to income, resources, decision-making power, and financial independence. Using a qualitative research design, this project …

Integrating Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions In Inclusive Classrooms To Support Autistic Students, Paige J. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current trend of an increasing prevalence rate of autism spectrum disorder creates a growing need for evidence-based interventions that can be accessed in the natural environments, such as within inclusive educational settings. Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) integrate principles of applied behavior analysis and developmental psychology, and offer effective tools for increasing social communication behaviors in autistic children that align with the neurodiversity-affirming movement. The present study sought to evaluate the effectiveness of Behavior Skills Training (BST) in teaching core NDBI skills to a preschool teacher, examine changes in teacher self-efficacy related to supporting autistic students, and assess the …

A Mixed-Methods Pilot Study Of A 10-Week Wellness Program For Resident Assistants, Emily L. Lee-Chong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This mixed-methods pilot study used semi-structured interviews with 15 resident assistants (RAs), complemented by descriptive pre- and post-test data from the Five Factor Wellness Inventory (FFWEL), to explore their lived experiences of participating in a 10-week wellness program grounded in the Indivisible Self Model of Wellness (IS-WEL). The purpose of this study was to examine the program's perceived influence on wellness practices and to explore the feasibility of implementing wellness-focused programming. Using a hermeneutic inquiry approach, the study identified four themes reflecting participants’ experiences throughout the program. Themes highlighted the importance of self-awareness through the IS-WEL model, the value of …