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Recognizing Metaphorical References To Sexual Assault Resistance And Represented Rape Myths In Coraline (2009), Braden Slater Apr 2026

Recognizing Metaphorical References To Sexual Assault Resistance And Represented Rape Myths In Coraline (2009), Braden Slater

Theses and Dissertations

Is there any value in children’s horror literature and film? Literary theorists have shown that children’s horror is uniquely positioned to be not only captivating and accessible, but also educational and hopeful for some young audience members. Like most fictional monsters, those presented in children’s horror can be read as metaphors for the fears and experiences people face in real life. Scholars have argued that engaging with this type of frightening media may help people confront challenging ideas and feelings from a place of safety. Building on this theoretical foundation, I perform a close reading of the 2009 film Coraline, …

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Liminality And Space In The Iliad And The Heike Monogatari, Jade Simmons Apr 2026

Liminality And Space In The Iliad And The Heike Monogatari, Jade Simmons

Theses and Dissertations

Both the Iliad and the Heike monogatari have received scholarly attention throughout the years, though rarely in comparison with one another. A few scholars, such as Tyler Creer and Naoko Yamagata, have attempted to examine the two side by side, but very little work has been done beyond their respective analyses. This is unsurprising as a cursory glance at the two texts suggests that they are too separated by time and space to warrant closer examination. I argue, however, that there is great value in analyzing the two side by side. Indeed, a closer look at these texts reveals that …

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Gratitude And The Second Language Writer: The Effects Of Gratitude Journaling In The English Language Writing Classroom, Lauren Smith Apr 2026

Gratitude And The Second Language Writer: The Effects Of Gratitude Journaling In The English Language Writing Classroom, Lauren Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Gratitude journaling interventions have repeatedly been shown to enhance wellbeing when conducted in participants’ first language (Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Sansone & Sansone, 2010), yet no studies to date have examined these practices in second language (L2) contexts. This mixed-methods quasi-experimental study investigated the effects of a six-week gratitude journaling intervention on adult L2 English writers enrolled in an intensive English program. Eleven writing classes (N = 183) were randomly assigned to either a gratitude journaling group or a neutral-events control group, with 123 participants completing all four stages of data collection. Trait gratitude and subjective wellbeing were measured pre-intervention, …

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Mcgehee Blow Up And Collision Manifold Of Planar (2+2)-Body Problem, Nathaniel Scott Sill Apr 2026

Mcgehee Blow Up And Collision Manifold Of Planar (2+2)-Body Problem, Nathaniel Scott Sill

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the dynamics of the Planar (2+2)-Body Problem which consists of two asteroids moving under the gravitational force of each other and of two larger primaries. We use the McGehee blow up technique to remove the singularities in the dynamics associated with a triple collision with one of the primaries by introducing a new set of variables. Additional variables are introduced to reduce the dimension of the problem. We then derive the dynamics for these new variables. We then use the energy relation that comes from the original Hamiltonian to describe the collision manifold which is pasted in …

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Differentiable Objectives For 3d Scene Relighting Via Gradient Descent On Olat Basis Coefficients, Anson Savage Apr 2026

Differentiable Objectives For 3d Scene Relighting Via Gradient Descent On Olat Basis Coefficients, Anson Savage

Theses and Dissertations

Designing effective lighting is an iterative and often time-consuming process. This work contributes to automatic lighting design research by presenting a render-engine agnostic optimization routine: gradient descent on RGB multipliers of one-light-at-a-time (OLAT) basis images. We compare several objective functions to accomplish lighting tasks and show that our method is capable of quickly and effectively exploring different lighting styles using either text prompts or reference images. We also present several datasets specific to lighting tasks and show that fine-tuning on these datasets can improve performance.

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Advanced Studies In Characterization Of Pyrolysis Products From Live Vegetation, Mahsa Alizadeh Apr 2026

Advanced Studies In Characterization Of Pyrolysis Products From Live Vegetation, Mahsa Alizadeh

Theses and Dissertations

Fire is a naturally occurring element in many ecosystems which can have both positive and negative effects. However, in recent years the frequency of the fires and the area they affect has increased. The rapid spread of wildland fires coupled with the limited resources available to forest services to manage wildland fires highlights the urgency for accurate prediction of fire spread. Fire prediction models enable the fire management services to predict the spread of fire and prioritize firefighting efforts more effectively. Understanding reactions and mechanisms occurring during wildland fires improves the fire prediction models. During wildland fires, the biomass covering …

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The San José De Laguna Mission: Christian Iconography Through The Lens Of Pueblo Oral Traditions, Natalie Sims Rasmussen Apr 2026

The San José De Laguna Mission: Christian Iconography Through The Lens Of Pueblo Oral Traditions, Natalie Sims Rasmussen

Theses and Dissertations

The San José de Laguna Mission was constructed in 1699 in modern New Mexico. Following on the heels of the second Pueblo revolt, it stands as a testament to the Pueblo adoption of Christian symbols in the portrayal of their own oral traditions. A central theme in the Laguna oral tradition is the complementary nature of masculine and feminine forces that make up the universe. The Christian figures of the altar screen, such as Saint Joseph, Saint John Nepomuck, Saint Barbara, and the Trinity, can be interpreted through the lens of the Pueblo oral tradition regarding a 19th century Laguna …

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Maximizing Uinta Basin Oil Well Yield Through Geochemical Fingerprinting Of Produced Water, Troy W. Day Apr 2026

Maximizing Uinta Basin Oil Well Yield Through Geochemical Fingerprinting Of Produced Water, Troy W. Day

Theses and Dissertations

The Uinta Basin is an unconventional oil play that has, since 2017, annually increased hydrocarbon extraction through modern drilling and fracing techniques with increased frac loading. The primary production target is the Uteland Butte Member of the Green River Formation, which consists of interbedded limestones, dolostones, and thick, organic-rich mudstones. Along with increased hydrocarbon production, volumes of produced water from the Uteland Butte Member have also risen. Water is co-produced with hydrocarbons and is an undesirable byproduct of hydrocarbon extraction. Large frac operations now consistently have highly variable percentages of recovered water volume relative to oil. This increase in water …

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Improving Electrochemical Measurements And Informing Future Reprocessing Of Advanced Nuclear Fuels, J. Marvin Torrie Apr 2026

Improving Electrochemical Measurements And Informing Future Reprocessing Of Advanced Nuclear Fuels, J. Marvin Torrie

Theses and Dissertations

This research promotes the application of molten salts through developing analytical tools in electroanalytical studies and in the data analysis of vapor pressure data. The electrochemical community lacks standardized, stable, and repeatable reference electrode designs which threaten the reliability of measured thermophysical properties and repeatability of published studies. This work confirms the application of a saturated reference electrode design for molten chlorides systems that outperforms traditional Ag+/Ag reference electrodes. In the field of thermal physical property measurements, vapor pressure data for chloride salts are diffused throughout the literature, uncertainty quantification is absent or limited, and all previous studies rely on …

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These Wretched Waters: A New Perspective On The Myth Texts And Visual Adaptations Of The Danaids, Tessa Haney Apr 2026

These Wretched Waters: A New Perspective On The Myth Texts And Visual Adaptations Of The Danaids, Tessa Haney

Theses and Dissertations

Both Greek and Latin texts regarding the Danaids are rife with gestational imagery and vocabulary. This textual focus on chthonic, symbolic aparturience coheres with both Greek and Roman perceptions of femininity. Women in both cultures were socially mandated to marry, have children, and confine themselves to the domestic sphere. The Danaids’ refusal to participate in this system would have been viewed as a breach of cosmic order, and a punishment that grounded the sisters in their 'traditional’ femaleness would have been viewed as a solution to such a breach. While early modern visual adaptations of the Danaid myth lack gestational …

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Stitched Together: Mourning And Memory In Latter-Day Saint Embroidery, Elizabeth Finlayson Apr 2026

Stitched Together: Mourning And Memory In Latter-Day Saint Embroidery, Elizabeth Finlayson

Theses and Dissertations

As the Church entered into a period of mourning, confusion, and uncertainty following the 1844 imprisonment of religious leaders Joseph and Hyrum Smith in Carthage Jail in Illinois, artists turned to their canvases to grapple with and depict these events. Ashlee Whitaker calls attention to this shift in Mormon art, noting how Latter-day Saint artists painted portraits, landscapes, and commemorative scenes to promote Church authorities and “covenant kinship” as the organization experienced both a leadership crisis and abrupt relocation. Whitaker’s analysis, however, focuses almost completely on paintings done on canvas by men in America such as Danquart Weggeland, C.C.A. Christensen, …

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Robust And Interpretable Cross-Domain Arabic Readability Prediction Using Hybrid Modeling: Evidence On The Limitations Of Transformer-Based Classifiers, Sarah Alzu'bi Apr 2026

Robust And Interpretable Cross-Domain Arabic Readability Prediction Using Hybrid Modeling: Evidence On The Limitations Of Transformer-Based Classifiers, Sarah Alzu'bi

Theses and Dissertations

Automatic readability assessment aims to predict how difficult a text is for readers to understand. The concept of readability has been widely studied across languages due to its significant impact on reading comprehension, leading to the development of various methods and approaches. In this study, I addressed two key challenges in readability assessment. First, I examine the performance of statistical classifiers and transformer-based models, including CAMeLBERT(Inoue et al, 2021.) with a focus on their ability to generalize under domain, genre, and stylistic shifts. Second, I investigate the interpretability of transformer performance in readability task, which are often criticized for their …

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Probing The Disequilibrium Chemistry Of Two Late T-Dwarfs Using Planetary Intensity Code For Atmospheric Scattering, Crystal-Lynn Jacqueline Bartier Apr 2026

Probing The Disequilibrium Chemistry Of Two Late T-Dwarfs Using Planetary Intensity Code For Atmospheric Scattering, Crystal-Lynn Jacqueline Bartier

Theses and Dissertations

We have performed a detailed analysis of the atmospheric properties of two late-T type brown dwarfs, 2MASSI J0415195-093506 and 2MASS J05591914-140448. For each brown dwarfs, we combined the spectra of each brown dwarf from the ground at 1-2.5 µm, AKARI at 2.5-5 µm, and from the Spitzer Space Telescope at 5-15 µm. For this project, we are particularly interested in probing the extent of vertical mixing. For this analysis, we used the Planetary Intensity Code for Atmospheric Scattering (PICASO), which is a code that creates a radiative transfer model for a given set of atmospheric parameters. With PICASO we find …

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Lists Of Selected Full-Text Databases By Subscription In East Asian Studies, Anlin Yang, Michiko Ito, Ellie Kim, Jian P. Lee Apr 2026

Lists Of Selected Full-Text Databases By Subscription In East Asian Studies, Anlin Yang, Michiko Ito, Ellie Kim, Jian P. Lee

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

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Council On East Asian Libraries Statistics 2024-2025 For North American Institutions, Michiko Ito, Ellie Kim, Jian P. Lee, Anlin Yang Apr 2026

Council On East Asian Libraries Statistics 2024-2025 For North American Institutions, Michiko Ito, Ellie Kim, Jian P. Lee, Anlin Yang

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

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The Taichung Polyglot, Mårten S. Saarela Apr 2026

The Taichung Polyglot, Mårten S. Saarela

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

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A Masked-Perturbation Model For Destabilization Security Games In Feedback Systems, Gabriel Michael Perry Apr 2026

A Masked-Perturbation Model For Destabilization Security Games In Feedback Systems, Gabriel Michael Perry

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we present a mathematical formulation for increasing cyberphysical system security. This model allows a system administrator to use assumptions about exposed signals to derive defense strategies meant to mitigate the system's vulnerability to feedback perturbation attacks. We begin with a survey of game theory with the goal of building the concepts of resource and security games. We then introduce our model, which is a security game; targets in this game are exposed signals in the model map of the system, and resources are perturbed or introduced dynamical relationships between these signals. This formulation, called the masked-perturbation model, …

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Theoretical Expressivity Of Self-Attention As A Model Of Binary Sequence-To-Sequence Functions And Other Explorations, Dustin Angerhofer Apr 2026

Theoretical Expressivity Of Self-Attention As A Model Of Binary Sequence-To-Sequence Functions And Other Explorations, Dustin Angerhofer

Theses and Dissertations

The self-attention mechanism lies at the heart of modern sequential modeling with deep neural networks, especially in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs). The basic role of self-attention is to capture pairwise interactions between tokens in a sequence. This allows token embeddings to be endowed with context-dependent information before further processing. Despite its widespread use, our theoretical understanding of self-attention is still nascent. In this work, we examine self-attention as a model of binary sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) functions, which is the simplest non-trivial case to analyze. We find, using VC dimension and the Sauer-Shelah lemma, that in the limit of …

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The Lookahead Transformer, Justin P. Olcott Apr 2026

The Lookahead Transformer, Justin P. Olcott

Theses and Dissertations

Large Language Models (LLMs) are transformer models that generate text autoregressively in two stages: prefill and decode. The prefill stage processes all input tokens in parallel and caches them into the KV cache. The decode stage uses the KV cache, processes a single token at a time, and is generally memory-bandwidth constrained. Each decode step generates a token probability distribution, samples from it, appends the token to the cache, and repeats. This left-to-right, one-at-a-time generation paradigm has proven effective for language modeling in many domains; however, it also has limitations such as token permanence, constant compute per token generation, constant …

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Improving Reclamation Seeding Success Through Seed Technologies, Surface Preparation, And Microbial Inoculants, Josh M. De Santiago Lazalde Apr 2026

Improving Reclamation Seeding Success Through Seed Technologies, Surface Preparation, And Microbial Inoculants, Josh M. De Santiago Lazalde

Theses and Dissertations

Revegetation of reclaimed lands is often limited by poor seed placement, unfavorable surface conditions, and reduced biological activity, particularly on steep or physically degraded substrates where broadcast seeding is commonly used. Improving early seeding establishment under these conditions requires approaches that address both physical and biological barriers to seedling development. We evaluated the effectiveness of surface preparation, seed technologies, and microbial inoculants for improving plant establishment in field and greenhouse settings relevant to mineland reclamation. At the field scale (Chapter 1), we investigated the effects of chain harrowing and seed enhancement treatments on the establishment of grasses, forbs, and shrubs …

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Detection Of The Presence And Growth Of E. Coli Bacteria In A Droplet-Based Microfluidic System Using Laser Induced Fluorescence, Oshira Peiris Apr 2026

Detection Of The Presence And Growth Of E. Coli Bacteria In A Droplet-Based Microfluidic System Using Laser Induced Fluorescence, Oshira Peiris

Theses and Dissertations

Antimicrobial resistance is a biomedical event, wherein an infectious microbe becomes non-responsive to the dosage of a particular antibiotic due to previous overuse or overexposure. Currently, agar plate disc diffusion is used as the gold standard for detecting antimicrobial resistance. The possibility of miniaturizing and speeding up detection techniques for antimicrobial resistance is investigated in this thesis. Microfabrication techniques were used in developing two droplet microfluidic systems interfaced with laser induced fluorescence detection. Microfluidic devices were manufactured with different droplet generating geometries using poly-dimethyl siloxane, soft lithography and hydrophobic surface treatment. The microfluidic devices were tested for droplet quality using …

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Answers “Go By Water”: Felt Knowledge As An Alternative Epistemology In Othello, Annalisa Gulbrandsen Apr 2026

Answers “Go By Water”: Felt Knowledge As An Alternative Epistemology In Othello, Annalisa Gulbrandsen

Theses and Dissertations

William Shakespeare's Othello is fundamentally a play about epistemology--how does one know what he/she knows amidst the sea of words, evidence, and misdirection? Traditionally, the problem of knowledge in Othello has been treated as an intellectual problem of the mind. However, this thesis argues that the play purposefully draws attention to the limits of what the mind can know by way of the eye (what is seen) and ear (what is spoken or heard), instead offering an alternative epistemology that is felt through embodiment. When Desdemona's words no longer have the power to affect what Othello believes, Desdemona's answers to …

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Model Unification: A Systematic Approach For The Cluster Expansion, Kolten Barfuss Apr 2026

Model Unification: A Systematic Approach For The Cluster Expansion, Kolten Barfuss

Theses and Dissertations

A systematic approach for model unification of cluster expansion models is developed and demonstrated. The method builds on previous work with the Manifold Boundary Approximation Method (MBAM) to identify supremal models. The work is motivated by the exercise of unifying cluster expansion models – characterized by Π matrices – for two binary alloys that share one atomic species to form a model for the ternary alloy. The result is the Supremal Π Algorithm, a systematic unification algorithm that relies on an MBAM-informed understanding of models and on the singular value decomposition. The algorithm yields ΠΛ, a Π matrix for the …

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Mild Thermal Treatment Of Lithium-Ion Batteries To Optimize Black Mass Production, Brooke Lillie Apr 2026

Mild Thermal Treatment Of Lithium-Ion Batteries To Optimize Black Mass Production, Brooke Lillie

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explains the design of equipment and the experimental procedure for thermal treatment of lithium-ion batteries for the purpose of low-cost materials recycling. Conditions used were between 150 ℃ and 425 ℃, involving different atmospheric conditions and treatment durations. The battery samples were processed through a sieve shaker device. Mass loss during the heat treatment, and separation of the battery through sieving was used to analyze the effect of the treatments on separability of black mass from the batteries. Additionally, internal battery temperature was measured and compared to real average furnace temperature to monitor thermal runaway. Testing showed minimal …

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The Artificial Maintenance Of Relationship Satisfaction: Romantic Ai Companion Usage Sustains Emerging Adults' Human Romantic Relationship Satisfaction While Eroding Relationship Stability, Rebekah M. Hakala Apr 2026

The Artificial Maintenance Of Relationship Satisfaction: Romantic Ai Companion Usage Sustains Emerging Adults' Human Romantic Relationship Satisfaction While Eroding Relationship Stability, Rebekah M. Hakala

Theses and Dissertations

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly sophisticated, romantic AI companions--AI systems designed to simulate romantic, emotional, or sexual relationships--have emerged as a novel relational phenomenon. Nearly one in four emerging adults now engage with romantic AI companions, yet little is known about how this usage affects their romantic human relationships. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory and the Investment Model of Commitment, and employing structural equation modeling, this thesis uses data from 2,431 emerging adults in romantic relationships to examine whether romantic AI companion usage influences relationship satisfaction and relationship stability among emerging adults in the United States (ages 18-30), and whether …

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Impacts Of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi And Novel Soil Amendments On Perennial Grass Establishment In Mineland Soils, Melissa M. Burrell Apr 2026

Impacts Of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi And Novel Soil Amendments On Perennial Grass Establishment In Mineland Soils, Melissa M. Burrell

Theses and Dissertations

Establishing perennial vegetation on mine waste materials is one of the primary challenges in mine land reclamation. Waste rock and mine tailing substrates typically lack the physical structure, nutrient availability, and biological communities necessary to support plant establishment and long-term ecosystem recovery. As a result, revegetation efforts often experience poor seeding success and limited plant persistence despite intensive management efforts. These studies investigated two complementary strategies to improve perennial grass establishment in degraded mine substrates: restoring mycorrhizal associations and enhancing soil function through soil amendments. The first study examined the role of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in facilitating plant establishment …

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Some Closure On The Relation Between Cfg And Peg, Nathan J. Bulloch Apr 2026

Some Closure On The Relation Between Cfg And Peg, Nathan J. Bulloch

Theses and Dissertations

We work toward a practical, unified language formalism for structurally recursive languages by expressing the mathematical theories underlying context-free grammars with lookahead (CFGLA) in the Rocq theorem prover and leveraging CFGLA semantics to analyze interactions between between recursion and negative lookahead. We give examples of grammars with left-recursive negation cycles for the parsing expression grammar (PEG) variant due to Medeiros et al. and for the translation from PEG to CFGLA due to Miyazaki and Minamide. To study the interaction between left recursion and negative lookahead in a PEG context, we introduce FPEG, a left-recursive extension of PEG with Fitting semantics.

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Fatherhood Redefined: How Paternity Leave Shapes Relationships, Olivia Flores Apr 2026

Fatherhood Redefined: How Paternity Leave Shapes Relationships, Olivia Flores

Family Perspectives

Paternity leave remains limited in the United States, with relatively few fathers granted paid time off following the birth of a child. This literature review examines how paternity leave shapes marital relationships by influencing parental mental health and couple communication during the transition to parenthood. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, the paper synthesizes evidence indicating that fathers’ use of paternity leave is associated with higher marital satisfaction and greater relationship stability. These benefits are largely mediated by improvements in both maternal and paternal mental health, as paternity leave reduces role overload, stress, and symptoms of anxiety and depression for both partners. …

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The World Needs More Resilient Kids, Kara Driggs Apr 2026

The World Needs More Resilient Kids, Kara Driggs

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

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The Effect Of Singlehood On Socioemotional Health, Alexa Garner Apr 2026

The Effect Of Singlehood On Socioemotional Health, Alexa Garner

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

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