Digital Commons Network^™

Unmasking The Global Crisis Of Misinformation: Its Devastating Impact On Leadership And Public Health, Kazi S. Salsabil

LEAD Scholars Academy Showcase

With the advancement of information access, the global community faces the growing dilemma of misinformation. The sources we rely on such as news, social media, and other media platforms play a critical role in our daily decisions, particularly in health and politics. Moreover, research has shown that misinformation has contributed to significant events such as election crises and the global pandemic. The purpose of this project is to address the global crisis of misinformation on leadership and Public health. The aim is to understand the causes and effects of this dilemma while determining more effective solutions that can create a …

Bilingual Education And Academic Performance, Gaspar Dantas

LEAD Scholars Academy Showcase

Bilingual education plays a crucial role in fostering cognitive benefits and promoting academic success, especially in multilingual societies. However, disparities in access to quality bilingual programs and inconsistent policies have led to inequities, particularly affecting Latinx and immigrant communities (Baker, 2011; Gándara & Contreras, 2009). Historical policies, limited funding, and misconceptions about bilingualism have hindered progress (Crawford, 2004). To address these challenges, recommendations include expanding dual-language immersion programs, and securing equitable funding through policy reforms (Baker, 2011; Gándara & Contreras, 2009). A sustained commitment to these efforts is essential to overcome systemic barriers and provide equal educational opportunities for all …

Spanish-Speaking Parents' Comprehension Of School-Based Speech Therapy Documentation, Daria Hernandez

LEAD Scholars Academy Showcase

Navigating speech-language therapy in schools can feel overwhelming for many families, and for Hispanic parents, language barriers and limited health literacy (HL) skills may intensify this challenge. There is a significant gap in research on health literacy strategies used by school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs). This issue becomes more critical when examining how Spanish-speaking parents navigate Spanish translations of essential documents like IEPs. This gap emphasizes the urgent need for research in this area, and my project seeks to help address it.

Robust Multiple Change Point Detection For Streaming Data, Randyll Pandohie

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

The growing prevalence of high-frequency, high-dimensional data streams in domains such as finance, cybersecurity, and industrial monitoring has intensified the demand for real-time multiple change point detection methods. These methods are expected to identify distributional shifts as they occur while also determining the number and locations of change points—even in the presence of noise, outliers, and limited labeled data. Traditional batch-based approaches and many existing machine learning models fall short in streaming contexts due to their reliance on static datasets and sensitivity to contamination.

This thesis proposes a unified framework for robust multiple change point detection in streaming environments. The …

How Fiscal And Labor Policies Influence Hospitality Entrepreneurship: A Panel Data Analysis, Mehmet Altin

Journal of Hospitality Financial Management

This study investigates how state-level fiscal and labor policies influence the creation of hospitality firms in the United States from 2002 to 2022. Using a panel dataset and fixed- effects models with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors, we analyze the effects of corporate, sales, property, and income taxes, along with minimum wage laws and educational attain- ment. We separate the results among accommodation and food service subsectors to iden- tify specific policy sensitivities. Our findings disclose that tax and labor policy impacts are highly sector-specific and context-dependent. Especially, minimum wage increases are pos- itively associated with firm formation in lower-income, lower-education states, …

Leading Change, Saving Lives: The Leadership Behind The National Marrow Donor Program, Madison Rhubart, Isabella De Araujo Mota

High Impact Practices Student Showcase Fall 2025

As part of the LEAD Scholar Academy service-learning project, our group partnered with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives through cell therapy and bone marrow donation. The purpose of our project was to support NMDP’s mission of expanding the marrow donor registry and to explore how leadership principles can be applied through meaningful community engagement.

Our volunteer work included assembling and labeling swab kits, assisting with donor registration drives, and educating UCF students about the importance of joining the registry. Through these activities, we not only contributed to lifesaving outreach efforts but also …

Predicting Milk Quality With Machine Learning, Franco Vidal, Matthew Nighting-Henderson​

High Impact Practices Student Showcase Spring 2025

Milk is a critical component of diets around the world, offering essential nutrients such as protein, calcium, and vitamin B12. However, in many low-income and rural regions, milk quality is often compromised due to poor storage conditions, lack of pasteurization, and even intentional adulteration. Low-quality milk poses serious health risks, including bacterial infections, toxin exposure, and long-term organ damage. These challenges highlight the need for reliable, accessible methods to assess milk quality without relying on costly laboratory testing.

In this study, we propose a data-driven approach to predict milk quality using ordered logistic regression. The dataset used, sourced from Kaggle, …

Bringing Military History To Life, Nathan T. Chamberlain

High Impact Practices Student Showcase Spring 2025

The purpose of this project was to be able to learn about public history in a military history setting. The two key activities that I did were; creating an exhibit for a fellow Navy Veteran, and helping with an Oral History event at the museum where we heard from two World War II veterans. The exhibit was especially important to me as it helped me to tell the story of a fellow Navy Veteran. It was also a helpful experience for me to be able to create all of the advertising for the oral history event. These projects helped me …

The Cypress Dome 2025, Issue 36, The Cypress Dome Society

The Cypress Dome

The Cypress Dome Society is the University of Central Florida’s literary organization staffed by undergraduate students. Named after a feature of the landscape on the UCF campus, we are dedicated to fostering the literary arts and promoting a sense of community among writers and artists through events and our annual publication, The Cypress Dome, UCF’s undergraduate literary journal

Development Of Generalizable Data-Driven Traffic State Prediction Solutions: A Comprehensive Approach, Md Mobasshir Rashid

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Increased urbanization and population growth lead to more traffic in the transportation system, causing severe congestion. Particularly during disruptive events such as hurricanes or traffic incidents, the traffic flow in the network worsens significantly. As a result, there is a need for data-driven traffic prediction models to reduce congestion in real-time, and the prediction model should be generalizable to be applicable across different dynamic scenarios. Additionally, a robust and adaptable traffic prediction model can help traffic managers to take proactive actions to optimize traffic flow. However, the majority of data-driven traffic prediction models suffer from limited applicability as they are …

Novel Nanomaterial-Based Platforms For Bio-Electrochemical Sensing And Photocatalytic Treatment Of Contaminants Of Emerging Concern In Water, Jonghyun Baik

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

This dissertation presents the development of novel nanomaterial-based platforms for bio-electrochemical sensing and photocatalytic treatment of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in water, including heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and microcystin toxins. Conventional detection and remediation methods are often costly, time-consuming, and impractical for field use. To overcome these limitations, in this dissertation, five distinct platforms were designed, developed, and evaluated under various water conditions.

First, a microbial fuel cell (MFC)-based biosensor was developed for detecting heavy metals (Cu²⁺ and Hg²⁺) and PAHs (benzene and xylene). The system exhibited rapid, linear …

Assessment Of The Safety Culture In Petrochemical Industries In Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study, Ahmed Mohammed Alqarfi

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Given the inherently hazardous nature of petrochemical operations, an effective safety culture is critical. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, 29 peer-reviewed articles published in open access between 2014 and 2024 were selected to evaluate the status of safety culture dimensions employed in the petrochemical sector. This cross-sectional study assessed safety culture in the Saudi Arabian petrochemical industry and examined the relationships among safety culture dimensions, safety motivation (SM), and safety performance. Safety performance was operationalized as personal error behavior (PEB) and attitudes toward violations (ATV), with SM modeled as a mediating factor. After obtaining IRB approval, a total of 482 employees …

Development Of A Data-Driven Decision Support System For Intelligent Traffic Management At Intersections, B M Tazbiul Hassan Anik

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Intersections are complex traffic environments where frequent vehicle and pedestrian interactions can lead to safety- and mobility-critical (SMC) conditions. Identifying these conditions promptly is crucial, as delays may result in missed interventions, thereby heightening crash risk, and diminishing operational efficiency. This dissertation introduces a data-driven, real-time decision support framework for the identification and mitigation of SMC conditions using High-Resolution Traffic Controller Data (HTCD) collected via Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures (ATSPM) system and Connected Vehicle (CV) data from Signal Analytics. First, an end-to-end analytical pipeline was developed to transform HTCD into actionable safety and mobility measures. A Bayesian beta-binomial framework, …

Small Ripple, Big Waves: Individual Political Attitudes, Populism, Illiberalism And Democratic Resilience, Paulo Ricardo Valle

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Why do individuals who support democracy also endorse populist and illiberal attitudes? Current literature focuses efforts on exploring the role that institutions and political actors have in democracy resilience (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2019; Merkel & Lührmann, 2021). However, relatively few academic works have examined this phenomenon at the individual level. With the aim to exploring the causal effect between individual political attitudes, anti-democratic threats, and democratic resilience at the individual level, this study applies a micro-level theoretical approach to assess how individuals’ political attitudes toward populism and illiberalism affect their support for democratic values. To test the hypotheses, this study …

An Ailment I Will Fight With: Differential Diagnosis And Methodology Evaluation Of Possible Treponemal Infection At Dayr Al-Barsha, Egypt, Lindsey D. Lefebvre

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Treponemal diseases, including bejel, yaws, pinta, and venereal syphilis, have long plagued human populations and continue to pose public health challenges today. Despite their persistent global presence, the origins, transmission pathways, and archaeological identification of these diseases—caused by various subspecies of Treponema pallidum—remain contested. This study explores the utility of standardized diagnostic criteria, as proposed by Baker et al. (2020), in assessing the presence of treponemal disease in highly fragmentary skeletal remains from the Roman-period necropolis at Dayr al Barsha, Egypt. Through the examination of 14 individuals, this research seeks to (1) identify indicators consistent with bejel (T.p. …

Determining Essential Attributes For Experience And Satisfaction In The Customer 4.0 Era: A Kano Model Approach, Cintia Z. Buffon

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

The world is constantly changing, with rapid technological advancements and increased digital connectivity shaping daily activities. In this evolving landscape, customers have transformed into what is known as Customer 4.0—a new generation of consumers who expect high levels of personalization, digital engagement, and greater transparency from organizations. These expectations extend to higher education, where students demand more customized learning experiences, interactive content, and digital accessibility. This research investigates engineering students' preferences regarding educational attributes aligned with Customer 4.0 characteristics using the Kano model. While the Kano model has been widely applied across industries, its use in higher education remains limited. …

Investigating The Impacts Of Peer Support And Online Information Seeking In Chronic Pain Online Health Communities, Aaron Necaise

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Chronic pain is a highly prevalent medical condition that contributes to intense emotional distress and social isolation in patients. With the growth of social media, online health communities (OHCs) have become a popular resource for patients to learn about their pain and establish social connections with peers. Although there is some evidence suggesting that curated online resources can benefit patient well-being, social media interactions have the potential to propagate medical misinformation and negativity. This dissertation expands upon the Social Communication Model of Pain to examine how interactions within social media-based OHCs impact chronic pain and uncover practical insights into OHC …

Towards Safe And Reliable Ai Models, Zihang Zou

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, its applications have become indispensable in our daily lives. Emerging advanced AI models, from general-purpose Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Deepseek to domain-specific systems such as autopilot for autonomous vehicles, are changing the way we work and live by increasing efficiency and fostering innovation. However, these advancements also bring significant risks, as they may compromise data ownership or yield unreliable outcomes. In response, we focus on two critical areas: data safety and model reliability. To ensure data safety and promote lawful data processing, we investigate anti-neural watermarking techniques designed to …

Contagion Chronicles: A Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Armed Conflict And Infectious Disease, Devyn Escalanti

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

This dissertation examines the relationship between armed conflict and infectious disease transmission through a novel theoretical framework that integrates ecological disturbance and health systems resilience theories into epidemiological contexts. The framework conceptualizes diseases along a continuum from "pulse" to "press." Pulse diseases, like Ebola, are characterized by sudden onset, high mortality, and short-term outbreaks. Press diseases, like HIV, progress gradually with lower mortality and long-term persistence. Grounded in this pulse–press disease typology and ecological and health systems resilience, the theory suggests that the absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity, and resilience of community health workers in conflict areas can influence disease transmission, …

Authorship Attribution Of Ai-Generated Codes, Soohyeon Choi

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

The field of code authorship attribution focuses on identifying the author(s) of source code written in a specific programming language. Various methods, including manual crafting, automated crafting, and deep learning-generated features, have been developed for this task. These techniques leverage the unique stylistic patterns inherent in code, such as structure, comments, variable names, and function names, to attribute authorship accurately. This field has practical applications in software forensics, cybersecurity, and code plagiarism detection, enabling investigations into issues like piracy, intellectual property violations, and malware attribution. In educational settings, it helps detect plagiarism in programming assignments. However, traditional methods face challenges …

Evaluating Pedestrian Behavior In Response To Innovative Detection Messages And Wait-Time Indicators At Signalized Intersections: A Virtual Reality Study, Nada K. Ahmed

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Pedestrian safety at signalized intersections remains a growing concern in urban environments, necessitating effective communication between pedestrians and traffic control devices. Traditional approaches often prove inadequate in addressing these challenges. This study utilized virtual reality simulation to examine how innovative detection systems and wait-time indicators affect pedestrian behavior under varying environmental conditions. Ninety participants evenly distributed across three age groups experienced 18 crossing scenarios that differed by detection type, wait indication, crossing time, crossing distance, visibility, traffic density, and time of day. Key behavioral measures including start-up lost time, crossing speed, and total crossing duration were analyzed using linear mixed-effects …

E-Cskpd: A Frequentist Framework For Multi-Modal High-Order Tensor Regression, Joshua D. White

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Understanding which features drive the outputs of modern learning systems remains a core challenge for regression and classification. While deep neural networks can be highly accurate, their latent representations often obscure how inputs map to decisions, limiting statistical inference, stakeholder trust, and practical use in domain decision-making. Sparse Kronecker Product Decomposition (SKPD) is a frequentist, tensor-structured approach that offers interpretable regression/classification in high dimensions. However, standard SKPD restricts relationships among predictors and covariates and is typically limited to order-2 tensors. This dissertation introduces E-CSKPD, an ensemble framework that (i) revisualizes designs to control non-imaging covariates; (ii) applies invertible, CNN-inspired transforms …

Strengthening Community Resilience Towards Infrastructure Disruptions Due To Hurricanes, Tasnuba Binte Jamal

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Extreme events such as hurricanes can significantly disrupt infrastructures, leading to negative impacts on productivity, economy, and social wellbeing. Understanding community resilience against infrastructure disruptions in response to such events is crucial for effective preparedness, mitigation, and recovery efforts. The overarching problem addressed in this dissertation centers around enhancing community resilience against infrastructure disruptions due to hurricanes. Community resilience is defined as the ability of a community to return to normalcy following a disaster. One way to enhance community resilience is to strengthen its critical lifelines and infrastructure services (e.g., power, water, transportation, internet) and capital—to reduce the likelihood of …

Inter-Basin Groundwater Flow In West-Central Florida, Sally Yousef Elrashedy Dr

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

The mean annual values of inter-basin groundwater flow (IGF) and its inter-annual and seasonal variability across 172 watersheds in west-central Florida were estimated using the Integrated Northern Tampa Bay (INTB) model, which is an application of the Integrated Hydrologic Model dynamically coupling HSPF and MODFLOW. The estimated IGF for the scenario without human fluxes shows spatial heterogeneity in the model domain ranging from -1291mm/year to 4808 mm/year, and the variability of IGF decreases with spatial scales. A region with gaining IGF is defined as groundwater importer and a region with losing IGF is defined as a groundwater exporter. The characteristics …

Integration Of System Dynamics And Agent-Based Simulation To Emulate Cyberattacks In An Iot-Based Smart Grid, Francisco Valdez

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

The electric power grid is a cyber-physical system (CPS) that plays a fundamental role in modern society. With the integration of renewable energy sources and advanced communication technologies, Smart Grids (SGs) can enhance both the profitability and reliability of the electric power system. The communication network that interconnects numerous remotely distributed generators, devices, and controllers plays a vital role in grid control, and current trends favor the widespread adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. However, this network is inherently vulnerable to cyberattacks. This dissertation presents a hybrid methodology to model and analyze the dynamic behavior of an electrical Smart …

A Comparative Analysis Of Figurines From The Lower Rio Verde Valley From Oaxaca, Raynaliz C. Velazquez

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

This thesis investigates 618 ceramic figurines from the Lower Río Verde Valley in Oaxaca, Mexico, to explore how figurine use varied across civic-ceremonial, domestic, and outlying contexts during the Terminal Formative and Late Classic periods. The central hypothesis proposes that figurines from the Río Viejo Acropolis, a civic-ceremonial center, would be larger and exhibit greater labor investment than those from residential and peripheral sites, reflecting more labor-intensive ideologies and ceremonial practices. Through typological, spatial, and material analysis, the study examines attributes such as size, surface treatment, production method, and the presence of musical elements. The dataset includes newly analyzed figurines …

Exploring The Experience Of Heart Disease Among Burmese Immigrants In The United States, Khup S. It

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

The ongoing political and military turmoil in Myanmar has resulted in a significant increase in the migration of Burmese individuals to the United States in recent years. This demographic shift has brought attention to the health challenges faced by Burmese immigrants, particularly with regard to heart disease (heart attack). The complexities of the U.S. healthcare system, compounded by legal and social barriers, place immigrants at greater risk for health disparities. This study examines the health challenges of Burmese immigrants in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with a specific focus on their perceptions and experiences related to heart disease, as explored through illness narratives. …

An Integrated Approach To Waste Management And Development Of Data Driven Decision Support Tools, Mert Gokgoz

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Municipal solid waste management requires balancing environmental performance, operational efficiency, and community participation. Proper recycling contamination in single-family units is a persistent barrier to material recovery, reducing the effectiveness of local programs by increasing recycling contamination. This dissertation develops an integrated, data-driven framework that combines behavioral modeling of communities via statistical analysis and machine learning (ML), and life cycle assessment (LCA) to support decision-making in residential waste management. The first component examines household recycling behavior using data from Orange County, Florida’s Recycling Quality Improvement Program (RQIP). Cart-tagging results were integrated with socio-demographic data from the U.S. Census to predict contamination …

Optimizing Emissions And Sustainability Of Alternative Fuel Buses Using Machine Learning And Life-Cycle Modeling, Md Rezwan Hossain

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Public transportation is undergoing a critical transition as agencies seek to balance environmental responsibility, operational efficiency, and economic viability. Alternative fuel buses (AFBs), including electric, compressed natural gas (CNG), propane, and biodiesel, offer opportunities to reduce emissions and advance sustainability, yet their adoption raises complex trade-offs. High upfront costs, infrastructure constraints, range limitations, and variable real-world performance complicate decisions for fleet managers and policymakers. This dissertation addresses these challenges by integrating real-world operational data, life-cycle modeling, and machine learning within a multi-objective optimization framework to evaluate and optimize AFB deployment. Using detailed telematics and GPS datasets from Central Florida's transit …

Design Tool For Ammonia Cracker Hardware, Andrew Menendez

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Ammonia is a promising carbon-free fuel for commercial aviation and represents a viable pathway toward net-zero emissions. However, direct ammonia combustion is inefficient, creating the need for onboard cracking to generate hydrogen for improved combustion characteristics. One pathway for onboard cracking is to have the hardware live around the combustor liner where heat generated from the combustion process can be used to sustain the reaction. This study aims to develop a design tool for the ammonia cracking reactor hardware. A simplified, single-step surface reaction mechanism was implemented using ANSYS FLUENT and CHEMKIN PRO R1, demonstrating strong agreement with experimental data …