Digital Commons Network^™

A Solution For Safe Pivot Transfers In A Population With Limited Mobility, Elizabeth A. Mitchell, Sean R. Giamportone

Honors Theses

Sit-to-stand pivot transfers are one of the most frequently performed movements for

individuals with limited mobility. This movement is very often performed in long-term care

facilities and clinics. Despite the commonality, this transfer poses a significant risk of injury to

both the patient and caregiver; falls, musculoskeletal injuries, and the reduction of independence

can result from issues associated with these transfers. Existing assistive devices, Hoyer lifts and

sliding boards, present limitations with cost, size, storage, and usability; thus, caregivers rely on

the hands-on manual transfer that increases the risk of injury. The goal of our team was to

address these …

Pop Prophets: How Celebrity Culture Shapes Gen Z'S Worldview, Olivia G. Usie

Honors Theses

Generation Z has grown up in a social environment shaped by constant connectivity, digital communication, and immediate access to the lives of others. Because of this, celebrity culture and pop culture may play a larger role in shaping attitudes, behaviors, and identity than they did for previous generations. This study explores how celebrity culture shapes Gen Z’s worldview through four areas: pop culture, celebrity, herd mentality, and cancel culture.

A mixed-method approach was used. Quantitative data was collected through a 28-question survey of 202 participants ages 18–25. Qualitative data was gathered through one focus group of eight participants and three …

Structural Design And Analysis Of The Civil Engineering Capstone Project, William R. Webster

Honors Theses

The structural elements of a office building designed for the University of Mississippi civil engineering senior design project were designed and analyzed. The proposed building is a shared office building located on an empty parcel on Oxford Commons Boulevard. Using the 2018 International Building Code (IBC), the structural loads were determined to be the following: 20 psf roof live load, 20 psf dead load, 20 psf snow load, and 15.6 psf rain load. These loads yielded a factored LRFD design load of 56 pdf. Using these loads and manuals provided by Nucor Vulcraft, the roof deck was determined to be …

Optimization And Dynamic Control Of Acetone Production From Isopropyl Alcohol, Thomas W. Wasson

Honors Theses

This paper investigates the optimization and dynamic control of acetone production via catalytic dehydrogenation of isopropyl alcohol. Optimization was conducted using steady-state Aspen Plus modeling with product specifications of 30,000 metric tons per year of 99.9% pure acetone by weight. Dynamic modeling of the feed preparation and reaction portions of the process was conducted in Aspen Plus Dynamic. Through optimization efforts the primary economic factor, net present value (NPV), was increased from $(126.6) million to $(83.2) million, representing a $43.4 million increase. This was primarily accomplished through a switch to low temperature catalyst, optimization of reactor dimensions, pressurization of key …

Storytelling As A Pedagogical Tool For Improving Memory In Lectures, Sydney E. Rutter

Honors Theses

The purpose of the study was to examine if utilizing storytelling in lectures caused a positive effect on students' memory over a week-long period. Storytelling has been used as a mnemonic device to improve memory, however its benefits have not been experimented much in higher education. In this study, 53 undergraduate psychology students were placed into two groups: traditional lecture or storytelling lecture. Students then watched the lecture they were assigned, both lectures discussed the ASURE model. A week later, students returned and took a 17 question memory test. Results indicated that students who watched the storytelling lecture performed significantly …

Spaceforge: Spatial Reconstruction For Signal Simulations, Compton Ross

Honors Theses

Signal simulation environments require accurate three dimensional representations of physical spaces, yet current methods for generating these representations, including Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanning, manual 3D modeling, and commercial photogrammetry, are both costly and time intensive. SpaceForge addresses this gap with a prompt guided pipeline that takes an ordinary indoor photograph and a configurable set of simulation relevant object categories as input and produces a voxelized 3D scene compatible with downstream signal simulation workflows. The pipeline proceeds through five major stages: open set object detection and segmentation, object level preprocessing, single image 3D mesh reconstruction, heuristic pose estimation and …

Antibiotic Resistance Patterns In Bacterial Isolates From Mississippi Gulf Coastal Environments, Lawler F. Horn

Honors Theses

Coastal environments host diverse microbial communities that play essential ecological roles but may also serve as reservoirs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This study investigated patterns of antibiotic resistance in microbial isolates collected from public beaches along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A total of 143 bacterial isolates exhibited growth and were included in antibiotic susceptibility screening. High levels of antibiotic resistance were observed, with 137 of 143 isolates showing growth on vancomycin, 124 on amoxicillin, and 102 on erythromycin. Resistance to kanamycin (19/143 isolates) and tetracycline (33/143) was less common. Multidrug resistance was widespread, with 101 isolates (70.6%) resistant to three or …

Belonging, Participation, And Student Success: Evaluating The Academic Impact Of The Biology Mentor Program At The University Of Mississippi, Cole B. Davidson

Honors Theses

This thesis examines whether students’ sense of belonging within the biology department and their participation in the University of Mississippi Biology Mentor Program are associated with success in introductory biology. The project used de-identified departmental survey data and program records collected across multiple semesters in the broader archive from fall 2020 through spring 2025. For the final analyses, course outcome records, mentor attendance records, and survey based belonging records were merged by student code and semester. After removing nonbinary outcome labels and retaining cases with usable belonging data, the analytic sample included 4,299 student-semester records. The primary outcome was a …

Jtc 26: The Best Decision They Almost Did Not Make, Alex Sims

University of Mississippi News

This story is part of the 2026 Journey to Commencement series, which celebrates the pinnacle of the academic year by highlighting University of Mississippi students and their outstanding academic and personal journeys from college student to college graduate.

Rich Gentry Named Dean Of School Of Business Administration, Jacob Batte

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi named Rich Gentry the next dean of its School of Business Administration, pending approval by the board of trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning.

Lunar Manufacturing Systems And The Role Of Additive Recycling Technologies, Camille A. Newman

Honors Theses

Renewed international interest in sustained lunar exploration has created a growing demand for technologies to support long-duration space exploration. Part of the recent Artemis missions and the Moon to Mars initiative is to improve key mission capabilities and fill critical gaps necessary to sustain lunar habitation. Waste management, recycling systems, and manufacturing systems have been identified as critical technologies that need further development before a sustained mission is possible. This thesis explores the feasibility of an additive manufacturing and recycling system designed to process plastic waste generated during extended lunar habitation. Initial research focused on existing manufacturing and recycling technologies …

A Remote Sensing Approach To Identifying Zones Of Instability In Mine Tailings Impoundments Using Multi-Sensor Satellite Data, Arden K. Pierce

Honors Theses

Mine tailings impoundments are structures built to contain the chemical and sedimentary byproducts generated by ore extraction activities. In this common method of mining waste storage, the tailings can be pumped into containment ponds and held behind earthen embankments to prevent the release of hazardous substances into the surrounding environment. Monitoring environmental factors that influence the structural integrity of these impoundments is essential for identifying areas vulnerable to instability and failure. Soil moisture is a factor that can affect the stability of mine tailings impoundment structures. This study evaluates the relationship between satellite-derived soil moisture and surface deformation at mine …

Lunar Manufacturing Systems And The Role Of Additive Recycling Technologies, Camille A. Newman

Honors Theses

Renewed international interest in sustained lunar exploration has created a growing demand for technologies to support long-duration space exploration. Part of the recent Artemis missions and the Moon to Mars initiative is to improve key mission capabilities and fill critical gaps necessary to sustain lunar habitation. Waste management, recycling systems, and manufacturing systems have been identified as critical technologies that need further development before a sustained mission is possible. This thesis explores the feasibility of an additive manufacturing and recycling system designed to process plastic waste generated during extended lunar habitation. Initial research focused on existing manufacturing and recycling technologies …

Not An Afterthought: Addressing The Academic And Social Challenges That Create Barriers To Belonging For Transfer Students, Brooke Jankowsky

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the academic and social barriers to belonging for transfer students at four-year institutions, with particular attention to the University of Mississippi. The goal is to bring attention to the issues that surround transfer student populations in general by identifying some of the most pressing structural and interpersonal challenges that shape their experiences. A qualitative approach was used, drawing on existing literature, prior unpublished research at the community college level, and reflective analysis to explore themes such as transfer shock, creating and maintaining social networks, and gaps in institutional support. Findings suggest that transfer students often face a …

How Ux Design Shapes Brand Perception In Digital Environments Among Gen Z, Adriane R. Arinder

Honors Theses

This study examines how user experience (UX) design shapes brand perception among young adult consumers, with a focus on digitally active individuals between the ages of 18 and 25. Drawing on a review of academic and industry literature, qualitative data from a focus group of seven University of Mississippi students, and quantitative data from a survey of 153 participants, this research argues that intuitive, accessible digital experiences function as a form of brand communication that significantly influences how users evaluate the companies behind them. The study conceptualizes UX through four primary dimensions: usability, navigation clarity, interaction efficiency, and accessibility. Findings …

Jtc 26: 'It’S Not Too Late', Pam Starling

University of Mississippi News

This story is part of the 2026 Journey to Commencement series, which celebrates the pinnacle of the academic year by highlighting University of Mississippi students and their outstanding academic and personal journeys from college student to college graduate.

Jtc 26: Shift Of Perspective Leads To Career Path, Kylie Eggert

University of Mississippi News

This story is part of the 2026 Journey to Commencement series, which celebrates the pinnacle of the academic year by highlighting University of Mississippi students and their outstanding academic and personal journeys from college student to college graduate.

Federated Learning And Blockchain-Enabled Framework For Secure And Intelligent Healthcare Systems, Jerina Eda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence is transforming healthcare delivery, particularly in chronic disease management and patient monitoring. However, significant challenges remain in ensuring data privacy, system security, and reliable real-time monitoring while maintaining diagnostic accuracy. This thesis presents a comprehensive investigation into secure, decentralized, and intelligent healthcare systems through three interconnected research contributions addressing these critical challenges.

First, we conduct a comprehensive survey of AI applications across major healthcare domains including Chronic Kidney Disease, Diabetes Mellitus, Cardiovascular Disease, and cancer. Through systematic review of over 150 studies published between 2017 and 2024, we examine how machine learning techniques are applied to diverse medical …

The Impact Of Palm Cooling On The Physiological And Cognitive Function Of Aerobically Trained Individuals, Katherine L. Tibbs

Honors Theses

Background: Cooling strategies have been shown to combat the harmful effects that an increase in body temperature can potentially cause, and palm cooling in particular has been adopted due to its effectiveness in mitigating muscle fatigue during exercise. While there is clear support that this improves muscular strength and endurance, there is a lack of research on the impact palm cooling has on the mental aspect of physical activity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the cognitive and physiological effects of palm cooling on aerobic exercise performance. Methods: Ten aerobically trained participants between the ages of 18-35 were …

Ccr5 Sulfopeptide Library And O-Glycosylated Amino Acids As Chemical Tools For Probing Chemokine Receptor Recognition, Mostafa Mohammed Mohammed Ali Eldeen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chemokine-receptor interactions play a central role in immune regulation and disease pathogenesis, particularly through CCR5, a receptor engaged by chemokines such as CCL3, CCL4, and CCL5. Post-translational modifications of the CCR5 N-terminus—including tyrosine sulfation at positions 3, 10, 14, and 15, and O-glycosylation at serine 6—critically modulate chemokine recognition and selectivity. However, the impact of specific sulfation patterns on chemokine binding and the synergistic effects of combined sulfation and glycosylation remain incompletely understood. This thesis presents a two-project chemical approach to systematically investigate CCR5 post-translational modifications. In Project 1, a comprehensive 16-member library of CCR5???? sulfopeptides representing all possible combinations …

Study Of Binary Hypothesis Testing Using Deep Learning, Sadhana Geddam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Binary hypothesis testing is a fundamental problem in statistical signal processing and decision theory, with applications in communications, radar systems, and distributed sensor networks. Classical approaches, particularly the likelihood ratio test (LRT), provide optimal detection performance when the underlying probability distributions are known. However, in many practical scenarios, the resulting decision rules can become analytically complex or computationally intensive, especially in multi-sensor and dependent data settings.

This thesis investigates the use of neural networks for binary hypothesis testing under diverse statistical conditions. A data-driven framework is developed to learn decision rules directly from observed data, enabling the approximation of likelihood …

Semantically Grounded Evaluation For Open-Vocabulary Human-Object Interaction Detection, Maja Noack

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Open-vocabulary human–object interaction (HOI) detection is a step towards building scal¬able systems that generalize to unseen interactions in real-world scenarios and support grounded multimodal systems that reason about human–object relationships. However, stan¬dard evaluation metrics, such as mean Average Precision (mAP), treat HOI classes as dis¬crete categorical labels and fail to credit semantically valid but lexically different predictions (e.g., “lean on couch” vs. “sit on couch”), limiting their applicability for evaluating open-vocabulary predictions that go beyond any predefined set of HOI labels. I introduce SHOE (Semantic HOI Open-Vocabulary Evaluation), a new evaluation framework that incorporates semantic similarity between predicted and ground-truth …

Secondary English Teachers’ Perceptions Regarding The Impact, If Any, Of Shifts In The Emphasis Of History Education On Students’ Comprehension Of Literature, Bailey J. Poole

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study explored secondary English teachers’ perceptions of the emphasis on history education and its perceived impact on their students’ comprehension of literature. This research used an interpretivist approach and a conceptual framework shaped by schema theory and constructivism to understand whether teachers perceived a shift in the value of history education, how they described such shifts, if any, and how they responded instructionally to those shifts, if necessary.

Data was collected through six semi-structured interviews with 11th and 12th grade English Language Arts teachers from public high schools in Mississippi, each with a minimum of ten years teaching …

Computational Investigation Of Nanoconfinement Effects On Gas Separation In Copolymer/Ionic Liquid Membranes, Azam Salmankhani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The separation of carbon dioxide (CO2) from methane (CH4) is a critical process in natural gas upgrading and carbon management, yet conventional membrane materials suffer from inherent trade offs between selectivity and permeability. Ionic liquid (IL)-based membranes offer high CO2 affinity and tunable chemistry, but the mechanisms governing gas transport under nanoconfinement remain poorly understood, especially the roles of confinement geometry and interfacial ordering in controlling gas selectivity and permeability. This dissertation addresses this challenge through a multiscale computational investigation of nanoconfined ionic liquid membranes. Mesoscale simulations are used to determine how block copolymer composition and ionic liquid loading control …

Disturbances In A Convergece Zone: Artisanal Fishers And The Making Of The Nearshore In Northern Coastal Peru, Leigh Shattuck Rodi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to study how artisanal fishers in northern coastal Peru interpret and respond to environmental change provoked by three sources of harm: climate change, overfishing, and contamination. Drawing from six and a half weeks of ethnographic fieldwork among artisanal fishers in Lobitos, Peru, this paper foregrounds the concept of the nearshore assemblage to highlight the ever-shifting relations between humans and marine ecologies that constitute littoral and oceanic worlds. Artisanal fishers utilize discriminatory, non-mechanical methods to fish in a protected section of Peru’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Fishing livelihoods in this space were previously possible because the convergence of …

Staying In Stem?: A Qualitative Exploration Of Women’S College Classroom Experiences In Stem Education, Sarah Dapaah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Women leave STEM not because of a lack of ability, but because of the classroom and institutional conditions they encounter once they arrive. This study examines how classroom experiences shape women’s decisions to persist in or leave STEM majors at the college level. Drawing on the sociological frameworks of doing gender, gendered organizations, and intersectionality, this study explores how gender, race, and class shape women’s experiences of belonging, support, discouragement, and recognition in STEM. Using 21 semi-structured interviews and 4 classroom observations at the University of Mississippi, the study analyzes the experiences of undergraduate women who remained in STEM, women …

Connecting The Dots: Hbcus, Access To Ai Education, And The Realities Of Public-Private Collaboration, Whitney Wells

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape workforce demands and educational priorities, this partnership has emerged as a potentially effective mechanism for advancing equitable access to emerging technologies. However, limited research has explored how and why diverse organizations engage in such collaborations, particularly in regions facing persistent educational and economic disparities. This study examines the organizational motivations driving participation in the Mississippi AI Collaborative (MAIC), a multi-sector partnership involving a higher education institution, industry partners, nonprofits, and a K-12 system. While the MAIC focuses specifically on AI education and training, the purpose of this study is not to examine AI …

Exploring Integrated Arts Education For Students With Autism, Karen Denise Harrison

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often misunderstood because of challenges in communication, social-emotional development, and sensory processing. Neuroscience research highlights that individuals with ASD process information and stimuli differently, particularly in areas related to sensory integration, executive functioning, and emotional regulation. Traditional educational methods often isolate these students from their neurotypical peers, reducing opportunities to engage meaningfully with standards-based curricula. Integrated arts education offers an alternative approach, aligning with neuroscience principles by engaging multiple brain regions through movement, rhythm, imagery, and creativity, allowing students with ASD to demonstrate their learning through project-based and creative experiences that meet diverse …

Kairosformer: Hybrid Transformer For Time Series Forecasting, Koichi Nishida

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Long-term time-series forecasting is a fundamental problem in real-world applications such as financial modeling and weather forecasting. While Transformer-based architectures have shown strong performance in sequence modeling like natural language processing and computer vision, their direct application to time-series forecasting faces challenges including quadratic computational complexity and capturing inherent temporal dependencies. Recent works such as Informer and Autoformer address these limitations through sparse attention mechanisms and series decomposition, but introduce trade-offs between predictive accuracy and computational efficiency.

In this thesis, we propose Kairosformer, a Transformer-based architecture for long-horizon time-series forecasting that integrates probabilistic attention with series-wise temporal aggregation. By combining …

Adversarial Llm-Gans For Robust Synthetic Pharmaceutical Data In Self-Emulsifying Drug Delivery Systems, Samiul Islam Niloy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The formulation of self-emulsifying drug delivery systems (SEDDS) represents a pivotal advancement in improving the oral bio-availability of poorly water-soluble pharmaceutical compounds, yet traditional development is heavily hindered by limited experimental datasets and the complexity of predicting key quality attributes like nanoparticle size and drug release profiles. Because empirical methodologies struggle to balance formulation constraints with predictive accuracy, this research introduces a comprehensive framework that leverages state-of-the-art generative artificial intelligence to synthesize realistic, constraint-compliant SEDDS datasets. The study proposes two primary methodologies to overcome data scarcity: a novel Drug Formulation Agent (DFA) powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) and a …