Digital Commons Network^™

Linking Sea Ice Melt, Water-Column Structure, And Particle Distributions In The Weddell Sea, Daniel England

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Sea-ice melt strongly influences the coastal waters of Antarctica by lowering surface salinity, reducing vertical mixing, and changing MLD (mixed layer depth). These changes can affect phytoplankton biomass, particle formation, and carbon export. This poster examines how meltwater, and mixed layer depth relate to fluorescence, particle abundance, and particle biovolume in the Weddell Sea region of the Western Antarctic Peninsula. CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) casts from the Polar Rapid cruise were used to analyze temperature, salinity, density, and fluorescence across multiple transects, and stations. Salinity was used to estimate meltwater percent in the water column, while density and temperature were used to …

The Invisible Threat: Traditional Culture-Based Monitoring Misses The Vbnc State, Sarah Fee

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

All living organisms share a fundamental biological drive to survive through adaptation. In drinking water systems, pathogens like E. coli utilize survival mechanisms to withstand the chemical disinfectants designed to eliminate them. While treatment with free chlorine or monochloramine successfully stops bacteria from multiplying into colonies, many cells respond to this oxidative stress by shifting into a viable but non-culturable (VBNC) state. In this state, bacteria remain physically intact and potentially virulent but fail to grow on standard agar plates, effectively “disappearing” from the conventional monitoring used to verify water safety. This investigation resolves this monitoring blind spot by utilizing …

Temporal Graph Networks With Dynamic Mode Decomposition For Iomt Threat And Risk Detection, Thinh Pham

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

The growing use of interconnected medical devices expands the attack surface of healthcare networks and creates the possibility that a compromise affecting one device, gateway, or communication channel may propagate through connected systems, producing cascading operational and patient-safety consequences. This research investigates whether temporal graph learning can improve intrusion detection and dynamic cyber-risk assessment in Internet of Medical Things networks. A Temporal Graph Network represents network flows as time-ordered interactions between communicating devices, uses each interaction to update their evolving behavioral profiles. The model jointly supports attack-type classification, anomaly detection, and dynamic risk scoring. The design also explores Dynamic Mode …

Digitizing An Assessment Protocol To Screen Bilingual Children For Developmental Language Disorder Risk, Ava De La Cruz, Anna Soares M.S., M. Adelaida Restrepo Phd

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

By integrating technology into assessment protocols, administration becomes more streamlined and scores become quicker to calculate. It opens doors for portable evaluations and data, efficient result analysis, and easily searchable records. To take advantage of these benefits, this project developed a digital version of the form used in the Spanish Screener for Language Impairment in Children (SSLIC). SSLIC screens Spanish-English bilingual children for the risk of DLD, utilizing subtests focused on morphology, sentence repetition, and other language-specific measures. Through the survey and database management tool REDCap, each section of SSLIC’s protocol was converted into a digital survey for researchers to …

In Vitro Evaluation Of A 405-Nm Blue-Light–Emitting Antimicrobial Bandage Using Micrococcus Luteus, Daniel W. Wallace, Joseph M. Busher

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Postoperative wound infections remain a major clinical challenge, worsened by rising antibiotic resistance and passive dressings that fail to reduce bacterial growth. Antimicrobial blue light near 405 nanometers shows broad-spectrum bactericidal activity, yet most prior approaches use short, high-intensity illumination from stationary sources rather than continuous, wearable delivery. This study evaluates a wearable 405-nanometer blue-light bandage designed for continuous, low-intensity exposure suited to prolonged wound-adjacent use. Antimicrobial performance was assessed in vitro using Micrococcus luteus, a safe model organism, comparing continuous exposure to matched dark controls. Exposure produced a pronounced, time-dependent reduction in bacterial viability, with near-complete suppression of detectable …

Chemical Effects Of Microplastics On Photochemistry In A Coral-Associated Zooxanthella, Meghan A. Hennings, Matz Indergard, John E. Parkinson

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Coral bleaching is the process by which corals lose their symbiotic microalgae in response to stressful conditions. These photosymbionts, known as zooxanthellae, give corals their color and sustain host growth through mutualistic nutritional exchange. Bleaching events are becoming more common and severe, driving research into coral conservation and the resilience of each partner in the symbiosis. Yet it is unknown how certain pollutants, such as microplastics, may affect bleaching outcomes. Previous research in our laboratory has demonstrated that the presence of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) microplastics inhibits bleaching recovery in sea anemones (a coral model), but it remains unclear whether the …

Alterations In Intracellular Pathways By Structured Acoustics Across Mammalian Model Systems, Mary B. Holahan, A'Niya Jackson, Jose Rumbaut-Clark, Elaina Schuler, Arnav Chavda, Thanh Mai Nguyen, Junaina Nazneen, Ana Beatriz-Melgar, Sarah Hedenstad, Emily Hernandez

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Music can be defined as structured sound that serves as a “universal language” capable of influencing emotion, cognition, and social connectivity in humans. Its formal application into the medical profession began in the 20th century, following World War I and II.  Human subject research involving music therapy has since reported a myriad of health benefits such as those on emotional (e.g., anxiety, depression, and stress), neurological (e.g., cognitive impairment, sleep issues, and dementia), and physical well-being (e.g., pain, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia). However, the impact of such structured acoustics on biological processes at the cellular and molecular level remains unclear. Towards …

Photophysical Study Of A Cyclopropenium Azobenzene-Based Photoswitch, Amya Culbreath, Gabriella Oliver, Chavdar Slavov

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Ionic liquids are salts that exist as liquids at or near room temperature and are of interest because their structures can be tuned to control properties such as viscosity, polarity, solvation environment, and molecular organization. Incorporating photoswitches into ionic liquids offers a strategy for introducing light-responsive behavior, where reversible structural changes can be used to dynamically modulate liquid structure and function. Here, we present the synthesis of a photoswitchable ionic liquid and investigate its dynamic properties using ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy. Our results provide insight into how molecular photoswitching influences ionic liquid structure and dynamics, guiding the development of ionic …

Ladbench: A Benchmark For Logical Fault Detection In Images, Sahasra Kondapalli, Lara Radovanovic, Mingyang Mao, Aadi Palnitkar

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Large Vision Language Models (VLMs) excel at visual question answering and semantic grounding, but their capacity for autonomous logical reasoning remains underexplored. Existing anomaly benchmarks emphasize visual errors or direct prompting rather than the physical and social common sense needed for open-world deployment. To address this, we introduce LAD-bench, a benchmark of more than 1,000 curated synthetic images with logical anomalies across four domains: Residential, Urban, Collaborative, and Nature. We further propose a Tiered Prompting Protocol based on progressive disclosure, which measures how much explicit assistance a model needs to localize and reason about a logical fault. Evaluating leading foundation …

Llm-Assisted Detection And Repair Of Hardware Security Vulnerabilities In Verilog Designs, Ethen Santana, Gabriel Gyaase

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Hardware designs, like software, are susceptible to bugs that can introduce security vulnerabilities and create opportunities for malicious exploitation. Unlike software vulnerabilities, however, hardware flaws become permanently embedded in silicon after fabrication, making them difficult or impossible to patch. Many of these weaknesses are categorized under the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) framework and include improper access control, exposure of sensitive information, and unintended privilege escalation. To improve the detection of such vulnerabilities, we propose a methodology that leverages a Large Language Model (LLM) to identify potential hardware CWEs directly from hardware designs in Verilog. The proposed approach is evaluated iteratively …

Smartphone-Based Profiling Of Industrial Control Systems Using Magnetic Side Channels, Michelle Mcaveety, Rylan Pietras, Robert Karam

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) have increasingly been subject to malicious cyber attacks, thus threatening the operational safety, stability, and reliability of critical infrastructure. While existing research has utilized electromagnetic, timing, and audiovisual side channels for ICS attacks, the offensive utility of magnetic side channels in these environments has yet to be explored. Utilizing the magnetometers present in modern-day smartphones, the magnetic fields produced by the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), Human-Machine Interface (HMI), Linear Actuator Controller, and AC-to-DC Power Converter are recorded. Magnetic field data then undergoes signal processing coupled with machine learning classification on extracted feature vectors to determine the …

Side-Channel Protection Through Threshold Implementation: A Case Study Of Poseidon, Siddhartha Tamma, Madison Daniella Eissayou

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

As systems grow complex, side-channel attacks pose severe threats by exploiting physical leakage, including power consumption, timing variations, and electromagnetic emissions, to infer sensitive data. To counter this, threshold implementations mask sensitive data by splitting it into randomized shares and performing intermediate computations so that no individual share reveals meaningful information. We aim to achieve a side-channel resistant architecture that eliminates statistical leakage across millions of evaluation traces. To minimize hardware overhead on the FPGA, we can time-multiplex a single protected S-box core across the cipher’s partial rounds. By decomposing the non-linear x^5 operation into cascading steps, we also aim …

Seabirds In 3d: A Framework To Evaluate Collision Vulnerability With Future Offshore Wind Developments In The California Current System, Stephanie R. Schneider, Eli Wallach, Charles Chamberlin, David G. Ainley, Scott B. Terrill, Sharon H. Kramer, R. Glenn Ford, Janet Casey, Jarrod A. Santora, Lisa T. Ballance, Sophie B. Bernstein, Sadie Trush, Arne Jacobson

Marine Ornithology

Since the 1970s, numerous vessel and aerial surveys of marine birds, covering many thousands of square kilometers, have been conducted in the California Current System (CCS), providing insights into seabirds' horizontal (2D) diversity and abundance, including the identification of “hotspots.” Addressing knowledge gaps regarding seabird distribution patterns from a 3D (vertical) perspective, however, will be required if California (CA) is to use offshore wind (OSW) facilities to assist in reaching the state's 2045 renewable energy goals. Such an analysis will allow seabirds' vertical distribution to be considered when assessing potential OSW impacts, as collision vulnerability is greatest for birds flying …

Conserving Seabirds: Actions Of The Pacific Seabird Group During Its First 40 Years., Craig S. Harrison

Marine Ornithology

The Pacific Seabird Group (PSG), founded in 1972, is “dedicated to the study and conservation of Pacific seabirds and their environment.” During its first 40 years, PSG undertook scores of conservation actions, although as an all-volunteer organization, PSG lacked the capacity to implement many programs or projects. It achieved its conservation goals through leadership, raising issues, bringing the best science to decision makers, and serving as a catalyst for others to act. PSG has been especially influential in six areas: (1) eradicating invasive alien animals from seabird colonies; (2) conserving Marbled Murrelets Brachyramphus marmoratus; (3) protecting seabird colonies in …

Reviews: Where The Earth Meets The Sky: A Story Of Penguins, People, And Place In Antarctica (Blight, L.); The Great Auk: Its Extraordinary Life, Hideous Death And Mysterious Afterlife (Birkead, T.); The Last Of Its Kind: The Search For The Great Auk And The Discovery Of Extinction (Pálsson, G.); No Island Too Far: The History Of Seabirds And Their Remote Islands (Brooke, M.), Rachel Buxton, Eric Wagner

Marine Ornithology

No abstract provided.

Behavioral Insights Into The Galapagos Penguin Spheniscus Mendiculus: A Day In His Life—An Ethological Portrait., Jonathan Cueva, Wilson Iñiguez, Gregory Marshall, Christian Sevilla, Andrea Coloma, Lorena Venegas, Gustavo Jiménez-Uzcátegui

Marine Ornithology

The Galapagos Penguin Spheniscus mendiculus, endemic to the Galápagos Archipelago, faces increasing ecological pressures threatening its population. This study aimed to characterize its daily behavioral patterns to better understand its adaptations and vulnerability to ecosystem changes. In one breeding locality, the Marielas Islets, we mounted a Crittercam on a male penguin to assess interactions with its mate and its behavior over a 24-hr period. Behaviors were classified as Diving, Foraging, Grooming, Intraspecific Interaction, Interspecific Interaction, Loafing, Prospecting, Resting, Surface Dipping, and Swimming. We analyzed behavioral data using chi-square tests and transition heat-maps. Results revealed predominantly surface behaviors—Prospecting (41.2% of …

Breeding Parameters Of The Gull-Billed Tern Gelochelidon Nilotica In Boughrara Lagoon, Southeast Tunisia., Amel Neb, Slaheddine Selmi

Marine Ornithology

We provide, for the first time, data on the breeding parameters of the Gull-billed Tern Gelochelidon nilotica in Tunisia, at Boughrara Lagoon. From May to July 2024, we monitored a breeding colony located on a small islet in the northern part of the lagoon. In total, 112 nests were monitored: 71 nests initiated in mid-May (early clutches) and 41 in early June (late nests). Clutch size ranged from one to four eggs (mean ± standard deviation [SD] = 2.51 ± 0.06), with no significant difference between early and late nesters. Egg volume ranged from 14.65 to 49.23 cm3 (mean ± …

Seabirds As Ecosystem Engineers: Providing Arthropod Habitat On Oceanic Islands., Kanon Mizukoshi, Kazuto Kawakami, Takashi Kamijo

Marine Ornithology

Seabirds play several important ecological roles on oceanic islands through their high-density breeding. Their ecosystem functions—such as nutrient cycling through excretion or terrestrial vegetation disturbance through trampling—are well known; however, little is known of their roles as ecosystem engineers. Nests and burrows can be densely concentrated in seabird colonies, by which seabirds can affect adjacent terrestrial ecosystems, especially affecting arthropods that use these structures as food or habitats. However, studies investigating the species composition of arthropods that inhabit seabird nests are limited. To characterize the arthropod faunas in seabird nests, this study surveyed and analyzed 90 nests of three seabird …

Seasonal Variation In Trophic Niche And Resource Use In Great Black-Backed Gulls Larus Marinus., Samuel Langlois Lopez, Nina J. O’Hanlon, Jared Wilson, Rona A. R. Mcgill, Francis Daunt, Elizabeth A. Masden

Marine Ornithology

Seabirds experience variable extrinsic and intrinsic pressures throughout the annual cycle that affect their ability to forage. Consequently, their foraging strategies may vary between breeding and non-breeding seasons due to the constraints of central-place foraging during the former. Here, we studied a population of a generalist seabird, the Great Black-backed Gull Larus marinus, breeding at a colony on the Isle of May, Scotland. We quantified seasonal variation in sexual segregation, trophic position, trophic niche width, and resource use by examining stable isotopes in feathers collected from adults. We found no sexual segregation, but we detected population- and individual-level shifts …

Atlantic Puffin Fratercula Arctica Mortality Along The Portuguese West Coast In Early 2023., Rute A. Costa, Ana S. Tavares, Francisca V. Hilário, Jorge Vaqueiro, Marisa Ferreira, Sara Sá, Silvia S. Monteiro, Andreia Torres-Pereira, Catarina Eira

Marine Ornithology

This study presents data about a mortality event involving Atlantic Puffins Fratercula arctica in the central region of Portugal, including information on the species' biometrics. More than 2,000 seabirds were collected from beaches between Lisbon and Matosinhos in January and February 2023, as casualties of a massive wreck. In total 444 Atlantic Puffins (171 live, 273 dead) were found and analysed. Leg bands on some birds indicated that these individuals primarily originated from colonies in Scotland. Of the live puffins that entered the Ecomare Marine Animal Rehabilitation Centre, only 18 survived to be successfully released. We conducted 426 post-mortem examinations …

Masthead, Marine Ornithology

Marine Ornithology

No abstract provided.

Summit Report: Nuclear Deterrence In An Uncertain World, Manolis Priniotakis

GNSI Summit Reports

The Global and National Security Institute’s Tampa Summit 6 took place on March 24-25, 2026, and examined a nuclear weapons environment marked by renewed uncertainty, weakened institutions, and rapid strategic change. General (Ret.) Frank McKenzie’s opening keynote framed the central challenge: The nuclear age never ended, but the United States and its allies spent much of the post-Cold War period looking away at other threats while Russia, China, North Korea, and others adapted. The world is now moving from the longstanding and relatively stable “two-body” nuclear order centered on the United States and Russia toward a far more complex “three-body” …

Wavelet-Based Multiscale Analysis Of Cave Co₂ Concentration In Response To Short-Term High-Intensity Tourism Activities: Spatiotemporal Heterogeneity And Lag Characteristics, Mingda Cao, Wenwen Song, Yan Zhang, Jie Zhang, Zhiqiang Yao

International Journal of Speleology

High-intensity tourism activities can cause a significant increase in cave air CO₂ concentration, thereby affecting the cave micro-environment and secondary carbonate deposition. During the 2023 National Day Golden Week, high-frequency continuous monitoring of cave air CO₂ partial pressure (PCO_2(A)) and visitor numbers was conducted in Dawang Cave, Anhui Province. Wavelet transform and cross-correlation analyses were used to reveal the multi-scale response characteristics of CO₂ concentration to tourism activities. The results show that: (1) PCO_2(A) exhibited clear diurnal variations (higher during the day, lower at night) and decreased spatially with enhanced ventilation, controlled jointly by …

Beyond The Driver’S Seat: A Multimodal Investigation Into The Dangers Of Distracted Behaviors In Surface Transportation, Jodi Godfrey, Gennaro Saliceto

CUTR Internal Grant Research Program

Distractions in surface transportation pose an increasing safety risk for everyone, including professional and private drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, micromobility users, and transit riders. As technology advances and travel habits change, the scope of distractions has expanded beyond drivers to all road users, forming a complex safety challenge. This report offers a thorough review of the prevalence, causes, and effects of distractions across all transportation modes, drawing on existing studies, data analysis, and expert advice on effective solutions.

The findings demonstrate how distraction is common, especially among younger age groups where mobile devices are widely used. Data from sources like the …

Editors' Introduction

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Full Issue 20.1

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Genocide In Gaza? Social Media Discussions Of Violence In Israel And Gaza, Timothy Williams, Andreas Dafnos

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article conducts social network and topic analyses of German-language posts on X that discuss genocide and terrorism in Israel and Gaza in the first six months after the October 7 attacks and compares these to broader English-language discourses on the platform. The comparison reveals subtle differences in how Israeli violence and governance and Palestinians are discussed and who is seen as complicit in supporting violence. Markedly, German-language posts discuss what constitutes antisemitism more and employ a more restrained language towards Israel as a state and its political actors than English-language posts. We tie these findings back to the idiosyncrasies …

Genocidal Criminology: My Testimony, Yarin Eski

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article is a testimony on the entanglement of my personal biography, responsibility, and lived experience of genocide denial and, subsequently, developing criminologies of genocide and its denial, based on my formative experiences, ranging from encountering Armenian genocide denial as a student, to dealing with institutional constraints and careerism, to my academic activism, raising awareness about the Gaza genocide, to, finally, prospecting genocide and ecocide in outer space: astrocide. These experiences configure a genealogy of what I term genocidal criminology that unpacks and criticizes criminological knowledge, institutions, and practices that produce genocide (denial), both epistemically and structurally. Essentially, I argue …

Arts & Literature: Gaza And The Question Of Prevention—An Interview With Bruce Robbins, Luis Gonzalez-Aponte

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Genocidal Occupation And The Occupier’S Dilemma: From Lemkin’S Axis Rule To 21st Century Palestine, Martin Shaw

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Following Israel’s campaign in Gaza after October 7, 2023, which was widely recognized as a genocide, the “ceasefire” of late 2025 introduced the prospect of a new occupation of the territory by the USA and Israel, leading to its redevelopment by them rather than the restoration of the pre-2023 Palestinian society. Together with the parallel accentuation of Palestinian dispossession under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, this development calls for a theorization of the relationship between occupation and genocide. Yet, although the concept of genocide was introduced by Raphael Lemkin in his analysis of the German occupations of European countries, …