Digital Commons Network^™

Nanoscale Morphological Perturbations Of Lipid Membranes Induced By Membrane Active Peptides, Yasith Sandeepa Indigahawela Gamage

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Membrane-active peptides (MAPs) are a diverse group of biologically relevant molecules that induce nanoscale modulations during their interactions with cell membranes. Understanding the precise mechanism by which these MAPs perturb or modulate the cell membranes is a cornerstone of membrane biophysics, as it facilitates rational design of useful therapeutics. That is, if we have the knowledge to determine what the peptide can do, how selective it is, or how toxic it might be, we can optimize them and design new peptide therapeutics such as for antimicrobial, anticancer, or drug-delivery applications. In general, MAPs can be categorized into two classes based …

The Isotopic Profile Of Plague Victims Buried On The Quarantine Islands Of Venice, Italy, Katherine L. Dunning

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis combined carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen stable isotope analysis and historical documentation to explore diet and mobility for 45 individuals whose remains were excavated from the Venetian island Lazzaretto Vecchio, where plague victims were quarantined, cared for, and buried between 1423 and 1700 CE. δ13C from bone collagen, bone apatite, and tooth enamel apatite was evaluated to determine terrestrial, aquatic, C3, and C4 contributors to diet. δ15N from bone collagen was evaluated to understand the individuals’ trophic levels. δ18O from tooth enamel apatite and bone apatite was evaluated to detect mobility over the life course. Adult diet was primarily …

Toward Intelligent Machines: Conscious Learning And Hardware-Accelerated Ai, Pavia Bera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Artificial intelligence systems excel at narrow, well-defined tasks but remain brittle at theboundaries of their training distributions: they cannot quantify uncertainty, adapt continuously to non-stationary data, or operate efficiently on energy-constrained hardware. This dissertation addresses these limitations through four coordinated contributions spanning probabilistic learning algorithms, biologically inspired temporal memory, cross-entity warning propagation via distributed associative memory, and spintronic processing-in-memory.

The first contribution introduces Boosted Bayesian Neural Networks (BBNNs), which extend standard mean-field variational inference by iteratively constructing a mixture posterior through Boosting Variational Inference. On five clinical medical classification datasets, BBNNs achieve superior uncertainty calibration—lower Negative Log-Likelihood and Expected Calibration …

Religious Higher Education In Prison In The United States: The Importance Of Well-Being, Robin L. Labarbera

Journal of Global Education and Research

A growing body of scholarship suggests that incarcerated individuals who participate in education programs, particularly those grounded in faith, are better positioned for lasting community reintegration and positive long-term outcomes. Using a mixed-methods evaluation design, the author examines two interrelated questions: whether faith-based higher education is associated with enhanced well-being among current participants and whether program graduates carry those well-being gains into post-release life. Drawing on group interviews with 109 incarcerated men and women across six U.S. facilities and surveys from 157 participants in four states, the study found that participation in a prison-based theological education program was associated with …

Bridging The Gap: Addressing Challenges And Enhancing Support For Learners Transitioning From Primary To Secondary School, Redson Nkosi, Precious Nyoni, Philogene Manirahari

Journal of Global Education and Research

This study explored the challenges students face during the transition from primary to secondary school, particularly in their final year of primary and first year of secondary school. Common concerns include bullying, making new friends, increased workload, unfriendly teachers, teasing, new subjects, and adjusting to the secondary school environment. Conducted in Malawi, Mzimba North education district at two secondary schools and one primary school, the research used a qualitative methodology, employing documentary review, interviews, focus group discussions, and observations for data collection. Findings revealed that many of the students’ fears were either confirmed, such as bullying and teacher strictness, proving …

Broadband Diffusion And Digital Preparedness In Tanzania: Harnessing The Role Of Technology In Formal Education, George Matto, John J. Iwata

Journal of Global Education and Research

Broadband, as a high-speed Internet connectivity, is an essential enabler for digital preparedness. However, little is known, in the case of Tanzania, about the nexus between broadband diffusion and digital preparedness, particularly in the facilitation of the teaching and learning process. This study, therefore, aimed at investigating the nexus between broadband diffusion and digital preparedness in Tanzania by focusing on the country’s readiness to leverage the same for formal education. The study employed a systematic review, guided by the PRISMA framework, to obtain the empirical evidence from existing literature. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes, analyze, and interpret qualitative …

Necessary Digital Competencies Of Preschool Teachers In Austria, Walter Fikisz

Journal of Global Education and Research

The aim of this paper is to identify specific digital competencies that preschool teachers require, compared with schoolteachers, to extend the Austrian digital competence model for teachers, digi.kompP. Methodologically, the study is based on interviews with Austrian experts in early childhood education, media pedagogy, computer science, and preschool teacher education. The expert interviews addressed the digital competencies required by preschool teachers, differences compared with schoolteachers, the timing and nature of competence development, and the institutions involved. As a result of this study, sixteen new can-do statements were developed for the expansion of the existing digi.kompP model, which maps the specific …

Subspace Decomposition For Spatial Parameter Estimation, Arthur Grik

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Passive emitter localization is an important capability for wireless sensing, interference detection, and spectrum awareness. Classical timing-based localization methods estimate emitter position from differences in signal arrival time across distributed sensor platforms, but their performance depends on precise receiver synchronization and favorable signal bandwidth characteristics. This thesis investigates subspace-decomposition-based spatial parameter estimation as an alternative approach in which directional information is extracted from coherent antenna-array measurements. This work develops the theoretical foundation and signal-processing framework for angle-of-arrival estimation. Various spatial parameter estimators are presented as supporting array-processing methods before focusing on a well-known subspace-decomposition-based approach called the Multiple SIgnal Classification …

A Review Of The South Central Society For Eighteenth-Century Studies (Scsecs) Annual Conference (Pinehurst, Nc 19-21 February 2026), Laura Runge-Gordon

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A conference review for the South-Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference held in Pinehurst, North Carolina February 19-21, 2026.  The conference was organized by SCECS President Catherine Parisian and featured the keynote speaker Peter Radford.

A Review Of Willow White's Feminist Comedy: Women Playwrights Of London (University Of Delaware Press, 2024), Mattie Burkert

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Willow White's Feminist Comedy: Women Playwrights of London by Mattie Burkert.

A Review Of Karen Bloom Gevirtz 'S The Apothecary's Wife (University Of California Press, 2024), Annika Mann

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Karen Bloom Gevirtz's The Apothecary's Wife by Annika Mann.

Teaching Frances Burney's Evelina With Netflix’S Bridgerton, Willow White

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This pedagogical essay explores strategies for teaching Frances Burney's first novel Evelina (1778) through comparison with Netflix's popular series Bridgerton. The essay demonstrates how Bridgerton's widespread popularity has renewed interest in Georgian literature and provides an engaging and accessible entry point for undergraduate students to explore Evelina's themes of social anxiety, gender, and coming of age.

Reading Burney’S Mastectomy Letter: Presentist Thinking And Personal Responses In The Classroom, Heather Meek

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Frances Burney’s mastectomy letter, in its graphic and detailed depiction of the operation she underwent without anesthetic in 1811, does not always lend itself immediately to standard, scholarly classroom discussion. It tends, rather, to incite unusually intimate responses, as well as conversations about medicine and health today. In my teaching of the letter in literature courses at Université de Montréal over the course of the past 13 years, I have found that students are inclined to seize upon the subject of breast cancer as especially contemporary in its relevance and to share their own anecdotal knowledge of the disease. I …

The Wanderers: Teaching The Literature Of Migration And Exile, Linda Zionkowski

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In our current global landscape, exile—or forced, often permanent migration—appears a central rather than tangential experience, being driven by armed conflict, environmental destruction, economic collapse, and political repression. The climate on many university campuses reflects students’ awareness of and concern for the situation of displaced populations, and this awareness has influenced political discourse and political action inside and outside the classroom. My course titled “The Wanderers: Teaching the Literature of Migration and Exile” begins with  Frances Burney’s narration of exilic experiences in her life writings and The Wanderer. Burney’s texts offer a conceptual foundation for exploring instances of physical …

The Secret(S) To Success: Genlis’S Guide To Raising A Foolproof Daughter, Jennifer Law-Sullivan

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Abstract: “The Secret(s) to Success: Genlis’s Guide to Raising a Foolproof Daughter”

Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis’s Adèle et Théodore ou lettres sur l’éducation, first published in 1782, is an epistolary conduct novel that examines the question of how best to educate girls. Attempts to answer the question were exceedingly in vogue in the late 18^th century and can be traced back to Fénelon’s 1681 Traité de l’éducation des filles. Genlis’s novel offers a robust critique of previous education treatises, Rousseau, and a patriarchal society that did little to educate girls and mothers. She couches her critique in a …

Skill Acquisition: Evaluation Of Instructional Procedures, Ellen I. Ratliff

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Identifying effective and efficient interventions is essential for establishing independent responding in learners with autism spectrum disorder and related developmental disabilities. The present study replicated and extended Gorgan and Kodak (2019) by comparing differential reinforcement, most-to-least prompt fading, and extended response interval procedures for teaching novel skills to three children with autism spectrum disorder who did not demonstrate prompt-dependent responding. Using an adapted alternating treatments design, each intervention was evaluated against a control condition with an equated opportunity interval. Extensions to prior research included conducting a reinforcer assessment to verify differentiation in stimulus potency, modifying the controlling prompt assessment to …

Autoencoders As Classifiers Trained On Single Sources Of Radiographic Images For Generalizability Across Unseen Sources, Ryan M. Putney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Artificial neural networks trained to classify X-ray images according to disease state will learn to distinguish between technical or procedural variations in the images rather than features relevant to the disease. For example, the model might learn to recognize the machine that captured the image or to distinguish an image taken while the patient is lying supine or standing upright. The present work is aimed at using autoencoders as a generalizable classifier to detect COVID vs pneumonia (PNA) X-ray images. The first experiment was to find an architecture for a fully convolutional autoencoder (CAE) and for a convolutional autoencoder with …

Examining The Impact Of A Positive Psychology Service-Learning Experience On Undergraduates’ Mental Health And Career Intentions, Cydney E. Williams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Universities currently face a growing public health concern regarding college students’ mental health and well-being (Hobbs et al., 2022; Sheldon et al., 2021). Given this, research has explored experiences that are advantageous for students’ overall well-being, including courses on positive psychology and service-learning experiences that may promote flourishing (Hobbs et al., 2022; Maples et al., 2022). Service-learning is also well situated to support undergraduate career development (Collison & Eck, 2022). Kranzler et al. (2011) described how the pedagogical approach of service-learning aligns well with positive psychology, leading them to implement a positive psychology service-learning course. However, to date, no study …

"Does The Penis Lie?": Truth, Sexuality, And Psychocarceral Power, Erin Mcqueary

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis critically examines the use of penile plethysmography (PPG), or phallometry, in the treatment and management of sex offenders in the late-twentieth century. Using the Florida Mental Health Institute’s 1986-1989 sex offender treatment program as a case study, it asks how phallometry came to be understood as an objective method for uncovering otherwise hidden sexual truths. Instead of focusing only on its appearance and development throughout the second half of the twentieth century, this thesis draws on the work of Michel Foucault to situate phallometric science within a broader history of sexuality and biopower. In doing so, it argues …

Trauma-Informed Care In Residential Settings: Staff Perceptions And The Impact Of The Prevent-Teach-Reinforce Model With Trauma-Informed Principles, Marissa L. Del Vecchio

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Trauma-informed care (TIC) has been recognized as a critical framework for supporting individuals on the autism spectrum, intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) and those within residential facilities given their heightened risk for experiencing adverse events, including trauma. However, the development and evaluation of a trauma-informed behavior analytic assessment and intervention approach is lacking. Although behavior analysts frequently target behaviors associated with trauma, research suggests that many practitioners have limited training, supervision and competence in TIC, despite widespread recognition of its importance. The Prevent-Teach-Reinforce (PTR) model may be a promising approach to address these limitations, as its practices align closely with …

Multi-Modal Survival Prediction On Breast Cancer Mammograms And Enabling Multi-Institutional Collaborations With Federated Learning, Nikolas Koutsoubis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cancer remains one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide, and machine learning is well positioned to leverage the large volumes of routinely collected clinical and imaging data to improve patient outcomes. Realizing this potential at scale requires three capabilities that current practice does not yet deliver in combination: models that integrate the multiple data modalities clinicians use, training procedures that respect institutional data-sharing constraints, and tooling that enables sharing of de-identified data when federated approaches are not sufficient. This dissertation develops methods and infrastructure addressing each of these capabilities in the context of breast cancer and oncology more broadly. …

Testimonios From Latine Educational Leaders Supporting Youth Development Programs, Luis E. Feliciano

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The United States has been experiencing a demographic change for the last twenty years representing a rise in both Latiné students and families. Despite this demographic change, Latiné folk remain widely underrepresented in school leadership, and furthermore underrepresented in specific Youth Development Programs (YDPs), with the relationship between educational leaders and YDPs being widely unexplored in academia. This study sought to bridge the gap between YDPs and educational leadership, specifically for Latiné folk by asking how Latiné educational leaders used their cultural heritage to encourage YDP development. To accomplish this a testimonio methodology was implemented via a two staged interview …

Evaluating The Role Of Individual Differences: Impact On Fruit And Vegetable Intake Outcomes In Nourish-T+ Caregivers Of Pediatric Cancer Survivors, Sandra Soca Lozano

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pediatric cancer survivors are at increased risk for obesity and related long-term health complications, highlighting the need for interventions promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors during survivorship. The present study examined caregivers’ fruit and vegetable intake in the full NOURISH-T+ intervention and evaluated whether their dietary outcomes changed from baseline to the 3-month post-assessment and differed by selected caregiver sociodemographic characteristics. The study also examined whether these characteristics accounted for variance in 3-month fruit and vegetable outcomes. Participants included 68 caregivers in the full NOURISH-T+ condition who completed both baseline and 3-month post-assessments. Fruit and vegetable intake was assessed using the Healthy …

The Development And Evaluation Of The Functional Analysis Screening Tool For Athletic Performance (Fast-Ap), Sharayah S. M. Tai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a growing focus of ABA within sports performance, however, there is a lack of standardized assessments to aid in the development of individualized programming for athletes that is based on the behavior-reinforcing effects to promote optimal athletic performance. The Functional Analysis Screening Tool for Athletic Performance (FAST-AP) is a 16-item questionnaire developed to identify environmental variables that influence athletic performance and identify strategies that can be used to improve motivation and performance of athletes. This allows for the development of function-based interventions and identifying individualized coaching strategies to improve motivation and increase athletic performance more consistently overtime. Study …

Efficient, Secure Learning And Resource Management For Wireless Networks, Jiahao Xue

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rapid advancement of wireless networks has enabled a wide range of applications such as federated learning (FL) and Internet of Things, with supporting technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID). However, resource management and security challenges in wireless networks remain insufficiently addressed for these representative applications. In this dissertation, we first investigate wireless resource management for FL, then study novel attack and defense mechanisms for RFID systems. Finally, we analyze the performance and security of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled next generation wireless networks.

First, we investigate the client assignment and bandwidth allocation problem for FL in a multi-provider wireless setting. Unlike …

Building Trustworthy Information Systems: A Unified Framework For Comparative Risk Detection, Parisa Momeni

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Risk detection in large scale information systems increasingly depends on heterogeneous data generatedby both centralized and distributed ecosystems. While centralized systems provide curated and validated reports, distributed environments produce large-scale and real-time observational evidence. Existing computational approaches analyze these ecosystems in isolation, limiting systematic comparison of risk repre-sentations across heterogeneous sources.

This dissertation presents a unified computational framework for comparative risk detection across centralized and distributed information systems. The framework provides a domain independent methodology for transforming heterogeneous risk reporting data into comparable multidimensional representations. To enable interpretable comparison of heterogeneous risk distributions, this work introduces the Geometric Overlap Score …

Seeing Around Corners: An Indirect Light Transport Decomposition Framework For Fusing Physics And Learned Priors, Fadlullah Raji

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging, or seeing around corners, is the ability to recover information about objects hidden from direct view and remains one of the most compelling challenges in computational imaging. Existing approaches fall broadly into two categories: active and passive. Active time-resolved methods achieve impressive performance but require specialized pulsed laser hardware and ultrafast detectors, making them expensive and limited by slow measurement acquisition. Passive NLOS methods, which instead exploit the subtle soft shadows (penumbrae) cast by a hidden scene onto a visible matte surface, have recently emerged as a practical alternative. However, existing passive approaches are largely limited to …

Aligning Perspectives: Exploring Parent-Youth Agreement On Well-Being And The Impact Of Positive Psychology On Communication & Relationship Habits, Daijah N. Hines

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As research calls for best practices in assessment of psychological constructs from multiple informants, more information is needed for secondary reports of subjective experiences such as perceptions of life satisfaction. Adolescence is a vital period for intervention and assessment supports to promote well-being, yet there is a gap in the research on how to interpret multi-informant data for mental health constructs such as subjective well-being especially within this population. Research has shown support for and validated the use of parents/caregivers as secondary informants (Dew & Huebner, 1994; Hines et al., 2023; Shoshani & Slone, 2017) yet there is still vague …

Language Models For Oncology Clinical Text: How Model Architecture And Data Strategies Shape Tumor Phenotype Extraction And Disease Progression Detection, Thanh Duong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rapid growth of electronic health records (EHRs) has created new opportunities to apply machine learning to clinical data.However, a large portion of important clinical information is still stored in unstructured text, such as pathology reports, radiology reports, and longitudinal clinical notes.These documents contain key details about tumor characteristics, diagnoses, treatments, and patient outcomes.Extracting structured and useful information from this text is challenging due to complex medical language, varied document formats, and the need to combine information across multiple reports over time.This dissertation studies how language models can be designed and adapted to better extract and use oncology-specific information from …

House Sparrow Invasion Success Across Ecological, Immunological, And Molecular Scales, Kailey Marie Mccain

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Biological invasions offer natural experiments for studying how organisms cope with ecological novelty. Although invasion success is often attributed to enemy release, introduced organisms do not enter enemy-free environments. Instead, they enter heterogeneous landscapes in which some familiar enemies are absent, others remain, and entirely novel enemies may be encountered. The question, then, is how invaders (hereafter non-natives) are poised to respond to these threats? This dissertation examines whether successful invasions in house sparrows (Passer domesticus) is associated with shifts in pathogen exposure, immune dynamics in blood, gut physiology, and gene co-expression network structure.

Chapter 1 is at the population/ecological …