Digital Commons Network^™

Trace: Temporal Rhetorical Analysis And Consistency Evaluation For Legislative Speech, David Hernandez

Master's Theses

Legislators frequently discuss the same policy issues across multiple hearings and legislative sessions, sometimes maintaining consistent positions and other times modifying or reframing their stance over time. Understanding how these positions evolve is important for analyzing political discourse and democratic accountability, yet identifying such shifts at scale remains difficult.

We introduce TRACE (Temporal Rhetorical Analysis and Consistency Evaluation), a system built on the Digital Democracy Database (DDDB) for detecting rhetorical inconsistency in California legislative hearing testimony. TRACE organizes utterances into speaker-anchored timelines indexed by bill and session, then applies hybrid semantic retrieval — combining dense BGE embeddings with BM25 lexical …

Marine Heatwaves And Fish Reproduction: Endocrine Responses In The Eurythermal Sheepshead Minnow (Cyprinodon Variegatus), Isabel Villafuerte

Master's Theses

Marine heatwaves associated with climate change are increasing in frequency and severity, posing significant threats to fish populations in shallow habitats such as estuaries and salt marshes. Because temperature is a primary regulator of fish reproduction, understanding how heatwaves affect reproductive physiology is critical for anticipating the biological consequences of ongoing climate change for coastal fishes. Here we examined how simulated heatwave conditions affect the reproductive hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) endocrine axis in the estuarine sheepshead minnow (Cyprinodon variegatus), a eurythermal fish well suited to studying thermal stress responses in estuarine environments. Adult sheepshead minnows acclimated to a daily oscillating …

On The Number Of Ways To Express A Set As A Union Of Individually Interesting Sets, Alison Watson

Master's Theses

In a dataset that contains what ought rightly to be several distinct datasets placed in juxtaposition with each other, grouping datapoints based on observed similarities can be done in many ways. Topological Data Analysis (TDA) is a field of math that seeks to impose geometric structure onto datasets, thereby translating problems in statistics to problems in geometry or topology. A common truism in this field is “Data has shape and shape has meaning.” In this thesis, we use combinatorial and categorical arguments to demonstrate some shortcomings of a TDA approach on a class of inverse problems inspired by marine wildlife …

Effects Of Hot Water Dipping And Sub-Zero Saline Chilling On The Microbial Safety Of Broiler Carcasses And Recycled Chilling Water, Elen Zhu

Master's Theses

Broiler meat became the most widely consumed meat within the United States and across the world in 2019. The trend of increasing broiler consumption is expected to continue due to affordability, health benefits, and production efficiency. To meet the growing demand of broilers, a substantial number of birds need to be produced and processed while minimizing bacteria contamination, water consumption and wastewater generation.

In this study, the microbial safety (mesophilic aerobic bacteria, coliforms, and Escherichia coli) of broiler carcasses and post-chill water (red water) was assessed, using innovative processing techniques and red water recycling. A total of 144 broilers …

Independent And Combined Effects Of Early-Life Iron Deficiency And Antibiotic Exposure On Growth And Hematological Outcomes In A Piglet Model, Ginger M. Fitzpatrick

Master's Theses

Iron deficiency (ID) affects over 2 billion individuals globally. Children under 5 are at increased risk of ID due to rapid growth and are especially vulnerable to its negative consequences because of iron’s essential role in cognitive development and immune maturation. ID is the leading cause of iron deficiency anemia (IDA), with IDA affecting approximately 40% of children in this age group. Antibiotic (abx) exposure is also prevalent during early life and may disrupt growth and through gut dysbiosis, with increasing use posing additional risk in younger populations. Geographically, there is overlap in regions with high anemia prevalence and those …

Investigating The Structural Barriers And Opportunities For End-Of-Life Management Of Agricultural Plastic Waste Within California's Strawberry Industry, Rory M. O'Toole

Master's Theses

Agricultural plastic waste (APW) accounts for a significant and growing share of global plastic pollution, yet no study has documented how APW management functions across a specific crop system from production through end-of-life (EOL). This thesis addresses that gap by examining the structures and valuations that shape current EOL management of plastic mulch (PM) and drip tape (DT) in California's strawberry industry, one of the nation's most plastic-dependent crop systems. Drawing on an ethnographic approach that included 27 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, as well as site visits, this study traces how APW is produced, valued, and discarded within a structurally …

Object Detection And Classification For Man-Made Structures To Aid In Search And Rescue (Sar), Mio A. Nakagawa

Master's Theses

This project explores the use of various object detection and classification models to identify permanent man-made structures, specifically cell towers, water towers, watch towers as well as its corresponding shadows (attributes), from aerial imagery. The goal is to evaluate those models and test the feasibility of current models to detect man-made structures in aerial images, in an effort to support search and rescue operations as well as update network infrastructure databases. Multiple object detection models, as well as classification models, including YOLOv8 and VGG19 are implemented and trained on annotated aerial images to determine the presence or absence of man-made …

Space Quacker Advanced Development (Squad): Lora Modulation On A Leo Cubesat Mission For Evaluation Of 916 Mhz Uplink, Samantha Brunton

Master's Theses

The LoRa Modulation format was developed by SEMTECH in 2018 and has revolutionized terrestrial Internet of Things (IoT) networks. LoRa (Long Range) has been successfully demonstrated as a long-range, low-data-rate communication modulation format and packet protocol for low-power terrestrial applications. LoRa offers low power consumption, low cost, robust signal sensitivity, and long communication range. Recently, interest has grown in using LoRa communication in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite systems, especially for global IoT connectivity. Previous studies have investigated the theoretical feasibility and simulated the performance of LoRa satellite communication. Companies such as Lacuna Space have demonstrated the practical potential of …

Assessing Nitrogen Leaching Risk In Organic Vegetable Production, Megan Widle

Master's Theses

Nitrogen (N) leaching is the primary driver of groundwater contamination in agricultural regions. On California’s Central Coast, Agricultural Order 4.0 regulates this risk by constraining field-level N balances (N applied minus N removed). However, the assumption that unrecovered N is lost via leaching may not hold in organic and regenerative systems that promote soil organic matter accumulation. This study evaluated whether measured N leaching aligns with estimates derived from partial N budgets in organic systems, and whether management practices (intercrops, cover crops, and reduced tillage) can mitigate leaching risk. Four field trials were conducted to investigate N dynamics in organic …

Evaluating The Commercial Aquaculture Potential Of The Native Pacific Littleneck Clam (Leukoma Staminea) As A Climate Resilient Alternative To The Non-Native Manila Littleneck Clam (Ruditapes Philippinarum)., Skylar M. Wuelfing

Master's Theses

The California shellfish industry’s near-exclusive reliance on the non-native Manila littleneck clam (Ruditapes philippinarum) creates an economic vulnerability to climate-driven disturbances, which can cause mortality events that eradicate up to 80% of stocks. This singular reliance on an introduced species highlights a need for the evaluation of native alternatives like the Pacific littleneck clam (Leukoma staminea). Our goal was to assess the feasibility of using the native Pacific littleneck in commercial aquaculture by comparing their performance to the non-native Manila littlenecks across the following conditions: 1) a five-month field outplant trial at high and low intertidal …

Pedagogical Perspectives Of Practitioner-Turned-Instructors In Upper-Division Computer Science Courses, Sinchana Shivaprasad

Master's Theses

Computer science and software engineering are disciplines in which a substantial proportion of graduates enter software engineering careers immediately after completing their undergraduate degrees. However, research continues to highlight a persistent gap between the knowledge acquired in university settings and the practical skills necessary to succeed in industry. Faculty who bring prior industry experience may be well-positioned to help bridge this gap by integrating applied perspectives and real-world problem-solving into academic instruction. As professors with practitioner experience are being hired into computer science departments, there remains limited research exploring how their professional backgrounds influence teaching approaches and shape computing education. …

Development Of A Video-Based Tool To Measure Motor Asymmetry In Infants At Risk For Hemiparesis, Roha Ali

Master's Theses

Congenital hemiparesis is a unilateral motor impairment stemming from brain injury in utero or early postnatally. Hemiparesis can be difficult to detect in early infancy with current clinical tools. Yet, early identification of motor asymmetry could play a key role in the design of effective early intervention and rehabilitation strategies. This thesis presents the development and validation of a video-based tool designed to extract infant limb movement data using DeepLabCut’s (DLC) machine learning network. The pipeline was developed using videos of typically developing (TD) infants and infants with Asymmetric Perinatal Brain Injury (APBI), all at or under 3 months corrected …

A Security Framework For Pacemaker Lead Failure: Anomaly Detection System And Failsafe Policy Considerations, Ethan Wagner

Master's Theses

Embedded system security in implantable medical devices (IMDs) remains an underexplored challenge due to the unique constraints of these systems. Specifically, pacemakers are optimized for ultra-low power consumption to maximize device lifespan, are highly resource constrained, and demand reliable and correct operation to prevent severe health consequences. These systems rely on sensing electrodes, called leads, to detect cardiac activity and stimulate the patient’s heart when appropriate. Therefore, pacemaker lead integrity is a critical issue, as malfunction or compromise can result in device failure jeopardizing patient safety.

The security framework presented in this thesis integrates several works to proactively detect and …

Cyberspatial Cartographies: Mapping Digital Nationhood Within The California-Punjabi Diaspora., Saihajpratap Singh Bajwa

Master's Theses

This research investigates the phenomenon of digital nationhood, the idea that a new form of community is actively produced through interactions taking place within digital social networks and forums. These spaces function as more than repositories of information or cultural archives; they are living ecosystems in which identity is constructed through mutual encounters among members of a diaspora, where shared references, meanings, and concepts proliferate across multiplex networks. The central questions animating this inquiry are: can a nation exist without a territory, and are these encounters producing what we might conceive of as a digital nation?

The Punjabi people serve …

Adaptive Reuse As Sustainability: Reconciling The Crises Of Functionalism And Environmental Conservation In Copenhagen And San Francisco, Samuel J. Fernandez

Master's Theses

Sustainability is the buzzword for modern global development. In the age of rapidly growing populations, unsustainable building practices, and an ever-present climate crisis, there must be a reorientation in global urban development practices. While experts tend to tout one sustainable initiative as a catch-all solution to the above crises, a multidimensional problem cannot be solved with a one-dimensional approach. In other words, sustainable development can only be achieved through a combination of different practices and approaches. This case study seeks to present adaptive reuse as a viable reaction to the climate crisis, but one that requires a combination of other …

The Feather Of The Quill: How Folklore Shapes Human Relationships With Wildlife, Taylor Breeanne Nelson

Master's Theses

This thesis examines how folklore and cultural phenomena shape human relationships with wildlife, arguing that the stories a society tells about animals are not merely reflective of its values but are constitutive of them. Drawing on narrative research methods sourced from literature and academic journals and interviews with academics, conservationists, and community members, this project examines the role of animal folklore.

I discuss how narratives around wildlife evolved alongside the development of the United States, arguing that the beginnings of mainstream American conservation not only displaced existing communities but also erased the sophisticated human-animal relationships their traditions had long sustained. …

Structure And Diversity Of Play Behavior In Juvenile Belding's Ground Squirrels, Paul O'Driscoll Ii

Master's Theses

Play behavior is ubiquitous among juvenile mammals and can promote motor, social, and cognitive development, providing multiple adaptive benefits to young animals in some cases. The structure of play can be linked to the benefits it confers on individuals. I evaluated the structure of play in juvenile Belding’s ground squirrels (Urocitellus beldingi), a species for which multiple adaptive benefits of play have been identified. I compared juvenile play in U. beldingi to adult sexual and aggressive behavior to determine and classify similarities between juvenile play and adult behavior. I evaluated diversity in the behaviors expressed during play interactions and diversity …

Herd Conditions And Food Security: Evidence From Kenya, Kira J. Enriquez

Master's Theses

Food insecurity is worsening across Kenya's Arid and Semi-Arid Lands, where over three million people currently face acute hunger. Among pastoral communities in these regions, livestock are the central productive asset and primary food source. When herds deteriorate, households face falling milk production and the erosion of assets that would otherwise buffer consumption during difficult periods. This paper tests whether livestock body condition and rangeland forage quality predict household food coping behavior, and whether those relationships differ above and below a Micawber-style herd size threshold. Using a panel of 232 pastoralist households surveyed across five ASAL counties between 2021 and …

Linking Fishery Productivity To Child Health In The Coastal Tropics, Francisco Flores-Mejia

Master's Theses

Fish are a primary source of calories, macronutrients, and income for coastal communities around the world, but overfishing and environmental changes have dramatically reduced productivity in the majority of small-scale fisheries. The social costs of these losses are believed to be large, particularly in poorer communities, but most estimates of fishery productivity effects on households are contextual and difficult to generalize. We combine a remote sensing measure of pelagic fishery productivity with geolocated child health and growth data from 34 countries in the coastal tropics. We estimate that the difference between sustainedly good versus bad fishing conditions corresponds up to …

Ecological And Nutritional Drivers Of Floral Fidelity In Wild Pollinators, Adelaide Elise Ergastolo

Master's Theses

Plants must receive pollen from the same species in order to successfully reproduce. For most flowering plants, the transfer of pollen occurs via animal pollinators while they forage on plants to obtain food. Therefore, the fidelity of pollinators to individual plant species during foraging trips is directly related to the amount of conspecific pollen plants receive. Low floral fidelity of pollinators can reduce plant reproductive success, which in turn has the potential to lower food resources for pollinators in the future. While many factors can potentially influence pollinator floral fidelity, several important ones may be the nutritional resources provided by …

The Undaunted: How Young Adult Activist Literature Depicts The Fight For Social Justice, Emma Stack

Master's Theses

In this thesis, I will explore a wide range of young adult fiction novels that feature themes surrounding activism. My goal will be to use a number of novels to illustrate the importance of analyzing literature that features young people as activists within social justice movements. My main overarching question is: How are young people represented as activists in young adult literature, and how can young people use such literature as a catalyst for social change? I also plan to explore questions relating to how young people are represented as activists, why their voices are so integral when promoting social …

Lateral Thinking In Large Language Models: Benchmarking And Fine-Tuning For Puzzle Solving And Generation, Ashish Khadka

Master's Theses

Recent progress in large language models has produced reasoning-oriented systems that allocate additional computation at inference time (e.g., deliberation, verification, and self-correction), raising the question of whether these gains can solve tasks requiring creative and lateral thinking. In this thesis, we study such capabilities using two popular word-association games—LinkedIn Pinpoint and New York Times (NYT) Connections—which require identifying non-obvious patterns or relationships. We first benchmark some light-weight open models and analyze their performance trends with respect to puzzle release dates and approximate model knowledge cutoffs to distinguish memorization effects from genuine inference. Our results show that accuracy of traditional embedding-based …

Hormonal, Cytokinetic, And Skeletal Response To A Single Weighted Vest Exercise Treatment: A Pilot Study To Determine Weighted Vest “Rucking” Treatment For Osteoporosis In Post-Menopausal Women, Eleanor Pell

Master's Theses

Osteoporosis is characterized by a deteriorating of bone tissue leading to brittleness and increased fracture risk that affects both men and women as they age. Postmenopausal women are of particular interest due to high risk of declining bone density, a characteristic of this population. Treatments for osteoporosis range from menopause hormone therapy, bisphosphonates, biologics, nutritional changes, and exercise. Load bearing exercise interventions have shown effectiveness for stimulating bone growth, but many factors such as lack of access, motivation, self-confidence or knowledge, prevent long term compliance. “Weighted vest rucking” refers to a variation of rucking, which is a form of exercise …

Companion Parrot Vocal Learning And Reproduction Of Human Speech Sounds, Karla Vilches Castaño

Master's Theses

Vocal learning is rare among animals but is well developed in parrots, which can imitate novel sounds and, in captive settings, reproduce human speech. This study helps address a larger evolutionary question about vocal learning. Specifically, whether vocal learning ability is best understood as a single generalized trait or as a multi-dimensional system in which different acoustic features can be learned and reproduced with varying degrees of fidelity. This thesis quantifies how closely companion parrots match their human tutors across three acoustic dimensions (spectrographic structure, intensity contour, and pitch contour) and tests whether mimicry accuracy varies among individuals, differs between …

Investigating The Taxonomic Uncertainties Of Potentilla Rupincola, Natalie Elizabeth Hieber

Master's Theses

Landscape stewardship is an integral role for land managers that becomes more important when rare or endangered species occur within managed areas. Conservation across the landscape is a primary concern for land managers, but resources allocated for conservation can be limited due to many competing goals. Taxonomic uncertainty surrounding rare and endangered taxa, particularly plant taxa, that have historically been classified solely using morphological features further complicates conservation planning. One such taxon is Potentilla rupincola, a rare plant endemic to the eastern Rocky Mountains in Colorado. For over a century, botanists have debated whether P. rupincola is a distinct species …

The Impact Of Place-Based Education Professional Development On Faculty Identity And Perceptions Of Nature-Culture Dichotomies, Reyt Middleton

Master's Theses

This qualitative study analyzes how implementing place-based education (PBE) in undergraduate coursework shapes faculty identity narratives and nature–culture positionalities across conceptual lenses of past, present, and future. Three faculty members at a regional Mississippi university engaged in a PBE professional development program; narratively driven pre- and post-implementation interviews were given to participants, then examined via thematic analysis. Framed primarily through lenses of constructivism, with support from critical pedagogy of place, relational and ecological epistemologies, and scholarship on faculty identity, this study posits two research questions—1: How does teaching PBE influence faculty identity narratives across past, present, and future temporalities? 2: …

Volunteer Spotlighting: Costly Signaling To Promote Volunteerism, Clyde A. Raible V

Master's Theses

Prosocial behaviors, because they are initially costly and do not guarantee a direct benefit to the actor, can nonetheless increase social status by signaling a willingness to incur cost on behalf of another. Given this signal value, nonprofit organizations may be able to leverage this knowledge to increase donations, such as through the provisioning of attention to, and recognition of, volunteers through social media. I predicted that the costliness of spotlighted behavior and the target signal clarity (i.e., individual vs. group spotlight) would interact with participants’ dispositional dominance and prestige-based status motives to influence volunteerism interest. To explore these associations, …

Morphological Variation Of Lingual Glands In Wild American Alligator (Alligator Mississippiensis) Populations, Benjamin Angalet

Master's Theses

American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) inhabit diverse aquatic ecosystems including freshwater wetlands, swamps, and estuarine rivers. As apex predators, their physiological resilience has implications for ecosystem stability and long-term conservation. With projected sea-level rise and increasing saltwater intrusion into coastal freshwater habitats, understanding the osmoregulatory capacity of alligators is increasingly important. Unlike marine-tolerant crocodilians such as the saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), which possess specialized salt-secreting lingual glands in addition to renal and cloacal mechanisms, the morphology and physiological significance of lingual glands in wild American alligators remain poorly understood. This study examined lingual gland morphology and plasma …

A Novel Approach To Creativity Assessment: Forced Pairwise Ranking With Large Language Models, Phillip R. Gregory Jr

Master's Theses

Assessing creativity at scale remains a persistent challenge in cognitive science, as human raters are costly, slow, and often inconsistent in their judgments. This thesis introduced a novel framework for automated scientific creativity assessment using forced pairwise ranking, in which fine-tuned large language models compared response pairs and determined which was more creative. Five empirical studies were conducted using Llama-2-7B and Llama-2-13B models adapted via LoRA fine-tuning and benchmarked against human scored responses from the Scientific Creative Thinking Test. A regression baseline achieved Pearson �� = .74 on the test set, matching the human inter-rater ceiling reported in the literature. …

Psychological And Inflammatory Ties To Diet In Breast Cancer Survivors, Sonal Kaur Johal

Master's Theses

Breast cancer is among the most prevalent forms of cancer and is a primary cause of death among women (Wang et al., 2020). Cancer patients experience higher levels of anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, and inflammation compared to non-cancer patients, which can predict a diminished quality of life but also contribute to higher mortality rates among cancer patients (Bortolato et al., 2016; Song et al., 2022). Diet has the potential to impact the manifestation of depressive and anxiety symptoms in both healthy individuals and those battling cancer. This study explored the association between dietary habits, specifically cholesterol, fiber, saturated fat, added …