Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring The Moderating Effect Of Boundary Management Strategy In A Remote Work Environment, Brandon M. Vasquez

Master's Theses

Remote work has evolved significantly, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and continues to influence employee experiences in both positive and negative ways. Managing the separation between work and personal life is of importance. More specifically, using a boundary management strategy of segmentation may be more effective than an integration strategy because those who separate the two domains of work and family/personal life may be less prone to conflict in their lives. The present study aimed to examine the moderating effect of boundary management strategy on the relationship between remote work and job satisfaction, work-life balance, and well-being. Specifically, it was …

Evaluation Of The Performance Of The Traveling Wave Differential Element In Protective Relays, Niranjan Kc

Master's Theses

This thesis evaluates the dependability, security, and limitations of the traveling wave differential protection function (TW87) in modern time-domain-based protective relays, using a combination of simulations and hardware testing in a laboratory environment. Fault transients are first generated using the electromagnetic transients program model of a real, 230 kV, 65.7 km long overhead transmission line, which are then played back on real time-domain-based protective relays. Various fault scenarios are chosen to evaluate the impacts of factors such as fault inception angle, distance to fault from line terminals, fault type, fault impedance, and external faults on the relay functions’ performance. Results …

The Design Of Coplanar Waveguide Traveling-Wave Kinetic-Impedance Parametric Amplifiers, Jordan Scott Savoie

Master's Theses

Astronomical observations and many physics experiments rely on cryogenic amplifiers for readout. Current sensitivity is limited by the noise figure of high-electronmobility transistor (HEMT) amplifiers, which have proven di!cult to decrease further in recent years. Traveling-wave kinetic-impedance parametric amplifiers (TKIPAs) are an emerging class of amplifiers which have the potential to substantially improve the sensitivity of microwave low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) while also accepting relatively high input powers and amplifying over a wide bandwidth. In this thesis, I present the design, modeling, and testing procedures for coplanar waveguide (CPW) TKIPAs developed by our group at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Using …

Is There An Association Between Food Literacy And Diet Quality In Young Adult College Men?, Morgan Claire Mayeux

Master's Theses

Food literacy skills can improve dietary intake in young adults as it provides them with the tools they need to make healthier food-related decisions. The benefits of improving food literacy includes the reduction in the risk of prevalent, preventable dietrelated diseases such as obesity, T2DM, heart disease, and other chronic diseases that plague the Unites States today. Previous literature reports primarily on college female samples. Because a large proportion of the samples in the available studies are female, the current literature may not reflect young adult men’s food literacy and its comparison to their overall diet quality. The purpose of …

Riparian Restoration Increases Soil Microbial Biomass In Marin County Rangelands, But Soil Carbon Stock Is Less Responsive, Sherilyn Kathryn Reinhart

Master's Theses

Land use change has caused the degradation of 70% of the Earth’s soils, directly altering soil microbial communities and carbon cycling. Interest in carbon farming practices is growing, but studies that document the nuances of soil carbon flux in specific bioregions are still too few. In this study, I examined how one practice, riparian restoration, alters soil carbon stock and microbial community structure over time. Using a paired sampling time series design, I collected soil samples from twelve riparian forests and adjacent rangelands near Marin County, California. Young and mature sites ranged from five to 29 years since restoration, and …

Learning Structure With Multivariate Information Bottleneck And Exploration Of New Methods In Sequential Decision Making, Volodymyr Makarenko

Master's Theses

Research in useful information extraction has been motivated by the increasing demand to extract insights from unstructured data, and by the need to store and transmit great volumes of information, often originating in unstructured data such as videos. Research in rate distortion and information bottleneck paved the path for understanding and guiding the design of lossy encoders, capable of extracting relevant information. Independently, research in deep representation learning has enabled numerous applications for unstructured high-dimensional data such as images. However, the interpretability of the deep learning methods remained limited. Several desired properties of learned representations have been suggested, including disentanglement. …

Understanding And Evaluating Genomic Language Models, Aadit Kapoor

Master's Theses

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities in interpreting complex patterns across various domains, yet their application to genomic data remains limited. We see great potential in leveraging LLMs for vital biological tasks, such as predicting transcription factor binding sites and identifying antibiotic-resistant genes. This emergent behavior positions LLMs as powerful tools for enhancing our understanding of intricate biological language. LLMs trained specifically on genomic data, such as DNA sequences, operate distinctly compared to those trained on natural language. This difference is evident not only in the architectural landscape of the models but also in the methodologies employed by …

It Shucks To Be Inbred: Effects Of Small Population Sizes On Genomic Diversity Of Hatchery Reared Olympia Oysters (Ostrea Lurida), Anna S. Heasley

Master's Theses

Olympia oysters (Ostrea lurida), critical members of estuarine ecosystems along the California Current Ecosystem (CCE), have faced significant population declines due to historical overfishing and habitat deterioration. Today, managers from multiple estuaries across the CCE are focusing on conservation aquaculture breeding efforts to aid in restoration; however, the genetic implications of these efforts remain unexplored. As with other Ostrea spp, Olympia oysters have a viviparous reproductive strategy that creates unique challenges for aquaculture-mediated restoration. This study evaluates the genetic impact of current captive breeding practices on Olympia oyster cohorts produced in three California estuaries: Elkhorn Slough (EHS), Morro Bay (MB), …

Coloring Outside The Lines: Factors Facilitating Divergent Thinking, Michelle Baca Reinke

Master's Theses

Divergent thinking involves producing a multitude of unique and diverse ideas. The ability to “color outside the lines” is crucial to business, education, and social domains. The flexibility, originality, and fluency dimensions of divergent thinking are commonly assessed using the Alternative Uses Task, which involves generating uses for common objects. Prior research suggests that high identification (first-person perspective) with schema-inconsistent experiences increases flexibility, while semantic density (degree of conceptual associations) impacts originality and fluency inversely. However, their combined effects across multiple divergent thinking dimensions remain unexplored. The present research investigated the interactive effects of identification (high, low), schema consistency (consistent, …

Measurements Of Spinal Posture During Common Strawberry Picking Positions Using Inertial Measurement Units, Madeline E. Everson

Master's Theses

Physically demanding professions, such as agriculture, put people at an increased

risk for experiencing back pain. This is due to the awkward and harmful postures sustained

throughout their workday. While studies have been done demonstrating that back pain is

prevalent amongst this community, most do not collect motion capture (MoCap) data,

leaving the specifics of the kinematics, such as the amount of time spent in harmful

postures, unknown. Unfortunately, MoCap data is typically limited to that of a lab or

facility where the cameras are housed. Therefore, this study aimed to mitigate the

inaccessibility of traditional MoCap by validating that …

Using Livestreaming Technology To Answer Novel Questions About The Behavior And Physiological Ecology Of The Prairie Rattlesnake (Crotalus Viridis), Max C. Roberts

Master's Theses

Recent advances in remote monitoring technology are opening up new opportunities for developing innovative natural history and biological research methodologies. In particular, the emergence of livestreaming camera technology has made recording remote video of wild and secretive animals much easier and made it possible to collect data at extremely fine temporal resolutions. In 2024, Project RattleCam launched a livestreaming camera at a Prairie Rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis) den in Colorado. The goal of this work was to study Prairie Rattlesnake behavior 24-7 throughout the species’ active season with minimal human disturbance. Additionally, I used this system to study the …

Investigating Rattlesnake Social Networks And Improving Their Public Image Through Unobtrusive Technologies And Community Science, Owen M. Bachhuber

Master's Theses

While technology is often blamed for humans’ increasing disconnect with nature, it can also serve as a tool to facilitate empathy and conservation action for wildlife. Snakes are among the most feared animals on the planet, though their understudied social interactions provide opportunities to make scientific discoveries and change public perceptions. Project RattleCam was founded as a camera trap project in 2021 and launched the first off-grid livestream on a den of wild Prairie Rattlesnakes (Crotalus viridis) in 2024. Both camera types captured hundreds of Prairie Rattlesnakes gathering in the summer as they prepared to give birth to pups before …

Integration And Testing Of A Quadruped Robot With Ros2, Jeremy S. West

Master's Theses

The Cal Poly Legged Robotics Group has been developing research and teaching platforms for agile legged robotics since 2020. These platforms are expected to provide students with opportunities to develop complete legged-robot systems from low-level control to advanced robotics tasks such as motion planning and decision making. However, the current prototyped quadruped robot lacked the software and sensing capabilities for high-level quadrupedal gaits and advanced robotic research.

To address these challenges, this project developed Switch, a robotic platform that builds upon the previous BRUCE platform with significant hardware and software upgrades. Switch features a modular design that allows individual software …

Development Of A Control System For An 8-Dof Quadrupedal Robotic Research Platform, Jack Butler

Master's Theses

Quadrupedal robots offer a versatile locomotion option that can extend the operating space of a robot into uneven terrains. However, controlling these systems presents significant challenges due to nonlinearities introduced by various factors.

In this thesis, model-predictive control (MPC) is applied to an 8-DOF legged robot developed by Cal Poly’s Legged Robotics group. The MPC framework employs a lumped rigid-body model that treats the robot as a single rigid body with forces applied directly at the foot contact points. The controller is developed within the ROS2 environment, with integration of state estimation and gait-pattern generation, to provide maximum modularity and …

Investigating The Influence Of Experimental Parameters On The Formation Of Gold Nanoparticles: A Green Synthesis And Design Of Experiments Approach, Isaac Opeyemi Subuloye

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the green synthesis of gold nanoparticles using catechin, a naturally occurring plant-derived compound, as both a reducing and capping agent. The synthesis process was guided by a structured Design of Experiments (DOE) methodology to ensure systematic investigation and optimization. A two-phase experimental approach was adopted. First, a full factorial screening design was used to evaluate the effects of catechin concentration, NaOH concentration, and pre-reaction time. This was followed by an optimization phase using a face-centered composite design to identify conditions that produce nanoparticles with ideal characteristics. The nanoparticles were analyzed using UV-visible spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering …

Predominant-Dominant Chains In Japanese Video Game Music, Evan R. Davis

Master's Theses

The short looping forms in Japanese video game music feature rapid modulations based on common chord progressions that necessitate contextual readings of harmonies in various keys to isolate how they manipulate tonal space. One such progression used by Japanese game music composers utilizes chains of predominant-dominant chords to move key centers by conflating function in minor-third related keys. These triumphant sounding transitional phrases are uniquely valuable in a medium dominated by stories of heroism and fighting authorities both earthly and divine. Building on the functional framework of 19^th century theorists and existing popular music research, two models are created …

Exploring Fisheries Species Distribution Shifts In Response To Freshwater Inflow Through The Bonnet Carré Spillway Using Species Distribution Models, David T. May

Master's Theses

The Bonnet Carre Spillway (BCS) is a flood control structure on the Mississippi River (MR) ~52 km upstream of New Orleans. The BCS protects downstream communities from MR flooding by diverting floodwaters into Lake Pontchartrain when the MR exceeds 5.18m flood stage. Diverted waters flow east into the Mississippi Sound (MSS), introducing turbid, nutrient rich freshwater to the estuary before draining into the Gulf of Mexico. BCS openings have become much more frequent in the last decade, though little work has been done to explore the impact of the BCS on nektonic fisheries species. Here, a series of seasonal Maximum …

Assessment Of A Muscadine Grape (Vitis Rotundifolia) Mapping Population For Tolerance To Pierce’S Disease Pathogen Xylella Fastidiosa And Resistance To Black Rot Disease Pathogen Guignardia Bidwellii, Anushka Tennakoon

Master's Theses

Pierce’s disease (PD) and black rot disease cause severe economic losses for grape production under humid and warm conditions. Identifying resistance genes is crucial for controlling these disease by developing resistant cultivars. Muscadine grape (Vitis rotundifolia) cultivar ‘Pam’ has been identified to possess a high level of resistance to diseases. To elucidate the genetic basis of the resistance to the causal pathogens Xylella fastidiosa and Guignardia bidwellii in this cultivar, parents and 141 F1 individuals developed from open pollinated ‘Pam’ were evaluated for two seasons under natural disease pressure. The mapping population was genotyped using genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) and …

Drug Delivery, Disulfide Crosslinked Hydrogel Coating For Polydimethylsiloxane (Pdms) Implant Materials, Paul A. Contos, Paul Anthony Contos

Master's Theses

Though polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is often used in medical devices due to its desirable mechanical properties and biocompatibility, its surface is often prone to bacterial adhesion. This is especially a problem for catheters, where bacteria can adhere and form biofilms that can in turn result in Urinary Tract Infections (UTI). In order to deter the presence of UTI causing bacteria on PDMS catheters, methods were developed to formulate a disulfide crosslinked hydrogel coating and create a methodology to allow adhesion to a PDMS substrate. The hydrogel coating discussed in this paper will be synthesized by chemically crosslinking stimuli-responsive vesicles, that carry …

Mechanoregulation Of Osteogenesis And Adipogenesis Of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Justin Caron

Master's Theses

Bone-related diseases (e.g., osteoporosis) are primarily treated with pharmacologic therapies that often exhibit limited efficacy and substantial side effects. Currently, bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have become one of most important cell options in bone regeneration due to readily available sources, strong proliferation abilities, weak immune rejection responses, and strong osteogenic differentiation potential. While identifying the most effective approach to enhance osteogenic differentiation of MSCs for bone regeneration is challenging, understanding the regulatory mechanisms is crucial for improving therapeutic efficacy. Recent research has focused on developing strategies to enhance osteogenesis, which involve biophysical and biochemical stimulation. Mechanical and …

Assessment Of Estuarine Respiration And Benthic Nutrient Fluxes In Mississippi Sound, Nur Pasha Sufian

Master's Theses

This study quantified seasonal and spatial variability of both water column and benthic respiration rates as well as benthic nutrient fluxes along the Mississippi Sound. Respiration was measured in recirculating incubation chambers using Firesting optical DO sensors (PyroScience GmbH), and changes in nutrient concentrations were assessed. Mean water column respiration rates ranged from 0.35 and 2.76 µM O₂ hr⁻¹, with the lowest rates in the winter and the highest in the summer while detectable nutrient concentrations (ammonium, (NH₄⁺), and soluble reactive phosphate (PO₄³⁻)) showed only slight decreases (< 1 µM) over all seasons. Sediment incubation chambers consistently had much greater oxygen declines than the water incubations and showed seasonal trends with the highest mean respiration rates measured in the summer and the lowest mean in the winter, with a range from 107.4 to 1514.9 µmol O₂ m⁻² hr⁻¹ (2.6 to 36.3 mmol O₂ m⁻² d⁻¹). Sediment incubations consistently showed increases in NH₄⁺ concentrations in the overlying water, resulting in calculated NH₄⁺ benthic flux rates of 0.73 to 379.01 µM N m⁻² hr⁻¹ with the lowest rates in the winter and highest rates in the summer. Although PO₄³⁻ concentrations were often below detection in cooler seasons, PO₄³⁻ flux also peaked during the summer (< 28.8 µmol P m⁻² hr⁻¹). In this study, temperature was a key regulator for estuarine respiration and benthic nutrient flux rates, and these rates were positively correlated with porewater nutrient concentrations and sedimentary organic matter. These findings illustrate that benthic respiration can contribute to water column hypoxia and that sediments serve as a source of nutrients to the water column. Overall, these findings provide us with valuable insight about the seasonal coupling of oxygen demand and nutrient flux in the Mississippi Sound and provide valuable baseline data for future biogeochemical modelling of hypoxia, eutrophication, and productivity.

Comparison Of Stem Student Reflections Of Their Undergraduate Research Experiences: Cures Vs. Apprentice Model, Chazzidy Harper

Master's Theses

Undergraduate research is widely recognized as a high-impact educational practice that promotes engagement and academic success in STEM. However, limited research has examined how different research formats, particularly course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) and the apprentice model, shape student experiences. This study investigates undergraduate research (UR) course characteristics and student reflections across STEM disciplines at Kennesaw State University (KSU), focusing on differences between CURE and apprentice experiences. A mixed-methods analysis was conducted on 809 student reflections and 169 course syllabi spanning biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics, computing, data science, software engineering, and information technology, psychological science, and engineering. Demographic data …

Cost-Effective Automated Uhi Mapping With Ai: A Case Study Of A Scalable Framework For Climate Equity In San José, California, Martin Alvarez Lopez

Master's Theses

Urban areas experience the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, with higher temperatures than rural areas, disproportionately impacting low-income communities. Mapping UHIs is a process that usually requires significant amount of human resources, and is not scalable. The lack of accurate and detailed UHI maps makes it difficult for decision makers to design effective mitigation strategies. In this work we introduce a cost-effective, scalable, and universally applicable UHI mapping framework that leverages open-source data and AI-driven feature extraction from remote sensing imagery. Using various causative factors such as city characteristics, anthropogenic heat, city canyons, and meteorological variables, we create UHI maps …

Stead: Spatio-Temporal Efficient Anomaly Detection For Time And Compute Sensitive Applications, Andrew Gao

Master's Theses

This paper presents a new method for anomaly detection in automated systems with time and compute sensitive requirements, with unparalleled efficiency. As these systems become increasingly popular, ensuring their safety has become more important than ever. Therefore, this paper focuses on how to quickly and effectively detect various anomalies in the aforementioned systems, with the goal of making them safer and more effective. Many detection systems have been developed with great success under spatial contexts; however, there is still significant room for improvement when it comes to temporal context. While there is substantial work regarding this task, there is minimal …

How Effective Are Engineered And Non-Engineered Riparian Forest Restoration Projects In Providing Salmonid-Quality Habitat In The San Francisco Bay Area?, Alexander Ivanov

Master's Theses

Streams and their riparian zones in the San Francisco Bay Area have been degraded, severely harming salmonid populations in the region. Ecological restoration is a common approach to return stream function. Such restoration projects vary widely in intensity, from low-impact vegetation removal/planting to highly engineered projects involving structures and grading. This research investigated the effectiveness of streams restored using engineered versus non-engineered solutions in supporting salmonid habitat viability in San Francisco Bay Area streams. Fourteen streams, seven from each of the two types of restoration, were sampled in the wet and dry season in 2024, three times each season. Data …

Quantization On Graph Neural Networks For Image Classification, Rithik Reddy Katpally

Master's Theses

Quantization has become a key approach for reducing storage and computational demands of deep neural networks while maintaining high accuracy. Although 8-bit quantization is well-established for convolutional architectures such as ResNet50 and MobileNetV2, its application to graph-based vision models remains underexplored. In this work, we extend quantization-aware training to Vision Graph Neural Networks (ViGs) and conduct comparisons with quantized CNNs on the CIFAR-100 dataset. To ensure parity, all models have same training hyperparameters such as learning rate, batch size, optimizer, number of epochs. We used numerous techniques to preserve performance for low-bit precision. First, Pauta Quantization clips activation outliers based …

Generalizability Of Existing Ai Models For Automatic Disfluency Detection In Children's Speech, Caryn W. C. Iwakiri

Master's Theses

Achieving consensus in identifying disfluencies and diagnosing developmental stuttering has been a significant challenge for many clinicians, particularly in young bilingual children, who tend to show increased disfluencies. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to recognize more complex yet systematic patterns that might not be easily observable by even trained clinicians. It also has the potential to bring consistency in the measurement of stuttered speech. This study compares the performance of four AI models, their performance on detecting disfluencies including both stutter-like-disfluencies (SLD) and typical disfluencies (TD) in monolingual and bilingual children's data, then explores whether increasing the quantity of …

Quantum Algorithm Emulation Using Fpgas, Samuel Petruescu

Master's Theses

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have been used in most of the physics sub-fields for various unique purposes. This includes particle physics, quantum optics, and, more recently, quantum computing. FPGAs boast many benefits over previous experimental and computational setups. They are versatile, easy to program, and cost-effective, leading to an understandable desire to incorporate them into the new field of quantum computing. While FPGAs have been used to help control the readout and control of physical qubits, they can also be a good tool for improving algorithm simulations, which is the focus of this paper. Different algorithms have different computational …

Superconducting Quantum Chip Design And Simulation, James F. Saslow

Master's Theses

This work presents a comprehensive analytical and simulation-based study of superconducting quantum chip architectures, spanning both 2D planar and 3D-integrated designs. We first design and simulate a planar quantum chip layout using Qiskit Metal, which is imported into Ansys HFSS (High Frequency Structure Simulator) to construct a 3D model and perform electromagnetic simulations. A detailed analysis using Driven Modal, Eigenmode, Magnetostatic, and Q3D Capacitance Extraction solvers ensures our simulations accurately reflect physical behavior. The results are validated against analytical models from microwave engineering. pyEPR (Python Energy Participation Ratio) is used to extract key quantum metrics, including eigenfrequencies, quality factors, decoherence …

Fluid-Structure Interaction Comsol Model For Unsteady Flow Through A 3d Bi-Leaflet Mechanical Heart Valve, Aya Zaky

Master's Theses

In this study, we developed a 3D Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) model using COMSOL© to analyze the unsteady flow through a bi-leaflet mechanical heart valve. The model incorporates sufficient complexity to test various factors, such as leaflet angle rotation, material selection for rigid components, fluid properties, and different simulation modes. Simultaneously, the model maintains a simplified structure and is developed using a single software platform, facilitating ease of modification and expansion by other researchers or developers. The mechanical heart valve (MHV) design was created using St. Jude’s geometric parameters as a reference. The input and output pressure waveforms are derived from …