Digital Commons Network^™

Mazique (22ad502): Late Woodland Village Or Vacant Ceremonial Center?, Lonnie A. Burch Jr

Master's Theses

Overlooking the bank of Second Creek near Natchez, Mississippi, the Mazique (22AD502) site is a Coles Creek period (AD 750-1000) mound and plaza center that once featured three mounds surrounding an open central plaza. Mounds A and B still sit prominently along the southern and eastern edges of Mazique’s plaza. The location of  Mound C remains unclear. Historic agricultural and construction activities have left no visible trace of the monument. The 2021 University of Southern Mississippi archaeological field school set out to investigate potential locations for Mound C and to explore the site's functionality.

Did the Mazique site support a …

A Unified Framework For Distributed And Resource-Aware Plant Disease Detection Using Federated And Adaptive Hybrid Deep Learning, Ticauris S. Stokes

Master's Theses

Plant disease detection in precision agriculture must operate under significant computational constraints, particularly in low-resource (LR) environments such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and edge devices. While LR models enable efficient real-time inference, they often lack the representational capacity required to accurately detect complex disease patterns. In contrast, high-resource (HR) models achieve superior detection performance due to their deep architectures but are computationally expensive and unsuitable for direct deployment in resource-constrained settings. This fundamental trade-off between efficiency and accuracy presents a major challenge for practical agricultural monitoring systems.

To address the distributed nature of agricultural data, federated learning (FL) is …

Explaining The Gap: The Mediating Effect Of Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction On Parenting Styles And Disordered Eating Behaviors, Oliva Dixon

Master's Theses

Eating disorders remain one of the fastest growing and most fatal forms of mental health disorders. It is estimated that around 9% of the US population meets diagnostic criteria for an eating disorder; however, a much larger percentage of the population engages in disordered eating behaviors, putting people at risk for negative consequences both physically and psychologically. While there are several theories about what precipitates disordered eating, parenting has been shown to be a key factor that can influence disordered eating behaviors. While some theories implicate authoritarian parenting, others consider psychological control or permissive parenting as potentially associated with the …

The Impact Of High-Cadence Cycling On Overground Running Performance In Recreational Runners, Matthew Ott

Master's Theses

Cycling is a commonly used exercise because it provides a controllable cardiovascular and musculoskeletal demand while imposing relatively low impact on the rider. High-cadence cycling (HCC) has been shown to influence subsequent running performance and gait performance by increasing cadence and reducing work rate when cycling prior to running. However, most of this work has focused on triathletes and older adults. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the acute effects of HCC on subsequent 800 m running performance and spatiotemporal parameters in adult recreational runners. Thirty recreational runners completed two testing sessions. On Day 1, participants performed …

Discerning Patterns Of Floral Sugar-Feeding: Dynamics Of The Mosquito Culex Antillummagnorum In Puerto Rico, Ella J. Branham

Master's Theses

Mosquitoes rely on sugar feeding for survival, primarily from flowering plants, yet mosquito–plant interactions remain understudied. I examined plant-feeding associations of the mosquito Culex antillummagnorum in the Luquillo Experimental Forest of Puerto Rico, which may clarify patterns of habitat use, disease dynamics, and broader species interactions. First, plant DNA was extracted from field-collected Cx. antillummagnorum to identify potential nectar sources. DNA barcoding produced positive matches to the flowering plant genera Billia, Aesculus, Cladium, Fimbristylis, Xyris, Cakile, and Habenaria. Habenaria was the most compelling result because it belongs to the same subtribe of orchids …

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: …

Evaluating Modern Neural Network Architectures For Suicide Prediction, Kyle Brown

Master's Theses

Suicide remains a leading cause of death among adolescents despite more access to healthcare information than ever before. Medical professionals struggle to make accurate diagnoses and catch warning signs with the overwhelming amount of data available. Machine learning algorithms, including neural networks, have previously been employed for this task, yet it remains an understudied domain.

This research aims to evaluate the capabilities of Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) and a selection of its successors, ResNet and MLP with a category embedding layer, at the task of predicting suicidal ideation among high-school students. This research finds ResNet to be the most capable at …

"Ostracized As We Are With God": Mina Loy's Anti-Career And The Search For Originality, Peyton L. Phillips

Master's Theses

Among many modernist artists, Mina Loy remains one of the most complex and allusive. Recent posthumous exposure of Loy's life and work adds to this precarity. A significant piece of Loy's life that is especially complex to contemporaries is her time spent writing. By establishing Loy's subjective relationship with her Victorian upbringing, this paper seeks to show examples of its influence on her search for originality. Mainly, the paper examines Loy's concept of originality, where that concept may have come from, and how it is reflected in her literature. The paper analyzes three of Loy's literary works, her poems "Virgins …

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 …

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. …

Design And Reliability Analysis Of A Radiation-Tolerant On-Board Computer System For Martian Surface Missions, Jack Ryan

Master's Theses

Space environments present complex challenges for electronic devices, perhaps most notably in the form of radiation effects; the natural protections provided by Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere are largely absent in deep space and extraterrestrial environments, making single-event effects (SEE) a critical concern. Although radiation-hardened components offer near-immunity to SEE, they possess tremendous drawbacks in both cost and performance. To circumvent such issues, this thesis investigates the feasibility of leveraging a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) device, the AMD KRIA K24 system-on-module (SOM), for use in Martian surface missions.

Detailed models were used to predict SEE rates in the system, and system-level fault tree …

Redeveloping Mississippi: A Case Study On Brownfields In Central & Southern Mississippi, Sahrah R. Yeroozedek

Master's Theses

Brownfields, or properties that are or possibly are contaminated with dangerous materials, represent a common obstacle for communities in Mississippi. The real or potential presence of contaminants at these sites often deters investors due to costly cleanup requirements (EPA, n.d. -b). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), through its Brownfield Revitalization Program, implemented guidelines for covering the costs and labor associated with the remediation of these properties. The EPA is not, however, responsible for redevelopment that supports long-term environmental and economic sustainability. Although the EPA maintains inventories of all Brownfields, there is also no comprehensive database of Brownfields and their current …

Long Run Effect Of Industrial Place-Based Policy On County Level Complexity, An Investigation Of The Tennessee Valley Authority, Anita Ifeyinwa Umunnah

Master's Theses

This paper studies the long-term effects of large federal investments in place-based industrial policies on regional economic development, contributing new evidence on how industrial policies shape regional local productive capabilities over time. While extensive research show that industrial policies impact regional development by advancing productive technology (capabilities), the fundamental question remains how to measure this technological transformation. The study employs the use of Economic Complexity Index (ECI) as a measure of “technological advancements” resulting from large federal investments in place-based industrial policies. Previous evaluations of such investment were based on livelihood, employment and income outcomes, with productive capability of receiving …

Assessment Of Mississippi Landfill Capacity In Relation To Waste Generation And Land-Use Constraints, Jason C. Anderson

Master's Theses

Municipal solid waste (MSW) management presents a growing challenge in Mississippi as population trends, socioeconomic change and regional development continue to place pressure on existing landfill capacity. This thesis examines waste generation and disposal patterns from 2000 through 2022 across Mississippi counties, with projections extending to 2050. Historical landfill tonnage data was gathered and compiled from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) and analyzed using regression models in Excel and RStudio, with forecasts generated for both in-state and out-of-state waste flow. Results highlight significant variations among landfills, including differing closure timelines, changing county service areas and notable shifts in …

Quantifying Discard Mortality Of Undersized And Ovigerous Crabs In The Gulf Of Mexico Blue Crab Fishery, Micayla Cochran

Master's Theses

Blue crabs support a valuable commercial fishery in the Gulf of Mexico. Most states require the release of undersized and ovigerous blue crabs, yet mortality of these discarded crabs is an understudied component of total mortality. The first objective of this project was to quantify discard mortality of non-target crabs using bycatch surveys across the Lake Pontchartrain–Mississippi Sound coastal system. Ovigerous crabs were most common at high salinities and temperatures, whereas undersized crab presence was inversely correlated with soak time, temperature, and the number of crabs per trap, and also varied among geographic locations. A reflex action mortality prediction assessment …

Investigating Racial And Ethnic Differences In Help-Seeking Recommendations And Intentions For Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms And Symptom Clusters, Josselyn Yanisbeth Telule

Master's Theses

Racially and ethnically minoritized (REM) communities experience disproportionate exposure to adverse events, including discrimination, socioeconomic disparities, justice system involvement, and limited access to healthcare. These inequities increase the likelihood of experiencing potentially traumatic events (PTEs) and developing trauma-related mental health concerns such as posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Despite this elevated risk, REM populations consistently underutilize mental health services. Although several explanations have been proposed—including differences in symptom recognition, perceived need for care, cultural values, mental health literacy, and preferred sources of support—less research has examined racial and ethnic differences in help-seeking intentions (HSI) and help-seeking recommendations (HSR), particularly in response …

Simulated Battles, Real Lessons: Analyzing The Impact Of The U.S. Navy’S Fleet Problems On Battle In The Pacific War, Jackson T. Volkert

Master's Theses

The historiography of the Pacific Theater of World War II is thorough in regard to its coverage of the war itself. The technology, doctrine, and personnel practices of both the Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States Navy are well understood by historians in the field. In addition to this, a less thorough but still healthy understanding exists as to how the belligerents in question adopted the methods and tactics they used on the battlefields of the Pacific. What currently exists in this field of study places more analytical emphasis on the cultural and strategic level impacts of the interwar …

Examining The Interactive Effects Of Time Perspective And Life History On Decision-Making Patterns Among College Students: A Modified Replication Of Griskevicius Et Al. (2011b), Cameron M. Robins

Master's Theses

Griskevicius and colleagues (2011b) demonstrated decision-making patterns consistent with life history theory, called life history strategies, using an experimental design in which they randomly assigned college students to read one of two texts. The experimental condition was designed to trigger a feeling of heightened awareness of one’s own mortality, called mortality salience. Participants in this condition exhibited patterns of risk-taking and delay discounting on the outcome measures that were related to their childhood socioeconomic status (SES), one of the first demonstrations of life history strategies in an experimental setting.

However, multiple attempts at replication have failed to show similar results. …

Modeling The Effects Of Low-Pressure Atmospheric Fronts On Sediment Transport Through Mississippi Sound Barrier Island Inlets, Nicholas J. Gagliano

Master's Theses

Coastal sediment dynamics in the Mississippi Sound are strongly influenced by tropical cyclones and the more frequent passage of low-pressure atmospheric fronts. While hurricanes are well recognized for reshaping barrier islands and altering sediment budgets, the cumulative role of recurrent fronts remains poorly quantified. This thesis investigates the impacts of six low-pressure atmospheric fronts (2015–2017) on sediment flux through six barrier island inlets in the Mississippi Sound.

A high-resolution application of the Regional Ocean Modeling System with the Community Sediment Transport Modeling System was developed to simulate tidal circulation, wind-driven currents, and sediment dynamics. Waves were excluded from the simulations. …

An Investigation Of Data Granularity In Rag Pipelines For Personalized Medicine, Paritosh Pandey

Master's Theses

Generative AI, exemplified by large language models like the OpenAI GPT and Meta LLaMA families, can produce diverse content in response to prompts. This capability offers a promising solution to challenges in precision medicine, which seeks to tailor treatments to individual clinical profiles but often struggles with data collection, cost, and privacy concerns. By generating realistic, privacy-preserving patient data, generative AI has the potential to transform patient-centric healthcare. With such motivation, this research develops a comprehensive Generative AI pipeline emphasizing data granularity for accurate prediction of personalized treatments. The pipeline features a central Large Language Model interacting with a Machine …

Simulation Of A Buried Hydrogen Pipeline In Kansas State Soil, Sidney Hines

Master's Theses

Underground pipelines can be used to transport large amounts of pressurized hydrogen gas over several hundred kilometers. The design will be sensitive to the pipe material, diameter, and trench construction, and traffic loads above the pipe. The purpose of this paper is to conduct various geotechnical engineering analyses (seepage, stress, and slope stability) using the software program GeoStudio (version 2025.2.0) on a buried steel or FRP pipe section in a specific soil type, Harney Soil. Harney soil is of particular interest, because it is the Kansas State Soil and the analysis is for a buried gas pipe to run through …

Agentcite: Trustworthy Ai Agents For Information Verification Across Referenced Documents, Eymen Yigit

Master's Theses

This thesis presents AgentCite, a multi-agent framework for automated verification of referenced numerical data in research documents. The framework employs a hybrid design in which LLM-based agents handle document understanding and evidence retrieval, while deterministic components manage structured parsing and value comparison, improving consistency and reproducibility while reducing token consumption and execution time compared to fully agentic approaches.

AgentCite consists of three autonomous agents: a Negotiator, a Main Document Agent, and a Source Documents Agent, coordinated through a fixed tool-call pipeline. The Negotiator orchestrates verification by extracting tabular data from the main document, retrieving evidence from per-source vector stores, and …

Probing Representational Emergence In Large Language Models, Shawn Ismail

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates whether abrupt behavioral gains in large language models under scaling are accompanied by systematic changes in internal representations. It combines a behavioral screen of 65 tasks per family with targeted layerwise probing across eight decoder-only, open-weight model families. Behavioral emergence is defined for each family-task trajectory using an empirical jump detector, with segmented regression retained only as a diagnostic. The representational follow-up analyzes 27 selected MMLU subtasks shared across all families, spanning 37 checkpoints and 216 family-task units.

For each follow-up checkpoint, frozen linear probes are trained on every layer's hidden states to measure how much task-relevant …

Preserving Cherokee Culture Through Literacy And Literature: A Study Of Gendered Literacy, Rhetoric, And Cultural Continuity In The Cherokee Nation, Diana W. Baber

Master's Theses

Early explorers to what is now America, beginning with Hernando DeSoto in 1530, stole the dignity and the lands of the Indigenous peoples of America, of whom the Cherokees are only one nation. Two of the things that could not be taken was the Cherokees’ rich cultural tradition and oral histories. Stories passed orally from generation to generation to ensure that histories were preserved. They were largely preserved by the women of the tribe.

After the American Revolution, there was pressure from the new government to force the Cherokees to assimilate to the new American culture—to speak English, dress and …

Ai-Enabled Autonomous Visual Navigation In Complex And Data-Constrained Agricultural Environments By Leveraging Image Augmentation And Translation Methods, Robel Mamo

Master's Theses

The field of agricultural robotics remains one of the most underexplored domains within the broader robotics community. As a result, there is a scarcity of robust, scalable, and adaptable robotic systems capable of operating under the highly variable conditions of real-world farms. Visual navigation is essential for field autonomy, yet state-of-the-art perception models rely heavily on large annotated datasets and consistent environmental conditions. This thesis addresses these limitations by proposing two novel frameworks to enhance model robustness against structural occlusions, environmental variability, and low-visibility conditions under nighttime settings. First, I introduce Crop-Aligned Cutout (CA-Cut), a spatially guided augmentation method that …

Toni Morrison's New World Black Woman: Refuting, Deconstructing, And Redefining Black Women's Identity, Victoria L. Bell

Master's Theses

Abstract

Through critical analysis of media: literary works, performance, and television, this thesis explores the prejudices, silencing, dehumanizing, sexualization, and marginalization of Black women, their bodies, identity, and trauma inflicted by White-authored texts, specifically the American canon. I analyze the works of Black women authors, scholars, and activists, who counter the false representation of the patriarchy. Their literary works refute, deconstruct, and redefine the canon’s distorted, racial and gendered stereotypes, later to be named controlling images.  While narrating the Black woman’s authentic self, experience, body, and womanhood they reclaim space, authenticity, and agency.

In my research and analysis, the central …

Analysis Of Lateral Load Distribution In Steel Girder–Concrete Deck Bridges: Influence Of Diaphragm Behavior Under Wind And Vessel Collision Loads, Bhupesh Chand

Master's Theses

Bridges are critical components of modern transportation infrastructure, and their structural response under extreme loading conditions is essential for ensuring safety and serviceability. A key challenge in current bridge engineering practice is accurately understanding and predicting the lateral load distribution in steel girder–concrete deck bridge systems subjected to wind and vessel collision loads. While the AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications provide well-established provisions for vertical load distribution, magnitudes and load combinations (Article 3.4), they do not explicitly define lateral load distribution factors (LLDFs) for such extreme lateral loading conditions or address the role of the deck in redistributing these loads …

Design And Validation Of A Wearable Respiratory Protection System For Wildland Firefighters, Oliver Pilon

Master's Theses

Wildland and Wildland–Urban Interface firefighters are routinely exposed to hazardous smoke with fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, and other toxic combustion products. Existing protective gear has significant limitations and shortcomings for these conditions. Respirators with tight-fitting facepieces make it difficult to breathe and speak. On the other hand, self-contained breathing apparatuses are too heavy, have a limited duration of use, and do not work well with long wildland fire scenes, while smaller protective equipment like N-95’s and gaiters provide very little protection. These constraints contribute to low adoption rates and prolonged occupational exposure.

This thesis presents the …

Demystifying Hardware Formal Verification For Undergraduate Education: A Risc-V Processor Case Study With Coursework Implementation, Riley A. Peters

Master's Theses

Hardware verification engineers apply formal methods to prove that a digital device always behaves according to its specification. This differs from traditional functional verification, in which engineers establish correctness by repeatedly sending test inputs to the device and comparing the outputs against a reference model. With the growing complexity of integrated circuits, the demand for digital verification engineers with formal methods experience has continued to increase. However, California Polytechnic State University: San Luis Obispo's current curriculum lacks dedicated material to prepare students for these roles.

This thesis seeks to address the lack of formal methods material through two efforts. First, …

Environmental Impact Of Preventative Fire-Retardant Applications On Soil Water Chemistry, Patrick C. Michelsen

Master's Theses

Between 1992 and 2012, 84% of all documented wildfires were started by humans. These fires often start around high-risk locations such as power lines and roadsides where fuel loads are near these potential human-caused ignition sources. Point source ignition sites that are surrounded by shrubs or grasslands are especially important because fires that occur within these biomes are responsible for far more destruction of property than forest fires. One strategy that is effective at mitigating the spread of fires from ignition sites that are within grassland or shrub biomes are preventative fire-retardant products (PFRPs). These PFRPs differ from traditional fire-retardant …