Digital Commons Network^™

A Study Of Booster Seat Education In An Elementary School Setting, Rosanina Carlotta Ketchum

Theses

The leading cause of death in children five to nine years old is motor vehicle accidents (MVA). Booster seats decrease the risk of injury during MVA’s, and knowledge deficit is a frequently listed reason for the non-use of booster seats. A descriptive quantitative research method was undertaken using a survey design to evaluate the effectiveness of parental booster seat education in the elementary school setting in increasing booster seat use among 4- to 8-year-olds in one Oklahoma community. A chi-square test of independence found that parents who attended booster seat education sessions had higher rates of consistent booster seat use …

The Aesthetics Of Violation: Visual Rhetoric And The Ethics Of Spectatorship In Venetian Ovidian Painting, Khira Rudolph

Theses

In this thesis, we will consider how 16th-century Venetian painters used sophisticated visual methods, colorito, glowing atmospheric glazes, serpentine lines and spatial buffering to camouflage the physical violence of Ovidian abduction stories. Most historical art literature in the past has hailed high Renaissance masters Titian and Paolo Veronese as technical bravura, lyrical colorism and visual appeal in the face of social and emotional tragedy in their work on canvas. In comparing Titian’s The Rape of Europa, Paolo Veronese’s The Rape of Europa, Paolo Veronese’s circle Scene from the Metamorphoses of Ovid: The Rape of Proserpine and Rembrandt …

The St. Louis Zine Project: A Study And Documentation Of Live Music, Dawnye Appel

Theses

This practice-based project examines how documentary photography and zine-making can document and interpret an independent live-music venue as a site of atmosphere, cultural memory, and community. Focusing on The Sinkhole in St. Louis, Missouri, the inquiry considers what becomes visible when the venue, rather than only the performer, becomes the subject of photographic documentation. Project materials include photographs taken during a single visit on July 11, 2026, observations of the venue, and an interview with owner Matt Stutler, documented through written notes. Scholarship on live-music spaces, cultural memory, photography, and self publishing informs the interpretation of these materials. Analysis occurs …

Improving And Quantifying Utility Under Local Differential Privacy, Ye Zheng

Theses

Local Differential Privacy (LDP) is a privacy model in which users perturb their data locally before sharing it with untrusted data collectors for analysis. It provides provable privacy guarantees for each individual user. Owing to these guarantees, LDP has been widely deployed by major technology companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft to protect user privacy while still enabling data collection for analytics and machine learning. However, a fundamental challenge in LDP is the tradeoff between privacy and utility: stronger privacy guarantees typically come at the cost of lower utility for the data collector. To address this challenge, a central …

Predictive Modeling For Traffic Accident Severity Using Machine Learning, Ahmad Bin Eid

Theses

Road traffic accidents remain a persistent public safety challenge, responsible for over 1.3 million deaths annually according to the World Health Organization. While considerable effort has gone into understanding accident patterns, predicting the severity of an accident before or immediately after it occurs remains a difficult problem — particularly when the underlying data is messy, imbalanced, and largely categorical in nature. This study applies three supervised machine learning classification algorithms — Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosting — to predict the severity of road traffic accidents using a dataset of 12,316 records collected by the Addis Ababa Sub-city Police …

Workload-Aware Performance Prediction And Data Movement For Data-Intensive Computing, Kevin Assogba

Theses

Data-intensive workloads in high-performance computing and artificial intelligence move massive volumes of data across deep memory and storage hierarchies, often spending more time moving data than computing on it. Their access patterns, data-sharing relationships, and computational graph properties are largely determined by descriptors known to the application before execution. However, general-purpose runtimes treat this structure as opaque, and the resulting gap between workload behavior and runtime decisions accounts for a substantial fraction of their execution time. Despite advances in performance modeling and data-movement systems, this structure remains underexploited. Schedulers, caches, and I/O paths provision resources conservatively, prediction models are rarely …

Greennet: Ai-Driven Routing Simulator For Sustainable Internet Energy Optimization, Olta Zagraxha

Theses

Reducing the energy consumption of communication networks while maintaining reliable service is an important challenge in sustainable computing. This capstone presents GreenNet, a simulation and evaluation framework designed to investigate whether energy-aware network control can reduce estimated energy consumption without unacceptable degradation in Quality of Service (QoS). GreenNet combines a graph-based network simulator, configurable traffic scenarios, and a web-based interface for examining network behavior and comparing control strategies. Three approaches are evaluated: an All-On baseline that keeps all links active, a rule-based heuristic that selectively deactivates links, and a hybrid controller based on Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), whose proposed actions …

Bayesian Network: An Explainable Artificial Intelligence (Xai) Approach To Human Performance Modelling For Control Room Operations, Houda Briwa

Theses

Alarm systems in process industry control rooms routinely exceed the performance targets set by standards such as EEMUA 191, placing operators under conditions where reliable performance is most difficult to achieve. Predicting how operators respond under such conditions is central to risk management, yet current Human Reliability Assessment (HRA) methods depend on expert judgement that is rarely tested against operational evidence, assume independence among factors known to interact, and do not explicitly represent the cognitive processes through which performance emerges. In Resilience Engineering terms, these methods encode Work-as-Imagined with limited means to assess how far expectations hold when work is …

Assessing The Impact Of Quantum Technology On Smart City Cyber Resilience, Afra Almansoori

Theses

Smart Cities rely on high-density digital infrastructures that include Internet of Things (IoT) devices, Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud computing, digital identity systems, and operational technology. Although these systems improve efficiency and sustainability, they also provide a large cyber-physical attack surface. The problem is exacerbated by the advent of quantum computing, as popular public-key ciphers like RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography can be broken using quantum algorithms such as Shor's algorithm (Shor, 1994; Mosca, 2018). Smart cities rely on long-term data confidentiality, certificate-based trust, and remote management of critical infrastructure. This presents a strategic cyber resilience challenge. This thesis examines the impact …

Machine Learning Based Detection Of Unaccounted For Water Using Smart Water Meter Data, Uhoud Aljarman

Theses

The increasing deployment of smart water meters has transformed water distribution systems by enabling high-resolution, near real-time monitoring of customer level water consumption. In water scarce regions such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and particularly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where potable water production relies predominantly on energy intensive desalination, these data streams present a critical opportunity to reduce Unaccounted-for Water (UFW), also referred to as Non-Revenue Water (NRW). UFW arising from physical leaks, meter malfunctions, unauthorized connections, and abnormal consumption patterns imposes significant economic, operational, and environmental burdens on water utilities (World Bank, 2016; World …

Women Entrepreneurs In Kosovo: Family And Institutional Implications, Lona Arifi

Theses

Women’s entrepreneurship represents an important source of economic participation, job creation, and local development in Kosovo. Despite gradual progress, women entrepreneurs continue to face structural constraints linked to family responsibilities, unequal care burdens, and uneven institutional support. This study examines how family-related responsibilities and institutional support mechanisms interact to shape the entrepreneurial experiences of women entrepreneurs in Kosovo. The analysis is guided by the 5M framework of women’s entrepreneurship developed by Brush et al. (2009) and applies a mixed-methods research design combining survey data from 145 women-owned businesses, semi-structured interviews, and secondary evidence. The findings show that women entrepreneurs in …

Beyond The Binary: Strengthening Nursing Students’ Proficiency Of Equitable Health Promotion, Martha K. Findley

Theses

Background: Sexual and gender diverse (SGD) populations continue to experience significant health inequities, yet prelicensure nursing curricula often lack structured, evidence‑based training to prepare students for equitable care.

Purpose: This study evaluated whether a targeted, transgender‑focused simulation could improve nursing students’ clinical knowledge and preparedness for providing equitable health promotion to SGD populations.

Methods: A pre‑/post‑intervention design was used with senior‑level nursing students who completed a transgender patient simulation emphasizing communication, assessment, and equitable health promotion. Students completed a validated survey measuring knowledge and preparedness in caring for SGD patients.

Results: Significant improvements across most survey items demonstrated that the …

Electromagnetic Signatures Of Massive Binary Black Hole Systems, Kaitlyn Porter

Theses

(EM) radiation, with their observable signatures shaped by the complex interplay between orbital dynamics, gas dynamics, and radiative processes. The evolution of the surrounding accretion flow is governed by general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) within a strongly curved, timedependent spacetime, making the prediction of observable EM signals a challenging computational problem. This dissertation presents the development of a general relativistic ray-tracing framework that post-processes numerical relativity GRMHD simulations of accreting SMBHB systems. The framework enables the calculation of predicted images, spectra, and light curves throughout the inspiral, merger, and early post-merger phases. In parallel, improvements are made to an analytical model …

Combined Effects Of Space-Relevant Thermal & Radiation Stress On Wide-Gap Mixed-Halide Perovskite Solar Cells, Veran Stanek

Theses

Mixed-halide wide-band gap perovskites are attractive for space power due to their high open-circuit voltages and compatibility with tandem device architectures, but their response to combined orbital stressors remains under-explored. Here, we study 1.86 eV band gap all-inorganic CsPbI2Br solar cells across a space-relevant thermal window of -80°C to +100°C before and after 1.0 M eV proton irradiation. n-i-p devices exhibit notable radiation tolerance retaining approximately 60% of initial power conversion efficiency (PCE) upon irradiation with a fluence of 5 × 10^13 cm^−2. Temperature-dependent hyperspectral photoluminescence imaging and spectroscopy uncover a reversible low-temperature emissive heterogeneity in the perovskite absorber, manifested …

Zineth, Colin Wilcox

Theses

This thesis asks whether a brand can generate real engagement without surrendering to an algorithm, and whether web design can recover the color, mystery, and sense of discovery it traded away as the internet corporatized. Daily internet use has risen every year on record, yet the spaces users inhabit have flattened into grey buttons and endless feeds. This question is answered through Zineth, a hybrid brand universe told across three coordinated forms: a Risograph-printed zine, a dense and layered website, and limited clothing drops. The zine operates as a key. Codes printed in its pages unlock gated areas of the …

A Large-Scale Annotated Flight Time-Series Dataset And Geospatial Post-Flight Analysis Tools For Ngafid, Roman Kozulia

Theses

This work presents three contributions to the National General Aviation Flight Information Database (NGAFID): a maintenance-linked flight dataset forpredictivemaintenanceresearch, anaviationchartprocessingservice, and an interactive geospatial heat map for post-flight event analysis. The first contribution is a maintenance-linked flight dataset for predic- tive maintenance and prognostics research in general aviation. The dataset contains approximately 100,000 non-simulated maintenance work orders and more than a million multivariate flight recordings extracted from NGAFID. Eachflightisassociatedwithmaintenancerecordsandlabeledaspre-maintenance, day-of-maintenance, or post-maintenance. Flights are exported as one-hertz sensor time series with flight-phase annotations, while a clustering pipeline groups technician-written maintenance records into event categories. To our knowledge, thisisthelargestpubliclyavailablegeneralaviationflightdataset linked to …

The Fate Of Microplastics In The Littoral Zone Of A Whole-Lake Microplastic Addition Experiment, Ren Staggs

Theses

Microplastics (MPs) are ubiquitous across all ecosystems, but the physical fate of MPs within specific littoral compartments in lakes is poorly understood. Here, we describe the fate of MPs across five littoral compartments: water, macrophytes, periphyton, rocks, and sediment, to contribute to a whole-lake MP particle budget as part of the pELAstic project, which has been adding polyethylene (PE), polystyrene (PS), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) MPs to an entire lake over three years in a whole-ecosystem experiment at the IISD-ELA. We quantified MP abundance across three particle size fractions (>212, 106–212, and 106–53 µm) by sampling each compartment at …

Lost In Translation: Quantifying Political Sociolect Divergence And Testing Llm Reliability As Political Interpreters, Daniel J. Corcoran

Theses

In the United States political sphere, growing polarization between Democrats and Republicans, particularly their more ideologically extreme wings, has given rise to distinct English-adjacent languages, shaped by social tendencies and referred to as “sociolects”. These sociolects offer a new avenue to analyze and further quantify growing polarization, and as Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) become increasingly embedded in political and social analysis, understanding their depth of political reasoning, biases, and classification behavior has become imperative. In this study, we sourced comment data from the CNN, Fox, and MSNBC YouTube channels, spanning from 2020 through 2024, trained …

Hybrid Photonic–Electronic Neuromorphic Integrated Circuits, Lilian Neim

Theses

Photonic neural networks use integrated photonic circuits to perform neural network operations with high bandwidth and the potential for energy-efficient computation. In these systems, optical device responses can represent weights, and wavelength division multiplexing enables multiple wavelength channels to be processed in parallel within the same waveguide. However, scalable photonic neural network hardware needs weights that can be programmed, stored, and read reliably. Many current approaches require continuous electrical or thermal tuning to hold the optical state. This dissertation addresses this challenge by developing a hybrid photonic-electronic approach to non-volatile electro-optic memory. Here, we design and demonstrate a non-volatile electro-optic …

Understanding The Long-Term Patterns Of Change Of A Tidal Marsh In Mission Bay, San Diego, California, Carrie A. Shuster, Theresa Sinicrope Talley Ph.D., Drew Talley Ph.D., Zhi-Yong Yin Ph.D., Kellie Uyeda Ph.D.

Theses

Coastal marshes are among California’s most productive ecosystems and the most impacted, having been extensively modified by dredging, filling, and urban development. This thesis investigates over a century of change for a marsh in Northern Mission Bay, San Diego, California using ecological and spatial analyses.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the environmental history and current land use of the Northern Mission Bay marsh, tracing changes from pre-contact Indigenous stewardship through colonial and modern urban development. It also introduces a restoration plant palette derived from historical and contemporary species occurrences, ecological functions, and documented cultural uses. By integrating ethnobotanical knowledge …

The Measured Toll: Visualizing The Hidden Impact Of Chronic Painkiller Use, Yun Chia (Lisa) Song

Theses

The Measured Toll: Visualizing the Hidden Impact of Chronic Painkiller Use investigates how clinical data can be reinterpreted through the lens of information design to reveal long-term effects on heart and liver health that are often overlooked or invisible. This project translates complex medical information into a visual language that prioritizes clarity, emotional resonance, and user engagement. Through a series of printed posters and a motion-based introduction, the work employs abstract design strategies—including subtle distortion, radial line structures, and restrained typography—to evoke a sense of internal tension and gradual change. By structuring the visuals to unfold as a narrative, the …

Anxious Or Avoidant? The Moderating Effects Of Attachment Styles On Later Development Of Ptsd And Bpd In Individuals With Child Maltreatment History, Jeannette L. Burkle

Theses

Child maltreatment (CM) has been associated with the later development of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among emerging adults. Numerous attachment studies have documented the association of insecure attachments with CM. There is little research on the independent effects of anxious and avoidant maternal attachment on later psychopathology and even less on the effects of peer attachment. Secure peer attachments can improve emotional regulation strategies as well as create healthy social support systems which may buffer against the development of later psychopathology. This study examined the independent effects of maternal and peer attachment in the relationship …

Navigating Errors: Voice Assistants And Aging Users, Bea Marithe V. Pulido

Theses

This study examined how age relates to usability, cognitive load, and affect when using voice-user interfaces (VUIs). VUIs such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Home are increasingly common and allow users to complete tasks through voice commands. While these systems can be convenient and accessible, especially for older adults, they often provide brief or unclear feedback when errors occur, making it difficult for users to understand what went wrong and how to continue the interaction. The current study compared older and younger adults (n = 40) to examine group differences in perceived usability, cognitive load, and affective change during VUI …

Investigation Of Applying Machine Learning For Thermal Transport Phenomena, Ayush Jha

Theses

Electronic cooling is essential for maintaining optimal performance during complex computation tasks. Computational simulations have become a key tool to assess performance under various operating conditions. However, computational modeling involves a lengthy process to reach the final solution. The present work introduces a point-based neural network model to generate instant predictions of temperature for various heat sink configurations. A design of experiments methodology was utilized to define different heatsink designs, which were simulated using OpenFOAM. The training data included fin length, fin width, thermal conductivity, and Cartesian coordinates of point clouds. PyTorch was enabled with a fully connected neural network …

Elimination Of Object Jittering Via Impostor Rendering With Gpu Emulated Doubles, James Govan Moir Iv

Theses

Object jittering is an issue that arises when rendering objects at large distances from the scene's origin. This challenge arises in software that focuses on rendering realistically scaled planetary systems and games which simulate large open world environments. While there are several techniques in common use that aim to manage jittering, they come with performance tradeoffs. We propose a new technique that combines GPU based emulated double arithmetic with impostor rendering. Our technique aims to eliminate object jittering while maintaining reasonable performance.

Metal-Assisted Chemical Etching For Heterogeneous Integration And Advanced Processing, Sami Znati

Theses

Emerging and existing technologies will require novel approaches to continue advances in development. Heterogeneous integration of next generation materials, such as 2-D materials and III-V semiconductors, onto existing platforms is a critical step to enabling new, better performing devices. Microtransfer printing (µTP) is a promising technique for integrating device coupons onto supportive platforms. InP coupons are integrated into mixed-dimensional structures by printing onto 2-D materials as part of an electronic device. Etching of next generation materials to define device structures is an integral part of any process. Catalytic wet etching is an alternative to dry etching that may offer improvements …

All The Pretty Ponies, David Rose

Theses

Adopting a nonconventional, narrative approach, this thesis explores a world of ponies where memories become distorted and rewritten through the author’s self-insert of a 'little pink pony' persona to illustrate the psychological states investigated in the exhibit. This paper serves as an artistic companion piece to the thesis exhibition by David Rose that featured these concepts through visual media. David utilizes painting, screenprinting, and animation as mediums for this body of work. This thesis is written like a story because David’s work is founded on the principle of creating and displaying an experience rather than simply stating the facts. Through …

Rebranding Architecture: Understanding Perception To Reinforce Professional Jurisdiction, Amber L. Whitaker

Theses

What is the current perception of the architecture profession, and what is the perception that architects want others to have? In the marketing and communications profession, one might ask, what is the profession’s current brand, and how does that differ from the desired brand? From inconsistent state laws regarding architectural titles, to the potential federal reclassification of the profession, to non-architects’ common misconception that architects merely draw floorplans, the architecture profession is misunderstood, causing an image problem. Although architecture is one of the world’s oldest professions, this image problem often translates into deep misunderstanding of what architects do, ultimately affecting …

Accelerometer-Based Longitudinal Center Of Gravity Estimation With Lateral Acceleration Compensation, John Wynne

Theses

Spatially separated accelerometers and measured rotational motion can enable estimation of an aircraft’s longitudinal center-of-gravity (CG) location. Because the unrestricted rigid-body governing equations form an underdetermined system, the problem is reduced by assuming known lateral and vertical CG coordinates. The resulting estimator uses the lateral acceleration equation, where sensitivity to longitudinal CG is governed by the rotational excitation term 𝑀_21 = 𝑝𝑞 + 𝑟̇. Three representations of lateral acceleration at the CG are evaluated: a zero- acceleration assumption, a linear sideslip angle model, and a model based on sideslip angle and true airspeed squared. Each model is calibrated using known …

Chronotivity: Concurrent And Prospective Influences On Creative Performance Among College Students, Hreem Mahadeshwar

Theses

Creativity is increasingly understood as a dynamic process influenced by biological, psychological, and contextual factors. Previous research has linked chronotype, sleep quality, affect, curiosity, and creative self-efficacy to creative performance; however, relatively little is known about how these factors jointly relate to creativity among college students or whether they predict creative performance over time. The present study examined concurrent and prospective relationships in undergraduate students at RIT (T1: n = 210; T2: n = 38), between these variables and creative performance using a two-timepoint design. Creative performance was assessed using the Alternative Uses Task and scored for creative quality and …