Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Consumer Behavior In End-Of-Current-Use Electronics: A Multi-Method Approach To Improving Sustainability Outcomes, Payam Saeedi

Theses

The proliferation of network-connected consumer electronics has created a sustained challenge for sustainability and data security at the End-of-Current-Use (EoCU) stage. In the United States, devices accumulate in storage rather than entering reuse or recycling pathways, and a substantial share of devices change hands without proper data sanitization. This dissertation characterizes and quantifies consumer behavior at EoCU of consumer electronics in the U.S., with the goal of supporting the design of interventions that improve sustainability and data security outcomes. A survey of 4,000 U.S. respondents (3,747 after data cleaning) was developed and deployed across 10 categories of network-connected devices, capturing …

Retroverse: Enhancing Fashion Shopping Experience Through Augmented Reality, Fanghao Wang

Theses

RetroVerse is a conceptual augmented reality (AR) application that reimagines the vintage fashion shopping experience by addressing the information gaps that often make secondhand purchasing uncertain and inefficient. As the resale market continues to grow, consumers frequently struggle to identify garments, verify authenticity, evaluate condition, compare prices, and determine fit, requiring them to rely on multiple platforms and personal knowledge before making a purchase. To address these challenges, RetroVerse integrates augmented reality, image recognition, and contextual product information into a unified shopping experience. Through video and live garment scanning, users can access brand history, manufacturing information, condition assessments, marketplace price …

Personalization And Generalization In Machine Learning For Affective Ai, Rajesh Titung

Theses

Human emotional communication involves subtle, low-intensity, and context-dependent expressions influenced by sociocultural and interpersonal factors. Their inherent ambiguity and variability create heterogeneous data distributions, making affective phenomena difficult to model in naturalistic settings where expressions differ from exaggerated affect behaviors in acted environments. Affective AI faces the fundamental challenge of balancing personalization, which captures individual nuances, with generalization, which ensures robustness of affective AI systems across individuals. Traditional centralized models emphasizing generalization often fail to capture fine-grained expressive heterogeneity, while fully personalized models improve system performance for individuals but lack transferability and robustness. The central task is thus to develop …

Ikaros: See Through Time, Aisha F. A. Alnouri

Theses

Conventional heritage interpretation often relies on static signage, creating an "information void" where physical ruins sit uncontextualized. This thesis addresses this issue by proposing an interactive spatial information system designed to dynamically display, and contextualize architectural heritage in real time. Designed as a global framework, Failaka Island in Kuwait serves as the primary case study, driven by a personal cultural connection and the need to bridge the island's post-war generational disconnect. Positioned at the intersection of information design, interactive media, and spatial visualization, the system, Ikaros, utilizes Hellenistic Temple B, a 3rd-century BCE sanctuary, as its core testbed. The touchscreen …

Impacts Of Prescribed Burning And Midstory Thinning On The Abundance Of Eastern Whip-Poor-Will And Chuck-Will’S-Widow In Southern Illinois, Lauren Benedict

Theses

The Chuck-will’s-widow (Antrostomus carolinensis) and Eastern Whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus) are nightjar species that inhabit southern Illinois during the breeding season. Both species are thought to benefit from open woodlands which are often a result of natural disturbance or active forest management. However, due to a lack of significant disturbances and active management, this forest structure has become rare. Like many disturbance-dependent species, the Chuck-will’s-widow and Eastern Whip-poor-will have experienced range-wide declines over the past 50 years. Despite this, few studies have examined the impacts of forest management and the resulting forest structure on these species. We evaluated the impacts of …

Cross-Layer Security And Responsive Evaluation Architectures For Quantum Resistance In Connected Vehicles, Geoff Twardokus

Theses

Connected vehicle (CV) technologies are emerging as a crucial technology for improving safety on future roadways. Wireless vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication allows CVs to exchange information that provides enhanced awareness and supports better driving decisions, especially in high-risk or non-line-of-sight scenarios. However, V2X also exposes new surfaces to physical layer attacks and increasingly sophisticated, potentially quantum-capable threat actors. As human or autonomous CV drivers will make split-second safety-critical decisions based on the contents of V2X messages, ensuring their authenticity, as well as their reliable and timely delivery, is crucial. Otherwise, malicious attackers may interfere with safety services or spoof messages to …

Miscela Aura: An Interactive Fragrance Experience, Francesca Delaney

Theses

How can product customization lead directly to design customization? This question is explored through the lens of perfume. The concept of layering and customizing perfume is becoming more of a desired feature in the fragrance industry, opening the opportunity for how design can be used to create an interactive fragrance experience. Miscela Aura is a custom perfume line centered on an interactive brand activation. An interactive display scans your “aura” and gives you a unique color pattern. Each color represents a fragrance note, the amount of each scent controlled by the amount of each color. As the user interacts with …

Design And Verification Of A Reconfigurable Cryptographic Hardware Accelerator, Nicholas Merante

Theses

Cryptographic operations are used throughout computing systems to protect data confidentiality and integrity. Although software implementations provide flexibility, dedicated hardware can offer more predictable execution time and reduce the processing burden placed on a general-purpose processor. This thesis presents the design and verification of a Reconfigurable Cryptographic Hardware Accelerator (RCHA) that integrates AES-128, ChaCha20, SHA-256, and BLAKE2s within a single Verilog/SystemVerilog design. A top-level interface shared by the four cores manages algorithm selection, inputs, outputs, status, protocol errors, cycle measurement, and known-answer self-tests. Verification combined primitive-level tests, integrated UVM regressions, randomized stimulus, directed coverage tests, and OpenSSL-based C++ reference models …

Capital Cities: The Intersection Of Power And Protest Urban Planning And Civic Design In Brasília And Washington, D.C., Noah Benjamin Gill

Theses

The physical environments of capital cities play a critical role in shaping how citizens interact with governmental power, particularly during moments of political unrest, protest, and democratic conflict. As both symbolic representations of national identity and functional centers of government, these urban landscapes influence how citizens approach, occupy, and confront civic institutions through their planning, architectural form, circulation networks, and spatial organization. Government buildings, public plazas, monumental landscapes, and civic axes do more than provide settings for political activity; they actively shape patterns of movement, visibility, accessibility, and control. The design of these spaces influences not only how democratic institutions …

Asynchronous Methods For Reducing Dynamic Power In Sparse Systems, Braley Lachner

Theses

While a strong history of computer development has maximized architecture performance, modern computing is fundamentally constrained by thermal limits and power consumption. This is especially true in power sensitive edge applications, which often have low activity. Asynchronous architectures offer a pathway to take advantage of sparsity within hardware to drastically reduce dynamic power through fine-grain selective activation of only necessary hardware. Despite these advantages, the semiconductor industry relies heavily on Electronic Design Automation (EDA) toolchains, which have been developed with many synchronous assumptions. The traditional overhead and strict incompatibility with standard EDA toolchains have limited adoption of asynchronous technologies in …

Design Of A Continuum Robot Test Bed Utilizing Model-Free Sliding Mode Control, Joseph Paul Streib

Theses

Continuum robots are a class of continually deformable robots inspired by snakes and tentacles that are commonly used in medical, search and rescue, and exploration applications. The robots are highly nonlinear and difficult to accurately model and control. Precise control of the pose of a continuum robot is typically reliant upon a system model. This work introduces a novel model free control algorithm for continuum robots that only relies upon the robot’s position in task space. The derived controller is built upon the foundation of a preexisting model free sliding mode controller and the q-state parameterized piecewise constant curvature kinematic …

Uvm Verification Of A 4-Stage Asynchronous Risc-V Processor, Yashaswini Suresha

Theses

Functional verification often takes more effort than designing the system itself, especially when the design departs from the synchronous, globally clocked style that verification tools assume. Asynchronous or clockless circuits are an example of this. They use local request and acknowledge handshaking instead of a global clock, which reduces dynamic power and eliminates clock-distribution and skew problems. However, this also means that standard verification methods that rely on a single periodic clock no longer apply. This thesis introduces a constrained-random, coverage-driven verification environment for a four-stage asynchronous RISC-V processor. The environment is built in SystemVerilog using the Universal Verification Methodology …

Passive House Envelope Retrofit For Heritage Buildings In Hot Semi-Arid Climates: A Shoebox Energy Simulation Study Of The Former British Residency (Osmania University College For Women), Hyderabad, India, Hasini Kadaru

Theses

This study assesses interior-oriented envelope retrofits based on Passive House principles, applied to the British Residency of Hyderabad, now called Telangana Mahila Viswa Vidyalayam since 2022, and to Osmania University College for Women (OUCW) for the prior 70 years. This Grade 1-listed building was constructed in several phases starting in the 1790s, then remodeled and extended under Resident James Achilles Kirkpatrick from 1798 to 1805 and completed around 1808. It served as the Residency until 1947, when it was handed over to Osmania University.    Due to the conservation approach applied to the site, which does not allow any external changes, …

A Best-Practice And Risk-Assessment Framework For Auditable Ai Integration In Uae Government Socs, Nasser Hassan Nasser Abdulrazaq Alrazooqi

Theses

The growing use of artificial intelligence and generative AI in security operations centres  have the ability to improve alert triage, investigation, threat-intelligence enrichment,  and incident response. It also introduces governance risks including explainability, data  leakage, prompt injection, model lifecycle management, human oversight, and the  traceability of AI-assisted decisions. This study has developed a best-practice and risk assessment framework for the auditable integration of AI in UAE’s governmental SOCs.  The research follows a qualitative and practitioner-informed documentary analysis.  Publicly available UAE cybersecurity policies, internationally recognised NIST and  ISO/IEC standards, academic literature, industry guidance and compliance  publications were reviewed. Moreover, they were …

Puzzles & Frames: Exploring Motion Graphics In Thriller Movie Poster Design, Xingyu Xiao

Theses

This thesis explores how motion graphics can expand the role of traditional movie posters and create more engaging visual communication experiences. The project began with an observation that static posters displayed in busy campus environments can easily be overlooked. This led to the central question of how motion graphics can make traditional movie posters more visually engaging and effective in campus environments. To investigate this question, I developed a series of dynamic thriller movie posters that combine traditional graphic design elements—including typography, composition, imagery, abstraction, and visual hierarchy—with motion. The design process developed through several stages of experimentation. Early studies …

Factors Influencing Employee Engagement And Performance In Hybrid Work Environments, Saif Alblooshi

Theses

The widespread adoption of hybrid work arrangements, in which employees divide their working time between remote and office-based settings, has fundamentally altered how organisations manage, measure, and sustain workforce engagement and performance. While hybrid models offer tangible benefits such as increased autonomy, reduced commuting burden, and greater scheduling flexibility, they simultaneously introduce a set of organisational challenges that conventional management frameworks were not designed to address. Chief among these challenges is the difficulty of maintaining consistent levels of employee engagement across distributed work settings, where informal communication, social connection, and direct managerial oversight are structurally constrained. The absence of robust, …

Analyzing The Effects Of Biodegradable Plastic Fragments On Maize Development And Defense Signaling, Ulysses Hampton

Theses

As plastic use shifts from non-degradable to biodegradable materials, the effects of biodegradable plastic fragments on crop physiology remain unclear. This study investigated how biodegradable plastic fragments influence maize development, transpiration, and defense signaling. Among five plastic types tested, poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (PBAT), polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), polycaprolactone (PCL), polylactic acid (PLA), and thermoplastic starch (TPS). PBAT and TPS showed the most significant effects and were selected for further oxylipin analysis. Results indicate that biodegradable plastic fragments can alter oxylipin signaling pathways in subtle but meaningful ways, suggesting that these materials are not inherently risk-free alternatives to conventional plastics.

The Impact Of Enhanced Pediatric Asthma Simulation Prebriefing On Perceived Psychological Safety In Associate Degree Nursing Students, Amy G. Burtram

Theses

Background: Simulation is a core teaching strategy in nursing education, yet student anxiety may negatively impact learning outcomes. Psychological safety has been identified as a critical factor in effective simulation-based student learning.

Purpose: The purpose of this project was to examine whether an enhanced simulation prebrief improved perceived psychological safety among second-semester associate degree nursing students during a high-fidelity pediatric asthma scenario at a rural community college in Alabama.

Methods: A quasi-experimental one-group pretest–posttest design evaluated changes in psychological safety following a structured, evidence-based prebrief grounded in the International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning (INACSL) Healthcare Simulation Standards …