Digital Commons Network^™

Lubricating Abilities Of Choline Amino Acid Protic Ionic Liquids Under High Temperature And Electrified Conditions, Esmond Lau

Theses

This work explores the tribological properties of choline amino acid protic ionic liquids (PILs) as environmentally friendly lubricants under high temperatures and electrified conditions. These conditions are found in the automotive sector, notably in internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs). Lubrication technologies are vital to improving the efficiency and operating lifetime of moving components in automotive drivetrains. The use of ionic liquids (ILs) is actively being researched, with ongoing exploration of their lubricating potential and unique physicochemical characteristics. Compared to traditional petroleum-based lubricants, ILs’ ability to thrive in these conditions will offer substantial benefits, immediately extend operational …

Gender Relations Within 18th And 19th Century Art And How It Affects A 21st Century Learner, Sophie Lima

Theses

This study constructs a curriculum unit comprising five lessons in feminist art history for middle school learners in 5th-8th grade. Drawing on theories and concepts from feminist art history, visual culture, and inquiry in art education, this curriculum aims to address the scarcity of age-appropriate materials in feminist art history. There is a need for curricular materials that help learners critically analyze issues of gender, identity, and power conveyed through visual culture. The curriculum encourages middle-grade students to engage with three approaches to art analysis: formalism, iconography, and feminism. The organized unit focuses on inquiry, interpretation, comparison, production, and evaluation. …

Developing Sight-Reading Proficiency In Music Education: A Synthesis Of Instructional Strategies And Pedagogical Approaches, Charles Clements Ii

Theses

Sight-reading is a foundational skill in music education that enables students to perform unfamiliar musical material independently. Despite its importance, instruction is often inconsistent and driven by performance priorities rather than systematic skill development. This thesis synthesizes existing research on sight-reading pedagogy to identify effective instructional strategies and organize them into a cohesive framework for educators.

By connecting research to classroom application, this project provides a practical, research-informed model for sight-reading instruction. The findings suggest that effective instruction requires a structured and integrated approach that supports both cognitive processing and musical performance, ultimately promoting greater student independence and musical literacy.

Sea-Ice Observation In The Arctic By The Arab Satellite 813, Simulated By The Radiative Transfer Model ‘Sciatran’, Tuqa Mohsin Al Hajri

Theses

The purpose of this research is to explore the spectral behavior of sea ice and to understand how Arctic sea ice surfaces appear when they are observed with a hyperspectral sensor. This is crucial because sea ice changes a lot during the melt season, and different surface types can sometimes look similar to a human eye, but physically they are different. It is thus essential to identify the spectral differences between these surfaces. The main objective of this study is to examine how the spectra of white ice and melt ponds change when their physical and optical properties are varied, …

Control And Entrainment Of Oscillatory Dynamics In An Oncolytic Virus–Tumor Model Under Periodic Therapy Forcing, Aya Salaheddin Shujrawi

Theses

This thesis investigates the dynamics of a tumour–virus interaction model under sinusoidal periodic viral injection, using the three-compartment ordinary differential equation framework of Baabdulla and Hillen (2024). The aim is to characterise how the frequency and amplitude of periodic injection interact with the system's intrinsic oscillatory dynamics, and to identify conditions for stable frequency entrainment. Equilibrium and Hopf bifurcation analysis of the autonomous system yields a supercritical bifurcation at θ_H^auto ≈ 338.45 with intrinsic frequency Ω₀^auto ≈ 0.7552. Introducing a constant baseline injection u₀ = 0.05 raises the threshold to θ_H^forced ≈ 364.85 and shifts …

Fractional Bernstein Polynomial Approximations For Nonlinear Timefractional Partial Differential Equations, Reem Abdul Quzli

Theses

This thesis studies the numerical approximation of nonlinear time-fractional partial differential equations using fractional Bernstein polynomials. The main model considered is the nonlinear time-fractional foam drainage equation, in which the classical time derivative is replaced by the Caputo fractional derivative. This formulation introduces memory effects into the model and allows the present drainage behavior to depend on the previous evolution of the liquid fraction.

The proposed method approximates the solution by a finite expansion of fractional Bernstein basis functions. After substituting this approximation into the governing equation, the residual is expanded in powers of t^�� . The unknown coefficient …

A Reproducible Hdr-Native Psychophysics Infrastructure For Color Science Research, Fernando Voltolini De Azambuja

Theses

Color science psychophysics measures the human visual system by relating controlled visual stimuli to observer responses, often through forced-choice paradigms such as two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) (Kingdom and Prins 2016). These studies require stimuli specified in physically meaningful units, technically correct display emission, and reproducible execution (Fairchild 2013; Lin et al. 2023). In practice, graduate-level experiments often rely on bespoke MATLAB or Python scripts, standard dynamic range (SDR)-first toolchains such as Psychtoolbox and PsychoPy, manual stimulus duplication, and incomplete capture of calibration, colorimetric state, and display capability (Brainard 1997; Peirce et al. 2019). These limitations increase experimental friction and create …

Effects Of Led Light Spectra And 1-Mcp On Postharvest Quality And Bioactive Compounds Of Cucumber (Cucumis Sativus L.) During Cold Storage, Imad Eldin Abbas Yousif

Theses

Extending postharvest quality and maintaining the nutritional value of cucumber fruit requires specific storage conditions to postpone senescence and enhance marketability. The postharvest lighting environment is a main factor that influences quality preservation for harvested biomass. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of different light emitting diodes (LED) spectra (green, red, blue, and white LED) alone or in combination with 1-Methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) on postharvest quality and bioactive compounds of cucumber fruit during cold storage for 16 days at 5°C, the control fruit were left in the dark. For combined treatment, the fruits were exposed to 1-MCP …

A Hybrid Approach To Phishing Email Detection: Leveraging Machine Learning And Large Language Models, Hessa Shamal Biri

Theses

Phishing attacks have reached a new level of sophistication through the deployment of large language models by attackers. The current AI-generated threats defeat existing detection systems which base their operation on past data. The thesis presents a hybrid system for phishing email detection which combines real email data with synthetic LLM-created samples to enhance traditional machine learning classifiers performance. The study created a hybrid dataset of 20,627 emails by combining 18,631 real messages from the Kaggle Email Classification Dataset with 1,996 synthetic emails. The synthetic emails were generated using four large language models LLaMA-3, Falcon, LLaVA, and Mistral to capture …

Perception Of Dynamic Lighting: Chromatic Adaptation And Augmented Reality, Abigayle Weymouth

Theses

Augmented reality (AR) is a rapidly developing technology with use cases ranging everywhere from medicine to entertainment. This research focuses on optical see-through (OST) AR, one of the common overarching types of available augmented reality devices. Color appearance in OST AR systems is affected by a mix of the viewing conditions and environment of the real world and the transparent virtual elements. Accurate control of the color of AR content in real-world use cases, which often includes changes in color over time in both parts of the environment, is important for many applications. This dissertation includes three studies of color …

The Effects Of Osha State Plans And State Gdp On Occupational Injuries And Illnesses In The United States, Ahmad Abdel Rahman Mohammad Amoorah

Theses

Workplace safety in the United States is governed by a system in which some states operate under federal OSHA oversight, while others administer their own OSHA-approved safety and health plans. This duality raises questions about whether state-level control leads to variation in safety and health outcomes. Economic conditions have also been shown to influence workplace injury rates, yet the interaction between safety and health regulations and local economies remains underexplored. Understanding these relationships is critical to protecting workers in occupational settings. The effects of OSHA state-plan status and state-level economic activity on occupational injury and illness rates across the United …

Deep Learning Approaches For Ctenophore Identification And Tracking, Anagha Bharadwaj

Theses

Ctenophores are translucent marine organisms with nearly invisible tentacles and pose significant challenges due to their transparent morphology and ambiguous structural features. This research addresses the classification and tracking of these organisms and evaluates the performance of current computer vision models under sparse-data environments.

A dataset from the NJIT Life History Lab consisting of microscopic laboratory videos and photographs of different growth stages is used to train and assess a number of convolutional neural network designs, including VGG16, ResNet, BioCLIP2, YOLO, and DeepLabCut. Additionally, a web-based interface is developed to evaluate expert-labeled ground truth with the model's performance.

The findings …

Polarimetric Terahertz Imaging For The Measurement Of Birefringence In Plastic, Rachel Cohen

Theses

Birefringence offers a promising way to observe stress concentration in materials such as glass and plastic, and thereby to identify weaknesses. Polarimetric imaging can be used to measure the birefringence of material, so long as the material is transparent to the light being used for the imaging. In this research, 2D Terahertz imaging was investigated as a means of measuring the birefringence of plastics that are opaque to visible light but transparent to THz radiation, for the eventual purpose of analyzing the residual stress present. In order to do so, two separate terahertz cameras were characterized for potential use in …

Pypitfall: Dependency Chaos And Supply Chain Vulnerabilities In Python, Jacob Mahon

Theses

Python software development heavily relies on third-party packages. Direct and transitive dependencies create a labyrinth of software supply chains. While it is convenient to reuse code, vulnerabilities within these dependency chains can propagate through dependencies, potentially affecting downstream packages and applications. PyPI, the official Python package repository, hosts many packages and lacks a comprehensive analysis of the prevalence of vulnerable dependencies. PyPitfall, a quantitative analysis of vulnerable dependencies across the PyPI ecosystem, is introduced. The dependency metadata of 378,573 PyPI packages is analyzed. 4,655 packages that explicitly require a known vulnerable package version and 141,044 packages that permit a vulnerable …

Retinomorphic Mid-Wave Infrared In-Sensor Processing Engine: Device-To-Architecture Co-Design, Hemalatha Nagaraju

Theses

Conventional frame-based CMOS image sensors acquire full-frame pixel data at discrete time intervals, resulting in substantial spatial redundancy and loss of temporal information between frames. The repeated conversion and transfer of redundant pixel data increases bandwidth and power consumption in machine vision systems. Retinomorphic sensing architectures address these limitations by enabling programmable, analog-domain processing directly at the sensor interface. A compact behavioral model of the PbSe device is developed in HSPICE based on calibrated TCAD simulation data to capture gate-controlled photocurrent modulation under varying illumination and gate bias conditions. Error analysis is performed to quantify the deviation between TCAD-generated photocurrent …

Adaptive Multimodal Smart Home Control On A Raspberry Pi 5 Using Hand Gestures, Voice Cues, And User Feedback, Vaibhav Bora

Theses

A real time multimodal smart home control system deployed on a Raspberry Pi 5 is presented. The system combines hand gestures, short voice cues, and proximity aware interaction to execute household commands such as light brightness control, fan speed adjustment, and stop or kill switch actions. Lightweight gesture and keyword spotting voice classifiers were trained offline and exported to TensorFlow Lite for efficient on device inference. For more natural spoken phrases, the system additionally integrates a locally deployed pretrained offline ASR component rather than a speech recognizer trained from scratch. Using a USB camera and microphone, the system operates fully …

Sound Detection Of Memory Leaks In Llvm Ir Programs Using Accumulation Analysis, Robert Blacha

Theses

Resource leaks occur when a limited resource such as memory is allocated by a program and needlessly held past the point of use. Leaks can lead to a degradation of services which can be specifically triggered with malicious behavior, for example abusing a memory leak in a program to cause a server to slow down and crash for a denial-of-service attack.

Prior work has demonstrated that accumulation analysis provides a sound detection of resource leaks with a working implementation for programs written in Java. While useful, current implementations are limited to programs written in Java, which has a garbage collector, …

Evaluation Of Medical Instrument Reliability For The Heath And Maddox Components Of The Accommodative-Vergence System, Jacob Chabuel

Theses

Binocular vision relies on the coordination of near response triad composed in part by the vergence and accommodative systems. Binocular dysfunctions linked to these systems impact the quality of life of those affected by complicating day-to-day tasks and leading to further health concerns. Clinical evaluations that diagnose dysfunctions and tailor therapies rely on subjective methods, creating a need for a reliable, quantitative, measurement tool. This is achieved using a haploscope, a tool that quantitatively measures and observes binocular vision to identify deficiencies within the eye. Modernization of a haploscope system, measurement of the Heath and Maddox components of the visual …

Smartdesk: Automatic Ticket Classification And Resolution Prediction Using Data Analytics, Danarir Almuhairi

Theses

Public and service-oriented organizations increasingly rely on digital ticketing systems to manage large volumes of citizen and customer requests. Despite this, many ticket management processes remain partially manual, leading to delays in case routing, inefficient resource allocation, and inconsistent resolution times. These challenges can negatively impact service quality, operational efficiency, and user satisfaction, particularly in large-scale public sector environments. This study proposes SmartDesk, a data-driven framework for automatic ticket classification and resolution time prediction using data analytics and natural language processing (NLP) techniques. The research leverages publicly available helpdesk and service ticket datasets to simulate real-world service environments where incoming …

The Impact Of Employment On Sense Of Belonging And Metacognitive Awareness: A Mixed-Methods Study Of Undergraduate Students’ Mathematical Performance, Erin Ryan

Theses

This study investigated how employment intensity affects two critical factors for academic success: a student’s sense of belonging and their metacognitive awareness (the ability to monitor and manage their own learning). Using a mixed-methods approach at the Rochester Institute of Technology, we analyzed survey data through multi-level modeling and conducted qualitative interviews to capture the personal experiences of employed students. Results reveal that students working off-campus for more than eleven hours a week showed significantly lower sense of belonging and metacognitive awareness scores than unemployed students. However, on-campus employment did not show the same effect. Both quantitative and qualitative results …

A Comparative Static Analysis Of Identifier Clones And Homonyms In Open Source Projects, Jose Palomino Lau

Theses

Identifier naming is a core element of software engineering and program comprehension. While existing literature suggests that naming consistency is ideal, there is limited empirical data on identifier homonyms, instances where the same name is used for different behaviors. This thesis investigates these naming patterns through a manual analysis inspired by grounded theory, supported by static analysis with srcML across three open source projects in Java, C and Python. By establishing a behavioral framework through axial coding, this research classifies 771 identifiers into functional categories to document their presence and role within the code. The results reveal that naming redundancy …

The Evolution Of Topological Structures In Climate Networks, Kiera Kelly

Theses

We investigate higher-order interactions in climate networks using topological data analysis (TDA) and analyze their evolution since 1948. Using the correlation between surface air temperature (SAT) anomalies, we define relationships between spatial locations and examine the patterns that emerge over time. We extend the framework of temporal climate networks and apply TDA methods, including persistent homology, curvature analysis, and the Euler characteristic, to identify dynamic structural features. Persistent homology tracks the births and deaths of topological features such as connected components and loops. Curvature quantifies a node’s participation in higher- order structures (cliques), while the Euler characteristic captures global trends …

Uncovering Cytoskeletal Length Control From Growth Trajectories Using Sparse Dynamical Modeling, Carson Hearn

Theses

Understanding the governing equations of biological filament dynamics is essential for predicting cellular behavior, yet these equations are often difficult or impossible to derive directly from first principles. This thesis investigates the use of Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics (SINDy) as a unified, data-driven framework for discovering, validating, and refining governing equations from both simulated and experimental data. Focusing on biological filament processes, including growth, disassembly, and severing, this work is designed not only to apply SINDy, but to systematically demonstrate that it is a reliable and generalizable tool for modeling complex biophysical systems. To establish this, SINDy is first …

Unfixed Bodies, Soph Shufelt

Theses

This thesis emerges from that tension between protest and living.  It considers what it means to have one’s existence continually framed as resistance, and how that condition reshapes embodiment, temporality, and identity.  By situating my lived experience within broader social and political structures, I examine how bodily autonomy functions not only as a personal necessity, but as a regulated site of power.  The work that follows investigates how queer and transgender bodies navigate visibility and risk, how time is warped through prolonged struggle, and how survival becomes a form of authorship.

She Absorbs, Jamie Westermeyer

Theses

Drawing from lived experience, this thesis investigates the ways sensitivity, attentiveness, and emotional labor are cultivated over time, specifically within gendered environments that reward endurance and self-containment. The figures in this work exist within moments of tension—straining, compressing, and distorting under pressures that are often invisible yet deeply felt. This work focuses on endurance—how individuals adapt, absorb, and negotiate expectations placed upon them. My figures operate as both personal and collective bodies, embodying experiences that extend beyond being autobiographical. Moments of physical distortion and emotional discomfort coexist within the sculptures, allowing vulnerability and critique to appear simultaneously. Ultimately, the sculptures …

Gender Symbolism, Emmanuel Joseph Okechukwu

Theses

This thesis, Gender Symbolism, explores how contemporary ceramic practice can be used to challenge colonial ideas of gender and reclaim African perspectives on identity. Drawing from personal experience growing up in Nigeria as someone who did not conform to rigid expectations of masculinity, this work examines how gender has been historically constructed, policed, and misunderstood within both African and Western contexts. Through research into pre-colonial Nigerian societies, this thesis argues that gender was once understood as fluid, situational, and socially defined, rather than fixed within binary categories. The imposition of colonial rule, Christianity, and Western legal systems introduced rigid gender …

What’S In It For Us?, Hannah Giancola

Theses

What’s in it for us? examines how value can be created, abstracted, and redefined through material practice, participation, and shared experience. Situated in the space between maker and mender, the artist works in the symbiotic relationship between creation and repair. Wood is the primary material of creation, often in its imperfect form. It becomes both medium and metaphor representing intrinsic value while helping to challenge the systems that’s equate value with market and currency. From a multidisciplinary approach and adaptive nature, the work pulls from personal history, interfaith upbringing, and influences from conceptual art to traditional craft. This thesis transitions …

Predicting Customer Churn In Telecommunication Companies: A Predictive Analytics Case Study Inspired By E&, Nadia Almheiri

Theses

Customer churn is a significant challenge in the telecommunications industry, particularly in competitive markets such as the United Arab Emirates, where customers can easily switch between providers such as e& and du. Telecommunications companies must move beyond reactive approaches and adopt data-driven strategies that enable early identification of churn risk and support proactive retention. This study develops an interpretable churn prediction framework using logistic regression and decision tree models within IBM SPSS. Following the CRISP-DM methodology, the research identifies key demographic, behavioural, and service-related factors that influence churn, and evaluates model performance using accuracy, precision, recall, and ROC-AUC. The findings …

"We Pledge Ourselves To Use Our United Strength": Education, Women's Clubs, And The Woman Suffrage Movement In Tennessee, Michelle P. Harris

Theses

The state of Tennessee played a central part in the battle for ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which would secure women’s right to vote. While the showdown in Nashville in August 1920 when suffragists and anti-suffragists descended upon the city to lobby for their respective sides gained a lot of attention for the state’s role in woman suffrage, the increasing opportunities of women outside the domestic sphere helped launch the suffrage movement. Educational opportunities, work outside the home, and voluntary societies were just a few of the ways that women stepped out into the public sphere. These endeavors outside the …

The Investigation Of The Digital Divide: Government Literacy With African American Seniors, Jenettie Pirtle

Theses

My thesis, The Great Divide: An Investigation of Digital Literacy with African American Seniors, explores how race, age, and income shape access to technology and digital learning. Many African American seniors continue to face barriers to digital literacy due to limited resources, lack of exposure, and social inequalities. Using a qualitative approach, I conducted a focus group to hear directly from seniors about their experiences with technology, what challenges they face, how they feel about using it, and what support they need. Guided by Critical Race Theory and the concept of digital inequality, my analysis highlights the gap between access …