Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Resilience: Exploring The Link Between Depression And Cognitive Performance In A Memory Disorder Clinic Population, Amanda Capriglione

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Research has consistently shown that depressive symptoms are associated with cognitive impairments, namely in memory, attention, and executive functioning (for a review, see Rock et al., 2014), particularly in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). As MCI is often a precursor to dementia, understanding and addressing modifiable factors that influence this trajectory is essential for prevention and intervention efforts. Resilience, defined as the capacity to adapt positively to adversity, has been identified as a potential protective factor against age-related cognitive decline. Prior studies (e.g., Laird et al., 2019b; Miller et al., 2023) suggest that resilience buffers against the cognitive …

Undefined By Design: The Fragmented Public Understanding Of Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion (Dei) By Americans, Caroline Umphlet

Theses and Dissertations

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies have become a contentious issue in contemporary United States public discourse, yet a critical question remains as to whether the public shares a common foundational understanding of these terms. While DEI as a concept has developed and evolved significantly since the 1960s, public understanding remains ardently fragmented.

This thesis aims to answer the research questions: how does the 60+ age group in the US define and understand diversity, equity, and inclusion and DEI policies? The 60+ age group was specifically chosen because their definitions give insight into the publics’ understanding of policy topics when …

Sufism At The Service Of Ḥadīth Commentary: Re-Framing Al-Kalābādhī'S Baḥr Al-FawāʾId In Fourth-Tenth Century Transoxiana, Fadhil Yunus Alsagoff

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Abū Bakr al-Kalābādhī’s (d. 380/990) understudied ḥadīth commentary, the Baḥr al-fawāʾid al-mashhūr bi-maʿānī al-akhbār. The first Anglophone study of the text as a whole, this thesis situates itself within the emergent literature on ḥadīth commentaries and challenges the prevailing scholarly tendency to reduce Sufi-authored commentarial texts to the ishārī method of interpretation and to treat them solely as repositories of Sufi themes. This thesis argues that, contrary to current perceptions of the text as primarily a work of Sufism, the Baḥr al-fawaʾid is first and foremost a work of ḥadīth commentary, its main intent being to …

Technology, Power, And Colonial Modernity: The Making Of The Egyptian Railways, Ahmed Mohamed Rahmy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Egyptian railways as a technology of power through which modern temporal order was gradually formed, reorganized, and contested. Focusing on the period from 1850 to 1920, it argues that railway infrastructure did more than facilitate mobility, economic exchange, and imperial administration: it reorganized the temporal relations through which social life was governed and experienced. Timetables, standardized schedules, fares, penalties, stations, and administrative procedures made punctuality, regularity, and measurable time appear as neutral requirements of life, while positioning existing ecological, agricultural, religious, and communal rhythms as signs of backwardness.

The thesis draws on British official correspondence, parliamentary debates, …

Between The Lens And The Gaze: Reflections Of Femininity In Film, Noureen Sakr

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the male gaze’s construction of femininity through the use of glass and reflective surfaces, particularly mirrors, windows, glasses, and cameras in film. Reflections and depictions of women are recurring motifs in cinema, often symbolizing dynamics of perception and power. This thesis mobilizes related psychoanalytic and feminist conceptions to examine and compare the recurring visual motifs in the following films: Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) and Rear Window (1954), Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct (1992), & Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010). This thesis employs a qualitative, interdisciplinary methodology that integrates psychoanalytic theory, feminist film theory, literary criticism …

Hell Reimagined: Dante’S Inferno And The Secular Afterlives Of Divine Punishment, Yara Mohamed El Hashimi

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines contrapasso and how it changes across different media and different sources of moral authority. In Chapter One, I examine four different cantos of Dante’s Inferno and rely on Teodolinda Barolini’s work to examine textual contrapasso. Chapter One also discusses how Dante’s work shows the sinner’s moral condition and makes it visible through the punishment inflicted. Additionally, Dante’s Inferno presents punishment as part of a divinely authorized moral order, which becomes important in Chapter Two when I examine how William Blake visually interprets and questions that system. In Chapter Two, I examine the works of Blake that correspond …

“The Light Of Certain Belief” – Orthodoxy Versus Innovation According To Abū Ḥāmid Al-Ghazālī’S Al-Risāla Al-Qudsiyyah, Thomas Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the question of Islamic orthodoxy in the thought of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, with particular attention to his Risāla al-Qudsiyya and its place within his wider intellectual and reformative project. It begins by exploring concepts of orthodoxy and heterodoxy across the Christian and Islamic traditions, arguing that orthodoxy emerges through processes of interpretation, doctrinal conflict, boundary formation, and communal consensus. Islamic orthodoxy is understood as the historically consolidated mainstream of belief rooted in the Qurʾān, the Sunnah, the authority of the early community, and the scholarly tradition.

The central argument of the thesis is that al-Ghazālī conceives of …

Knowledge, Attitudes, And Practices (Kap) Of Parents Regarding The Prevention And Control Of Childhood Iron Deficiency Anemia In Egypt: A Cross-Sectional Study, Omnia Soliman

Theses and Dissertations

Childhood Iron Deficiency Anemia (IDA) remains a major public health challenge in Egypt, where its persistently high and rising prevalence carries substantial consequences for child growth, cognitive development, immunity, and long-term health outcomes. Globally, approximately 40% of children aged 6–59 months are affected by anemia (World Health Organization, 2025), and Egypt mirrors this burden, with national data showing a worsening trend in recent years. In Egypt, national strategies have traditionally focused on biomedical interventions such as iron supplementation and food fortification, while less attention has been directed toward behavioral and household-level determinants, particularly parental knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) related …

A Hybrid Rule-Based And Large Language Model Framework For Extracting Acronym–Definition Pairs From Scientific Literature, Petro Skrypnyk

Theses and Dissertations

Authors of scientific papers rely heavily on acronyms and often use them without defining them, making the literature harder to read and index. This thesis develops and evaluates a hybrid rule-based and large language model (LLM) framework that extracts acronym–definition pairs from scientific PDF documents. It extends an earlier Rowan University system that combined a regular-expression parser with a single LLM on 200 papers. That system showed that neither the parser nor the LLM alone is sufficient for accurate extraction of the pairs. The framework is a fully automated pipeline from PDF input to scored results. It compares four LLM …

Effects Of Social Comparison Instructions On Affect, Motivation For Healthy Behavior, And Health Behavior Selections: Guidance To Identify Or Contrast, Raj Harsora

Theses and Dissertations

Engaging in healthy behaviors early in life is crucial for preventing noncommunicable diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. College is an optimal period to establish these habits, yet students often engage in poor dietary and physical activity practices; thus, identifying effective health behavior change techniques for this population is essential. Social comparisons are known to influence health behaviors, yet no research has tested comparison instructions as a behavior change technique, particularly identification versus contrast with upward and downward targets. Using a preregistered protocol (https://osf.io/z29en), we tested whether guiding college students (N=664) to identify with or contrast …

Struggling Readers Collaborate On Reading Interventions For Fifteen Minutes A Day, Jordan Dobzanski

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines what happens when struggling readers collaborate on reading intervention practices for fifteen minutes a day. Relevant theories that guided this research included Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, Vygotsky’s Social Constructivist Theory, and Lankshear and Knobel’s New Literacies Theory. Throughout the six-week study, four third-grade students identified as below grade level participated in a collaborative reading intervention that focused on vocabulary development, fiction and informational text comprehension, student-led discussions, digital literacy activities, and reflective journaling. Students worked together in structured literature circles while engaging in literacy activities connected to their classroom curriculum. Data were analyzed through triangulation in order …

“Voices Of Tomorrow”: A Youth Participatory Action Research Study Of A Middle School Advisory In An Urban Public Charter School, Seth Hull

Theses and Dissertations

Urban middle schools often grapple with how to create spaces that affirm students’ identities and foster authentic engagement within a broader landscape shaped by standardized testing and accountability pressures. This dissertation examines Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and advisory as two relationally grounded practices that can address these challenges. Grounded in critical hope (Zembylas, 2013), culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017), and community responsive education (Duncan-Andrade, 2022), the study explores the experiences of 12 middle school students who spent seven months investigating their school’s advisory program as student-researchers, as well as the findings that emerged about advisory. Data sources …

Workers Authoring Assessment: Play And Power In Early Childhood Education, Phoebe M. Gilpin

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers assert that play-based pedagogy is an effective approach to teaching young children, but there is less consensus on the specific methods of play-based teaching. This mixed-methodology exploratory case study investigated early childhood (EC) educators’ conceptualizations of play-based pedagogy in three phases: Phase 1’s quantitative measure testing found a mismatch between researchers’ conceptualization of play-based pedagogy and EC educators’ (n=183) understandings. In Phase 2, EC educators (n=3) articulated their perspectives about teaching through play and co-authored a new tool, the Teacher-Authored Play and Teaching Scale (TAPTS). Within Phase 3, EC educators (n=60) completed the TAPTS, which I interpreted through a …

Developing An Object Level Understanding Of Sine And Cosine As Ratios And A Coherent Trigonometry, Jeffrey Peter Nair

Theses and Dissertations

Solving right-triangle problems as well as integrating right-triangle and circular trigonometry into a coherent understanding are documented challenges for students. Prior research has deeply investigated students constructing ratio meanings for sine and cosine using a circle-first approach, which then can be extended to right triangles. Also, past work has separately documented distinct meanings that are useful for sine and cosine, in addition to the ratio meaning, including as lengths in a unit circle and coordinate points. This study took these existing ideas and put them together into one possible developmental progression, based on APOS theory, where students can learn length, …

Actionable Hydrologic Data To Information With National Water Model-Based Derived Dataset, Cutting-Edge Data Services, And Agentic Ai System, Sujan Chandra Mondol

Theses and Dissertations

Hydrologic data are the cornerstone of many complex hydrologic research and operational workflows that produce useful hydrologic information for water resources decision-making, flood risk communication, and water availability implications. The National Water Model (NWM) is a valuable source of hydrologic data, particularly for its extended coverage of unmonitored streams and the large-scale continuity of hydrologic processes. Precomputed secondary datasets derived from this simulated data, such as streamflow indices, can improve operational efficiency through thresholding. Disseminating the data through modern technologies, such as application programming interfaces, is required for ready integration into applications. However, if extraction requires an intermediate service, there …

"Tithing Is An Insurance Premium": A Framing Analysis Of Speaker Innovation And Diachronic Trends In Latter-Day Saint Religious Discourse, Reid Empey

Theses and Dissertations

Religious language relies on shared metaphor and frames that contextualize religious experience and practice. Current approaches to frame semantics (Fillmore 1982) and cognitive metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) lend important insight into religious language, particularly in describing the role that figurative language serves in a religious speech community. However, a vital component of many religious speech communities is the presence of and engagement with a scriptural canon, which often contains metaphorical and framing language that religious speakers can directly reference. Yet, past conceptualizations of speech communities have not accounted for this engagement with a shared canon. To illustrate the role …

Synthetic Strategies For Bioactive Peptides: From Aggregation Inhibitors To The Total Synthesis Of Tunicyclin C, Stephanie Graciela Garcia Morin

Theses and Dissertations

In Alzheimer's disease (AD), a brain protein called "tau" abnormally clumps and forms neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), causing damage to brain cells. Ac-PHF6-NH2 is a hexapeptide segment of tau protein that plays a dominant role in tau aggregation and is used as a model to design tau protein aggregation inhibitors. In this research we synthesized four dehydroamino acid (□AA) containing PHF6 analogues with △Abu (derived from L-threonine) and △Val (derived from □-OH-Valine) at position 2 or 3 via dehydrations or azlactone ring-openings as key reactions. We evaluated their proteolytic resistance, ability to inhibit aggregation of PHF6, and impact on the morphology …

Measuring Proteostasis Changes In Apolipoprotein E Mouse Models Using Quantitative And Kinetic Proteomic Methods, Ariel E.A. Denos

Theses and Dissertations

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a neurological disorder associated with brain mass loss and cognitive decline. It affects millions of elderly people and is currently uncurable. Since 1906, when the disease was first described, researchers have uncovered many components of AD pathology. However, it is now evident that curing Alzheimer's Disease will require intervention before the pathological onset of amyloid beta plaque deposition, tau neurofibrillary tangles, and associated neuronal loss. Studying AD from the perspective of early intervention requires special attention to small changes that may disrupt the normal processing of cells. Cells undergo a natural cycle of creation and destruction …

Multi-Band Extinction Modeling In Early-Type Galaxies With Circumnuclear Disks, Nonnie Bash

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we present a spatially resolved, multi-band dust-attenuation method for correcting the stellar luminosity models used in dynamical supermassive black hole (BH) mass measurements. If uncorrected, dust extinction effects may dominate over other systematic uncertainties when determining the BH mass ($M_\mathrm{BH}$). We expand on a simple dust-attenuation method that treats the circumnuclear disk as a thin dust layer embedded in the galaxy midplane. Using a Multi-Gaussian Expansion, we create a three-dimensional stellar luminosity model to calculate the fractions of stellar light originating in front of and behind the disk along each line of sight. We infer the pixel-by-pixel …

Family Religious Socialization Index: Development And Preliminary Validation, Kaelie Rene Crockett

Theses and Dissertations

A key area of interest for religious scholars is how religious beliefs are passed across generations, or religious socialization. To expand this field of study, a theoretically grounded, validated measure of this construct is needed. This article describes the development and validation of the Family Religious Socialization Index (FRSI), a multi-informant, multidimensional assessment of the processes through which parents socialize religion and faith in their children. Based on Social Cognitive Theory and through a rigorous development and validation process, three subscales were developed to represent the primary processes of religious socialization. The FRSI consists of two parallel scales, a parent …

Identifying The Brain Circuits Involved In Religious Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Kiana Bunnell

Theses and Dissertations

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an often-debilitating psychiatric disorder involving a pattern of obsessive thoughts and compensatory compulsions. Symptoms tend to be chronic, leading to substantial emotional burden and significant impairment across multiple domains of daily functioning. Previous research has identified some consistency in the brain regions implicated in OCD. In particular, cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) circuitry has been linked to behavioral features commonly observed in OCD. Moreover, some studies suggest that distinct patterns of brain activation and functional connectivity may be associated with different OCD symptom dimensions, though findings have not been consistent. One symptom dimension of OCD (scrupulosity) is characterized by …

Is “No Change” Really No Change?: A Qualitative Analysis Of Clients With “No Change” On Routine Outcome Monitoring Who Report Improving In Therapy, Audrey Louise Stewart Parker

Theses and Dissertations

Routine outcome monitoring (ROM), the practice of tracking client progress in therapy by administering regular questionnaires to assess functioning, has demonstrated a significant positive effect on psychotherapy outcomes, especially for clients are who not improving as expected. However, some researchers argue the symptom-based measures and outcome classification criteria commonly used in ROM may not represent a complete picture of client change. A recent body of mixed-methods research has investigated these ROM-determined outcome categories to gain insight into client experiences and whether the category and client perception of therapy outcome align. In this investigation, researchers have found significant variety within outcome …

Modifying Lta Zeolites For Reversible Hydrogen Sulfide Capture And Elucidating The Structure Of The Incorporated Metal And Sulfur Ions, Adeyemi D. Ojaide

Theses and Dissertations

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a highly toxic and corrosive gas that poses significant environmental and industrial challenges, particularly within the wastewater treatment and oil and gas sectors. H2S leakage is among the deadliest industrial hazards, highlighting the urgent need for the development of highly efficient, non-corrosive adsorbents. This dissertation provides an in-depth examination of the use of metal-zeolites for H2S capture. We carefully investigate the impact of multiple divalent and one monovalent transition metals on LTA zeolites to optimize H2S removal. While Linde Type A (LTA) zeolites offer a robust structural framework for gas separation, a comprehensive understanding of how …

Threads Across The Atlantic: A Dialogue Of Feminist Writings Between Portugal And Cape Verde, Elliana Shillig Venancio

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the feminist literary traditions of Portugal and Cape Verde through a comparative analysis of Ana de Castro Osório’s Infelizes and Dina Salústio’s Mornas eram as noites. Separated by nearly nine decades and an ocean, these two works nonetheless converge in their insistence on women’s autonomy, bodily sovereignty, and resistance to patriarchal structures. Drawing on Hélène Cixous’s theory of écriture féminine and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s framework of intersectionality, this thesis argues that despite the significant differences in time, geography, and socio-political context that separate these authors, powerful threads of feminist consciousness bind their writing together. At the same time, …

Analyzing The Transition From Writing Center Tutor To Graduate Student Instructor, Luci Mackenzie Sullivan

Theses and Dissertations

Writing center tutoring is almost universally considered to be beneficial preparation for graduate student instructors (GSIs) of writing, so much so that many programs require writing center experience as part of their GSI training. Despite various similarities between the roles of tutor and teacher, the precise ways in which writing center experience influences GSIs as teachers remain unclear. This IRB-approved, mixed-methods study builds on previous empirical scholarship on transfer between tutoring and teaching to determine how new GSIs with previous writing center experience integrate practices, knowledge, and dispositions developed in the writing center. My findings echo those of previous studies …

A Graphical Approach To Isospectral Unfoldings, Dallin Seyfried

Theses and Dissertations

Isospectral reductions are mathematical techniques used to shrink a matrix, or a graph, into a smaller, dimensionally reduced form while preserving its spectrum. Simple graphs that share isospectral reductions also share quantum walk properties. As such we further develop the inverse process, isospectral unfoldings, to find graphs that share isospectral reductions. We first prove many conditions relating to isospectral reductions and unfoldings. Afterwards, we define two new unfolding processes: general unfolding which unfolds the graph one vertex at a time, and equitable partition unfolding which excels at larger graph unfolding. In particular, through equitable partition unfolding, we discover many graphs …

Learning, Abstraction, And Creative Search For Interactive Agents, Jonathan Demke

Theses and Dissertations

Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly deployed as autonomous agents that interact directly with complex environments. Ensuring these agents remain reliable, adaptable, and useful presents an ongoing practical challenge. This dissertation studies agent-environment interactions through a progressive lens, examining behavior from foundational training stability and abstraction discovery to adaptation in unpredictable settings and open-ended creative search. The investigation begins by analyzing how hyperparameter settings affect early-stage Deep Q-Network performance, yielding practical guidelines for debugging reinforcement learning implementations. To address the challenge of long-horizon planning, the discovery of temporally extended options is formalized as the Minimum Shortcut Problem, demonstrating how agents can …

Online Parent Group Intervention For Executive Function Skills For Autistic Children And Adolescents, Kathleen Clark

Theses and Dissertations

Executive functioning (EF) skills deficits are prevalent among children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (autism) that impacts their academic functioning, social relationships, and families' quality of life. This study aimed to explore an online parent group intervention, to test effectiveness of a 6-week parenting intervention on parenting stress and child's executive functioning (EF) among autism families in rural Utah with limited access to traditional intervention resources. The participants were eight parents from six families of children and adolescents (8-15 years) with clinical diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and appropriate language abilities for their age. The parents participated in weekly …

A Coupled Reaction-Diffusion Model Of Promoting And Suppressing Interactions Among Cancer Hallmarks In Endometrial Cancer, Jeddy Bennett

Theses and Dissertations

Spatial transcriptomics enables the scoring of Cancer Hallmarks at a high resolution across a tissue biopsy, yet current analyses of these data remain largely descriptive, treating each spot as a static, independent observation. This thesis develops a coupled system of advection-diffusion-reaction partial differential equations to model the hallmark landscape as the steady-state solution of an underlying spatial process, and casts the recovery of its physical parameters as a PDE-constrained inverse problem. The framework is implemented in FEniCSx on tissue-specific finite element meshes derived from two endometrial cancer biopsies provided by the Huntsman Cancer Institute, with subdomains, boundary interfaces, and an …

Sand Distribution On Titan And Implications For Sand Transport And Interconnectedness Of Sand Seas, Delaney Rose

Theses and Dissertations

The vast equatorial sand seas of Saturn's moon Titan are of particular interest for understanding surface processes and the budget of organic materials on Titan's surface. Previous studies have described sand dune morphology, transport, collection, and distribution patterns utilizing Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS), Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery. Studies have also shown evidence both for and against a global interconnected system of sand transport between Titan's major sand seas. This study worked both to create a higher resolution dataset of sand distribution using trimodal thresholding techniques applied to SAR images, as well …