Digital Commons Network^™

Building Artistic Identity, Visual Heritage, And Contemporaneity Of The Arab World: Case Studies Of The 1974 Arab Art Biennale And 'Calligraphy In Contemporary Arab Painting' At The 1989 Havana Biennial, Amanda Msallem

Theses and Dissertations

The 1974 Arab Art Biennale held in Baghdad, Iraq, and the exhibition Calligraphy in Contemporary Arab Painting of the 1989 Havana Biennial in Cuba are unique biennial initiatives that represent a decisive transitional period of modern art of the Arab world, during which Arab artists moved from the aspirations of the Pan-Arab collective and toward increasingly individualized, experimental practices with local cultural specificity.

From Guyana To Queens: The Formation Of The Indo-Guyanese Ethnoburb In New York City, 1970-1990, Lianne R. Persaud

Theses and Dissertations

Expanding on Li’s concept of ethnoburbs, this study examines Indo-Guyanese settlement in Little Guyana, Queens (1970–1990). I propose the Vertical Enclave Model, which suggests that multi-family homeownership and internal rental markets facilitated the residential permanence of working-class individuals. The IPUMS Census microdata corroborates this community’s reliance on metropolitan integration, thereby refuting traditional self-sufficient ethnic enclave theories.

Isabel I Of Castile And Her Portapaz: A Queenly Expression Of Sovereignty, Legacy, And Piety, Alina Cui

Theses and Dissertations

What is a pax, and why does it matter to a queen? I argue that in the Portapaz Gótico at the Royal Chapel of Granada, Queen Isabel I of Castile drew from Rogier van der Weyden’s Miraflores Altarpiece to craft a new iconography, reflecting her unique political and devotional interests.

Hanne Darboven: Bismarckzeit (Bismarck Time), Lindsey J. Poremba

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines post-war German artist Hanne Darboven’s 1978 work Bismarckzeit (Bismarck Time). Bismarckzeit is a significant work where images, quotations, and equations meet and explore history. This thesis studies the different visual languages in Darboven’s installation, comparing her work with that of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project.

Voyager, Ben K. Voss

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores painting as a site of meditation, time and (un)knowability.

Containment, Quin Mittelstead

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores “containment" (the act of keeping something within limits) as both oppressive control and a mode of self-regulation, grounded in the author’s experience with epilepsy. Paintings deploy grayscale grounds, restrained palettes, and contrasting rapid/slow gestures; emergent color, texture, and altered substrates map psychological states, bodily impulses, and reactive processes. Research into witchcraft, remedial items, and eugenics (notably Buck v. Bell) informs works that link historical censorship and institutional violence to contemporary stigma. Sculptural installations (nets, jute, flawed Faraday-like enclosures) and cannibalized studio materials probe systems that restrain thought, media, and bodies. By introducing unpredictable variables with found supports, …

Efficient Compression Framework For Time Series Self-Supervised Learning, Brooklyn Berry

Theses and Dissertations

Time series data is perhaps one of the most broad data types that exist and is studied by diverse research fields. Recently, Self-Supervised Learning (SSL) training frameworks, the training frameworks to pre-train deep learning models without human annotations, have been proposed. Because human annotation for time series is typically associated with being costly, there is a growing interest in developing effective SSL for time series data. In SSL, the pre-trained model will often produce a time series embedding series summarized from the original time series to ensure temporal information is preserved. Although such representation can effectively capture the semantic information, …

Exploring Online Social Capital Through The Lived-Experiences Of Students At A Southern Hispanic Institution: A Transactional Distance Approach, Marc Anthony Zamorano

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative transcendental phenomenological study examines how first generation Hispanic doctoral students at a southern Hispanic Serving Institution experience online engagement as a context for generating bonding, bridging, and linking social capital. Semi structured-in-depth interviews with 17 participants explored interactions with instructors, peers, course content, and technology. Analysis followed phenomenological reduction procedures to identify the essence of participants lived experiences. Key findings revealed that instructor presence and responsiveness strengthened bonding and linking capital; peer collaboration fostered belonging and bridging capital; and technology mediated tools reduced transactional distance when paired with clear course design and timely feedback. These relational and technological …

Data Driven Monitoring And Control Of Laser Powder Bed Fusion Process, Jose De Jesus Galarza

Theses and Dissertations

The Laser Powder Bed Fusion Process (LPBF) has been one of the main processes of additive manufacturing, enabling the manufacturing of complex geometries, customization, and lightweight parts. Modern LPBF processes have integrated monitoring systems that capture the light emissions per layer for quality assurance. However, standard defect detection algorithms have not yet achieved the high precision required due to the inherently variable nature of the signal, insufficient data for model training, and the confounding effects of the print.

The processes still have some challenges, such as characterizing the roughness from the build parameters alone, improving the pore detection using the …

Typing Proficiency And Its Relationship To Outcomes In Online Writing Assessments, Agustin J. Cantu

Theses and Dissertations

As writing assessment increasingly occurs in digital environments, students must demonstrate not only composition skills but also sufficient transcription fluency to produce responses under timed conditions. This quantitative study examined the relationship among structured typing practice, transcription fluency, and writing performance among students in Grades 3 and 4 at IDEA Public Schools. Specifically, the study investigated whether engagement with Typing.com was associated with improvements in words per minute (WPM) and accuracy, and whether transcription fluency was associated with performance on Internal Assessment (IA) Writing Percent Correct.

Archival district data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlational analyses, hierarchical regression, moderation analyses, …

Insights Into Androgen Receptor Allosteric Modulation By P,P'-Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene Binding At The Binding Function-3 Site And Site-Specific Binding Function-3 Mutations, Emanuel Aggeo Flores

Theses and Dissertations

One of DDT’s metabolites, p,p’-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE), has been classified as an endocrine disrupting chemical (EDC) due to its ability to interfere with hormone signaling by binding to nuclear receptors (NR) such as the androgen receptor (AR).

Structurally, the AR contains a ligand-binding domain (LBD) where endogenous steroids bind. Furthermore, the LBD contains a surface binding site known as binding function-3 (BF-3), which studies suggest exerts an allosteric effect on bound DHT when small, hydrophobic molecules bind.

Here, we present a study that examines how specific BF-3 site mutations and DDE binding affect steroid stability within the LBP utilizing computational methods. …

Using Behavioral Monitoring To Assess Activity Patterns And Welfare Indicators In Captive Black Howler Monkeys (Alouatta Caraya), Ramiro Gomez Iii

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined activity patterns and potential welfare indicators in captive black howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya) using behavioral monitoring techniques. A monogamous pair housed indoors at Gladys Porter Zoo was observed using focal sampling methods, and a species specific ethogram was developed to systematically record behavior. A total of 1,750 minutes of data were collected over one year. Observed behaviors were categorized into five groups: affiliative, agonistic, stationary, locomotion, and stereotypic behaviors. Activity budgets were calculated to determine the proportion of time allocated to each behavioral category. Results indicated that affiliative behaviors, particularly physical contact, dominated the activity budget, while …

I Am Still Learning, Too!: Pre-Service Teachers' Experiences Of Mathematics Anxiety In An Inquiry-Based Mathematics Education Course At Utrgv, Jeremiah James Adriano Dela Rosa

Theses and Dissertations

Mathematics anxiety is a prevalent issue in mathematics education that negatively impacts students’ learning, performance, and engagement in mathematics. Prior research suggests that mathematics anxiety is often shaped by students’ experiences and emotional responses within the classroom environment.

The purpose of this study is to explore how Pre-Service Teachers experience mathematics anxiety in an Inquiry-Based Mathematics Education (IBME) classroom. This study employed a qualitative research design supported by descriptive survey data collected through the Abbreviated Mathematics Anxiety Scale (AMAS), selected components of the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Anxiety Scale (FSMAS), and semi-structured interviews. The survey instruments were used to provide descriptive background …

Optimizing Citriculture In South Texas With Endemic Hlb, Ruth Lilia Galan

Theses and Dissertations

The Texas citrus industry has a long history of resilience, rebounding from environmental and economic disasters. Over the last decade it has endured several hurricanes, freezes, pests and diseases. Huanglongbing (HLB), a graft-transmissible disease caused by Gram-negative bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus which is vectored by the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) (Diaphorina citri Kuwayama), is an endemic citrus disease posing serious threat to the long-term viability of the industry. Rapid production of high quality nursery trees and effective protection of young citrus transplants from HLB are critical for long term sustainability of citriculture in this region. Studies were performed to improve …

Learning Adaptive Control For Safe Collaborative Autonomous Driving, Fabian Alexis Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

Connected autonomous vehicles improve urban driving through collaborative perception via Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication. Frameworks such as V2Xverse leverage this collaboration for planning and perception, yet their controllers rely on fixed parameters that cannot adapt to varying traffic. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) enforce safety by constraining actions within a safe set, but a fixed barrier gain imposes a single operating point: conservative settings reduce throughput while permissive settings under-react to hazards.

This research proposes an adaptive CBF framework that learns state-dependent, class-specific barrier gains via constrained Reinforcement Learning (RL). A compact policy outputs separate gains for vehicles, pedestrians, and bicycles, parameterizing …

Combinatorial Statistics Witnessing An Infinite Family Of Congruences For A Sum Of Partition Functions, Jena M. Gregory

Theses and Dissertations

In 2007, Kronholm established The Interval Theorem, infinite families of congruences in arithmetic progression, modulo any prime ��, for ��(��, ��), the function enumerating the partitions of �� into parts whose sizes come from the set {1, 2, … , ��}. In 2022, Eichhorn, Kronholm, and Larsen proved there are combinatorial statistics described in terms of the multiplicities of the part sizes that witness Kronholm’s Interval Theorem. Here, “witness" means given a congruence of the form ��(��, ��) ≡ 0 (mod ��), we can use these statistics to classify the set of partitions of �� into �� equally sized subsets …

From Homeland To The Foreign Classroom: The Salaysay Of Filipina Immigrant Teachers In Texas, Shanna Cui Miranda

Theses and Dissertations

Filipina immigrant teachers are a growing presence in Texas schools, especially as districts respond to teacher shortages by recruiting internationally trained educators. This narrative study explores the salaysay of Filipina immigrant teachers in Texas and examines how their funds of knowledge inform their teaching practice. Guided by the research question, What are the salaysay of Filipina immigrant teachers in Texas, and how do their funds of knowledge inform their teaching? The study uses Funds of Knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) as the central framework and resizes it to focus on teachers as holders of culturally developed knowledge. The resized framework …

General Chemistry Students' Perceptions Of How Various Course Resources Affect Their Learning And Exam Preparation, Jennifer Scoggin Cortez

Theses and Dissertations

The tertiary-level first-semester general chemistry course has a large range of material with different complexities that can be difficult for students to master within one semester. In the general chemistry I course under study here, students were provided with a variety of resources to help with their learning and understanding, with various components of the course, including the lecture, online textbook, Peer-Led-Team-Learning (PLTL) study sessions, and exams, having associated resources. This study aims to analyze students’ experiences with these various resources. Students were given semi-structured interviews where they talked about their experiences with the resources and provided insight into more …

Chatbots In The Classroom: Understanding The Impact Of Chatbot Integration In Writer’S Workshops On High School Students’ Writing, Gabriel Cerda

Theses and Dissertations

Writing is a complex developmental skill, and much research has been conducted to understand in which ways to best close the gaps that national data indicates exist for students in K-12 education. This quasi-experimental study explored how integrating chatbots as dialogue agents within a writer’s workshop framework influences the quality of written compositions among Grade 12 students. The research was grounded in the Direct and Indirect Effect Model of Writing (DIEW) and the Writer(s)-Within-Community (WWC) model, which emphasize both the cognitive and social-emotional dimensions of the writing process.

Participants received real-time, individualized feedback, with pre- and post-test essays evaluated using …

Assessing Water Quality And Nitrogen Dynamics In Bahia Grande, Texas Using Field And Remote Sensing Data, Sk Taufiqul Islam

Theses and Dissertations

An 8,220-acre estuary in South Texas, Bahia Grande has recently been restored from a disconnected hypersaline basin to a tidal estuary. A spatially explicit water quality index (WQI) was developed and in situ physicochemical data coupled with remote sensing data from Sentinel-2 were used to determine ecological integrity. A WQI from 29.45-53.20 yielded a spatial distribution of water quality that displayed a non-linear spatial trend throughout the estuary. Water quality close to the Brownsville Ship Channel inlet yielded values of 'Moderate/Stressed' water quality (> 50). These areas represent local zones of disturbance where ammonium concentrations were more than 11 µmol/L. …

Bayesian Change-Point Detection In Stock And Cryptocurrency Markets Using Shrinkage Priors, Yosalin Sanchez

Theses and Dissertations

Financial markets often undergo abrupt structural changes driven by political, economic, and geopolitical events, leading to substantial volatility. Detecting such change-points is crucial for identifying structural breaks, improving risk management, and enhancing forecasting performance in financial time series. This study proposes a Bayesian change-point detection framework that incorporates both the t-shrinkage prior and the Horseshoe shrinkage prior. These priors enforce strong regularization on successive differences in mean parameters, enabling the identification of piecewise constant structures in time series data. Posterior inference is conducted using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, specifically a Gibbs sampling algorithm, which iteratively samples from the …

Essays On Ai-Driven Analytics For Enhanced Healthcare Delivery: From Onset To Outcomes In Neurological Diseases Management, Gabriel Owusu

Theses and Dissertations

Chronic neurological diseases, particularly Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRDs), pose mounting global healthcare burdens. Despite advances in AI and health information technologies, early detection, precise diagnosis, and effective caregiver support remain elusive. This dissertation proposes innovative AI-enabled analytical frameworks to address these challenges across the full ADRD continuum.

The first essay designs an explainable AI-enabled clinical decision support system (CDSS) using a graph neural network for early AD identification, evaluated through usability studies demonstrating improved risk awareness and clinical engagement. The second essay introduces MADT-RNN, a multi-level attention-based deep transfer recurrent neural network that fuses convolutional and recurrent architectures …

The Effects Of Ai Adoption On Digital Entrepreneurial Intention: A Meta-Analysis, Xandra Precious Okori

Theses and Dissertations

AI adoption and its widespread use have sparked debates about the future of work, job displacement, and the evolving entrepreneurial landscape. While AI is often seen as a threat to traditional employment, research shows that this emerging technology is more likely to change task structures rather than eliminate entire occupations or industries. This shows that there are new entrepreneurial opportunities, particularly digital, that potential entrepreneurs can venture into. This thesis uses a meta-analytic approach to study the relationship between AI adoption and digital entrepreneurial intention, addressing inconsistencies in current research.

Following PRISMA guidelines, a comprehensive search was conducted across Web …

Exit Topology Effects On Low-Mach Jet Impingement, Alejandro Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

Planar PIV characterizes a low‑Mach (M = 0.05) air jet impinging normally on a plate at fixed spacing H/D = 4.0. Four nozzles of equal hydraulic diameter (D = 50.8 mm) are compared: circular, rectangular (AR 3), diamond, and elliptical (AR 2); asymmetric exits are tested in major and minor orientations. Mean velocity, azimuthal vorticity, and turbulence kinetic energy reveal that exit topology strongly modulates the stagnation footprint and shear‑layer growth. The circular jet forms the canonical toroidal wall jet and a narrow stagnation core (dₛ = 0.9D). Orienting the rectangular major axis toward the plate elongates the core to …

From Witness To Weapon: How Elizabeth Barrett Browning’S “The Cry Of The Children” Embodies And Transforms The Rhetorical Situation, Elyssa Vianey Solis

Theses and Dissertations

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” employs trauma-driven rhetoric to expose Victorian child labor exploitation.

Combining literary analysis with rhetorical theory, this research contextualizes the poem within 19th-century industrial exploitation, showing how Browning transforms documentary evidence like the 1842 Children’s Employment Commission Report into emotional testimony. Visceral imagery, ironic juxtaposition, and embodied suffering weaponize pathos to reveal systemic abuse and moral urgency. Applying Lloyd Bitzer’s and Richard Vatz’s theories, we can posit that Browning both responds to and defines the crisis, merging poetic protest with social reform as civic intervention.

By engaging Bitzer and Vatz, this paper argues …

Chronicles Of A Caliche Road: Lessons From The Monte Through A Poetic Currere Of Language, Memory, And Identity, Brenda Ochoa

Theses and Dissertations

This autobiographical study explores how language, memory, and identity are shaped through lived experience in the South Texas brushland known as the monte. Situated within the cultural and linguistic landscape of the Rio Grande Valley, the study examines how land, native plants, and regional wildlife function as an informal curriculum that shapes voice, silence, and ways of knowing beyond formal schooling. Grounded in autobiographical inquiry, the study uses poetic currere as both an analytic process and a mode of representation to illuminate the relationship between language experience, memory, and identity across time. Data sources include personal memories, reflective journals, original …

Vision-Based Vibration Monitoring Of Civil Structural Damage Detection Using A Low-Cost Autonomous Uav, Javier Antonio Becerril

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the development and experimental validation of a low-cost autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for non-contact vibration-based structural damage detection. We extract structural vibration signals directly from video recordings captured by the onboard camera during flight. The extracted vibration signals are analyzed in the frequency domain to identify natural frequency shifts associated with structural degradation and damage.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a laboratory-scale steel frame structure is tested under both healthy and simulated damage conditions. In contrast to advanced commercial UAV inspection systems, the developed UAV achieves comparable inspection capability at a significantly lower …

Developing A Qpcr Method For Evaluating Parasitoid Wasps As A Potential Means Of Control Of The Southern Cattle Fever Tick Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) Microplus In South Texas, Abbey Abalos

Theses and Dissertations

Ixodiphagus spp. wasps are natural enemies of ticks that have been reported to cause mortality in multiple tick species. Parasitoid wasps may represent a potential biocontrol alternative to traditional chemical tick control methods, which are challenged by non-target toxicity and the development of pesticide resistance in species of concern such as Rhipicephalus microplus, a pest of livestock that causes billions of dollars in loss to the livestock industry worldwide. Rhipicephalus sanguineus s.l. is a congeneric species of R. microplus, and parasitism of R. sanguineus by Ixodiphagus sp. in areas of co-occurrence has been observed. It is unknown if R. microplus …

Pesticides And Poverty: How Socioeconomic Factors Relate To Pesticide Application In The Continental Us, Reed Smetter

Theses and Dissertations

Pesticides are often used to help reduce the populations of weeds, insects, and pathogens in agricultural and urban settings, reducing the risk of outbreaks and losses of agricultural yield. The communities that surround agricultural areas often bear the brunt of the negative community and environmental health effects of these chemicals, and are frequently rural, poor, and lack critical infrastructure resources. Pesticide application volumes are often linked closely with specific health effects. In this study, I apply social vulnerability theory to compare the potential connections between the application rates of pesticides and socioeconomic variables across the United States using a nationwide …

A Visit-Count-Based Complete Foraging Strategy For Robot Swarms, Arturo Yahir Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

Swarm robotics systems often rely on a balance between exploration and exploitation to perform tasks like Central Place Foraging. While exploitation methods such as pheromone trails and site fidelity are well-studied, the efficiency of the underlying random search exploration remains a challenge, frequently leading to redundant coverage and wasted time as multiple agents repeatedly search the same fruitless areas. This thesis introduces a memory-enhanced exploration strategy designed to improve the efficiency of random search in a swarm of simple robots.

In our proposed algorithm, each robot, constrained with limited memory, periodically logs its recent locations while exploring. This spatial data …