Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring The Synthesis, Characterization, And Aggregation Properties Of Perylene Diimide Derivatives, Erica Salinas

Honors Theses

Once widely used for its vivid presence in an array of industrial dyes, perylene-3, 4, 9, 10-tetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCDA) is a known precursor for perylene diimides (PDIs). These compounds are an alternative for sustainable energy within organic solar cells (OSCs) and for improving organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). PDIs are a great candidate for organic semiconductor applications because of their overall flexibility and low manufacturing cost as an organic photovoltaic. Its extended π-conjugation results in a planar structure promoting strong π- π intermolecular stacking, giving aggregated PDIs high electron mobility, allowing a flow of electrons to move through these stacked …

Nutritional Knowledge Of Collegiate Track Athletes, Haleigh Risner

Honors Theses

There are rising concerns on whether collegiate athletes are being diligent with their nutritional practices. With an increase in RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in sports) cases in athletes, their knowledge about their nutritional needs comes into question. Nutrition has a significant impact on athletic performance and the development in an athlete’s specialty. To assess the current knowledge of athletes, the track athletes of East Texas A&M University were asked to participate in a nutritional assessment to determine their knowledge of nutrition in regard to their sport. It was hypothesized that the majority of athletes surveyed would not possess adequate knowledge …

Essays In Macroeconomics, Sihyun Kim

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation consists of two research projects in macroeconomics. The first chapter studies a topic in fiscal policy and sovereign debt. I became interested in this topic during my third year of the Ph.D. program while working as a research assistant for Professor Manuelli. He recommended several papers on debt sustainability in the U.S. and Japan. I initially struggled to reconcile the coexistence of low default risk and persistent fiscal deficits in these countries. This led me to think that, in addition to the realized fiscal path, the fiscal capacity---such as the tax base---can also play an important role in …

Space-Time Coded Pcm/Fm For Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry, Zachary B. Hilton

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes the application of a space-time block code for the legacy continuous phase modulation called "PCM/FM" in the IRIG 106 standard to solve the "two-antenna problem". This problem arises when two transmit antennas are used for full spatial coverage at the cost of self-interference caused by the different delays between the transmit antennas and the ground-based antenna. The space-time block encoder is described using bit-level operations on the input data stream. The space-time decoder uses coherent combining and maximum likelihood sequence estimation to produce an estimate of the data sequence. Simulation results for zero and various non-zero differential …

The Road To Senior Leadership: Senior-Level Administrative Women Leaders In Division I Intercollegiate Athletic Departments, Susan E. Richard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This qualitative narrative study examined the career pathways and lived leadership experiences of women serving in senior-level administrative roles within Division I intercollegiate athletics, a traditionally male-dominated industry. Guided by a crucible leadership framework, the study explored how formative experiences shaped participants’ leadership development, professional advancement, and persistence. Nine women who currently or previously served as senior-level administrative leaders participated in the study. Data were collected using an adapted version of Seidman’s three-interview series, supplemented by document analysis and a demographic survey to support triangulation. Interviews were organized into three phases to chronologically capture participants’ career trajectories.

The findings are …

Towards Modern Graph Learning: From Graph Neural Networks To Large Language Models, Jiarui Feng

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Graph-structured data provides a fundamental representation for modeling complex systems, from social networks to molecular interactions. Learning effective representations from such data is therefore a central problem in machine learning. While Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have emerged as the dominant paradigm for this task, achieving strong performance across node, edge, and graph-level predictions, they face significant limitations in expressiveness, adaptability, and generalization. Specifically, standard architectures often struggle to capture complex substructures—such as cycles and motifs—that are critical in scientific domains. Moreover, many models are tailored to specific tasks or distributions, limiting their ability to generalize across heterogeneous graph types. In …

Essays On Empirical Research Of Education, Criminal And Decision, Hsuan-Hua Huang

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays in applied microeconomics, examining how subjective beliefs, institutional designs, and policy incentives shape critical life-cycle decisions in education and public safety. The first chapter investigates how students form beliefs about their academic ability and how the misalignment between perceived and benchmark ability shapes high-stakes educational sorting. Using longitudinal data from Taiwan, I show that these ability gaps systematically predict school and track choices. By developing a model of utility maximization under perceived ability, the results highlight that subjective beliefs, rather than objective scores alone, are central to educational outcomes and potential mismatches in school …

Automated Asset Allocation: Evaluating Generative Artificial Intelligence In Retirement Portfolio Construction Vs. Target-Date Funds, Kiah Steven Derrick

Honors Capstone Projects and Theses

No abstract provided.

Death And The Uncanny: Freud, Grief, And The Horror Of Inevitability In Ari Aster’S Hereditary And Midsommar, Courtney Michelle Taylor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This thesis explores how Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019) create ongoing discomfort among viewers through their shared focus on death and the tensions between fate and freewill.

Using Freud’s concept of the uncanny as a lens, this thesis argues that these films are disturbing because they introduce familiar horrors in a newly unsetting way, forcing audience members to confront deep rooted fears of grief, loss, and the lack of control.

By repeatedly forcing his audience and characters to confront death and the illusion of agency, Aster successfully creates the prolonged anxiety and dread felt by many viewers of …

Patriots And Protestant Dissenters: Early Religious Disestablishment In Revolutionary South Carolina, Nathan James Shull

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

In 1778, the newly independent government of South Carolina broke with more than a century of precedent and disestablished the Church of England by enacting Article XXXVIII of its State Constitution. This thesis weaves together the interconnected stories of Patriots such as William Tennent, Christopher Gadsden, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Oliver Hart, Richard Furman, and William Henry Drayton, demonstrating how they converged on disestablishment. While the historiography has focused on one or another religious or political group, this thesis asserts that an array of South Carolinians from across the political spectrum coalesced around disestablishment as a pragmatic solution to a variety …

Impact Of Living Shorelines On Coastal Morphology And Sedimentology, Sydney Garber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Living shorelines, or nature-based solutions, have emerged as a preferred approach to coastal restoration, but have not been well studied or monitored postimplementation. This project evaluated the efficacy of living shorelines in protecting and stabilizing coastal morphology in Palm Beach County’s Lake Worth Lagoon. The study assessed surface and subsurface sedimentology, short-term water-level variability, and morphological change at two living shoreline areas of Jewell Steinhardt Cove and Snook Islands Natural Area. Each shoreline area has different breakwater designs aimed at stabilizing the shoreline with recruitment of oysters and mangroves in the Lake Worth Lagoon. Overall, seasonal morphology and sediment data …

Saltfish And Seedcake: Examining Fantasy Through Food Studies, Isabella Martins-Simonsen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Although mundane and often overlooked in reality, in fantasy, food, like all other things, is entirely symbolic. Therefore, considering food closely when analyzing a fantasy text offers unique insights into the world being developed, the characters within that world, and the author’s own understanding of both the real and “secondary” world. In this paper, I consider the foods of Earthsea, Narnia, and Middle Earth to offer various perspectives on the worldbuilding and examine the implications of different foods in these well-known settings. For example, the tea served in Narnia creates a fantasy world that is more normal than the strange …

Dietary Manipulations Of The Undernourished Infant Microbiome, Cyrus Zhou

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Today, undernutrition affects approximately 150 million children worldwide. During the first two years of life, the healthy gut microbial community undergoes a series of predictable developmental transitions. These transitions are delayed in undernourished children resulting in microbiota “immaturity.” In a foundational study, immature gut microbial communities from undernourished children and normally developing communities from chronologically age-matched healthy children living in the same area were transplanted into groups of germ-free mice consuming the same diet – one representative of what consumed by the study population. Compared mice with a mature gut microbiome, mice with an immature gut microbiome had impaired weight …

Spontaneous Blood Oxygen Level Dependent Signals In Glioblastoma-Bearing And Aging Brains, Ki Yun Park

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Brain activity fluctuates across timescales from microseconds to decades, reflecting processes ranging from rapid synaptic transmission to slow neuromodulatory and homeostatic changes. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) captures the slow end of this spectrum (spontaneous blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) fluctuations over tens to hundreds of seconds), which reflect the integrated output of these underlying processes and are increasingly recognized as sensitive to both pathological and physiological brain states. The core of this thesis examines rs-fMRI as a biomarker for two clinical entities: glioblastoma and aging. Reliable biomarker development requires both methodological rigor and analytic breadth, knowing what the method …

Testing A New Creighton Competency Evaluation Instrument For Pediatric Nursing, Elizabeth Anne Flasch

Dissertations (1934 -)

A descriptive multi-site correlational study design was used to test a modified instrument to determine its ability to assess students consistently across settings using a group of prelicensure pediatric students enrolled in two different pediatric clinical environments. Two participant groups were intentionally recruited including clinical instructors teaching in pediatric clinical environments and their corresponding students practicing in pediatric simulation and traditional clinical environments. Inter-rater reliability of the instrument was achieved. Prelicensure nursing students were deemed competent in the care of children across settings. No statistically significant correlations were found between environments. There was a relationship between student perception of confidence …

Friends Of Mill Ridge Park: Increasing Accessibility And Free Educational Opportunities In Southeast Nashville, Emma Richardson

OTD Capstone Projects

This doctoral capstone project was completed in collaboration with Friends of Mill Ridge Park (FMRP), a non-profit organization with a mission to enhance and advocate for Mill Ridge Park to strengthen the community in Southeast Davidson County. Through their work, FMRP creates opportunities for the community to engage in outdoor recreation, conservation, and educational experiences. This doctoral capstone project was focused on creating a free, educational opportunity for the diverse population of southeast Nashville through the development of a bilingual Story Stroll event. This event attracted close to 150 community members and received positive feedback from survey respondents, including: 100% …

Fabrication Of Su-8 Electrically Actuating Membranes, Tyler James Adams

Theses and Dissertations

This work investigates SU-8 polymer waveguides as a fabrication platform for integrated optical structures. Surface roughening using oxygen plasma etching is used to induce controlled optical scattering, enabling direct observation of guided modes and providing insight into waveguide behavior. Building on this, waveguide geometry is modified through an elevated scattering region (ESR) design, which reduces transition losses and improves scattering efficiency by preserving optical volume within the guiding region. In parallel, suspended SU-8 membranes are fabricated and evaluated for mechanical stability, providing a platform for integrating optical structures beyond conventional substrate-bound configurations. These membranes are further characterized under electrostatic actuation, …

Understanding The Role Of Tiktok As A Source Of Support For Cyberbullying Victims, Saba Iqbal

Theses and Dissertations

Cyberbullying poses a significant threat to teenagers and young adults, who often seek support and advice online. Little is known about the support and advice shared online for victims of cyberbullying and whether it is helpful. In this study, we used qualitative thematic analysis to examine a sample of 150 TikTok videos that give support or advice for cyberbullying victims. We identify 33 unique pieces of support and advice across 5 categories, with differences in tone and delivery among different types of videos. We then evaluated the quality of 33 unique pieces of cyberbullying advice in a user study with …

Democratizing National Water Model Streamflow Forecasts Through Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development, Jerson J. Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

The National Water Model (NWM) provides operational streamflow forecasts for 2.7 million stream reaches across the continental United States, yet technical barriers prevent widespread public access to this hydrological infrastructure. This paper presents RIVR (River Information Visualization and Risk), a cross-platform mobile application that transforms National Water Model forecasts into an accessible interface for non-technical users. Built with Flutter, the application deploys to iOS and Android from a single codebase and integrates NOAA forecast APIs, CIROH return-period thresholds, and interactive vector-tile mapping. Performance evaluation across six metrics: application size, startup time, memory consumption, rendering frame rates, API response times, and …

Race Evasion In White Student Affairs Professionals In Minnesota Higher Education: A Phenomenology, Cindy Boe

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

Language that includes race-evasive frames is used by White individuals to maintain a status quo wherein White individuals hold greater access to societal power and resources than people of color. Race-evasive frames include abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and disconnected power-analysis. In higher education, use of race evasive frames has been primarily documented in White college students and White faculty members. This study addressed in a gap in the literature related to race evasion in White student affairs professionals. Student affairs professionals provide direct support to college students. Scholars have suggested that student affairs professionals carry responsibility for advancing equity …

Resurrection In Gold, Samantha K. Kelley

Undergraduate Theses

The human experience consistently brings about themes of brokenness, oftentimes leading to feelings of loss, confusion, and a desire for repair. Guided by a metaphor found in kintsugi (a Japanese art form), this thesis aims to explore and illustrate both brokenness and repair, through a lens of Christian theology.

The beginning of this project focuses on brokenness, illustrating the brokenness that is found in life by destroying old artworks in various ways. The method of breaking each piece also aimed to connect to a way brokenness is commonly found in life, for example – society tearing us down, artworks being …

Modeling Bitcoin Dynamics Using Differential Equations, Boone M. Fleenor

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In this thesis, we develop and analyze two nonlinear systems of ordinary differential equations to model Bitcoin price dynamics. Analytical techniques are used to obtain exact or approximate solutions where possible. Then, numerical simulations using a fourth-order Runge–Kutta method are employed to explore system behavior beyond analytically tractable regimes. Finally, model outputs are compared to historical Bitcoin price data using normalized and resampled time series. These results suggest that deterministic models can provide meaningful insight into the structural behavior of Bitcoin markets, while highlighting the need for stochastic or time-dependent extensions for more realistic modeling.

Quantitative Proteomics For The Investigation Of Phosphoprotein Phosphatase 1 And 3 Substrate Specificities, Galini Poimenidou

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Reversible phosphorylation is a crucial post-translational modification (PTM) that modulates a variety of signaling pathways intracellularly, with aberrant protein phosphorylation being a hallmark of many human diseases. Kinases, which catalyze phosphorylation of their substrates, have been extensively studied in the context of the signaling pathways they regulate and their effects on cellular processes. In contrast, phosphoprotein phosphatases (PPPs), which catalyze the removal of phosphate groups from substrate proteins, have only recently come to the research spotlight. For a long time, protein phosphatases were deemed unspecific housekeeping enzymes, but they are now known to display exquisite substrate specificity. Phosphoprotein phosphatase 1 …

Hybrid Bermudagrass Dormancy Management In A Cool-Season Climate, Clarissa H. Peterson

Theses and Dissertations

Hybrid bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon [L.] Pers. × C. transvaalensis Burtt Davy) (HBG) is a water efficient warm-season turfgrass increasingly adopted in cool-season and semi-arid regions due to climate change and the demand for reduced irrigation inputs. However, prolonged winter dormancy limits its visual quality (verdure) and seasonal performance. This thesis evaluated multiple management strategies to modify dormancy dynamics and improve off-season turf quality in a cool-season environment. Field experiments assessed the effects of growth covers, fertilizers, colorants, surfactants, organic acids, and overseeding with cool-season species on HBG dormancy over two seasons. Dormancy responses were quantified using normalized difference vegetation index …

The Effects Of Dietary Protein Manipulation On Operant Demand, Brianna R. Lilly

LSU Master's Theses

Previous work with dietary protein restriction in rodents has demonstrated that rodents fed a low protein diet exhibit physiological effects such as lower rates of weight gain and increased levels of circulating fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21). Dietary protein restriction also produces behavioral effects. Compared to rodents that are not protein-restricted, rodents that are protein-restricted exhibit increased food intake and higher preference for a protein vs. carbohydrate solution. Additionally, protein-restricted rodents will respond at higher levels for a protein reinforcer than non-restricted rodents. The current study assessed the effect of dietary protein restriction on operant protein demand during and after …

An Education Project To Address Pain Management Solutions For Adult Clients With Ue Involvement To Reduce Dependence On Pharmacological Options To Increase Comfort And Performance With Life Activities, Alexander J. Birdsall

Student Capstone Papers

Upper extremity (UE) pain affects approximately 30.7% of adults in the United States and is associated with decreased function and participation. Despite evidence supporting non-pharmacological approaches, pharmacological interventions remain commonly used. This capstone project implemented and evaluated an occupation-based educational program to promote non-pharmacological pain management among adults receiving outpatient occupational therapy for UE conditions. This 14-week project included 10 participants and utilized a mixed-methods design with pre-, mid-, and post-surveys. The program consisted of an introduction and three modules addressing therapeutic movement, physical agent modalities, and sensory regulation. Outcome measures included pain, activity engagement, medication use, confidence, and program …

Inequality And Well-Being, Sarah E. Boslaugh

Theses

Human well-being has been a topic of interest to philosophers at least since the time of Aristotle, and well-being has also been a core concern of social scientists since the birth of the discipline in the late 18^th century. Some theories of well-being include economic inequality as a factor, and multiple ways to measure this factor have been developed; as with well-being, there is no single best measure of economic inequality and the choice of which measure to use may be based on both theoretical and practical reasons. I argue that income inequality should always be included as a …

Secondary Contact Dynamics In White-Breasted Nuthatches (Sitta Carolinensis) Across The Pine Ridge Of Nebraska, Eugene A. Huryn

Biology Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

Populations’ interactions in contact zones are important for understanding divergence dynamics of closely related taxa. Such interactions may vary from inter-population divergence being reinforced to secondary contact resulting in the creation of a hybrid swarm. The ecology of each lineage, and different factors like behavior and ecological niches, may impact the outcome of such contact. However, there is little current research on how habitat choice at local scales might reflect distinct populations, particularly in cryptic species. To study how niche dynamics affect diversification, we studied the White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) complex in northwestern Nebraska. Two members of this …

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Fingerprinting: Techniques For Attacker-In-The-Middle Proxy Detection, Evasion, And Counter-Evasion, Jensen George Wood

Theses and Dissertations

Attacker-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing toolkits have emerged as a critical threat to enterprise and individual security by enabling adversaries to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) and compromise cloud-based accounts at scale. Traditional detection techniques--such as IP blocklists or content-based detection methods--are often ineffective against these increasingly sophisticated attacks. We propose a novel method that detects malicious proxies by identifying artifacts they introduce into HTTP request headers. To evaluate our approach, we systematically analyze traffic passed through several open-source AitM toolkits and proxies, identifying distinct modifications to header structures and content, then formalize these features as YARA rules for automated use. To validate …

Hip Strengthening Exercises That Improve The Sit-To-Stand In Older Adults, Savanna Pohly

Doctorate in Kinesiology

To date, no home-based exercise programs have been established as definitive interventions for improving the sit-to-stand (STS) performance in older adults (OAs). Previous research identifies a duration of >15 seconds on the Five-Time-Sit-to-Stand Test (FTSST) as a significant predictor of increased fall risk for OAs. This study applies higher-ranked gluteal activation therapeutic exercises that can improve STS performance for OAs.

Twenty-five OAs age 72.68 ± 4.02 years old were given a 6-week home exercise program that included five therapeutic exercises to be performed three times a week using a Perform Better resistance loop. The FTSST and surveys were completed pre- …