Digital Commons Network^™

Effective Technology Strategies Supporting Green Supply Chain Management Within Guyana’S Oil And Gas Industry, Clairmont Andrew Austin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Policy Whiplash: Tariffs And Uncertainty Among Firms And Investors In 2025, Boau Lilly Shepherd

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

On April 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced a series of reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners, set to be implemented on April 9, 2025, a day he referred to as “Liberation Day”. Although these tariffs were paused almost immediately, they were subsequently renegotiated and revised throughout the summer of 2025. This paper finds evidence that Liberation Day caused a spike in uncertainty among firms and a spike in volatility among investors, while the subsequent summer revisions reduced uncertainty and volatility, despite tariff levels remaining substantially higher than those at the start of the year. These findings suggest that firms …

Individualism And Momentum Revisited: Evidence On The Persistence Of Cultural Drivers In Stock Market Returns, Hayley S. Sciubba

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

This paper reexamines the relationship between cultural differences and momentum strategy returns over the period March 2007 through March 2026, building on the Chui, Titman and Wei (2010) finding that higher individualism is associated with greater trading volume, volatility, and momentum profits. Cross-country cultural differences are measured using an individualism index developed by Minkov et al. (2017), which is related to overconfidence and self-attribution bias. Using monthly stock price data, I construct cleaned monthly returns and sort stocks into six-month momentum portfolios. Although many of the 41 countries common to the original and current samples have experienced changes in their …

Selective Contagion: Sovereign Credit Integration And Heterogeneous Shock Transmission In Emerging Equity And Derivative Markets, Fabiana Araujo Rincón

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

Contagion in Latin America is real but selective: the direction of spillover depends on whether a country is integrated more strongly into global or regional markets. Using a stacked event study across 90 manually identified shocks from 2001 to 2026, I estimate regional contagion and its determinants across credit, currency, equity, and derivative markets. Contagion travels through sovereign credit, not currency, and through economic, not political, shocks. Political shocks, despite their larger domestic impact, stay locally contained. The direction of spillover turns on shock origin: shocks from large, globally integrated economies depress their peers, while shocks from smaller, regionally focused …

Implied Variance Asymmetry As A Predictor Of Stock Returns Around Quarterly Earnings Dates, Matthew J. Sebastian

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

This paper investigates whether option-implied variance asymmetry, defined as the difference between upside and downside risk-neutral semivariances measured shortly before scheduled quarterly earnings announcements pre- dicts the cumulative abnormal return realized over the announcement win- dow. We find implied variance asymmetry positively and significantly pre- dicts announcement-window returns in S&P 500 companies: the high-minus- low quintile sort portfolio earns 45 basis points over a five-day window with a Fama-French four-factor alpha of 60 basis points, both statistically signif- icant. The results suggest a temporary break in market efficiency and are consistent with an informed-trading interpretation in which earnings specific information …

Storytelling, Gender, And The Double-Empathy Problem, Annie Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

Storytelling has been proposed as a meaningful way to facilitate empathy and connection, particularly across neurotypes. The present study examined whether a live storytelling event influenced perceptions of the autism community, empathy, and interpersonal connection, while also exploring differences on biological sex and levels of autistic traits. Participants completed pre- and post-event measures assessing relationship perceptions and connection, along with standardized measures of empathy and autistic traits. Results showed a significant increase in positive perceptions of the autism community and perceived closeness to storytellers after the event. Engagement, emotional impact, openness, and motivation to support the autism community were all …

The Evolution Of Collaborative Dialogue And Instructional Change Among Secondary Mathematics Teachers Engaged In Peer Observation, Shazia Akbar

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined how collaborative dialogue evolved across four cycles of a formative peer observation system involving one veteran and two first-year secondary mathematics teachers, exploring which aspects of that dialogue teachers attributed to changes in their instructional practice. Using the Math Talk for Equitable Participation (MTEP) framework across one academic year, data were drawn from verbatim transcripts of eight collaborative sessions and video-stimulated recall interviews. Four key findings emerged: evidence shifted from planning documents to video of student thinking, deepening pedagogical reasoning; novice teacher contributions grew from peripheral to central; relational trust fostered critical rather than merely affirming …

Flip It And Reverse It: Probing Consistency Of Llm World Knowledge Under Logical Transformations, Rhianna Smith

Computer Science Senior Theses

When assessing the extent to which someone truly understands the topics they discuss, you might ask them a series of questions that examine their knowledge from different angles. As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into real-world tasks, they are often required to reason through ambiguous and uncertain scenarios that rarely have a single correct answer. In these settings, their usefulness is contingent on more than accuracy alone. Rather, it depends on the strength of the reasoning that underlies their responses. This begs the question: how might we extend these types of tests to LLMs? We formalize this informal …

Unheard Voices: Language And Humanity In Memoirs Of Immigration From Latin America To The United States, Aj Setala

Honors Projects

At the time of writing this project, aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) raids and mass deportations are being carried out across the U.S. The need to recognize the humanity of those targeted grows with every deportation. In this project, I address the question - What does it mean to be human? - by considering how language impacts the ways in which others affirm or deny the humanity of immigrants. To do this, I examine the role language plays in memoirs of undocumented Latin American immigrants. My analysis is grounded in Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory and César Miguel R. Vega …

Professional Identity And Teaching Self-Efficacy Among Early Career Nurse Educators Across Baccalaureate Nursing Programs, Kerri Chapman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Using Single Cell Multi Omics And Spatial Transcriptomics To Characterize The Inflammatory- Fibroblast Axis In Cardiovascular Disease, Junedh Mahesh Amrute

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Despite tremendous progress in cardiovascular research, we still have an incomplete understanding of the precise cell states, transcriptional programs, and regulatory mechanism involved in atherosclerosis and heart failure. I hypothesize: (1) in human coronary artery disease, genetic variation acts in a cell state specific manner to perturb the gene regulatory network and drive smooth muscle cell and fibroblast trans- differentiation into the neo-intima and (2) macrophages signal to fibroblasts via IL-1b through a Runx1 gene regulatory network to drive activation and cardiac fibrosis. To test these hypotheses, we will employ a reverse translation paradigm: starting with human tissue, we will …

Examining The Impact Of Design Thinking Practices On Manufacturing Innovation Performance In The U.S. Automotive Industry, Charles Emlin Pluviose

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between The Environment And Pollution With Surgical Outcomes And Disparities, Wendelyn Marie Oslock

ETDs from 2020-2029

Air pollution exposure has been linked to many surgically managed diseases and adverse health events that occur in the postoperative period. Despite this, the impact of air pollution on postoperative recovery is poorly understood. This knowledge gap may be one of the underlying mechanisms for persistent disparities in surgical outcomes. Previous studies have found racial and economic disparities in air pollution exposure. These same communities have been shown to experience worse surgical outcomes. The goal of this thesis is to explore if exposure to air pollution impacts surgical outcomes and determine if disparities in socioeconomic factors impact this relationship. The …

Predictors And Outcomes Of Reading Intervention Success In Autistic Children: Memory And Brain Connectivity, Meagan Elizabeth Beckerson

ETDs from 2020-2029

Reading comprehension is a complex skill that relies on linguistic and cognitive abilities, including executive control processes. Creating a cohesive representation of text involves maintaining visual and verbal information in short term memory (STM) and using executive control skills to integrate information, apply it to questions, and draw inferences. Many autistic children demonstrate strong individual word reading (decoding) but poor comprehension, resulting in a discrepant reading profile. The role of STM and executive control—along with the underlying neural systems that support these processes—in reading comprehension and response to intervention has not been examined in autistic children with this profile. The …

Distribution, Abundance And Habitat Utilization Of Sea Turtles In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, With An Emphasis On Coastal Mississippi, Theresa Rose Madrigal

ETDs from 2020-2029

The Gulf of Mexico represents important habitat for a variety of sea turtle species. This includes habitats for the various life history stages ranging from the oceanic stage of hatchling and post-hatchling turtles, neritic subadults, to the adult foraging and reproduc-tive stages. In contrast to many areas of the Gulf of Mexico, there has been a limited amount of data reported on sea turtle nesting as well as sea turtle foraging and develop-mental habitat in the north central Gulf of Mexico. This thesis includes two studies which investigate the importance of the coastal areas of Mississippi as sea turtle habitat. …

Growing Pains: The Loss Of Plasticity To Extreme Anoxia In Developing Embryos Of Austrofundulus Limnaeus, Patrick Ryan Clouser

Dissertations and Theses

Oxygen plays a pivotal role for most animal life on Earth, so much so that even short exposures to no oxygen, anoxia, can have severe effects on the animal's wellbeing. Conversely, aerobic recovery after anoxic insult can be just as detrimental. Some animals are the exception to this rule and demonstrate survival through anoxia and recovery. There has been a great deal of research around anoxia tolerant animals, but what remains unclear are the genetic underpinnings that determine the anoxia tolerant phenotype. RNA sequencing allows for the quantification of RNA transcripts within a sample, which can indicate if a gene …

Emotion-Focused Teaching And Preschool Children's Social, Emotional, And Self-Regulatory Development, Brielle Emily Petit

Dissertations and Theses

Contributing to the literature on supportive mechanisms for children's development of social, emotional, and self-regulatory competencies, the current study examines the contributions of emotion-focused teaching in preschool classrooms. Emotion-focused teaching is a framework used within preschool classrooms that encompasses three domains of teaching that support children's development of emotion skills—how teachers display their own emotions or emotion-related behaviors and actions (modeling), the ways they respond to children's emotional expressions (responding), and how instruction is used to inform children about emotions and related processes (instructing). More frequent emotion-focused teaching has been shown to be a …

Fabrication Of Two-Dimensional Optoelectrical Devices, Holly Walworth

Honors Projects

Optoelectrical devices enable the exploration of interesting quantum states observed in two-dimensional (2D) condensed material systems. 2D materials, such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides, exhibit unique electronic properties, including the Fractional Quantum Anomalous Hall effect (FQAHE). The realization of the FQAHE offers a pathway toward topological quantum computing via non-Abelian anyons. Still, fabricating high-quality 2D optoelectrical devices remains a significant experimental challenge. Using mechanical exfoliation and stacking techniques within an inert argon environment, we attempted to fabricate optoelectrical devices using twisted molybdenum ditelluride (tMoTe2) and gallium telluride (GaTe). Three devices were successfully assembled; however, structural defects including hexagonal boron …

Barriers To Food Security In Supportive Housing Sites In Scc, Olivia Reifschneider, Addison Lewis, Will Jaspen

Environmental Studies and Sciences Senior Capstone

Using a community-engaged mixed-methods research study, we sought to determine the extent to which supportive housing residents in Santa Clara County (SCC) are food insecure, as well as the possible causes, and how this can be addressed by the County and connected non-profits. Through interviews and surveys, we found that 84.62% of the residents surveyed were food insecure, and 62% did not agree that their food insecurity had improved while being in supportive housing. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the cause of food insecurity, as many housing sites provide meals to their residents multiple times a day. We …

K-12 Veteran Teachers’ Perceptions On Teacher Retention In North Carolina, Candace Me'chele Moser, Ed.D

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Image Processing In Self-Driving Cars, Julia Lin, Sid Kalidindi, Anushri Selva, Seana Corners

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

This thesis presents the development of a low-cost embedded image processing system for autonomous vehicle perception using the PYNQ-Z2 FPGA board. The project explores whether compact FPGA-based systems can provide efficient, low-latency perception for small-scale autonomous applications such as delivery robots, warehouse robots, and drones, where power efficiency and affordability are important design constraints.

The system uses Python and OpenCV for image preprocessing and color-based traffic sign segmentation, while a modified LeNet-5 convolutional neural network performs traffic sign classification. The model was optimized and deployed onto the FPGA using Vivado HLS and Vitis to accelerate inference on resource-constrained hardware. The …

High Altitude Lora Networking (Halon) For Crisis Communications, Sahana Prasanna Chandramohan, Vikram Rakesh Jangid

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Natural disasters, infrastructure failure, and politically motivated internet shutdowns can severely disrupt communication systems, preventing affected populations from coordinating emergency response, accessing information, and contacting others. Existing communication infrastructure relies heavily on centralized networks, fixed power availability, and costly deployments, making such systems vulnerable during periods of crisis. To alleviate these problems we propose High Altitude Long Range Networking (HALoN) for Crisis Communications, a rapidly deployable decentralized wireless mesh network designed for operation in infrastructure-denied environments. HALoN utilizes low-power long range (LoRa) communication and high-altitude deployment platforms such as balloons, drones and tall structures, among others, to create temporary communication …

How Do Peer Support Officers Perceive Support Provided To Officers Involved In Critical Incidents, Jodi Vanderwier

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Investigating How Llm Trading Agents Integrate External Signals, Rohan Ray

Computer Science Senior Theses

Large Language Models are increasingly deployed in systems that assume more information leads to better decisions: RAG pipelines inject retrieved documents, tool-augmented agents call external APIs, and multi-model architectures route signals between specialized components. Whether this holds when both the information and the outcomes are noisy, and decisions compound over time, has received limited empirical attention. This thesis tests that assumption on LLM-based trading agents. Using StockBench (Chen et al., 2025) as our benchmark, we ran 150 backtests across 2 frontier LLMs (Kimi K2 and Qwen3-235B-Instruct), 12 augmentation strategies, and 5 random seeds, over 82 trading days — a period …

Risk Management Strategies To Reduce Pressure Injuries In Skilled Nursing Homes In Florida, Teresa Latoya Desir

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Implementation And Evaluation Of A Nurse-Led Telehealth Protocol To Reduce No-Show Rates Among Chronic Care Patients, Yaneisy Puig

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Burnout On The Attitudes Of Treatment Providers Towards Sex Offenders, Aklima S. Baksh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

The Relationships Between Adult Cyberbullying Victimization, Introversion, Extroversion, And Demographic Variables, Amber Paige Arrington

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Obstetric Access In Rural And Urban Areas In The United States, Sandali Chandradasa

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Longitudinal Relationship Between Income Variability And Hypertension Risk Through A Life Course Lens, Mehrnaz Siavoshi

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.