Digital Commons Network^™

Towards Effective Developer Communication In Open Source Software Via Emotional Awareness, Mia Mohammad Imran

Theses and Dissertations

Emotions play an integral yet understudied role in open-source software development, profoundly shaping critical collaborative processes such as knowledge sharing, decision-making, and team dynamics. However, accurately detecting and analyzing emotions in developer communications poses significant challenges due to the lack of visual and auditory cues in text-based interactions. This dissertation investigates techniques to enhance the understanding and modeling of emotions within the textual artifacts of open-source projects. We conduct an extensive evaluation of existing emotion classification tools using a novel dataset of annotated GitHub comments. An error analysis reveals deficiencies in handling implicit emotional expressions and figurative language. We demonstrate …

Transforming Children's Oral Health: The Impact Of Oral Healthcare Policies On Virginia Medicaid Dental Health Outcomes., Anita M. Kumar

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract: Transforming Children's Oral Health: The Impact of Oral Healthcare Policies on Virginia Medicaid Dental Health Outcomes.

Objectives: This dissertation uses Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) administrative files at the individual and provider level from fiscal years (FY) 2011 to 2021 to systematically study the effect of recently implemented oral health policies (EBD guidelines on sealants, CMS updated quality measures, expansion of Medicaid oral healthcare for qualifying pregnant women) on oral health outcomes of Virginia Medicaid-enrolled children.

Methods: The studies employ a difference in differences regression methods (negative binomial, Poisson, and logistic) to examine the effects of oral health …

Using Asset-Based Community Development To Increase Student Engagement And Improve Student Experience In Schools, Jacqueline Hopkins

Theses and Dissertations

The following is a dissertation in the three-paper dissertation format. The first section will give background information on the issue of alienation in schools and how asset-based community development (ABCD) could be an effective tool for educators to combat alienation and disengagement, especially with students with marginalized identities. This first section will also show the significance of the three papers as a whole and how they connect to one another. The first paper is the conceptual literature review, the second paper is an empirical study of the ABCD model in schools, and the dissertation will end with a practitioner's article …

How Ebony Transcends In The Ivory Tower: Unveiling Transformational Black Women Forging Leadership Paths In Historically White Institutions, Lauren N. Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

Considerable literature has amplified the perceived challenges and deficits of Black women as they advance in their careers within historically white institutions (HWI). As a result, there is a notable absence of anti-deficit explorations of the inherent abilities and strengths that contribute to Black women’s professional mobility. Grounded in anti-deficit achievement framework and Black feminist leadership, this study aimed to illuminate the assets and factors that influence the professional ascension of seven, current/former senior-level Black women in a HWI within the Southeastern region of the U.S. By adopting a qualitative, phenomenological framework, this study provides in-depth insights into the participants’ …

The Patient Experience Of Language Discordance And Interpreter Services In The Emergency Department, Keri L. Baker

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Clear communication is critical to the interaction of a patient and medical provider. For non-English speaking patients, language discordance, described as the lack of proficiency in a shared language, with the medical team results in a poor patient experience and poor patient outcomes. The predominant solution to language discordance is the use of interpreter services, however these services are underused in the emergency department (ED). Studies examining underuse of interpreter services have primarily focused on the clinician and little is known about the patient’s influence on the use of interpreter services.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 Spanish-speaking …

Enhancing Accessibility : A Pilot Study For Context-Aware Image-Caption To American Sign Language (Asl) Translation, Oluwafolahanmi Adedamola Aluko

Theses

Since the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the explosion of Generative AI, much work has been done around image captioning, providing wildly accurate captions from still images, and more recently videos [3]. Alt-Text has improved dramatically with efforts to enhance context and sentiment captured during automated captioning. This thesis attempts to expand on a section on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and its relevance to promoting accessibility and context-awareness in the premise of the American Sign Language (ASL) application. This thesis explores what it means to give full context about a caption or image to the end user, including sentiments, …

An Ecocritical Approach To Fyodor Abramov's Story "What Do The Horses Cry About", Badegül Can Emir

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Human's destructive behaviors toward the environment also harm animals. Fyodor Abramov's story, “What Do The Horses Cry About”. focuses on this issue. While this story reflects the world through the eyes of an animal, it reveals people's changing behaviors towards animals. The study tries to read the changing attitude of man toward nature in the modern age on the axis of Fyodor Abramov's story called “What Do The Horses Cry About”. On the other hand, it tries to understand how the relationship between the human and other living things has penetrated the fiction of the story. It shall be emphasized …

Audiovisual Translation: A Case Study Of What We Wanted, Evren Barut, M.Cem Odacıoğlu, Fadimə Çoban

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This study examines the English and Turkish subtitles of the German Netflix film Was Wir Wollten based on its dubbed version. In the film, main characters Alice and Niklas speak Standard High German (Hochdeutsch), while Christl communicates in South Tyrolean German, a distinct dialect, with her husband Romed and their children. To highlight cultural contrasts between the families, Saran Digital Studios, responsible for the Turkish subtitles and dubbing, made a notable localization decision: they replaced South Tyrolean German with Aegean Turkish in the dubbed version. According to interviews with Saran Digital Studios and Netflix officials, various Turkish dialects, including the …

Entire Issue Vol. 17 No. 30

Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies

Vol. 17(30) 2024

Supreme Court Litigators In The Age Of Textualism, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s approach to statutory interpretation has moved in a textualist direction over the last several decades, but there is little systematic information on how litigators’ briefing practices have changed during this era of textualist ascendancy. This Article examines thirty-five years’ worth of party briefs (over 8,000 briefs total), explores the briefs’ use of interpretive tools (including differences across categories of attorneys), and compares the briefs to the Court’s opinions.

This examination yields several valuable findings. Although the briefs show a textualist shift, they differ from the Court’s opinions in a few ways. The magnitude of the textualist shift …

The Delegation Doctrine, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

Despite the focus on the Court’s recent major questions cases, signs of an emergent delegation doctrine can also be found elsewhere. Most significantly, seeds of a delegation doctrine have been planted within the Court’s Chevron jurisprudence. The Court’s increased reluctance to grant Chevron deference to administrative agencies--and its insistence that courts first conclude that interpretive authority has been delegated before deferring to any agency interpretation—rests on the same core premise as the Court’s recent major questions doctrine decisions. It also suggests that the “new” major questions doctrine is not as new as it might seem, but rather a logical outgrowth …

Promoting Cultural Competence Through Clinical Education, Katie Coakley

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation was to explore how clinical education can be leveraged to promote the cultural competence of aspiring clinicians. Cultural competence training is important in addressing health disparities and recommended in health professions education, but barriers exist to its implementation. This dissertation seeks to explore and appraise the literature on cultural competence instruction in rehabilitation education, evaluate the impact of a clinical education experience for speech language pathology (SLP) students on their perceived cultural competence, and assess the outcomes for clients receiving feeding therapy services from supervised SLP students, including the client perceptions of cultural competence …

Enhancing Usability In Aviation: Insights From User Experience Studies, Jennifer Ann Howard

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The modern aviation industry is consistently embracing technological advancements to improve safety, efficiency, and training practices. Three user experience studies were conducted to examine the usability aspects of two digital components within aviation: the Federal Aviation Administration website and virtual reality head-mounted displays for aviation training.

The Federal Aviation Administration website serves as a central hub for aviation-related information, resources, and regulations for all domestic civil or military air operations within U.S. airspace. Usability is essential to ensure easy access to valuable data for aviation professionals, enthusiasts, and the public. Results from the experiences of ten pilots executing five tasks …

Netflix As A Transverse Transnational Media In Southeast Asia: Exploring The Philippine Context, Lady Aileen Ambion Orsal

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines how Netflix as a transnational Internet TV disrupted the media flow in Southeast Asia. As subscription to streaming platforms grew exponentially, the limited linear flow of contents in traditional TV was transformed into a more personalized viewing experience. Consumers binge-watching on a subscription video on demand service were given the agency to view diverse contents at a time and on a gadget they prefer while also being offered recommendations from the platform’s curated list. As Netflix expanded to over 190 countries around the world, it has employed localization strategies to provide culturally authentic contents through co-production with …

International Graduate Student Challenges And Self-Efficacy When Studying In The United States, Kawthar Alfarhan

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This study examined challenges international graduate students face in the United States regarding English language skills, cultural adaptation, and impacts on their academic self-efficacy. Ten international students from different countries were interviewed using a qualitative research method. The interviews explored international graduate students’ experiences after completing at least one year at the university. Specific focus areas included difficulties faced with English proficiency and cultural adaptation, how students described their self-efficacy in managing these challenges, the impacts on their academic performance, and strategies to support their self-efficacy.

The findings showed that self-efficacy as well as encouragement from peers and faculty helped …

Effort Of Reproducibility: Metrics, Methods, And Models To Navigate The Landscape Of Reproducible Research, Akhil Pandey Akella

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Validating scientific claims is an elaborate process that involves researchers investing considerable time and effort to discover the validity of claims. It involves repeatability, reproducibility, and replicability, where each subsequent step requires increased effort and time. With the evolving nature of computational experiments and the exponential pace at which scientific publications are disseminated, researchers find it challenging to devote time, energy, and resources to assess claims made in papers of interest. Preemptive signals for reproducible effort can be helpful to researchers in filtering academic works of interest, thereby allowing them to adjust efforts based on need. Through this research, I …

Classic Taíno Foodways And Ritual Practices: A Comparative Paleoethnobotanical Analysis From Cinnamon Bay, St. John, Anna N. Chitwood

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Macrobotanical analysis of Taíno habitation sites throughout the Caribbean has provided evidence of what comprised the Taíno diet. Although those analyses are important to our understanding of the Taíno, there has been a lack of analysis from ritual sites, and the data recovered from existing sites are limited. This thesis presents the results of analysis of paleoethnobotanical remains from Cinnamon Bay (VIIS 191), a shoreline Taíno ritual site located on St. John in the United States Virgin Islands (USVI) that dates to approximately 1000 CE – 1490 CE, in order to gain a better understand how Indigenous Taíno people interacted …

Evaluating Computational Reproducibility Of Jupyter Notebooks Using Machine Learning And Natural Language Processing, A S M Shahadat Hossain

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In recent years, computational reproducibility, which refers to achieving consistent results upon rerunning an experiment, has become one of the major concerns of various research communities. Jupyter Notebook, as a web-based computational notebook application, offers useful features for running and publishing computational experiments through interactive environments. However, rerunning notebooks does not always reproduce the experimental results. This thesis aims to develop novel methods to evaluate reproducibility by comparing different types of outputs between original and rerun notebooks. It also explores the idea of using machine learning models to predict reproducibility of notebooks automatically without the need of rerunning them. Through …

Expressive Writing Rooted In Self-Determination Theory: An Intervention For Racial Trauma, Diana A. Robinson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Understanding the impact of racial discrimination is not a new endeavor in the field of psychology. However, research utilizing a trauma-focused lens to evaluate the negative mental health outcomes in the aftermath of racial discrimination is only in its infancy. In addition to depression, anxiety, and substance use, recent research has linked racial discrimination to negative mental health outcomes that mirror that of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although many researchers have identified the negative effects of racial discrimination, few studies have examined intervention approaches designed to reduce the negative impact of racial discrimination. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a comprehensive theory …

Reinterpreting Fort Ancient Plant Relationships Through Native Science And Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Bailey Rae Raab

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Paleoethnobotanical analyses over the past several decades have shed light on subsistence practices, agricultural strategies, and environmental interactions of members of the Fort Ancient culture, an Indigenous society that thrived in the Ohio Valley from 1000 to 1650 CE. Largely absent from these conversations, however, are discussions of non-food uses of plants or considerations of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). By combining multiple different sources of knowledge, a more holistic view of people-plant relationships within the Fort Ancient culture may be established, one that allows us to better understand these relationships in the past and present. In this thesis, I synthesize …

Latine Caregiver Perspectives Of Their Child’S Speech And Language Services, Marisol Perez

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Early Intervention (EI) speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are mandated to provide culturally responsive services to culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) clients. However, little is known about Latine caregivers’ perspectives on receiving these services. The purpose of this study was to examine Latine caregivers’ perspectives on their child’s speech and language services by answering the following research questions: 1) How do intrinsic factors relate to Latine caregiver satisfaction with their family’s speech and language services? 2) Does perception of clinician cultural sensitivity relate to Latine caregiver satisfaction with speech and language services? 3) What do Latine caregivers perceive as determinants (facilitators and …

The Human Faces Of Dissident Socialism: The Fight For Human Rights In Soviet Ukraine, Alexander Nicholas Sosenko

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the transformation of a Ukrainian literary and aesthetic avant-garde movement in the 1960s, the Sixtiers, into an emblem of the 1970s global human rights campaign. This historical interpretation intertwines the brief flicker of early-1960s Ukrainian art and poetry with the joyous and tragic stories of Soviet citizens fighting for human rights. The Ukrainian Sixtiers’ experience with political persecution made them ideal players in the international human rights movement in its formative years. They adopted positive foreign influences and modified them for their own situation, whether in intellectual work or human rights activism. This represents a Soviet Ukrainian …

Journalists’ Perception Of Artificial Intelligence: The Case Of Nigerian Newsrooms, Amaka Peace Onebunne

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Technological advancements have always influenced how news is sourced, produced, and disseminated. The emergence of AI technology fundamentally repositions human journalists, requiring them to work with non-human agents. Typically, the Global North leads in adopting such technologies, resulting in unequal technological diffusion and research between the Global North and South. This research thus takes a less-traveled path within a portion of the global south to understand journalists’ views of Artificial Intelligence in Nigerian newsrooms and how geographical and cultural factors influence AI usage. Grounded in the human-machine communication framework, semi-structured interviews with 18 Nigerian journalists revealed a double-edged view of …

(Agri)Cultural Activism: The Role Of Pgaz K’Nyau Karen Youth In Sustaining Rotational Farming In Thailand, Mitchell Rigert

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The focus of this thesis is to shed light on youth group activism in an Indigenous Pgaz k’Nyau Karen community in Thailand. These youth are seeking rights and recognition to sustain their subsistence-based practice of swidden agriculture in the context of state forest policy officially banning such practices. I draw on over two months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Thailand. I argue that the youth use a variety of strategies to render swidden agriculture visible and legible to the state and public in the interest of sustaining the practice, which they see as an essential part of their communal identity. …

There Is No Substitute For A Lifetime: A Study Of Metaphor And Linguistic Autonomy In The Lives And Works Of Selected American Poets, Richard Tony Thompson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Metaphor is not only figurative language, but also a way of understanding reality and creating truth. This study describes how selected American poets, including Tom Andrews, Patti Smith, and Natasha Trethewey, engage the concept of creation through metaphor in their poetic and autobiographical writing. Theories of signification, symbolism, and metaphor as defined by philosophers of language, including George Lakoff, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Roman Jakobson, are combined with complementary theories from philosophers of poetry, including Wallace Stevens, Jorie Graham, and Federico García Lorca, and used as a lens through which to view the agency of the language user as a …

After The Collapse: Herman Melville’S And Friedrich Nietzsche's Existentialism, Ryan L. Smith

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation compares the works of Herman Melville and Friedrich Nietzsche. Melville and Nietzsche articulate similar arguments about the collapse of Christian metaphysics as a traditional philosophical system. Both authors recognize the moral, intellectual, and spiritual void this collapse revealed, and they craft similar texts that illustrate humanity’s emotional turmoil facing the abyss. In addition to these scenes of upheaval, Melville and Nietzsche promote the importance of the individual’s will to overcome the possible fall into psychological nihilism resulting from recognizing the emptiness of traditional religion’s teachings. Melville’s and Nietzsche’s striving against complete despair in the wake of this collapse …

Taking A Look At The Chicago Renaissance: A Cultural And Influential Movement, Shannon Watkins

Masters Theses

A resource guide for educators to allow students to explore literature from the Chicago Renaissance; while bridging the gap between Social Studies and English/Language Arts. This guide has lesson plans, curricular resources, and references for Intermediate Elementary teachers and students. Lesson plans are aligned with Bloom’s Taxonomy, Illinois State & National Standards. This guide implements Common Core State Standards with interdisciplinary subject areas while developing and emerging critical thinkers in students.

The Role Of Study Abroad Directors In The Internationalization Of Higher Education, Alexandra Tserenova

Masters Theses

This study looks at the preparation and job description for those serving as directors of study abroad on the college campus. For this study three professionals who work in director positions were interviewed as well as their job descriptions were analyzed to determine what the expectations are for those in these positions. Study abroad professionals engage with students, faculty, external agencies, and other educational institutions worldwide. They are required to collaborate with many different constituents in the areas of program development, recruitment, risk management, program implementation, as well as pre- and post-departure orientations.

Student Perceptions Of Inclusive And Culturally Responsive Teaching In The Elementary Classroom, Emma Larson

Masters Theses

The purpose of this research is to explore student perspectives, as it relates to inclusive and culturally responsive teaching practices. In order to uplift student voices in the elementary classroom, observations and interviews were conducted to collect data on student perceptions. This study found that students believe the teacher’s job is to help everyone, students want a sense of belonging, and students love when their teacher celebrates them. As this research followed students in a bilingual kindergarten classroom, further research is needed in order to grasp a deeper understanding of students, their view, and perception of inclusive and culturally responsive …

Centering Linguistic Justice In The First Year Writing Classroom: An Argument For The Incorporation Of Code-Meshing And Narrative In Academic Writing, Traci Salazar

Masters Theses

The author addresses several questions across three chapters in relation to linguistic identity and standard language ideology in academic writing, particularly as it pertains to the First Year Writing classroom. Firstly, what is standard language ideology, and what are the detriments of its effects on students in the writing classroom? This answer is considered with an emphasis on the implications for students whose home languages are not in close proximity to Standard English (SE) and boils down to a homogenous language that is deemed ideal and is imposed upon others by dominant institutions, such as academic institutions. Within a literature …