Digital Commons Network^™

"{W]E Have Had Enough Revolutions": International Advocacy Strategies Through The Lens Of Russian Political Prisoners, Elena Macomber

Minnesota Journal of International Law, Vols. 28:2 onward (2019-present)

Authoritarian states are not known for promoting freedom of expression. In order to maintain power, successful authoritarian governments must restrict oppositional voices to survive. However, as a matter of institutional legitimacy in the eyes of their people, many regimes still superficially hold elections, request opinions from their constitutional courts, and even incorporate human rights protections into national laws. Such is the case in the Russian Federation, where the government strives to appear democratic despite its widespread repression. Behind the arguably feeble appearance of a legitimately elected government with constitutional safeguards, the Russian legal system systemically punishes and incarcerates political dissidents. …

A Power Move In The Solar Trade Arena? How The Inflation Reduction Act's Preference For Domestically Produced Solar Products May Conflict With International Trade Rules, Maria Pfister

Minnesota Journal of International Law, Vols. 28:2 onward (2019-present)

When the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”)—described as “the most important climate action in U.S. history”—was passed in August of 2022, it came as a surprise not only to the citizens of the United States, but also to key Senators who helped pass the legislation. In the past decade, the United States had seemingly abdicated its role as a global leader in addressing climate change. When this law, with a title that has little to do with environmental legislation, burst onto the world stage, it signaled that the United States’ was working to reclaim its role as a global leader in …

Innovative Approaches To On-Demand Continuing Legal Education Ethics Training: A Case Study, Tigran W. Eldred, Molly J. Walker Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

In the ongoing discussions about continuing legal education (CLE), concerns have been raised about the quality of programming that is created and delivered. Critics have emphasized the weaknesses in mandatory programs, arguing that requiring annual training on topics such as legal ethics tends to fall short of stated goals.¹ Too often, it is said, such programs fail to deliver content in an engaging manner that is likely to improve competence.² The picture conjured up is of the bored lawyer, sitting in the back of a room flipping through a newspaper or some other distraction, as CLE instructors passively …

Leviosa: Natural Language-Based Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle Trajectory Generation, Godwyll Aikins, Mawaba Pascal Dao, Koboyo Josias Moukpe, Thomas C. Eskridge, Kim-Doang Nguyen

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

This paper presents LEVIOSA, a novel framework for text- and speech-based uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) trajectory generation. By leveraging multimodal large language models (LLMs) to interpret natural language commands, the system converts text and audio inputs into executable flight paths for UAV swarms. The approach aims to simplify the complex task of multi-UAV trajectory generation, which has significant applications in fields such as search and rescue, agriculture, infrastructure inspection, and entertainment. The framework involves two key innovations: a multi-critic consensus mechanism to evaluate trajectory quality and a hierarchical prompt structuring for improved task execution. The innovations ensure fidelity to user …

Psychedelic Expectancies And Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms, Samantha Gomez

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Millions of Americans struggle with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) every year. Though typical treatments work for some, patients often drop out of treatment. Given that patients are often retelling their traumatic experiences, or confronting stimuli and situations that are relevant to the experience, psychotherapy for PTSD can be psychologically demanding and intensive. These factors provide a further understanding for the high rates of PTSD treatment attrition. Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy (PAP) is a potential option to mitigate these concerns. Preliminary research on PAP has revealed effective and promising results. However, questions about PAP and their public perception remain. Furthermore, treatment expectancies, …

Is Chunking Multimodal?: Music Reading Expertise Effects On Eye Movements During A Cross-Modal Visual Search Paradigm, Nicole Arco

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Experts show performance advantages during visual search due to their extensive experience with domain-specific stimuli. Experts form memory representations for meaningful visual patterns, called chunks, that group together multiple chess features. Prior work suggests that the ability for experts to precisely encode a search template facilitates visual search performance (e.g. Hout & Goldinger, 2015). In music, expert musicians might also form chunks (see e.g., Maturi & Sheridan, 2020), although it is unclear what constitutes a chunk in music. The current study addressed the possibility that chunks are multimodal by introducing a new auditory-visual cross-modal version of the visual search paradigm …

Phenomenological Study Of Talented Young People In Ballet In South Korea, Kyung Hyun Park

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Talent development occurs throughout an individual’s everyday life in a complex, evolving, and dynamic way. Focusing on the developmental perspective of human talent, this study aimed to comprehensively explore the long-term learning paths of students majoring in ballet in Korea. Six research questions were investigated regarding individual talent profiles in ballet, psychological and social stressors, the role of family and home, peer relationships, educational environments, and socio-cultural context. This qualitative study conducted in-depth interviews with 20 undergraduates and 14 parents about the students’ experiences in ballet. Through reflexive thematic analysis based on a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, six themes emerged as …

Hospital Surge Capacity In Co-Occurring Mass Casualty Incidents, Carolyn Solimine

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought sweeping disruption and changes across healthcare systems. Examining how these changes have impacted surge capacity and capabilities is necessary to plan for future co-occurring surge-creating events in hospital Emergency Departments (EDs) and Intensive Care Units (ICUs). While there is extensive research on patient surge management, no study has looked at how the presence of a prolonged surge would impact the healthcare system’s ability to handle a concurrent acute patient surge. This study seeks to demonstrate the need for comprehensive planning for co-occurring patient surges in New York State using hospital capacity data from Health and …

The Contextual Process Of Bystander Intervention In Bias-Motivated Violent Victimization: An Experimental Approach, James Hubbell

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Hate crimes against Asian Americans and LGBT individuals have been on the rise within the U.S. in the past few years (UCR, 2024). Although these offenses tend to occur in public, numerous stories in the media highlight that few bystanders choose to intervene. To unveil why bystanders choose not to intervene, this dissertation explored the extent to which 1,001 U.S. adults engaged with the five-step situational model for bystander intervention proposed by Latané and Darley (1970). Respondents were recruited through Qualtrics and randomly assigned to a hate scenario involving one of six victims: an Asian American man, an Asian American …

Assessing Associations Between Emergency Room Visits For Respiratory And Cardiovascular Diseases And Criteria Air Pollutants Exposure In New York State, Tamba Solomon Lebbie

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Abstract

Air pollution is a major environmental health hazard for the general population. Approximately 90% of the global population is at risk of both indoor and outdoor air pollution, and it accounts for an estimated 7 million premature deaths every year according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Multiple studies including epidemiological and molecular analyses have confirmed the negative effects of air pollutants on human health even at levels within the WHO guidelines. This study examines the health impacts of releases of criteria air pollution from point sources in New York State (NYS). There is evidence from population studies that …

Remedying Educational Opportunity Program Freshmen's Knowledge Of Fractions And Views Of Mathematics Learning With Serious Video Games, Yan Tian

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Well-designed serious video games have great potential in mathematics education. This study aims to enrich our understanding of Slice Fractions and Slice Fractions 2 as remedy tools for college freshmen in an educational opportunities program. Specifically, drawing on resources-based epistemic cognition theory and scheme theory, the study investigated fourteen participants’ perspectives and experiences of playing these games, the impacts of the gameplay on their fraction schemes/operations and explicit conceptions of fractions, practices in fraction problem-solving, and views of mathematics learning. With a quasi-experimental design, each participant finished a pre-game interview and assessment, played SF1 or SF2, and completed a post-game …

Analyzing The Correlation Between Surface Elevation And Seasonal And Diurnal Surface Temperature Cycles On Mars, Emily A. Dolan

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Recent technologies such as the Mars Climate Sounder, the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, and the Curiosity rover have allowed scientists to examine Mars’ surface, climate, and atmospheric dynamics. Surface temperature data from the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) were collected and seasonal and diurnal cycles were extracted via Fourier regression analysis into a 1° latitude longitude grid. Diurnal cycles were shown to move from west to east across the surface throughout the day, while seasonal cycles moved from north to south. Two key diurnal portions, one in the early morning, and another in the late afternoon, were chosen due to their …

Optimizing The Community Health Worker (Chw) Program In Belize And Understanding Its Unique Intermediary Position Within The Health System: Perspective From The World Health Organization (Who) Health Systems Approach, Andrei R. Chell

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Human resources for health (HRH) are the backbone of a well-functioning and resilient health system. Issues related to HRH recruitment, retention, planning, leadership and governance have been amplified by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and have posed additional and unprecedented challenges in many countries. Community health workers (CHWs) in particular, are uniquely positioned to be frontline health care workers (HCWs) that are considered a vital link between communities and the formal health system. Globally, the benefits of CHW programs have been well documented, and there is substantial evidence of the efficacy and effectiveness of these programs. However, countries are …

Using Airborne Measurements To Evaluate Forecasts Of Freezing Drizzle Aloft Results From The Wintre-Mix Field Campaign, Megan Schiede

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Icing associated with the accretion of supercooled large droplets (SLD) serves as a significant hazard to aviation activities. Forecasting SLD events is complex due in part to the limitations of numerical weather prediction models. The Winter Precipitation Type Research Multiscale Experiment (WINTRE-MIX) aimed to comprehend such limitations within numerical forecasts of precipitation type (p-type) through the use of extensive observations during events with multiple p-types. To investigate precipitation processes aloft in winter storms with near-freezing surface conditions, research flights were orchestrated with the National Research Council of Canada Convair-580 aircraft. This study examines a WINTRE-MIX intensive observing period that took …

Ribosome Hibernation Factor Induces Antibiotic Persisters Of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis In Neutrophil-Rich Lung Lesions, Jamie Corro

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the etiological agent of tuberculosis, is a prescient global health threat and the leading cause of death by an infectious agent. Treatment of Mtb infection involves administering 2-4 antibiotics for a minimum of 6 months. This extended drug regimen is required to target a subpopulation of persistent bacilli. As their name implies, these bacteria can “persist” by acquiring nonhereditary and transient antibiotic tolerance. Although the precise mechanism is unknown, it’s often attributed to slowing cellular growth and metabolic processes. During zinc deprivation, bacteria can remodel their ribosomes by replacing their zinc-binding paralogues containing the CXXC motif (C+) …

Regulator Preferences And Underinvestment In Drinking Water Infrastructure, Chunyu Guo

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The infrastructure of U.S. drinking water systems faces chronic issues of low quality and underinvestment. As the water utilities in the U.S. are typically managed and regulated at the local municipal level, investment levels depend on the municipal regulator's preferences. Drawing from a dynamic framework, I specify and estimate the local regulators' objective function over drinking water infrastructure investment. This framework highlights the tradeoff between profit and consumer surplus and reveals how regulator preferences can deviate from net surplus optimization, resulting in underinvestment. My findings provide significant evidence that the drinking water infrastructure is underinvested. I reveal that the regulator's …

Stable Oxygen Isotope Variability As A Proxy For Large-Scale Dynamics Of The South American Summer Monsoon, Rebecca Orrison

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Terrestrial archives of oxygen isotope records are particularly important for the study of South American hydrology, where hydroclimate observations over the historical period are sparse and often not long enough to characterize multidecadal to centennial-scale changes. Knowledge of such low-frequency changes is critically important for interpreting and constraining projections of future change and detecting the emergence of forced change beyond the envelope of natural variability. This dissertation focuses on the past, present, and future of South American tropical and subtropical climate, with an emphasis on the mature phase of the monsoon season (December, January, and February; DJF) using oxygen isotopes …

Understanding Teacher Behavior And Its Influence On Student On-Task Behavior, Jennifer Birchler

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Student behavior in the classroom is a significant predictor of student outcomes and teacher satisfaction. But, teachers report classroom management to be challenging. Finding simple, cost-effective methods of improving student behavior in the classroom can vastly improve long-term success for students. This study seeks to better understand how class size relates to teacher praise and movement, and how these teacher behaviors relate to student on-task behavior. Previous research suggests on-task behavior improves with more teacher praise and movement in the classroom. The current study used data collected using the Bx Management Tool as part of the Osage County Fall 2019 …

Nickel Ferrite As A Model Corrosion Product And Its Deposition On Current And Future Nuclear Fuel Cladding Materials, Bhavani Sasank Nagothi

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The primary corrosion products in Light Water Reactors (LWRs) are nickel ferrites (nominal stoichiometry NiFe₂O₄) having the spinel crystal structure. These products, commonly called CRUD (Chalk River Unidentified Deposits) are challenging to study in situ, yet understanding their properties is key to improving reactor performance and reducing worker’s radiological exposure risk. In this thesis, a hydrothermal synthesis technique was used to produce nickel ferrite particles from goethite and nickel nitrate hexahydrate in the presence of NaOH. X-ray diffraction was used for phase identification, with scanning electron microscopy used for particle shape and size analysis. By …

Examining Downshear Reformation In Tropical Cyclones, Nathalie Rivera Torres

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The development of a new low-level circulation center in tropical cyclones, known as downshear reformation, can lead to sudden changes in storm structure and intensity, representing a challenge in forecasting tropical cyclones. This phenomenon is commonly observed in weak tropical cyclones (e.g., tropical depressions, tropical storms) experiencing moderate to strong vertical wind shear (> 5 m s-1), when the vertical wind shear organizes convection in the downshear region of the tropical cyclone, and lower-tropospheric vorticity is generated within the intense convection. Downshear reformation has been proposed as a mechanism for intensification, sometimes rapidly, in tropical cyclones under unfavorable environmental wind …

Multi-Activity Student Knowledge And Behavior Modeling Via Transfer Learning, Siqian Zhao

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Online education systems have grown in popularity over the past few years, providing abundant opportunities for students to learn. As the number of students using these systems grows, it promotes the development of the Educational Data Mining (EDM) field, which leverages statistical, machine learning, and data mining technologies to explore large-scale educational data and develop methods to better understand student learning.

In this dissertation, we investigate two essential topics in EDM: Student Knowledge Tracing (KT) and Behavior Modeling (BM). KT aims to quantify and model student knowledge gained from learning activities, while BM focuses on tasks such as modeling student …

The Effect Of Presenting Concerns On Providers’ Assessment Of Patients' Suicide Risk, Alexandria Brunkow

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Objective: Suicide is the 10^th leading cause of death in the U.S. with nearly 50,000 people per year dying by suicide. Public health approaches to suicide prevention focus on screening people in primary and mental health care settings and offering treatment to those who screen positive. Research shows that mental health providers may not recognize risk factors for suicide and miss opportunities to screen patients who may be at risk. Providers’ mental representations of suicide risk may be influencing their perception of patient risk and contributing to low screening rates. This study used an experimental vignette case design to …

The Study Of Different It Audit Methodologies, Alexa Cassidy

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This thesis delves into the obstacles organizations and tiny businesses encounter when conducting security audits of their networks. It addresses critical challenges relating to these audits' cost, time, and resources. The study thoroughly examines the audit process, elucidating its strengths and weaknesses, the available tools, and the pertinent laws and frameworks necessary for ensuring compliance. It specifically focuses on small businesses' approach to conducting these audits and the specific hurdles they face. The findings spotlight two primary audit methodologies, technical and regulatory, which scrutinize data security, network security, and physical security within a business. The thesis elaborates on tools such …

A Combinatorial Model For Affine Demazure Crystals Of Levels Zero And One, Samuel Spellman

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The symmetric and non-symmetric Macdonald polynomials are special families of orthogonal polynomials with parameters q and t. They are indexed by dominant, (resp. arbitrary) weights associated to a root system and generalize several well-known polynomials such as the Schur polynomials, Jack polynomials, Hall-Littlewood polynomials, etc. There are two well-known combinatorial models for computing these polynomials: a tableau model in type A, due to Haglund, Haiman and Loehr, and a type-independent model due to Ram and Yip, based on alcove walks.

Crystals bases are an important construction encoding information about Lie algebra representations. It turns out that there is an interesting …

Sparse Representation Learning For Temporal Networks, Maxwell Mcneil

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Temporal networks arise in many domains including activity of social network users, sensor network readings over time, and time course gene expression within the interaction network of a model organism. Data of this type contains a wealth of prior information such as the connectivity among nodes (e.g., a friendship graph), and prior knowledge of expected temporal patterns (e.g., periodicity). Modeling these temporal and network patterns jointly is essential for state-of-the-art performance in temporal network data analysis and mining. Sparse dictionary encoding is one modeling approach for such underlying patterns. However, most classical approaches consider only one dimension of the data …

Understanding Local And Large-Scale Drivers Of Rainfall Variability And Change Over The Hawaiian Islands Region, Katrina Fandrich

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Hawaiian rainfall variability is strongly influenced by anthropogenic climate change and natural variability (e.g., Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Pacific North American (PNA) pattern, El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)). For local decision-makers and resource managers, understanding the drivers of rainfall variability and change in Hawai‘i is crucial for climate adaptation and mitigation planning. Previous studies have applied statistical and dynamical downscaling to produce high-resolution rainfall projections for the Hawaiian Islands region. However, to date, downscaling has only been used to investigate the influence of anthropogenic forcing on late-century rainfall projections for the Hawaiian Islands. For regions like Hawai’i, that are highly vulnerable …

Deconstructing Whiteness In Teacher Education, Allison Karcher

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This study sets out to understand how five teacher educators deconstruct whiteness in their courses and how their institutions support or hinder their work. Undergirding the study is the silence of whiteness residing in education and the urgency to notice, name, and disrupt it (Kohli et. al, 2021; Sleeter, 2017). The racial demographics in K-12 is 80% White for educators, and 54% students of color (National Center for Education Statistics, 2021). Therefore, most educators are teaching from experiences or identities that differ than their students. Since teaching is a personal endeavor, bringing our identities and experiences into the classroom, (Ahmed, …

Updating Nuclear Recoil Models In The Noble Element Simulation Technique For The Lux-Zeplin Experiment, Ryan J. Mcmonigle

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

There is a substantial amount of evidence that a majority of the mass in the universe is comprised of a non-luminous substance, given the name dark matter. Many candidates have been theorized as the solution to the dark matter mystery, with the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) being a favorable candidate. WIMPs may be detectable via interactions with nucleons, a method known as direct detection. The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment is a xenon-based dual-phase Time Projection Chamber (TPC), that specializes in searching for WIMP-nucleon interactions. TPCs are used to reconstruct event information using scintillation and ionization, which are products of interactions …

A Corona Theorem For Multipliers On The Dirichlet Space, Alea Wittig

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

An analogue to Wolff's ideal problem for the multiplier algebra of the Dirichlet space, the main theorem provides sufficient conditions to classify membership of an arbitrary function in an infinitely generated ideal of the multiplier algebra.

Understanding How Laypeople Perceive Sexual Harassment Claims From "Non-Typical" Claimants, Jennifer Mezzapelle

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Over the past four decades, scholars have generated a wealth of knowledge on the topic of sexual harassment. However, in much of this research, findings may have resulted from participants assuming that the target in question was a “typical” sexual harassment victim (i.e., a White, straight, cisgender woman who is traditionally feminine and conventionally attractive; Kaiser et al., 2022). As a result, the generalizability of this research is inherently limited, as it may not accurately reflect how sexual harassment is perceived when it is aimed at a person who does not possess the attributes typically associated with sexual harassment targets. …