Digital Commons Network^™

A Voice To Remember: Recovering The Rhetoric Of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, Diana Lynne Nogay

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation will recover Mordecai Johnson's rhetoric to demonstrate how he addressed the political issues of his time, which were often related to race, and were frequently reduced or even forgotten. In this dissertation, titled “A Voice to Remember: Recovering the Rhetoric of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson,” I perform and analyze the rhetoric associated with him. Johnson was well known for being the president of Howard University; the goal of this project is to recover the rhetoric and identify the common themes. The two themes identified in Johnson’s rhetoric are religion and education. Personal traits and associations with religion are traced …

The People’S Medicine: Modern Perspectives On Folk Medicine In South Central Appalachia, Stacey M. Horton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study addresses the critical need to document Appalachian folk medicine conventions and cultural practices from a modern perspective. In so doing, it addresses folk medicine research gaps in understudied places in South Central Appalachia, particularly in Southwestern Virginia and Northeast Tennessee. This research utilizes participant observation and oral history interviews to research modern Appalachian folk medicine practices among a select group of practitioners. Interviews focused on individuals who center their professional careers and subsequent lifestyles around herbalism, foraging, folk medicine, ethnobotany, and botanicals. By utilizing a critical praxis framework, the study seeks to move beyond lists of symptoms and …

Bias And The Writing Process In Adaptations And Retellings Of Mythology, Haley Sanderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis is an examination of how adaptations and retellings of mythology are written and affected by readership and reception of mythology. I compare American Gods by Neil Gaiman and The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood and how they are written as adaptations and retellings of mythology. As seen in both novels, the presence of the mythological source material in adaptations and retellings of mythology is equally influenced by authors’ perception and the influence of readership. Approaching the ideological positions of Atwood and Gaiman through the similarities and differences of The Penelopiad and American Gods provides a deeper insight on the …

"That Was Something I Had To Get Used To”: Communication Challenges Of African Graduate Teaching Assistants, Mohammed Hafiz Nabila

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined the communication challenges and adaptive strategies of African Graduate Teaching Assistants (AGTAs) in U.S. higher education, focusing on East Tennessee State University. The study aimed to understand how AGTAs navigate linguistic, cultural, and institutional barriers in their teaching roles. Using semi-structured interviews with seven participants, data were analyzed through thematic analysis to identify key patterns and meanings. Findings revealed challenges related to accents, cultural adjustment, and limited institutional preparation. Faculty mentorship played a vital role in shaping AGTAs’ confidence, interpretation of challenges, and professional growth. However, lack of support often led to isolation and self-doubt. The …

From Awareness To Action: Improving Advanced Directives With The Five Wishes In College Aged Young Adults, Dina M. Giovanetti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This quality improvement project aimed to increase early education, initiation, documentation, and completion rates of advance directives (ADs), specifically the Five Wishes, among college-aged young adults (18–24 years old) in a concierge primary care setting. The project addressed the low engagement and completion rates of ADs in this population, which can result in inadequate end-of-life care planning. The initiative involved training all staff members through collaborative instruction, informational sessions, and personalized provider-patient discussions. A convenience sample of eligible patients was identified via chart review. Inclusion criteria included English-speaking young adults aged 18–24, regardless of comorbid conditions who were members of …

Implementing Primary Care Fall Prevention With The Steadi Algorithm Toolkit, Roslyn Pechet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Falls among older adults remain a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, especially in underserved populations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed the Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths, and Injuries (STEADI) toolkit to help providers systematically identify and address fall risks. The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project was to implement and evaluate integration of the CDC STEADI toolkit within primary care at Palm Beach Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) Greenacres. The aim was to train the interprofessional leadership team to use the STEADI program to enhance knowledge, confidence, screening, and implementation …

The Effect Of Shared Decisions On Intertemporal Choice, Rosemarie M. Davidson

Masters Theses

Substance use disorders are a significant public health concern, and improving treatment outcomes requires a better understanding of the behavioral processes that influence drug consumption. Delay discounting, or the tendency to overvalue immediate reinforcers, is reliably more severe among individuals with substance use disorders. Recent work suggests that shared decision-making may increase tolerance for delayed rewards; however, prior studies used procedures that confounded delay to token delivery with delay to token exchange, limiting conclusions. The present study evaluates delay discounting across individual and social decision-making contexts using a traditional delay discounting paradigm.

Ten undergraduate participants completed sessions involving choices between …

"Gross Normality" And "Marked Deviation": A Qualitative Study Of Disability Theory In Three Periods Of Sociological Literature, Kelsey Sullivan

Masters Theses

In the 20th century, three theoretical perspectives concurrently dominated sociological discussions of disability. Functionalism and Talcott Parsons argued for a pathologized framework in the form of a “sick role” occupied by disabled people. Interactionism and Erving Goffman emphasized the stigmas faced by individual disabled people, and the ripple-effects of those stigmas. Finally, disabled activists, inspired by social constructionism, championed the social model of disability. This model purported that disability is a social condition, resulting from systemic barriers imposed upon people who do not fit the mental or physiological norm. This project, through a content analysis of 30 historical journal articles, …

New Hampshire Coastal Flood Risk Summary, Part 1: Science, Jamie Carter, Anna Simpson, Chris Gloninger, John Trowbridge, Kirk Bosma, Jayne F. Knott, Mary Lemcke-Stampone, Elizabeth Burakowski, Jennifer Gilbert, Kirsten Howard, Lisa Wise

UNH Cooperative Extension

The New Hampshire Coastal Flood Risk Summary – Part 1: Science provides a synthesis of the state of the science relevant to coastal flood risks in New Hampshire. Specifically, this document provides updated trends projections of sea-level rise, coastal storms, groundwater rise, precipitation, and freshwater flooding for coastal New Hampshire. This 2025 report updates the earlier 2019 report. This information is intended to serve as the scientific foundation for the updated companion resource, Part II: Guidance for Using Best Available Science, which will be published in 2026.

Looking At Teacher Knowledge, Skills, And Dispositions To Create School-Wide English Learning, Grace Elizabeth Allely

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation-in-practice addresses the gap between teacher preparation and the rapidly growing multilingual learner population in U.S. public schools, where one in four students is classified as an English Learner yet only half of states mandate specialized teacher training for this population. Grounded in sociocultural learning theory, the know-do gap framework, and implementation science principles, this qualitative study investigates how the School-Wide English Learning (SWEL) peer coaching model bridges the divide between educators' theoretical knowledge and classroom application. Through focus group interviews with eleven general education teachers who participated in SWEL coaching for at least six months in Minnesota District …

Rise Of Social Media Hacking: Ai-Based Ip Tracking For Uae Law Enforcement, Mounikha Naarrayen Chakravarthula

Theses

Social media has evolved into a critical channel for communication, expression, and public influence, but it has also become a prevalent avenue for cybercrime, particularly in digitally advanced nations such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The rising complexity of online offences, coupled with anonymisation tools and cross-border digital behaviour, has made the attribution of social-media-based cyber incidents increasingly challenging for law enforcement. In this context, artificial intelligence (AI) offers the potential to strengthen digital investigations by providing intelligent, scalable, and evidence-driven attribution capabilities. This research develops an AI-assisted Internet Protocol (IP) attribution framework tailored specifically for UAE law enforcement …

Predictive Ai Models For Phishing Attack Detection: A Data-Driven And Statistical Analysis Approach, Suhail Othman Alfalasi

Theses

Phishing has remained a serious threat to cybersecurity, as this type of attack can easily bypass detection systems that are either rule-based or blacklist-based. The proposed thesis work will present a solution that will make use of both statistical analysis and machine learning to correctly identify a phishing website. The solution will make use of a hybrid approach comprising statistical-based preprocessing methodologies, such as PCA and decision tree-based feature selection, to filter the crucial URL features that a website may possess. A carefully balanced dataset has been utilized, as well as a non-parametric approach utilizing the Mann-Whitney U-test to validate …

Transgender Adolescents' Healthcare Rights: The Gap Between Gender-Affirming-Care (Gac) Policymakers’ And Healthcare Providers’ Goals, Jayden Galli

Theses

Transgender people have marginalized healthcare experiences that result in decreased health outcomes. For transgender adolescents, gender-affirming-care (GAC) is even more difficult to access and being restricted with increasing frequency. This mixed methods study was conducted to examine transgender healthcare through the gaps between GAC policymakers’ and healthcare providers’ goals. General research has focused on the relationship between GAC and transgender health, GAC policy development, and the discrepancies between GAC policy outcomes and medical professionals’ advice. This leads to the research question about how policymakers and healthcare providers can collaborate to bridge the gap between GAC policies and transgender minors' healthcare …

Persuasive Pathways In Digital Apologies: The Role Of Persuasion Routes In Engagement With Youtuber Apology Videos, Darrin Majocha

Theses

This study explores how viewers process YouTube apology videos and how those processing methods relate to their judgments of the creator and their willingness to continue engaging with the channel. Guided by the Elaboration Likelihood Model, a single-session online survey experiment randomly assigned 413 adult participants to watch one of five publicly available apology videos from well-known YouTubers. After viewing, participants reported the extent to which they engaged in central versus peripheral processing, rated the creator's credibility and the apology's sincerity, and indicated their intentions to engage. Central processing was positively associated with engagement intentions, whereas peripheral processing was weakly …

An Interpretable Machine Learning Framework For Detecting Phishing Urls Based On Lexical Features, Khalid Alrokhaimi

Theses

Phishing attacks represent one of the most significant and persistent threats in the cybersecu- rity landscape, with attackers increasingly using sophisticated URL manipulation techniques to deceive users and steal sensitive information. Traditional detection methods, which rely primarily on blacklists and heuristic rules, struggle to identify zero-day phishing URLs that have not yet been catalogued in security databases. This research addresses this critical gap by developing an interpretable machine learning framework for detecting phishing URLs usingclexical, structural, content-based, and domain metadata features. The study employs a comprehensive dataset of 11,430 labeled URLs (5,715 legitimate and 5,715 phishing) with 87 extracted features, …

Predicting Violent Crime Hotspots, Mohammad Alhammadi

Theses

This thesis presents a systematic literature review and an empirical demonstration focused on predicting violent-crime hotspots. Drawing on 50 studies published between 2010 and 2025, the review synthesises methodological developments across hotspot mapping, spatio-temporal modelling, risk terrain analysis, and machine-learning approaches. The review highlights a clear evolution from retrospective density maps to more dynamic, data-driven techniques, while also identifying persistent challenges related to data bias, temporal granularity, environmental context, fairness, and operational implementation. To complement the review, the thesis applies kernel density estimation (KDE) and three ensemble machine-learning models—Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, and XGBoost—to 769,680 geocoded violent-crime incidents recorded in …

Segment-Level Machine Learning For Detecting Partial Deepfake Audio: An Rnn–Svm Hybrid Approach For Real-World Adversarial Environments, Ahmad Alhelli

Theses

This study investigates the detection of real, fully fake, and partially fake (PF) audio using classical machine-learning models as well as a segment-level analysis model. Unlike most existing research, which focuses solely on binary real-vs-fake classification, this work introduces a three-class detection framework and constructs realistic PF samples by inserting short synthetic speech segments into otherwise genuine audio recordings. Its method combines MFCC and spectral feature engineering,Wav2Vec2 embeddings, controlled PF synthesis and various models such as SVM, Random Forest, XGBoost and an attention based RNN. Segment level windowing allows fine-grained study of transition of time and breaks of manipulation. The …

Proactive Onboarding Services Model As An Academic And Social Integration Strategy For First-Time In College Students At A Virginia Community College, Jhansi V. Eturu

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

A recent survey by the Education Advisory Board (EAB) found that of the 1000 community college students surveyed, 56% nearly quit before classes started due to challenges during college onboarding. Similarly, admissions data from the Virginia Community Colleges System (VCCS) indicated that more than half of the students who apply do not enroll in classes, highlighting a need to closely examine the onboarding process and support services provided to understand what is effective and what is not. The purpose of this study is to understand the predictive utility of certain student onboarding services, such as an appointment with an admissions …

Unraveling The Links Between Substance Use And Academic Motivation In Higher Education, Melissa Lynn Goins

STEMPS Theses & Dissertations

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) posits that the quality of students’ motivation regulation (i.e., autonomous versus controlled) shapes both learning and health behavior, yet few studies have examined the relations among motivation regulation, alcohol and cannabis use, and achievement. In this study, I surveyed 459 undergraduates at a mid-sized public university in the southeastern United States. Participants completed the Academic Motivation Scale-College version 28 to assess autonomous and controlled motivation regulation, a typical-week alcohol grid, a seven-day cannabis grid, and self-reported grade point average (GPA). Results indicated that autonomous academic motivation was uniquely related to GPA; however, neither motivation variable related to …

Local Government Standing As State Standing, Katharine Cooney, Katherine Mims Crocker

Faculty Scholarship

It is increasingly common, and controversial, for local governments to bring lawsuits as plaintiffs in federal court. Many questions about this practice raise matters that sound in policy. But some, including the issue of standing to sue, also raise issues of constitutional law. How local governments fit into standing rules should reflect how they fit into the U.S. constitutional system more broadly. As the Supreme Court put it in the famous (and infamous) 1907 case Hunter v. City of Pittsburgh, "[m]unicipal corporations are political subdivisions of the State, created as convenient agencies for exercising such of the governmental powers of …

R.I.P.—A Financial Incentive To Protect Your Cadaver?, William Drennan

Penn State Law Review (2003 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Of Felons And The Mentally Ill: Range, § 922(G)(4), And The Dangerousness Solution, Colin Hitt

Penn State Law Review (2003 - Present)

No abstract provided.

The Constitution And Online Exams: A New Fourth Amendment Take On Ogletree V. Cleveland State University, Arthur Benne

Penn State Law Review (2003 - Present)

No abstract provided.

After Amgen: Examining The Supreme Court's Impact On Patents For Therapeutic Antibodies, Noah Pollio

Penn State Law Review (2003 - Present)

No abstract provided.

A Model For Developing Subspecialty Clinical Practice Guidelines: The Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines 20, Satheesh Gunaga, Christopher R Carpenter, Maura Kennedy, Lauren T Southerland, Alexander X Lo, Sangil Lee, Kirby Swan, Fabrice Mowbray, Rachel M Skains, Teresita M Hogan, Martin F Casey, Kei Ouchi, Naomi R George, Kerstin De Wit, Cameron J Gettel, Katherine Selman, Luna C Ragsdale, Anita N Chary, James D Van Oppen, Glenn Arendts, Charles L Maddow, Katherine M Hunold, Katren R Tyler, Danya Khoujah, Ula Hwang, Shan Liu

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The original consensus-based Geriatric Emergency Department (GED) Guidelines, published in 2014, established a framework of core principles for delivering high-quality, age-appropriate emergency care for older adults. In response to significant advances in geriatric emergency medicine research and evolving clinical priorities, we developed the GED Guidelines 2.0 to ensure continued relevance, clinical utility, and evidence-based rigor. This concept paper describes the systematic and iterative process undertaken to update the guidelines, including the formation of multidisciplinary working groups and the application of the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology. Unlike the original GED Guidelines, our approach prioritized methodological transparency, …

Racial And Ethnic Associations With Interstitial Lung Disease And Healthcare Utilization In Patients With Systemic Sclerosis, Ann-Marcia C Tukpah, Jonathan A Rose, Diane L Seger, Paul F Dellaripa, Gary Matthew Hunninghake, David W Bates

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Objective: Racial and ethnic differences in presentation and outcomes have been reported in SSc and SSc-interstitial lung disease (ILD). However, prior studies have limited diversity. We aim to evaluate if there are racial/ethnic differences associated with ILD, time intervals between SSc and ILD, and emergency department (ED) visit or hospitalization rates.

Methods: Clinical and sociodemographic variables were extracted for 756 patients with SSc from longitudinal health records in an integrated health-system. Logistic regression models analysed the association of covariates with ILD and age at SSc-ILD. Healthcare outcomes were analysed with complementary log-log regression models.

Results: Overall, 33.7% of patients in …

Evaluating The Effect Of Visual Data On Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Diagnostic Performance, Arjun Mahajan, Callie Fry, Li Zhou, David W Bates

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

No abstract provided.

Nortriptyline Inhibits Lysosomal Exocytosis-Mediated Sasp During Gastric Cancer Progression Via Targeting Hoxa1-Pitx2 Phase Separation, Yi Zhou, Chunhui Yang, Xinyue Li, Xiaojing Wang, Wanju Jiao, Xiaolin Wang, Jiaying Qu, Bosen Zhao, Shunchen Zhou, Qiangsong Tong, Liduan Zheng

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Lysosomal exocytosis, a calcium-dependent secretory process, facilitates extracellular release of cargos that promote cancer progression, though its regulatory pathways and therapeutic strategies are poorly understood. Herein, using combined transcriptomic and proteomic approaches, we identify homeobox A1 (HOXA1) as a functional partner of paired like homeodomain 2 (PITX2) within biomolecular condensates forming via liquid-liquid phase separation. Mechanistically, HOXA1-PITX2 complex facilitates the expression of mucolipin 1 (MCOLN1) and RAS-related protein Rab-3A (RAB3A), which drive lysosomal exocytosis of galectin-1 (LGALS1) and insulin like growth factor binding protein 7 (IGFBP7) from senescent gastric cancer cells. This process potentiates AKT activation and epithelial-mesenchymal transition, accelerating …

Healthy Aging And Aging-Related Kidney Diseases: Lessons From Centenarians, Shinya Yamamoto, Yasumichi Arai, Tatsuaki Kosaka, Minami Matsumoto, Ryo Yamada, Takahisa Yoshikawa, Motoko Yanagita

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The world's population is aging, and age-related diseases such as neurodegenerative, cardiovascular, and metabolic disorders are rapidly increasing. The field of nephrology is expected to be profoundly influenced by the demographic trend toward increased life expectancy. Consequently, promoting healthy aging has emerged as a critical priority for both individuals and society. Centenarians (those who have reached the age of 100) exemplify exceptional longevity and are regarded as a model of healthy aging. They are distinguished by a notable resistance to risk factors commonly associated with cardiovascular diseases, such as diabetes and dyslipidemia. Remarkably, although centenarians exhibit a high prevalence of …

Reply To Chaïbi And Tandjaoui-Lambiotte And To Young And Scott, Joan B Soriano, Francesca Polverino

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

No abstract provided.