Digital Commons Network^™

Openmuse: Integrating Open-Source Models Into Music Creation Workflows, Tyler K. Vergho

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This master's thesis introduces OpenMUSE (Open Multimodal Unified Sound Engine), a platform that demonstrates the potential of open-source AI music generation by integrating state-of-the-art deep learning models into a unified system. By unifying ten different open-source models, including MusicGen, AudioLDM2, and custom-trained text-to-symbolic music generation models, OpenMUSE aims to create a user-friendly interface that empowers artists to produce complex, adaptive musical compositions. The system enhances accessibility by providing a simple web interface and natural language controls, while improving controllability through features like melody conditioning and semantic audio editing. Specifically, OpenMUSE offers a digital audio workstation (DAW)-inspired interface that lowers the …

Editor's Introduction, Emily Allen

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Editor's introduction to Honors in Practice, volume 21 (2025).

"As we head into an uncertain future, let us care for each other and remember that together we are strong."

Honoring Careers: Developing Professional Aspirations In Honors Programs, L. Benjamin Boyar

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This essay builds on previous arguments in honors for greater representation of preprofessional disciplines. Drawing from a focused honors accounting initiative, author explores how video interviews with alumni—created through an iterative process of outreach and collaboration—can effectively bridge intellectual inquiry and career preparation. Alumni narratives help students critically examine professional trajectories, connect current coursework with broader academic and societal contexts, and produce tangible outcomes, such as conference presentations and journal publications. By showcasing these diverse career trajectories, this approach reassures students in both preprofessional and traditional disciplines, demonstrating the relevance of their academic pursuits while ensuring honors education remains intellectually …

Launching Cures In Non-Traditional Settings: How One Honors Program Propels Primary Research For The Institution, Kathryn M. Macdonald

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This essay considers how course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) can drive original research. Honors students in career-oriented majors (accounting, hospitality management, health services administration, criminal justice) develop primary research studies that are proposed for institutional review and then conducted within a specific population across the university. The author describes the CURE model within an honors curriculum, observing that it actively engages students in the full research cycle from conceptualization to dissemination and fosters critical thinking, methodological rigor, and ethical awareness. The author recommends its use in either group or individual settings to honors programs seeking to position students as active …

Sharing The Stage With The Future: Humans And Robots Together At Last, Donna L. Clevinger

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This essay presents a co-curricular collaboration bringing ancient comedy to a modern audience. Students and faculty at a large, public R1 university combine art and engineering to create a STEAM-based approach to theatrical production. The author describes how integrating classical text, creative expression, and transformational technologies demonstrates that collaboration between disciplines can produce gains for each, fostering advancements and human understanding that would be unattainable independently. Script writing, casting, stage production, and outcomes are presented.

Leaning Pine Arboretum Gazebo, Carson C. Henry

Construction Management

The Leaning Pine Arboretum gazebo provides an aesthetic relaxation space for visitors to the arboretum as well as being a functional structure for faculty as a future event space. This gazebo replaces an existing one, revitalizing the space in conjunction with the arboretum’s planned growth over the coming years. There were many challenges throughout the construction process including permitting issues, design complexities, and coordination with architects and engineers. Persevering through these taught a great deal about project management, the construction industry, and the importance of teamwork. The structure is a total rejuvenation of the prior structure; it is now stronger, …

Developing A 4d Logistics Educational Module With Cmbuilder, Misael Gonzalez Ramirez

Construction Management

The increasing adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the construction industry has led to a need for its increasing integration into construction management education. While existing curriculum covers various BIM applications, there is often a gap in in-depth instruction on BIM-based site logistics planning. This paper details the development of an educational module designed to address this gap, focusing on 4D site logistics and phasing using cmBuilder. The module aims not only to provide students with technical software skills but also to equip them with practical skills in visualizing, planning, and communicating complex construction site logistics. Through a series …

Replacing This Old House: Certifying And Regulating New Legal Services Providers, Bruce A. Green, M. Ellen Murphy

Faculty Scholarship

This Article comprehensively examines the decisions that state courts must make, and have made to date, when they certify and regulate new categories of legal services providers: those individuals other than lawyers who are authorized to provide discrete legal services that the laws governing the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) generally reserve to lawyers.

In certifying new categories of legal services providers, courts must make an array of interrelated decisions. These include decisions about the rules for educational and testing requirements, the scope of services that legal services providers may offer, the conditions under which they may provide services, and …

Stories, Statistics, And The Regulation Of Alternative Data, Aniket Kesari, Mark Verstraete

Faculty Scholarship

Financial technology has long relied on data like an applicant’s current indebtedness to make decisions about who gets access to new credit, but AI is now enabling credit determinations based on some unusual inputs. This “alternative data”—or data that is not intuitively connected to creditworthiness—includes information like a consumer’s online shopping habits, whether they paid their rent and utility bills, and even how many friends they have on social media. The use of this kind of data has exciting potential to expand access to credit but exemplifies a well-known feature of machine learning: It works by finding nonintuitive relationships in …

Abolitionism, Artificial Intelligence, And Non-Reformist Reform, Youngjae Lee

Faculty Scholarship

Prison abolitionism has gained significant prominence in criminal law scholarship, while artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force across society. Two schools of thought have arisen regarding their intersection. Some scholars contend abolitionists should welcome AI technologies to reduce the carceral state’s reach. Critics view these tools skeptically, arguing that they lead to biased surveillance and incarceration practices. Using this debate as an example, this article seeks to illuminate the distinction between reformist and non-reformist reforms. The article argues that abolitionists’ criticism of reformists as agents of oppression risks alienating potential allies and discouraging progressive interventions in pivotal, …

Content-Neutral Restrictions Revisited, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Whether a law affecting free speech does so in a content-based or content-neutral way is usually the first step in analyzing the law’s constitutionality.  But the Supreme Court has not had an easy time sorting statutes as content based or content neutral, and it has similarly struggled in sorting and explaining the difference between content-neutral laws that incidentally affect expression (O’Brien laws) and content-neutral laws that regulate the time, place, or manner of expression (TPM laws).  Scholarship on content-neutral restrictions has nibbled around the edges of these difficulties but has yet to comprehensively analyze the doctrine.  This Article provides a …

Group And State-Specific Estimation In Animal Movement Models Using A Bayesian Approach, Anita Bhandari Sharma

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This research study investigates statistical approaches for modeling the movement patterns of white-tailed deer in Louisiana using GPS tracking data. We start by classifying the latent behavioral states using a hidden Markov model (HMM) and then integrate those inferred states into a state-dependent step selection framework to evaluate the land cover preferences. Standard HMMs, however, assume the same movement patterns for all animals, overlooking the differences due to characteristics such as sex, age, breeding season, etc.

To address this limitation, we extend the modeling framework to incorporate the group-level structure defined by similar characteristics or conditions to assess whether such …

Geometric Modeling, Reconstruction And Evaluation Of Maize Leaf Morphology In 3d, Zhaocheng Xiang

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Maize is a vital crop for global food security, yet quantitative characterization of its three-dimensional (3D) morphology remains a major challenge due to the geometric complexity of curved leaf structures and occlusions during data collection. This work presents an integrated framework for the digital reconstruction, parametric modeling, and functional analysis of maize leaf morphology and canopy architecture, advancing the precision and interpretability of phenotyping and modeling in smart agriculture.

First, we propose a descriptive and parametric model that represents maize leaves through three fundamental components: midrib, cross-section, and blade contour. Each is described by geometric curves and controlled by biologically …

Analyzing Reciprocating Piston Expander Performance In Small-Scale Caes Considering Expansion Mismatch And Residual Mass Losses, Mehrdad Poursadegh

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Energy storage (ES) has become an essential element of modern energy systems, particularly with the rapid growth of renewable energy sources. While these sources are central to global decarbonization efforts, their intermittent nature creates significant challenges for both grid operators and end users. To address these challenges, a wide range of storage technologies have been developed ranging from large utility-scale to small behind-the-meter units. Among these, Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) stands out for its long lifespan, low storage cost per unit of energy, and ability to provide both electricity and thermal energy. However, small- and micro-scale CAES systems, unlike …

All For One And One For Gall: Getting Kids Excited About Plant-Insect Interactions, Natalie D. Tessicini

Department of Entomology: Distance Master of Science Projects

Insect biodiversity is on a decline globally. In order to care about insects, the population must know about them. Creating interest starts with young children and students, using age-appropriate resources and lesson plans. Ensuring that future generations are curious about entomology and not driven away from it is integral to building a future where the public protects the environment. I will add to the available tools by creating my own non-fiction children’s book on under-explored entomology topics.

Evaluation Of A Community-Based Socialization Program For Independently Living Older Adults, Patricia A. Shane, Anne T. Ferguson, Erin L. Woodhead

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Social isolation among older adults is a major public health concern because of the adverse impact it has on health and well-being. Reducing social isolation can improve health and decrease the use of costly healthcare services. However, there is little consensus on the critical ingredients of programming to reduce social isolation. Bay Area Older Adults® (BAO) is a nonprofit organization whose community-based Healthy Living Program (HLP) focuses on building and nourishing older adults’ social networks through transitions such as retirement, divorce and loss of loved ones. The current study was a program evaluation of the HLP using a survey to …

Validation Of A Self-Fitting Over-The-Counter Hearing Aid Intervention Compared With A Clinician-Fitted Hearing Aid Intervention: A Within-Subjects Crossover Design Using The Same Device, Lucas S. Baltzell, Kosta Kokkinakis, Amy Li, Anusha Yellamsetty, Katherine Teece, Peggy B. Nelson

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

In October of 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration finalized regulations establishing the category of self-fitting over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids, intended to reduce barriers to hearing aid adoption for individuals with self-perceived mild to moderate hearing loss. Since then a number of self-fitting OTC hearing aids have entered the market, and a small number of published studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of a self-fitted OTC intervention against a traditional clinician-fitted intervention. Given the variety of self-fitting approaches available, and the small number of studies demonstrating effectiveness, the goal of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a …

Waterman V. Meta, Central District Of California

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

No abstract provided.

Early Electronic Journals: A Preservation Survey, Nick Szydlowski, Rosa Salangsang, Daniella Kate Corpuz

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

In 1994, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) published a print directory containing information on every electronic journal that could be identified, anywhere in the world. Thirty years later, this study surveys the current availability and preservation status of those 443 journals. While a significant number of these journals are no longer available, the results indicate that independent preservation efforts by individuals and small groups were a major factor in preserving many of the remaining publications. This study uses the preservation survey method to assess the preservation environment for these journals, and also to build an online directory of the …

Can Household Water Sharing Advance Water Security? An Integrative Review Of Water Entitlements And Entitlement Failures, Melissa Beresford, Ellis Adams, Jessica Budds, Leila M. Harris, Wendy Jepson, Tennille Marley, Chloe Nguyen, Amber Pearson, Anaís Delilah Roque, Asher Y. Rosinger, Sameer H. Shah, Matthew Stellbauer, Amber Wutich

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

An increasing number of studies find that water sharing—the non-market transfer of privately held water between households—is a ubiquitous informal practice around the world and a primary way that households respond to water insecurity. Yet, a key question about household water sharing remains: is water sharing a viable path that can help advance household water security? Or should water sharing be understood as a symptom of water insecurity in wait for more formalized solutions? Here, we address this question by applying Sen’s entitlement framework in an integrative review of empirical scholarship on household water sharing. Our review shows that when …

Assessing Teachers’ Conceptual Leadership Perceptions Of School-Site Administrators As An Approach To Improve Teacher Morale, Darlene C. Landy

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to have teachers complete a self-assessment survey to assess their conceptual belief of the leadership styles of school-site administrators that are conducive to high teacher morals. The questions addressed how teacher morale affected the teachers according to the number of years they had been teaching, their college majors, their highest college degree, their gender, and their ethnicity. The teachers who participated in this study were volunteers who had to be teaching for 2 years or more.

This was a quantitative study that used the Teacher Rapport With Principal dimension of the Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire …

The Lived Experiences Of Project Rebound Students In California, Jeffrey R. Jacobs

Theses and Dissertations

As the United States attempts to address issues of prison overcrowding, recidivism, and rehabilitation, states like California have turned to higher education during and after incarceration to remedy the situation and promote successful community reentry among individuals who have served time in the nation’s prisons. People who are formerly incarcerated are often up against a myriad of obstacles once released, and programs like California State University’s Project Rebound aim to aid in this transition through a model rooted in community and campus care. Numerous bodies of research have explored the impacts of education on individuals who are actively incarcerated; however, …

Egalitarianism Is Not Equality: Moving From Outcome To Process In The Study Of Human Political Organisation, Duncan Stibbard-Hawkes, Christopher Von Rueden

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Many traditional subsistence groups have been described as ‘egalitarian societies’. Definitions of ‘egalitarianism’, especially beyond anthropology, have often emphasised equality in resource access, prestige or rank, alongside generalised preferences for fairness and equality. However, there are no human societies where equality is genuinely realised in all areas of life. Here we demonstrate, empirically, that nominally egalitarian societies are often unequal across seven important interconnected domains: embodied capital, social capital, leadership, gender, age/knowledge, material capital/land tenure, and reproduction. We also highlight evidence that individuals in nominally egalitarian societies do not unfailingly adhere to strong equality preferences. We propose a new operational …

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Faculty Scholarship

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Conservation And Survey Division 2024 Annual Report, R.M. Joeckel, Michele Waszgis

Conservation and Survey Division: Faculty and Staff Publications

The Conservation and Survey Division of the University of Nebraska - Lincoln is the agency designated by statute to investigate and interpret the geologically related natural resources of the State, to make available to the public the results of these investigations, and to assist in the development and conservation of these resources. It consists of program areas in geology, water, soils and remote sensing-geographic information systems.

Application-Driven Materials Development Of Solid-State Conductive Composites Of Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene, Peder Solberg

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) is a linear long chain homopolymer valued for its toughness, wear resistance, and chemical inertness. In the medical field, these properties make it the material of choice for bearing surfaces despite recognized tradeoffs between wear resistance, toughness, and oxidation resistance. Electrically conductive composites of UHMWPE show promise to enable new types of smart and active load-bearing implants in a future of personalized medicine, if beneficial properties can be maintained with the addition of solid-state additives.

Clinical need-finding conducted through Dartmouth’s Training Program in Surgical Innovation revealed several potential applications for conductive, load-bearing polymers. These include: …

Experimental And Finite Element Analysis On Seismic Performance Of Composite Shear Walls With Embedded Cold-Formed C-Shape Steel Section, Mohamed F. Abd El-Wahed, Sameh Moustafa Gaawan, Mohamed M. Yehia

Trends in advanced sciences and technology

The composite shear wall with embedded cold formed steel-braces (ECFSB) is a revolutionary pattern of composite wall. It involves of a cold formed steel (CFS) braced frame that is fully immersed within reinforced concrete. The purpose of this configuration is to develop the lateral resilience of the shear wall. The CF steel columns, which are embedded the walls, boost the wall's capability to augment bending forces. Additionally, the steel braces, which are enclosed within the web, enhance the wall's efficiency to resist shear forces. This study investigates the cyclic shear behaviour of compact embedded cold formed steel (ECFS) walls by …

Finite Element Modeling For Two-Dimensional Wireless Capsule Endoscope Manipulation System, Wael S. Abbas, Mohamed T. El-Wakad, R.R. Darwish

Trends in advanced sciences and technology

The inadequacies of traditional flexible endoscopes used in gastrointestinal diagnostic procedures, causing pain and discomfort to patients, led to the development of the wireless capsule endoscope. There are two types of wireless capsule endoscopes: passive and active. The passive wireless capsule endoscope cannot stop at a specific position for diagnostic purposes, which can lead to capsule retention. The active capsule can solve those problems. In this article, we use COMSOL Multiphysics to simulate a two-dimensional (2D) electromagnetic actuation (EMA) system for active wireless capsule endoscope. The EMA system uses a stationary two-pair coil system (Helmholtz and Maxwell). The capsule endoscope …

Synthesis And Characterization Of A High Entropy Alloy By Powder Metallurgy Technique, Aya Fawzy, Mohamed Bhlol, Osama Dawood, Ayman Elsayed

Trends in advanced sciences and technology

Synthesis of CuCoFeNiW alloy has been realized by powder metallurgy. Mechanical alloying was used to prepare a high-entropy alloy consisting of Cu, Co, Fe, Ni with and without 10 wt.% W particles. The mixed samples were compacted by a uniaxial press under pressures ranging from 340 to 840 MPa. Green samples were sintered in a vacuum sintering furnace from 1150 and 1300 C. The results have shown that the proposed synthesis route could be used to obtain the alloy with proper transformation and metallurgical properties. Hot forging has effectively increased the hardness of the alloy at all preparation conditions.

Irisin And Bdnf Mediate Exercise And Melatonin Effects In Animal Model Of Experimental Hypothyroid Depression., Hanan Essam Mohamed, Mf El-Bab, Noha O. Shawky, Nermien E. Waly

Trends in advanced sciences and technology

Background Depression affects about 60% of people with hypothyroidism. Exercise and melatonin are thought to have beneficial effects in hypothyroid depression. Irisin and brainderived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) participate significantly in hypothyroid depression in rats and both are decreased in hypothyroid depression. Objectives To investigate the potential roles of melatonin and exercise in hypothyroid depression. Methodology Fifty-six male albino rats were divided into eight groups (n=7/group) as follows: Control (C), Hypothyroidism (Hypo), Hypothyroidism and Melatonin 10 mg/kg/day (Mel), treated hypothyroidism with Levothyroxine 20 μg/kg/day and Melatonin (Mel&Levo), Hypothyroidism and Exercise (30-minute swimming protocol, 5 days/week) (Ex), treated hypothyroidism and exercise (Ex&Levo), …