Digital Commons Network^™

The (Non-) Protection Of Indigenous Rights In Isds, Dr. Kevin W. Gray

Pace International Law Review

International investment law largely flows from the protections afforded foreign investors under bilateral and multilateral investment treaties.  Until recently, few of these treaties required investors to comply with human rights provisions in national constitutions or in international law, or preserved the ability of states to regulate to protect constitutional rights.  As a result, critics have argued, investor-state dispute settlement fails to protect human rights or preserve the ability of states to regulate in the public interest, and that arbitral awards rarely consider, let alone give effect to, rules of human rights.

This article considers the question of how Indigenous rights, …

Analysing Numeracy Demands In Alberta Curriculum: A Focus On High School Mathematics, Asia Majeed, Kwesi Yaro

Numeracy

In recent years, numeracy has been recognized as a key educational priority across the curriculum in many international jurisdictions, including almost all Canadian provinces. In Alberta province, Canada, for example, the Teaching Quality Standard (TQS) #3 explicitly states that all teachers are responsible for fostering literacy and numeracy skills, regardless of the specific subject areas they teach. This expanded focus reflects a broader understanding of numeracy not merely as a subset of mathematical skills, but as a fundamental competency that supports informed participation in civic, economic, and personal life. This paper applies the 21st Century Numeracy Model (Goos et al., …

Entropy-Gated Probabilistic Inference For Optical Financial Identifier Recognition, Jack Ngare

Defensive Publications Series

Recognizing financial identifiers from variable or degraded optical inputs can be challenging, as conventional deterministic scanners may fail and general-purpose optical character recognition systems may lack semantic logic. A system can employ a cascaded inference pipeline that first assesses the visual entropy of an optical input. Based on this assessment, the input can be routed to either a fast, deterministic decoder for low-entropy signals or a probabilistic inference engine for high-entropy signals. The probabilistic engine could generate multiple candidate identifiers and use a reasoning model, constrained by financial domain logic, to evaluate a plausible candidate. A validation layer can then …

Promise P R O G R A M Providing Opportunities For Mathematics And Science Enrichment, Illinois Math And Science Academy

Promise Programs

IMSA’s PROMISE Program aims to address the challenges of culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse (CLED) students. PROMISE is a proven model of success for realizing the vision of a highly diverse and creative STEM workforce. Eligible students will be in 7th-9th grade in Illinois and demonstrate high academic achievement. This grantfunded program is open to all students, especially those from culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse backgrounds, including Black or African American students, Latinx students, students who qualify for the National Free or Reduced-Price Meal Program, and students from rural Illinois counties.

Bridging The Gap: Exploring The Educational Transitional Experiences Of Foreign-Born Ghanaian High School Students, Samuel Adusei Buabeng

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the gaps and limitations in language transition and the educational experiences of high school students born in Ghana who are English Language Learners. The research analyzed migration patterns within this group and how these experiences affect their integration into the American education system. It also examined whether culture and acculturation influence this transitional process. The study explored the language transition process, learning experiences, and cultural shifts within English-dominant educational systems, emphasizing participants' lived experiences and any challenges they faced during their transition. Although English is Ghana's official language, significant dialectal, exposure, and teaching-quality differences affect students' proficiency …

It's Getting Hot In Here: The Heated Debate On The Censorhip Of Climate Change Education And Its Violation Of State Constitutions, Lilyan Jarreau

LSU Journal of Energy Law and Resources

No abstract provided.

Construction Of Chinese Identities And Community: A Linguistic Ethnographic Study Of A Chinese Culture-Sharing Club At A Us University, Yuxuan Mu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Chinese identity has been viewed as a debated and contested notion in sociolinguistics (Wong et al., 2021). Existing sociolinguistic research, which has centered on Chinese identity-related questions, such as “Who can be or cannot be Chinese?”, has been closely involved with the current political tensions between mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, as well as their associated linguistic tensions between simplified Chinese writing and traditional Chinese writing, and Cantonese and Mandarin. Building on these studies, this dissertation goes beyond the scope of Sinophone contexts traditionally examined in prior research (e.g., mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong) to examine how US …

Precision In Words, Precision In Warfare: Terminology And Control In Military Discourse On Unmanned Systems, Elise Annett, John Bitterman, James Giordano

Strategic Insights

This commentary is about how inconsistent terminology surrounding unmanned and intelligent systems can create confusion in military planning and policy discussions. Terms such as automatic, remote, and autonomous are often used interchangeably in defense discourse, despite describing distinct technological capabilities and levels of human control. This ambiguity can hinder effective evaluation, governance, and operational use of unmanned systems in modern warfare. As machines increasingly support sensing, decision-making, and action on the battlefield, precise terminology becomes essential for doctrine development, training, command authority, and ethical oversight. Clearer definitions and conceptual frameworks can ensure that emerging technologies are understood and integrated into …

Communication Challenges Experienced By Telephone Triage Registered Nurses Providing Assessment Of Health Symptoms, Stacy Huddleston

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Telephone triage nurses routinely assess symptoms and make clinical decisions without visual contact, which introduces complex communication challenges. Language differences, emotional distress, cultural misunderstandings, and the absence of visual cues may influence how symptoms are described, interpreted, and acted upon during telephone encounters. The purpose of this qualitative interpretive description study, guided by Peplau’s theory of interpersonal relations, was to explore how RNs experience and manage communication barriers in telephone triage practice. Six RNs with recent experience in telephone triage participated in semistructured interviews, and the data were analyzed using interpretive description and thematic analysis. Findings indicated that participants relied …

They Find A Way: The Transnational Practices And Experiences Of Diaspora Conflict Journalists, Grace E. Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As global tensions continue to rise, media landscapes are changing. Diaspora communities play an integral role in this shift, as they search for verifiable news with a global perspective to keep them informed on crises in their home countries. In order to keep their communities informed, diaspora journalists step up to localize coverage, creating transnational networks to bridge home and host countries. They often work through intense situations, sacrificing normalcy for information. Building on the framework from Ogunyemi’s (2018) diasporic media observations, Fraser’s (1992) counterpublics theory, and D.K. Thussu’s (2006) contra-flow in global media theory, this study explores how diaspora …

Primordial Recognition And The Structure Of Human Cognition: Toward A Quranic Epistemology, Jana El-Boustani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reconstructs a Qur’anic epistemological architecture grounded in narrative rather than abstract system-building. It argues that the Qur’an articulates a unified account of human cognition in which intelligibility is grounded in divine instruction, recognition is affirmed through primordial testimony, and knowledge is exercised within finite yet accountable faculties.

Through close analysis of the story of Adam in Surat al-Baqarah, the primordial covenant in Surat al-Aʿrāf, and the verse of the Amanah in Surat al-Aḥzāb, the study demonstrates that the Qur’an presents human knowing as structured, oriented, and morally conditioned. Revelation functions not as the introduction of wholly new knowledge, …

Warm-Ups To Works Of Art: How Engaging Choral Students In Fundamentals Of Music Leads To The Creative Outlet Of Songwriting", Clay E. Bradford

SPARK Symposium Presentations

When students typically participate in public school choir, they may learn songs from varying different cultures, genres, and styles spanning from different periods of music and countries. This music is incredibly important for the foundation of student learning; however, students are often consumers rather than generators of music. By then taking the basic music theory students may have, and applying it to songwriting parameters and practices, students are able to compose their own music! This not only teaches students to experiment with songwriting but encourages this creative outlet of composition - something they haven't previously encountered before in choir or …

Ai-Powered Reporting For Improved Hospital Efficiency, Joel C. Laskow, Chris Papesh, Srishti Awasthi, Jacquelyn Cheun

SMU Data Science Review

This study explores the feasibility of an AI-powered chatbot for HIPAA-aligned intake of emergency room patients seeking treatment for overdose and violence. The system utilizes AWS Amplify, an encrypted EC2 instance, and a secure S3 Bucket house on Amazon Web Services. Chat functionality is powered by a multi-agentic framework operating on Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4. Manual evaluation and exact match testing reveal the system reliably obtains and records relevant information during intake. Future work will focus on expanding accessibility by integrating voice functionality, obtaining HIPAA compliance certifications, and incorporating the chat system into existing healthcare networks.

Bias Evaluation Of Healthcare Data With The Use Of Vbqa - A Vaers Inspired Bias Question Answer Dataset, Nolan Dulude, Renu Karthikeyan, Bivin Sadler, Faizan Javed

SMU Data Science Review

Abstract. Large Language Models (LLMs) are being used increasingly within the healthcare industry to summarize complex clinical information, but their outputs can often reflect biases inherited from their training data. In healthcare, these biases are not just technical flaws, but they can lead to distorted and false information about vaccine safety, compromise patient trust, and lead to potential harmful outcomes. This study investigates bias found in LLM-generated outputs to question-answer pairs inspired by adverse vaccine reactions using COVID-19 data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) from 2020–2024. We examined whether training the LLMs on a known Bias Benchmark …

Nlp Bias And African American English, Kenya Roy, Faizan Javed

SMU Data Science Review

African American English (AAE), also referred to as African American Vernacular English (AAVE), is widely used on social media, but most sentiment analysis tools are trained only on Standard American English (SAE). This mismatch can cause models to misclassify dialectal expressions—especially by labeling neutral or positive AAE as negative or toxic. These errors matter, since Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems are now central to content moderation and brand monitoring. This research will evaluate the VADER, RoBERTa, GPT-OSS, and Gemma’s handling of AAE in comparison to SAE using the TwitterAAE corpus, a public dataset of tweets with estimated AAVE usage. The …

Automating Cardiff Model Data Capture In Emergency Departments: Ambient Nlp Integration With Oracle-Cerner Fhir Systems, Simi Augustine, Marco A. Lopez, Jacquelyn Cheun, Chris Papesh

SMU Data Science Review

Violence and overdose events in Las Vegas occur at rates above the national average, with fewer than half of violent injuries reported to law enforcement [2,7]. The Cardiff Model offers a proven framework for standardized data collection and sharing between hospitals and public safety partners, yet many implementations still rely on manual entry. We propose an ambient triage pipeline integrated with Oracle-Cerner electronic health record systems to listen to nurse–patient dialogue, convert speech to text, extract Cardiff fields, and write standards-based FHIR Bundles for analytics. Using SMART on FHIR standards and Cerner Millennium APIs, the study evaluates whether ambient capture …

Virtual Ai Lifestyle Assistant, Solomon T. Mathew, Babu T. Mathew

SMU Data Science Review

Patients struggle with adhering to prescribed medication and leading a healthy lifestyle outside of clinical visits. A mechanism needs to be developed and deployed to constantly remind them about the need to take medication and to lead a healthy lifestyle in a non-intrusive way while watching for changes in vitals that can be collected using wearable devices. With these considerations, a Virtual Healthcare Assistant is proposed, built with a multi-agent system that is easily integrated with wearable devices such as Apple Watches, Fitbits, and Oura Rings. a LangGraph-based multi-agent workflow to mimic real-world continuous monitoring. The resulting system enables agent-to-agent …

Application Of Open-Source Small Large Language Models For Finance Report Analysis, Tue Vu, Mark Austin, Marcel Tuijn

SMU Data Science Review

The rapid integration of generative AI in finance introduces both opportunities and challenges, particularly when analyzing sensitive data such as Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. This study investigates the use of open-source Small Large Language Models (SLLMs), deployed locally through the Ollama and LangChain frameworks, combined with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for extracting financial insights relevant to index performance and reporting quality. Two key objectives guide this work: (1) benchmarking multiple open-source SLLMs for sentiment analysis, multiple-choice reasoning, and financial question answering, and (2) assessing the feasibility of locally deployed SLLMs for domain-specific financial queries. A standardized set of 50 …

A Collostructional Approach To The Concealed Passive Construction In English, Rok Sim, Jungsoo Kim

Faculty Publications

This study investigates the English concealed passive construction (CPC), as in the car needs washing, using authentic corpus data. While previous research has explored certain aspects of the CPC, little attention has been given to strongly associated matrix verbs (or verb types) and interactions between matrix verbs (or verb types) and other elements of the construction. To address these issues, we apply three types of collostructional analysis, and our findings indicate that no single, straightforward pattern emerges with respect to real-life grammatical properties of the CPC. We then show that the well-known distinction between raising and control constructions, formalized …

A Quantitative Quasi-Experimental Study To Determine The Effectiveness Of Ufli And Iready Interventions For Third Grade Struggling Readers, Vada Kehrer

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental pretest-posttest study was to determine whether there is a significant difference in the growth in reading proficiency among third-grade struggling readers receiving different reading intervention programs: the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI) or i-Ready curriculum-based interventions. The study is important because the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has reported a concerning decline in literacy rates, particularly among students with dyslexia. The persistence of decline in reading proficiency stresses the urgent need for effective reading interventions. This study contributes to the existing literature on reading intervention programs for struggling readers. The sample included …

Lived Experiences Of Teachers Implementing Student-Centered Learning: A Phenomenological Study, Jennifer R. Knowlton

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to describe the lived experiences of teachers implementing student-centered learning (SCL) in high schools in the southeastern United States. The theory guiding this study was Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory, as it was a framework for understanding what factors help or hurt psychological well-being, autonomous extrinsic motivation, and intrinsic motivation. This study sought to answer the central research question: What are teachers lived experiences implementing student-centered learning (SCL) in high schools in the southeastern United States? This qualitative hermeneutic phenomenology research focused on SCL high school teachers across the southeastern United …

Infusing Indigenous Knowledge Into Eurocentric Educational Systems In Sub-Saharan Africa: A Hermeneutical Phenomenology, Assane Ba Faye

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study is to explore the lived experiences of participants from Mills Elementary School and the Kao-Kao School District (pseudonyms) regarding the integration of pre-colonial traditional pedagogies into post-colonial Eurocentric education systems in sub-Saharan Africa. The guiding theory for this research is Jean Piaget’s constructivist theory, which emphasizes active learner involvement and knowledge development based on prior experience. The main research question asks: What are the lived experiences of community members at Mills Elementary School and the Kao-Kao School District (pseudonyms) concerning the effects of incorporating Indigenous pedagogies into Eurocentric education systems in sub-Saharan Africa? …

Student Anxiety And Lassitude In A Foreign Language Learning Classroom: A Qualitative Phenomenological Study, Mcgraham Anyanwu

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The problem is that university students studying French in Nigerian schools as a foreign language experience anxiety because of communication apprehension, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation. The purpose of this qualitative transcendental phenomenological study is to explore how university students studying French as a foreign language describe experiences of anxiety and lassitude with French language learning at University Alpha in Nigeria. The central research question guiding this study is: How do university students studying French in Nigeria describe their experiences of anxiety and lassitude in a foreign language learning classroom? The theory guiding this study is Krashen’s theory …

A Multimethod Study Of The Barriers Of Women In The General Schedule 15 Grade And Senior Executive Staff Experience In Promotion At The Department Of Veterans Affairs, Terry Michael Acie

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this research study was to discover why the female executive employee population is experiencing a gap in representation in senior management at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The scholarly literature addressing federal disparities across the gender demographic identified several issues such as underrepresentation, social equity, pay equity, turnover intention, job satisfaction, and diversity as primary barrier drivers preventing or slowing female promotion. The issues are rarely investigated in an intersecting manner which plausibly could create several hurdles women must navigate to obtain a promotion and decrease their representation in executive service. The theoretical approach used is …

The Psychometric Use Of Word Embeddings, Thomas Benjamin Lyle Wasden

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This quantitative study examined the feasibility of categorizing individuals by English-language competency using word embeddings derived from language samples obtained from these individuals and by viewing word embeddings as a psycholinguistic construct. Word embeddings have been shown to be a versatile tool for performing a large number of important natural language processing (NLP) tasks, as well as a plausible model for some processes in the human mind, including processes within the domain of psycholinguistics. This research seeks to build upon previous research by showing that word embeddings may shed light on the underlying neural representation of semantic entities being acquired …

Addressing Failing Water Systems: A Qualitative Protocol For Intervention Research On Water Insecurity, Patrick Thomson, Melissa Beresford, Jobayer Hossain, Cara Jacob, Carolina Jordão, Oswaldo Medina-Ramírez, Sophie Neems, Daniel Salcedo Serrano, Dave White, Amber Wutich

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

It is increasingly acknowledged that high income countries do not enjoy universal drinking water coverage, with pockets of water insecurity persisting close to areas that have had high-quality, centralized water provision for half a century or more. The reasons behind this are complex, and effective ways to improve water security in these areas defy simple prescriptions. Nuanced measures that disaggregate the different facets of water insecurity are especially important as we attempt to understand and, crucially, improve water security in high-income countries.In this paper, we describe a qualitative protocol for assessing water insecurity at the household level in a study …

From Divine Absence To Eternal Presence: Reframing The Jeremianic Temple-City Abandonment Motif From Its Ancient Near Eastern Roots To Its Fulfillment In Christ As The Ultimate Yahwistic Temple, Patrick Stewart

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation offers a canonical-theological and comparative study of temple destruction, divine absence, and the logic of return by tracing a five-stage “temple-city abandonment” motif across two corpora: the Sumerian City Laments (and related balag̃ material) and the biblical canon. The Sumerian laments depict the catastrophic loss of temple and city within a deterministic world where divine decisions often appear opaque, emotionally volatile, and only tenuously repairable through ritual lament and reconstruction. By contrast, the biblical narrative interprets the same crisis within a covenantal grammar: Jerusalem’s fall is grounded in articulated covenant breach, responsibility is named and confessed through prophetic …

Manufacturing Main Street: How Historic Plant City Main Street Revitalizes Its Community And Simulates The Commons, Emily Burke

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community has remained a central concern to sociology since its founding, even as industrialization, globalization, and digital media have transformed how social ties are formed and maintained. Small American downtowns once anchored civic and social life, but have faced destabilizing events like globalization, the rise of e-commerce, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, many small cities have turned to the national nonprofit Main Street AmericaTM to help them revitalize their downtowns. Although research on small cities is limited compared to large urban centers, emerging literature highlights post-COVID opportunities to renew physical and local shopping on main street (small city downtowns). …

The Intervention Effects Of Self-Leadership And Motivation On The Second Language Motivation Mechanism In Tanzanian Form 5 Students: A Static-Group Study Using Structural Equation Modeling, Euna Kim Park

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this quantitative, static-group study was to determine the effect of the intervention among high school newcomers in the English-medium instruction (EMI) context in Tanzania. Tanzanian adolescents have difficulty adapting to the transition to secondary school, as the language of instruction is not their native language. Four high schools in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania participated in the study, with 381 participants in the intervention group and 373 in the control group. The intervention group attended self-leadership training and second-language (L2) motivation workshops, while the control group did not. After the intervention, the two groups completed surveys using …

Sacred Space, Divine Presence, And Covenant: A Theological Trajectory From Eden To The Indwelling Spirit Across The Pentateuch And The Book Of Joshua, William C. Merry

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation thesis is that sacred space, divine presence, and covenant are a theological triad that gives form to the canonical progression from Eden through the Pentateuch into Joshua and finds its eschatological orientation in the indwelling Spirit. The project as a whole, and its treatment of Genesis–Deuteronomy and Joshua in particular, maintains that the presence of God is never conceived independently of a covenantal relationship and is thereby always concretized, i.e., spatialized in and through the site or locale of the sacred space: Eden, the tabernacle, the land, and the sanctuary at Shiloh. Each of these stages in the …