Digital Commons Network^™

Inspiring Voices: The Impact Of Poetry Education, Nancy Aide Gonzalez St.Clair

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Poetry education is frequently viewed as an enrichment activity rather than a critical practice that supports academic, emotional, and social development. This qualitative exploratory case study examined how participation in a nonprofit creative writing program in northern California influenced the cognitive development, emotional well-being, communication skills, empathy, and perspective taking of young adults. The study was guided by constructivism, radical constructivism, and symbolic interactionism. It centered on the lived experiences of six poetry program alumni aged 18 to 25. The researcher collected data through semi-structured Zoom interviews and poetry portfolios containing three poems selected by each participant. I used inductive …

A Qualitative Study Of Teacher Perceptions Of Reading Proficiency, Latia Tyler

Theses and Dissertations

This applied qualitative dissertation was constructed to provide insight into the experiences of teachers who provide reading instruction for third grade students at the target school. Seven teachers engaged in semi structured interviews that sought to examine their perceptions on their abilities in teaching reading instruction, their perception on school supports, their perceptions on reading proficiency and factors that contribute to it. Additionally, comprehensive reading plans, published by the state of Florida, were examined to further understand the perceptions of teachers alongside district intended approach for reading instruction.

Thematic analysis of data revealed eight key themes including gaps in foundational …

How Do Female Artists In The Middle East Navigate Art Market Legitimacy, And How Do Experiences Differ Between The Levant And Gulf Regions?, Noura Alzaim

MA in Art Business Dissertations

This dissertation examines the journeys and challenges faced by female artists in the Middle East as they strive for recognition and legitimacy within the region’s evolving art markets. By comparing the lived experiences of artists from the Levant, where creativity often flourishes in grassroots and diaspora circles, to those cultivating their careers amid the state-driven, rapidly expanding cultural landscape of the Gulf, the research brings distinct artistic perspectives into conversation. Combining interviews, theoretical inquiry, and analysis of press releases, essays, and market data, the study highlights how history, political context, and institutional structures shape opportunities and obstacles. Central chapters show …

An Imperial Pivot: How The Qing Court Shaped The Kapāla And Its Global Value, Haiyi Wang

MA in Art Business Dissertations

This thesis examines the journey of the kapāla, a Tibetan Buddhist ritual skull cup, from a sacred implement to a global commodity. It argues that the modern identity, display, and commercial value of the kapāla in the Western world are not a natural extension of its original religious meaning but are fundamentally a product of its aesthetic and political re-creation by the Qing imperial court. This study posits the Qing court's intervention as the "decisive pivot" that systematically replaced the object's native "religious value system," based on ritual efficacy, with a new "imperial value system" rooted in craftsmanship, precious materials, …

Subliminal Nature: Dialogues In Performance, Carlos A. Carvajal

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

I will discuss how my artwork sets for the development of various layers of experience within the same context and space, to stimulate the subconscious of the audience. This layering is a combination of stimuli of senses (the inclusion of sound and active participation) and the syntax of the dynamics of audience interaction. Sound and visuals create a performance to acknowledge and read, while also pertaining to participation by a sort of instruction for the viewer to partake in the work. These are all different layers of experience that happen simultaneously within a piece, setting up different possible outcomes from …

‘Prov[Ing] What You Already Know’: The Overreliance On Medical Evidence In Adjudicating Ontario Disability Support Program Applications, Alison Imrie

Journal of Law and Social Policy

The Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) relies heavily on medical evidence when adjudicating applications. In doing so, it positions healthcare providers as the undisputed experts on applicants’ disabilities. This poses particular challenges for applicants with under-recognized or misunderstood medical conditions like Myalgic Encelphalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), who may struggle to obtain adequate medical care and thus adequate medical evidence for the purpose of ODSP applications. Through qualitative interviews with five individuals with ME/CFS who applied for ODSP, this paper illuminates the particular challenges faced by those with ME/CFS and other under-recognized disabilities in the ODSP application process. Drawing on literature …

Security And Energy-Efficiency In Federated Learning, Priyesh Ranjan

Doctoral Dissertations

Federated Learning (FL), which facilitates collaborative model training and protects users' privacy, has drawn great interest from the research community. With FL, the participants train their models on local data and submit the corresponding updates for aggregation to a server. While concealing the participants' identities, FL may attract adversaries aiming to hamper the underlying model. These adversaries aim to submit malicious weight updates that corrupt the performance of the server model. Further, these models when communicated to the participating clients extend the behavior which is undesirable. Additionally, FL suffers from increased energy consumption at the edge device level due to …

Incremental Cluster Validity Indices And Their Role In Interpreting Lifelong Learning Systems, Niklas Max Melton

Doctoral Dissertations

Clustering and supervised learning are often treated as distinct paradigms, yet both rely on structure in feature space. This dissertation investigates the relationship between cluster validity indices (CVIs) and supervised learning in real-time and lifelong learning settings where data arrive incrementally and cannot be revisited. Across four studies, it develops methods for online cluster validation, uses supervised learning to improve their interpretability, and applies these ideas to evaluating performance degradation in continual learning.

The first study extends incremental cluster validity indices (iCVIs), enabling widely used validation metrics to operate in streaming environments. Experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets show systematic …

Advancing Coal Rib Support Design Through The Integration Of Field Studies And Numerical Simulations, Alper Kirmaci

Doctoral Dissertations

Coal rib stability remains a major safety concern in U.S. underground coal mines, with rib failure-related injuries and fatalities still occurring. A key challenge is the lack of a standardized methodology for designing rib support systems that can address varying geological conditions. As a result, many mines rely on trial-and-error or traditional practices, leading to inconsistent designs. This research aims to develop a systematic methodology for rib support design to improve coal rib stability in U.S. mining operations.

The study consists of: i) field monitoring in active room-and-pillar coal mines, ii) in-situ pull-out tests on coal ribs, iii) numerical model …

Critical Parameters Controlling Oxide Scale Formation And Hydro-Descaling Efficiency During Steelmaking, Tochukwu Princewill Ojiako

Doctoral Dissertations

In modern steelmaking, cast slabs are exposed to high-temperature oxidizing environments during secondary cooling, reheating, and hot rolling, resulting in the formation of multilayer oxide scales on the steel surface. These scales interact with mold-flux residues originating from the casting process (CC). The morphology, chemistry, and adhesion of oxide scale strongly influence its removability during high-pressure hydraulic descaling and ultimately determine the surface quality of hot-rolled products. However, the mechanistic relationship between oxide scale evolution, scale-steel interfacial structure, and hydraulic descaling performance remains poorly understood.

This dissertation investigates oxide scale formation, modification, and removal in low-carbon thin-slab steels produced by …

Against Doctrinal Siloing: Harmonizing Fiscal Federalism And The U.S. Constitution, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Faculty Publications

This Essay argues that constitutional law’s treatment of fiscal federalism has fractured into a bewildering collection of doctrinal silos. Federal spending that pressures states, federal preemption of state taxes, the Dormant Commerce Clause, sovereign immunity, Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the federal taxing power are all analyzed through distinct tests, even when they implicate the same basic conflict between federal authority and state fiscal autonomy. The result is not just theoretical confusion but inconsistent constitutional answers. Current doctrine can protect states from comparatively modest liabilities while leaving uncertain whether Congress may displace large swaths of state revenue authority. …

Trigonometric Continuous-Variable Gates And Hybrid Quantum Simulations Of The Sine-Gordon Model, Tommaso Rainaldi, Victor Ale, Matt Grau, Dmitri Kharzeev, Enrique Rico, Felix Ringer, Pubasha Shome, George Siopsis

Physics Faculty Publications

Hybrid qubit-qumode quantum computing platforms provide a natural setting for simulating interacting bosonic quantum field theories. However, existing continuous-variable gate constructions rely predominantly on polynomial functions of canonical quadratures. In this work, we introduce a complementary universality paradigm based on trigonometric continuous-variable gates, which enable a Fourier-like representation of bosonic operators and are particularly well suited for periodic and non-perturbative interactions. We present an ancilla-based framework for implementing trigonometric gates with arguments given by arbitrary Hermitian functions of qumode quadratures. The protocol yields unitary gates deterministically, and non-unitary gates through probabilistic post-selection. As a concrete application, we develop a hybrid …

Real-Time Estimators For Scattering Observables: A Full Account Of Finite-Volume Errors For Quantum Simulation, Ivan M. Burbano, Marco A. Carrillo, Rana Urek, Anthony N. Ciavarella, Raul A. Briceno

Physics Faculty Publications

The real-time correlators of quantum field theories can be directly probed through new approaches to simulation, such as quantum computing and tensor networks. This provides a new framework for computing scattering observables in lattice formulations of strongly interacting theories, such as lattice quantum chromodynamics. In this paper, we prove that the proposal of real-time estimators of scattering observables is universally applicable to all scattering observables of gapped quantum field theories. All finite-volume errors are exponentially suppressed, and the rate of this suppression is controlled by the regulator considered, namely, a displacement of the spectrum of the theory into the complex …

Studying Electroweak Few-Body Observables In Chiral Effective Field Theory, Alex Gnech

Physics Faculty Publications

The use of nuclei to study electroweak probes is becoming increasingly relevant experimentally. The success of dark matter and neutrino experiments strongly depends on the ability to control nuclear effects in order to extract the fundamental parameters associated with external probes. Therefore, reliable theoretical calculations of nuclear structure and reactions, with well-controlled errors, are crucial for the success of experimental efforts. Currently, chiral effective field theory (χEFT) coupled with {\it ab-initio} methods represents one of the best approaches that fulfills these requirements. To use this approach as a tool for studying fundamental physics, it is essential to validate it against …

Poincaré Invariance And The Unruh Effect, Alexandre Deur, Stanley J. Brodsky, Craig D. Roberts, Balša Terzić

Physics Faculty Publications

In quantum field theory, the vacuum is popularly considered to be a complex medium populated with virtual particle + antiparticle pairs. To an observer experiencing uniform acceleration, it is generally held that these virtual particles become real, appearing as a gas at a temperature that grows with the acceleration. This is the Unruh effect. However, it has been shown that vacuum complexity is an artifact produced by treating quantum field theory in a manner that does not manifestly enforce causality. Choosing a quantization approach that patently enforces causality, the quantum field theory vacuum is barren, bereft even of virtual particles. …

Optical Nonlinearity Of A Cold Atomic Ensemble Driven By A Strong Coherent Field In A Saturation Regime, A. S. Usoltsev, L. V. Gerasimov, A. D. Manukhova, S. P. Kulik, D. V. Kupriyanov

Physics Faculty Publications

We present a microscopic analysis and evaluation of the dielectric susceptibility of a dielectric medium consisting of vector-type two-energy-level atoms, responding to a weak probe mode, when the atoms are driven by a strong coherent field. Each atom, in an environment of others, exists as a quasiparticle, further structuring the bulk medium. In a limit of dilute atomic gas, the dynamics of each atom follows the Mollow-type nonlinear excitation regime, and the medium susceptibility collectivizes the individual atomic responses to the probe mode. We outline how the collective dynamics can be interpolated up to a dense medium, and we argue …

Real-Space Imaging Of The Electron-Pair Density Hole In Molecular Auger-Meitner Decay, Mats Simmermacher, Nathan Goff, Andres Moreno Carrascosa, Elke Fasshauer, Thomas Northey, Lingyu Ma, Haiwang Yong, Brian Stankus, Asami Odate, Xuan Xu, Wenping Du, Kyle Acheson, Joseph C. Cooper, Daniel Ratner, Mengning Liang, Ruaridh Forbes, Michael P. Minitti, Adam Kirrander, Peter M. Weber

Physics Faculty Publications

Electrons in matter can rearrange extremely quickly under external perturbations, underpinning subsequent structural and chemical transformations. Coulomb interactions between neighbouring electrons often shape this response, giving rise to correlated motion and strongly affecting the distribution of electrons in the system. Here we show that non-resonant hard X-ray scattering can directly access changes in the radial electron-pair density during the rapid rearrangement of core and valence electrons. We do this by studying sulfur hexafluoride molecules undergoing Auger–Meitner decay. We exploit a second-order interaction between the X-ray photons and the molecules to trigger and probe the decay dynamics with a single pulse, …

Unsuccessful? Universal Human Rights And The United Nations: Russian Imperialism In Ukraine And The Post-Udhr International System, Sofiia Novytska

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Human universality has always stood as a controversial subject and remains politically contentious today. Following the humanitarian crisis of World War II, the international community was determined to protect the integrity and dignity of people worldwide by developing the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, universal human rights were not invented by the Declaration and were already conceptually established in global ancient thought, further evolved into Early Modern scholarship, and later paved the way for modern humanitarian frameworks. The UDHR was not universally well-received, and was criticized for its revolutionary legal character, postcolonial contestation, and practical ambiguity. The …

State Constitutionalism's Fragile Wall, Adam B. Sopko

Publications

The adequate and independent state grounds (AISG) doctrine has long demarcated the perimeter of the U.S. Supreme Court’s authority to review state court decisions, limiting review to questions of federal law. AISG maintains the Court’s primacy over federal law and state courts’ supremacy over state law. A comprehensive review of all filings on the Court’s docket from state courts over the last twenty years reveals that recent applications of AISG consist of subtle but significant departures from existing norms that, together, suggest a reformulation of the Court’s power over state courts that threatens their sovereign law development role. This Essay …

Teaching Evolution After Kennedy And Mahmoud, Alexander Gouzoules

Faculty Publications

One of the longest running disputes at the intersection of education law and the First Amendment has involved conflict over evolutionary biology in American public schools. Through a century of nearly continuous litigation, creationist legislation and parental demands to exempt students from science instruction have been constrained by longstanding First Amendment doctrines.

That settlement is now unraveling. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court abandoned its prior approach to the Establishment Clause in favor of a history-and-tradition analysis that is ill-suited to questions about modern scientific education. And in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court held that students' compulsory …

Studying Electroweak Few-Body Observables In Chiral Effective Field Theory, Alex Gnech

Physics Faculty Publications

The use of nuclei to study electroweak probes is becoming increasingly relevant experimentally. The success of dark matter and neutrino experiments strongly depends on the ability to control nuclear effects in order to extract the fundamental parameters associated with external probes. Therefore, reliable theoretical calculations of nuclear structure and reactions, with well-controlled errors, are crucial for the success of experimental efforts. Currently, chiral effective field theory (χ EFT) coupled with {\it ab-initio} methods represents one of the best approaches that fulfills these requirements. To use this approach as a tool for studying fundamental physics, it is essential to validate it …

Analytics And Irony In Organizational Change: Agency And Emotions In The Mangle Of Practice, Uri Gal, Sean Hansen, Kalle Lyytinen

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Advanced data analytics technology has experienced an explosion of interest as firms seek to increase profits, operational efficiency, and employee engagement through evidence-based management. However, empirical evidence of the impact of this technology on organizational outcomes remains mixed, which assertions of benefits closely matched by concerns about potential adverse outcomes. In this study, we explore the adoption of a popular application of analytics technology – a people analytics system – at Everest, a leadership development consulting firm. By juxtaposing idealized and realized facets of the organizational practices mediated by the system, we highlight the emergence of situational ironies, in which …

Investigation Expenses, Ryan Vacca

Faculty Publications

Misappropriating trade secrets is usually done in secret. After all, those taking another’s trade secret in violation of state and federal law rarely openly tout their misdeeds. As a result, trade secret owners do not always immediately realize that their trade secret has been misappropriated and must spend significant resources investigating whether misappropriation has occurred and, if so, by whom and to what extent.

An important question frequently arising over the last several years but overlooked in the scholarly literature is whether a trade secret owner’s investigation expenses are recoverable as “actual loss” under state and federal trade secret laws. …

Artificial Intelligence, Judicial Evolution, And Insurance, Renee Henson

Faculty Publications

AI-driven platforms have the potential to inflict traditional injuries in new ways. Proprietary algorithms trained on large volumes of personal data can cause mental, emotional, and sometimes physical injuries via conversational exchanges, harmful content recommendations, and the promotion of extremist content. This "algorithmic liability" fundamentally challenges existing legal doctrines and statutory protections, thereby exposing deficiencies in current insurance coverage frameworks. 

Historically, courts dismissed algorithmic liability claims early in litigation, invoking Section 230 immunity and First Amendment protections, and resisted classifying algorithmic tools as "products" for the purposes of products liability law. Recent jurisprudence, however, signals a critical turning point. On …

Early-Time/High-Frequency Electromagnetic Induction Sensing For Minimal-Metal And None-Metallic Subsurface Targets, Michele Louise Maxson

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Conventional electromagnetic induction (EMI) systems operate within the quasi-static regime, where measurements are dominated by conduction currents and are primarily sensitive to highly conductive targets and bulk soil properties. As a result, these systems exhibit limited sensitivity to low-conductivity and layered media, such as permafrost, composite materials, and minimum-metal landmines, where diagnostically relevant information resides in early-time/high-frequency electromagnetic responses, generally above 100 kHz. This limitation reflects a mismatch between conventional EMI system design and the underlying target physics, restricting the ability of standard EMI approaches to resolve fine-scale non-metallic subsurface structure.

In this thesis, I investigate early-time/high-frequency sensitivity as a …

Cross-Temporal Statistical Approaches For Evaluating Predictor-Outcome Relationships, Jeff Joseph

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Central auditory function is linked with cognitive deficits, but few research projects use existing statistical approaches or develop new ones to forecast cognitive deficits using the results of central auditory tests. To address this limitation, we use a series of statistical learning frameworks for predicting a child’s cognitive abilities based on his/her central auditory performances and demographic factors. Two key challenges exist. First, children may start the study at a time when they are unable to perform the central auditory tests or cognitive tests. Second, cognitive performance is age-dependent, particularly in the early formative years of childhood and adolescence. To …

Black Ecological Care: Conservation, Environmental Justice, And Sovereignty In Baltimore, Maryland, Alexandria Nicole Casteel

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Dominant traditions of urban planning, municipal policy, and environmental science register Black urban spaces through a vocabulary of pathology, as sites of ecological deficit, contamination, and social decay. This dissertation investigates how Black communities in U.S. cities attend to the environment in ways that address legacies of environmental and social injustice while opening pathways toward different environmental futures. I gather these practices under the analytic of Black ecological care, which captures the generative labor of making and maintaining livable worlds within, alongside, and beyond histories of harm. I develop the analytic across twenty-nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2021 and …

Ice Stream Formation, Activation, And Evolution, Logan E. Mann

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

While the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets deform as slow viscous fluids, ice streams are regions of ice that flow several orders of magnitude faster than the surrounding ice ridges. Ice streams form the primary drainage networks for ice sheets and are currently responsible for the majority of discharge from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Many catchments like the Siple Coast of West Antarctica display a complex array of flow morphologies that are not primarily determined by bed topography. Instead, flow is primarily governed by thermal conditions along the bed and in shear margins that lead to rapid till deformation. …

The Leeuwenhoek Paradox In Dental Artificial Intelligence: A Narrative Review Of Artificial Intelligence-Detected Subclinical Periapical Changes And Human-Labeled False Positives, Etyene Schnurr, Mario Parra, David M. Kim

Journal of Dental Sciences

This narrative review explores the “Leeuwenhoek Paradox,” a metaphorical and conceptual challenge that arises when artificial intelligence (AI) detects subtle periapical radiological changes that are not visible to human observers. Drawing on evidence from studies using two-dimensional and cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) imaging, this review critically examined the limitations of human-centered reference standards and recurrent discrepancies in AI-based periapical detection. The literature shows that AI systems frequently detect more periapical alterations than human experts. These findings may reflect early bone changes, as indicated by CBCT-based analyses of bone density and longitudinal observations. The paradox arises because AI identifies subclinical radiographic …

A Comprehensive Analysis And Sex-Related Differences In Root And Root Canal Anatomy In The Taiwanese Population, Ho-Sheng Chiang, Wei-Cheng Lee, Ying-Wu Chen, Ling-Yu Kung, Kuei-Yuan Chen, Ren-Yeong Huang, Yi-Shing Shieh, Yu-Chiao Wu

Journal of Dental Sciences

Background/purpose: Root canal morphology exhibits substantial anatomical variation influenced by ethnicity and sex, which may complicate endodontic treatment if unrecognized. This study aimed to comprehensively evaluate root and root canal configurations in a Taiwanese population using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) and to investigate sex-related differences in canal anatomy.

Materials and methods: CBCT scans from 802 patients treated between 2022 and 2024 were retrospectively analyzed. A total of 18,578 teeth met the inclusion criteria. Root canal configurations were assessed for every root using Vertucci’s classification, and C-shaped canals were further categorized based on morphology. Sex-related differences were analyzed using chi-square tests. …