Digital Commons Network^™

The Chemistry Of Red Lipstick: The Impact Red Lipstick Has On Society, Lilliana Weldeslassie

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Cosmetic chemistry is deeply embedded in everyday life, shaping the products people use from morning to night. Among these, red lipstick stands out as a formulation that blends complex chemistry with a cultural meaning. This thesis examines the scientific foundations of red lipstick through its chemical composition, pigment structure, toxicological history, analytical methods, and evolving sustainability practices. Historically, red lipsticks relied on high-risk ingredients such as lead, mercury, and other toxic metals, reflecting an era before chemical safety and regulatory oversight were incorporated.²¹ Modern formulations have established safer synthetic dyes, natural waxes, plant-based oils, and stabilizers created to optimize …

Classification, Service Provision, And Early Academic Skills Of Early Elementary School Students Who Received Services As A Preschool Student With A Disability, Meghan Conboy

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Youth with disabilities benefit from coordinated supports and services, particularly during early childhood when they are developing foundational abilities that will influence their developmental trajectory (Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center, 2015; Sandall et al., 2005). Preschool-aged students who enter kindergarten with adequately developed pre-academic skills are more likely demonstrate high performance levels in academic domains throughout compulsory education compared to peers with low pre-academic skills (Christensen et al., 2020; Fitzpatrick, 2017; Hair et al., 2006; Tavassolie et al., 2022). However, despite the knowledge that both preschool programs and high-quality and effective early intervention benefit children across their lifetime, limited research …

Determinants And Impacts Of Public Health Accreditation: Evidence From U.S. Local Health Departments, Zahra S. Alaali

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Local health departments (LHDs) play a critical role in delivering essential public health services in the United States, yet they operate under persistent resource constraints, increasing accountability demands, and evolving population health needs. In response to calls for greater quality and consistency in public health, the National Public Health Accreditation Program was launched in 2013. Implemented by the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), the program aims to improve and protect population health by advancing the quality and performance of public health departments. Given that accreditation is a key strategy for strengthening public health systems, it is critical to build robust …

Understanding Support And Success: A Cross-Group Analysis Of Student Support Services And Nontraditional Graduate Student Experience, Erica Shudt

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This study explored how nontraditional graduate students perceive their experiences with student support services within a Research 1, public university. The purpose of this study was to understand how these services impact their overall academic experience. Findings from semi-structured interviews with nontraditional graduate students and student support staff using a qualitative approach revealed four themes. These themes included (1) a shared emphasis on connection and belonging, (2) flexibility as a foundation for support and success, (3) individualized student-centered support, and (4) the acknowledgement of nontraditional student support identity. Both groups identify that meaningful support is within relationships with faculty and …

The Effect Of Education On Green Growth And Carbon Emissions, 1990–2022, Soojeong Ahn

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The question of whether education promotes economic growth has long been a central topic in development research, and education has been linked to economic outcomes through macro-level pathways such as human capital accumulation, productivity growth, and technological diffusion. More recently, this discussion has expanded beyond economic growth to consider whether education contributes to environmentally sustainable development, particularly green growth. Green growth emphasizes the possibility of sustaining economic expansion while reducing environmental pressure (OECD, 2011; UNEP, 2011), and this study therefore examines how education is related to green growth and carbon emissions at the macro level.

At the macro level, existing …

Developments And Applications Of Transport Of Intensity Equation Imaging And Optical Diffraction Tomography In Bioimaging, Shane D. Carney

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Non-invasive imaging schemes are highly sought after methodologies in biology and metrology, where maintaining the physical state of a sample is important. Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) techniques non-invasively reconstruct the relative phase delay imparted onto an optical field due to transmission through a sample. Phase delay is proportional to the thickness and refractive index of the sample, but is lost in the intensity measurement process. Digital holographic microscopy (DHM) and transport of intensity equation (TIE) phase imaging are two high-resolution QPI techniques. DHM is a well-researched, accurate, and widely implemented technique, but can be difficult to implement in labs without …

Bonny And Read: Navigating The Waters Between Truth And Tale, Fiona J. Faccilonga

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This thesis examines piracy, cross-dressing, gender fluidity, and ambiguous identity in the lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read as represented in A General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson. This thesis argues that Johnson’s narrative reshapes their piracy through feminine frameworks to align them with patriarchal expectations of womanhood and fixed identity. Specifically, he uses the breast and the belly as sites of gendered truth, attempting to reduce their masculine presentation as mere performance rather than intrinsic identity.

However, despite Johnson’s attempt at narrative authority, Bonny and Read ultimately resist such containment. Through close readings of both …

Reviving Southern Divides: Multilevel Explorations Of Gentrification’S Role In School Resegregation In Tallahassee, Florida From 1999 – 2015, Ola U. Kalu

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation examines whether neighborhood gentrification in Tallahassee reshaped Title I elementary schools by improving academic outcomes, changing who enrolled, or both, from 1999 to 2015. Using Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Model as a conceptual scaffold, the study situates schools within their neighborhood and district contexts across three nested analytical levels. A two-wave panel design using 2010 and 2015 school-year observations is linked to a 2000 Census baseline to connect school data with spatially weighted neighborhood change indicators. Mixed-effects multilevel models and fixed-effects robustness checks estimate the associations between neighborhood change indicators and two continuous dependent variables: standardized ELA achievement and …

Multifunctional And Adaptive: Tracking How Fibroblasts Respond To Tissue Injury And Facilitate Tissue Remodeling, Joey R. Tavarez

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Fibrosis is characterized by an accumulation of proteins in the extracellular matrix (ECM) that results in altered tissue architecture and reduced organ function. In the salivary glands, fibrosis leads to loss of saliva, dysbiosis of the oral microbiome, an increase in oral infections, difficulty in digestion of food and an overall reduction in the quality of life. Understanding the progression of fibrosis and how it affects human health is a crucial step for designing effective therapeutics. Understanding fibroblast function is integral to advancing the field due to the many roles they play in maintaining the ECM. To perform preliminary analysis, …

Constructing The Political “Other”: Affective Polarization And Cross-Ideological Portrayals On Instagram, Amanda M. Novellin

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Instagram has frequently been characterized by users as a platform that permits the circulation of hostile and adversarial political content due to comparatively limited moderation practices. In January 2025, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced changes to content moderation policies on Facebook and Instagram, including the removal of third-party fact-checking mechanisms. These platform-level changes further reshaped the political information environment in which online discourse occurs. However, even prior to these policy changes, Instagram had established itself as a prominent space for highly polarized political expression across the ideological spectrum.

This thesis examines how political polarization in the United States is reflected …

Entropic Foundation Of Finance And Physics: Securities Price Dynamics And Quantum Theory, Mohammad Abedi

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

In many scientific and financial contexts, we must reason and make predictions under conditions of incomplete information. This dissertation develops Entropic Dynamics (ED) as a unified framework for deriving dynamical laws directly from principles of inference. Within this approach, probability distributions represent states of knowledge, and their evolution is determined through entropy maximization subject to relevant constraints. This leads to a novel concept of entropic time and a formulation of dynamics as an inferential process. In this talk, I will present how ED provides a common foundation across multiple domains. In physics, quantum dynamics for particles and scalar fields in …

Discord Is Still A Chord: A Mixed-Methods Analysis Of Discourse Networks, Brokerage, And The Fiscal Consequences Of Fracking Policy In The Delaware River Basin, In Hae Noh

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Beneath the policy debates of many environmental controversies lies a dynamic network of actors making claims, forming coalitions, and contesting policy discourses. Drawing on theories of discourse coalitions, discourse networks, network brokerage, and public finance, and using the Delaware River Basin hydraulic fracturing debate as a case study, this dissertation examines how discourse coalitions evolve, how discourse brokers shape coalition dynamics, and whether resulting policy decisions produce meaningful fiscal consequences. The first paper investigates how discourse coalitions shifted across three periods of the Delaware River Basin fracking debate, using a mix of methods integrating discourse network analysis, computational text analysis, …

Concentration Or Coincidence? Rethinking Random Effects In Spatial And Spatiotemporal Concentration Of Burglary Through A Target-Based Approach, Yichao Gao

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Studies of crime and place have long asked how much random processes contribute to the spatial and spatiotemporal concentration of crime. Traditionally, simulations assume that crime incidents occur randomly across microgeographic units—such as block groups, street segments, and parcels—by selecting geographic units at random with replacement. This dissertation takes a different approach, modeling crime incidents as random selections among potential targets, also with replacement. In this framework focusing primarily on burglary, simulated patterns reflect the spatial distribution of potential targets (i.e., properties). This dissertation relies on burglary data from San Antonio, Texas (2017–2019), and measures available burglary targets as individual …

Development Of Photolabile Coumarin Linker For Rna Synthesis And Crisprcas9 Applications, Ian Mcclain

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The scope of RNA-based therapeutics continues to expand as more siRNA, mRNA, and CRISPR-based treatments are approved for various medical applications. Purification of synthetic RNA drugs is inherently challenging and requires considerable time and resources. New cost-effective and efficient purification strategies will expedite drug development process and will lower the drug costs. In this thesis I describe two generations of photolabile linkers for the non-chromatographic purification of therapeutic RNAs. In addition, the photolabile linker was utilized for regulation CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. In the first part of the thesis, I describe the first generation of the photolabile coumarin-based linker for non-chromatographic …

Academic Drift In Indonesian Islamic Higher Education: An Empirical Study Of The State Islamic University Of Mataram, Ade Alimah

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Many higher education institutions imitate one another to achieve upward movement, a phenomenon known as academic drift. While this trend is widely acknowledged, the existing academic literature primarily focuses on developed nations. This research aims to investigate how academic drift occurs in Indonesian Islamic higher education, particularly through institutional transformations that involve institutes transitioning to universities.

This qualitative study examines academic drift at the State Islamic University of Mataram, Indonesia. To gather extensive data, in-depth interviews were conducted with participants from this university, representatives from two leading public Islamic universities, and senior officials from the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Our …

Becoming-With The Earth: Contemplative Practice As A Critical Onto-Epistemic Resource For Planetary Belonging, Care, And World-Making, Megan M. Fowler

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

In an era of accelerating planetary crisis, social work is called to reimagine its theories, methods, and practices beyond anthropocentric frameworks that separate human wellbeing from the health of the Earth and its resplendent living systems. Working in the space of transformative eco-social work, a growing chorus of voices contends that eco-centric responses require broadening the scope of health, welfare, justice, and care to extend beyond the human, to include the more-than-human world upon which all life intimately depends—understandings resonant with Indigenous and other relational knowledge systems long marginalized by colonialist-capitalist-modernity. Drawing from eco-feminist, eco-queer, decolonial, and post-anthropocentric lineages of …

The Communicative Constitution Of Resilience In Graduate-Student Parenthood: Ventriloqual Analysis, Intersectionality, And Sociomaterial Assemblages, Lin Lin

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Graduate education is often organized around norms of uninterrupted productivity, flexibility, and professional availability, making graduate study especially challenging for students who are simultaneously raising children. Although prior research has documented the structural barriers faced by graduate student parents (GSPs), less attention has been paid to how resilience is communicatively enacted within the intersection of academic work and family life. This dissertation examines how GSPs communicatively constitute resilience while navigating work-life disruptions. Drawing on Communication Theory of Resilience (CTR) and the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) perspective, particularly ventriloqual analysis, this study explores how resilience emerges through interactions among human …

Development And Applications Of Fluorescence Microscopy Protocol To Investigate Borrelia Burgdorferi Immune Interactions In The Skin, Rebecca V. Landry

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The skin is an immunological organ that acts as the hosts’ first line of defense against infectious agents. Infectious disease vectors like ticks breach this barrier by feeding on hosts, transmitting pathogens like Borrelia burgdorferi in the process. Uncleared infection with B. burgdorferi causes Lyme disease, the most prevalent vector-borne disease in the United States. Previous research has explained many elements of Lyme disease pathogenesis and immunity including the dissemination of the spirochete, innate immune cells performing phagocytosis, the production of antibodies by the humoral response, and the impact of prophylactic treatment with monoclonal antibodies. A remaining gap in the …

Building Fiscal Resilience And Enhancing Social Equity In Disaster Mitigation At The Local Level, Hyoeun Kim

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

As climate-related disasters are becoming more frequent and severe, local governments face growing pressure to manage disaster-related fiscal shocks. Although disaster mitigation and preparedness are widely recognized as cost-effective strategies for reducing future losses, local governments often lack the financial, political, and technical capacity to invest in them. Despite the importance of pre-disaster investment, mitigation and preparedness efforts continue to lag at the local level, and concerns remain that federal mitigation funding is not distributed equitably across communities. This has important implications for both equity and resilience because unequal access to mitigation resources can reinforce existing vulnerability to future natural …

A Moderated Mediation Analysis Of Mental Health Literacy, Personal Stigma, And Gender On Help-Seeking Intentions In College Students, Anna M. Gentile

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Although many college students experience mental health challenges, help-seeking rates remain disproportionately low relative to reported need (Abelson et al., 2022). Identifying factors that facilitate help-seeking is critical for improving access to mental health support in this population. Prior research has identified mental health literacy as a significant predictor of help-seeking behavior and intentions among college students (Gorczynski et al., 2017; Smith & Shochet, 2011), whereas personal stigma, which is defined as a person’s negative attitude towards people with mental health concerns (Griffiths et al., 2006), has been consistently associated with reduced help-seeking (Abelson et al., 2022). Grounded in the …

The Effects Of Downdraft And Radial Ventilation In Hurricanes Earl (2010) And Edouard (2014), Jacob Vile

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Tropical cyclone (TC) intensity change in moderate vertical wind shear (VWS) is difficult to predict. Specifically, ventilation, the intrusion of dry and/or cool (i.e., low equivalent potential temperature (theta-e) air inside the TC, can have differing effects on TCs. Downdraft ventilation is the downward transport of below-mean  theta-e air by downdrafts, and radial ventilation is the inward transport of below-mean theta-e air by storm-relative radial winds. If this low theta-e air is able to get ingested by updrafts, it can result in a reduction of convection in the TC, thereby reducing intensity. Although most studies of ventilation have been conducted …

Combating Antibiotic Resistance With Plasmid-Dependent Phages, Rhiannon T. Mariano

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The alarming rise of carbapenem-resistant bacteria poses an urgent global health threat, driven in large part by the horizontal spread of carbapenemase-encoding plasmids (Ma et al., 2023). These plasmids are often highly mobile and transmissible, enabling rapid dissemination of resistance genes across diverse bacterial populations. Their mobility is largely mediated by conjugation, a process dependent on the formation of pili, which serve as physical bridges for plasmid transfer between cells (Murray et al. 2022; San Millan and MacLean 2017; Virolle et al. 2020). Beyond their role in gene exchange, these pili also act as entry points for a unique class …

An Evaluation Of Current And Future Extreme Precipitation Events In The South American Altiplano Using Convective-Permitting Model Simulations, Karen R. Conron Chamberlain

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Extreme precipitation events in the South American Altiplano present significant hazards to communities in the Andean region, yet their future characteristics under anthropogenic climate change remain uncertain because of complex terrain and limitations of course-resolution climate models. This study evaluates the ability of South America Affinity Group Weather Research and Forecasting (SAAG-WRF) model with 4-km grid-spacing to reproduce 2000-2015 temperature, precipitation, and extreme precipitation events over the Altiplano. Examination of projected future changes is completed using the SAAG-WRF pseudo global warming (WRF PGW) simulation representing an approximately 3°C warmer global climate. The historical/control simulation (WRF CTL) was evaluated against DECADE …

Key Processes Involved In The Vortex Alignment Of Sheared Tropical Cyclones, Luis O. Hernandez

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are challenging to forecast when under vertical wind shear (VWS). VWS tilts a TC’s vortex, creating asymmetries in its structure that impedes intensification. Although work has been done to conceptualize and understand how TCs evolve under shear and how they axisymmetrize and intensify, vortex alignment remains a complex and unresolved topic. The goal of this study is to assess what physical processes are important to tilt reduction and how these processes evolve in weak TCs. Using the Hurricane Analysis Forecast System Model-B (HAFS-B) 2.1, a case study on two storms, Hurricane Earl (2022) and Hurricane Lee (2023) …

When Helpfulness Becomes Harmful: Jailbreaking Llms For Malicious Code Generation, Noelle Capodieci

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Generative AI (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) have made large strides in coding task capabilities, with many software developers integrating agentic engineering into their workflow. While GenAI has largely benefited professional software engineers who can automate their work, it has also created room for those with little coding expertise to also create fully fledged programs and applications. It is commonly noted that GenAI is trained with two major goals in mind: to be as helpful as possible, and be as harmless as possible. There exist moments where helpfulness may be prioritized over harmlessness when these goals conflict. LLMs may …

Drivers Of Extreme Streamflow During A Snowmelt-Enhanced Heavy Rainfall And Atmospheric River Event In The Catskill Mountains Of New York, Christopher A. Gilberti

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This study uses atmospheric reanalysis, precipitation and snow water equivalent (SWE) analyses, mesonet observations, and streamflow records to examine the impact of an atmospheric river storm that produced heavy rainfall and snowpack ablation across the Catskill Mountains of New York on 24–25 December 2020. Earlier in December, an antecedent storm produced SWE values in the Catskills above the 90^th percentile for that point in the season. The atmospheric river event followed with strong southerly warm-air advection ahead of an anomalously deep trough, temperatures and dewpoints that exceeded 10°C, and heavy orographically enhanced rainfall and rapid snowmelt. Sensible heat fluxes …

Hydroclimate Variability And Itcz Migration Over The Last Millennium Inferred From A New Speleothem Record In Central Colombia Using Paleo Data Assimilation, Derick Appiah Kubi

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Hydroclimate variability over tropical South America is strongly influenced by meridional shifts in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), yet the spatial expression and dynamical controls of these changes during the last millennium remain poorly understood. This work investigates hydroclimate variability and ITCZ migration over the last millennium (850-1850 CE) using a new isotope-enabled data assimilation (DA) reconstruction made from a suite of speleothem δ¹⁸O records from the neotropics on both sides of the ITCZ. The reconstruction targets the March-August (MAMJJA) season in order to capture the rainfall regimes most relevant to central Colombia and northeastern Brazil. The focus on these …

A Comprehensive Investigation Of Service Utilization In Innovative Models Of Hepatitis C Care And Treatment For Persons Who Inject Drugs In New York State, Amanda C. Sue

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the most prevalent blood-borne infection in the United States and is primarily transmitted through the sharing of unsterilized drug injection equipment. With surges in opioid overdose deaths, there has been an increase in people diagnosed with HCV that can be attributed to persons who inject drugs (PWID) in the United States. PWID have therefore been identified as a priority population to achieve the goal of eliminating HCV as a public health threat. Despite the availability of safe and effective direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapies that can cure people with HCV, uptake of HCV treatment in PWID …

Victimized And Criminalized: The Intertwined Narratives Of Trauma And Offending, Caitlin Maria Udas

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

How do pathways between childhood victimization, drug use, and offending behavior vary for recordholders of different races and genders? Prior literature and theory indicates that there are distinct processes that can link childhood victimization to drug use and other offending behavior. These processes are rooted at least partially in experiences of racism/discrimination, placement relative to sociocultural power structures, and norms established over one’s childhood through peer and familial influences. However, less is known about how these differ by race, gender, and the intersection thereof. This dissertation examines the intersectional differences in narrative pathways that link childhood victimization, drug use, and …

Weather-Related Road Condition Detection Using Co-Developed Machine Learning Methods, Carly Sutter

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Transportation agencies make critical operational decisions during hazardous weather events, including assessment of road conditions and resource allocation. In this study, machine learning models are developed to provide additional support for the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) by automatically classifying road conditions across the state. Convolutional neural networks and random forests are trained on NYSDOT roadside camera images and weather data to predict road surface conditions. This task draws critically on a labeled dataset of 22,000 camera images containing six road surface conditions (severe snow, snow, wet, dry, poor visibility, and obstructed) generated from an iterative hand-labeling process …