Digital Commons Network^™

Addressing Mental Health In College Athletics: Developing A Mindfulness-Centered Curricular Intervention For Student-Athletes And Coaches, Douglas W. Lampman

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Rising rates of mental health concerns among collegiate student-athletes have intensified calls for a more holistic approach to athlete development and well-being.  While student-athletes regularly interact with coaches and educators, few curricular interventions explicitly address mental and emotional wellness in the athletic context.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the development, implementation, and perceived impact of a mindfulness-centered approach and curriculum.  This curriculum is designed explicitly for collegiate student-athletes and coaches.  Grounded in mindfulness-based pedagogy, the curriculum addressed stress management, emotion regulation, interpersonal relationships, performance anxiety, and personal growth.

Using a multi-tiered qualitative design, data were collected …

Graph-Based And Graph-Transformer Representation Learning For Healthcare Data, Rui Wang

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Healthcare data exhibit complex structures, including heterogeneous clinical entities, sparse observations, and longitudinal patient trajectories. Effectively modeling such data remains a fundamental challenge in computational healthcare research. Traditional machine learning approaches often rely on flat feature representations that fail to capture relationships among clinical events, limiting their ability to model complex healthcare processes. These challenges motivate structured learning frameworks that capture both relational structure and temporal dynamics in healthcare data. This dissertation develops a series of graph-based representation learning approaches, extended through graph-transformer architectures for modeling complex healthcare data. Such data can be represented as graphs, where nodes correspond to …

From Sparks To Insights: An Aggregate Analysis On Arson And Explosive Data Reporting Published By The Atf (2014-2024), Zahra A. Khan

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This thesis provides an aggregate assessment of arson and explosives incidents reported by the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco, from 2014 to 2024. This thesis is written to highlight trends, investigative outcomes, and evolving patterns of criminal activity. Analysis of the data reveals notable shifts in incident frequencies, data distributions, and case resolution rates. This suggests both emerging technologies and changing operational dynamics that have affected long-term trends in arson and explosive incidents. Variations in incident types and investigative outcomes underscore the interplay between law enforcement priorities, resource allocation, and reporting practices over the ten-year period. The study also …

Understanding The Experiences Of First-Generation College Students Working As Resident Assistants, Mairead S. Murray

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

First-generation college students have been a population of interest in higher education for several decades as they are both a historically underserved group and make up a significant portion of the college-going population (RTI International, 2019a; Schuyler et al., 2021), making them an impactful group of students to research. As a whole, first-generation college students tend to fall behind their non-first-generation college student peers in key areas that are indicators of student success, including engagement, persistence, and degree completion (Goldman et al., 2022; Kezar & Kitchen, 2020; Kuh et al., 2007; McCallen & Johnson, 2020; Means & Pyne, 2017; Pendakur, …

The Relationship Between State-Level Career And Technical Education (Cte) Policies And Secondary Student Enrollment In Construction, Manufacturing, And Health Sciences Cte Programs, Brittany A. Kitterman

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Across the United States, employers in construction, manufacturing, and healthcare report ongoing difficulty filling positions. These shortages have been driven by an aging workforce, increased demand, and high rates of retirement. Compounding these shortages, Federal investments such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS Act have further increased demand. Career and Technical Education programs are well positioned to support workforce development and help close workforce shortages, but access and participation remain limited. Supported by Federal Perkins funding, states have enacted CTE policies to increase access and enrollment in CTE programs aligned with high-demand industries such as construction, …

Categories, Homology And Sheaves For Hypergraphs, Robert Green

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Hypergraphs are a prominent tool for representing networks with connections among three or more entities. There is an inherent flexibility that allows hypergraphs to more naturally represent certain types of networks than graphs or simplicial complexes can on their own. This flexibility, however, comes at a cost, as there is a zoo of various categories and homology theories that are applicable to hypergraphs. The first chapter of this dissertation explores various categorical perspectives on hypergraphs, focusing on what the natural notion of morphism between hypergraphs should be. It also contains an exploration of the functoriality of vertex-edge duality in these …

Exploring The Impact Of Mindful Social Media Literacy Instruction On Self-Regulated Smartphone Use, Catherine Coons

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Smartphone and social media addiction, and increasingly high rates of anxiety and other mental health challenges, afflict contemporary undergraduate students more than previous generations of college students. The mental health challenges faced by students directly affect their academic potential, influencing their ability to concentrate, maintain confidence, get adequate sleep, and sustain overall well-being. Despite the increasing prevalence of these issues, universities often lack sufficient resources, services, and trained staff to support this growing student population adequately.

This study examines the impact of mindfulness-based social media literacy instruction on curbing problematic social media use in college students. While extensive research has …

Hidden Markov Models For Stock Market Regime Prediction, Meghan Blanch

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) are a powerful mathematical system used for analyzing time sequences in which the underlying states are unable to be directly observed. This project strives to develop the theory and computation of such models, including deriving the forward and backward variables, the Baum-Welch algorithm, and the Viterbi algorithm. Each of these HMM components are derived and explained to demonstrate the probabilistic principles that allow HMMs to be effective for modeling sequential data.

To demonstrate its practical relevance, the HMM is applied to financial time series. The observable stock market returns tend to be influenced by market regimes …

Understanding The Intergenerational Transmission Of Risk And Resilience In Black Birthing Parent-Infant Dyads: Physiological Coregulation & Cultural-Contextual Factors, Annabelle Armah

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Symptoms of postpartum depression (PPD) are common, particularly for Black birthing parents who may face increased psychosocial risk during the perinatal period. Previous work has demonstrated that PPD can have significant ramifications not only for maternal wellbeing but for infants’ regulatory development. PPD may influence the concordance or mutual influence of biological states between parents and children (i.e., physiological synchrony). Physiological synchrony is thought to be implicated in the development of self-regulation and may be a mechanism through which PPD undermines infants’ emerging regulatory capacities. In Black families, cultural-contextual factors, like racism or cultural practices, may additionally shape birthing parent …

Llevándolas Con Calma: Latin American Migrant Worker Parenthood And Covid-19, Anthony J. Stronach

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

We have yet to fully understand what Latino migrant worker parents -a population invisible in many ways to much of society- have undergone since the onset and as a result of the COVID-19 health crisis. As such, grounded in the experiences and words of eleven migrants, this dissertation demonstrates (1) the shifting parameters of migrant parenthood during and after the pandemic, (2) how migrant working parents navigated such unprecedented times, and (3) their reflections as they looked back upon such experiences. These experiences include more than merely what happened to them; they encompass their thoughts, their emotions, their memories, their …

Entropic Dynamics Approach To The Classical Limit Of Quantum Mechanics: Decoupling Of The Center Of Mass Motion For A Mesoscopic Particle, Fatimah Judayba

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

In the Entropic Dynamics (ED) approach, quantum mechanics is derived from the principles of entropic inference and information geometry. The ED approach differs from other interpretations by making a clear commitment to distinguishing which variables are ontic (real) and which are epistemic. The classical limit for the center of mass (CM) coordinate is achieved for a large number of particles, M →∞, while Planck’s constant ℏ remains finite. Typically, the emergence of the classical limit requires decoherence through interactions with the external environment. In this work, we investigate whether the classical behavior of the CM coordinate in a mesoscopic system …

As If It Were Food: A Prose Translation Of The Old English Genesis B, Kane R. Malone

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The anonymous Old English poem known as “Genesis B” comes down to us as one of the most inherently human retellings of the Fall of Adam and Eve. Despite this, the piece is seldom read by the average twenty-first century middle-school learner. The poem, originally penned in Old English, has been translated into modern English numerous times, yet as I read through a variety of these translations, they all seemed to downplay the human element which I found intriguing. Thus, I created my own translation of “Genesis B” with a more general audience in mind, looking to create something that …

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 …

Bioinformatic Identification And Analysis Of Shared Splicing Errors In Myotonic Dystrophy Type (Dm1) And Fuchs' Endothelial Corneal Dystrophy (Fecd), Carter I. Wilkins

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is an autosomal dominant form of muscular dystrophy, and it is the most common form of adult-onset muscular dystrophy. The disease is the result of CTG trinucleotide repeats (TNR) in the 3’UTR of the dystrophia myotonica protein kinase (DMPK) gene. This produces toxic RNA hairpin structures by CUG repeat expansions that sequester proteins–most relevantly muscleblind-like 1 (MBNL)–that regulate alternative RNA splicing. The missplicing of a wide variety of genes results in the symptoms such as myotonia (rigidity of the muscles), atrophy, and cardiac failure.

Fuchs’ Endothelial Corneal Dystrophy (FECD) is characterized by progressive loss and …

Corannulene: Optimized Synthesis And Four-Fold Reduction, Guy Rozenman

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Corannulene is a bowl-shaped π-conjugated fragment of the ball-shaped C₆₀-fullerene that undergoes stepwise multielectron reduction and can accept four electrons to form the aromatic tetraanion, C₂₀H₁₀⁴⁻. Prior literature has established this charge state in donor-solvated alkali-metal assemblies: early solution studies identified the formation of the tetraanion under lithium reduction in THF, and later X-ray diffraction crystallography demonstrated a triple-decker lithium sandwich in which two corannulene tetraanion decks encapsulate five Li⁺ ions. The central objective of this thesis is to determine whether the corannulene tetraanion can instead be isolated as a bulk solvent-free alkali-metal salt containing only corannulene and …

Informationally-Optimal Measurements On Single-Qubit Systems, Adam V. Preston

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This thesis will focus on deriving informationally-optimal quantum state tomographic measurements on single-qubit systems, with the definition of informationally optimal to be defined as those measurements which maximize the average information gain. The informationally-optimal measurements that will be covered include projective measurements (formally building off of the work of [1] and putting it on firm, information-theoretic foundations), and more general types of quantum measurements called directional (also known as rank-one) positive operator-valued measure (POVM) measurements, and, finally, adaptive directional POVM measurements.

For projective measurements, we build on the work of Wootters and Fields ([1]) and show, via analytical methods 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 …

Molecular Diffusion In Chemically Amplified Resists For Euv Lithography, Eshan Dilina Thilakarathna

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Photolithography is a critical manufacturing step in high-volume manufacturing (HVM) of semiconductor devices, where a photoresist layer is used to transfer nanoscale patterns onto the underlying stack materials. As the microelectronics industry continues to move toward smaller node sizes, driven by Moore's Law. As a result, the tolerances for photoresist performance have become increasingly demanding, which necessitates simultaneous improvements in resolution, defectivity, and roughness. At advanced nodes, these performance limitations are governed by the fundamental stochastic nature of the photochemical processes occurring within the resist film itself, rather than the optical or tool-level constraints. Photon shot noise, the statistical distribution …

Moderators Of Subjective Distress And State Body Image During Open And Blind Weighing, Danielle E. Peters

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Objective: Body image disturbances are central to eating disorder (ED) pathology and are often addressed through exposure-based methods, such as open weighing. Open weighing is recommended in evidence-based ED treatments, but many clinicians and patients prefer blind weighing. It may be that pre-treatment patient characteristics may influence how distressed they feel by open and blind weighing. As such, the present study aimed to 1) compare how open and blind weighing impact subjective distress and state body image, and 2) examine whether self-weighing tendencies, body avoidance, body checking, body checking-related beliefs, intolerance of uncertainty, and ED psychopathology moderate the relationship between …

Essays On Indian Inflation Targeting, Dipankar Biswas

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation explores the efficacy and impact of inflation targeting as the monetary policy framework with a specific focus on India after its formal adoption of the inflation-targeting framework in 2016.

The first chapter focuses on the history of monetary policy framework in India. It discusses, in detail, the different monetary policy frameworks, namely Credit Planning, Flexible Monetary-Targeting, and Multiple-Indicator approaches, adopted by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) (i.e., the monetary authority of the country), before arriving at the adoption of the inflation-targeting framework. The monetary policy transmission process in India during the different global turmoil segments of the …

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 …

Well-Being Despite Adversity: A Portfolio Approach To Understanding Resilience Among Autistic Adults, Krista Rose

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Autistic individuals, across the lifespan, face increased exposure to stressful, adverse, and potentially traumatic experiences. These experiences pose a negative impact on well-being and quality of life. Prevailing risk-based models are anchored in deficit-focused conceptualizations and provide limited insight into autistic individuals’ experiences afteradversity, highlighting the important shift towards strength-based models within resilience. Although resilience is a crucial topic to promote positive outcomes and well-being among autistic individuals, existing research is limited, lacks an integrated framework, and has not yet been investigated in the context of stressful, adverse, or potentially traumatic experiences, despite the deleterious effect these experiences pose …

Three Essays In Labor Economics, Yoritsugu Shimazu

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The first chapter decomposes aggregate productivity growth into a pure-technology contribution and an allocative-efficiency contribution for Japan and the United States, applying a single estimation methodology symmetrically to comparable firm-level panels. Production functions are estimated by the Gandhi, Navarro, and Rivers (2020) gross-output procedure under monopolistic competition (GNR-MC), which recovers firm-level price markups and wage markdowns, and these enter the Baqaee–Farhi (2020) decomposition through the closed form of Aoki et al. (2024). Both panels are drawn from Compustat with identical pre-processing and estimation, and we close the markup-level identification gap that GNR leave open with a normalization anchored on the …

On Quantum Processes And The Epistemic Constraints, Varun Immanuel Premkumar Immanuel

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This doctoral dissertation on the foundations of quantum theory tells the story of a conceptual protagonist I have called “Epistemic Constraint.” Here, epistemic constraints are the definite, intersubjectively agreeable, ordinary-language conditions under which experiments are described.

The usual formulation of the quantum measurement problem, which I call the Schrodingerian measurement problem, has the structure of an anomaly: if we take quantum theory at face value, we expect no definite values, and yet we see definite values in experiments. The responses to this problem have been either to solve it or to dissolve it. These responses, which have taken the form …

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 …

Advancing Data Extraction Workflows For Single-Case Design Meta-Analysis Using Large Language Models, Yaosheng Lou

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Single-case experimental designs (SCEDs) are a form of longitudinal research that is particularly valuable for studying marginalized and underrepresented populations. Meta-analysis plays an essential role in synthesizing evidence across studies and enhancing the generalizability of findings. However, as interest in SCEDs grows and the evidence base expands, conducting meta-analyses has become increasingly labor-intensive and time-consuming. This dissertation addresses these challenges by examining the applicability of large language models (LLMs) for data extraction and meta-analytic dataset compilation in the context of SCED meta-analysis. Because LLM performance is influenced by model selection, prompt design, and the specific materials being extracted, this dissertation …

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) …