Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Chronic Nicotine Exposure On Dopamine-Mediated Reinforcement Learning And Striatal Neurotransmission, Srishti Bose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Tobacco is one of the most widely used substances across the United States; tobacco consumption is linked with several diseases and is one of the leading causes of preventable death in the country. Nicotine is the active substrate found in tobacco products, acting as a stimulant, which reinforces continued use. The introduction of tobacco-free options such as e-cigarettes and oral pouches has driven an increase in nicotine exposure across the population, especially in young adults. Acute nicotine use induces neuroadaptations in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, which mediates reinforcement learning and addiction, that potentiates reward-related neurotransmission. Furthermore, there are clinical studies …

Optimizing Nanoparticle Quality And Function In Applied Research, Angela M. Fried

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Radiology tests are among the fastest-growing categories of diagnostic analysis, and the gold standard of radiology tests is MRI.  MRI can be more informative if a contrast agent is used, and the standard of care contrasting agents (CA) are gadolinium-based.  Gadolinium is a heavy metal, toxic, and contraindicated for renal-compromised patients and the critically ill.  We propose a nanogel (NG) vehicle for an alternative organic CA.  CNs like 4-hydroxy-2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidin-1-oxyl (TEMPOL) and its derivatives have a variety of medical and industrial uses.  These cyclic CNs are stable, synthetic radicals with distinctive EPR/ESR signals and are helpful for various experimental applications, from …

Mapping The Water Quality Of Jamaica Bay, New York (1996-2024): Principal Component Analysis And K-Means Clustering, Sneha Srivastava

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Jamaica Bay, located along the southeastern coast of New York City, acts as a biodiverse estuary of wetlands, meadows, and salt marsh islands. The purpose of this study is to analyze the water quality conditions of the region over time, comparing locations around the bay to identify hyperlocal features that influence larger trends in the hydrological system. Ten variables were used as water quality indicators, including total Kjeldahl nitrogen, salinity, pH, Secchi disk depth, and total phosphorus, among others, across five stations in the bay, between 1994 and 2024. After data cleaning and standardization methods were applied, principal component analysis …

"Is This America?" Fannie Lou Hamer, Humanity, Citizenship And The Struggle For Inclusive Democracy, Rhonda Chambers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the life, political rhetoric, and enduring legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer, focusing on how her lived experiences under Jim Crow shaped the development of a distinctive political voice grounded in dignity, moral conviction, and democratic struggle.  Born into a Mississippi sharecropping family and denied the educational and political opportunities afforded to white Americans, Hamer developed an understanding of injustice through the realities of racial and economic oppression. Her experience with segregation, voter suppression, violence, and the Black church became central to the way she understood citizenship and was able to articulate the demands of freedom.

Through an …

Panopticism And Pan-Oticism: Sound-Power From Foucault To Deleuze, Eric Dillenberger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From Muzak to long range acoustic devices (LRADs), the contemporary proliferation of sonic technologies for governing moods, behaviors, and potentialities complicates the virtual absence of sound within Michel Foucault's primarily visual modality of disciplinary power in Discipline and Punish, exemplified by his central conceptual model of the panopticon. This thesis develops the corollary concept of pan-oticism to theorize the transformation of sound-power and its political function within administered sonic ecologies from Foucault's disciplinary societies to Gilles Deleuze's societies of control. Within the enclosed spaces constitutive of disciplinary societies, sound-power remains subordinated to Foucault's visual logic of panopticism, extending …

Analyzing Harmony In Bulgarian And Bulgarian-Influenced Choral Arrangements From The Radio To The Screen, Annie Beliveau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates developments in arrangements and compositions made for Bulgarian choirs between 1950 and 2025. Arrangements from Bulgaria’s communist period (1944-1989), when musical radio broadcasts were tailored to promote nationalist sentiment, eventually reached the ears of foreigners on the other side of the Iron Curtain via recordings and ensemble tours. These obrabotki (arrangements of folk tunes) became popular in the “world music” boom of the 1980s, and foreign composers soon began to create new compositions for Bulgarian choirs to sing on albums and in scores for film, television, and video games. Over time, the uses of Bulgarian choir in …

Rethinking Road Racing Standards: Comparing New York Road Runners Race Results To Running Industry Standards, Jennie Coughlin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Running has undergone a third boom in participation since 2020, driven largely by people seeking fitness options that were outside and socially distanced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media has also allowed runners from groups that did not traditionally participate to find community. As the road racing population has expanded to include more people, some road racing industry standards have not kept up. This project assesses what the road racing community looks like and measures industry standards against the community of participants to see what changes in those standards would be needed to make them inclusive for all participants.

To …

Individual Intellectual Humility As A Predictor Of Perceived Information Sharing And Perceived Shared Leadership, Mary Beth Schroeder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cross-functional problem-solving teams are often assembled to address complex challenges by combining members’ distinct knowledge, ideas, and leadership capabilities. Yet teams do not always capitalize on these collective resources, because team members do not share the information they uniquely possess. This tendency to withhold information may be lessened by intellectually humility, a personality trait marked by a desire to close gaps in one’s knowledge and openness to what others contribute.

This study was originally designed to examine whether team intellectual humility relates to team creativity through information sharing and shared leadership. However, because of changes in the leadership development program …

Urban Counterpoint (1992–2003): The Piano Music Of Ed Bland, Joseph Vaz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the piano music of Ed Bland, a politically and philosophically vocal composer active in the second half of the twentieth century, whose music draws on both the European and American twentieth-century avant-garde, and on African American vernacular music genres from ragtime to hip-hop. A review of the historical and personal context for these pieces, and a detailed examination of the compositional processes used in this music, work together to demonstrate how Bland thought about the relationship between different musical genres and languages.

Through this combination of theory of musical genre, historical and biographical study, and detailed analysis …

Investigating The Role Of Striatal Cholinergic Interneuron D2 Receptors In Behavioral Flexibility, Janyn J. Alfred

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dopamine (DA) and acetylcholine (ACh) interact within the striatum to shape reward-based learning and choice behavior. DA D2 receptors on cholinergic interneurons (CIN D2Rs) were genetically knocked out to investigate their role in choice allocation using a two-lever matching paradigm. Behaviorally, both knockout (KO) and wild-type (WT) mice learned the initial task equally well. When shifted to asymmetric matching schedules (VI-90 vs. VI-180), ideal matching predicts that mice should allocate exactly 67% of their total responses to the rich lever. Neither group matched as predicted by the matching law. Instead, the KO mice showed a pattern where the higher rate …

Waltzing Into Silence: Time, Space, And The Afterword In Ravel’S Valses Nobles Et Sentimentales In Comparison With Schumann’S Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6, Nora I. Bartosik

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation undertakes an analysis of Maurice Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales for piano against the backdrop of Robert Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6, a work with significant parallels in structure, character, and narrative. The Davidsbündlertänze are examined as a model for the Valses nobles et sentimentales, with an emphasis on the two works’ use of the waltz form, their structure as a series of miniature dances composed as a single cohesive work, and their inclusion of an afterword, or epilogue. The analysis draws from the extensive literature on Schumann’s piano cycles in order to apply similar techniques to …

Retrieval Information From Working Memory: The Output Gating Framework Perspective And Its Underlying Processes, Chen Tiferet-Dweck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Working memory (WM) keeps information accessible and available for further processing. However, not all the information we maintain in WM is behaviorally relevant at any given moment. To act effectively, we must dynamically control which memory representations are accessed to support ongoing goal-directed behavior. While the mechanisms underlying the selection of single items from WM access are comparatively well-studied, less is known about the principles governing multi-item access. Existing models of WM access imply that selecting multiple items should take longer and be more error-prone than single-item access. Yet, paradoxically, prior studies have shown that retrieving all items in WM …

The Role Of Temperament In Criminal Trajectories: Development, Stability, And Predictive Power Across The Life Course, Joshua A. Lang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Temperament, an individual's largely innate tendency to experience and regulate responses to their environment, has long been studied but was only recently introduced as a primary predictor of criminal behavior (DeLisi & Vaughn, 2014). While prior criminological theories have incorporated temperament-related constructs, such as negative affect (Agnew, 1992; Moffitt, 1993) and self-control (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990), no other theory has explicitly positioned temperament as the central factor in offending. DeLisi and Vaughn’s temperament-based theory of antisocial behavior posits that individuals with low effortful control and high negative emotionality—features of a difficult temperament—are more likely to engage in criminal behavior. Despite …

The Role Of External Factors In Shaping Carbohydrate Conformational Landscapes, Murat Yaman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Carbohydrates (glycans) are among the most structurally diverse biomolecules and participate in a wide range of biological processes, including molecular recognition, cell adhesion, immune response, host-pathogen interactions, and cellular signaling. Their biological functions are governed by a complex interplay between sequence, stereochemistry, conformational flexibility, and environmental factors. However, the structural heterogeneity and dynamic nature of glycans present significant challenges for both experimental characterization and theoretical modeling. In particular, the relationships between glycan structure, conformational dynamics, and the resulting potential energy surfaces remain incomplete.

This dissertation investigates how external factors modulate the potential energy surfaces of carbohydrates through a combination of …

Riluzole As A Dual-Targeted Radiosensitizer For Osteosarcoma: Targeting Tumor Cells And Angiogenic Vasculature To Enhance Single High-Dose Radiotherapy Efficacy, Pooja P. Rao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Osteosarcoma (OS), the most common primary bone malignancy of children and young adults, is intrinsically radioresistant, and outcomes for patients with unresectable or metastatic disease have not improved in over four decades. Single-dose radiation therapy (SDRT) is a potent modality against radioresistant, highly vascularized sarcomas, but its application in OS is constrained by dose-dependent normal tissue toxicity. Radiosensitizers achieving tumor control at lower doses therefore offer a direct route to widening the therapeutic window. Critically, OS radioresistance is not tumor-cell-autonomous. It emerges from two coordinated compartments: aberrant DNA repair and antioxidant capacity intrinsic to the tumor cell, and a radioprotective, …

‘A Sense Of The Sea’: Grassroots Culture, Care, And Endurance In Swansea, Cymru, Katy Clark

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues that under present conditions, everyday political-aesthetic life is not only about resistance or reproduction but about holding: the work of keeping people, practices, and attachment present and oriented as conditions change. Holding takes the form of care and maintenance; as practices of making, assembling, and imagining; and as the work that keeps open the possibility of renewed attachment to public things and to each other. In the field, this was named as ‘a sense of the sea’, an affective register characterized by wariness, attunement, attentiveness, orientation, and endurance. I am calling this a fragile infrastructure of …

Mesoscopic Scaling Of Microwave Transmittance And Disorder-Induced Alignment, Israel Kurtz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis presents microwave measurements and numerical simulations of wave propagation and transmission through random mesoscopic waveguides. We analyze the scaling of mesoscopic microwave conductance, including departures from Ohm’s law near channel openings, which are frequencies at which new propagating modes enter the system, and the evolution of modal phase alignment within the medium, which leads to the observed diversity of transmission eigenvalues. We extend the transmission matrix formalism to all sample depths using the flux matrix, which relates the flux amplitude within the sample to the incident flux, and decompose the flux at each sample depth into forward- and …

Towards Identifying Fear And Safety Network States Across Sex, Rhonda Kolaric

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a trauma- and stressor-related disorder with a lifetime prevalence of 5-6% in men, and 10-12% in women (National Center for PTSD). Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a highly prevalent anxiety- and depression-related psychiatric disorder with a lifetime prevalence of 1-2% in men, and 3-4% in women (National Institutes of Health). Both of these disorders disproportionately affect women. A hallmark feature of both disorders is the maladaptive generalization of fear, in which defensive responses extend beyond the original traumatic or threatening stimulus to neutral or unrelated cues. This overgeneralization can become debilitating, disrupting cognitive, emotional, and …

New York City Women’S Experiences With Perinatal Depression Inquiries, Diagnosis, And Treatment Initiation, Caterina Pisciotta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Perinatal depression represents a significant public health concern, yet many women who experience depression symptoms during the perinatal period (either during pregnancy and/or after birth) do not receive treatment. Initiatives, such as ThriveNYC, were designed to address these gaps by screening and treating perinatal women for maternal depression, integrating screening into routine perinatal care and strengthening pathways to treatment. Using representative survey data collected between 2016 and 2021 via the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), this study examined trends in perinatal depression inquiries (a proxy for “screening”) and postpartum diagnosis, as well as …

Ultrafast Spectroscopy Of Organic Materials In Strong Light–Matter Interaction And Terahertz Optics, Kamyar Rashidi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ultrafast spectroscopy is a powerful tool for investigating phenomena that occur on extremely short timescales and for probing ultrabroadband spectral responses enabled by its ultrashort laser pulses. These capabilities are essential for advancing both the fundamental understanding of light–matter interactions and the development of next-generation optoelectronic technologies. The first part of this thesis investigates the ultrafast dynamics of organic exciton–polaritons and their application to controlling molecular excited-state processes using momentum-resolved pump–probe spectroscopy. A major challenge in these systems is the dark-state problem, where photoexcitation predominantly populates long-lived excitonic reservoir states that obscure the in trinsic dynamics of the hybrid light–matter …

Analysis Of Diterpenoid Alkaloids From American Aconitum Using Lc-Ms Metabolomic Methods, Yi Zhao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Analysis of Diterpenoid Alkaloids from American Aconitum Using LC-MS Metabolomic Methods

by

Yi Zhao

Advisor: Edward J. Kennelly

Aconitum plants have been used as a traditional medicine in Asian countries for millennia to treat pain, rheumatism, syncope, fever, and other conditions. These therapeutic effects are mainly due to the bioactive diterpenoid alkaloids accumulated in the roots. Comparing with the large records and studies of Asian Aconitum and their medicinal use and the broad bioactive compounds, American Aconitum has been rarely investigated, not to mention how American Aconitum has been used medicinally. Based on previous phylogenetic and chemotaxonomic studies of Aconitum …

Self-Organized Criticality In Biased Activated Random Walk, Joshua Meisel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We demonstrate many of the conjectured universality and self-organized criticality (SOC) properties of the interacting particle system Activated Random Walk (ARW) in the setting of one-dimensional biased walks, as formulated for instance in Levine and Silvestri’s 2024 survey. Namely, there exists the same limiting critical state for two finite ARW models, as well as for the infinite model as the density approaches its critical value from below. Many of the desired properties hold, including heavy-tailed avalanches, but spatial correlations decay exponentially fast, a deviation from the SOC paradigm. Nonetheless, the obtained decay rate vanishes with the bias. Since the critical …

Parenthood And Re-Appraisal Of Childhood Maltreatment, Gayathri Cheran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Child maltreatment is associated with poorer physical and mental health outcomes across the lifespan.  Individuals’ appraisals of childhood maltreatment have important implications for these outcomes.  Appraisal is shaped by biological, psychological, and social-cultural factors, each of which undergoes change in parenthood.  Parenthood may prompt re-appraisal of childhood maltreatment in that being a parent evokes one’s experience of being parented.

Hypotheses: (1) Re-appraisal will be more likely in parents than non-parents.  In parents, re-appraisal will be more likely among: (2) primiparous parents, (3) parents with offspring of the same sex, and (4) parents who experienced maltreatment older in childhood (at …

Symphonies That "Sing": Reevaluating Voices And Vocality In Mahler's Early Symphonies, Erin M. Johnston

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation considers the role of vocal music in Gustav Mahler’s early symphonies through the lens of the composer’s practice of self-borrowing. Mahler was known to use his own pre-existing songs as the basis for large-scale movements in his early symphonies. While scholars have long recognized the close relationship between Mahler’s songs and symphonies, existing studies have emphasized questions of biography, intertextuality, musical meaning, and quotation rather than sustained analytical investigations of vocal influence in Mahler’s large-scale symphonic forms. The present study places this vocality at the forefront of its analyses, arguing that Mahler’s reworking of his own Lieder is …

Architects Of Mrna Fate: Molecular And Cellular Control Of P-Body Organization In The Drosophilia Melanogaster Female Germline, Samantha Milano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Processing bodies (P-bodies) are cytoplasmic ribonucleoprotein condensates that regulate mRNA storage, translational repression, and decay. While the biochemical principles governing condensate assembly have been extensively studied in vitro, how P-body organization is established and dynamically regulated in vivo to control specific mRNA populations remains poorly understood. This dissertation investigated the molecular and cellular mechanisms that govern P-body architecture and function in the Drosophila melanogaster female germline. First, I identified the conserved LSm protein Trailer Hitch (Tral) as a central organizer of P-body architecture. Using quantitative confocal and super-resolution microscopy combined with chemical perturbations, I showed that Tral coordinates the …

New Cities, Old Names, Jason J. Palladino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates instances of etymology-based wordplay of words from languages other than Latin and Greek in the Aeneid. There are instances of etymology-based wordplay (also known as etymological glosses) of multiple languages other than Greek and Latin. Books 1, 4, and 6 have etymological glosses of the Punic language, and Books 7, 9, and 12 have etymological glosses of various other languages of Italy, such as Oscan, Umbrian, and Etruscan. This thesis is divided into two sections that examine Punic etymological glosses and Italic etymological glosses, respectively. It aims to place Virgil’s use of non-Greek and Latin etymological wordplay …

Opportunities For Learning Through Object Exploration During Early Physical Therapy: Physical Therapists’ And Caregivers’ Assistance And Interference Behaviors, Michele Goncalves Maia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Early physical therapy (EPT) for infants with motor delays has traditionally emphasized motor milestone acquisition, yet growing evidence indicates that motor and cognitive development are fundamentally interconnected. Grounded in embodied cognition and developmental cascade theories, this dissertation conceptualized object exploration as a primary mechanism through which infants learn during EPT and examined how intervention approaches and adult behaviors shape opportunities for object exploration. Using retrospective analyses of video-recorded EPT sessions, two studies investigated how intervention approaches and adult behaviors influence infants' opportunities to learn through object exploration. Study 1 compared object exploration in the START-Play (SP) intervention and Usual Care …

Scrolling Through Stress: Physiological Stress Recovery Shapes Risk For Problematic Social Media Use In Young Adults With Depressive Symptoms, Abigail Findley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Depression is among the most consistent correlates of problematic social media use (PSMU), yet how depressive symptoms confer this risk, and for whom, remains poorly understood. The present study examined whether stress regulation explains the link between depressive symptoms and PSMU in young adults, testing specifically whether stress recovery acts as a mechanism linking the two or as a vulnerability that determines for whom they are linked, and whether distress tolerance (DT) shapes these pathways. Participants (N = 77) were young adults (18–25) with elevated depressive symptoms. Following the Trier Social Stress Test, participants completed a 15-minute social media …

Applications Of Entanglement In Quantum Information, Nada Ali

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Entanglement is the resource that most sharply distinguishes quantum information processing from its classical counterpart, and this thesis examines it from two complementary directions: how it can be detected and quantified, and how it, together with the broader machinery of quantum correlations, interference, and measurement, can be put to use. We first study two simple, measurable conditions that detect bipartite entanglement, and show that the extent to which either is violated yields a lower bound on the negativity of a state. The bound is established for two qubits, extended to systems of arbitrary finite dimension, and sharpened when partial knowledge …

Bimodal-Bilingual Advantage: Neural Patterns Of Asl Interpreters During Narrative Encoding, Gina F. Piersanti Gioe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Interpreters display superior executive functions when compared to non-interpreters in tasks of working memory and attentional control. Sign Language Interpreters work simultaneously between two language modalities, though little is known about how regular engagement in communication of high cognitive demand shapes their cognition. Oscillatory activity in the brain has been mapped to functions of cognition. Specifically, parietal alpha activity is linked to attention control and frontal theta activity to memory processes. This study uses both behavioral measures, narrative recall accuracy, and EEG recording of neural oscillations to compare 12 professional American Sign Language Interpreters to 12 Non-Interpreter controls. Participants were …