Digital Commons Network^™

Rethinking Team Science Metrics Through Collaborative Guideposts, Kristen J. Mcquerry, Kelsey Karnik, Megan E. Hall, Caitline Phan, Yana Feygin, Emily Slade

Biostatistics Faculty Publications

Introduction – The increasing reliance on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams has reshaped how science is conducted, yet evaluating the success of such teams remains a persistent challenge. Traditional metrics, such as publication counts, impact factors, and citation indices, fail to capture the full scope of team contributions, particularly in contexts where success may be defined by community engagement, mentorship, or long-term collaboration. Methods – In this Perspective, we introduce Collaborative Guideposts, a framework designed to align success metrics with a team’s organizing priorities. We illustrate this approach through two contrasting team models from a biostatistical collaboration center: Team A, a …

The Multidimensional Impacts Of Poverty On Adolescent Outcomes, Klarence Baker

Graduate Research Papers

Poverty is a pervasive, multidimensional phenomenon that extends beyond financial scarcity to encompass a lack of both tangible and intangible resources necessary for healthy development. This research article synthesizes current literature to explore the profound impacts of poverty on adolescents specifically examining how economic hardship influences long term outcomes in financial attainment, educational success, and physical and mental health. This study investigates how cooccurring risk factors can disrupt neural development and social trajectories. The primary purpose of this study is to assess the duration and severity of poverty exposure and its lasting effects extending into adulthood. This research examines three …

Mapping The Geography Of Economic Espionage In The United States (2000–2025): An Applied Counterintelligence And Spatial Analysis, David A. Turner

Graduate Research Papers

This Graduate Research Project examines whether economic espionage incidents within the United States exhibit structured geographic patterns aligned with innovation ecosystem density. Using a verified dataset of 135 publicly documented economic espionage and foreign-linked trade secret theft cases between 2000 and 2025, this study applies Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis to evaluate spatial concentration, sectoral prioritization, and foreign nexus distribution.

Kernel Density Estimation and state-level aggregation reveal disproportionate clustering within innovation-dense regions, including California, New York, and major Midwestern industrial corridors. Aerospace and defense technologies, energy technologies, and semiconductors and microelectronics collectively account for 55.6 percent of all documented cases. …

“En La Clase, Sí. En Estados Unidos, No.”: La Motivación, La Pertenencia Y El Intercambio De Recursos En Clases Para Adultos Aprendices De Inglés, Katie Hunter

Graduate Research Papers

En los Estados Unidos, los programas de educación para adultos pueden abrir la puerta a varias oportunidades para estudiantes con trasfondos académicos no tradicionales. Los programas como la educación básica para adultos, la equivalencia de escuela secundaria, la preparación profesional y técnica y, lo más importante para los propósitos de este estudio, la educación para adultos aprendices de inglés, promueven el progreso profesional y apoyan a los estudiantes a identificar y trabajar para alcanzar sus metas personales. Sin embargo, en este contexto educativo es de suma importancia reconocer el conocimiento arraigado en la experiencia vivida que los estudiantes traen al …

Digital Lover: Insecure Attachment Styles And Romantic Parasocial Relationship Among Chinese Female Otome Game Playersdigital Lover: Insecure Attachement Styles And Romantic Parasocial Relationship Among Chinese Female Otome Game Players, Weifan (Kyrie) Zhang M.S.

Selected Full Text Dissertations, 2011-

The existing literature has explored the relationship between insecure attachment styles and parasocial relationships, particularly focusing on traditional media such as television. However, it has largely overlooked the novel form of media represented by contemporary Chinese otome games, which offer an idealized digital environment potentially more appealing to players with insecure attachment styles. Moreover, previous studies have not sufficiently differentiated between general parasocial interactions and the specific nuances of parasocial romantic relationships unique to romantic video games (RVGs). This study seeks to bridge these gaps by examining the psychological underpinnings of Chinese female players' engagement with female-oriented romantic video games. …

Selling Ideals: Sexualization In Teen Girl Magazines, 2007-2017, Megan Coogan

Honors Theses - Providence Campus

Magazines are made to sell more than just a product; they sell lifestyles and ideals. Teen girl magazines target adolescents starting as young as twelve years old, but is the content in its pages appropriate and identifiable for that demographic? This study investigated how levels of perceived sexualization changed between 2007, 2012, and 2017, in Seventeen and Teen Vogue magazines. A decrease in perceived sexualization was expected across the ten-year period of time. This window of time reflects the last ten years of publication for both magazines. Research was conducted by creating and utilizing a grading system for non-explicit sexualized …

The Lived Experience Of Intimate Partner Violence For Females In Emerging Adulthood: A Qualitative Study, Laurel Dobkin M.S.

Selected Full Text Dissertations, 2011-

Emerging adulthood is the developmental period between ages 18 to 25 where individuals begin to explore their worldviews and develop intimate relationships. This period is important for developing a sense of identity and self (Arnett, 2000, 2014). During this period, negative events or relationships, such as intimate partner violence (IPV), may have detrimental effects (Erikson, 1968; Barreto & Frazier, 2012). While literature suggests that IPV has high rates and negative consequences in emerging adulthood (Bhattacharjee & Gopal, 2022; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2024; Shen & Kusunoki, 2019), there is little research on the subjective experience of females …

A Comparative Analysis Of Supervised Machine Learning Techniques For Predicting It Incident Resolution Time, Ammad Hussain, Hussnain Yaqoob

ICT

IT support teams are facing the persistent challenge in estimating how long an incident will take to resolve. The lack of reliable predictions, planning decisions around staffing, escalation and user communication are largely guesswork. This project set out to address that gap by building a machine learning solution capable of predicting incident resolution time from details available at the point a ticket is logged.

Using the UCI IT Incident Event Log dataset, which contains 141,712 records from a real service management system, the project followed the CRISP-DM framework across six phases from business understanding through to deployment. After thorough data …

A Comprehensive Study Of Sarima And Xgboost Models For Short-Term Traffic Volume Forecasting At A Melbourne Intersection (Victoria), Australia, Douglas Vinicius Dierings, Felipe Fontanive Marques

ICT

Traffic congestion is an increasing challenge in modern cities, impacting transportation efficiency and urban sustainability. This project focuses on short-term traffic volume forecasting, using 15-minute Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS) data collected from the State of Victoria, Australia. The study compares two forecasting approaches: SARIMA, a statistical time-series model, and XGBoost, a decision-tree machine-learning model. Historical traffic data from 2022 to 2024 was analysed to identify traffic patterns, seasonal trends, and peak traffic periods. The models were evaluated for their effectiveness in handling urban traffic behaviour. The results of this study aim to support smarter traffic management, infrastructure planning, …

Identifying New Programme Development Viability, Grant Goodwin

ICT

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) face the challenge of developing programmes that respond to changing labour market needs while providing graduates with relevant employment opportunities and ensuring institutional financial viability. Rapid technological and economic changes make it increasingly important for HEIs to use reliable data to identify emerging skills and workforce demands. This project explores the use of machine learning and nationally collected employment data to support evidence-based decision-making in higher education programme development. By analysing patterns and relationships within labour market data, machine learning models can help identify areas of growing demand and provide insights into the potential alignment between …

Seasonal Dublin Airport Passenger Arrivals Forecast For The Economy Sector Of Dublin Airport, Roberto Tavares De Oliveira Neto

ICT

Dublin Airport plays a significant role in Ireland’s tourism and commercial sectors, with passenger demand directly influencing retail, hospitality, car rental and other airport-related businesses. Accurate forecasting of passenger numbers can support these sectors in planning marketing activities, managing stock levels and making evidence-based operational decisions. This project develops a monthly forecasting framework for passenger arrivals at Dublin Airport using data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). Building on previous exploratory data analysis, the study evaluates five time series forecasting approaches: ARIMA, SARIMA, Holt-Winters Triple Exponential Smoothing, TBATS, and an automated model comparison pipeline using PyCaret. The models are assessed …

Machine Learning For Early Obesity Risk Prediction, Giuseppe Cutugno

ICT

Obesity is a major global public health concern, with significant implications for individual health, healthcare systems, and wider economic outcomes. Early identification of obesity risk can support preventive strategies and encourage healthier lifestyle choices before health conditions become more severe. This project develops a machine learning framework for estimating obesity levels using data relating to individuals’ physical characteristics, eating habits, lifestyle behaviours, and demographic factors. Following the CRISP-DM framework, the project examines the structure and limitations of the dataset, including its mixture of objective measurements, survey-based variables, and synthetically generated observations. Two modelling approaches are considered, one including BMI as …

Predicting The Next Recession With Machine Learning, David Heffernan

ICT

Economic recessions can have significant consequences for businesses, households, financial markets, and policymakers, creating a need for improved understanding of the factors associated with economic downturns. This project analyses historical US economic and financial data to examine patterns associated with previous recessionary periods and assess whether machine learning can be used to identify recession risk. The study uses a two-tier analytical approach, combining a macroeconomic dataset covering 1960 to the present with a more detailed dataset from 1987 onwards that incorporates financial markets, house prices, and consumer confidence. Building on previous exploratory analysis, the project develops and evaluates three machine …

The Impact Of Strategic Planning On Teachers' Perceptions Of Their Practice: A Mixed-Methods Study, Vivian Robert

Selected Full Text Dissertations, 2011-

Strategic planning is a vital endeavor for school districts across New York State. Often, however, significant human and financial capital is invested in these processes without investigating their impact beyond immediate student outcomes. While student success is the ultimate priority, little attention has been paid to the effect strategic planning has on the practitioners charged with implementing it, specifically teachers. This phenomenological mixed-method case study investigates how strategic planning influences teachers’ perceptions of their practice and identifies how districts can better engage educators to ensure the successful realization of district goals. In this study, district leaders participated in semi-structured interviews, …

Characterizing Cyber Intrusions In Critical Infrastructure Networks Using Discrete-Event Simulation, Lawrence M. Dilworth

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Over the past two decades, cybersecurity compliance frameworks such as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) have introduced prescriptive measures for protecting power system networks, emphasizing restricted access, segmentation, and minimizing routable exposure. While effective for baseline cyber hygiene, these approaches do not capture system-level risks or adversarial propagation across interconnected infrastructure. In contrast, Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE), advanced by Idaho National Laboratory, embeds security in system design by considering threat vectors and physical constraints.

Despite CIP guidance, many deployments rely on IP-routable, bidirectional communication that enables handshaking, allowing adversaries to infer reachable targets. This work presents …

Development Of Stronger, More Extrudable 6xxx Series Alloys For Automotive Applications, Eli A. Harma

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

6xxx alloys are widely used in automotive extrusion structures for their high specific strength and formability. Advanced designs require greater formability and strength, creating an opportunity for high-strength, formable alloys. The 6xxx series forms β”-Mg₅Si₆ precipitates during age hardening and develops a fibrous microstructure during extrusion, both strengthening the alloy. Increasing Mg and Si to form more β” decreases formability. Thus, modifying texture can increase strength without reducing formability. Current alloys like 6005A add Mn and Cr to form dispersoids that inhibit recrystallization and promote strengthening textures; however, high Mn and Cr concentrations reduce formability. Replacing Mn …

Aqueous Iron Electrowinning: From Electrolyte Engineering To The Unexplored Potential Of Acetate Systems, Chodwell N. Verenga

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Iron electrowinning and electrodeposition sit at the intersection of classical metallurgy and developing sustainable manufacturing. With the iron and steel industry responsible for 7 - 9% of global CO₂ emissions, low-temperature electrochemical pathways for iron production have garnered significant research interest. This review examines the fundamental electrochemical principles governing iron deposition, the thermodynamic constraints imposed by the iron-water system, and the kinetic challenges posed by the parasitic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The three key electrolyte systems are objectively evaluated: acidic sulfate and chloride electrolytes, alkaline suspension electrolytes and water-in-salt electrolytes. Their operating parameters, faradaic efficiencies, energy consumption and deposit characteristics …

Designing With Foresight: Premortem And Human-Centered Evaluation Of Emerging Technologies, Anusha Kannan

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in safety-critical systems, including transportation, where people must make fast decisions under uncertainty and high risk. As AI takes on a larger role in supporting human judgment, researchers and designers must evaluate more than just its technical performance, they must ask whether people can understand the system and use it effectively in high-risk settings.

This dissertation presents two distinct evaluation methodologies. First, the Human-Centered Evaluation, examines how intelligent in-vehicle alert systems influence driver decision behavior across two experiments. In Experiment 1 (n=24) and Experiment 2 (n=26), participants completed a driving simulator study in which our …

Reconciling Discretion With The Rule Of Law: A Rawlsian Analysis Of Civil Disobedience By State Actors In Liberal-Democratic Schemes, Reid Devoge

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation starts from the position that the stability of liberal-democratic political schemes relies on its citizens mutually accepting a basic conception of political justice. While these conceptions of justice may vary, most incorporate the inter-connected concepts of autonomy, liberty, liberalism, and the rule of law. Within this conception of a liberal democracy, a potentially destabilizing issue arises when a legislatively passed law is put into effect, but a portion of the citizens perceive it as unjust. If legitimate (i.e., lawful) actions do not sufficiently resolve the concern, civil disobedience (i.e., disobeying the law) is a potential recourse, but this …

Digital Technology And Women’S Health In Nigeria: A Feminist Sts Walkthrough Analysis Of Mdoc Digital Health, Edith Michael Ogbodo

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This thesis critically examines how a Nigerian digital health platform, mDoc, represents and constructs women’s health. Drawing on Feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Light et al.’s (2018) walkthrough method, the study interrogates the values, assumptions, and power relations embedded in mDoc’s design, language, and governance structures. The analysis reveals that mDoc, despite positioning itself as an equitable solution to Nigeria’s health crisis, reproduces and depoliticizes the structural inequalities it claims to address. Through its neoliberal emphasis on self-care, the individualization of structurally produced suffering, and the datafication of women’s bodies, the platform encodes gendered, colonial, and class-based assumptions …

Fluctuation Of Organochlorine Concentrations In Bull Sharks At Different Life Stages, Mackenzie R. Phillips

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

For Carcharhinid species such as the bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas), the maternal offloading of nutrients is essential for pup development and growth, however, significant amounts of OCs are also transferred. As a top predator in aquatic food webs, bull sharks can potentially bioaccumulate high concentrations of pollutants such as dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) that biomagnify through aquatic food webs. These pollutants are also hydrophobic and fat soluble and therefore pose toxicity risks to developing young bull sharks. In this study, liver tissues collected from juvenile bull sharks inhabiting Florida’s coastal waters were analyzed for a suite of organochlorine pesticides (OCs) …

Machine Learning And Multi-Scale Optimization For Control And Energy Management In Connected And Automated Vehicle Propulsion Systems, Joshua D. Orlando

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation presents a multi-scale optimization framework leveraging machine learning (ML) to enhance energy efficiency in connected and automated vehicle (CAV) propulsion systems. As transportation transitions toward hybridization and automation, the integration of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity and advanced control algorithms offers unprecedented opportunities for energy reduction. This research addresses three critical scales of vehicle energy management: multiple vehicle-level coordination, component-level powertrain dynamics, and real-time vehicle parameter estimation.

First, the research investigates the energy consumption characteristics of heterogeneous propulsion systems—ranging from internal combustion engines to battery electric vehicles across light- and heavy-duty sectors—on arterial roadways. Utilizing Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and …

Reading Between The Lines: Protected, But Not From Interpretation, Hooriya Habib

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In the realm of television, audiences are interactive viewers who decode meaning based on their lived experiences. Given that each culture has its own set of cultural codes it uses as a lens to navigate life, meanings do not remain constant. This cultural media study breaks down three advertisements to study the effectiveness of these advertisements in relation to religious and cultural codes. Using Stuart Hall’s (1980) encoding/decoding model, an oppositional reading was employed to understand the disconnect that may be caused between an audience of rural Pakistani women and the producers. Objects of focus were nonverbal codes such as …

Open Source Tools For Ecological Research, Alex P. Riebe

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This thesis presents the development of an open source wireless sensor network for hibernacula manipulation with an emphasis on accessibility and reproducibility. It addresses the design of the electrical hardware, guidance on antennas and RF implementation, and design of an application-specific communication protocol, all with the explicit goal of enabling ecologists and other conservationists to be able to manufacture, deploy, operate, and maintain the system for their research. The resulting sensor network designed in this thesis is to control the temperature inside bat hibernacula during the winter to study the relationship between temperature and bat mortality rate due to White …

Design And Experimental Evaluation Of A Custom Vision-Guided Approach To 2d Part Localization For Industrial Robots, Faisal Ali

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Vision-guided robots offer a clear advantage over teach-pendant programming for battery handling, where modern packs hold thousands of cells and teaching each position by hand does not scale. Commercial vision systems address this need, but their calibration, detection, and coordinate-conversion stages are closed to the user, making it hard to incorporate newer learning-based methods. This work presents a modular, custom-built vision-guided system using an Orbbec Gemini 435Le eye-in-hand camera, an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano, an Allen-Bradley Micro850 PLC, and a FANUC LR Mate 200iC, communicating over Modbus TCP and EtherNet/IP. A per-hole classification model resolves each known hole into a …

Public Perception Of Environmental Contamination And Its Implications For Fish And Community Health In West Bengal, India, Libia Hazra

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In West Bengal, India, the highest fish-consuming state in the country, fish are woven into everyday life, including ceremonies of birth and marriage, prayers offered during harvesting and the cultural memory of communities whose identities are inseparable from aquatic life. However, the rivers, wetlands, and ponds that sustain these fish-human relationships are increasingly threatened by environmental contamination resulting from industrial discharge, agricultural runoff, and inadequate environmental management. Understanding how communities perceive these environmental changes is essential for developing effective conservation and public health strategies.

In collaboration between the Indian Institute of Technology (ITT) Kharagpur, India, and Michigan Technological University (USA), …

Design And Validation Of A Low-Cost Wearable Electromyography (Emg) System For Monitoring Exercise-Induced Changes In Muscle Activity, Ingrid E. Halverson

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Wearable technologies have expanded opportunities for monitoring athletic performance, but many existing systems remain costly and confined to laboratory or medical settings. This thesis presents the design, development, and evaluation of a low-cost, wearable EMG platform for monitoring neuromuscular activity during exercise. A wireless device incorporating a surface EMG sensor, an ESP32 microcontroller, and Wi-Fi transmission was developed to acquire muscle activation data. Signal processing techniques, including filtering, root-mean-square (RMS), mean frequency (MNF), and median frequency (MDF) analyses, were used to evaluate changes in muscle activation. Experimental testing demonstrated reliable wireless data acquisition and successful capture of physiological changes before …

Bayesian Analysis Of Nominal Outcomes With Missing Values Using Multinomial And Multivariate Multinomial Probit Models, Suwash Silwal

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Nominal outcomes frequently arise in health sciences, transportation, economics, market research, and related fields. These data often contain missing values, while longitudinal and panel studies generate multiple correlated nominal responses. Bayesian estimation of multinomial probit (MNP) and multivariate multinomial probit (MMNP) models provides a flexible framework for analyzing such data but remains computationally challenging due to high-dimensional likelihood integration, restrictive covariance identification constraints, and poor mixing of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, particularly in the presence of missing data. This dissertation develops parameter-expanded data augmentation (PX-DA) methods for MNP and MMNP models with missing nominal outcomes by incorporating parameter …

Physicochemical Characterization Of Small Extracellular Vesicles: Effects Of Immobilization, Isolation, And Disease State, Bianca M. Mercado Velez

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Cancer treatments and survival outcomes have improved significantly in the last couple of decades, with survival rates increasing in the U.S. Despite improvements in treatment outcomes, early detection and treatment are crucial for improving cancer prognosis and survival rates. The standard cancer diagnostic procedure of tissue biopsy is highly invasive, leading to the further spread of cancer in some cases. Alternatively, the extraction of biofluids from cancer patients, also called a liquid biopsy, is increasingly popular because it is less invasive and more representative of the tumor microenvironment, which contains cancer cells, tumor genetic material, and extracellular vesicles, including small …

High-Performance Circuit Manufacturing And Testing Exercises, Benjamin S. Keppers

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

An advanced demonstrator Printed Circuit Board (PCB) has been designed and implemented providing a framework for advancing students’ knowledge in hands-on PCB design and manufacturing process through industry recognized test coupons, stack ups, and transmission lines. Students are guided through several key aspects of design and simulation relating to manufacturing and qualifications. Manufacturing allows students to refine process development and analyze performance data with respect to qualification tests specified by Global Electronics Association standards. Results are then used to build a stackup model, and complete a design activity for calculating expected test results for a series of controlled impedance electrical …