Digital Commons Network^™

Autistic Students' Experiences With Hybrid Flexible Instruction In Higher Education: An Interpretive Phenomenological Study, Tracey Nicole Barr

STEMPS Theses & Dissertations

During the twenty-first century, autistic learners have enrolled in colleges and universities in greater numbers; however, the majority of research focused on their experiences in higher education has found them to be less academically successful than their neurotypical peers. The academic skills that autistic students bring to higher education are often tempered by social, emotional, and self-regulative challenges. The body of research focusing on autistic learners’ experiences in higher education is currently limited and focused primarily on fully in-person and online course models. No extant research has focused on autistic students’ experiences with hybrid or blended course models.

This interpretive …

Inbox Impressions: Exploring Trans-Situational Networked Ecology’S Influence On Student-Instructor Emails In Academic Communities Of Practice, Suzanne M. Gut

English Theses & Dissertations

Ineffective email communication has been a topic of debate, it seems, for as long as email has been a mainstream communication tool. This study, situated in linguistics, is one more part of that conversation and aims to address how instructors and students are using email in academic settings, what genre conventions they employ, and what expectations of and attitudes towards email and email users influence email communication. Discourse analysis and thematic analysis were used to identify emergent patterns in the data from 20 authentic emails and six student/faculty focus groups. This study draws from Pokharel’s theory of trans-situational networked ecology …

Praise That Empowers: Training Preschool Teachers To Linguistically Adapt Behavior-Specific Praise For Hispanic Students, Claudia Abril Ochoa

Dissertations

Children’s engagement in early ages is critical for promoting behavioral, academic, and social-emotional outcomes. However, engagement in classroom activities may be difficult for young children who have not mastered the primary language used in early childhood education settings (i.e., English). Research regarding engagement in English Language Learners (ELLs) in preschool settings, as well as cultural and/or linguistic adaptations of classroom interventions to serve this population is limited. Behavior-specific praise (BSP) has been an effective strategy to improve behavior in preschool classrooms. The current study used a multiple-baseline design across three Head-Start teachers to test the efficacy of in situ training …

A Trombone Studio Teacher's Guide To Non-Injury-Related Embouchure Changes, Austin A. Handley

Dissertations

This dissertation is a pedagogical guide for trombone studio teachers who will lead students through embouchure changes. These changes and adjustments are normal in brass pedagogy, but there is limited literature that addresses how teachers should identify the need for change, initiate the process, and support students through it. There are a growing number of resources available about embouchure injury and dysfunction, rehabilitation, and long-term prevention. This leaves a gap for teachers who are trying to help students using an inefficient embouchure setup.

The purpose of this study is to provide a practical resource for teachers by examining the experiences …

Key Success Factors In Aviation–Start-Up Collaboration: A Framework For Innovation And Value Creation, Bruno Pereira, Gui Lohmann, Luke Houghton, Adela Mcmurray, Mauro Caetano

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This study addresses how the aviation sector can create value by fostering innovation in collaboration with start-ups. A novel ‘Key-Success Factors in Aviation-Start-up Collaboration Framework’ is proposed to explain the innovation process, identify key success factors, and generate valuable insights into the aviation sector and start-up partnerships. Drawing on 31 of 80 consolidated key success factors selected from the literature and validated through ten interviews with managers of aviation innovation programs and start-up founders, the proposed framework is structured into three dimensions: (i) antecedents, (ii) governance, support, and development, and (iii) innovation and value creation, and 13 related categories. The …

Yorga Moorditj Koort: Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Women’S Perspectives About Heart Health On Noongar Boodjar, Elia Bidgood, Cathy Garlett, Richard Chenhall, Amie Bingham, Francine Eades, Emily Banks, Melinda J. Carrington, Grace Joshy, Sandra Eades, Tabassum Rahman

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

In Australia, despite overall declines in cardiovascular disease (CVD)-related mortality, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women develop heart disease earlier and experience more than twice the rate of related morbidity and mortality compared with non-Indigenous women. This study explores Aboriginal women’s understandings of the factors that shape their heart health and lived experiences of CVD. We spoke with 28 Aboriginal women aged ≥18 years—15 semistructured interviews and two yarning circles with an additional 13 Aboriginal women—with/without pre-existing CVD, and 10 healthcare professionals (HCPs) working with Aboriginal communities in the Perth metropolitan region, between May 2024 and April 2025. Data were …

Ephemeral To Empowered? International Comparison Of Women’S Participation In Web Series Production, 2012–2019, Nicola Evans, Marion Mccutcheon, Emilia King, Joel Bassaget, Steinar Ellingsen

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Women are significantly underrepresented in above-the-line roles in film and television, but anecdotal evidence suggests they are gravitating to web series. To explore this, the authors built the largest known international archive of web series released during 2012–2019 and analysed women’s participation. In the top five web series producing countries in the West, women achieved or approached parity with men in producing, directing and writing, but not cinematography. Do achievements in low-budget, transitory media count for anything? Drawing on ephemeral media scholarship, we discuss the potential of such forms to disturb entrenched patterns of gender discrimination in screen industries worldwide.

Gut Microbiome Changes In Preclinical Alzheimer’S Disease, D. M. Sithara Dissanayaka, Stephanie R. Rainey-Smith, Hamid R. Sohrabi, Thilini N. Jayasinghe, Vincent Ho, Vijay Jayasena, Kevin Taddei, Colin L. Masters, Ralph N. Martins, W. M.A.D.Binosha Fernando

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that develops many years before clinical symptoms appear. The biological changes involved in the earliest stages remain poorly understood, particularly during the preclinical stage. Our previous work has identified gradual gut microbial and metabolic changes during this stage, suggesting these may represent early biological shifts that precede disease progression. Recent studies suggest that the gut microbiome may contribute to early AD processes through its effects on immune regulation, metabolism, and gut–brain communication. Changes in gut microbial composition, including reduced levels of short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-producing bacteria, such as Faecalibacterium, Roseburia, and Eubacterium, …

A Finite Element Model To Analyze Crack-Tip Fields In A Transversely Isotropic Strain-Limiting Elastic Solid, Saugata Ghosh, Dambaru Bhatta, S. M. Mallikarjunaiah

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

This paper presents a finite element model for the analysis of crack-tip fields in a transversely isotropic strain-limiting elastic body. A nonlinear constitutive relationship between stress and linearized strain characterizes the material response. This algebraically nonlinear relationship is critical as it mitigates the physically inconsistent strain singularities that arise at crack tips. These strain-limiting relationships ensure that strains remain bounded near the crack tip, representing a significant advancement in the formulation of boundary value problems (BVPs) within the context of first-order approximate constitutive models. For a transversely isotropic elastic material containing a crack, the equilibrium equation, derived from the balance …

Engagement Of Understudied Populations As Community Change: The South Texas Adrc Model, Gladys E. Maestre, Neela K. Patel, Rosa V. Pirela, Robin C. Hilsabeck, Kendra Stine, Neyra García, Roberto Reyes, Omar Oropeza, Cristian Maestre, Jesus D. Melgarejo, Sarah Williams-Blangero, Ney Alliey Rodriguez

School of Medicine Publications

Many populations experiencing the highest burdens of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias remain understudied, in part because traditional recruitment and retention models are insufficient to support sustained engagement. The Outreach, Recruitment, and Engagement Core (OREC) of the South Texas Alzheimer's Disease Research Center reconceptualized participant recruitment as a long-term system change in a Hispanic-majority, urban–rural region. OREC institutionalizes shared power through community advisory governance, aligns research protocols with local lived realities (through patient navigators, community health workers/promotores, and decentralized access points), and employs a data-driven feedback loop for continuous improvement. In 1 year, 46 outreach events touched 10,134 individuals (71% …

A Review Of Blue Carbon Credit Projects' Socio-Economic Activities, Nata Tavonvunchai, Holly J. Niner, Abigail Mcquatters-Gollop, Siân E. Rees

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Coastal ‘blue carbon’ ecosystems (mangroves, seagrasses and saltmarshes) are critical for climate regulation and biodiversity, yet significant funding gaps persist in marine conservation. While blue carbon credits are increasingly used to bridge these gaps, concerns remain regarding their efficacy in delivering socio-economic benefits. Based on lessons from terrestrial carbon markets, failing to prioritise local community needs can lead to inequitable outcomes and externally mandated constraints, which undermine the legitimacy of nature-based solutions. This research seeks to add to the centralised understanding of the social dimension of blue carbon by delivering a comprehensive review of 77 publicly listed projects from global …

Genwriter 2.0: A Hybrid Case-Based And Llm Rewriting Approach For Mitigating Implicit Gender Cues In Text, Shweta Soundararajan, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

Gendered language is the use of words or phrases that indicate an individual's gender. Although useful in some contexts, gendered language can reinforce gender stereotypes and introduce bias, particularly in machine learning models for tasks involving people such as recruitment or occupation classification. When textual content about individuals, such as biographies, contain gender cues, models can learn spurious associations between gender and other characteristics of individuals, such as profession, potentially resulting in unfair outcomes such as reduced hiring opportunities for women.

To address this challenge, we propose GenWriter 2.0, a hybrid approach that integrates Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) with Large …

Efficient Test-Time Retrieval Augmented Generation, Hailong Yin, Bin Zhu, Jingjing Chen, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Although Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate significant capabilities, their reliance on parametric knowledge often leads to inaccuracies. Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) mitigates this by incorporating external knowledge, but these methods may introduce irrelevant retrieved documents, leading to inaccurate responses. While the integration methods filter out incorrect answers from multiple responses, but lack external knowledge like RAG methods, and their high costs require balancing overhead with performance gains. To address these issues, we propose an Efficient Test-Time Retrieval-Augmented Generation Framework named ET2RAG to improve the performance of LLMs while maintaining efficiency. Specifically, ET2RAG is a training-free method, that first retrieves the …

The Stories Of College Faculty Navigating Student Trauma Disclosures: A Narrative Inquiry, Samantha Daluz

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to understand how faculty who navigate student trauma disclosures construct stories about themselves as educators and how those stories shape their understanding of teaching and learning. Although the literature has increasingly focused on trauma-informed approaches to teaching and learning, little research has explored how faculty navigate student trauma disclosures or how those experiences shape their understanding of teaching and learning. This study sought to better understand those experiences and provide institutional leaders with insight into how faculty experience student trauma disclosures within higher education. Narrative inquiry was employed using Mahayana Buddhism as the …

Greenhouse Gas Flux Response In Biochar- And Compost-Amended Lawn Soils Under Simulated Water Saturation Conditions, Angel Salinas, Chu-Lin Cheng, Engil Pereira, Rafael M. Almeida, James Jihoon Kang

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Understanding greenhouse gas emission dynamics in lawn soils is important for improving climate change mitigation strategies in urban and suburban landscapes. In this greenhouse mesocosm study, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) fluxes were measured from 12 turfgrass soil columns arranged in an unreplicated, completely randomized 4 × 3 factorial design. Four amendment treatments (biochar, compost, bio-com [1:1 volume ratio of biochar and compost], and unamended control) were combined with three water-table conditions (full saturation, half saturation, and unsaturated), with a single column representing each treatment combination. Columns were irrigated at 1 cm day−1 for 24 days, …

From Algorithm To Alarm: A Narrative Review On Insulin Delivery Innovation, Noor Ul Asaleem, Faraz Arshad, Maria Qadri, Muhammad Saqlain Mushtaq, Mishaim Khan, Pakeeza Shakoor, Tirath Patel, Anaya Noor, Nikhilesh Anand

School of Medicine Publications

Background and objective: The global rise in the incidence of diabetes mellitus necessitates innovative management strategies to mitigate the severity of the disease. The mainstay of diabetes treatment is still insulin therapy, although there are drawbacks, such as the need to maintain ideal glycemic control while lowering the risk of hypoglycemia and user fatigue. The development, clinical usefulness, and constraints of insulin delivery systems are examined in this narrative review, with particular attention to sensor-augmented and closed-loop technologies.

Methods: A thorough electronic database search was conducted to obtain pertinent data on major insulin delivery devices, including sensor-augmented and closed-loop systems. …

Closer Than They Appear: Parasocial Relationships, Social Processes, And Emotional Intimacy, Paige Bedore

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Decades of research have attempted to clarify the mechanisms underlying parasocial relationships, or one-sided relationships. Yet, relatively little empirical attention has been given to the subjective experiences of intimacy that occur in these relationships or to making direct comparisons between social and parasocial relational processes within individuals. The present study aimed to address these gaps and to investigate whether selected variables associated with social relationships similarly predicted parasocial relationship strength. Adult participants identified both a meaningful social relationship target and a parasocial target before completing measures of relationship strength, intimacy, attachment style, and cumulative exposure for each relationship type. Hypotheses …

Intentional Investment In Adolescent Girls In The Digital Space In West And Central Africa, Mame Soukeye Mbaye, Sarah Engebretsen, Maty Dia, Karen Austrian

Adolescents and Young People

The Girls’ Futures in Focus: Evidence from West and Central Africa series examines the challenges facing adolescent girls in the region and highlights evidence-informed approaches to improving their lives. This brief summarizes the evidence on which adolescent girls are most excluded from the digital space in West and Central Africa (WCA), drawing on evidence from the GIRL Center’s priority countries. It identifies digital approaches that may be relevant for adolescent girls in the West and Central African context, while recognizing that rigorous evidence remains limited, especially in francophone and fragile settings.

Changement Climatique Et Adolescentes En Afrique De L’Ouest Et Du Centre : Vers Une Réponse Centrée Sur Les Filles, Mame Soukeye Mbaye, Sarah Engebretsen, Maty Dia, Karen Austrian

Adolescents and Young People

La série « L’avenir des filles en point de mire : données probantes d’Afrique de l’Ouest et du Centre » examine les défis auxquels font face les adolescentes de la région et met en lumière des approches éclairées par les données probantes pour améliorer leurs conditions de vie. Cette note de recherche synthétise les données probantes sur la manière dont les chocs climatiques bouleversent la vie des adolescentes en Afrique de l’Ouest et du Centre (AOC), en s’appuyant notamment sur les données issues des pays prioritaires du GIRL Center. Elle examine les vulnérabilités climatiques liées au genre, les lacunes des …

Climate Change And Adolescent Girls In West And Central Africa: Building A Girl-Intentional Response, Mame Soukeye Mbaye, Sarah Engebretsen, Maty Dia, Karen Austrian

Adolescents and Young People

The Girls’ Futures in Focus: Evidence from West and Central Africa series examines the challenges facing adolescent girls in the region and highlights evidence-informed approaches to improving their lives. This brief summarizes the evidence on how climate shocks reshape the lives of adolescent girls in West and Central Africa, drawing in particular on evidence from the GIRL Center’s priority countries. It examines gendered climate vulnerabilities, gaps in climate policies that overlook girls, and emerging adaptation strategies that hold promise for girls in the region. The brief points to what a girl-intentional climate response could look like across the priority countries.

Parent Emotion Socialization And The Influence On Child Emotion Regulation In A Clinical Sample, Crystal Tracy

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to contribute to existing literature by examining parent emotion socialization (i.e., parent orientation to child emotion) and its influence on child internalizing symptoms. Prior research suggests that parent emotion socialization impacts child emotion regulation and internalizing symptoms; however, there is little research at present focused specifically on the influence of parent orientation to child emotion on child internalizing symptoms through child emotion dysregulation. This study adds to the literature by considering the association between parent orientation to child emotion and internalizing symptoms in a sample of children referred for an ADHD evaluation. Participants included 161 children ages …

The Joint Effect Of Bilingualism And Sleep On Executive Functions Among Children And Adolescents With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (Adhd), Yirou Jiang

Doctoral Dissertations

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that significantly impacts cognitive and behavioral functions, leading challenges for individuals across the lifespan. While extensive research has been conducted to understand the connection between executive functioning (EF) and ADHD, research findings related to the contributing factors of bilingualism and sleep still remains inconsistent (Bialystok et al., 2017). Investigating the joint effect between bilingualism and sleep on EF among children and adolescents with ADHD may help further clarify the connection between EF, language, and sleep, and facilitate the development of interventions from the perspective of these protective factors. EF encompasses cognitive processes …

Design And Verification Of A Reconfigurable Cryptographic Hardware Accelerator, Nicholas Merante

Theses

Cryptographic operations are used throughout computing systems to protect data confidentiality and integrity. Although software implementations provide flexibility, dedicated hardware can offer more predictable execution time and reduce the processing burden placed on a general-purpose processor. This thesis presents the design and verification of a Reconfigurable Cryptographic Hardware Accelerator (RCHA) that integrates AES-128, ChaCha20, SHA-256, and BLAKE2s within a single Verilog/SystemVerilog design. A top-level interface shared by the four cores manages algorithm selection, inputs, outputs, status, protocol errors, cycle measurement, and known-answer self-tests. Verification combined primitive-level tests, integrated UVM regressions, randomized stimulus, directed coverage tests, and OpenSSL-based C++ reference models …

Capital Cities: The Intersection Of Power And Protest Urban Planning And Civic Design In Brasília And Washington, D.C., Noah Benjamin Gill

Theses

The physical environments of capital cities play a critical role in shaping how citizens interact with governmental power, particularly during moments of political unrest, protest, and democratic conflict. As both symbolic representations of national identity and functional centers of government, these urban landscapes influence how citizens approach, occupy, and confront civic institutions through their planning, architectural form, circulation networks, and spatial organization. Government buildings, public plazas, monumental landscapes, and civic axes do more than provide settings for political activity; they actively shape patterns of movement, visibility, accessibility, and control. The design of these spaces influences not only how democratic institutions …

Asynchronous Methods For Reducing Dynamic Power In Sparse Systems, Braley Lachner

Theses

While a strong history of computer development has maximized architecture performance, modern computing is fundamentally constrained by thermal limits and power consumption. This is especially true in power sensitive edge applications, which often have low activity. Asynchronous architectures offer a pathway to take advantage of sparsity within hardware to drastically reduce dynamic power through fine-grain selective activation of only necessary hardware. Despite these advantages, the semiconductor industry relies heavily on Electronic Design Automation (EDA) toolchains, which have been developed with many synchronous assumptions. The traditional overhead and strict incompatibility with standard EDA toolchains have limited adoption of asynchronous technologies in …

Design Of A Continuum Robot Test Bed Utilizing Model-Free Sliding Mode Control, Joseph Paul Streib

Theses

Continuum robots are a class of continually deformable robots inspired by snakes and tentacles that are commonly used in medical, search and rescue, and exploration applications. The robots are highly nonlinear and difficult to accurately model and control. Precise control of the pose of a continuum robot is typically reliant upon a system model. This work introduces a novel model free control algorithm for continuum robots that only relies upon the robot’s position in task space. The derived controller is built upon the foundation of a preexisting model free sliding mode controller and the q-state parameterized piecewise constant curvature kinematic …

Uvm Verification Of A 4-Stage Asynchronous Risc-V Processor, Yashaswini Suresha

Theses

Functional verification often takes more effort than designing the system itself, especially when the design departs from the synchronous, globally clocked style that verification tools assume. Asynchronous or clockless circuits are an example of this. They use local request and acknowledge handshaking instead of a global clock, which reduces dynamic power and eliminates clock-distribution and skew problems. However, this also means that standard verification methods that rely on a single periodic clock no longer apply. This thesis introduces a constrained-random, coverage-driven verification environment for a four-stage asynchronous RISC-V processor. The environment is built in SystemVerilog using the Universal Verification Methodology …

Passive House Envelope Retrofit For Heritage Buildings In Hot Semi-Arid Climates: A Shoebox Energy Simulation Study Of The Former British Residency (Osmania University College For Women), Hyderabad, India, Hasini Kadaru

Theses

This study assesses interior-oriented envelope retrofits based on Passive House principles, applied to the British Residency of Hyderabad, now called Telangana Mahila Viswa Vidyalayam since 2022, and to Osmania University College for Women (OUCW) for the prior 70 years. This Grade 1-listed building was constructed in several phases starting in the 1790s, then remodeled and extended under Resident James Achilles Kirkpatrick from 1798 to 1805 and completed around 1808. It served as the Residency until 1947, when it was handed over to Osmania University.    Due to the conservation approach applied to the site, which does not allow any external changes, …

A Best-Practice And Risk-Assessment Framework For Auditable Ai Integration In Uae Government Socs, Nasser Hassan Nasser Abdulrazaq Alrazooqi

Theses

The growing use of artificial intelligence and generative AI in security operations centres  have the ability to improve alert triage, investigation, threat-intelligence enrichment,  and incident response. It also introduces governance risks including explainability, data  leakage, prompt injection, model lifecycle management, human oversight, and the  traceability of AI-assisted decisions. This study has developed a best-practice and risk assessment framework for the auditable integration of AI in UAE’s governmental SOCs.  The research follows a qualitative and practitioner-informed documentary analysis.  Publicly available UAE cybersecurity policies, internationally recognised NIST and  ISO/IEC standards, academic literature, industry guidance and compliance  publications were reviewed. Moreover, they were …

Puzzles & Frames: Exploring Motion Graphics In Thriller Movie Poster Design, Xingyu Xiao

Theses

This thesis explores how motion graphics can expand the role of traditional movie posters and create more engaging visual communication experiences. The project began with an observation that static posters displayed in busy campus environments can easily be overlooked. This led to the central question of how motion graphics can make traditional movie posters more visually engaging and effective in campus environments. To investigate this question, I developed a series of dynamic thriller movie posters that combine traditional graphic design elements—including typography, composition, imagery, abstraction, and visual hierarchy—with motion. The design process developed through several stages of experimentation. Early studies …