Digital Commons Network^™

A Study Of Visualized Diagnostics In Early Stage Digital Twin Implementation Of An Industrial Control System, Michael R. Kinzel

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are used for process control in almost all industries. An ICS combines Operational Technologies (OT) with Information Technologies (IT) to allow human supervision of a process through surveillance of process variables and manipulation of controlling elements such as valves to maintain stable process conditions. ICSs have been in-service for several decades and may remain operational past their technological service life. Organizational personnel interact with the ICS through visual displays that both indicate the process variables and also the controlling elements. The Human Machine Interface (HMI) allows visibility of the process and the ability to manipulate controlling …

Ligand-Based Pharmacophore Modeling And Structure-Based Virtual Screening For Identifying Potential Therapeutic Agents Targeting The Sars-Cov-2 Spike Protein-Ace2 Receptor Interaction, Timoteo Delgado-Maldonado, Gilberto Vargas-Salas, Debasish Bandyopadhyay, Adriana Moreno-Rodriguez, Eyra Ortiz-Pérez, Gildardo Rivera-Sanchez

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences Faculty Publications

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) remains a global health concern due to its high mortality and morbidity. In this study, we combined ligand-based pharmacophore modeling (LBPM) with structure-based virtual screening (SBVS) to identify novel inhibitors targeting the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Ligands from the MolPort database were screened via docking and molecular dynamics simulations at the receptor-binding domain (RBD). Four compounds showed promising docking scores (-8.7 to -6.4 kcal/mol) and dynamic stability (root mean square deviation < 5 Å). In vitro assays confirmed that compounds C3 (IC50 = 0.03 µM) and C4 (IC50 = 10.4 µM) effectively inhibited spike-ACE2 binding with low cytotoxicity (CC50 > 100 µM). These findings show the efficacy of the LBPM technique and highlight 1H-pyrazol-5-ol derivatives as potential building blocks for developing new antiviral agents against SARS-CoV-2.

Clergywomen, Cliftonstrengths, And Spiritual Formation : A Leadership Development Study In The Kentucky Annual Conference, Tamara H. Coleman

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Advanced Optimization And Integration Of Propellant Flow Path For Cntr Fuel Tube, David Cox, Michael Rietze, Karl Lauture, Max Lowe, Elijah Spencer, Kojo Pinkrah

Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design Projects

The Centrifugal Nuclear Thermal Rocket (CNTR) is an advanced propulsion concept whose performance is strongly influenced by the efficiency and continuity of its propellant flow path. This project focuses on improving the geometric integrity and analytical fidelity of the CNTR fuel tube inlet and manifolds, which are critical subsystems governing pressure losses and downstream performance. In prior designs, these parts consisted of multiple components assembled using adhesive, introducing geometric discontinuities that increased head losses and limited the reliability of computational analysis.

In this work, the inlet and manifold were successfully redesigned as single, integrated components. This redesign represents a key …

Antidiscrimination, Not Anti-Dei: The Real Story Of The Supreme Court's Recent Title Vii Precedent, Madeline H. Meth

Faculty Scholarship

For several years, my colleague and I had been litigating employment discrimination cases with facts that shocked our friends and family. For example, we fought Dallas County over a women-work-the-weekend policy that required women detention officers to work weekends while male colleagues took the weekends off. Likewise, we challenged the City of Cleveland when it moved our client, an emergency medical services supervisor, from the day shift to the night shift explicitly because he is Black. Then, in April 2024, in one of our client’s cases, Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overruled the …

Reconfigurable Dataflow For Efficient Matrix-Matrix Multiplication For Dnn Acceleration, Daniel Laudico

Theses

General matrix-matrix multiplication (GeMM) is a principal computational bottleneck in modern deep learning workloads where performance can be heavily impeded by frequent memory accesses. This thesis introduces a multi-dataflow aware processing element (PE) designed to perform the multiply-accumulate (MAC) operations fundamental to GeMMs while utilizing a data flow that best fits the data provided. A salient feature of this architecture is its programmable flexibility, which enables the implementation and execution of different data flow strategies, including Output Stationary, Weight Stationary, Input Stationary, and Row Stationary. The flexible design supports both dense and sparse GeMM and General matrix-vector multiplication (GeMV). To …

Energy Loss Hotspot Mapping In Power Distribution Networks, Abdulla Alhammadi

Theses

The electricity systems used in power distribution in the United States also consume a lot of electricity to warm up until it gets to homes, business or industries. These are technical losses which are caused by the physical resistance of the aging electrical equipment like transformers, conductors and distribution lines. With the aging of infrastructure, the resistance rises, and the amount of wasted energy increases. Although this is a large problem, most utility companies continue to use rough age estimations or customer complaints instead of using more direct and objective data-driven techniques to determine the concentration of the worst losses. …

Kosovo Pisa Monitoring Via System Signals Benchmarking 2015/2018/2022, Peer Clusters, Early-Warning Screening, And Mixed-Methods Triangulation In Grade 10 Mathematics, Leon Cana

Theses

This thesis develops a practical monitoring approach for Kosovo’s PISA outcomes by linking country-level benchmarking of PISA 2015, 2018, and 2022 with measurable system signals and a focused school-level triangulation. Quantitatively, it benchmarks Kosovo against Western Balkans Six (WB6) and selected European peers through mathematics mean scores, below-Level-2 shares, and top-performing shares. It then uses k-means clustering to define empirical peer groups and tests an early-warning screening exercise in which 2015/2018 information is used to classify held-out 2022 high-risk profiles. Qualitatively, it triangulates the statistical signal patterns with policy document analysis and a low-burden Grade 10 mathematics micro-study in Prishtina …

Delaware’S Agency Problem, Charles K. Whitehead

Vanderbilt Law Review

Delaware is widely regarded as the gold standard in corporate law, largely due to its expertise and responsiveness to evolving business needs. But that status comes at a cost. Delaware’s corporate statutes are typically drafted by a small group of repeat players—primarily attorneys from some of Delaware’s leading law firms—whose proposals are routinely enacted with minimal public input. This closed process raises familiar agency concerns, but with a twist: While corporate law aims to mitigate first-order agency problems between corporate managers and shareholders, the lawmaking process itself may be affected by the self-interest of those drafting the statutes—a second-order agency …

Popular Accountability And State Constitutional Law, Jonathan L. Marshfield

Vanderbilt Law Review

American constitutionalism operates against the backdrop of democratic processes, but the federal Constitution approaches democracy differently than state constitutions. The federal Constitution is built to fend off rash majoritarianism through checks and balances and siphoning accountability into a few highly mediated representative bottlenecks—elections for President and Congress. State constitutional structure is different. Through processes like judicial elections, the citizen initiative, referendum, recall, popular conventions, and elections for various executive offices, state constitutions reflect skepticism of wholesale representative democracy and trust in extant electoral majorities to participate in governance. This Article argues that state constitutional law should better account for this …

Discriminatory Bankruptcy Trusts, Nicole Langston

Vanderbilt Law Review

Hundreds of thousands of people who’ve been exposed to asbestos and opioids have had their claims funneled into trusts through mass-tort bankruptcy cases. At their start, both the asbestos and opioid epidemics were limited to occupations and geographic locations that primarily affected lower-class white men. Today, however, women and people of color are also harmed. Like the claimants of earlier generations, their claims are funneled into bankruptcy trusts. Women and people of color have unequal access to treatment and have higher mortality rates from their opioid and asbestos exposure, making them more likely to have larger dollar value claims in …

Renegotiating The “Grand Bargain” Of Workers’ Compensation: States’ Race To The Bottom And A Medicaid-Based Model For Federal Reform, Itza Mendez

Vanderbilt Law Review

For more than a century, workers’ compensation has rested on a basic tradeoff: Employees surrender their right to sue employers in tort in exchange for prompt, guaranteed, and limited benefits for workplace injuries. Over time, however, the “Grand Bargain” of workers’ compensation has eroded. Across states, injured workers face sharply different benefit levels, rising procedural barriers, claim denials, delays, and cost-driven medical determinations. Yet state courts have largely declined to police the adequacy of workers’ compensation benefits, and state legislatures often face strong pressure to reduce employer costs rather than expand worker protections. As a result, injured workers have few …

Mathematical Modeling Of Ocular Surface Deformation Due To Contact Lens Wear That Accounts For Intraocular Pressure, Riley K. Supple

Theses

Myopia is one of the most common ocular disorders, and is expected to affect approximately five billion people worldwide by 2050. One treatment currently available for myopia is soft contact lenses. In general, about one in ten Americans wear contact lenses, however one in three will stop wearing them due to discomfort. The goal of this dissertation is to develop a mathematical model that predicts the mechanical interactions between the contact lens and the ocular surface. Assuming the ocular tissue is a linear elastic material, we first develop a mathematical model to predict ocular deformation that is anatomically accurate in …

Optimizing Product Placement Using Purchase Pattern Analysis, Mohra Shamaa

Theses

Retail product placement has traditionally relied on static shelf layouts and techniques such as market basket analysis, often guided by managerial intuition and category based organization. However, such approaches frequently overlook the complexity of consumer purchasing behavior as reflected in the transactional data, and this study investigates how data driven analysis of purchase relationships can inform more effective product placement strategies in physical retail environments. Unlike the sequential models, this study focuses on co occurrence relationships due to dataset constraints, prioritizing interpretability for retail applications. Using transaction level data from the Instacart dataset, this research applies association rule mining through …

Inverse Laplacian Solution For Spherical Harmonic Decomposition Of Black Hole Initial Data, Nikolaus Vernon Kent

Theses

In the construction of initial data, by way of describing one or more black holes for Numerical Relativity, solving the Hamiltonian Constraint remains a fundamental challenge, as the presence of coordinate singularities in the so-called "puncture" formalism often complicates traditional grid-based numerical methods. This thesis addresses this challenge by developing a semi-analytical framework based on an iterative spherical harmonic modal expansion. We begin by decomposing the source term of the Hamiltonian Constraint, given in terms of the extrinsic curvature, into a basis of spherical harmonics. To navigate the non-linearity of the governing equation, we implement an iterative scheme derived from …

Ai In Action: Redefining Loan Default Prediction For The Digital Lending Era, Joe Vinson Ukken

Theses

Credit risk assessment remains a very important part of financial institutions, particularly within the rapidly evolving digital lending environment. The research explores the effectiveness of five machine learning models—Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, and Support Vector Machine—in predicting loan default using both financial indicators and categorical borrower attributes. The study is motivated by the growing availability of structured borrower data and the need to evaluate whether advanced machine learning algorithms can be implemented over conventional credit scoring methods. A publicly available L&T Vehicle Loan Default Prediction dataset comprising 233,154 borrower records and 41 structured attributes, the CRISP-DM …

Subject. Object. Thing., Cristin Hand

Theses

Subject. Object. Thing. is part of an accumulating record of self-construction and self-reflection. The work considers the complications of visibility through self-portraiture, how the desire to be seen exists alongside the impulse to withhold, obscure, and substitute. Working across photography, performance, collage, and sculptural constructions made for the camera, I fragment, disassemble, and reconfigure my body as photographic subject and material. This exploration is structured around a series of oppositions; concealment/exposure, anonymity/specificity, subject/object, naked/nude, and destruction/reconstruction. I do not attempt to resolve these oppositions. Instead, I consider where these categories blur, contradict themselves, and become unstable. Central to this inquiry …

The Emergent Wild, Allen Douglas

Theses

This thesis investigates a shift from the structured, approval-driven process of illustration to a more exploratory and intuitive painting studio practice. While my training has emphasized careful planning and technical precision, it has also limited spontaneity and material engagement. In response, I adopt a process-driven approach that privileges improvisation and material agency, repositioning painting as a site in which control is negotiated rather than maintained. This change marks not only a methodological departure but an internal reorientation—from adherence to external standards toward a more self-directed and responsive mode of making. The expansion of my visual universe—through expressive mark-making, increased ambiguity, …

An Evidence-Based Ethical Risk Classification Framework (Ercf) For Ai Policies, Ahmad Almarri

Theses

This thesis develops and evaluates an evidence-based Ethical Risk Classification Framework (ERCF) for analyzing substantive ethical engagement in AI policy documents. The study addresses the gap between high-level AI ethics principles and reproducible computational methods for comparative governance analysis. A secondary dataset of AI ethics policy recordswas used as the starting point. After retrieval, text extraction, and validation, a corpus of 44 policy documents was constructed from an initial 112 records (110 link-bearing entries). Supervised classification was implemented for four core dimensions: Accountability, Bias & Fairness, Privacy, and Transparency. A TF-IDF + Logistic Regression baseline was evaluated using stratified 5-fold …

Bio-Based Materials In Adaptive Reuse: Assessing Durability, Disassembly, And Reuse Potential, Gloria Barry

Theses

This study evaluates the performance of bio-based and conventional wall assemblies in relation to their ability to be disassembled and reused after exposure to environmental stress. While durability is often prioritized in construction, this research examines whether materials that resist change are also those most suitable for reuse. Four wall assembly types, two conventional (CMU with EPS insulation) and two bio-based (compressed earth blocks with hemp insulation), were constructed, each with two specimens to establish control and test conditions, using different connection strategies, including 1/2-inch mortared systems and a combination of thin mortar-slip joints with mechanical fasteners. Assemblies were subjected …

Perceptual Evaluation Of Deep Learning Models For Hdr Reconstruction Under Severe Overexposure, Alireza Rabbanifar

Theses

Overexposure in imaging systems leads to irreversible loss of scene information due to sensor saturation, resulting in degraded perceptual quality and limited dynamic range. While recent deep learning approaches have shown promising results in correcting mild to moderate overexposure, their performance under severe overexposure and their perceptual quality in HDR image generation remain less understood. In this work, a comparative evaluation of four representative models—Multi-Scale Exposure Correction (MSEC), Illumination-Adaptive Transformer (IAT), LEDiff, and X2HDR—is conducted across multiple scenes and levels of overexposure, with particular emphasis on severe overexposure conditions. The evaluation focuses on the perceptual quality of the reconstructed HDR …

Migration Of The Spirit, Yaqub Shabazz

Theses

Migration of the Spirit examines interior transition through sustained painting practice. While migration is often understood as geographic displacement, this thesis reframes it as an interior reorientation shaped by halted time, disciplined solitude, and the act of reclaiming one’s own narrative. Grounded in lived experience within institutional systems and sustained decades of teaching and studio practice, the work reflects a movement from externally imposed narratives toward self-authored clarity. The paintings are marked by architectural compression, repeated motifs, and restrained palettes dominated by sienna, umber, and muted blues. Figures emerge within densely structured spatial fields shaped by assertive linear frameworks that …

Vectra: Medication Cart System Designed For Nurses, Chris Dimovski

Theses

Medication administration is a critical phase of patient care where errors are most likely to occur, often contributing to adverse drug events and increasing risk to patient safety. At the same time, rising levels of nurse burnout highlight the growing cognitive demands placed on healthcare professionals. Although systems such as medication carts, digital records, and safety protocols are intended to reduce errors, they operate independently rather than as a connected system. This leaves nurses responsible for connecting each step, relying on memory and constant adjustment throughout the workflow. This thesis focuses on the medication administration phase and looks at how …

The Next Generation Of Police Station Design: Integration Of Officer Wellness With Operational Demands, Kayla Zill

Theses

The design of police stations has traditionally prioritized efficiency of operations and security, overlooking the wellness of officers. This research analyzes the integration of Trauma-informed Design (TiD) and WELL Building Standards into police stations design to create environments that aid officer well-being while maintaining operational functionality. Through literature review, including research of current police station design guidelines, trauma endured by officers, Trauma-Informed Design principles, WELL building standards, and understanding of the need for wellness to be incorporated into police station design. Officer interviews then further understanding of the needs of officers to create a scorecard and program guidelines to refocus …

Urban Illumination And Circadian Disruption: Examining Artificial Light At Night, Caitlin Mcmasters

Theses

Artificial light at night is increasingly prevalent in dense urban environments, yet it remains unclear how often typical city lighting conditions likely exceed recommended nighttime limits for residential circadian health. This thesis evaluates nighttime light exposure in two contrasting urban districts, Back Bay in Boston and Times Square in New York City, using satellite derived nighttime radiance, GIS based urban morphology, and documented lighting infrastructure characteristics. Rather than relying on calibrated photometric simulations, the study employs a qualitative, evidence based comparative approach to assess relative façade exposure and interpret conditions against established benchmarks, including the WELL Building Standard and ILP …

Adaptive Insider Threat Detection With Graph-Based Models, Rashed Hassan Nasser Alrazooqi

Theses

Insider threats represent one of the most challenging categories of cybersecurity risk facing modern organizations. Traditional detection approaches based on fixed rules, static thresholds, and signature databases are not effective for capturing the subtle and evolving nature of insider behaviour. This work proposes and implements a multi-stage unsupervised analytical framework for insider threat detection based on large-scale NetFlow telemetry. The framework operates through five interconnected stages: memory-efficient chunk-based streaming ingestion of raw NetFlow records, hourly temporal segmentation of host-level traffic statistics, composite anomaly scoring combining logarithmically scaled byte volume and flow frequency, weighted host-to-host communication graph construction with greedy modularity …

Dirt Finder (Drtfndr): A Marketplace Application For Construction Earthwork, Evan A. Reed

Construction Management

The construction industry regularly produces a surplus of earthwork materials: clean fill, topsoil, gravel, and crushed concrete, that are disposed of at considerable cost. All the while, contractors actively seek those same materials, and no dedicated digital platform existed to connect these two groups efficiently. DrtFndr ("Dirt Finder") is a mobile-first web application developed to address this gap, providing a marketplace where contractors can post available or needed earthwork materials, browse geographically filtered listings by material type and proximity, and connect directly with other users. The application was built using Base44, an AI-powered application development platform, and includes real-time mapping, …

Sb 1953 Field Execution Under Hcai Oversight: Seismic Retrofit At Zsfg Building 5, Victor Lucas

Construction Management

Every hospital in California must be seismically compliant by 2030 under Senate Bill 1953, which is enforced by the Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI). HCAI approves and inspects all hospital construction in the state, and its authority reaches into the field, so a contractor cannot simply build to an approved drawing the way it would on a commercial job. This paper explains how that approval system governs the work, written for construction professionals entering hospital work in California whose experience to that point has been commercial. It uses the ZSFG Building 5 Voluntary Seismic Upgrade, a 1976 …

Sheep Pen Improvements At City Farm Slo, Ryan S. Bodmer

Construction Management

City Farm SLO is an urban non-profit educational farm located in San Luis Obispo, CA. It serves the community through offering farm learning programs, including hands-on experience in sustainable farming practices and livestock care. This project, completed over the winter and spring quarters, focused on delivering an upgraded sheep pen to improve access and safety for both volunteers and sheep. The project consisted of developing design plans, coordination of materials and allowable working times with the owner, where the animals were either moved out of the working area or when work would not jeopardize animal health, schedule creation, cost estimates, …

2-Aminobutyrate Mediates The Impact Of Air Pollution On Blood Biomarkers Of Alzheimer’S Disease, Anum Saeed, Chris Mckennan, Jane E Clougherty, Peidi Zhou, Sheila Tripathy, Ellen J Kinnee, Jiaxuan Duan, Kevin Kip, Xuemei Zeng, Victor Villemagne, Tharick Pascoal, Mark Mapstone, Eric A Whitsel, Oscar I Lopez, Christie Ballantyne, Thomas K Karikari, Bing Yu, Steven Reis, Annie Cohen

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Introduction: We examined the impact of mid-life metabolites on late-life Alzheimer's disease (AD) plasma biomarkers and whether these metabolites mediate air pollution effects.

Methods: In the Heart Strategies Concentrating on Risk Evaluation (Heart SCORE) cohort, we applied high-dimensional regression and meditation models, adjusting for observed and latent confounders, with replication in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study. Exposures included mid-life fine particulate matter (PM2.5), black carbon, metals, and metabolites. Outcomes were: late-life plasma p-tau(181, 217, and 231) and amyloid beta 42/40 (Simoa assays).

Results: In the Heart SCORE study, seven lipid- and amnio acid-pathway metabolites measured in mid-life were …