Digital Commons Network^™

Inhibitor Development And Clinical Characteristics In Children With Severe Hemophilia A In The Athn 8 Us Cohort Study., Courtney D. Thornburg, H Marijke Van Den Berg, Martin Chandler, Lynn Malec, Matthew Manuel, Carrie O'Neill, Michael Recht, Elizabeth Taggart, Shannon L. Carpenter, American Thrombosis And Hemostasis Network (Athn) 8 Investigators Study Group

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Clotting factor concentrate (CFC), used to treat and prevent bleeding in hemophilia, is rendered ineffective if clotting factor neutralizing antibodies (inhibitors) develop. Inhibitors occur most often in children, early in treatment. The American Thrombosis and Hemostasis Network (ATHN) 8: US Cohort Study of Previously Untreated Patients (PUPs) with Congenital Hemophilia, conducted in children born in 2010 to 2020 with severe or moderate hemophilia, was designed to determine the percentage of participants who developed a confirmed, clinically significant inhibitor within the first 50 CFC exposure days (EDs). Cox proportional hazards models were used to evaluate risk factors for inhibitor development in …

Navigating Stigma And Privacy: Health-Related Communication Among Bangladeshi Women, Nazmul Shajib

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Women in Bangladesh often silently bear the burden of stigma tied to their bodies, minds, and societal roles. This study examines the coping strategies women use to manage health-related stigma and their privacy while facing issues like reproductive health, mental health, and postpartum challenges. The study was conducted by utilizing in-depth interviews with 17 Bangladeshi women. Stigma Management Communication Theory (SMC) and Communication Privacy Management Theory (CPM) are the two frameworks that guided the study. The findings of the study reveal that stigma often silences women and threatens their social identities, and women feel that having a health problem means …

Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Material Rhetoric Of Becoming Fascist In Parachurch Scouting Organizations, Madeline Aubrey Studebaker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a material rhetorical analysis of Trail Life USA and American Heritage Girls, two Christian nationalist scouting organizations that aim to renew and restore their cultural dominance across America. In examining how these programs route children’s bodies through ritual and affective indoctrination, I find that a fascist becoming underpins these groups’ (re)production of perfect, patriotic children. The first chapter discusses how boys enrolled in Trail Life USA become fascist as self-defense against American boyhood’s perceived eradication. Trail Life USA restores masculinity through rituals of autogenetic sovereignty, returns to originality through homosocial and affective intensity, and invocations of exceptional …

Intention To Take Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (Prep) As An Hiv Preventive Medication: An Application Of The Health Belief Model And Theory Planned Behavior, Besuthu Nakekelwa Nkambule

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

South Africa (SA) has 7.7 million citizens (12.6% of its 2023 population) living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) as an antiretroviral medication for HIV-negative individuals is a promising HIV prevention strategy in SA that can help the attainment of an HIV free generation. PrEP offers greater than 90% protection against HIV acquisition. Despite SA’s efforts in increasing PrEP coverage for its citizens, primarily to those at substantial risk, its adoption remains relatively low. Structural barriers related to access, costs, lack of awareness, and, more recently, US funding cuts exacerbate the challenges of PrEP’s potential …

Humboldt County, Dennis Robert Sanchez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Danny Marquez, a police sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, takes his family on a vacation to Seattle, Washington. On the way, they stop in Humboldt County, and Danny is captivated by the beauty and serenity of this county. He imagines moving his family to Humboldt County and leaving the troubles of big city life behind. He applied for the position of Chief Inspector for the Humboldt Police. By the time he is hired, he loses both his son to Fentanyl and his wife to suicide. He is hired for the position but finds himself alone. He considers suicide. …

A Review: The Beauty Of Serendipity Between Integrated Circuit Security And Artificial Intelligence, Chen Dong, Decheng Qiu, Bolun Li, Yang Yang, Chenxi Lyu, Dong Cheng, Hao Zhang, Zhenyi. Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Integrated circuits are the core of a cyber-physical system, where tens of billions of components are integrated into a tiny silicon chip to conduct complex functions. To maximize utilities, the design and manufacturing life cycle of integrated circuits rely on numerous untrustworthy third parties, forming a global supply chain model. At the same time, this model produces unpredictable and catastrophic issues, threatening the security of individuals and countries. As for guaranteeing the security of ultra-highly integrated chips, detecting slight abnormalities caused by malicious behavior in the current and voltage is challenging, as is achieving computability within a reasonable time and …

Use Of A Preliminary Artificial Intelligence-Based Laryngeal Cancer Screening Framework For Low-Resource Settings: Development And Validation Study, Shao Wei Sean Lam, Min Hun Lee, Michael Dorosan, Samuel Altonji, Hiang Khoon Tan, Walter T. Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Background: Early-stage diagnosis of laryngeal cancer significantly improves patient survival and quality of life. However, the scarcity of specialists in low-resource settings hinders the timely review of flexible nasopharyngoscopy (FNS) videos, which are essential for accurate triage of at-risk patients.Objective: We introduce a preliminary AI-based screening framework to address this challenge for the triaging of at-risk patients in low-resource settings. This formative research addresses multiple challenges common in high-dimensional FNS videos: (1) selecting clear, informative images; (2) deriving regions within frames that show an anatomical landmark of interest; and (3) classifying patients into referral grades based on the FNS video …

Causalabstain: Enhancing Multilingual Llms With Causal Reasoning For Trustworthy Abstention, Yuxi Sun, Aoqi Zuo, Wei Gao, Jing Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Large Language Models (LLMs) often exhibit knowledge disparities across languages. Encouraging LLMs to abstain when faced with knowledge gaps is a promising strategy to reduce hallucinations in multilingual settings. Current abstention strategies for multilingual scenarios primarily rely on generating feedback in various languages using LLMs and performing self-reflection. However, these methods can be adversely impacted by inaccuracies and biases in the generated feedback. To address this, from a causal perspective, we introduce CausalAbstain, a method that helps LLMs determine whether to utilize multiple generated feedback responses and how to identify the most useful ones. Extensive experiments demonstrate that CausalAbstain effectively …

B.R. Wells Arkansas Rice Research Studies 2024, J. Hardke, X. Sha, N. Bateman

Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Series

Research reports contained in the publication may represent preliminary or only a single year of results; therefore, these results should not be read as a basis for long-term recommendations.

Several research reports in this publication will appear in other University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station publications. This duplication is the result of the overlap in research coverage between disciplines and our effort to inform Arkansas rice producers of all the research being conducted with funds from the rice check-off program. This publication also contains research funded by industry, federal, and state agencies.

Use of products …

Multi-Crop Systems And Crop-Switching Strategies To Enhance Water Use Efficiency And Climate Resilience In Arid Agricultural Regions, Shahryar Fazli, Wenzhao Li, Surendra Maharjan, Hesham El-Askary

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Agriculture in the Lower Colorado River (LCR) region faces mounting challenges from climate change, arid conditions, and water scarcity. This study evaluates water use efficiency (WUEc) and crop-switching strategies under SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios for 2025–2049, 2050–2074, and 2075–2099. Using historical data, climatic drivers such as temperature and precipitation were analyzed for their influence on key crops, including durum wheat, winter wheat, and corn. Results show SSP2-4.5 supports water use reductions up to 16%, stable profits (80–90%), and modest calorie increases (up to 15%), while SSP5-8.5 poses severe challenges, with water use reductions of 2–5%, profits dropping to around 20%, …

Wildfires Classification In Canadian Boreal Forest: A Comparative Study Of Logistic Regression And Xgboost Models, Brandon Tran, Elijah James Duran, Mike Luu, Hesham Morgan, Surendra Maharjan, Wenzhao Li, Hesham El-Askary

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

In recent years, Canada has faced a growing number of wildfires. These events have devastated ecosystems, displaced communities, and posed severe health risks. To minimize the damage caused by such disasters, this study aims to develop an early warning system that predicts wildfire occurrences. Two machine learning models for binary classification of wildfire occurrence in Canadian wild forests, Logistic regression and XGBoost, will be compared and evaluated. The models are used to predict the likelihood of wildfire events based on various environmental and climatic factors. The models are evaluated using a 70-30 split validation approach and their performance is assessed …

Reconstruction Of A Pelvic Nonunion Secondary To Metastatic Breast Cancer And Palliative Radiation., Ronald Peirish, Landon Reading, Cesar Cereijo

Surgery Articles

Pathologic pelvic nonunions are uncommon, although they remain a difficult problem and require meticulous surgical planning and execution for desired outcomes. In this paper, we discuss a patient who sustained a pathologic pelvic insufficiency fracture secondary to radiation therapy for metastatic breast cancer, who subsequently developed a symptomatic nonunion that required surgical intervention secondary to debilitating pain and inability to ambulate. We also discuss the classification of insufficiency fractures of the pelvis to guide treatment, in addition to complications associated with surgical intervention. A 51-year-old female with a 12-year history of metastatic breast cancer. She presented to an outside facility …

Hypertension, Diabetes, And Chronic Kidney Disease In Young Adults: Nhanes Data From 2013-2018, Ashly Rodriguez Reyes

Undergraduate Scholarship and Creative Works

Background. Several studies have reported the link between diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and obesity as risk factors for the onset of chronic kidney disease (CKD), ultimately leading to renal replacement therapies such as dialysis and kidney transplantation. Although extensively researched in adults aged 55 years and older, CKD remains under-researched for young adults. Despite its emergence as a healthcare concern, limited data exists on risk factors impacting young adults without major comorbidities.

Objective. This research study aims to understand the potential risk factors unique to this population, seeking to guide prevention strategies and improve prognosis in already diagnosed individuals. Additionally, …

Identifying Topographic Influences Of Landcover Change In A Subarctic Watershed, Mason Bull

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Increased temperatures over the last 40 years have globally promoted a loss of ice and increase of plant cover and density, known as greening. Greening is seen more in arctic and alpine environments than elsewhere, and current literature states that new growth consists of low-lying tundra plants, as well as encroaching shrub communities into previously uninhabited rocky slopes. However, our understanding of greening processes and extent is potentially biased by study strategies. Many vegetation studies take place at either the small plot or arctic regional scale, and do not encapsulate the intricacies of watershed scale processes on greening. This study …

Response Rates And Response Quality Of Online Course Survey For Deaf College Students: A Mixed-Method Study, Abdulaziz Abdullah M. Alqahtani

Dissertations

The purpose of the current dissertation study was to investigate how different delivery formats (written vs. sign language) of the course survey evaluation affect the response rate, psychometric properties and experiences of deaf and hard of hearing students taking course evaluation of total effectiveness. The following research questions guided this study:

Q1 To what extent do the different delivery formats of the online course evaluation of total effectiveness affect the response rate of DHH college students in KSA? (Quantitative question)

Q2 Do psychometric characteristics of the online course evaluation of total effectiveness differ by the design format of the online …

Private Equity And The Public Good, Daniel J. Morrissey

Buffalo Law Review

Private Equity (PE) is a term for large funds that use mostly borrowed money to buy and restructure companies, supposedly to make them more profitable. They manage trillions of dollars in holdings and have come to dominate many sectors of our economy, often not for the better. Private Equity is perhaps a more genteel form of the hostile take-overs that were so prevalent several decades ago, because now instead of ousting management of the firms they acquire, Private Equity offers their officials sweet deals to stay on. Those arrangements often raise conflicts which result in the shareholders of the target …

Experimental Evaluation And Comparison Of Football-Related Head Impacts Among Ovine, Human, And Hybrid Iii Headforms, Madysn D. Cardinal

All Dissertations

Concussions and traumatic brain injury (TBI) remains a significant public health concern, especially in American football, where repeated head impacts pose long-term risks to athlete health. While current helmet testing standards rely heavily on the Hybrid III surrogate headform to evaluate protective performance, these surrogate models lack anatomical accuracy and exclude the presence of a brain component, limiting their ability to capture the true mechanics of concussion. To address this limitation, this research developed and validated a novel inverted impact testing method that allows the impact testing of a Hybrid III headform and a cadaveric specimen. Additionally, this fixture preserves …

Robustness Investigation, Detection, And Defense Of Deep Learning Models Against False Data Injection, Amirhossein Nazeri

All Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the critical challenge of adversarial robustness in deep learning systems, focusing on two fundamental domains: time-series prediction and object detection. As these AI systems become increasingly deployed in safety-critical applications from power grid management to autonomous vehicles their vulnerability to adversarial attacks poses significant risks to infrastructure and human safety.

The first contribution introduces a novel stealthy black-box False Data Injection (FDI) attack specifically designed for quasi-periodic time-series data. Unlike existing attacks that produce easily detectable anomalies, our method generates adversarial perturbations that preserve the underlying periodicity and statistical properties of the data, effectively bypassing traditional anomaly …

Robust Adaptive Rigid Body State And Mass Property Estimation Via Unscented Kalman Filter On Tse(3) With Process Noise Estimation, Herman Gunter

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Mass property estimation, including mass, center of mass, and moment of inertia, is a crucial yet challenging problem in spacecraft autonomy and astrodynamics. Knowledge of mass properties of a spacecraft is essential for future astronautical missions, as changes in the mass properties of a spacecraft due to a shift in cargo distribution often require a careful and costly recalculation to ensure applied control inputs produce the desired results. As spacecraft missions grow in both duration and number, meeting the need for precise and accurate measurements becomes increasingly complex. Stochastic effects, such as angle and velocity random walks, along with persistent …

Trophic Roles And Climate-Driven Vulnerability For Benthic Invertebrates At Artificial Reefs In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, Amanda Kirkland

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Artificial reefs are deployed to enhance marine habitats and fisheries, yet their role in supporting secondary production and their vulnerability to climate stressors remain understudied. This dissertation investigates the trophic ecology and climate sensitivity of benthic invertebrates at artificial reefs in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Chapter 1 assessed reef food webs using stable isotopes from fishes, invertebrates, and primary producers across six reefs and two seasons. Mixing models showed that most fishes rely on benthic reef carbon, while suspension feeders consume plankton and sediment microphytobenthos. Isotopic niche analysis revealed functional diversity and seasonal shifts in δ¹³C and δ³⁴S, though …

Real-Time Fiducial Marker Based Localization For Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Navigation, Sourav Raxit

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

By harnessing fiducial markers as visual landmarks in the environment, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can rapidly build precise maps and navigate spaces safely and efficiently, unlocking their potential for fluent collaboration and coexistence with humans. Existing fiducial marker methods rely on handcrafted feature extraction, which sacrifices accuracy. On the other hand, some deep learning pipelines for marker detection fail to meet real-time runtime constraints crucial for navigation applications. In this work, I propose YoloTag- a real-time fiducial marker-based localization system. YoloTag uses a lightweight YOLO v8 object detector to accurately detect fiducial markers in images while meeting the runtime constraints …

Discovery Of High-Performance Cathode Materials For Protonic Ceramic Fuel Cells, Liang Han

All Dissertations

Environmental pollution and rapid energy consumption have become common problems in global development and will continue to grow with the world population. PCFCs use proton-conducting ceramics as electrolytes, with low activation energy and high ionic conductivity at intermediate temperatures, enabling them to operate at intermediate-temperature conditions, which can effectively solve the problems of poor stability and high cost of exotic materials of traditional solid oxide fuel cells. However, as the operating temperature decreases, the electrocatalytic activity of the cathode decreases significantly, seriously affecting PCFC’s performance. Therefore, developing high-performance cathode material suitable for working under intermediate-temperature conditions has become the key …

Secure Control And Trust Evaluation Framework For Autonomous Transportation Systems, Grace Muriithi

All Dissertations

This dissertation advances the cybersecurity of hybrid tracked vehicles (HTVs) and ship power systems (SPSs) by developing innovative cyber-attack models and corresponding defence frameworks. First, we formulate stealthy false-data-injection attacks (FDIAs) on HTV energy-management systems as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) solved via deep reinforcement learning. A novel sniffing-based reward function guides the attacker to covertly degrade battery capacity and energy efficiency, which we evaluate using custom stealth–impact metrics and a sliding-window anomaly detector (Isolation Forest with Dynamic Time Warping). Additionally, we model sophisticated control-layer attacks in HTVs, including reinforcement-learning-optimised replay attacks and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks targeting generator-speed …

Graduate School Blog - August 2025, Cynthia Haynes

UofM Grad School Blog

The August 2025 edition of the UofM Graduate School Blog delivers inspiration, insights, and community news for graduate students. Dr. Deborah Tollefsen, Vice Provost and Dean, examines the real value of a master’s degree pairing national labor statistics with a thoughtful exploration of professional growth, personal transformation, and lifelong connections. The issue also welcomes Dr. Robbie Salters as Associate Dean and Director of Graduate Admissions, shares student spotlight stories like MFA candidate Sabrina Spence’s journey, and promotes upcoming events including Virtual Orientation and Graduation Prep sessions. Rounding out the edition is a curated list of “Memphis Must-Dos” to help students …

Graduate School Blog - August 2025 Volume 2, Cynthia Haynes

UofM Grad School Blog

Welcome to Volume 2 of the UofM Graduate School Blog, The First Days of Graduate School: Standing at the Edge of the Unknown. This edition opens with Dean Deborah Tollefsen’s reflection on the transformative journey of starting graduate school, reminding students that the challenges ahead shape both their knowledge and character. It also introduces the Fall 2025 Mastering Grad School Workshop Series, designed to equip students with practical tools for success, from dissertations to career preparation. In addition, the blog highlights the excitement of Fall Orientation, the University Libraries’ Welcome Carnival, and the annual Walk: Bridge Your Future tradition. …

Population Analysis Of Cyanobacteria In Rotating Algal Biofilm Reactors, Eric H. Matthews

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Algal biofilms have numerous applications in wastewater treatment and bioproduct production. The Sustainable Waste-to-Bioproducts Engineering Center at Utah State University is working to develop rotating algal biofilm reactors (RABRs) to remove excess nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater effluent while producing biomass for downstream production.

Genetic analysis of algal biofilms on various RABRs was performed to gain improved understanding of the biofilm populations. This analysis focuses on a pilot-scale RABR and how it compares to several other RABRs. Additionally, old methods of genetic analysis filtered out important cyanobacterial populations. A new method was developed to identify the cyanobacteria within the biofilms. …

Quantifying The Sensitivity Of Land Use Land Cover Metrics Through Simulation Techniques, Haley Burger

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

As human activities and climate change continue to reshape our landscape, understanding how land use changes over time is becoming increasingly important. Accurate ways to track and analyze these changes are essential for governments, businesses, and communities to make informed decisions. Monitoring agricultural land is particularly critical, as shifts in land use can impact food production and environmental pollutants. One of the primary tools used in the United States to monitor agricultural land is the Cropland Data Layer (CDL), an annual map created by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) from satellite images. While the CDL is highly accurate, …

The Effect Of Voter Education On Behaviors In Ranked Choice Voting, Ethan G. Olsen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The appeal of ranked choice voting has led to its recent meteoric rise throughout America, leading to adoption in a number of cities and a handful of states, but some critics and political scientists worry about its higher difficulty potentially leading to more errors and undesirable behavior. Utilizing an experiment, I find that a short voter education video is all that is required to reduce rates of errors and ideologically inconsistent behavior, while finding null results for undervoting, possibly due to its low occurrence in the sample.

As ranked choice voting’s adoption is considered in each election cycle for jurisdictions …

Non-Efl World Language Teachers’ Perceptions And Experiences With Generative Ai Tools, Georgia Konstantinou

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This exploratory quantitative research study explored the perceptions and experiences of non-English as a Foreign Language (non-EFL) world language teachers who were members of online communities of practice regarding their use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools in their teaching practices. Many research studies began to explore the impact of GenAI tools in various educational settings, and some studies even investigated the perceptions of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, but research studies exploring the perceptions of non-EFL world language teachers regarding the use of GenAI tools inside and outside of the classroom remain limited. This study addressed this …

Unraveling Snow And Rain Contributions To Streamflow Through A Methodological Investigation On Cold And Warm Season End-Members, Rachel Grena

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Water supply and demand are encountering unique challenges in the western United States as climate change impacts the availability of water resources. Much of the west relies on high mountain snowpack to maintain consistent streamflow throughout the dry, warm season months. Temperatures often rise above freezing in the cold season, diminishing the snowpack size, and altering the timing of snowmelt. As droughts become more frequent, water managers are increasingly concerned about the risk of reduced summer streamflow. To understand changing hydrologic patterns, this study utilizes phase changes in precipitation, specifically the distinction between cold and warm season precipitation, and their …