Digital Commons Network^™

The Alaska Wolf War: Action On The Prince Of Wales Island Complex, Edward A. Fitzgerald

Alaska Law Review

This Article examines Alaska's management of the Alexander Archipelago wolf on the Prince of Wales Island Complex, pursuant to constitutional and statutory requirements. It begins by reviewing the history of unsuccessful efforts to declare the wolf a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. It then analyzes Bennett v. State, which focused on the changed management regime and devastating wolf harvest of the 2019–20 season. The Article argues that the district and Alaska Supreme Court's decisions in the case were flawed because they failed to properly implement the "hard look" doctrine.

Image Processing In Self-Driving Cars, Julia Lin, Sid Kalidindi, Anushri Selva, Seana Corners

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

This thesis presents the development of a low-cost embedded image processing system for autonomous vehicle perception using the PYNQ-Z2 FPGA board. The project explores whether compact FPGA-based systems can provide efficient, low-latency perception for small-scale autonomous applications such as delivery robots, warehouse robots, and drones, where power efficiency and affordability are important design constraints.

The system uses Python and OpenCV for image preprocessing and color-based traffic sign segmentation, while a modified LeNet-5 convolutional neural network performs traffic sign classification. The model was optimized and deployed onto the FPGA using Vivado HLS and Vitis to accelerate inference on resource-constrained hardware. The …

High Altitude Lora Networking (Halon) For Crisis Communications, Sahana Prasanna Chandramohan, Vikram Rakesh Jangid

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Natural disasters, infrastructure failure, and politically motivated internet shutdowns can severely disrupt communication systems, preventing affected populations from coordinating emergency response, accessing information, and contacting others. Existing communication infrastructure relies heavily on centralized networks, fixed power availability, and costly deployments, making such systems vulnerable during periods of crisis. To alleviate these problems we propose High Altitude Long Range Networking (HALoN) for Crisis Communications, a rapidly deployable decentralized wireless mesh network designed for operation in infrastructure-denied environments. HALoN utilizes low-power long range (LoRa) communication and high-altitude deployment platforms such as balloons, drones and tall structures, among others, to create temporary communication …

Investigating How Llm Trading Agents Integrate External Signals, Rohan Ray

Computer Science Senior Theses

Large Language Models are increasingly deployed in systems that assume more information leads to better decisions: RAG pipelines inject retrieved documents, tool-augmented agents call external APIs, and multi-model architectures route signals between specialized components. Whether this holds when both the information and the outcomes are noisy, and decisions compound over time, has received limited empirical attention. This thesis tests that assumption on LLM-based trading agents. Using StockBench (Chen et al., 2025) as our benchmark, we ran 150 backtests across 2 frontier LLMs (Kimi K2 and Qwen3-235B-Instruct), 12 augmentation strategies, and 5 random seeds, over 82 trading days — a period …

Hypertensive Disorders Of Pregnancy, Covid And Readmission Status, Margaret Luebke, Ross Bindler, Trisha Saul, Linda Trinh

Publications 2026-present

No abstract provided.

Note From The Editor

Alaska Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Trainwreck In The Making: The Alaska Railroad Right-Of-Way, John W. Pletcher, Mia E. Manney

Alaska Law Review

This Article argues that the Ninth Circuit erred in Alaska Railroad Corp. v. Flying Crown Subdivision Additions Nos. 1 & 2 Property Owners Ass'n by recognizing an exclusive use easement that permits the Alaska Railroad Corporation to unilaterally exclude private property owners from non-interfering uses of the right-of-way. Drawing on common law easement principles reaffirmed in Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, the Article demonstrates that exclusivity must be conferred through specific language in a creating instrument and cannot be implied from federal railroad legislation. The Article calls for legislative reform and remedial judicial interpretation to curtail …

Protecting Bearded Seals In Alaska: The Esa, Critical Habitat Designations, And Climate Change, Caitlyn Leary

Alaska Law Review

Rapid climate change in the Arctic has accelerated the loss of sea ice, threatening the survival of one of Alaska's most vital species: the bearded seal. In 2012, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) listed the bearded seal as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Ten years later, the agency designated approximately 174 million acres of occupied critical habitat for the seals on the northern coast of Alaska, along the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas. NMFS reasoned that a large designation was necessary to account for the dynamic and seasonal nature of sea ice. In 2024, however, the U.S. …

Carbon Cash Back: A Green Ubi For A Decarbonized Future, Lily Skopp

Alaska Law Review

This Note supports a framework for climate governance that transforms carbon tax revenues into equal per‑capita cash distributions for all United States residents: a green universal basic income (UBI). It examines how the institutional structure of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) can guide the design of a federal resource‑based dividend. By combining economic analyses of efficiency and distribution with legal scholarship on political salience and administrative design, the Note uses Alaska's PFD as an empirical case study to connect two often separate literatures. The Note introduces the PFD's key features—universality, independent fund management, and a narrative of collective resource …

The Impact Of Burnout On The Attitudes Of Treatment Providers Towards Sex Offenders, Aklima S. Baksh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Chun Ying Zhang V. Liya Wang

All Decisions

In this GCEL no-grounds nonrenewal holdover, the court granted reargue but adhered to its prior order dismissing the petition. The landlord, claiming the small landlord exemption, had failed to provide direct and beneficial ownership information required by RPAPL § 741(5-b). The court found the motion to reargue was effectively a motion to amend an already-dismissed petition and therefore failed to satisfy CPLR 2221, which requires showing that the court misapprehended the facts or law.

The Malaugh Operations And The Quadratic Invariant Gaps Of $\Si_4^C$, Forrest M. Hilton

ETDs from 2020-2029

Connected Julia sets of polynomials generally correspond to laminations, sets of chords of the unit disc that reflect the dynamics of the Julia set. If the circle is measured in revolutions and the polynomials studied are of degree $d$, then the dynamics on the lamination is given by the covering map $\sigma_d(t) := td \pmod 1$ where chords are mapped by their end points. Every lamination has at least one laminational invariant set, which is loosely an invariant complementary component of the lamination. That set has a significant impact on the shape of the Julia set. James Malaugh showed how …

Modeling The Spread Of Competing Narratives In Multimodal Social Media Network, Mayor Inna Gurung

Theses and Dissertations

Social media has fundamentally transformed how narratives are produced, contested, and disseminated, enabling competing interpretations of the same event to spread rapidly across networked populations. Understanding how narratives gain traction over others in these environments is critical for addressing misinformation, supporting informed public discourse, and designing effective counter-messaging strategies. Yet existing research largely treats narrative propagation as a single-process phenomenon and focuses predominantly on textual data, overlooking both the competitive dynamics between opposing narratives and the growing role of visual symbolic communication in shaping how narratives are received. This dissertation addresses these gaps through a multi-platform, multimodal framework applied to …

Sleepfocus – The Attributes And Application, Austin Kim, Erik Keifer, Isaac Amedie

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Insufficient sleep is a widespread public health concern, yet many consumer sleep tools still emphasize retrospective dashboards over personalized, actionable guidance. Platforms such as Apple Health, Fitbit, Whoop, and Oura collect detailed biometric and sleep data, but users are often left to interpret trends and decide what to change on their own.

SleepFocus was built to address that gap by turning wearable sleep data into clearer feedback, personalized recommendations, and healthier sleep routines. SleepFocus is a native iOS application that integrates with Apple HealthKit to collect sleep-stage data and biometric streams such as heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, …

Broncosgo: Driving Student Event Participation Via Human-Ai Collaborative Event Curation, Katherine Carter, Ethan Sychangco

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

College campuses rely heavily on email communication for event advertisement. However, due to the sheer number of emails any student may receive, the individual effectiveness of each advertisement decreases. A better alternative for event promotion was needed. How could we introduce students to events they would not usually find on their own, without continuing to fill up their email inbox? And how would information on all of those events be collected and maintained without requiring organizations to jump through extra hoops? Our project, BroncosGo, solves this issue by maintaining a database of campus events which is populated with information provided …

Club Finance Management Application, India Bell, Lydia Martin, Sola Kawahara, Zachariah Wang

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

There are over 160 Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) at SCU as of 2023 [6]. There is currently no centralized system that RSO treasurers use to track and manage club finances. As a result, many organizations rely on fragmented methods such as spreadsheets, shared documents, email chains, and manual record keeping to manage budgets, reimbursements, and financial reports. These disconnected systems often lead to inconsistent organization, communication difficulties, and challenges during leadership transitions between club officers. This project proposes the development of a web-based Club Finance Management Application, Kaikei, designed specifically for Santa Clara University student organizations. The application centralizes financial …

Examining The Impact Of Design Thinking Practices On Manufacturing Innovation Performance In The U.S. Automotive Industry, Charles Emlin Pluviose

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Multiscale Optical Imaging: From Single-Molecule Dynamics To Tissue-Scale Mechanics, Weiyan Zhou

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Biological systems exhibit hierarchical organization spanning molecular to tissue scales. Molecular orientation and supramolecular packing define nanoscale architecture, while collective organization of these constituents contributes to emergent mechanical and dynamical behavior at the tissue level. Although optical imaging provides access to both regimes, modalities are typically optimized for a single scale and often emphasize qualitative visualization rather than quantitative measurement. Establishing rigorous frameworks for extracting physical parameters from optical signals and articulating conceptual continuity across scales remains a central challenge. This dissertation advances optical imaging as a quantitative measurement technology through the development of complementary approaches at the nanoscale and …

Interview With Charles 'Chuck' A. Malloy Iii, Charles 'Chuck' A. Malloy Iii, Logan Dovalina

Rio Grande Valley Oral Histories

This oral history transcript (dated June 4, 2026, Laguna Vista, TX) features Charles A. “Chuck” Malloy III, a prominent South Texas horticulturist, Master Gardener, and longtime President of the Palm Society of South Texas. Interviewed by Logan Dovalina for the Rio Grande Valley Legacy Anthology, Vol. 1, Malloy recounts his life journey—from his 1953 birth in Tallahassee, Florida, as a military “Army brat,” early inspiration from his grandfather’s forestry and camellia work, and youthful gardening experiences, to military service during Vietnam, college on the GI Bill, and a full career followed by retirement in 2013.

The interview details his …

Abundance And The Supreme Court, Nicholas Bagley

Articles

Scarcity mars much of American life. Housing prices in our most productive cities are out of control. The nation’s transportation infrastructure is aging and obsolete because it costs so much more to build here than in other developed countries. Meanwhile, China generates nearly three times as much solar energy as the United States, with the gap growing every year.

Why does the richest nation in the history of the world struggle so mightily to get stuff done? That’s the question that propels Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s 2025 bestseller Abundance, which galvanized what may be the hottest and most controversial …

Getting Close, Sadie Laufe Mccarthy

Dissertations and Theses

"Getting Close" is a collection of short pieces, some fiction and some memoir. It's not important which is which.

I'm interested in the barriers we face when it comes to connection, and how aloneness can often be more sensual than togetherness. I'm interested in the places we find respite from the pain of existing within societal pressures.

I'm not interested in acceptability. I write toward a world in which we do not have to be anything other than ourselves.

The Architecture Of Chemical Understanding: How Representation Selection, Ordering, And Feature Salience Shape Students' Conceptions In Chemistry, Isaiah Nelsen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Chemical representations play a central role in how students learn and reason aboutchemistry. While representations are routinely used in chemistry classrooms, students often struggle to extract relevant information, connect representations to underlying chemical principles, and apply this information to problem-solving. This dissertation investigates the role of representations in supporting students’ conceptual understanding and reasoning across general and organic chemistry through three qualitative studies.

The first study in this work explores how variation in chemical representation influences how students understand foundational chemistry principles. This study sought to characterize how second semester general chemistry students approach dipole–dipole interaction tasks with four distinct …

Halal Education: Curriculum Management Based On Halal Entrepreneurship At Nahdlatul Ulama University Of Sidoarjo, Fatkul Anam, Nurul Istiq’Faroh

Nusantara Halal Journal

Indonesia is well-known for having the world's largest Muslim population. As a result, Indonesia has significant halal market potential. After forming the Institute for the Study of Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics in the Indonesian Ulema Council, halal products became more widely known (LPPOMMUI). Since then, public awareness and demand for Halal products have risen significantly, making Indonesia a lucrative market for halal businesses. In response to the rapid rise of the halal industry, a new curriculum has emerged in education to meet the difficulties of today's industrial world. Halal entrepreneurship is a newly designed university program. This study was implemented …

Can Technology Augment Order Writing Capacity At Regulators?, Natasha Aggarwal, Amrutha Desikan, Bhavin Patel, Satyavrat Bondre, Dipyaman Sanyal

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

This article critically examines the opportunities and challenges of using technology, in particular Large Language Models (‘LLMs’), to assist regulatory order writing in quasi-judicial settings in India. It proposes augmenting rather than replacing human decision-makers, aiming to improve regulatory order writing practice through responsible use of LLMs. This article identifies the core principles of administrative law that must be upheld in these settings and analyses how inherent limitations of LLMs may undermine these principles. The article reviews international frameworks and case studies from various jurisdictions, highlighting common design principles. It proposes a comprehensive Problem-Solution-Evaluation ('PSE') framework for responsibly integrating LLMs …

The Technical Capabilities Of Traditional Methods And 3d Modeling In Ceramic Mold Manufacturing: An Experimental Comparative Study, Ebrahim Dosouky Abd-Elmawgoud Soliman, Rasha Fawzy Ahmed Abd-Elrahim

Journal of Art, Design and Music

Ceramic mold-making stands at the intersection of artistic heritage and technological innovation, prompting the present study to investigate the technical capabilities of traditional methods versus modern three-dimensional (3D) modeling in ceramic mold manufacturing. The research addresses the core problem of evaluating how each approach meets the demands of contemporary ceramic production in terms of precision, efficiency, cost, and design complexity. Aimed at Comparative The Technical Capabilities of Traditional Methods and 3D modeling in ceramic mold manufacturing. The significance of this work lies in its dual contribution: theoretically enriching the field of ceramic art through a systematic comparative analysis, and practically …

Processing Freehand Interior Architecture Sketches Using Ai Applications, Khaled M. Zaki Hawas

Journal of Art, Design and Music

The intersection of interior architecture design and artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how designers perceive, inhale, and implement their ideas. One of the most exciting developments in this field is the use of artificial intelligence to process interior architecture design drawings. Handmade sketches have always been an essential tool for designers, allowing them to visualize ideas and spaces and transfer concepts. However, the transition from drawing to final design can be time-consuming and challenging. AI applications are now intervening to streamline this process, providing designers with powerful tools to boost creativity, improve accuracy, and speed up workflows. With the advent of …

Utilizing Deep Learning To Generate Biomorphic Furniture Design: A Generative Approach, Asmaa Medhat Abd El Aziz Mostafa, Doaa Abdelrahman Mohamed Goda, Dalia Mohamed Ezzat

Journal of Art, Design and Music

This research paper highlights the relatively unexplored potential of deep learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, to radically transform design in general, and specifically in the field of furniture design, by creating new design concepts inspired by living organisms such as marine biology. The main objective of this research is to explore the role of deep learning and artificial intelligence as tools for generating innovative and novel furniture designs inspired by marine organisms (marine biology). The research followed experimental methodology through a prompt engineering-based protocol, using ChatGPT-4 to produce an optimized prompt to be subsequently used on the (Prome AI) …

Innovative Designs For One-Piece Clothing Inspired By The Textures And Color Of Textile Structures, Macramé And Carpet Stitches, Fatma M. Ahmed, Maysa M. Reda, Heba A. Abd El-Aziz, Ahmed G. Hassabo, Hanan A. Othman

Journal of Art, Design and Music

Social ideals and youth curiosity shape fashion. Technology aids product design, balancing form and function. New designs in kids' garments are important for fashion. Computers can swiftly alter images and designs, switch between apps, and have a broad vision, making them ideal for developing one-piece textile prints. They help designers connect one-piece textile printing to production engineering standards with simple accuracy and visibility. Polyester was tested for textile printing. Transfer printing sublimated and thermofixed the ink from paper to polyester fiber. Design research examined how wool and cotton threads affect non-woven fabric structures (macrame). The design experiment examined the interdependence …

Mapping Themes, Aligning Strategies: Institutional Research Analytics With Bertopic And Genai, Danping Dong, Pin Pin Yeo

FORCE 2026

Libraries and research offices are increasingly tasked with making sense of unstructured institutional data, such as research publications and strategic documents. These insights help inform decision-making and leadership planning. This session shares how SMU Libraries leveraged BERTopic, an open-source topic modeling tool, together with generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude, to extract meaningful insights from faculty publications and support institutional sensemaking.

In one use case, we applied BERTopic to university-authored publications to surface thematic groupings related to research about Asia. Generative AI tools were then used to summarize each cluster into human-readable narratives, enabling research landscape mapping, identification …

Into The Unknown: Ai Adoption And Job Satisfaction Of Christian Faculty, Hailey A. Manicone, Roger B. Bingham, Ireremena E. Felixotuorimuo, Linnaya M. Graf, Rachel A. Joseph, Erica Danielle Moore, Joshua E. Wilson

Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

The purpose of this study was to capture the lived experiences of faculty members at Christian higher education institutions regarding the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on faculty job satisfaction. The study addressed two primary research questions: (1) What are the perceptions of Christian higher education faculty regarding expectations related to their use of AI in teaching? (2) How do these perceptions influence their job satisfaction? A transcendental phenomenological approach was used to gather data from six participants from a faith-based institution in the southeastern United States through individual interviews, focus groups, and journal prompts. Analysis followed Moustakas’ (1994) four-step …