Digital Commons Network^™

Postmarketing Safety Of Bimekizumab For Hidradenitis Suppurativa: An Early Pharmacovigilance Analysis Using The United States Food And Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System, Simona A. Alomary, Nicole J. Baker, Temitayo Ogunleye, Susan C. Taylor

Student Papers, Posters & Projects

No abstract provided.

Inexcuseable? Building An Artificial Intelligence Microexpert On Contract Excuse Doctrine, Mark Edwin Burge

Faculty Scholarship

This article details and advocates for a general methodology for creating a "microexpert" grounded in a user-defined set of legal sources and widelyaccessible tools for integrating generative artificial intelligence (AI) into legal analysis. The study focuses particularly on background contract excuse doctrines of impossibility, impracticability, and frustration of purpose, which are collectively a methodologically challenging area of law to rationalize due to factintensive variables that undermine their predictability. Particular challenges include assessing the foreseeability of the event that led to the contract's nonperformance, the extent of the hardship or burden on the party seeking excuse, and the purpose of the …

Tokenized Real Estate: The Law And Tech Of Digital Deeds, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato

Faculty Scholarship

The advent of blockchain technology has generated bold claims that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can fundamentally transform real estate. Proponents assert that digital assets can tokenize real property interests: the concept of using digital tokens to represent ownership rights in physical property. Their goal is to allow buyers and sellers to transfer real estate through simple blockchain transactions, thereby eliminating traditional intermediaries, reducing costs, and accelerating deal velocity. This Essay provides the first comprehensive legal analysis examining whether American law actually supports such a direct tokenization of real estate rights.

Our investigation reveals a stark disconnect between technological capability and legal …

Be Responsible In Your Answers! Monitoring Out-Of-Domain Behaviors In Domain-Specific Llms, Boquan Li, Chenzhe Lou, Zhe Ren, Peixin Zhang, Zirui Fu, Jun Sun, Yaowen Zheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Large Language Models (LLMs) have accelerated the rapid development of chatbot web applications in various domains, such as coding, biomedicine and psychology. Compared to general LLMs like ChatGPT, domain-specific LLMs require a greater sense of responsibility. For instance, if a programming LLM casually answers medical or psychological questions, it not only misleads the public but also poses legal risks. This highlights new demands for monitoring and preventing such irresponsible behaviors. Existing efforts attempt to monitor LLMs from multiple aspects, such as lying, jailbreaks, and toxic content, while overlooking out-of-domain behaviors. In this work, we propose an innovative LLM domain monitoring …

If Life Were Only As Our First Encounter, Yixiao Zhang

MFA in Visual Art

This thesis examines how contemporary portrait painting extends beyond the representation of physical appearance toward the construction of collective memory, history, cultural identity, and mechanisms of seeing. Using staged, photo-based portraits as a point of departure, my work engages both Eastern and Western traditions to produce new autoethnographic narratives. Rethinking the significance of portraiture today, this paper considers what persists and what has shifted over time. It argues that portrait painting is no longer merely a representation of an individual; rather, like a literary text, it functions as a signifier shaped by both the moment of its production and the …

(Un)Imagining India: Anti-Rape Protests As Diagnostic Of Indian State Power, Sonal Churiwal

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Senior Honors Papers

Since the 2012 brutal gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh brought India’s pervasive rape culture to international attention, media, politicians, and the broader Indian public demanded justice for “India’s daughter.” Protestors called on the Indian government to expand the police state, execute perpetrators, and create fast-track legal courts to avenge her death. Collectively, they cast the state in the role of a protector, even of a patriarchal authority. The nature of these demands stands in contrast to Kashmir and Manipur, geographies differentially controlled by the Indian state, where protests call for the withdrawal of the Indian army, a primary …

Navigating Displacement: Queer And Crip Of Color Reframings Of Eating Disorder Discourse, Emilio Parra-Garcia

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Senior Honors Papers

Scholarship on eating disorders has long been dominated by quantitative social science research that shapes clinical understandings of these illnesses, despite growing humanistic interventions. My thesis places eating disorders, through an “archive” of psychological studies, in conversation with queer and crip of color theory to uncover the co-constitutive relationship between queerness, disability, and race/ethnicity that centers on queer people of color with eating disorders as a necessary site of theoretical inquiry. Drawing on Sabrina Strings’ analysis of racialized body ideals, I trace how genealogies of bodily legibility (driven by discourses on whiteness, weight, and citizenship) created systems of “categorical oppression,” …

Choice, Power, & Care: Crisis Pregnancy Centers And Reproductive Justice In Missouri, Sylvie Richards

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Senior Honors Papers

Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are religious organizations with the purpose to dissuade people from obtaining abortions. They often present themselves as authentic reproductive healthcare clinics through medicalized language, services such as ultrasounds and pregnancy tests, promises of information on all pregnancy options, staff dressed as medical professionals, and placement near family planning clinics. In reality, CPCs are medically unlicensed and often spread medical misinformation.

No study has yet focused on CPCs in Missouri, despite providing a critical case study. The state has minimal access to abortion and other components of comprehensive reproductive healthcare and one of the worst maternal mortality …

Dietary Influence And Neurodegenerative Disease Risk: Insight From Alzheimer’S And Parkinson’S Disease, Madison Wirt

Honors Projects

As populations age, neurodegenerative diseases (NDD) become significantly more prevalent and impactful on patients and families. Clinical research has suggested a correlation between diet, gut health, neuroinflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction to the onset and development of specific and severe NDDs, especially Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). This research focuses on the relationship behind the gut-brain axis, micronutrient status and how diet influences the development of both AD and PD. Ten randomized, controlled trials were analyzed from the literature to investigate the impact of these factors on the inflammatory, metabolic and antioxidant processes. The studies focused on the use …

Back To Basics: The Benefits Of Children’S Literature In Higher Education, Max A. Bufkin

Honors Projects

The historic undervaluing of children’s literature has resulted in little research or application of the genre in higher education. However, what research is available has shown that engaging with children’s literature as an adult can have many benefits, including better mental well-being, understanding of multicultural perspectives, and enhanced critical thinking skills. Due to patriarchal ideologies over who can and cannot engage with literature, as well as the work of children’s literature critics, the genre has been marginalized from much debate and discussion. Through student-centered learning and group reading sessions, college students from nearly every discipline can learn to utilize and …

Secondary Dual Language And Immersion Content Teachers And Their Instructional Materials, Curtis Larsen

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

Secondary dual language and immersion (DLI) teachers who teach content courses, such as social studies or science, balance two central responsibilities: meeting content-area standards and supporting students’ language development (Cammarata & Tedick, 2012). Managing these responsibilities presents challenges when preparing and using instructional materials in languages other than English (Moate, 2014; Morton, 2013; Skinnari, 2020; Sun, 2017). While existing research shows that DLI teachers expend enormous energy seeking and preparing instructional materials for their content-area classes (Mathieu, 2022), little is known about the factors that guide this work or how well existing materials meet teachers’ needs. This dissertation sought to …

Multilingual Learner Parent Involvement: Perspectives From Parents, Stella Sandager

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined multilingual learner (ML) parent perspectives on family engagement. The purpose of this study was to determine the opportunities and barriers for parents in order to increase family engagement at a suburban school in Minnesota. The ML population is growing, and understanding how to effectively engage with parents has become increasingly critical. Despite research demonstrating that parent and family engagement impacts student success, parent voices are missing in the research. This study adds to the literature by offering perspectives from parents. Qualitative interviews and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis were used to answer the research questions. Findings concluded that …

Bilingual Achievement, Identity, And Aspiration: Multilingual High School Students’ Lived Experiences Through The Bilingual Seal, Kristy O'Brien

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

O’Brien, K. (2026). Bilingual Achievement, Identity, and Aspiration: Multilingual High School Students’ Lived Experiences through the Bilingual Seal

In an educational landscape shaped by deficit-based perspectives on multilingual learners, asset-based policies such as the Minnesota Bilingual Seal offer an alternative approach for affirming students’ linguistic and cultural identities. This study examined this policy through the experiences of Latiné multilingual high school students. It amplified the voices of the students themselves through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, addressing a gap in multilingual learning and Bilingual Seal research, framed by the conceptual lens of critical consciousness and Latino Crit theory. The research questions are: …

Multilingual Learner Parent Involvement: Perspectives From Parents, Stella Sandager

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined multilingual learner (ML) parent perspectives on family engagement. The purpose of this study was to determine the opportunities and barriers for parents in order to increase family engagement at a suburban school in Minnesota. The ML population is growing, and understanding how to effectively engage with parents has become increasingly critical. Despite research demonstrating that parent and family engagement impacts student success, parent voices are missing in the research. This study adds to the literature by offering perspectives from parents. Qualitative interviews and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis were used to answer the research questions. Findings concluded that …

Development And Acceptability Of A Patient Decision Aid For People With Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy: An International Mixed-Methods Study, Andrew R. Gamble, David B. Anderson, Marnee J. Mckay, Benjamin M. Davies, Sophie Macpherson, James Van Gelder, Tammy Hoffmann, Kirsten Mccaffery, Samuel X. Stevens, Carlo Ammendolia, Rohil V. Chauhan, Carl M. Zipser, Timothy F. Boerger, Lindsay A. Tetreault, Michael G. Fehlings, Elanor Dustan, Carolyn Nugent, Helen Holmgren, Andreas K. Demetriades, Justin M. Lantz, Rana Dhillon, Chris G. Maher, Joshua R. Zadro

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Objectives To develop and user-test a patient decision aid for people diagnosed with degenerative cervical myelopathy and who are considering surgery.

Design Mixed-methods study describing the development of a patient decision aid.

Setting A draft decision aid was developed by a multidisciplinary steering group (including study authors with degenerative cervical myelopathy, health professionals and researchers) informed by the best available evidence, authorship consensus and existing patient decision aids.

Participants Patient-participants and health professional-participants who manage people with degenerative cervical myelopathy were recruited through social media and the steering group’s research and practice network. Quantitative questionnaires were used to gather baseline …

Correlated Many-Body Quantum Dynamics Of The Peregrine Soliton, D. Diplaris, G. A. Bougas, P. G. Kevrekidis, C. L. Hung, P. Schmelcher, S. I. Mistakidis

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We explore the correlated dynamics underlying the formation of the quantum Peregrine soliton, a prototypical rogue-wave excitation, utilizing interaction quenches from repulsive to attractive couplings in an ultracold bosonic gas confined in a one-dimensional box trap. The latter emulates the so-called semiclassical initial conditions and the associated gradient catastrophe scenario facilitating the emergence of a high-density, doubly localized waveform. The ensuing multiorbital variant of the Peregrine soliton features notable deviations from its mean-field sibling, including a reduced peak amplitude, wider core, absence of the side density dips, and earlier formation times. Moreover, Peregrine soliton generation yields coherence losses, while experiencing …

2026 Gsba Conference Abstracts

Global Sport Business Journal

Conference abstracts from the 2026 GSBA Conference "Ideas in Motion"

Architecture-Agnostic Test-Time Adaptation Via Backprop-Free Embedding Alignment, Xiao Ma, Young D. Kwon, Pan Zhou, Dong Ma

PhD Student’s Publications Collection

Test-Time Adaptation (TTA) adapts a deployed model during online inference to mitigate the impact of domain shift. While achieving strong accuracy, most existing methods rely on backpropagation, which is memory and computation intensive, making them unsuitable for resource-constrained devices. Recent attempts to reduce this overhead often suffer from high latency or are tied to specific architectures such as ViT-only or CNN-only. In this work, we revisit domain shift from an embedding perspective. Our analysis reveals that domain shift induces three distinct structural changes in the embedding space: translation (mean shift), scaling (variance shift), and rotation (covariance shift). Based on this …

Scalable Multi-Task Low-Rank Model Adaptation, Zichen Tian, Antoine Ledent, Qianru Sun

PhD Student’s Publications Collection

Scaling multi-task low-rank adaptation (LoRA) to a large number of tasks induces catastrophic performance degradation, such as an accuracy drop from 88.2% to 2.0% on DOTA when scaling from 5 to 15 tasks. This failure is due to parameter and representation misalignment. We find that existing solutions, like regularization and dynamic routing, fail at scale because they are constrained by a fundamental trade-off: strengthening regularization to reduce inter-task conflict inadvertently suppresses the essential feature discrimination required for effective routing. In this work, we identify two root causes for this trade-off. First, uniform regularization disrupts inter-task knowledge sharing: shared underlying knowledge …

New School Troubles: How Building Community Impacts Sense Of Belonging, Naydine Naileah Garcia

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

In this quantitative two group study, there were opportunities for 11th-grade students in ELA to build a classroom community throughout a three-week intervention, designed to examine if implementing these activities would increase their sense of school belonging. Sense of belonging is significant for students to feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others in the school's social environment. Sense of belonging was measured using the Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale as a pre and post test. The treatment group participated in four, 15-minute classroom community building activities a week, completing twelve activities by the end of the intervention. …

Additive Manufacturing Of Ti-Ni Based Ternary Shape Memory Alloys, Yitao Chen, Frank Liou

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Metal additive manufacturing has become a powerful tool to develop customized metal alloys and to discover more advanced properties for novel extended applications. Ti-Ni based shape memory alloy is a group of intriguing smart functional materials, and adding a small amount of a third element can promote and induce more attractive functions. Due to the difficulty in traditional processing and the unique feature of material flexibility of in-situ alloying in additive manufacturing processes, not only Ti-Ni binary shape memory alloys but also Ti-Ni-X ternary shape memory alloys can be developed, manufactured, and investigated in-depth by additive manufacturing. This paper provides …

Thinking Constructively About International Law, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

The international order that has defined the post-World War II period is being radically transformed, presenting a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reconstitute its basic foundations. The pressing questions for international lawyers are about the roles their enterprise can and should play going forward. I argue in this Article that most lack the analytic framework they need even to begin tackling these questions. Worse, most seem mired in an old theory about law that corrupts how they approach their enterprise. My goals in the Article are to expose the prevalence of this bad theory and to present the grounds for discarding it, …

Evaluating Current And Prospective Major League Soccer Marketing Strategies To Spanish Speakers In The United States, Larissa Lee

Honors Theses

This quantitative study identifies the relationship between Spanish-language marketing and Major League Soccer (MLS) fandom and support among consumers. Data were collected by administering a survey in both English and Spanish to ensure inclusivity and increase accessibility. A total of 497 responses were collected, and a series of simple linear regressions were conducted using SPSS to evaluate if MLS fandom and team support could be predicted by language preference for marketing campaigns, perceptions of current Spanish-language content availability, cultural representation, cultural inclusion, and demand for more Spanish-language content.

Results indicated statistically significant differences across all hypotheses. Regarding the dependent variable …

Justice And Peace Shall Kiss: A Comparative Analysis Of Law From Ancient Israel To Modern America, Evan Nix

Honors Theses

Modern legal scholarship frequently attributes American criminal jurisprudence to Roman structures, Enlightenment rationality, and English common law, which obscures the American system’s roots in Hebraic natural-law value frameworks. The present thesis asks: “To what extent does the American criminal justice system embody core values of ancient Hebrew law, and how does such a framework compare to purely secular models regarding societal stability and equity?” A comparative analysis draws on biblical texts of the Torah, Hebrew wisdom literature, and American constitutional and statutory provisions, tracing a genealogy from covenantal laws of ancient Israel to modern American constitutionalism. Findings indicate preservation of …

A Comparative Analysis Of Alternative Pathways To A Law License In The United States, Katherine Willis

Honors Theses

In recent years, there has been an ongoing discussion of how bar exams may be disproportionately unfair to certain demographic groups as a standard pathway to admission to law practice. Some states have had longstanding alternate pathways to the legal profession that sidestep the bar exam and/or law school, including California, Virginia, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire. In the years following 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, other states have joined these jurisdictions in offering alternative pathways to practice that would replace the law school and/or bar exam requirements for aspiring lawyers. This thesis aims to bridge a gap in the literature …

Standardized Home Blood Pressure Log Implementation For Patients With Hypertension To Increase Patient Awareness And Clinical Action, Ashley Alcala

Doctoral Dissertations & Projects

Background: Home blood pressure monitoring (HBPM) is recommended for hypertension management, yet primary care clinics often lack standardized workflows for distributing, collecting, and using home blood pressure (BP) data. Inconsistent reporting and limited patient understanding of their own BP trends, such as whether readings are stable, elevated, or unchanged, reduce providers ability to make timely clinical decisions.

Problem: Despite evidence supporting HBPM, patients rarely brought usable BP logs to follow‑up visits, limiting providers ability to assess BP control, identify trends, and make timely medication or care plan adjustments.

Approach: This project used a Plan‑Do‑Study‑Act (PDSA) model to implement a standardized …

Deportation And Death: Examining The Second Trump Administration’S Immigration Policy Through The Lens Of Just War Theory, Finley W. Snyder

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

From day one of the second Trump administration, the White House has treated illegal immigration as an invasion, both rhetorically and, to a lesser extent, legally. The administration has not shied away from the use of force in this campaign, leading to the notable killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti along with countless acts of violence across the nation. This essay seeks to evaluate the ethics of the second Trump administration's immigration policy from within this "war" framing through the lens of just war theory. While there has been considerable attention to just war theory in the context of …

Navigating End-Of-Life Decisions: Cultural Considerations For Latine Patients, Michelle Carbajal Hernandez

Honors Capstones

Healthcare professionals face many challenges when communicating terminal illness prognoses for individuals. This responsibility to address a terminal prognosis is further complicated when communicating with Latine patients who may face multiple barriers within the healthcare system and whose cultural preferences influence end-of-life care planning (Carrion, 2010). For example, Latines are less likely to enroll in end-of-life (EOL) care services (e.g., hospice) (Barragan-Carrillo et al., 2022). As well as engage in end-of-life care planning than White Non-Latines (Shen et al., 2016). To understand this hesitancy towards EOL care options, this literature review aims to explore how terminally ill Latine and …

Retail Behaviours And Preferences Of Older Adults In Suburban Malls, Le Ha Linh Phan, Kenneth Choo, Emi Loh, Wensi Lim

ROSA Research Briefs

Singapore’s population is ageing rapidly, with projections indicating that one in four Singaporeans will be aged 65 and above by 2030 (Iparraguirre, 2019). This demographic shift presents significant opportunities for the Silver economy, which refers to economic activities, products, and services designed to meet the needs of older adults. As the market for products that enhance seniors’ quality of life expands (Wong, 2007), the Silver retail sector, comprising businesses that provide age-friendly goods and services, has become an increasingly important component of this landscape (Colurcio et al., 2022).

Mathematics In Maltese: The Compilation Of A Bilingual English-Maltese Glossary To Support Mathematics Teaching And Learning In Malta, Marie Theresa Farrugia, Lara Ann Vella, David Muscat, Melanie Casha Sammut

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In Malta, mathematics education is accessed bilingually through Maltese and English. While Maltese is often used for verbal interaction, English is the language of written texts, including assessments. Consequently, switches between the languages is a common feature of Maltese mathematics classrooms. Anecdotal and research evidence indicate that Maltese students benefit from the use of their home language. However, to date, there is no recognised and standardised Maltese bank of mathematics Our project aims to address this lacuna. In this article, we outline the process of compiling a bilingual glossary of mathematics terms intended for kindergarten and elementary school levels in …