Digital Commons Network^™

Unraveling Hemispheric Specializations In The Mouse Auditory Cortex: From Diseased Model Comparisons To Development, Demetrios Neophytou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hemispheric specialization is a fundamental organizing principle of mature auditory cortical function, allowing the left and right Auditory Cortex (ACx) to perform complementary computations on complex sounds. This division of labor is conserved across species, and mice recapitulate key forms of auditory cortical lateralization, providing access to the synaptic and circuit mechanisms that generate it. Disrupted hemispheric organization is also associated with neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by severe communication impairments, including Rett Syndrome (RTT). Despite this, we know little about how lateralized auditory circuits are assembled during development or why they become differentially vulnerable to neurodevelopmental disruption. Here, using a mouse …

Predictors Of Over- And Under-Policing In Kansas City, Missouri: An Examination Of Neighborhood Trajectories, Rachael Arietti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines patterns of over- and under-policing across neighborhoods in Kansas City, MO. Over- and under-policing can undermine police legitimacy, community trust, and public safety. Yet few empirical studies have directly operationalized these constructs, with existing research relying primarily on perception-based data and cross-sectional measures.

The present study uses longitudinal administrative data from the Kansas City, MO Police Department to more directly operationalize over- and under-policing over an 11-year period (2006–2016). It extends prior research by: 1) using group-based trajectory modeling to examine how over- and under-policing vary across neighborhoods and over time, 2) using dual trajectory analysis to …

Assessing The Relationship Between Housing Provision And State Legitimacy Through The Vision 2030 Plan In Saudi Arabia, Shovan Bala

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars have long evaluated the politicization of housing by examining the relationship between housing provision and legitimacy across democratic and authoritarian states. This thesis contributes to the scholarship on housing provision and state legitimacy by examining the Saudi state’s recent housing development efforts, and its role in shaping citizens’ housing aspirations and informing their understanding of housing as a state responsibility. Using the Vision 2030 Plan’s Sakani and Ejar initiatives, I examine the nexus between Saudi government’s housing development efforts and provision of financial incentives and citizens’ perceived reliance on the state for housing. I evaluate these housing initiatives through …

A Study Of Bengali Grapheme-To-Phoneme Conversion, Arundhati Sengupta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion is a foundational component of speech technology, yet the languages for which it has been carefully studied remain a small fraction of the world's languages. Bengali is spoken by over 230 million people, making it one of the world's most widely used languages, but it remains comparatively understudied in natural language processing, and G2P for Bengali in particular has received less attention.

In this dissertation, we use neural architecture comparison, error analysis, and explicit correction techniques to identify and address the sources of G2P error in Bengali. First, we train and compare four neural G2P architectures, including …

Modeling Large Language Model Cognition, Eleni Angelou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project builds three core directions in a philosophy of cognitive science for large language models (LLMs): 1) interpreting LLM behavior, 2) analyzing the system in terms of Marr’s three levels, and 3) mapping the correspondence between behavioral outputs and the internals of the system. It consists of the following three chapters accordingly:

Dennettian Stances and Large Language Models

The aim of this chapter is to argue that there are convincing grounds for applying Dennett’s framework of stances to LLMs against worries that doing so produces “counterfeit people”. After introducing the intentional and design stances, I take sycophancy as a …

Theoretical Analysis And Performance Interpretation In Thomas Adès’S Traced Overhead, Han Chen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While many post-tonal composers avoid any inkling of tonality by embracing dissonance or breaking tonal resolutions, Thomas Adès does not shy away from the traditional harmonies that strongly relate to tonal music, such as the circle of fifths, major and minor triads, and the horn-call motif, but adopts several intervallic systems that govern all the notes, including aligned cycles, parsimonious voice leading, and the twelve-tone aggregate.

To examine how Adès uses these intervallic systems to repurpose traditional harmonies, this dissertation presents a close tonal analysis of his solo piano work Traced Overhead. Integrating historical, pianistic, and extramusical contexts, this …

Cavity Optomechanics Via Mechanically Induced Coupling Of Optical Modes, Satyam S. Jha

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis introduces a transverse, symmetry-breaking mode of optomechanical coupling that departs from the conventional dispersive and dissipative interactions, taking its motivating platform from whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) resonators, where a mechanical displacement lifts the near-degeneracy of azimuthal mode pairs and couples them. After reviewing the standard optomechanical model and the sideband-cooling phenomenology it underlies, we derive the Hamiltonian for the transverse-coupling system and first study its Hamiltonian dynamics, without drive or dissipation. Recast in terms of Schwinger pseudospin operators, the model exhibits a Hamiltonian Hopf bifurcation separating stable and unstable dynamical regimes. In the stable regime, the mechanical nonlinearity permits controlled …

Curated Spaces: Cognition By Design, Sydney Harvey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Curated Spaces: Cognition by Design” is a dissertation that considers the connection between designed spaces and cognition. This work combines philosophy of mind and aesthetics. The dissertation introduces the term “Curated Cognition”, which builds on the concept of situated cognition ( Brooks, 1991; Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman,  2003;  Sterelny, 2010; Krueger, 2015; Colombetti, 2020 ). The dissertation argues that the environment is essential to cognition, and all environments are curated; therefore, the way we think, feel, and act is curated as well. Some non-human animals may inhabit worlds that are not curated. For example, an octopus may find shelter in …

Lingual Articulatory Configuration Of Japanese Devoiced Vowels, Rion Iwasaki

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Tokyo Japanese, high vowels /i/ and /u/ are devoiced with high frequency between two voiceless obstruents. There is an ongoing outstanding debate in the literature on whether devoiced vowels maintain their lingual articulation or are deleted. To contribute to this debate from a lingual articulatory perspective, the current study uses ultrasound imaging of the tongue and various acoustic measurements. Data from 11 native speakers of Tokyo Japanese are analyzed. This is the first lingual articulatory study to examine both devoiced /i/ and /u/ from more than three speakers. All speakers provide articulatory and acoustic evidence that devoiced /i/ and …

Bimodal-Bilingual Advantage: Neural Patterns Of Asl Interpreters During Narrative Encoding, Gina F. Piersanti Gioe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Interpreters display superior executive functions when compared to non-interpreters in tasks of working memory and attentional control. Sign Language Interpreters work simultaneously between two language modalities, though little is known about how regular engagement in communication of high cognitive demand shapes their cognition. Oscillatory activity in the brain has been mapped to functions of cognition. Specifically, parietal alpha activity is linked to attention control and frontal theta activity to memory processes. This study uses both behavioral measures, narrative recall accuracy, and EEG recording of neural oscillations to compare 12 professional American Sign Language Interpreters to 12 Non-Interpreter controls. Participants were …

International Migration And Sex Trafficking: A Scoping Review., Higinio Fernández-Sánchez, Mutaz T Abdulrazag Gamra, Luis E Caso Vega, Julio Rodriguez-Araujo, Jennifer Stockton, Tahilin Sanchez Karver, Carlos Rodriguez-Diaz, Diane Santa Maria

Library Staff Publications

Introduction: Sex trafficking is a pervasive threat that disproportionately affects migrant populations. These groups are often targeted due to socioeconomic status, legal insecurity, and limited access to appropriate protections. The intersection between migration status and current structural inequalities further intensifies risks to migrant health and general well-being, making them highly susceptible to coercion and abuse. Despite growing research around these issues, evidence on sex trafficking among migrants remains an area for further exploration.

Objective: To examine the scope, nature, and thematic trends in the literature on international migration and sex trafficking.

Methods: This scoping review was guided by the population-Concept-Context …

Generalizations Of The Dirichlet Problem For Bianalytic Functions, William L. Blair

Math Faculty Publications and Presentations

We prove the Dirichlet problem for second-order iterated Vekua equations, a natural generalization of the Bitsadze equation, is well-posed when the boundary condition is defined as a product of an exponential function and a polynomial on a non-degenerate conic that is not a circumference. Also, we extend this result, as well as other related results for the Dirichlet problem for polyanalytic and generalized analytic functions from the literature, to their analogues for bicomplex differential equations.

Investigating The Impact Of Outreach Programmes On Second Level Students In Formal And Informal Computer Science Education In Ireland, Karen Nolan

Doctoral

Computer Science (CS) education at second-level in Ireland has undergone significant development, including the introduction of the Leaving Certificate Computer Science (LCCS). However, the existing literature examined demonstrated that access to and participation in CS education is uneven, resulting in many students having limited exposure CS at second-level before making educational choices. At the same time, students who elect to study LCCS require appropriate support as they engage with programming and other aspects of a relatively new formal curriculum. This thesis investigates the function of school-based CS outreach in helping students at these various phases of their second-level CS education …

Behind The Score: The Influence Of Neighborhood Policy Contexts On New York Regents Exam Performance Across New York City Public High Schools, Philip J. Kovacevic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study used a two-level hierarchical linear model (HLM) to test whether New York City neighborhood zoning and land-use characteristics independently predict school-level performance on the New York State Regents Examinations, after controlling for school demographic and organizational characteristics, and Regents mean scores, both drawn from the NYC DOE's Regents Exam Results file (NYC Public Schools InfoHub, 2024). Using NYC Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output (PLUTO) 2025 data, a Neighborhood Educational Quality (NEQ) index was built for each of the city’s 42 community districts by combining the commercial floor area ratio (CommFAR) and the proportion of lots zoned residential …

Manufacturing Routes For Oxide Dispersion Strengthened Alloys, Ertugrul Demir, Seung Min Ha, Alexander Killips, Guan Cheng Chen, Yitian Chi, Dileepa Maddumage, Dalong Zhang, Xiaochun Li, Haiming Wen, Enrique Lavernia

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Oxide dispersion strengthened alloys are promising structural materials for high temperature, irradiation, and mechanically demanding environments because their performance depends on fine and stable oxide dispersoids distributed within a metallic matrix. However, reliable fabrication remains challenging because precursor oxide nanoparticles or oxide forming species must be transformed into stable oxide dispersoids without excessive agglomeration, coarsening, contamination, or loss during processing. This review critically compares powder metallurgy, additive manufacturing, and liquid metallurgy routes for ODS alloy fabrication, with emphasis on oxide evolution, microstructure control, mechanical performance, scalability, and industrial maturity. Powder metallurgy remains the most reliable route for producing fine and …

Radiological Safety Assessment Of Gamma Spectroscopy Based Spent Fuel Burnup Analysis At The Itu Triga Mark Ii Reactor, T. Akyurek, Z. Boduroglu, A. Kaya, O. Erbay, I. A. Reyhancan, M. S. Kiziltas, S. Ozcan

Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study investigates radiological safety and photon attenuation behavior during spent fuel inspection and burnup analysis at the ITU TRIGA Mark II Research Reactor. A lead-shielded fuel inspection system equipped with an HPGe detector was used to perform remote gamma spectroscopy on spent fuel elements, ensuring operator safety. Dose rate measurements were taken using a handheld radiation monitor at both the surface and at a distance of 1 m from the inspection system for each fuel element. The highest contact dose rate was observed for the B4 element (6.68 ± 0.60 μSv/h), while the lowest was for F30 (2.4 ± …

Automated Haulage Trucks: Impact On Workplace Safety And Efficiency In Surface Mining Systems, Samuel Frimpong, Mabel Obosu

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The mining industry continues to face significant safety challenges, particularly with powered haulage equipment (PHE). PHE incidents account for a substantial percentage of mining-related fatalities, often resulting from vehicle collisions, equipment rollovers, operator errors, and blind-spot hazards. Despite the industry's efforts to improve safety protocols, fatal accidents involving haulage trucks remain persistent. The mining industry has increasingly adopted automation to enhance operational efficiency and improve safety, particularly in surface mines where haulage truck accidents remain a critical concern. Automation has significantly reduced human exposure to hazardous tasks by removing operators from dangerous environments, thereby mitigating risks associated with human error …

Geometric And Operational Design Principles For Autonomous Haulage Systems In Open-Pit Mining: A Systematic Review, Justina Senam Lotsu, Samuel Frimpong, Muhammad Azeem Raza

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The rapid deployment of autonomous haulage systems (AHSs) in open-pit mining has significantly altered haul road geometric design requirements, as autonomous trucks operate under strict kinematic constraints related to turning radius, gradient, and braking performance. Since haulage accounts for 50–60% of total mining costs, optimizing haul road geometry is critical for improving operational efficiency, energy consumption, and safety. This study presents a systematic review of 50 highly relevant studies selected from 81 candidate publications published between 2003 and 2025 through structured database searches and citation chaining. The review synthesizes current developments in haul road layout optimization, turning radius accommodation, gradient …

Smart: When Is It Actually Worth Expanding A Speculative Tree?, Lifu Wang, Pan Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Tree-based speculative decoding accelerates autoregressive generation by verifying a branching tree of draft tokens in a single targetmodel forward pass. However, existing methods prioritize maximizing token-level likelihood or the number of accepted tokens while ignoring a critical “efficiency paradox”: the computational overhead of drafting and verifying big trees can grow super-linearly, particularly at scale. This often leads to negative wall-clock speedup when batch sizes increase or hardware saturation limits are reached. To address this, we propose SMART, a System-aware Marginal Analysis framework for Runtime Tree construction. SMART reformulates tree expansion as a hardware-aware optimization problem that directly maximizes end-toend speedup. …

Best Practices For Supporting Occupational Therapy Students With Disabilities During Clinical Education: Results From A Three-Round Delphi Study, Courtney Gohean, Katie Mclaughlin, Aster Harrison

Department of Occupational Therapy Faculty Papers

INTRODUCTION: Disabled occupational therapy students face systemic barriers in clinical education. Although legal mandates require reasonable accommodations, implementation is often inconsistent, and few standardized guidelines exist for fieldwork education. This study is aimed at establishing best practices for supporting occupational therapy and occupational therapy assistant students with disabilities during fieldwork.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A three-round Delphi study was conducted with a panel of 30 experts, including disabled occupational therapy students, disabled occupational therapy practitioners, academic fieldwork coordinators (AFWCs), fieldwork educators (FWEs), disability services staff, and researchers. In Round 1, participants answered open-ended questions about challenges, accommodations, and environmental supports. Responses …

Learning 1-Bit Lidar-Based Localization With Auxiliary Objective, Kaijie Yin, Zhiyuan Zhang, Tian Gao, Wentao Zhu, Cheng-Zhong Xu, Hui Kong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

6-DoF LiDAR-based localization is a fundamental capability for autonomous systems operating in large-scale outdoor environments. Many deep-learning-based localization methods have achieved promising performance so far. However, as one of the always-on modules competing for limited on-board computational resources, the localization module is expected to consume only a small portion of the overall compute budget. Most existing learning-based methods are still too heavy for this purpose. In contrast, binary neural networks (BNNs) offer an appealing solution, but the 1-bit compression causes severe information loss and performance drop. In this paper, we address this challenge by proposing Binarized LiDAR-based Localization (BiLoc), the …

Catalysts For Third-Country Market Entry: The Role Of Preferential Trade Agreements, Qiugu He, Xuan Luo

Research Collection School Of Economics

Preferential trade agreement (PTA) membership is known to divert trade volumes away from nonmember (third) countries along the intensive margin of trade, yet much less is known about its effects on third-country market entry along the extensive margin of trade. This paper examines whether PTAs catalyze market entry into third countries, and more broadly whether PTAs create spillover effects beyond member countries that matter for development. Using bilateral trade data from 1948 to 2020, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy, and find that the third-country market entry rate rises by 2.1% when the origin country has a PTA partner in the …

Threshold Spatial Panel Regression With Fixed Effects, Xiaoyu Meng, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We introduce general estimation and inference methods for threshold spatial panel regression with two-way fixed effects in a diminishing-threshold-effects framework. A valid objective function is obtained through a simple adjustment on the concentrated quasi loglikelihood with fixed effects being concentrated out, which leads to a consistent estimation of all common parameters. We show that the estimation of threshold parameter has a negligible effect on the asymptotic distribution of the main parameter estimators and thereby regular inference methods apply, though a bias correction may be necessary. The limiting distribution of the threshold parameter estimator is shown to be non-regular and infeasible, …

Querying Institutional Data With Ai Agents: A Hands-On Workshop For Rowan Employees, Vijay Bharathwaj

Library Workshops

This workshop will demonstrate how AI agents can transform the way employees at Rowan University access and interact with institutional data. Attendees will learn how conversational AI agents can provide immediate answers to enrollment and institutional reporting questions using natural language. The session will feature live demonstrations of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)  Agent and Census Enrollment Data Agent developed by Rowan University’s Institutional Data & Analytics (IDA) team. These agents provide access to institutionally governed, definition-based data aligned with official reporting standards and census reporting practices. Attendees will see how users can ask follow-up questions conversationally to …

The Bridwell Quill, April-September, Issues 92–97, Anthony Elia

Bridwell Library Publications

No abstract provided.

Ask Dr. Wang: A Community Conversation On Ai At Cary Library, Stephen Yang, Zhengjia Yang, Julie Yin, Eric Gu, Jiawei Liu

Paul English Applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institute Publications

This report describes a community engagement project by the Youth STEAM Initiative (YSI) in conjunction with a public talk by Dr. Haixun Wang, “How AI Remembers, Imagines, and Creates,” held at the Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, Massachusetts. Prior to the talk, YSI collected questions and perspectives from community members through an online survey, gathering thirteen responses spanning students, parents, and professionals. This report summarizes the talk, themes that emerged from those responses, the community’s views on AI creativity, and reflections from the YSI team.

The Relationship Between Adverse Childhood Experiences, Protective And Compensatory Experiences, And Parenting Attitudes Among Fathers, Kylie Schmidt

Dissertations

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are defined as potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood particularly between the ages of 0 and 17 years that negatively influence long-term health, relational functioning, and parenting practices (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2026; Felitti et al., 1998; Merrick et al., 2019). Conversely, protective and compensatory experiences (PACEs) have emerged as protective factors that foster resilience and possibly buffer against the adverse outcomes of ACEs (Narayan et al., 2018). As the existing research has greatly focused on mothers, little is known about how men’s early life experiences shape their parenting attitudes, particularly during the …

Offline And Thriving: Understanding The Professional And Personal Lives Of Non-Social Media Users In A Digitally Dominant Era, Bhargava Mantena

Dissertations

Existing research has treated voluntary social media abstinence as the absence of users rather than as a condition worth study. This mixed-methods study examined its psychological and occupational correlates. Adults aged 21 to 65 reporting abstinence from all major platforms for six months or more completed three validated instruments measuring mental well-being, work engagement, and perceived social isolation; a purposive subsample of 12 took part in semi-structured interviews. The analysis set comprised 120 participants, below the 128 indicated by the a priori power analysis. Research Question 1 could not be tested as approved, because no active-user comparison group was recruited; …

Cognitive-Affective And Somatic Depressive Symptom Domains Related To Psychological Mechanisms And Sociodemographic Factors, Danielle B. Hazeltine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Major depressive disorder is prevalent, chronic, and heterogeneous, including cognitive- affective (e.g., maladaptive beliefs or thinking patterns and sad mood) and somatic (e.g., fatigue, appetite, or sleep changes) symptom domains. While depression domains have been long theorized, research examining psychological mechanisms underlying this distinction is limited. Preliminary research suggests cognitive-affective symptoms relate more strongly to cognitive mechanisms (cognitive bias, perseverative thought), somatic symptoms relate more strongly to behavioral mechanisms (behavioral inhibition/activation), and gender, race, and ethnicity moderate these relationships. This study examined whether cognitive-affective and somatic symptom domains differentially relate to cognitive and behavioral mechanisms, and whether these relationships are …

Distinguishing Between Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder And Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Role Of Childhood Maltreatment, Catherine Harris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The current study examined whether court-substantiated childhood maltreatment may be associated with increased risk for Complex PTSD (CPTSD) and whether individuals with CPTSD and individuals with PTSD could be distinguished in terms of complex trauma exposure. Children with documented cases of abuse and neglect prior to age 11 were matched on age, race, sex, and approximate family socioeconomic status with children without documented histories of maltreatment (controls) and both groups were followed prospectively into adulthood. Participants (N = 1,196) were assessed using a DSM-III-R based structured interview of PTSD symptoms and other self-report measures of psychiatric symptoms at mean age …