Digital Commons Network^™

Characterization Of The Genetic Diversity Of Curlyleaf Pondweed (Potamogeton Crispus L.) In The Contiguous United States And Canada And Analysis Of Possible Hybrid Potamogeton Crispus Lineages, Mallory M. Kaiser

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Curlyleaf Pondweed (Potamogeton crispus L.) is a prolific invasive species that has spread across the United States and into parts of Canada since its introduction to North America in the 1840s. It causes extensive economic and environmental damage across its invasive range, and its control and eradication are of utmost importance to agricultural, ecological, recreational, and transportational stakeholders. Developments in molecular ecology and invasive management have found that genetic diversity and hybridization of aquatic macrophytes may affect their susceptibility to herbicide treatments, and genotype or lineage identification are important control variables that must be considered in field and …

Sociolinguistic Challenges To The Academic Inclusion Of Latin American Immigrants Of Legal Age And Spanish In High Schools In Minnesota: A Qualitative Study On The Learning Of English As A Second Language, Geanella Margarita Ochoa Veloz

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This research analyzes and exposes the experiences of Latin American adult migrants who, having recently arrived in the United States, have resumed their studies in high schools in the State of Minnesota as a strategy to learn the English language by immersion. The study was based on the contributions of the sociology of migration and the sociology of education, which, incorporating as a methodological strategy “the case study” combined with “the life story”, managed to collect and share reflections regarding the barriers faced by migrants during the process of adaptation and insertion into American society, thus adopting a critical approach. …

Creating The Role Of Passerby And Stationmaster In The Cherry Orchard, Selwyn Ofori

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This paper will serve as a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the Master of Fine Arts degree in Acting. It is a detailed account of Selwyn Ofori's artistic process in creating the role of Passerby and Stationmaster in Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard staged at Ted Paul at Minnesota State University, Mankato in Spring 2026. This thesis entails the actor's analysis from pre-production till performance in five chapters, namely: pre-production analysis, historical and critical perspective, journals, post-production analysis, process development, and appendix. The sources of my research are also recorded in the works cited.

Chesapeake Bay Water Clarity: Challenges And Successes, Jessica S. Turner, Carl T. Friedrichs, David B. Parrish, Kelsey A. Fall

OES Faculty Publications

The Chesapeake Bay is a large estuarine system spanning multiple jurisdictions and serves as a model for estuarine health worldwide. Historically, nutrient loading degraded water quality, prompting the need for regulation. Water clarity, one component of water quality, is vital for benthic communities and serves as a key indicator of overall ecosystem health. Here, physical resuspension and salinity gradients, nutrient and sediment inputs, production of organic detritus by phytoplankton, and benthic communities all interact to drive clarity patterns, with high spatial variability. Trends over the last 50 years show improvement, though with a temporary increase in organic detritus in response …

Revisiting The Life Cycle Of Margalefidinium Polykrikoides Group Iii, Eduardo Pérez-Vega, Kenneth N. Mertens, Pjotr Meyvisch, Margaret R. Mulholland

OES Faculty Publications

Dinoflagellates produce cysts as a strategy to withstand environmental stressors, with nutrient depletion generally considered a key trigger for cyst production. Resting cysts are thick-walled, typically composed of one to several layers, and characterized by a prolonged dormancy period. In contrast, pellicle cysts possess a thin, single wall and exhibit no dormancy or a markedly shorter dormancy than resting cysts of the same species. Margalefidinium polykrikoides produces pellicle and resting cysts, whereas its congener, M. fulvescens, has been shown to produce pumpkin-like structures. Using phase-contrast microscopy, time-lapse microscopy, FlowCam, and attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (ATR μ-FTIR), …

From Reactionary To Anticipatory Integrated Action: Novel Environmental Health Surveillance For Mass Gatherings, Benjamin J. Ryan, Michael Donahoo, Danielle Esler, Paul Barach, Benjamin Coghlan, Shelby Garner, Laura M. Langan, John Piispanen, Bryan W. Brooks

College of Population Health Faculty Papers

Advances in AI-driven analytics, human-in-the loop techniques, and wastewater monitoring provide the foundation needed to shift from reactive to anticipatory actions for mass gatherings. Traditional surveillance systems focus on clinical and laboratory-based notification pathways, which often result in tardy actions being implemented. Thus, traditional surveillance is becoming outdated. Mass gatherings pose heightened public health risks and hazards, including trauma; injury and substance misuse; deliberate poisoning; and infectious diseases such as food and waterborne illnesses, sexually transmitted infections, and respiratory diseases. There is also a heightened concern due to reduced vaccination coverage. As a result, future international events such as the …

Obituary For The Birth Certificate, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

Have birth certificates outlived their usefulness? Birth certificates establish an individual’s name, identity, age, race, sex and gender, parental authority, and citizenship. In addition, the information collected at the time of birth and reflected on a long-form birth certificate provides data for public health policy, population statistics, internal migration, government planning, and resource allocation. Birth certificates are also the all-access pass to American life, necessary for many functions of modern life: registering a child in school, signing a child up for soccer, getting a driver’s license and passport, enlisting in the military, and applying for government benefits. All of this, …

Looking Forward, Reflecting Back: The Promise Of Dispute Resolution To Reform The Criminal Legal System, Cynthia Alkon

Faculty Scholarship

The criminal legal system in the United States is plagued by serious and systemic problems. There have been countless efforts at reform over the last many decades that have included changes in what is a crime, how crimes are punished, how prosecutors do their job, and changes in policing. Yet, despite these efforts, problems such as mass incarceration remain deeply embedded. It is easy to be swept up in pessimism when discussing the criminal legal system. Change is hard, at best incremental, and we seem to be in the beginning of an era of backlash against recent reforms. This is …

Comparison Of Groundwater Ownership Regimes In Ten Jurisdictions Across Five Continents, Gabriel Eckstein, Theo Buchler, Caleb Cook, Heping Dang, Robyn Stein, Stefano Burchi, Gabriela Cuadrado Quesada, Juan Pablo Galeano, Eric Garner, Amy Hardberger, Imad Antoine Ibrahim, Oudi Kgomongwe

Faculty Scholarship

The regulation of groundwater remains underdeveloped globally and often lags behind the domestic governance of surface water. As a result, groundwater is often subject to unfettered extraction, uses, and contamination. A clear understanding of ownership is central to the success of domestic regulations. However, the types of ownership regime in place in nations around the world are poorly documented in the academic literature. This study addresses that gap through a comparative analysis of domestic groundwater ownership regimes across ten jurisdictions in nine countries spanning five continents. It identifies three dominant models of groundwater ownership: private ownership, public ownership, and non-ownership …

Symmetry, Presumptions, And The Judges Design, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

An instrumental variables approach called ‘the judges design’ used frequently in social sciences relies on an assumption called ‘average monotonicity’. This assumption pertains to how different judges’ (or other classifiers’) decision making processes relate to each other. Violations of it are hard to detect, which raises the importance of it being supported by a plausible theory. Decisions of judges who solve Bayesian decision problems violate average monotonicity as long as the signals they process are symmetric and they do not possess strong presumptions. This result is extended to cases where judge presumptions are symmetrically distributed and may include strong presumptions. …

Information Law Pluralism, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Information-intensive activities are reshaping political, social, and economic institutions. As they respond to these shifts, legislators and regulators are embracing information as a regulatory device for tech. Far from limiting themselves to public disclosure, consumer notice, and other traditional mechanisms of fostering transparency and information flows, however, legislators are using other, more nuanced tools to incentivize regulated entities to obtain, generate, and share information.

This Article maps the landscape of the emerging information-based regimes for regulating tech and assesses their conceptual and practical implications. It canvasses an extensive set of recently enacted laws regulating the information economy and shows that, …

Equal Justice & Generative Ai, Milan R. Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

The United States has long suffered from unequal access to justice, with countless low-and middle-income Americans forced to navigate the legal system alone. Recently, prominent judges, lawyers, and scholars have seized on generative AI as a potential corrective. These techno-optimists maintain that ChatGPT and other large language models can demystify the law and address unmet legal needs. Chief Justice John Roberts has proclaimed that AI-based tools "have the welcome potential to smooth out any mismatch between available resources and urgent needs in our court system."

Although AI will be an increasingly important source of legal assistance for underserved populations, the …

Examining The Current And Potential Impacts Of Erosion, Flooding, And Permafrost Thaw On Small Businesses In The Lower Kuskokwim Basin, Alaska, Dela Yao Agbagba

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

No abstract provided.

Exploit Machina, Andrea Matwyshyn

Faculty Scholarship

Over half a century ago, Hannah Arendt cautioned us to “think what we are doing” when we build new technologies. Engaging with her counsel and a set of historical case studies, this Article frames what it calls exploit machina problems. Exploit machina refers to situations where broken technologies and broken governance combine to irreparably harm the public. In other words, exploit machina involves organizational choices to knowingly leverage technology as part of legally problematic conduct, including various forms of fraud. In the language of data science, exploit machina situations implicate strategic decisions in building and managing artificial intelligence (AI); they …

Renegotiating The Energy Transition, Hannah Jacobs Wiseman, Jennifer Baka, Kaitlyn Spangler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beyond Bans: A Travel Distance-Based Approach To Estimating The Effects Of Dobbs V. Jackson Women’S Health Organization On Fertility And Labor Supply, Enya Kamadolli

CMC Senior Theses

The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision had highly heterogeneous effects on abortion access across U.S. states, variation I exploit to identify causal effects on fertility and labor supply. Rather than a binary “total ban” indicator, I construct a continuous treatment measure based on changes in distance to the nearest legal abortion provider between 2021 and 2023, and apply a difference-in-differences design to state-level panel data. Effects are attenuated and imprecise in the South, consistent with diminishing marginal effects at large distances. In non-Southern states, I find that a 100 km increase in distance raises total births by about …

Transformed, Not Resolved: Ethnic Federalism And The Politics Of Conflict In Ethiopia, Melayae L. Houser

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis investigates whether Ethiopia's system of ethnic federalism resolved the longstanding conflicts that have characterized the country's political history or instead transformed them into new manifestations. Introduced in 1991 after the collapse of the Derg regime, ethnic federalism reorganized Ethiopia into ethnically defined regional states and granted groups constitutional rights to self-governance and self-determination. The system aimed to address historical grievances stemming from decades of centralized, exclusionary governance.

Employing a four-part analytical framework, this thesis analyzes two case studies: the Tigray War of 2020–2022 and the Oromia-Somali border conflict, to argue that ethnic federalism did not resolve Ethiopia's underlying …

David Vs. The Propaganda Machine: Péter Magyar And The Disruption Of Hungary’S Media Capture, Carrick G. Mollenkamp

CMC Senior Theses

The durability of competitive authoritarian regimes is often derived from media capture, a sophisticated system in which media institutions are structured to favor incumbent actors. Viktor Orbán’s Hungary serves as a quintessential example. For more than a decade, opposition actors were systematically denied meaningful access to the electorate, enabling Orbán to maintain his grip on power through consecutive elections. But that durability did not last. Drawing on Marius Dragomir’s media capture model and Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way’s framework of hybrid regimes, this thesis argues Péter Magyar’s landslide victory in the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary election exposed three vulnerabilities of media …

The Economics Of The U.S. Student Loan Market And The Case For The Education Development Financial Institution, Ian Akers

CMC Senior Theses

The United States student loan market is shaped by a variety of market failures–credit constraints, positive externalities, behavioral frictions including myopia, debt aversion, and misperception–that together justify government intervention in the market. Yet the design of federal intervention is just as important as its existence. This thesis details the economic theory underpinning the market for student loans, evaluates three historical federal student loan programs (the Perkins Loan Program, the Federal Family Education Loan Program, and the Federal Direct Loan Program) through the lens of that theory. The thesis then proposes a novel institutional model as a targeted response to the …

Pillpetz: A Smarter Way To Encourage Medication Adherence In Children, John H. Begley

CMC Senior Theses

Medication adherence is usually framed as a problem of patient behavior, but this thesis argues that it is equally a problem of design. Children who take daily medication face barriers that adults often do not: developing executive function, dependence on caregivers, shifting school and home routines, privacy concerns, and stigma around being perceived as different. The standard prescription bottle, by contrast, was designed primarily for dispensing efficiency, safety, and accidental ingestion prevention—not for sustained daily use by a developing child.

This thesis proposes PillPetz, a smart pill case and digital companion that uses routine, play, dose confirmation, and caregiver-connected support …

Algorithmic Trading In Idiosyncratic-Payoff Markets: A Multi-Agent System For On-Chain Prediction Contracts, Saif Aldeen A.K. Agha

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis documents the design, deployment, and forward-test evaluation of an evolutionary multi-agent algorithmic trading system on Polymarket, the largest decentralized prediction market. The system pairs a locally-hosted 72-billion-parameter language model with a gradient-boosted statistical filter and an evolutionary selection mechanism that maintains a population of approximately 500 autonomous trading agents. Each agent generates a probability estimate for an event, compares it to the prevailing market price, and trades the resulting disagreement.

The central empirical exercise estimates a panel regression of trade-level profit on the absolute disagreement between the agent's probability estimate and the market price, controlling for agent identity, …

From Reconstruction To The Carceral State: Law, Labor, And Punishment In Black America, Nicolas S. Changbencharoen

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the reconfiguration of racial and labor subordination in the United States from Reconstruction to the present, arguing that the legal abolition of slavery did not dismantle the economic and institutional structures on which it rested. It traces a continuous trajectory through which law and the criminal justice system were systematically weaponized to reconstitute slavery's essential functions under successive institutional forms, each serving as a deliberate mechanism for the extraction of Black labor in service of private and state interests. The analysis culminates in an examination of the modern carceral state, concluding that contemporary prison labor programs continue …

Goods, Practices, Excellence, And The Law: Steps To An Internal Theory Of Value, Rowan Gray

CMC Senior Theses

Practices are the coherent and complex social activities we spend much of our lives engaging in. This category encompasses everything from figure skating to wine-tasting to friend relationships. We gain immense value from participating in practices, and philosophers have articulated a number of accounts for where the value emerges from and how we can best experience it. Many of these theories are ‘externalist’, because they posit that value is incidental to practices and emerges from outside of them.

In contrast, this thesis will argue that the value in practices is internal to each practice. The value comes from each practice’s …

Designed To Please: How Sycophantic Ai Voices Reinforce Gendered Expectations, Zoe O. Feuer

CMC Senior Theses

Scholars have raised concerns that the popularization of feminized, agreeable AI assistants normalizes associations between women and subservient behavior, potentially reinforcing broader gender stereotypes through repeated exposure. This study tested whether AI sycophancy and AI gender shape user perceptions of AI warmth, competence, affective trust, and cognitive trust, and whether interacting with a sycophantic female AI shifts explicit or implicit gender stereotype endorsement. Using a 2 (AI gender: male vs. female) × 2 (sycophancy: high vs. low) between-subjects design, 202 participants completed a simulated travel planning task with a voice-based AI agent. Despite successfully manipulating sycophancy, neither sycophancy nor AI …

Top-Tier Venture Capital Backing And Startup Acquisition Speed: Evidence Of Certification Signaling In Private Markets, Nicolas Wilde

CMC Senior Theses

The venture capital market is defined by information asymmetry, and private acquisitions represent the setting where that asymmetry bites hardest. Acquirers evaluating private targets have no prospectus, no analyst coverage, and no independent market price to anchor their judgment. This paper asks whether the reputation of a startup's lead investor shapes how quickly that startup is acquired. Using a sample of 1,000 acquired United States technology startups founded between 2008 and 2016, sourced from Crunchbase, I estimate a cross-sectional OLS regression of months from founding to acquisition on a binary indicator of top-tier venture capital backing based on the 2016 …

Modulating Oran Nitrate-Reducing Bacteria To Enhance Nitric Oxide Bioavailability As A Therapeutic Target For Atherosclerosis, Donovan C. Davidson

CMC Senior Theses

Atherosclerosis remains the primary driver of global cardiovascular disease, yet clinical interventions are largely restricted to high-cost, invasive procedures only after it has reached a critical stage. Recent research has identified a connection between the oral microbiome and vascular health via the enterosalivary nitrate-nitrite-nitic oxide (NO) pathway. Oral nitrate-reducing bacteria (ONRB) drive the synthesization of NO by reducing dietary nitrate into nitrite, which is then converted into bioavailable NO. NO is a potent vasodilator that maintains endothelial health by suppressing inflammation through inhibiting the expression of adhesion molecules VCAM-1 and ICAM-1. However, this pathway is easily compromised by dysbiotic oral …

Not Biological, But Built: Structural And Metabolic Pathways Driving Black Maternal Health Disparities In The United States, Alexandra I. Umegboh

CMC Senior Theses

Black infants in the United States are more than twice as likely to die before their first birthday than white infants, a disparity often attributed to genetics, behavior, or individual health choices. However, this idea is challenged by a key contradiction: African immigrant women consistently experience better birth outcomes than U.S.-born Black women despite being similarly racialized. This thesis investigates the origins of this reproductive advantage and the factors contributing to its decline over time. By drawing on epidemiological data, metabolic health research, and literature on African diasporic healing traditions, it argues that the “healthy immigrant effect” is not biological, …

Balancing The Scales Of Justice: The Unconstitutionality Of Marital Rape In India, Pallavi Raju

CMC Senior Theses

Marital rape remains an unpunished crime in India, despite decades of dispute and litigation. This thesis explores the question of why the state continues to retain the marital rape exception within the Indian criminal code, even though it commits to combat gender based violence in other areas of justice. The research begins with a broader understanding of privatization of women’s rights in the international sphere and culturally sanctioned violence to protect the institution of marriage. With a focus on the legal justifications and language of Indian court cases, this thesis determines that judges adjudicate on gender justice inconsistently. Attempting to …

The Jamaica That Dreams: A Normative Application Of Developmental Theory, Tamoy Pitt

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines Jamaica’s persistent underdevelopment through Martha Nussbaum's normative application of the capabilities approach as per her conception in Creating Capabilities. Through this approach, the paper will argue that Jamaica’s underdevelopment is a result of the failure of its domestic institutions to provide all citizens with the substantive freedoms and capabilities necessary to live lives of dignity. Originally detailed by Amartya Sen in his book Development as Freedom, the capabilities approach posits freedom as both the means and ends to development while rejecting contemporary approaches to development such as GDP, Utilitarianism, or Rawlsian resource-based approaches as insufficient frameworks for …

Defining Consensus‐Based Components For Integrating Dietitians Into Primary Dental Care For Paediatric Populations: A Delphi Study, Lauren Hallewell, Raul Bescos, Zoe Brookes, Robert Witton, Patricia Casas‐Agustench

School of Health Professions

Background: Diet is a modifiable risk factor linking oral and systemic health, contributing to dental caries and weight-related outcomes (including underweight, overweight and obesity) in the paediatric population. However, dietary advice provided by dental professionals in primary dental care is often brief and sugar-focused, representing a missed opportunity to address shared risk factors. Integrating dietitians into primary dental care may support more holistic paediatric preventative care. Objective: To develop expert consensus on the components required to integrate dietitians into primary dental care to address diet as a common risk factor in paediatric oral health and weight-related outcomes. Methods: A three-round …