Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Nurses' Documentation Prioritization Strategies To Alleviate Ehr Documentation Burden: A Phenomenological Study, Rosemary Mugoya, Jennifer Thate, Fan Hao, Sarah C Rossetti, Po-Yin Yen

2020-Current year OA Pubs

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to understand how inpatient nurses determine and prioritize necessary documentation within the context of the Excessive Documentation Burden (ExDocBurden) in Electronic Health Records (EHRs).

METHODOLOGY: A phenomenological approach was used to explore inpatient nurses' lived experiences of prioritizing EHR documentation. Interpretive phenomenology guided the study design, focusing on how nurses prioritize documentation. Purposive sampling recruited 14 registered nurses (RNs) from acute and critical care settings. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using Colaizzi's 7-step and Smith's Interpretive Phenomenology Analysis.

RESULTS: Five themes emerged: (1) Advocating for Quality Patient Care Environment and Patient Needs, (2) …

The Spread Of Conspiracy Theories And Social Media Radicalization: “Stop The Steal” On Social Media, Zaynab Saleem

Honors Theses

This study examines how conspiracy-related content spread across social media platforms following the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, specifically the “Stop the Steal” (STS) movement. While conspiracy theories are often seen as influential on niche parts of the internet, less is known about how they compare to non-conspiracy content in terms of engagement, visibility, and how they change over time. To address this gap, this study uses a quantitative approach to compare STS and non-STS content across two distinct types of social media platforms: a text-based platform (Platform A) and a video-sharing platform (Platform B). Data was collected using keyword searches …

Quantifying The Antifungal Properties Of Bacteria Using Cotton Strips, Lily Lofton

Honors Theses

Many bacteria have been known to have antifungal properties. Research has begun to determine how these bacteria can be used to protect cotton and other cellulose-rich textiles. In the present study, standardized cotton strips were inoculated with two different bacterial consortia that have exhibited anti-fungal properties. These strips were then inoculated with the melanized cellulolytic fungi, Chaetomium globosum and Rhinocladiella similis. Similarly, some cotton strips were also inoculated with a non-melanized fungus, Rhodotorula toruloides, which is also thought to be cellulolytic. The tensile strength of cotton strips was measured along with the ergosterol concentrations (fungal biomass) for each cotton strip …

Comparing The Risk And Return Characteristics Of Ai Exchange-Traded Funds To Benchmark Stock Market Etfs, Aryan Malhotra

Honors Theses

Artificial intelligence exchange-traded funds (AI ETFs) have expanded rapidly as investors seek targeted exposure to firms developing or benefiting from AI technologies. This study compares the performance of 50 AI ETFs with two broad-market ETFs, SPY (S&P 500) and RSP (equal-weight S&P 500), from January 2018 to January 2026. AI ETFs exhibit higher expense ratios and strong correlations with both benchmarks, reflecting their concentration in large-cap technology stocks. Over the full sample, AI ETFs generated higher cumulative returns but with substantially greater volatility. Sub-period analysis further decomposes the post-COVID period into pre-ChatGPT (April 2020–November 2022) and post-ChatGPT (December 2022–January 2026) …

Assessing Tracking Error Of The Municipal Bond Etfs, Maksym Chikin

Honors Theses

Municipal bond exchange-traded funds (ETFs) provide diversified exposure to state and local government bonds through a single tradable security. They also provide interest that is usually exempt from federal income tax. This thesis examines 31 investment-grade and 3 high-yield municipal bond ETFs from April 2015 to February 2025 and compares them with three passively managed broad-market bond ETFs: BND (investment-grade bonds), SCHR (Treasury bonds), and JNK (high-yield corporate bonds). Using tracking error, volatility, and returns across the pre-COVID, COVID, and post-COVID periods, the results show that municipal bond ETFs—especially high-yield funds—have higher tracking errors, greater volatility, and more variable returns …

Ethical Attitudes Of Emerging Entrepreneurs: Unethical Business Practices And Informal Entrepreneurship, Reuben Mcdonald

Honors Theses

This thesis aims to analyze the connection between how entrepreneurs’ ethical attitudes impact their intentions in pursuing informal entrepreneurship practices. The research question of this thesis is, “To what extent do the ethical attitudes of pre-venture entrepreneurs affect their willingness to engage in informal business practices?” To answer this question, the researcher utilized both previously validated and developed scales to measure how ethical attitudes impact the informal entrepreneurship intentions of college students. Within this thesis, the researcher discusses the creation of the measurement instrument, the results of the data measured by the instrument, and the impact of ethical attitudes on …

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 …

Evaluation Of Tick-Derived Peptides For Transmission-Blocking Vaccine Candidates, Madelyn Futral

Honors Theses

The lack of effective preventive measures for tick-borne diseases represents a major public health challenge. Transmission-blocking vaccines targeting tick molecules essential for feeding or reproduction could provide a sustainable and broad-spectrum solution. In this study, we evaluated two tick-derived proteins as potential vaccine antigens, subolesin, a key regulator of blood-feeding and cellular processes, and vitellogenin, a protein involved in egg development. Using bioinformatic tools, we identified immunogenic peptide sequences from each protein and chemically conjugated them to virus-like particles (VLPs) to enhance antigen presentation. C57BL/6 mice were immunized intradermally with VLP-peptide conjugates, followed by a booster dose. Blood and spleen …

Developing A Range Prediction For The Imperiled Florida Harvester Ant (Pogonomyrmex Badius) Using Species Distribution Modeling, Noah Williamson

Honors Theses

The Florida Harvester Ant (Pogonomyrmex badius) was once widespread and commonplace throughout the sandhills of the Southeastern United States, providing key ecosystem services, such as seed dispersal and soil aeration. Over recent decades, however, Florida Harvester Ant populations have declined in some areas. Current literature postulates that Red Imported Fire Ants (RIFA), and the insecticides used to manage them, as well as further human encroachment onto their habitat, all likely contributed to Florida Harvester Ant population declines. Thus, to better protect these organisms, pursue data-driven conservation efforts, and guide management practices, more information about their nest site selection, as well …

Women Leading In Higher Education: Exploring The Experiences Of Women Leaders In Student Affairs, Amelia Lindsay

Honors Theses

Student affairs is a field within higher education that works to support students’ out-of-classroom needs and provide them with a college experience that promotes holistic growth. This study examines the experiences of women leaders in student affairs at a mid-sized university in the southeastern United States and the opportunities and barriers they encountered in their pathways to their careers. Through in-depth, qualitative interviews, clear themes emerged regarding both facilitators of and challenges to their progression to leadership. Data show that their early life characteristics, self-perceptions, collegiate involvement, and mentorship were the largest catalysts in their career trajectories while the challenge …

Taphonomy And Fossil Record Of Eufistulana Mumia In The Owl Creek Formation Of The Mississippi Embayment, Riley Rilette

Honors Theses

This study examines the taphonomy and preservation of Eufistulana mumia, a boring bivalve, within the Owl Creek Formation of northeastern Mississippi. The formation was deposited in a shallow marine environment of Maastrichtian age within the Mississippi Embayment. A total of 66 specimens were collected from exposures within the formation and analyzed to evaluate morphometric variation and orientation patterns. Field measurements of trend and plunge of each specimen were recorded in situ using a geological compass, and specimens were later prepared and measured in the laboratory with digital calipers. Morphometric results show consistent tube morphology, with basal widths larger than distal …

The Impact Of Pp1Β Cancer-Associated Polymorphisms On Pp1Β Protein Abundance And Cell Survival In Humanized Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Kaylee Martinez

Honors Theses

PP1β is an understudied protein phosphatase that affects the cell’s ability to reproduce. It has been known to be an important part of the cell cycle. Mutations within PP1β have been found to affect that process and influence the development of cancer and disease. In this thesis, different PP1β cancer and disease associated polymorphisms are investigated through the use of humanized yeast. PP1β yeast variants are tested by using Live/Dead cell assay and western blot techniques. Live/Dead analysis was conducted on different strains grown at permissible temperature (room temperature) and non-permissible temperature (37°C) over the course of 6 or 48 …

How Ip Ends, Dave Fagundes, Aaron Perzanowski

Articles

Real and personal property may last forever, but intellectual property (IP) ends. Despite the doctrinal complexity and practical significance of the mechanisms that terminate IP rights, scholarship has scarcely focused on them, and none has analyzed these doctrines as a unified field. As a result, the discourse about the ways IP ends remains impoverished, with courts, legislatures, and commentators offering imprecise and inconsistent formulations that obscure the rationales for these doctrines. This Article offers the first comprehensive taxonomy of IP’s terminal mechanisms, providing much-needed conceptual and definitional coherence. It then reveals the underappreciated policy leverage these mechanisms can deliver and …

Available Space… The Final Frontier An Empirical Analysis Of The Heterogeneous Regulatory Burdens That Oversee Private Schools Within States With School Choice Policies, Patrick J. Wolf, Colyn Ritter, Misty Gallo

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Using administrative data available from a variety of public sources, our research team examined the ways in which state and local regulatory burdens along with state political and economic factors work to encourage or depress the supply response of private school providers in the years following the adoption of school choice policies. We tracked counts of private schools using NCES and state departments of education at baseline year 1 of program implementation and a second outcome variable measuring the change from baseline to the current year (2024). We estimate the effect of state political and socioeconomic controls, two regulatory and …

Relational Victimization And Student Dropout Intentions: Examining The Impact Of Trauma And The Buffering Role Of Friend Support, Makaila Belk

Honors Theses

Universities prioritize strategies that improve student success, with graduation rates serving as a key indicator of institutional effectiveness (Kinzie & Kuh, 2017; York et al., 2015). Considering this, we examined peer relational victimization, an interpersonal stressor involving exclusion and reputational harm (Casper et al., 2020; You & Bellmore, 2012), as a predictor of dropout intention. Using archival data collected from undergraduate volunteers recruited from the University of Southern Mississippi (N = 291), we tested a moderated mediation model. We predicted that trauma-like symptoms would partially mediate the relationship between peer relational victimization and dropout intention and that perceived social …

Algorithm Performance In The Search For Hamiltonian Cycles, Chance Davis

Honors Theses

The Hamiltonian cycle problem is ubiquitous in both computer science and graph theory: Given a connected graph, a solution would either confirm the existence of a cycle which visits each vertex only once or its nonexistence. The importance of this problem, as well as its difficulty, is described in the Clay Mathematics Institute’s Millenium Prize Problems and Karp’s 21 NP-complete problems. Despite its “hardness,” solutions to the Hamiltonian cycle problem are desired in logistics, electronic circuit design, and network routing, among other fields. In this work, we benchmark a promising exhaustive enumeration algorithm on various graphs, including ones derived from …

Investigating The Effects Of Depth And Distance On Jumping Decisions, Ean Fisher

Honors Theses

For an actor to accurately perceive if a gap affords crossing, they must consider environmental constraints, particularly spatial dimensions like gap depth and gap width, and their own physical capabilities, as determined by body/action-scaled information, namely body height and jumping ability. Prior research has examined the gap-crossing affordance across various contexts (real-world, augmented reality, and virtual reality). However, no research has investigated the gap-crossing affordance through performing a standing jump estimation within VR. The present study investigated how depth and width influence the perception of gap-crossing, operationalized as the act of performing a standing jump across a gap within a …

An Exploratory Analysis Of Student Attitudes Towards Punishment: Punitive Vs Rehabilitative Orientations, Leah Johnson

Honors Theses

This study examined differences in punishment orientation among undergraduate students, paying particular attention to variations across academic major, degree progression, and connectivity to law enforcement and corrections. This study explored how individual characteristics may influence attitudes toward crime and appropriate punishment. Data were collected through surveys which were administered in person to students enrolled in criminal justice or social science courses at the University of Southern Mississippi. Participants were asked to rate their level of agreement on a variety of statements regarding punishment. These responses were used to calculate punitive and rehabilitative orientation scores. Statistical analyses were conducted to test …

Evaluating Predictive Structure In Penny Stocks Using Machine Learning And Statistical Methods, Susom Hait

Honors Theses

Market prediction attempts have primarily focused on large-cap stocks due to their stability and market consistency. As such, studies that use time-series techniques to predict large-cap stocks have produced consistent results. Despite the success of large-cap predictions, penny stocks have remained unexplored in modern academia due to their high volatility, low liquidity, and structural instability. Regardless, unexplored market potential and technological advancements underscore the need for preliminary research into penny stock forecasting. This study aims to determine whether meaningful predictive structures exist in time-series penny stock data. This study utilizes an incremental approach. Various penny stocks were selected, pooled, and …

The Big Ideas Of Motivation Toolkit, Kevin Pugh, Cassendra Bergstrom

Toolkits

Teaching Coach Pugh has synthesized the Big Ideas of Motivation into the following infographics, along with associated references. A lot of this information can also be found in a vlog series on Dr. Pugh's youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QhP5k7eOEo&list=PLi9kxIQ_OxFzZCbDiWaYYImmi35MLZ2hu

Machiavelli’S Realist International Law, Will Iboshi

Araneum: Richmond Journal of American & Global Affairs

By bridging the gap between scholarship on Machiavelli’s realism and legal thought, “Machiavelli’s Realist International Law” supports a historical approach of understanding Machiavellian international law through a realistic, human-centered project for state survival. I argue that if realism shapes the way that law produces order, then our interpretation of Machiavelli’s realism determines how we understand his views on the law’s source and function. Through a careful textual analysis of The Prince and The Discourses on Livy, I frame Machiavelli’s relationship to international law as a historical-ahistorical axis that situates his conception of foreign affairs alongside modern debates about realism and …

Araneum -- Spring 2026

Araneum: Richmond Journal of American & Global Affairs

No abstract provided.

Posture And Pain: Investigating The Effects Of Study Habits On Musculoskeletal Discomfort In College Students, Eden G. Potter

Honors Theses

Musculoskeletal discomfort is increasingly common among college students, particularly in the neck, shoulders, and lower back, due to prolonged sitting and frequent use of electronic devices. This study examines the relationship between posture habits, study behaviors, ergonomic awareness, and musculoskeletal discomfort among students at Eastern Kentucky University. A cross-sectional survey design was used to collect data through an anonymous Qualtrics questionnaire. Participants reported their study duration, posture habits, device usage, ergonomic awareness, and levels of musculoskeletal pain using a 0–10 scale.

Descriptive analyses were conducted to identify patterns among variables. Results indicated that while study duration alone did not show …

Invasive Honeysuckle: Using Remotely Sensed Imagery To Map Landcover Change At Taylor Fork Ecological Area, Avery Krahwinkel

Honors Theses

Invasive species can have detrimental impacts on biodiversity and local ecosystems and are frequently targeted by natural area management for treatment and removal. Two common species of invasive honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii and Lonicera japonica) decrease plant diversity and alter ecological systems such as food webs in Kentucky. Both species are found in abundance at Taylor Fork Ecological Area (TFEA) and difficult to effectively manage. Remote sensing tools like multispectral imagery can be used to efficiently locate and quantify the abundance of invasive honeysuckle at TFEA because of the unique spectral signatures of various landcovers. This study used a …

More Than Just Hyper: The Mislabeling And Overmedicating Of Adhd In Children Ages 5-10, Katlyn Waltz

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the frequency and consequences of the misdiagnosis and overmedicating of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in elementary school aged children, ages 5-10. The information within this paper utilizes recent evidence-based psychological and medical research done surrounding ADHD in children. Specifically focusing on what a misdiagnosis looks like and how this can affect the child. Physically, if an alternative diagnosis is overlooked, the severity of the problem worsens. Emotionally children often feel misunderstood. Misdiagnosis often occurs due to symptoms being shared with other disorders such as thyroid disease, sleep disordered breathing, developmental delays or anxiety/depression.

For children who are …

Musculoskeletal Risk Among Radiology Professionals: Ergo, The Importance Of Ergonomics, Jodie M. Caithamer

Honors Theses

Workers in physically demanding occupations are at increased risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs), particularly with prolonged exposure to awkward postures and static loading. Healthcare workers, including those in radiology, are particularly affected. This study used an anonymous survey based on the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ) and Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA), to assess body regions of discomfort and ergonomic risk factors.

In total, 48 radiology healthcare workers participated. Musculoskeletal discomfort was highly prevalent, with 96% reporting symptoms in the past 12 months. The most affected areas were the lower back (76.1%), neck (56.5%), and shoulders (34.8%). Awkward postures such …

Media On Trial: The Effects Of Media Coverage On Legal Proceedings In High-Profile Cases, Julia Luxon

Honors Theses

This paper examines the constitutional tension between the First Amendment and the Sixth Amendment, specifically in relation to media coverage and the right to a fair trial in high-profile criminal cases. This study explores the contextual and media environments surrounding the high-profile cases of Sheppard v. Maxwell, The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson, and State of South Carolina v. Richard Alexander Murdaugh. By conducting a comparative analysis, I examined the media narratives present in each case and how they influenced public perception and its impact on the administration of justice. This study …

You Hit Your Head, What Comes Next? How Can Speech-Language Pathologists Assist In Traumatic Brain Injury Recovery?, Elayna R. Wollam

Honors Theses

Traumatic Brain Injuries are complex injuries caused by an impact or penetrating wound to the head that disrupts the typical functioning of the brain. TBIs are highly prevalent and complex injuries. They can present in different severities, have numerous causes, and result in a variety of different types of symptoms and impairments. These impairments can include articulation disorders, language disorders, fluency disorders, swallowing disorders, social communication disorders, cognitive communication disorders, and more. Every injury will be different, and every individual will experience different symptoms and have different priorities for their recovery. This means treatment should also be nuanced to reflect …

Me Or We In Criminal Behavior: A Cross-National Examination On The Impact Of Narcissism On Criminal Behavior, Adrian J. Zaragoza

Honors Theses

Crime is a worldwide issue that exists within any society. Many studies have not examined narcissism and its relation to crime in a cross-cultural perspective. The current study aimed to examine how culture can impact narcissism and criminal behavior. Hypothesis 1: Individual narcissism will be positively associated with criminal and antisocial responses to provocation scenarios in the United States. Hypothesis 2: Collective narcissism will be positively associated with criminal and antisocial responses to provocation scenarios in Kenya. Hypothesis 3: The association between individual narcissism and criminal/antisocial behavior will be stronger in the United States than in Kenya, …

All Harm, All Fouls: Human Trafficking At Large Sporting Events, Addison Caravona

Honors Theses

Human trafficking affects thousands of people worldwide every year. During large sporting events, this can become an issue as the line between consenting sex work and trafficking becomes blurred. The difficulty of quantifying human trafficking combined with the legality of sex work creates a predicament where measuring human trafficking statistics over a smaller period of time becomes incredibly difficult. Sporting events bring in millions of patrons every year, which produces unique challenges for law enforcement and advocacy groups to manage and prevent trafficking. This research investigates human trafficking surrounding large sporting events and the processes and legislation in place to …