Digital Commons Network^™

Und Leads: A Strategic Vision For The University Of North Dakota, University Of North Dakota

LEADS Development Documents

Official UND LEADS strategic plan for the University of North Dakota. The plan presents UND’s mission and vision, introduces the five LEADS pillars of Learning, Equity, Affinity, Discovery, and Service, and outlines strategic priorities developed through campus and community input.

Prediction Of 2024 Indian Pm Election Results Using Sentiment Analysis On Twitter Data, Surabhi Gupta

Master's Projects

This sentiments analysis study presents a methodical approach to predict the 2024 Indian Prime Minister Election. Data collected spanning from 2020 to 2023 from Twitter using hashtags such as IndianPMElection2024 and on topics such as the revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, the Farm Bill, and the Digital India initiative, form the core of this research. We utilized a combination of sentiment extraction tools-namely, the NLP Town's Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)-based multilingual uncased sentiment model, Valance Aware Dictionary for Sentiment Reasoning (VADER), and TextBlob. Additionally, we used a well-established machine learning model Naive Bayes, deep …

Context Aware Neural Machine Translation Using Graph Encoders, Saurabh Kale

Master's Projects

Machine translation presents its root in the domain of textual processing that focuses on the usage of computer software for the purpose of translation of sentences. Neural machine translation follows the same idea and integrates machine learning with the help of neural networks.Various techniques are being explored by researchers and are famously used by Google Translate, Bing Microsoft Translator, Deep Translator, etc. However, these neural machine translation techniques do not incorporate the context of the sentences and are only determined by the phrasesor sentence structure. This report explores the neural machine translation technique dedicated to context-aware translations. It also provides …

Ml-Based User Authentication Through Mouse Dynamics, Sai Kiran Davuluri

Master's Projects

Increasing reliance on digital services and the limitations of traditional authentication methods have necessitated the development of more advanced and secure user authentication methods. For user authentication and intrusion detection, mouse dynamics, a form of behavioral biometrics, offers a promising and non-invasive method. This paper presents a comprehensive study on ML-Based User Authentication Through Mouse Dynamics.

This project proposes a novel framework integrating sophisticated techniques such as embeddings extraction using Transformer models with cutting-edge machine learning algorithms such as Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN). The project aims to accurately identify users based on their distinct mouse behavior and detect unauthorized access …

Spam Comments Detection In Youtube Videos, Priyusha Kotta

Master's Projects

This paper suggests an innovative way for finding spam or ham comments on the video- sharing website YouTube. Comments that are contextually irrelevant for a particular video or have a commercial motive constitute as spam. In the past few years, with the advent of advertisements spreading to new arenas such as the social media has created a lucrative platform for many. Today, it is being widely used by everyone. But this innovation comes with its own impediments. We can see how malicious users have taken over these platforms with the aid of automated bots that can deploy a well-coordinated spam …

Sensitive Data Detection With High-Throughput Machine Learning Models In Electrical Health Records, Kai Zhang, Xiaoqian Jiang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

In the era of big data, there is an increasing need for healthcare providers, communities, and researchers to share data and collaborate to improve health outcomes, generate valuable insights, and advance research. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a federal law designed to protect sensitive health information by defining regulations for protected health information (PHI). However, it does not provide efficient tools for detecting or removing PHI before data sharing. One of the challenges in this area of research is the heterogeneous nature of PHI fields in data across different parties. This variability makes rule-based …

Large Language Models For Healthcare Data Augmentation: An Example On Patient-Trial Matching, Jiayi Yuan, Ruixiang Tang, Xiaoqian Jiang, Xia Hu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The process of matching patients with suitable clinical trials is essential for advancing medical research and providing optimal care. However, current approaches face challenges such as data standardization, ethical considerations, and a lack of interoperability between Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and clinical trial criteria. In this paper, we explore the potential of large language models (LLMs) to address these challenges by leveraging their advanced natural language generation capabilities to improve compatibility between EHRs and clinical trial descriptions. We propose an innovative privacy-aware data augmentation approach for LLM-based patient-trial matching (LLM-PTM), which balances the benefits of LLMs while ensuring the security …

Local Contrastive Learning For Medical Image Recognition, Syed A Rizvi, Ruixiang Tang, Xiaoqian Jiang, Xiaotian Ma, Xia Hu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The proliferation of Deep Learning (DL)-based methods for radiographic image analysis has created a great demand for expert-labeled radiology data. Recent self-supervised frameworks have alleviated the need for expert labeling by obtaining supervision from associated radiology reports. These frameworks, however, struggle to distinguish the subtle differences between different pathologies in medical images. Additionally, many of them do not provide interpretation between image regions and text, making it difficult for radiologists to assess model predictions. In this work, we propose Local Region Contrastive Learning (LRCLR), a flexible fine-tuning framework that adds layers for significant image region selection as well as cross-modality …

A Novel Nih Research Grant Recommender Using Bert, Jie Zhu, Braja Gopal Patra, Hulin Wu, Ashraf Yaseen

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Research grants are important for researchers to sustain a good position in academia. There are many grant opportunities available from different funding agencies. However, finding relevant grant announcements is challenging and time-consuming for researchers. To resolve the problem, we proposed a grant announcements recommendation system for the National Institute of Health (NIH) grants using researchers' publications. We formulated the recommendation as a classification problem and proposed a recommender using state-of-the-art deep learning techniques: i.e. Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), to capture intrinsic, non-linear relationship between researchers' publications and grants announcements. Internal and external evaluations were conducted to assess the …

Digital Solutions Observed In Clinical Trials: A Formative Feasibility Scoping Review, Taylor M Harrison, Sungrim Moon, Liwei Wang, Sunyang Fu, Hongfang Liu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Growing digital access accelerates digital transformation of clinical trials where digital solutions (DSs) are increasingly and widely leveraged for improving trial efficiency, effectiveness, and accessibility. Many factors impact DS success including technology barriers, privacy concerns, or user engagement activities. It is unclear how those factors are considered or reported in the literature. Here, we perform a formative feasibility scoping review to identify gaps impacting DS quality and reproducibility in trials. Articles containing digital terms published in English from 2009 to 2022 were collected (n=4,167). 130 articles published between 2016 and 2022 were randomly selected for full-text review. Eligible articles (n=100) …

Tiny Language Models Enriched With Multimodal Knowledge From Multiplex Networks, Clayton Fields, Osama Natouf, Andrew Mcmains, Catherine Henry, Casey Kennington

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Large transformer language models trained exclusively on massive quantities of text are now the standard in NLP. In addition to the impractical amounts of data used to train them, they require enormous computational resources for training. Furthermore, they lack the rich array of sensory information available to humans, who can learn language with much less exposure to language. In this study, performed for submission in the BabyLM challenge, we show that we can improve a small transformer model’s data efficiency by enriching its embeddings by swapping the learned word embeddings from a tiny transformer model with vectors extracted from a …

Criticizing Paywall Publishing, Or Integrating Open Access Into The Feminist Movement, Meggie Mapes, Teri Terigele

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Dominant scholarly publishing models, reliant on expensive paywalls, remain preferential throughout higher education’s landscape. This essay engages paywall publishing from a feminist communicative perspective by asking, how can publishing extend or prohibit feminist movements? Or, as Nancy Fraser (2013) asks, “which modes of feminist theorizing should be incorporated into the new political imaginaries now being invented by new generations” (2)? With these questions in mind, we integrate feminist epistemologies into publishing practices to argue that open access is integral to the feminist movement. The argument unfolds in three parts: first, we conduct a feminist criticism of paywall publishing by arguing …

Communication Networks And Team Performance: Selecting Members To Network Positions, Jerry Guo, Linda Argote, Jonathan Kush, Jisoo Park

School of Business

This study examines how individuals come to occupy communication network positions and the effect of selection processes on group performance. Drawing on the Carnegie perspective and research on communication networks, we compare the performance of groups whose members receive their choice of who occupies which network position to the performance of groups whose members do not receive their choice. We integrate ideas from the Carnegie perspective with the social psychological literature on the recognition of expertise to theorize that when group members choose who occupies which network positions, individuals select themselves and others into network positions that best suit their …

Introduction: Translating Transnational Feminisms, Erin K. Krafft, Caroline De Souza

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In this introduction to the Special Issue “Translating Transnational Feminisms,” we argue for the integral position of feminist translation practices and the theories of Feminist Translation Studies as tools for both local and transnational feminist solidarities. Beginning with the understanding that transnational feminist solidarities rely on not only linguistic translation but also cultural fluencies that allow for exchange rather than simply the import or export of locally bound feminist praxis, we illustrate that the practice of feminist translation thus carries with it the conflicts, the fraught and unfolding contestations of meaning, and the ever-evolving conceptions of gender, feminism, and solidarity …

From “A Room Of Your Own” To “A Room Of Her Own”: Women Rewriting Women And The Path To Feminist Practice, Vasiliki Misiou

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929) was first translated in Greek by Mina Dalamanga (Odysseus Editions) in 1980. Almost forty years later, in 2019, Vasia Tzanakari was assigned the translation of Woolf’s seminal text by Metaichmio Publications. And in 2021, a new translation by Sparti Gerodimou saw the light of day, published by Erato Publications (2021). Three different women translators have thus rendered Woolf’s text in Greek with all three publications coming out at times marked by significant changes in Greek society. Exploring the context in which the agents were situated and drawing on feminist translation practices and …

Translation, Weather, And Erasure In Bhanu Kapil’S Schizophrene, Flore Chevaillier

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

For Bhanu Kapil, the drafting process of writing involves the translation of non-linguistic realities into storytelling, the nature of which must leave room for the performative experience that shapes writing. In Schizophrene (2011), Kapil engaged in adventitious composition processes when she sealed her manuscript in a Ziploc bag and threw it in the garden to spend months outdoors in the Colorado winter. The text, full of gaps created by the erased parts of the “winterized” manuscript, documents schizophrenia in diasporic Indian and Pakistani communities. The decaying process of the book that created a void in her writing also impacts the …

What Difference Does It Make? Early Reception Stories About Luce Irigaray's Writing On Divine Women, Elsa Kunz

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This paper examines numerous pre-texts in Anglo-American feminist theology and critical theory seminal to the establishment of feminist philosophy of religion as a distinct academic discipline. Specifically, I trace early reception of philosopher Luce Irigaray’s writing on becoming divine women in Anglo-American feminist circles, arguing that critical attention to the “horizons of expectations” around Irigaray’s person is a necessary step to the myriad readings of her work. I begin by situating my own initial expectations and encounters with Irigaray’s writing on divine women as a graduate student in theological studies cross-registered in a course on ‘French Feminism’ in the neighboring …

Reading Selves/Writing Selves: Tracing The Intellectual History Of Writing As A Technology Of The Self, Olivia Hopewell

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

From the advent of writing in the ancient Mediterranean world, people have found ways to forge a connection between their selves and the text. Whether by means and for purposes of representation, translation, or presentation of the self, writing as a technology has long functioned as a method of enacting selfhood. This dissertation constructs an intellectual history of writing as a technology of the self in the ancient Greek and Latin imaginary, considering the works of Plato, Augustine, Ausonius, and Dhuoda. This history and these textual case studies then serve as a point-of-departure for a discussion of the ramifications of …

An Epic Of Tragic Proportions: [In]Forming The Politics Of Statius’ Thebaid Through Greek Tragic Intertext, Dianne Elizabeth Boetsch

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

Statius’ epic poem, the Thebaid, has often been compared to Virgil’s Aeneid and many studies rightfully devote their attention to this text. I argue, however, that Greek tragedy equally plays an integral role in our reading and understanding of the Thebaid. Statius’ relationship with Greek tragedy in his epic is pronounced, ubiquitous, and intentional throughout the Thebaid and it is no less prevalent and relevant than the Aeneid for an understanding of the poem. The extant Greek tragic plays that treat the Theban story and Polynices and Eteocles’ conflict include Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonus, …

“The Weird And The Occult” In Carmilla And “The Portrait Of Roísín Dhu”, Eliza Lehman

Senior Honors and Award-Winning Theses

This thesis brings together two Irish Gothic texts that contemplate queer intimacy and reveal similar logics of imagined Irish Catholicism. By reading Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla and Dorothy Macardle’s 1924 short story “The Portrait of Roísín Dhu” alongside Heather Love’s Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (2007), this thesis examines the literary treatment of Irish Catholicism and queerness as “backward.” In both texts, the embedded narrative undermines the frame, allowing more subversive and complex themes to haunt the hopeful, nationalist frame of “The Portrait of Roísín Dhu” and the patriarchal, imperial frame of Carmilla.

Improving Diagnostic Outcomes For Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders Within The Hispanic Community In Bowling Green, Kentucky, Bethany Waddey

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Despite the importance of early identification and intervention of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Hispanic children are significantly under-diagnosed with ASD in comparison to non-Hispanic, white children due to barriers to ASD identification in this population. The purpose of this research is to determine the levels of ASD knowledge in the Hispanic community in Bowling Green, the barriers that may contribute to why ASD is underdiagnosed in Hispanic children, and how to mitigate these barriers. This research analyzes the results of a survey, called the “Autism Spectrum Knowledge Scale- General Population Version”, administered to 51 participants from the Hispanic population of …

Evaluative Thinking Amid Disaster, Phung Khanh Pham

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Evaluation and emergency medicine have appreciable parallels and are likely to intertwine as they each evolve, especially in response to disasters or other pervasive problems that can worsen into the future. Evaluative thinking—which largely involves critical thinking, valuing, and other dynamic processes—may be ubiquitously useful to practitioners, scholars, and others from both these fields of practice. In this dissertation, I referenced the dual systems theory of the human mind to conceptualize evaluative thinking as paradoxically fast (automatic) and slow (deliberate), and I characterized the COVID-19 pandemic as a disaster laden with societal games. Derived from game theory, societal games range …

African American Women In The Academy: Meaningful Pathways To Productive Careers, Kenya Marshall Harper

CGU Theses & Dissertations

African American female professors hold prominent, influential roles inside and outside university settings. In universities, professors are impactful mentors and role models influencing students' academic dispositions and outcomes (Zinn & Walker, 2018; Hine & Thompson, 1998). In communities, they provide meaningful scholarship that influences academic, workplace, and extracurricular equity and advancement opportunities (Njoku & Patton, 2017; Evans, 2016; Cooper, 2006). The current study investigates the individual aptitude, school/instruction , and environmental factors influencing African American females' life-span academic talent development. A mixed-method research approach, including a structured interview protocol and online survey, is used to investigate study participants' early to …

Clausal Or Phrasal: Variability Of Lexical Bundles In L1 And Turkish L2 English Research Articles, Fatih Güngö, Hacer Hande Uysal

PASAA

This study aimed to compare how native and non-native Turkish authors use four-word lexical bundles in research articles written in English in educational sciences. The two-million-word corpus included 165 research articles in L2 English and 206 in L1 English. Our corpus query resulted in 119 bundles in L2 English and 79 bundles in L1 English with a cut-off point of 20 times per million words and the occurrence in at least 10% of the articles in each corpus. The frequency results reveal that non-native authors dominantly use lexical bundles in their research articles. The classification of bundles revealed considerable structural …

Book Review: A Philosophical Approach To Perceptions Of Academic Writing Practices In Higher Education: Through A Glass Darkly, Harald Kraus

PASAA

No abstract provided.

Revision Of An Academic English Writing Rubric For A Graduate School Admission Test, Chawin Srisawat, Kornwipa Poonpon

PASAA

This study aimed to revise an academic English writing rubric for a university graduate admission test, following the Triangulation Scale Revision Process (Banerjee et al., 2015) and the Mixed-methods Conceptual Design Model (Janssen et al., 2015). The current scale revision was informed by a corpus analysis of writing responses, multi-facet RASCH model (MFRM) analysis, and a rater discussion. The samples of the study were 134 scored writing responses. Each writing response was rated by two raters. Seven raters were recruited in the rating process, and four of them participated in the subsequent raters’ discussion process. Corpus analysis was employed to …

An Exploration Of Salespersons’ Communication Apprehension In English Communication: A Case Of A Private Company In Thailand, Penpitcha Prakaiborisuth

PASAA

Communicating in a foreign language can be a traumatic experience for a large number of language users, and having to use a foreign language can lead to anxiety or communication apprehension. In cases of salespersons, communication apprehension can adversely affect sales performance and the ability to engage customers and close deals. The present study aimed at investigating the levels of communication apprehension among Thai salespersons during oral sales presentations in English, explore the perceived effects of communication apprehension on sales presentations, and identify coping strategies employed by Thai salespersons to manage their communication apprehension. Quantitative data from self-report questionnaires and …

Perspectives On Online Learning And Technostress Experienced By Science And Non-Science First-Year University Students During Covid-19, Teerada Chongkolrattanaporn, Woralan Kongpolphrom

PASAA

This study examined perspectives on online learning, focusing on synchronous and asynchronous modes and technostress experienced by first-year students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a survey of 803 first-year university respondents, the results indicated that both science and nonscience students held different perspectives on synchronous and asynchronous modes of learning. The students from both groups also experienced varying levels of technostress, with techno-overload being the most pronounced. There was a significant difference in attitudes towards online learning modes and in technostress between science and non-science students. Non-science students were more positive toward asynchronous modes and reported higher levels of …

Caring For Individuals Who Have Used Methamphetamine: A Study Exploring The Experiences Of West Australian Nurses Working In An Authorised Mental Health Institute, John Kriticos

Theses

Background: Methamphetamine (MA) use in Australia has stabilized over the last 22 years, however changing routes of administration and increased purity of the drug has led to greater rates of physical dependency and higher rates of cardiovascular, neurological, and mental health complications. Challenges managing MA related presentations have been reported in Australian Emergency Departments (ED’s), with limited research considering nurses’ experience treating individual(s) who use MA (IWUM) and require prolonged mental health care. Purpose: The aim of this study was to understand nurses’ experiences who care for IWUM in a West Australian hospital’s inpatient mental health service. Methods: Interpretive phenomenological …

The Age Of De Fer: Maps, Knowledge, And The Western World View, 1680-1720, Fiona Keating

Theses

This thesis determines the degree to which cartographic tools and maps such as Nicolas de Fer’s Carte de la Mer du Sud et de la Mer du Nord (Paris, 1713) might be considered ‘weapons’ of empire and examples of eighteenth-century ‘plundering’ of the Pacific. It analyses the connection between knowledge, power, empire and identity in the so-called ‘Age of Discovery’ by examining the map created by de Fer in the early years of the Scientific Revolution and the ‘Age of Enlightenment’. Carte de la Mer du Sud et de la Mer du Nord is an encyclopaedic, visual representation of western …