Digital Commons Network^™

Smart Kitchen: Towards Real-Time Ai Systems For Cognitive Support In Daily Activities, Ruiqi Wang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The rapid growth of the aging population and the rising prevalence of Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD) highlight the need for continuous, unobtrusive assessment of functional cognition during everyday activities. Vision-based smart home systems offer a promising pathway for monitoring behavior and supporting independent living. However, enabling real-time cognitive assistance remains challenging. It requires not only accurately interpreting complex human behaviors to detect cognitive errors, but also supporting real-time deployment on resource-constrained edge devices and under dynamic wireless network conditions. This dissertation presents Smart Kitchen, an AI-driven system for real-time cognitive error detection through the monitoring of daily cooking activities. Under …

An Autism-Centered Analysis Of The Aesthetics And Narrative Of Gene Wolfe’S Book Of The New Sun, Sebastian Peterson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Much of the recent work published within the literary neurodiversity studies field focuses on how certain writing techniques can be viewed as representing the experience of being autistic by influencing the reader so that they experience distinctly autistic patterns of cognition. Likewise, the Book of the New Sun series employs many such techniques within the narrative and prose. This is in addition to the fact that the plot contains elements that mirror the relationship and conflict between those with autism and neuronormative hegemony (that being the ways in which societies oppress, mistreat, and belittle those not deemed “neurotypical”). The goal …

The Predictive Relationship Between Teachers’ Knowledge Of Developmental Dyslexia And Literacy Self-Efficacy Among General Education Teachers: A Predictive Correlational Study, Robyn Nicole Mcclellan

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This quantitative, predictive correlational study explored the relationship between teachers' knowledge of dyslexia and their literacy self-efficacy instruction in the general education classroom. The study is important because when a teacher is not confident in teaching literacy to this special-needs population, they are less likely to provide appropriate and effective interventions and accommodations. The sample of this study consisted of 111 public school general education teachers from multiple school districts across multiple states. A convenience sample of 111 participants was given two scales: Knowledge and Beliefs About Developmental Dyslexia (KBDDS) and the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy for Literacy Instruction (TSELIS). …

A Phenomenological Study: The Lived Experiences Of Uncertified Bilingual Teachers In Dual Language Elementary Schools At A Mid-Sized Urban Public-School District In Texas, Jeini Gordon

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences teaching in a dual-language classroom for uncertified teachers at a mid-sized urban public-school district in Texas. A teacher’s lack of participation in an adequate teacher preparation program may alter students’ educational outcomes, even more so that of English language learners, influencing their academic achievement. The theory that guided this study was Walberg’s theory of educational productivity, which posits that student achievement is affected by student aptitude and motivation, instructional quality and quantity, and a student’s social and cultural learning environments. This phenomenological study focused on the shared …

Use Of The Casper Test As An Admissions Test For Predicting Academic And Clinical Performance In Student Registered Nurse Anesthetists: A Predictive Correlational Study, Barbara A. Acord

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This quantitative, non-experimental, predictive correlational study examined the extent to which CASPer test scores predict academic and clinical performance among student registered nurse anesthetists (SRNAs). Certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs) provide over 80% of anesthesia services in the United States, showing the importance of effective admissions processes to identify candidates most likely to succeed academically and clinically. Traditional admissions criteria in nurse anesthesia programs largely prioritize grades and may underrepresent non-cognitive attributes associated with student success. A convenience sample used a medium effect size, power of .8, and alpha level of .05, with G*Power calculated to be 85 participants 2nd …

Nature’S Sovereign: Environmental Archetypes In Isaiah’S Kingship Polemic, Christopher Ryan Sandel

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation examines how Isaiah employs environmental archetypes to advance a comprehensive kingship polemic that asserts Yahweh’s unrivaled sovereignty over all creation. The study addresses a gap in scholarship by offering the first systematic analysis of Isaiah’s environmental imagery within a unified rhetorical and theological framework. Drawing on historical, literary, and comparative ancient Near Eastern backgrounds, the study argues that Isaiah’s civilizational, cosmic, and terrestrial archetypes function as strategic instruments that dismantle rival claims to power and reorient the audience toward covenantal fidelity. Civilizational archetypes reveal the fragility of human empires and the futility of political trust. Entities such as …

Two Centuries Of Sexism In British Parliament: A Computational Analysis Of Women’S Representation In The Hansard Corpus, Mandira Sawkar

Theses

Detecting sexism and gender bias in text is a central problem in NLP, yet most existing work focuses on short, informal content such as social media posts. In contrast, much less is known about how sexism operates in long-form, formal discourse, where it is often expressed indirectly through rhetorical framing, appeals to tradition, or references to gender roles. Parliamentary debates offer a particularly rich setting for studying such language, but their scale, linguistic complexity, use of archaic English, and the presence of distributional shift across centuries make systematic analysis challenging and historically infeasible without automation. In this work, we analyse …

Culturally Tailored Materials For Smoking Cessation And Hiv Care Adherence Among Hispanic Adults: Protocol For Content Development And Formative Evaluation, Lorra Garey, Jacqueline J Charles, Ashley L Ruiz, Rodrigo Castillo-Avilés, Virmarie Correa-Fernández, Marshall K Cheney, Thomas P Giordano, Michael J Zvolensky

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: Hispanic people with HIV who smoke cigarettes experience unique stressors (eg, stigma), which contribute to health disparities. Anxiety sensitivity (AS) may worsen mood management problems, which are a leading barrier to smoking cessation. Interventions targeting AS can improve HIV-specific outcomes and smoking cessation. However, no prior research has culturally tailored an AS reduction program to improve quality of life among Hispanic people with HIV who smoke. The research team previously developed a mobile health (mHealth) intervention addressing AS reduction, smoking cessation, and HIV care management for Black people with HIV who smoke. Building on this work, this study represents …

Taylor Swift, Gender, And Feminism: What Do The Data Say?, Maxine Lewis

The Manuscript: Journal of Taylor Swift Studies

In the world of Swiftian scholarship, several scholars have credited Taylor Swift with feminist impact, while others have criticized both her type of feminism and claims to be a feminist. Many arguments rest on a narrow group of protest songs (“The Man”, “You Need To Calm Down”, and “Only The Young”) and a short period of Swift’s career in which she made many paratextual political gestures (2019-2020). However, claims about a songwriter’s feminism (or lack thereof) will be more accurate, robust, and nuanced if they draw on data from her whole career.

This article provides the first systematic survey of …

Teacher Candidates’ Reflective Practices Of Mathematics Curriculum From The Lens Of Universal Design For Learning, Weichen Zhao

Journal of Practitioner Research

The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework encourages educators to proactively remove barriers in curriculum and instruction to increase accessibility for all learners. While UDL is often applied during lesson planning, it can also serve as a powerful tool for critically examining and revising existing mathematics curricula. Drawing on qualitative data from teacher candidates’ reflective journals and curriculum artifacts collected over two semesters, this study examines how guided reflection supported teacher candidates in identifying barriers, proposing inclusive adaptations, and deepening their understanding of equity-oriented mathematics instructional design. As a self-study grounded in participatory action research, the findings also informed the …

Drug Risk Knowledge Discovery For Western Medicines Based On Knowledge Graph Link Prediction, Jianxiang Wei, Ma Hengyuan Ma, Yuehong Sun, Wenwen Du, Letian Hu

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance] The risk information contained in drug instructions is usually incomplete, and some new adverse reactions can only be discovered in actual clinical use. This paper proposes an information organization and knowledge discovery method for pharmacovigilance, in order to timely and accurately identify missing risk knowledge in drug instructions. [Method/process] Drug instructions of 8 152 Western medicines are collected as the research data; On the basis of ontology construction, data annotation, and model training, the UIE model is used to jointly extract entity and relationship triplets from the research data; A new knowledge graph link prediction method CompGCN-RotatE, is proposed, …

Research On Temporal Knowledge Graph Completion Method For Emergent Events Based On Bigru And Graph Contrastive Learning, Peng Wu, Zhenyu Lu, Xuechen Zhang

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance] During emergencies, social media short texts contain critical information but are heavily interfered with by noise. Traditional static knowledge graph completion techniques struggle to effectively address their dynamic evolution and data sparsity issues, making it imperative to introduce temporal modeling methods. [Method/process] This study proposes a dynamic completion framework that combines the temporal feature capture capability of Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Units (BiGRU) with the noise-resistant representation learning advantages of Graph Contrastive Learning (GCL). At the completion level, the ConBiTE method is introduced, which captures temporal dependencies through self-attention mechanisms and BiGRU, while leveraging GCL to enhance the completion of …

Breathing Life Into Sel: A Practitioner Inquiry On Hā, Belonging, And Multilingual Learners In Hawai‘I, Mylia Briggs, Monica Gonzalez Smith

Journal of Practitioner Research

This practitioner inquiry explores how a Pacific-oriented social-emotional learning (SEL) framework, Nā Hopena A‘o (HĀ: BREATH), can affirm the cultural identities and emotional well-being of Filipino multilingual learners (MLs) in Hawai‘i. Implemented over a 15-week period in a third-grade classroom, the study draws on culturally adapted SEL lessons, student exit tickets and focus groups, and teacher reflections to examine how SEL shifts when grounded in Indigenous values, heritage language use, and community knowledge. Findings reveal three key themes: (1) Cultural Connection Fosters Belonging, (2) Language Visibility Promotes Emotional Safety, and (3) Identity-Affirming Practices Build Confidence and Voice. While students responded …

The Labor And Cultural Divide In The New Almaden Quicksilver Mines, Jenny Moore

Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II

No abstract provided.

A Researcher’S Reflections On Using Participant-Led Photo Elicitation: A Work In Progress., Aoife Ryan, Frank Houghton, Jennifer Moran Stritch

Journal of Academic Research and Innovation

This paper outlines a researcher’s reflections on using a participant-led photo elicitation methodology in counselling/psychotherapy research, in an Irish context. The method used in this research is outlined and explored and strengths and limitations are discussed.

Toward A Technology-Enhanced Project-Based Learning Curriculum For English Language Learners, Lynn Wolfe

MITESOL Journal: An Online Publication of MITESOL

Project-based learning (PBL) has been demonstrated as an effective strategy for millennial and Gen Z students, particularly in K-12 contexts, but this teaching approach is not commonly used in adult ESL classrooms. This paper suggests that a technology-enhanced PBL approach may transform otherwise teacher-centered and outdated ESL classes by helping English language learners (ELLs) develop linguistic fluency along with technological fluency that is essential for the 21st century workplace. Collaborative PBL activities involving the use of digital tools are presented in the areas of listening/speaking, reading/vocabulary, grammar, and writing, providing a foundation for a technology-enhanced PBL curriculum designed for adult …

As-1009-26 Resolution On New Bachelor Of Science Degree Program In Data Science, Data Science Curriculum Committee

Academic Senate Resolutions

Resolves that the Academic Senate of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, approve the establishment of a Bachelor of Science in Data Science; and be it further resolved that the program be implemented contingent upon final approval by the Chancellor’s Office and availability of appropriate resources.

Covid Minds: A Thematic Review Of The Pandemic On Neural Mechanisms And Political Polarization, Madison Jeffries

Honors Projects

This paper analyzes how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced political polarization in the United States by examining the interactions between social system disruption, psychological stress, and underlying neurological behaviors. While previous research has extensively discussed pandemic's influence on public health and societal breakdowns, studies fail to examine how these disruptions shaped political divisions. This study synthesizes interdisciplinary literature on pandemic-induced stressors and analyzes factors, including institutional mistrust and social isolation, and how these experiences shape political behavior and perspectives. Applying research from psychology and neuroscience, the paper argues that prolonged exposure to pandemic-related stressors changed neurological and behavioral patterns in response …

Cultivating The Dream In African American Men Through Black Excellence And Success, Sylvia Lawan Branch

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Achieving Black Excellence has been a goal for African American men for several decades; yet this movement has been hindered by social, emotional, and discriminatory life experiences from early childhood through adulthood. Black Excellence has been a phrase used in recent years to highlight achievements for African American men in wealth, mental health, well-being, fatherhood, and academic achievement. The main objective of this dissertation was to define and examine dimensions of Black Excellence among African American men, including elements that contributed to personal fulfillment and broader social impact. To determine recommendations to achieve Black Excellence (Scott, 2017), 10 semistructured interviews …

Thinking With The Feet In The Clinic Of Psychosis, Jed Wilson

Middle Voices

In his later work, Lacan makes occasional reference to the idea of “thinking with the feet.” An equivocal formulation, it first seems to suggest that thought and language can be regarded as physical processes—not occurring in some homunculan disembodied brain or mind, but in the real of the body. Equally, it can call to mind the idea of thinking “on” one’s feet, in the manner of adaptive improvisation. Going further, could we not also say that it points to the possibility of setting something in motion (as in walking, dancing, going somewhere—all the things we do with the feet) as …

Cognition Is Not Content: A Structural Account Of Processing Conditions, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

Human cognition has been described in terms of content. This description becomes insufficient once artificial systems make output observable apart from subject attribution, intention, and relational context. Under this contrast condition, what becomes visible is a layered structure in which output, reconstruction, evaluation, and termination do not necessarily coincide. The same input may register as complete under one processing condition while remaining unresolved under another. This separability means that content-based description does not merely omit an additional variable: it can mislocate a processing difference as a difference in meaning, personality, intention, ability, or attitude. This is not a proposal for …

The Importance Of Play-Based Learning, Nina Cavanaugh

Masters Projects

Play-based learning is a beneficial tool that can help support development of not only young children but students of all ages and abilities. While research may show that play-based learning has benefits for students’ development, many schools in the United States, including public schools in Macomb County do not have professional development opportunities to educate teachers on play-based learning. This project covers the benefits, theories, and implementation strategies of play-based learning. It explains how play-based learning can be beneficial for students cognitive and academic skills.  It also supports social emotional development, physical development, and language development. Not only does play-based …

Improving Reading Motivation For Upper High School Students: Thematic Book Clubs For The Ela Classroom, Isabella Haskin

Masters Projects

Though strong literacy skills are commonly understood to be essential for a successful life, reading comprehension rates continue to fall in the United States. A major factor in this literacy trend is a disinterest and lack of motivation to read among high school students. Research shows that students lose interest in reading as they progress through school, often due to a lack of choice and relevancy of school assigned texts. To address this issue, this project aims to provide educators with a replicable unit plan that will motivate students to read, and subsequently strengthen their literacy skills. It pairs a …

Addressing The Hidden Curriculum Through Trauma-Informed And Culturally Responsive Teaching For Multilingual Learners, Gabrielle Moeggenborg

Masters Projects

Multilingual learners (MLLs), including refugee, transient, and culturally and linguistically diverse students, often enter schools with experiences of trauma that impact academic performance, behavior, and sense of belonging. Additionally, the hidden curriculum in U.S. schools reinforces inequities for these students. The purpose of this project was to develop a high-quality, research-based educational handbook integrating trauma-informed practices with culturally responsive teaching to better support MLLs and mitigate the effects of the hidden curriculum. This project involved an extensive review of peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary research on learning theories, trauma, culturally responsive teaching, and multilingual education. Historical and contemporary literature was synthesized to …

Providing Individualized Support For Students With Adhd, Jeremy Scott Clymer

Masters Projects

Many general education teachers lack sufficient skills to successfully serve students with special needs. This project aims to provide professional development materials for pre-service and in-service educators which will provide them with information to help them achieve better outcomes for students with ADHD. Based on existing research about how ADHD can affect students differently and how to best account for those learning differences, the project provides background information about the different subtypes of ADHD, best practices for curriculum design, common accommodations for students with ADHD, and types of interventions that can help students with ADHD succeed. It includes a slide …

Maternal Genetic Structure Of Iraqi Faili Kurds Revealed Using Whole Mitochondrial Genome Sequencing, Mayyadah Khalid Ibrahim, Suhaili Abu Bakar, Cheah Yoke Kqueen, Majeed Arsheed Sabbah

Baghdad Science Journal

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is a commonly utilized genetic marker in determining maternal ancestry because of the hypervariable regions in it, as well as haplogroups, which enable scientists to establish ancestral links among populations. This research involved the analysis of the complete mitochondrial genome of 100 Faili Kurd women in different cities in Iraq using the Illumina system. The most common haplogroups were HV14 (53%), H14a (16%), M37e2 (16%), and HV2a1*1 (15%). The pair-wise AMOVA-FST analysis in terms of population revealed that there were various levels of genetic differentiation between Faili Kurds and other populations in Iraq, Iran, and surrounding areas. …

Who's Got The Floor? Successful Interruptions In Dyadic Conversation In The Candor Corpus, Josie Steen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Conversational exchanges are frequently marked by overlap. Some forms include backchanneling and both unsuccessful and successful attempts to take the floor. To further understand their role in discourse, 81 half-hour virtual conversations between strangers from the CANDOR corpus (Reece et al., 2023) were analyzed for instances of successful interruptions, whereby one member of a dyad takes the floor away from the other. Nearly six hundred such episodes were identified and analyzed for underlying systematicity. Regarding demographic characteristics of the speakers, gender was not related to successful interruptions. However, older speakers were more likely to successfully interrupt, suggesting that a speaker’s …

Beyond Symptoms: A Narrative Counseling Interpretation Of First-Year Student Anxiety In Indonesian Higher Education, Azizah Abdullah, Rizky Andana Pohan, Ramtia Darma Putri, Triyono Triyono, Marimbun Marimbun, Rahmi Dwi Febriani

Buletin Konseling Inovatif

The transition to higher education is a critical period in which first-year students face new academic demands, financial pressures, social adjustment challenges, and uncertainty about the future. However, limited research has examined how freshmen make sense of and narrate their anxiety, particularly in the Indonesian context. This study aimed to explore the main domains of anxiety among first-semester students in Indonesian public universities and to interpret these experiences through a narrative counseling lens. The study employed a qualitative online survey design with an interpretivist orientation. Data were collected from 199 first-semester students through open-ended questions addressing anxiety-provoking situations, sources of …

Sejarah Undang-Undang Dalam Pembuatan Rancangan Undang-Undang, Frans Limahelu

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Abstract

The Role Of Media Technology In The Social Sustainability Of Staged Spaces, Noora Dhyaa Al-Najjar, Enas Salim

Iraqi Journal of Architecture and Planning

Multimedia technologies are effective tools for stimulating the senses and enhancing engagement in architectural spaces. By activating perception, they help transform static environments into interactive platforms that support social sustainability. This study aims to explore the role of multimedia in this process. A descriptive and analytical approach was employed, incorporating a literature review and an analysis of two case studies: one local and one global. Results showed that integrating multimedia improves vitality, visual appeal, and functional performance. It also strengthens users’ sense of identity and belonging while encouraging social interaction. Furthermore, multimedia enables the creation of immersive spaces rich in …