Digital Commons Network^™

Parameter-Free Determination Of Au Nanorod Dimensions Using Depolarized Dls And Genetic Optimization, Nehal Nupnar, Geofrey Nyabere, Claire M.B. Bolding, Kiril A. Streletzky, Michael J.A. Hore

Physics Faculty Publications

Gold nanorods (AuNRs) have received considerable attention for their distinctive optical properties and well-defined, low-polydispersity dimensions. These characteristics position them as promising candidates for diverse applications in imaging, sensing, and treating diseases. However, accurate characterization of AuNRs in their native solution state, which is crucial to many applications, presents many challenges─especially if AuNRs are coated with surface layers (e.g., surfactants or grafted polymers). When applied to AuNRs with functionalized surfaces, common techniques such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM), small-angle scattering, and dynamic light scattering (DLS) can present limitations such as small sample sizes, the inability to detect light elements, a …

Policy: District, State, And National: A Selected Annotated Bibliography For English Learner Research, Policy, And Practice, Center For Equity For English Learners

Annotated Bibliographies

Policy: District, state, and national: A Selected Annotated Bibliography for English Learner Research, Policy, and Practice is comprised of 26 annotations from recent and seminal literature regarding policies across various levels impacting the education of English Learners (ELs) and Multilingual Learners (MLs). These annotations build on the annotations regarding policy in CEEL’s 2022 annotated bibliography, Ensuring Equity and Excellence for English Learners: An Annotated Bibliography for Research, Policy, and Practice (Center for Equity for English Learners, 2022) to include publications from 2022-2025. This selected annotated bibliography serves as a resource for researchers, policymakers, educators, and advocates who are working for …

English Language And Literacy Development/Proficiency: A Selected Annotated Bibliography For English Learner Research, Policy, And Practice, Center For Equity For English Learners

Annotated Bibliographies

English Language and Literacy Development/Proficiency: A Selected Annotated Bibliography for English Learner Research, Policy, and Practice is comprised of 16 annotations from recent and seminal literature English language and literacy development and proficiency for English Learners (ELs) and professional development for teachers of ELs. These annotations build on the annotations regarding English language and literacy development and proficiency in CEEL’s 2022 annotated bibliography, Ensuring Equity and Excellence for English Learners: An Annotated Bibliography for Research, Policy, and Practice (CEEL, 2022) to include publications from 2022-2025. This selected annotated bibliography serves as a resource for researchers, policymakers, educators, and advocates who …

Teaching/Professional Development: A Selected Annotated Bibliography For English Learner Research, Policy, And Practice, Center For Equity For English Learners

Annotated Bibliographies

Teaching/Professional Development: A Selected Annotated Bibliography for English Learner Research, Policy, and Practice is comprised of 36 annotations from recent and seminal literature regarding teaching English Learners (ELs) and professional development for teachers of ELs. These annotations build on the annotations regarding teaching and professional development in CEEL’s 2022 annotated bibliography, Ensuring Equity and Excellence for English Learners: An Annotated Bibliography for Research, Policy, and Practice (Center for Equity for English Learners, 2022) to include publications from 2022-2025. This selected annotated bibliography serves as a resource for researchers, policymakers, educators, and advocates who are working for equity and excellence for …

Modeling Taiwanese Monetary Policy: Augmented Taylor And Mccallum Rules, Yu-Chi (Yunnie) Cheng

CMC Senior Theses

This study examines how price-based and quantity-based monetary frameworks explain the policy actions of the Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan) within the context of a trade-dependent, small open economy. Utilizing a comparative empirical analysis of Taylor and McCallum rules from 2000 to 2025, the research finds that Taylor rule’s superior fit is contingent upon the inclusion of the augmented variables, such as federal funds rate, Financial Stress Index, and sovereign credit premiums, revealing a policy stance that is deeply reactive to international financial conditions. In contrast, the McCallum rule demonstrates remarkable parsimony, explaining 45% of the variance …

Teleoperated Robotic Arm With Vision-Based Imitation Learning, Favour E. Emmanuel, Hunter J. Donahue

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This report presents the design, development, and deployment of a teleoperated robotic arm system capable of vision-based imitation learning. The system uses a leader-follower architecture with myArm C650 and myArm M750 robots manufactured by Elephant Robotics. The leader arm movement is controlled by the operator, whereas the follower performs actions acquired from demonstrations. Data collection included synchronized joint-angle recording and multi- camera video streams capturing human demonstrations.

These demonstrations were processed with a deep learning imitation algorithm called Action Chunking with Transformers (ACT). The main capability of this algorithm is its ability to make future action predictions based solely on …

Robotic Air Hockey Table, William Forcey, Andrew Piunno, Kaden Carpenter, Xander Zavatchen

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Air hockey, a popular arcade game, is traditionally designed for two players. This limits the game’s accessibility for individuals who wish to practice or enjoy it as a single player. To solve this problem, a robotic system was implemented to play air hockey against a human player. The speed and acceleration of the puck and mallet were measured from a game played between humans to inform the required movement capabilities of the robot. The robotic opponent implemented observes the location of the puck on the table using a camera and predicts where it will be in the future. A Cartesian …

The Effects Of Low-Frequency, Low-Intensity Ultrasound On Gene Expression In Macrophage-Endothelial Cell Co-Culture, Evelyn Hergenhan

Honors Theses

Introduction

Low-frequency, low-intensity ultrasound (LFLI US) has been shown to be a promising treatment for noninvasive accelerated chronic wound healing. However, the biological mechanisms of this ultrasound-assisted healing are not yet understood, limiting clinical adoption. The objective of this study is to characterize the effects of LFLI US on gene expression in a simulated chronic wound environment to gain a better understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying this therapeutic.

Methods

A simulated chronic wound environment consisting of endothelial cells and inflammatory M1 macrophages co-cultured in 3D was subject to LFLI US at 50, 100, or 150 mW/cm² Spatial-Peak, Temporal-Peak …

Genre Based Analysis Of Sustainability In Contemporary U.S. Film Production: Inception Or Illusion?, Tanner Ennis

Interdisciplinary Studies | Senior Theses

Anthropogenic activity is actively leading to environmental degradation, highlighting the need for large industries to take responsibility for their environmental impact, particularly the film industry. While sustainable practices in the film industry such as virtual production, recycling of set construction materials, or the use of renewable energy present opportunities to improve sustainability, there is still a substantial amount of progress to be made. For example, research has demonstrated that increases in production budget correlate with higher carbon dioxide emissions, with fuel, utilities, and travel acting as the top contributors (Sustainable Entertainment Alliance, 2022). Conversation among the scholarly community is centered …

Teachers' Perceptions Of The Use Of The Language Essentials For Teachers Of Reading And Spelling (Letrs) Professional Development Training, Colette Burgess

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) professional development course has been participated in by educators across the United States. The LETRS training focuses on research-based methods and the science of reading. The five components of the science of reading guide the LETRS course. These components include phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The purpose of this study was to examine the perspectives and experiences of teachers from West Virginia schools who participated in the LETRS professional development course as a cohort. This study examined the questions: What are the perceptions of K-5 educators in implementing …

Toward Completeness Theorem For Guarded Kleene Algebra With Tests, Hung Pham

Honors Theses

Code refactoring is a fundamental practice in software engineering, in which a program is restructured without changing the actions it performs and the results it produces. To carry out refactoring with confidence, one requires a formal method for verifying that two programs are equivalent. Guarded Kleene Algebra with Tests (GKAT) provides such a framework, an algebraic system designed to reason about a natural class of programs, namely those in which every branch and loop is governed by a Boolean condition, such as if–else and while statements. Central to GKAT is a finite set of algebraic axioms for deriving program equivalences. …

Is It A Failure Of Informed Consent When A Physician Does Not Share A Test Result With A Patient Because The Physician Does Not Believe The Test?, Alan Schwartz

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

United States V. Sanders: Dost And The Quest For Clarity, Katie Stonich

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Underdiagnosis Of Stroke In Individuals Aged 0-64, Catherine Wang

Mentorship Program 2025-2026

No abstract provided.

Most Utahns Support Affirming Rights Of Great Salt Lake, Sarah A. Woodbury, Kirsten Vinyeta, Jessica D. Ulrich-Schad, Darren Parry

Utah People and Environment Poll (UPEP)

A combination of water diversions and climate change-related shifts have led to record low water levels and increasing salinity at Great Salt Lake (GSL) (1, 2).  Low water levels not only impact those directly dependent on the lake—brine shrimpers and migratory birds, for example—but also the millions of individuals living along the Wasatch Front. Increasing toxic dust levels from exposed lakebed and potential shifts to snowpack in the region are of primary concern. Children and marginalized communities are especially vulnerable to the respiratory health impacts of toxic dust (3, 4). According to the 2023 Utah People & Environment Poll (UPEP), …

Aura: An Ai-Powered Multimodal Prototype For Adaptive Apraxia Of Speech Therapy And Communication Support, Omotayo Omoyemi, Rachel K. Johnson

Speech-Language Pathology Faculty Publications

Apraxia of Speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder that significantly limits communication and requires intensive, long-term therapy. Access to consistent treatment is often constrained by shortages of speech-language pathologists, high costs, and limited opportunities for continuous monitoring outside clinical settings. Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) provide new opportunities to support scalable and personalized speech therapy.

This paper presents AURA (Adaptive Understanding and Relearning Assistant for Apraxia), a multimodal AI framework designed to support speech therapy, progress monitoring, and communication for individuals with AOS. The system integrates speech analysis, machine learning–based error detection, reinforcement learning for adaptive therapy, and …

Temperature-Dependent Optical Properties Characterization Of Thermophotovoltaic Selective Emitter (4h– Sic, Aln Ceramic, And Aln/Al2o3), Po-Chao Huang

Honors Theses

Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) systems convert thermal radiation into electricity, and their efficiency depends strongly on the temperature-dependent optical response of the emitter materials. To support the design of high-temperature selective emitters, we characterized the thermo-optical properties of aluminum nitride ceramic (AlN), silicon carbide (4H– SiC), and aluminum oxide on aluminum nitride (AlN/Al2O3) thin film/substrate pairs, as a promising example of a bilayer emitter. Spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements from 240 nm to 2500 nm were performed while heating samples from room temperature to 600 °C. Using general oscillators modeling, we established accurate temperature dependent optical models consistent with literature values. Increasing temperature revealed …

Leveraging Machine Learning Techniques To Identify Catastrophic Outliers In Photometric Redshift Estimates, Jason Yoo

Honors Theses

Leveraging the unprecedented data volumes from modern astronomical surveys, this work addresses the critical challenge of identifying catastrophic outliers (COs) in photometric redshift (photo-z) estimates. Reliable redshift estimation is essential for precision cosmology, yet COs (galaxies with severely erroneous photo-z) can introduce significant systematic bias. We develop and evaluate two machine learning approaches for robust CO identification: a multilayer perceptron (MLP) utilizing photo-z point estimates and probability distributions, and a convolutional neural network (CNN) leveraging raw 5-band photometric images. Using datasets emulating LSST conditions, we demonstrate that the MLP model achieves high accuracy and stability across redshift bins, correctly identifying …

A Comparison Of Time-Dependent Cloudy Astrophysical Code Simulations With Experimental X-Ray Spectra From Kev Laser-Generated Argon Plasmas, N. Rathee, F. P. Keenan, R. J. R. Williams, Gary Ferland, S. J. Rose, S. White, D. Riley

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

We have generated strongly photoionized Ar plasmas in experiments designed to use primarily X-ray l-shell line emission generated from Ag foils irradiated by the VULCAN high-power laser at the UK Central Laser Facility. The principle of the experiment is that use of line emission rather than the usual sub-keV quasi-blackbody source allows keV radiation to play a more dominant role compared to softer X-rays and thus mimic the effect of a blackbody with a higher effective spectral temperature. Our aim is to reproduce in the laboratory the extreme photoionization conditions found in accretion-powered astrophysical sources. In this paper, we compare …

Setting The Recycling Narrative: A Thematic Analysis Of Recycling Webpages In The United States, Haley Nolde

Dissertations and Theses

Recycling is widely promoted in the United States as a central strategy for waste diversion and sustainable materials management, yet recycling outcomes remain inconsistent and public understanding is often fragmented. While substantial research examines recycling behavior, infrastructure, material science, and markets, less attention has been paid to how recycling itself is framed and communicated to the public. This thesis addresses that gap by examining narratives produced by recycling thought leader organizations (TLOs) in the United States. Using thematic analysis, this study analyzes publicly available recycling webpages from 99 TLOs, including state government agencies, state-level non-governmental organizations (NGOs), national and regional …

Deep Learning-Based Quantification Of Tall Fescue Abundance In Pastures, Rose E. Binkley, Samuel R. Revolinski, Echo Elizabeth Gotsick, Ray Smith, Zeya Wang, Katsutoshi Mizuta

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

Accurate and rapid measurement of tall fescue abundance is essential for efficient forage management and mitigating livestock exposure to potential endophyte-related toxicity. Traditional visual estimation methods are labor-intensive and are subject to change depending on the observer doing the calculations, which limits their scalability and consistency. This study explores the application of deep learning techniques to automate and improve the classification of tall fescue abundance across pasture systems in Kentucky. Ground-truth abundance classes were evaluated using one of the traditional methods with occupancy grid and compared against estimates derived from red-green-blue images. Two convolutional neural network architectures, YouOnlyLookOnce (YOLO) and …

Investigation Of Factors Influencing Electric Vehicle Adoption In Indonesia: Ev Owners’ Perspectives, Desrina Yusi Irawatia, Nur Aini Masruroh, Nur Mayke Eka Normasari

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Electric vehicle (EV) uptake in Indonesia remains markedly below policy benchmarks. This study applies the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology version 3 (UTAUT3), an extension of UTAUT2 that incorporates personal innovativeness as an additional construct to examine its impact on both behavioral intention and actual EV adoption within the Indonesian context. Unlike studies that typically survey the general public, this study focuses on actual EV users and owners, providing more representative and responsive insights into real-world EV usage. A total of 208 respondents participated, with 135 from the Jabodetabek area and 73 from Surabaya. The UTAUT3 framework …

Scaffolding Minimum Age Thresholds, Eve Rips

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Deep Neural Approach To Network-Based Obfuscated Malware, Meera Parmar, Sunil Gautam

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

The rising prevalence of obfuscated malware poses a critical threat to network security, undermining traditional detection methods and jeopardizing data integrity and system reliability in an increasingly connected world. This growing danger highlights the urgent need for advanced solutions to protect against evolving cyber risks. This research intro-duces a novel framework to enhance malware detection, employing a hybrid architecture that integrates spatial and temporal analysis with attention mechanisms. The approach leverages a large dataset subsample, focusing on key feature selection and augmentation to improve robustness against evasion techniques. This innovative framework offers a significant advancement in identifying malicious network traffic, …

Meshless Collocation Methods For Time-Dependent Nonlocal Problems Based On Radial Basis Functions, Qiao Zhuang, Yanzhi Zhang, Zhongqiang Zhang

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We present radial basis function (RBF) collocation methods for time-dependent space fractional problems on general bounded domains. Building on a recently developed approach for accurately computing the integral fractional Laplacian of any RBF, we design collocation schemes for fractional heat and Stokes equations using extended-domain techniques. In particular, we propose a numerical Leray projection method for fractional Stokes problems, where both the discrete projection operator and the collocation scheme are formulated on extended domains to handle complex domains. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in solving time-dependent nonlocal problems on complex domains.

Mass Tourism And Sustainability Discourses: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Stakeholder Communication Across The Canary Islands, Iceland, And Puerto Rico, Carmen Collins

Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes 123 websites from the Canary Islands, Iceland, and Puerto Rico, each including an equal number of tourism businesses, environmental organizations, and governments from each region, to examine the rhetorical digital communication strategies used and the textual differences between these websites. Thematic analysis was the methodology employed in this study. Ten themes were found inductively from the data, which are: 1) economic value framing, 2) cultural identity and heritage, 3) technological mediation, 4) inspiring guilt, awe, and urgency, 5) sustainability as an instrument, 6) intergenerational responsibility, 7) global versus local contestations, 8) accessibility and inclusion, 9) transparency and …

Servant Leadership And Student Achievement In High Schools: Graduation Rate And Regents Performance In Mathematics And English, Saida Rodriguez-Tabone

Theses and Dissertations

This quantitative, correlational study examined how teachers’ and families’ perceptions of principals’ servant-leadership behaviors relate to student outcomes in New York City (NYC) public high schools. Guided by Greenleaf’s (1977) servant leadership theory, the study examined whether leadership grounded in purpose, empathy, and collaboration is associated with improved academic outcomes. Data were drawn from the 2022 NYC School Survey Reports for 122 schools across the five boroughs of NYC school district. Composite indices representing teacher- and family-perceived servant leadership served as predictors of three school level outcomes: 4-year graduation rate, Algebra I Regents proficiency, and English Language Arts (ELA) Regents …

Rooted In Education: Defining And Exploring Characteristics Of School Learning Gardens And Their Influence On Student Development In Urban Settings, Jason Samuel Fuller

Theses and Dissertations

This study employed an explanatory sequential mixed-methods research design, grounded in a constructionist framework, to investigate the educational significance and perceived impact of school learning gardens in urban settings. It examined the intended outcomes of various school garden models, including their contributions to academic achievement, health, community engagement, and social-emotional well-being. The study explored similarities and differences among school gardens and the perceptions of school administrators and garden facilitators regarding their value, as well as how garden design and characteristics relate to student experiences and educational goals. Quantitative data were drawn from publicly available sources, including the NYC DOE’s Sustainability …

A Qualitative Study On Teaching Strategies For Comprehension Of Ambiguous Language Among Adolescent English Language Learners, Gonzalo Grant Castro

Theses and Dissertations

Ambiguous language—words, phrases, or sentences with multiple meanings—often creates significant instructional challenges in English Language Development (ELD) classrooms. This qualitative case study, grounded in Vygotsky’s sociocognitive theory, investigates how four high school ELD teachers strategically employ scaffolding and social interactions to clarify such ambiguities. In this study, classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and detailed analyses of instructional artifacts served as key data sources. These methods provide a comprehensive picture of the classroom dynamics that shape teacher and student interactions, allowing for greater insight into the relationship between instructional strategies and the social context of learning. This study identifies critical elements that …

Exploring Elementary Students’ Perceptions Of Community-School Partnerships: Effect On Academic Motivation, Tolisa Khelawan

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study aims to explore the perceptions and experiences of elementary-aged students when participating in community-school partnerships to provide educators with strong methods of supporting students’ academic, social, and emotional development. The study is conducted in an elementary school in proximity to New York City that includes a diverse racial and ethnic demographic student body. The elementary school’s commitment to participating in community-school partnerships has prompted efforts to incorporate service-learning projects for the students. Through interviews, observations, and analysis of school documents, this study examines the experiences of students, teachers, parents, and the school leader during community service …