Digital Commons Network^™

Personality Traits And Perceived Barriers: A Comparative Study Of Teacher Views On Behavior Interventions, Patricia Geiger Lee

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Maladaptive behaviors negatively affect both students and teachers. Students’ academic success, mental health, and safety are jeopardized by these behaviors, while teachers experience increased stress and burnout when managing them. Behavior interventions have been shown to reduce maladaptive behaviors and improve outcomes. Although most teachers agree that certain factors act as barriers to implementing behavior interventions, there is no consensus on the frequency or impact of these barriers. Guided by the Big Five Theory, this quantitative study examined how teachers’ levels of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness were associated with differences in their perceptions of the frequency and impact …

Teacher Support For Special Education Students Struggling With Basic Reading In The Inclusive Setting: A Qualitative Case Study, Dylan O. Cramer

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this case study is to discover how teachers support special education elementary students identified with specific learning disabilities (SLD) in the inclusion setting who struggle with basic reading at Champion Heights Elementary School. At this stage in research, the academic impact of inclusion for special education students who struggle with basic reading will generally be defined as determining the academic benefits and weaknesses of elementary students being educated inside the general education classroom. The theory guiding this study is Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory. The social cognitive theory relates to this topic because students learn through observed …

2017 Rocky Mountain National Park Research Conference, United States Department Of Interior

Rocky Mountain National Park

The work highlighted by this conference addresses key issues, including climate change, the spread of exotic plants, large scale restoration needs, environmental contaminants and disease, a need for greater relevancy to youth, and inadequate capacity to keep pace with growing visitation. The NPS Director's Order "Resource Stewardship for the 21st Century" directs park managers to steward resources for continuous change that is not yet fully understood. This challenge makes research, learning, and engagement at local to global scales more important than ever. The magnitude of issues and opportunities currently facing park managers is reflected in the breadth and depth of …

Gamification Of A Bimanual Coordination Task, Robby Johnson, Caeden Kidd, Johnathan Oestringer, Jaylin Pigeon, Brandon Woolman

Infinite Loop

Video games are a promising future for research and development. A new way to measure motor skills is to use robots to test individuals. This technology is incredible and has helped the medical field, but there must be a way to allow individuals to use this technology in a similar and affordable manner. Space Trash is a game that was developed with the intent to gamify the object hit detection that is used in the Kin Arm Robot with the intent to see if a person will show signs of Alzheimer’s. The goal is to not only be able to …

A Proposed Study Of Tone Indicators In Sentimental Analysis And Emotion Detection, Andrea Llanas

Infinite Loop

Sentimental analysis and emotion detection have been an ever-growing field in academic literature in recent years [1,2,3]. There are many methods and techniques to distinguish positive and negative tokens as well as classification of emotions respectively. However, the use of tone indicators has been relatively underexplored within the field.

Tone indicators are a relatively recent trend in social media. Users denote a positive or negative connotation as well as an emotion in a sentence at the moment of conception with syntax such as “/s,” “/pos,” and “/neg.” These annotations often are context-free, or do not depend on previously declared information, …

Business Financial Information Systems, Lirie Koraqi, James Jolovski Prof.

International Journal of Business and Technology

An information system is a combination of software, hardware, and telecommunication networks to collect useful data, especially in an organisation. Many businesses use information technology to complete and manage their operations, interact with their consumers, and stay ahead of their competition. Some companies today are completely built on information technology.

Well designed and implemented business information systems should provide the information management and outside parties need to make informed and timely decisions about the operating health of the company. Business considers the need to have information available to assess the profitability of a new product they are selling or their …

Digital Transformation Management And Organizational Performance: The Case Of Albanian Healthcare Sector, Oltjan Hamza

International Journal of Business and Technology

Purpose - The integration of digital technologies into the healthcare system is essential for improving both operational efficiency and quality of services. This study examines the relationship between digital transformation management and organizational performance in the healthcare sector in Albania, with particular focus on the mediating role of leadership in digital transformation and the digital skills of the healthcare staff. Methodology - The study employ a quantitative method through a structured questionnaire using a Likert scale, which was distributed to 93 healthcare sector employees in public and private institutions in Albania. Findings - Data collected through the survey were analyzed …

Applied Cryptography With Python, Hizer Leka, Albiona Leka

International Journal of Business and Technology

Cryptography is a key aspect of information security and provides data security. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of cryptography and its application with Python through real life examples. It covers the basics of cryptography, containing information about symmetric and asymmetric encryption methods. Throughout the paper we dive into different encryption methods, from simple to more complex, starting with the Caesar Cipher that has been used by people ever since ancient times, the Reverse Cipher which is one of the simplest encryption methods, all the way to implementing a RSA Algorithm using Python’s cryptography library, always providing knowledge …

Multicriteria Analysis For Identification Of Potential Urban Green Spaces In Gjakova (Kosova), Eli Binxhija, Edon Maliqi

International Journal of Business and Technology

Green spaces are essential for maintaining the quality of life. Due to rapid urbanization, they are rapidly disappearing in Gjakova. This study aims to automate the process of identifying the suitable areas for future urban green spaces in Gjakova city, considering multiple criteria, including: topographic, environmental and socio-economic. The study has integrated multi-criteria spatial analysis in Geographic Information System (GIS), in order to evaluate the suitability of the site selection of urban green spaces. It combines a number of factors in both data models (vector and raster), such as land use/land cover, elevation, slope, existing green areas, proximity to road, …

Applying Lasso Regression For Property Price Prediction In Emerging Markets: An Empirical Study Of Prishtina's Real Estate Sector, Visar Hoxha, Albana Shala, Veli Lecaj, Fuat Pallaska, Hazer Dana

International Journal of Business and Technology

This study employs Lasso Regression (LR) to forecast apartment prices in Prishtina, analyzing a dataset of 1,468 transactions from the Kosovo Department of Property Taxes (2019-2023). Focusing on variables like distance to the central business district and apartment size, LR was selected for its ability to perform feature selection and regularization, applied using Python. The preliminary model included variables such as distance to central business district, distance from main road leading to central business district, size, floor, distance from bus stations, distance from ambulances, distance from schools, distance from green spaces, income status of inhabitants per apartment, and distance from …

Comparative Evaluation Of Microcontrollers For Real-Time Heart Rate Monitoring And Tachycardia/Bradycardia Detection, Arxhend Jetullahu, Luan Mulaku, Saranda Demolli

International Journal of Business and Technology

The growing demand for portable healthcare devices has led to combining microcontrollers with machine learning models to enable real-time health monitoring. It's quite paramount, specifically in the context of identifying irregularities in heart rate, like tachycardia—where the heart races unusually fast—and bradycardia, an instance of a sluggish heartbeat. The neat thing is that this study takes a stab at contrasting the effectiveness among three popular microcontroller types—the ESP32, the Raspberry Pi, and the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense—in terms of real-time tracking of heartbeats and spotting any oddities (using, of course, a model developed with some machine learning elements). At …

The Picotesla Protocol: Energy-Matched Neuromorphic Brain–Ai Interface With Quantum-Responsive Event, Samuel Church

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure presents a brain–AI interface architecture that operates under a strict sub-50 W system power envelope to reduce electromagnetic and thermal noise to near-brain levels, enabling event-driven coupling between biological neural surprise events and a neuromorphic spiking system. The system comprises: (i) a brain signal receiver (EEG) with alpha/theta-band feature extraction; (ii) an optional quantum-responsive transducer (e.g., NV-center magnetometer or QRNG correlator) for timing-level sensitivity to picotesla-scale field perturbations; and (iii) an energy-matched neuromorphic processor (e.g., Loihi-class SNN or low-power NPU) that converts biological “surprise” events into discrete spikes with < 40 μs latency and learns via STDP. The disclosure includes enabling details: system diagrams, energy budgets, filtering equations, spike-encoding logic, and experimental protocols (including physically isolated, Faraday-caged conditions) to ensure that the design is reproducible and citable as prior art. This publication is intended as a defensive disclosure to dedicate these concepts to the public domain and prevent later patenting of substantially similar systems

Supply Chain Attacks Through Open Source Software: A Comprehensive Analysis Of Npm, Pypi, And Docker Hub Vulnerabilities, Thomas Pham

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Open-source software ecosystems have become critical infrastructure for modern software development, yet they remain vulnerable to sophisticated supply chain attacks. This paper presents a comprehensive empirical analysis of supply chain attacks targeting npm, PyPI, and Docker Hub, examining 23 documented campaigns affecting over 2.6 billion weekly downloads. Through systematic analysis of attack vectors including typosquatting, dependency confusion, and maintainer account compromise, we identify recurring patterns and structural vulnerabilities across package registries. Our analysis reveals that 86.1% of detected typosquatted packages contained malware, with cryptocurrency theft emerging as the predominant attack objective. We document the September 2025 npm compromise affecting 18 …

Improving Palliative Care Knowledge And Intentions Among Great Plains American Indians: Efficacy Results From A Randomized Clinical Trial Testing A Culture-Centric Palliative Care Message, Mary J. Isaacson, Kah Meng (Charlie) Soh, Christopher S. Wichman, Gina Johnson, Kelly Le Beaux, Semhar Michael, Lisa Sparks, Karla M. Hunter

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Background

Methods

Results

December 3, 2025 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

Viability Of Widely Used Encryption Schemes In Drone Transmission, Emanuel Yasir Nelson

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

This paper presents throughout research on the security issues related to drone transmission. These topics were addressed and explained, in particular the aspects relating to cybersecurity, for utmost clarity. These include threats and vulnerabilities, drone transmission the impact of encryption on latency, and the details of the encryption methods AES-128, AES-256, and ChaCha20 that were used in the experiment described in the paper. Each encryption method performance was measured and outputted by the Python code developed and used in the experiment. Afterwards, the performance of each method was analyzed in relation to their decryption time, encryption time, end to end …

Selenium Nanoparticles As Versatile Delivery Tools, Amir Nasrolahi Shirazi, Rajesh Vadlapatla, Ajoy Koomer, Kyle Yep, Keykavous Parang

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) have emerged as promising metal-based nanoparticles for drug delivery due to their unique physicochemical properties, intrinsic bioactivity, and biocompatibility. SeNPs offer a lower toxicity, higher bioavailability, and flexibility to be customized for surface chemistry compared to traditional selenium compounds. Advances in synthetic strategies, including chemical reduction, green biosynthesis, and surface functionalization with polymers, peptides, or ligands, have improved their stability, targeting capability, and circulation time. SeNP-based systems have demonstrated unique anticancer, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory activities, as they can function as drug carriers and active therapeutic agents. The surface of SeNPs has been functionalized with ligands such as …

Gets: Greenhouse Environment Time Series, Scott Grimshaw, Natalie J. Blades, Grant R. Mcqueen

ScholarsArchive Data

This dataset contains high-frequency environmental measurements from a single greenhouse used to study multivariate statistical process control under strong autocorrelation. The data consist of a continuous Phase 1 monitoring period of approximately four weeks, during which environmental sensors recorded conditions inside the greenhouse once per minute.

The primary variables included in the archived dataset are:

• date – Date-time stamp at one-minute resolution (local greenhouse time).

• co2_ppm – Carbon dioxide concentration in parts per million (ppm).

• humidity_pct – Relative humidity (%).

• soil_temp_F – Soil temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Towards Resilient Data Governance: An Industry Study On Practitioner Perspectives On The Current State Of Data Governance, Anthony Mazzarella Iii

Theses and Dissertations

Experts agree that data governance is crucial for managing data as an asset, yet in practice, it remains inconsistently defined, unevenly implemented, and poorly understood. Earlier industry studies offered valuable descriptive benchmarks of governance adoption and professional roles, but provided limited theoretical insight and little empirical evidence explaining how governance functions within organizations. Building on this foundation, the current research offers a more substantial and analytically rigorous contribution by transforming descriptive observations into empirical explanations. Through a collaborative academic–industry partnership, the study utilizes a global survey of 565 respondents (348 valid cases) to analyze governance structures, motivations, challenges, and the …

Understanding Medical Information And Emotional Support Needs In Mental Health Questions With Large Language Models, Chen Liu, William Yu Chung Wang, Gohar Khan

All Works

Purpose – This study seeks to bridge the gap between users’ multidimensional needs and the single-task capabilities of existing Mental Health Question Answering (MHQA) systems by tackling the underexplored challenge of jointly understanding medical informational needs and emotional support needs within complex consumer mental health inquiries. Design/methodology/approach – Grounded in Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), the proposed Multi-Needs and Context Recognition (MNCR) framework decomposes mental health question understanding task into four interrelated subtasks: Medical Needs Recognition (MNR), Medical Needs-related Context Extraction (MNCE), Emotional Needs Recognition (ENR) and Emotional Needs-related Context Extraction (ENCE). A new benchmark dataset, MHQ-MedEmo, was constructed through multi-layered …

Efficient Routing For Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Networks: A Naïve Bayes Approach, Amine Tcherak, Samia Loucif, Mohamed Ould Khaoua

All Works

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) form the backbone of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging networking paradigm that extends the lifetime of WSNs by transferring the resource-intensive routing task from sensor nodes to a centralized controller. However, many SDN-based routing schemes for WSNs employ inefficient algorithms at the controller. Traditional shortest-path methods often create traffic imbalances across neighboring nodes, while Reinforcement Learning (RL)-based approaches typically generate excessive control traffic. Both issues accelerate energy depletion and reduce network lifetime. Moreover, existing algorithms frequently overlook critical factors, such as buffer occupancy, when selecting relay nodes, which can lead …

A Harmonious Equation: How To Facilitate The Interdisciplinary Nature Of The Arts In A High School Math Classroom, Myah Medendorp

Honors Theses

The education system is constantly evolving and advancing, and the teaching methods should advance along with it. Musical involvement has long been cited as having a positive effect on mathematical proficiency and being an easy way to boost mathematical performance but is most often used in an elementary school setting and the early learning years. Are there ways to use this scientific relationship to boost performance and engagement in a secondary school environment?

This literature review functionalization takes a closer look at this relationship and how it can be implemented effectively in a high school math classroom beyond the young …

Identifying Draft-Worthy Pitchers: A Statistical Analysis Of Northwoods League Performance Metrics, Stephen Tyrpak

Honors Theses

The Northwoods League (NWL) is a collegiate summer wooden-bat baseball league that provides college athletes with an opportunity to maintain and enhance their skills during the offseason while competing in game-like conditions. Although prior research has explored player performance in other summer leagues, such as the Cape Cod Baseball League, academic investigation into predictors of draft outcomes in the NWL remains limited. This study addresses this gap by evaluating whether pitch-tracking metrics collected via Trackman systems can predict a pitcher’s likelihood of selection in the Major League Baseball (MLB) draft and by identifying which performance characteristics are most strongly associated …

Explainable Ai For Liver Transplant Survival Prediction: Integrating Immunological Mismatch Features, Sourab Shaik

Honors Projects

Liver Transplantations are crucial treatment for end-stage liver disease. However, a persistent deficit of donor organs necessitates maximizing the utility of each available graft to minimize failure rates. We evaluated whether donor–recipient molecular immunogenicity metrics - Electrostatic and Hydrophobic Mismatch Scores (HMS/EMS) and eplet-based counts - improve post–liver-transplant survival prediction. The analytic cohort comprised adult, first time, single-organ deceased-donor transplants drawn from Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients; follow-up was truncated at five years, and the endpoint was all-cause graft failure (earliest of graft failure or death; otherwise, censored). HLA variables were derived via high- resolution conversion and molecular mismatch computations …

Strategies For Improving Supported Employment Services For Adults With Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities, Janelle Latoya Bailey

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There is a growing need for supported employment services and improved programming among people with intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD). The research question for this study was; what are human service staff and administrators’ experiences and perceptions of what is working well in supported employment programs, and how to improve the services offered to adults with I/DD in a northeastern county? The tenets of Kurt Lewin’s change model form the theoretical framework for the study, to serve as a foundation for effective change. A force field analysis approach was used to gather narrative written data from open ended questionnaire responses to grasp …

Exploring The Potential Of Martian Agriculture: Assessing Viability And Nutritional Composition Of Plants Cultivated In Martian Regolith, Abigail Ross

Honors Theses

In addition to sunlight and water, plants can utilize a small number of nutrients from the soil to biosynthesize all the materials that are needed for growth and development. However, plants require an environment where they are able to obtain those nutrients, such as iron, magnesium, potassium, sulfur, and nitrogen. Environmental factors determine the types and accessibility of nutrients available to plants. Plants then take up these nutrients from the soil to aid in biological mechanisms and the synthesis of important molecules needed for growth and development. Ascorbic acid, commonly known as Vitamin C, is a vital molecule that is …

The Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Economy In The Mountain West, 2025, Dre Boyd-Weatherly, Sean Curry, Krish Sharma, Kristian Thymianos, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet reports on the artificial intelligence (AI) readiness of five Mountain West metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs): Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ; Salt Lake City-Murray, UT; Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO; Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV; and Albuquerque, NM. Using data from the Brookings Institution's “Mapping the AI Economy” report, the MSAs are benchmarked based on their overall population, employment, talent, adoption, and innovation.

The Nature And Distribution Of Road Sediment Contaminants In The Greater Las Vegas, Nevada Area, K. J. Gokey, M. Gillis, Kenneth L. Brown, N. Renkes, C. L. Mcleod, M.P.S. Krekeler

Geology and Environmental Geoscience Faculty Publications

Road sediment is an underutilized medium in the investigation of environmental pollution, yet it serves as both a source and sink for a wide array of pollutants. In urban areas especially, contaminants present within road sediment have the potential to pose human health risks depending on the abundance, chemical, and physical nature of these contaminants as well as the duration (i.e. acute or chronic) of exposure. Las Vegas, Nevada is currently one of the fastest growing urban areas in the United States and is therefore a prime location for the investigation of potential environmental contaminants and pollutants in road sediment. …

Unsaturated Fatty Acid Oil-Based Microdroplets: A Promising Novel Class Of Microdroplets, Ramiz S. Alejilat

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Droplet-based microfluidics has rapidly advanced numerous fields, including chemistry, biology, materials science, medicine, food science, and cosmetics. In these systems, fluorocarbon oil combined with fluorinated surfactants is the preferred medium for fluid encapsulation, offering exceptional stability and biocompatibility essential for sensitive biological and chemical processes. However, growing concerns about the environmental and biological risks associated with fluorinated chemicals have prompted a search for alternatives.

This study is the first to explore the use of unsaturated fatty acids derived from emu oil for microdroplet formation. We characterized droplet formation based on flow rates and the presence non-fluorinated surfactant at a certain …

Developing Accessible Narrative-Based Stem Learning Software For K-6 Braille Display Users, Dylan Ravel, Daniel Tsivkovski, Brandon Foley, Maryam Etezad, Franceli Cibrian, Ariel Han, Rajeev Joshi

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research develops a free, accessible web application that enables K-6 students who are blind or visually impaired (BVI) to learn STEM concepts using refreshable braille displays. Currently, most online learning tools are not designed for BVI students, creating a significant educational barrier.

The application interfaces with commercial braille displays and uses narrative-based learning to make STEM content approachable and engaging. By presenting material as interactive stories, students can connect with concepts while developing braille reading skills. The curriculum design prioritizes accessibility through the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) standards and screen reader support.

The goal is to provide BVI …