Digital Commons Network^™

Department Of Mathematical Sciences Newsletter, Spring 2025, University Of Montana--Missoula. Department Of Mathematical Sciences

Newsletters from the Department of Mathematical Sciences at UM

At the Intersection Between Choreography & Calculations / Dominic Beccari -- Christian López Mercado: From Meteorology to Math / Fred Peck -- Robert McKelvey 1929-2025: In Memoriam -- Notes from the Chair / John Bardsley -- UM Math Day Returns / Matt Roscoe -- Richard Lane 1941-2025 -- The Mathematics Enthusiast’s Worldwide Readership in 2024 -- An Unusual Visitor to the Math Department -- Donations to the Math Department -- Degree Recipients 2024-2025 -- Spring 2025 Scholarships & Awards -- Servus from Austria! / Mary Catlett

Toward A Global Roadmap: An Analysis Of National Strategies Toward Digital Education Improvements Across Southeast Asia And Southern Africa, Z Alexandra Anderson

Computer Science Undergraduate Theses

The rapid global expansion of digital technologies has created significant opportunities to transform education systems, foster innovation, and reduce inequalities. However, access to and benefits from these technologies remain unevenly distributed, shaped by differences in infrastructure, human capital, governance structures, and economic development. This thesis investigates how systemic approaches to digital education in Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe can inform a more inclusive and adaptive global roadmap for digital transformation in education.

Adopting a mixed-methods design, this study combines a comparative quantitative analysis of the CISCO Digital Readiness Index (DRI) with a qualitative content analysis of national …

Causal Models For Realistic Cognitive Reinforcement, Vivek Dhingra, Brandon Bazile, Andrew Forney

Computer Science Undergraduate Theses

Modeling complex hierarchical decision systems can be used for predicting the effects of policy changes before their enactment, such as understanding how new laws might influence students within an educational system. However, understanding the effects of policies on individuals versus populations requires a structured assertion of the system’s causal dynamics. As such, we propose a novel reinforcement learning framework that integrates causal modeling to optimize decision-making in multi-agent environments, like schools. The causal model captures relationships between these levels, providing agents with a structured understanding of how their actions propagate through the system. Compared to traditional reinforcement learning methods, our …

The Influence Of Institutional Barriers And Personality On Gendered Occupational Choice, Mia Sideris

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

Men hold a disproportionate share of high-paying jobs, leading to an uneven distribution within the workforce. Possible rationalizations behind the formation of the occupational gap can be narrowed down to two factors: institutional barriers and personality differences. Accounts of prestigious organizations intentionally underrepresenting women in academic spheres, in addition to the persistence of societal norms can explain the observed distribution. Other perspectives insist that sex determines one’s behavior in selecting a life-long occupation, where a woman’s instinct to nurture and develop interpersonal connections leads them to choose fields that necessitate these characteristics. Compiling data from mainstream companies like Apple who …

Teaching Video Composition And Digital Rhetoric In The Youtube Era: Analysis And Research Of Academic Video Essays In The College Composition Classroom, Carmen Ollila

All NMU Master's Theses

As video-based communication has gained popularity across sites like YouTube, it is essential to represent this type of rhetorical communication within the college composition classroom. Using video and filmmaking to communicate information in the classroom is not new, as academics have explored such media as aids to writing since the 1970s, following the popularity of news broadcasting in the 1950s. In the 21st Century, teaching students video composition and digital rhetoric in an era where a platform such as YouTube has made it easier to share information to a large audience. The freshman college composition classroom should provide the tools …

Extending Feature-Based Detection For Artificial Intelligence, Kayla Ahrndt

SPARK Symposium Presentations

AI text generation is rapidly developing, and, as a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate it from human written text. Our base study by Leon Fröhling et al. proposed a feature-based detection model trained on GPT2, GPT3, and Grover data, as well as human-generated text. Our work extends their research by training a modified model with four neural networks on word embeddings, select features from the original study, as well as updated data (GPT3, GPT4, and Grover).

How The Biotic And Abiotic Factors In The Belle Forest Cave And Arboretum Soil Dictates Tree Species Prevalence, Amya A. Bingham

SPARK Symposium Presentations

A plethora of factors in the soil impact a plant’s health, including the presence of different biotic and abiotic factors. These include things like temperature, elevation, pH, microbial respiration and the presence of water, clay, loam, silt, sand, nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. Different soils will have varying amounts of these, which may dictate what is able to grow in them, and therefore also the surrounding area. This research project explores how the aforementioned biotic and abiotic factors affect the soil at the Belle Forest Cave and Arboretum. Three samples will be taken from four spots along a transect at this …

"Data Science For Digital Privacy: A Practical Guide For Non-Technical Audiences", Kayla Ahrndt

SPARK Symposium Presentations

As companies increasingly rely on consumer data for personalization and profit, the need for stronger user protections, security measures, and transparency in data practices grows. Legal frameworks must be continuously re-evaluated and updated to ensure accountability, while individuals must be equipped with the knowledge to make informed decisions about their digital presence. However, personal data privacy education remains widely inaccessible due to the technical language and the effort required to navigate complex policies. This project, presented in both zine and blog formats, addresses this gap by providing clear, actionable, and accessible recommendations for data privacy and personal cybersecurity. As an …

Investigating Mercury Contamination In Urban Fish: Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy And Histological Analysis For Environmental And Human Health, Indy L. Cockrill, Ross Andrew

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Mercury contamination in aquatic ecosystems is a pressing environmental and public health concern, particularly in urban areas where industrial runoff and wastewater contribute to heavy metal accumulation. This study investigates mercury presence in fish from Richland Creek in Nashville, TN, by analyzing histological changes in liver and muscle tissues. Mercury bioaccumulates in aquatic food chains, potentially leading to physiological damage in fish and posing health risks to humans who consume contaminated seafood. While prior research has established mercury’s toxic effects, there is a need for localized studies assessing its presence in urban waterways. The hope is to find histological abnormalities …

Moviequeue: Leveraging Graph Databases To Build Recommender Systems, Ryan C. Juricic

SPARK Symposium Presentations

In the era of abundant streaming content, viewers often face choice overload and inefficient recommendation systems limited to isolated platforms. MovieQueue is a graph-based, cross-platform movie recommender system built on a Neo4j knowledge graph and integrated with an interactive Streamlit application. Leveraging both user-specific ratings and extensive movie metadata — including genres, cast, crew, runtime, release year, and audience engagement — the system provides tailored recommendations grounded in content similarity and social context. Users receive recommendations not only based on genre overlap but also through shared actors, directors, and composers with previously highly-rated films, alongside filters for explicit genre selection. …

High School Self-Esteem As It Relates To College Autonomy: The Role Of The Mother-Daughter Relationship, Emma J. Shamburger

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Existing research indicates that feelings of connectedness in the mother-daughter relationship positively predict self-esteem and overall life satisfaction (Onayli & Erdur-Baker, 2013). In addition, mother-daughter communication is significantly correlated with daughters’ perceived self-esteem (Lyle, 1984). Furthermore, parental support of autonomy in adolescents is positively associated with life satisfaction, and this relationship is partially mediated by self-esteem (Ma et al., 2022). Research is clear that autonomy is a strong predictor of self-esteem (Hodgins et al., 2007); however, no research indicates whether or not self-esteem can be a predictor of autonomy. Thus, the purpose of our study is to explore high school …

Patterns Within The Collatz Conjecture, Kiel Harrison

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

The Collatz Conjecture, also known as 3n+1, one of the most famous unsolved problems in mathematics, has been forever out of reach of being truly solved. However, through the application of traces, there is now a new pathway forward to working out a potential solution. This study shows how this pathway was found, and what steps need to be taken to follow it.

Bioethics Of Patents And Licensing, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Church Doors And Hospital Doors: The Interrelationship, Azubuike Chukwubumnobi Okeke, Samuel Obiajulu Ike

Great Commission Research Journal

This study examines the place of medical evangelism as a means of church expansion in modern Nigeria. It is a retrospective cross-sectional investigative study involving data collection from the Good Shepherd Specialist Hospital’s anonymized patient records. The Good Shepherd Specialist Hospital is in Enugu State in southeastern Nigeria. Over 100,000 patients sought medical care in the hospital during a period of 19 years. Seventy-four percent had spiritual care provided by a person of the same faith. Most of the respondents came from within the Enugu metropolitan area. Using the church planting ministry of the Chapel of His Resurrection within the …

Nash Bargaining Strategy In Autonomous Decision Making For Multi-Ship Collision Avoidance Based On Route Exchange, Yang Wang, Qiangsheng Ye, Hoong Chuin Lau, Tengfei Wang, Bing Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A novel scheme is proposed for the distributed multi-ship collision avoidance (CA) problem with consideration of the autonomous, dynamic nature of the real circumstance. All the ships in the envisioned scenarios can share their decisions or intentions through route exchange, allowing them to make subsequent decisions based on the route planning in each iteration. By leveraging route exchange, the multi-ship CA problem involves iterations for negotiation, and is regarded as a staged cooperative game under conditions of complete information. The concept of closest spatio-temporal distance (CSTD) is introduced to more accurately assess collision risk between ships. A coordinated CA mechanism …

Samgpt: Text-Free Graph Foundation Model For Multi-Domain Pre-Training And Cross-Domain Adaptation, Xingtong Yu, Zechuan Gong, Chang Zhou, Yuan Fang, Hui Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Graphs are able to model interconnected entities in many online services, supporting a wide range of applications on the Web. This raises an important question: How can we train a graph foundational model on multiple source domains and adapt to an unseen target domain? A major obstacle is that graphs from different domains often exhibit divergent characteristics. Some studies leverage large language models to align multiple domains based on textual descriptions associated with the graphs, limiting their applicability to text-attributed graphs. For text-free graphs, a few recent works attempt to align different feature distributions across domains, while generally neglecting structural …

Emeriti News Spring 2025, Emeriti Council

Emeriti News

No abstract provided.

Analytical Dispatch Strategies For Pumped Storage Hydro: A Conditional Dynamic Programming Approach To Discontinuous Multi-Period Optimization Problems, Jian Liu, Jianwen Zhang, Zaiwu Gong, Donald C. Wunsch, Rui Bo

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The increasing integration of renewable energy sources like wind and solar poses significant challenges to secure and stable grid operation. Energy storage systems, particularly pumped storage hydro (PSH), play a crucial role in balancing power supply and demand. Traditional analytical studies of PSH economic dispatch problems often assume zero lower bounds for generating and pumping rates to simplify analysis and derive analytical solutions for multi-period optimization problems. However, the inherent mechanical design constraints of PSH require non-zero minimum flow rates for efficient operation. We analyze two scenarios, merchants having PSH only and merchants having both PSH and wind farms. In …

Spectral Width Of Maximum Deposition Eigenchannels In Diffusive Media, Rohin E. Mcintosh, Arthur Goetschy, Nicholas Bender, Alexey Yamilov, Chia Wei Hsu, Hasan Yllmaz, Hui Cao

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The maximum deposition eigenchannel provides the largest possible power delivery to a target region inside a diffusive medium by optimizing the incident wavefront of a monochromatic beam. It originates from constructive interference of scattered waves, which is frequency sensitive. We investigate the spectral width of the maximum deposition eigenchannels over a range of target depths using numerical simulations of a 2D diffusive system. Compared to tight focusing into the system, power deposition to an extended region is more sensitive to frequency detuning. The spectral width of enhanced delivery to a large target displays a rather weak, nonmonotonic variation with target …

Radiative Energy And Mass Shifts Of Quantum Cyclotron States, Ulrich D. Jentschura

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Abstract: We discuss relativistic and radiative corrections to the energies of quantum cyclotron states. In particular, it is shown analytically that the leading logarithmic radiative (self-energy) correction to the bound-state energy levels of quantum cyclotron states is state independent and must be interpreted as a magnetic field-dependent correction to the electron's mass in a Penning trap.

Silverrush. Xiv. Lyα Luminosity Functions And Angular Correlation Functions From 20,000 Lyα Emitters At Z ∼ 2.2-7.3 From Up To 24 Deg2 Hsc-Ssp And Chorus Surveys: Linking The Postreionization Epoch To The Heart Of Reionization, Hiroya Umeda, Masami Ouchi, Satoshi Kikuta, Yuichi Harikane, Yoshiaki Ono, Takatoshi Shibuya, Akio K. Inoue, Kazuhiro Shimasaku, Yongming Liang, Akinori Matsumoto, Shun Saito, Haruka Kusakabe, Yuta Kageura

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We present luminosity functions (LFs) and angular correlation functions (ACFs) derived from 18,960 Lyα emitters (LAEs) at z = 2.2−7.3 over a wide survey area of ≲24 deg² that are identified in the narrowband data of the HSC-SSP and CHORUS surveys. Confirming the large sample with 241 spectroscopically identified LAEs, we determine Lyα LFs and ACFs in the brighter luminosity range down to 0.5L⋆, and confirm that our measurements are consistent with previous studies but offer significantly reduced statistical uncertainties. The improved precision of our ACFs allows us to clearly detect one-halo terms at some redshifts, and provides large-scale …

Teacher Mindset: An Investigation On The Influence Of Teachers’ Transformational Leadership On Growth Mindset, Rodolfo Reyes

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

Identifying transformational leadership as a predictor of a growth mindset can be useful in developing teachers’ growth mindset. This nonexperimental quantitative study examined the relationship between teachers’ growth mindset and transformational leadership, and how the dimensions of teacher transformational leadership styles predict teachers’ growth mindset. The current study examined 63 participants in a school district in Florida. Using Dweck’s growth mindset survey (2006) and a researcher-created instrument to assess teachers’ perceptions of growth mindset and transformational leadership, the study resulted in a statistically significant finding of the association and prediction of transformational leadership on growth mindset. Demographics, such as teachers’ …

A Quantitative Analysis Of Middle School Teachers’ Self-Efficacy And Small-Group Instruction, Charles B. Alvare

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

This nonexperimental, descriptive quantitative study focused on the relationship between teacher self-efficacy (TSE) and the receptivity to and implementation of small-group instruction (SGI) among middle school teachers in a school district in the Southeast United States. Rooted in Albert Bandura’s 1977 self-efficacy theory, this study integrated Megan Tschannen-Moran and Anita Hoy’s (2001) Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale and a researcher-created instrument that resulted in statistically significant findings from the 76 teachers who participated in the survey. The predictive model of receptiveness to SGI by overall TSE was statistically significant (F[3,72)] = 8.92, p < .001, R2 = .27), as was the predictive model of teacher implementation of SGI (F[1,74] = 35.45, p < .001, R2 = .32). The Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale measures the confluence of TSE related to classroom management, student engagement, and instructional strategies. Teacher efficacy in instructional strategies was indicative of participating middle school teachers’ perceived receptivity of SGI (B = −0.36, t(72) = −1.97, p = .05), and efficacy in classroom management (B = 0.52, t(72) = 3.58, p < .001) impacted their perceived implementation of SGI. Furthermore, the TSE dimension of student engagement was statistically significant in predicting perceptions of overall receptiveness to (B = 0.62, t(72) = 3.52, p < .001) and implementation of (B = 0.31, t(72) = 2.26, p = .03) SGI. The research findings of this current study and the literature highlight the significant benefits of TSE and student engagement.

Forecasting Supply Chain Disruptions And Reducing Costs Through Data Science, Kayla Ahrndt

SPARK Symposium Presentations

The timely and cost-effective distribution of antiretroviral (ARV) and HIV laboratory commodities, particularly in over-exploited and low-resource settings, is imperative through effective Supply Chain Management.This project uses a comprehensive supply chain dataset to analyze pricing trends, predict lead times, forecast demand, and optimize costs for ARV and HIV lab shipments across multiple countries. Through data science, we can predict future demand, detect unusual pricing patterns, assess risks of supply chain disruptions, examine how commodity prices fluctuate over time and across regions, identify key factors influencing shipment lead times, and develop predictive models for future demand. Through anomaly detection techniques, we …

Microbial Distortion? Impacts Of Delayed Preservation On Microbiome Diversity And Composition In A Marine Invertebrate, Brenna Hutchings, Susanna López-Legentil, Lauren Stefaniak, Marie Nydam, Patrick M. Erwin

Marine Science

Field collections of marine invertebrates are often accompanied by delays in preservation, which may impact microbiome composition. Here, we tested the effects of delayed preservation and relaxation methods on microbiome diversity and composition in the colonial ascidian Trididemnum solidum using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. Replicate samples collected from Belizean reefs were either (1) immediately preserved in ethanol (“control”), (2) held in ambient seawater for 3 h before preservation (“SW”), or (3) held in ambient seawater with menthol (a common pre-preservation relaxation technique for ascidian identification) for 3 h before preservation (“SW + M”). All T. solidum microbiomes were different from …

Roshit Niraula Honors Portfolio, Roshit Niraula

Honors Capstone Portfolios

Roshit Niraula's Honors Portfolio captured in May 2025.

Dangerous Digital Standing: Applying Spokeo And Transunion To Online Privacy Harms, Michael E. Ten Eyck

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In recent years, the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) has been used to sue website-holding companies for utilizing chat bots that record online conversations. Such claims have already generated high-profile class actions and multidistrict litigations, with many more expected. Because CIPA violations often occur writ large when websites retain data from their chat boxes, and the statute imposes relatively high damages, there exists an incentive for plaintiffs’ attorneys to seek out aggregated claims, generating time-consuming litigation. Meanwhile, the harms suffered by those bringing suit fall under the category of intangible privacy harms. The US Court of Appeals for the …

Charter Schools And Students With Disabilities: Admissions Equity, Kelly L. Carrick

Senior Theses

Many states are now offering parents a choice in where their child attends school, typically offering charter schools as the alternative to public schools. With charter school enrollment on the rise, questions have begun to arise regarding the acceptance rates of students with disabilities, specifically, how do students with disabilities fare in the process of being admitted to charter schools? This research examines the admissions policies of charter schools, the admission rates for students with disabilities, as well as the legality and equity of this topic. Previous research has found that charter schools typically do not accept as many students …

Cybermapping Solutions: A Unified Approach In Us/Nato Military Applications And Development, Nicholas Macrino

Electrical & Computer Engineering Projects for D. Eng. Degree

[First paragraph] Cyber threats are evolving in complexity and frequency, posing significant challenges for cybersecurity professionals in identifying, categorizing, and responding to attacks in real time. Unlike traditional warfare, where battlefield awareness is based on fixed geographic warfare, cyber operations involve abstract attack vectors, non-linear threat escalation, and rapidly changing network conditions. Modern cyber threats, such as advanced persistent threats (APTs), polymorphic malware, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, require adaptive visualization techniques that provide real-time awareness and facilitate rapid decision-making. However, existing symbology standards, such as MIL-STD-2525D, were not designed to accommodate the dynamic nature of cyber warfare. The inability …

Amplification In Mems Rlc Circuits For Enhanced Sensitivity And Mems Applications, Mutaz Mohd Hamdi Al Fayad

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) have garnered significant attention due to their unique characteristics, including small size, high sensitivity, and cost-effective mass production. While electrostatic actuation offers low power consumption, it requires high voltage to move the MEMS structure, posing a challenge for applications such as RF switches and MEMS resonator-based sensors. Reducing the required input voltage for electrostatic MEMS remains a key research focus.

This thesis investigates voltage amplification in electrostatic MEMS through integration with resonant RLC circuits. By leveraging resonance, optimized configurations are designed to maximize voltage gain and enhance the signal-to-noise ratio. Through theoretical modeling and simulations using MATLAB …