Digital Commons Network^™

Grassland Bird Community Responses To Fire Management, Mason H. Dillard

ATU Scholars Symposium

Vegetation structure plays a major role in determining avian community makeup. Controlled burn frequency changes vegetation structure and consequently the makeup of avian communities. To examine this relationship, I surveyed breeding birds in grasslands and savannahs of the Ozark Mountains, Arkansas River Valley, and Northwest Arkansas. I created models to outline the relationship between these three factors (avian community, fire management, and vegetation structure.) I also examined surrounding land cover and patch size as potential variables that may impact avian community structures.

I will outline the role fire management plays in determining the makeup of breeding bird communities in grasslands, …

Proactive Mental Health Assistance Via Agentic Llm Chatbots With Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Shaira Wajiha

ATU Scholars Symposium

Mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression are widespread, yet often remain unaddressed due to stigma, financial barriers, limited access to professionals, or personal reluctance. To address this gap, we present an accessible AI-powered chatbot that provides preliminary conversational support with empathetic, context-aware responses. The chatbot is trained and evaluated on two publicly available counseling conversation datasets from Huggingface, enabling it to learn and maintain therapeutic dialogue patterns. We compare three advanced LLMs, such as Llama3.1, Mistral 7b, and Qwen3, evaluating them on relevance, empathy, conciseness, and contextual understanding, and all models demonstrate high response quality. Incorporation of a …

Developing Machine Learning Algorithms For Highly Imbalanced Neonatal Disorder Data, Ali Nawaz

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

Neonatal disorders such as low birth weight, very low birth weight, extremely low birth weight, preterm birth, and very preterm birth increase the likelihood of high neonatal morbidity or mortality and call for early identification. However, the rarity of occurrence of these conditions in the clinical datasets has resulted in a severe class imbalance, raising questions about the application of binary classification models to them. Therefore, this thesis proposes a sequential methodological framework for neonatal disorder detection under different assumptions related to the availability of labels. Initially, binary classification experiments are conducted to analyze the behaviour of commonly used classification …

Tavern Table: A Peer-To-Peer Online Platform For Collaborative Dungeons & Dragons Campaigns, Dustin Needham, Kristen Avery, Aidan Martin, Seth Poindexter

ATU Scholars Symposium

Designed to address the lack of free, accessible, and feature-complete online Dungeons & Dragons gameplay platforms, Tavern Table gives users the ability to create or participate in Dungeons & Dragons campaigns online via peer-to-peer multiplayer. This platform is targeted primarily for two sets of users: Dungeon Masters (the game masters), who will be creating and hosting campaigns for players to participate in, and the players participating in said campaigns. We chose the Unity Real-Time Development Platform to develop Tavern Table as it was a free and effective platform that supported 2D game development as well as peer-to-peer multiplayer. To create …

Simple D&D: A Web-Based Character Creation System For Dungeons & Dragons, Brennan M. Bondio, Dalton N. Tate, Landon F. Boyd

ATU Scholars Symposium

Dungeons & Dragons, published by Wizards of the Coast, is a widely played tabletop role-playing game that requires players to create detailed characters governed by structured rule systems. Character creation involves managing interdependent attributes, calculations, and constraints that can be difficult for new players and time-consuming even for experienced participants. These complexities create a barrier to entry and reduce efficiency during gameplay preparation.

This project addresses that challenge through the development of Simple D&D, a web-based character creation system designed to streamline and automate rule-driven character configuration. The system aims to reduce manual calculation errors and setup time while maintaining …

Automatic Labeling Of Real-World Pmu Data: A Weakly Supervised Learning Approach, Yunchuan Liu

Research Days

This paper presents a weakly supervised learning framework for real-world event identification in transmission networks using phasor measurement unit (PMU) data. The growing integration of renewable energy sources has introduced greater variability in grid conditions, intensifying the need for accurate event detection. Although high-resolution PMU measurements enable event identification to be formulated as a classification problem, traditional supervised learning approaches are hindered by the scarcity of labeled data, and acquiring large-scale, high-quality labeled PMU datasets remains prohibitively expensive. To overcome this challenge, we propose an automated PMU data-labeling method that combines domain knowledge with machine learning techniques through the use …

Team Selection Applications Using Subjective And Objective Factors: An Analytic Approach, Alan D. Smith

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

The Courier, Summer 2024, Tennessee. Historical Commission.

Tennessee Historical Commission

No abstract provided.

The Courier, Summer 2025, Tennessee. Historical Commission.

Tennessee Historical Commission

No abstract provided.

Navigation Bar Design Effects On Consumer Visual Processing, James Coyle

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Effect Of A Human-Made Reservoir On The Mussel Community In Caney Creek, Trakker Estes

ATU Scholars Symposium

Freshwater mussels are one of the most threatened taxonomic groups globally, with less than 32% of North American taxa considered secure. In Arkansas, over half of the state’s 85 species are endangered, threatened, or of special concern. Small impoundments may contribute to these declines through reduced hydrological connectivity and the resulting decline of fish community movement. This study examines the effects of Tri-County Lake, a small impoundment of Caney Creek in southern Arkansas, on mussel abundance and diversity. In total, eight sites were surveyed upstream, within, and downstream of the impoundment across various habitat types. A timed-search approach utilizing scuba …

Digitizing Transportation Operations At Safe Haven, Luke S. Garrett, William B. Turk, Clay A. Curtis, Aiden H. Behler

ATU Scholars Symposium

Safe Haven’s transportation department currently relies on a paper-based documentation process that requires physical transfer of records between buildings and repeated manual uploading of documents into storage systems. This workflow creates delays, redundant administrative tasks, and increased risk of misplaced or inconsistent records. Drivers, transportation coordinators, reviewers, and clients all interact with this process, making efficiency and data accuracy critical to daily operations.

This project develops a web-based transportation scheduling system designed to digitize documentation workflows and automate many of the repetitive tasks. The system replaces physical records with digital data management, reducing unnecessary manual handling and improving information accessibility …

Non-Markovian Quantum State Diffusion For Electron Transfer In The Biological Complexes, Muhammad Waqas Haseeb

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

The emerging field of quantum biology explores whether non-trivial quantum effects such as entanglement, tunnelling, and environmentally induced memory can contribute meaningfully to biological function alongside classical mechanisms. While such effects have been explored in photosynthesis, enzyme catalysis, and olfaction, their potential relevance to virology remains largely unexplored. Viruses, which straddle the boundary between living and non-living matter, provide a particularly compelling testbed for this inquiry. This thesis investigates a quantum-dynamical paradigm for viral entry, proposing that the earliest stage of SARS-CoV-2 infection may involve vibrationally assisted electron transfer (VA-ET) between the viral Spike protein and the host cell's angiotensin-converting …

From Counting To Advanced Math: How Five Simple Axioms Shape The Mathematical Landscape, Joy Skaggs

ATU Scholars Symposium

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mathematics faced a foundational crisis: Greog Cantor’s set theory led to an interesting self-referencing paradox in math and questions about the logical consistency of mathematics. From this crisis, two opposing viewpoints emerged: the Formalists and the Intuitionists. The Formalists praised Cantor’s work as a way to place math on a secure logical foundation, ensuring the discipline’s purity, however the Intuitionists despised Cantor’s work and heralded Cantor as a charlatan and corrupter of the youth. The leader of the Formalists, David Hilbert, proposed a formal system of rigorous proofs to build a complete …

Roomiq, Po Kya, Eh Paw, Nicole Holt, Riley Lindsay

ATU Scholars Symposium

1. RoomIQ is a smart room scheduling system designed to replace the current booking process for Corley Room 230 at Arkansas Tech University (ATU). The existing system presents challenges in efficiency, accessibility, and real-time coordination. Our goal is to deliver a user-friendly, real- time coordinated reservation solution that improves both functionality and overall user experience. The system will operate on an iPad Mini mounted outside the room, allowing users to instantly check availability and reserve the space on-site. This provides a convenient solution for immediate scheduling needs. In addition, a QR code displayed at the entrance will allow users to access …

Blazewatch: A Web-Based Management System For Volunteer Fire Departments, Michael J. Heinzen, Locke G. Weisler, Hunter S. King, Ryan N. Williams

ATU Scholars Symposium

BlazeWatch is a web application developed for rural volunteer fire departments. Volunteer fire departments often rely on manual processes and paper records systems to manage district fire dues, emergency call documentation, and equipment tracking. These inefficiencies can increase administrative workload and reduce efficiency. BlazeWatch is a secure full-stack web application designed to streamline administrative management for volunteer fire stations while providing a public-facing interface for general department information as well as a way for users to pay their fire dues. The system is built using an Angular frontend and a .NET backend with Identity-based authentication to ensure secure access control. …

Memorra: A Mobile-First Reminder Application For Personal And Social Event Management, Aaron Ngo, Caden Cash, Asher Wise

ATU Scholars Symposium

Memorra is a mobile-first reminder application designed to help individuals manage important dates and social commitments in a secure and reliable manner. Many users—including older adults, students, working professionals, and individuals experiencing cognitive overload—struggle to consistently remember birthdays, anniversaries, deadlines, and other significant events amid demanding schedules. To address this challenge, Memorra provides a centralized platform for managing reminders and organizing events with timely push notifications. The system architecture employs Flutter and Dart for cross-platform mobile development, supported by Firebase services—including Firestore, Authentication, Hosting, and Cloud Messaging—for backend functionality, real-time data management, and notification delivery. Secure user authentication, encrypted data …

Moneyup: A Predictive Financial Management System For College Students, Isaiah J. Adams, Malaya E. Wilburd, Dan V. Le, Joshua P. Golden

ATU Scholars Symposium

College students often lack accessible tools that combine real-time financial tracking, mobile accessibility, predictive analytics, and secure system design, leaving many without structured insight into their spending behavior. MoneyUP is a full-stack financial management platform developed to address these challenges through a secure, data-driven budgeting system deployed as both a web application and a cross-platform Flutter mobile application. The system integrates the Plaid API in its Sandbox environment to synchronize simulated banking data for secure testing without exposing live financial credentials. Transaction data is processed and stored using Supabase with a relational PostgreSQL database structured to enforce normalization, referential integrity, …

Llm-Based Stock Sentiment And Market Intelligence Platform, Joshua Thrower, Andrew Pinkerton, Ian Duggan, Wyatt Lester

ATU Scholars Symposium

Financial markets increasingly react to social media discourse, yet investors lack tools to translate this unstructured commentary into measurable indicators. Platforms such as YouTube host extensive discussions about publicly traded equities, but extracting reliable sentiment trends from high-volume, noisy comment streams remains technically challenging. This project develops a stock sentiment and market intelligence platform that transforms YouTube comment data into aggregated sentiment indicators aligned to specific equities. Comments are mapped to equities using ticker specific keyword identification combined with contextual filtering to reduce false associations from ambiguous or off-topic mentions. The system assigns numerical sentiment scores to individual comments and …

Use Of Basal Tree Cavities By Sylvilagus Aquaticus In Central Arkansas, Heath R. Williams

ATU Scholars Symposium

Basal tree cavities are hollow structures at the base of tree trunks utilized by many wildlife species, including small mammals, furbearers, and bats. Dumyahn and Zollner (2010) demonstrated that swamp rabbits (Sylvilagus aquaticus) use basal tree cavities and speculated that they may be used for thermoregulation at the northern limits of their geographic range or as alternative escape routes. To further investigate swamp rabbit use of basal tree cavities, we placed camera traps approximately 1 m from the entrance of the cavities (n = 43) in various Wildlife Management Areas in central Arkansas. Along with control sites without cavities (n=25), …

Technical Disclosure: Foundational Mathematical Framework For The Schramm Branch - Aperiodic Magnetic Confinement And Gradient Tractor Kinematics, Daniel Schramm

Defensive Publications Series

TECHNICAL DISCLOSURE: Foundational Mathematical Framework for the Schramm Branch - Aperiodic Magnetic Confinement and Gradient Tractor Kinematics

Inventor: Daniel C. Schramm (Taxi)

Date of Record: April 5, 2026

Protocols Active: STALWART, CAMAE, GRAPEFRUIT

1. ABSTRACT

This disclosure establishes the "Schramm Branch" of physics, detailing a deterministic mathematical framework for plasma stabilization, entropy recycling, and non-expulsive kinematics. By applying aperiodic geometry governed by the Golden Ratio (phi) to magnetic confinement (the "Cousin Wind" bi-ionic hourglass architecture), this framework mathematically neutralizes harmonic resonance, specifically the m=1 kink instability prevalent in traditional high-density plasma reactors. Furthermore, it defines a closed-loop thermodynamic boundary via …

Rotated Overlapping Tori For High-Performance Computing Networks, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

The technology described in this paper relates to a network topology for computing systems that features two or more overlapping tori. The topology is constructed by applying an affine transformation, such as a rotation, to the basis of at least one torus to ensure its axes are distinct from the axes of another torus. This configuration improves bisection bandwidth and reduces network diameter. The arrangement reduces global connections, such as optical cables, thereby lowering costs and improving system availability. The inner torus may possess a greater number of local dimensions to facilitate a fine-grained distribution of egress bandwidth.

Academic Proposal Management: Expanding The Impact Of Research Development, Faye Farmer, Kellianne Lauer, Tobin Spratte, Huguette Albrecht, Megan Blease

Research Development Review: The NORDP Journal

As a practice, research development encompasses activities that expand innovation and discovery for individuals in academia and industry. Within the research development framework, proposal development refers to activities that support individuals and teams in pursuing funding opportunities. Proposal management encompasses a specific suite of rigorous, reproducible, and structured activities dedicated to preparing a persuasive, coherent, and compliant proposal in response to a funding opportunity. While the approach is scalable, the presence of a skilled professional proposal manager is often reserved for multi-institutional, multi-million-dollar proposals. Proposal management is a well-established profession outside of higher education. Proposal management as a profession has …

Optimizing The Digital Learning Experience: A Behavioral Model Of Distance Student Engagement With The Learning Management System, Ghasa Faraasyatul Alam, Ali Imron, Imron Arifin, Juharyanto Juharyanto, Muhammad Zulhairi Bin Zubairi

Jurnal Pendidikan Humaniora

This study investigates the influence of students' intentions to utilize and engage with remote learning management systems (LMS) on the enhancement of educational quality. Through a comprehensive literature review, this research synthesizes existing findings to understand the interplay between student engagement with LMS in remote learning contexts and its effects on the quality of education in higher education institutions. The analysis demonstrates that students' behavioral intentions toward adopting LMS are crucial in improving educational outcomes. Significant insights from this study highlight the LMS as: (a) an essential tool for accessing educational content, (b) a robust platform for facilitating effective distance …

Assessing The Development And Forms Of Continuous Evaluation Methods Employed In Interdisciplinary Science And Social Studies With Lumi Education, Hana Triana, Arifin Maksum, Nina Nurhasanah

Jurnal Pendidikan Humaniora

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of interactive applications in primary education settings, focusing on continuous assessment practices and the overall performance of teaching Science and Social Studies. A descriptive-comparative research methodology was employed in this investigation. The participants comprised fifteen Grade 4 Cambridge students.The findings revealed that the content utilized for ongoing assessment through interactive applications encompassed information on Earth features, human interaction, and plant-based natural resources. A crucial aspect of evaluating fundamental learning competencies predominantly involved describing, identifying, listing, naming, relating, and explaining concepts within the domains of social studies and science. The interactive …

Analyzing Cognitive Development In Elementary-Aged Children And Its Implications For Teaching And Learning Strategies, Hardita Amalia Sri Ayu Lestari, Rinnanik Rinnanik, Evy Ramadina, Febi Nur Biduri

Jurnal Pendidikan Humaniora

The acceleration and optimization of an individual's development can surpass that of their peers, with disparities emerging from age-related, genetic, dietary, and environmental factors. A profound understanding of human development serves as a crucial foundation for comprehending an individual's needs and character, particularly among elementary-aged children. Defined as those aged 7-12 years or encompassed within the educational system, this demographic necessitates a thorough examination of their cognitive development. Cognitive development constitutes an extensive domain that encompasses various thinking abilities, such as reasoning, memory, problem-solving, ideation, and creativity. Consequently, the present study embarks on a substantive and comprehensive analysis of the …

2026 April 9 - Tennessee Weekly Drought Summary, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Weekly Drought Summaries

No abstract provided.

Interview With Orca Award Winner Paul Olson, Unl English; Literature, Curricular Reform, Great Plains Studies, Mark A. Griep, Paul A. Olson

UNL ORCA Interview Series

Paul Olson was awarded the ORCA in 1984. He was born in 1932 in Washburn, Wisconsin. During his youth, his family also farmed in Nebraska and South Dakota. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. Next, he earned a master’s in English from the University of Nebraska, had a Fulbright fellowship to spend a year at London University in England, and earned his doctorate in medieval and Renaissance studies from Princeton University in New Jersey. In 1957, he joined UNL as an assistant professor of English and was soon promoted to full professor. One of his …

Retaining Teachers In High-Need Schools, Myram Chapman Brady

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the Ernst and Sara Lane Volgenau College of Education at Morehead State University by Myram Chapman Brady on April 9, 2026.

Ole Miss Goldwater Scholar Searches Molecules For Life's Origins, Marvis Herring

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – Sealed in the frozen dust of a distant comet, there may be a molecule that helps explain how life began.