Digital Commons Network^™

Inflation Determinants In Brazil, Mariana Andrade Da Rocha Saba

Theses & ETDs

This thesis examines the determinants of Brazilian inflation in the context of demand-pull and cost-push dynamics. The study aims to assess whether inflation in Brazil is primarily driven by demand-side pressures, supply-side factors, or a combination of both. For the empirical analysis, three ARDL models are estimated using quarterly data from 2006 to 2025. The first model includes only demand-side variables, the second focuses on supply-side variables, and the third incorporates both demand and supply factors. The results indicate that inflation in Brazil cannot be fully explained by either demand or cost pressures in isolation; rather, it arises from the …

Digital Orientalism: Examining Eastern Practices In The Wellness Industry, Celia Golden

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

As popularity rises for global and domestic wellness retreats as tourist destinations, their predominantly Western audience invites an American offshoot of Orientalism that commodifies Asian names and practices into “mindfulness.” This paper examines the guest guide of the Miraval Berkshires wellness facility and its treatment of Eastern practices. Findings revealed 55.6% of the specialists at the Miraval Berkshires employ Eastern techniques, and 74.14% of those offerings are restricted to paid and private sessions to create exclusivity. The word “ancient” is disproportionately leveled against Eastern practices in the guest guide to further cement them as relics of the past. Alongside minimalist …

Geospatial Science And The Changing Environment: Applied Methods For Sustainable Agriculture And Landscape Management, Harrison Wakefield Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rapid environmental change is disrupting agricultural productivity, ecological function, and the long-term resilience of managed landscapes. At the same time, the rapid growth of geospatial data science has improved our understanding of environmental change and increasingly is being used to improve sustainability in agricultural and environmental management. However, critical gaps remain that limit the applicability of data-driven insights in landscape management. This dissertation investigates the potential of geospatial analytics for sustainable agriculture and landscape management, with a focus on applied methods that operate across spatial and temporal scales. Using field, landscape, regional, and national datasets, it explores the capabilities and …

Fixing Wages In The Name Of Training: Residency Programs And The Forgotten Antitrust Question, Yousef Ziyadi

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Patient Privacy In The Digital Age: Reimagining Health Data Laws To Protect Patients’ Constitutional Rights, Adriana Almeida Mehtani

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jenna Shoultz-Thao Honors Portfolio, Jenna Shoultz-Thao

Honors Capstone Portfolios

Jenna Shoultz-Thao's honors capstone portfolio captured in May 2026.

Brock Nielsen Honors Portfolio, Brock Nielsen

Honors Capstone Portfolios

Brock Nielsen's honors capstone portfolio captured in May 2026.

Creative Problem Solving In A Coffee Mug: Designing A Self-Guided Cps Toolkit For Small Business Owners In Latin America, Maria Mujica

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This Master’s Project designs CPS in a Coffee Mug Toolkit: a six-day ritualized, self-guided, habit-building micro-learning experience that equips small business owners in Latin America with the essential skills of Creative Problem Solving (CPS) to address their everyday business challenges in a highly resource-constrained context. The toolkit integrates the essentials of CPS with behavior change and experiential learning models functioning both as a training and as a behavioral adoption system. It is a frugal solution designed to meet small business owners where they are and to embed CPS as a daily habit to support their progress. In the future, it …

Beyond Student Voice: The Agency Blueprint For Democratic Inquiry And Creative Problem Solving, Noam Oren

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of this Master of Science project in Creativity and Change Leadership is to establish a foundational framework for schools to cultivate a climate that empowers students to act and create within their communities. The primary contribution is the Agency Blueprint, a scalable model designed to adapt to diverse educational settings. By synthesizing the four-stage Creative Problem Solving (CPS) framework with Democratic pedagogy, the blueprint—supported by the Lundy Model and the REAL framework—provides the necessary scaffolding for students to transition from passive subjects to active agents of change. Whether implemented for a small cohort or a larger student body, …

Future Ready Young Adults: Building Creative And Adaptive Thinkers, Robell Yeung

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Abstract of Project

Future Ready Young Adults: Building Creative and Adaptive Thinkers addresses a developmental gap in educational practices that prioritize technical proficiency over the psychological frameworks necessary for navigating systemic ambiguity. This project introduces an interdisciplinary, modular curriculum specifically designed for the challenges of emerging adulthood. By synthesizing Creative Problem Solving (CPS), James Clear’s habit architecture, and Martin Seligman’s PERMA model, the curriculum provides a structured pathway for cultivating creative self-efficacy and financial capability. Moving beyond traditional views of innate creativity, this model employs asset-based frameworks to treat cognitive agility and ambiguity tolerance as developable competencies. The project culminates …

Cultivating Well-Being & Vibrant Futures Through Creativity: A Community-Based Library Initiative In Rural America, Alyssa M. Bump

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Cultivating Well-Being & Vibrant Futures Through Creativity: A Community-Based Library Initiative in Rural America presents the development and design of a creativity-based community program for public libraries in Allegany County, New York. Developed in partnership with the Allegany County Area Foundation (ACAF), this project aims to foster creativity as a tool for well-being, connection, and future-oriented thinking for adults in a rural context.

The program consists of a three-session series that integrate elements of Creative Problem-Solving (CPS), mindfulness, and creative well-being practices to support creative self-efficacy. Designed utilizing the Torrance Incubation Model of Teaching and Learning (TIM), each session aims …

Impacts And Perceptions Of Holistic Education Practices, Kaitlyn Mj Calabrese

Leadership Education Capstones

This study examined educators' perceptions of holistic education and its impact on students. It

addressed the problem of the limited emphasis on developing the whole student within

traditional education systems, despite its importance for long-term success. Developing students

holistically involves not only focusing on academic skills but also on non-academic skills such as

social-emotional development, community building, communication, and collaboration. This

mixed-methods study used an online survey administered through Qualtrics consisting of 24

questions, including Likert scale and open-ended items. The survey was completed by 12

educators from a school that has grades 1 through 4. in Southeast Minnesota. Qualitative …

Parallelism In Java, Matt Vierow

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Parallelism and multithreading have become an important facet of programming in recent years. Much work has been done in programming languages such as C and C++ with libraries such as OpenMP. However, less effort has been made to create parallelism tools in higher level languages such as Java. This is important because most programmers learn the basics in languages such as Python and Java that lack parallel tools like OpenMP. This means they must directly manage threads which requires knowledge of object-oriented programming and design.

This project sought to incorporate some elements of OpenMP into Java to allow newer programmers …

Genome-Wide Phenotypic Characterization Of Mycobacteriophage Mercurio, Tyler Downs

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Bacteriophages, or phages, are being piloted as a supplemental or alternative therapeutic to antibiotics against drug-resistant Mycobacterium pathogens, such as M. tuberculosis, which pose a global public health crisis.  Characterizing bacteriophage genomes can provide insights into efficacy in phage therapy before implementation or elucidate new targets to manipulate bacterial growth.  Overexpression of individual phage genes is useful to study a gene product’s function independent of others.  Here, the results of phage Mercurio plasmid library overexpression in plate-based assays are described.  Mercurio infects nonpathogenic Mycobacterium smegmatis and is genetically related to bacteriophages infecting pathogenic Mycobacterium species.  Eleven gene products of …

Purdue University Research Repository (Purr), Reid Boehm, Purdue University Office Of Research

University Research Core Facility Boilerplate Descriptions

No abstract provided.

Anaerobic Co-Digestion Of Goat Manure With Rice Residue To Maximize Biomethane Recovery, Mahmoud Nabil Soliman

All Theses

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a widely adopted waste‑management technology and a key process for renewable energy production in the form of biogas. Manures, such as goat manure (GM), often exhibit low carbon‑to‑nitrogen (C/N) ratios, which may limit biogas recovery. This study evaluated and optimized the anaerobic co‑digestion of GM with rice husk (RH) and rice straw (RS) across varying substrate proportions (0–100% GM). Goat manure was collected from the International Goat Research Center at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU), while RH and RS were obtained from Gulf Pacific Co. (Houston, TX), and the inoculum was sourced from the PVAMU wastewater …

Ole Miss Names Poet, Physicist As 2026 Faculty Laureates, Clara Turnage

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi Faculty Laureate program is bringing science and arts education to the state with a novel approach: a poet, a physicist and a portable planetarium.

Between The One And The Many: Considering Community And Individualism - Opening Essay, John Schmalzbauer

eJournal of Public Affairs

This issue had its genesis thirty years ago at a campus lecture, a lecture that helped launch Missouri State University’s public affairs mission. Speaking on the “moral crisis in American public life,” sociologist Robert Bellah criticized the toxic individualism of the global elite, calling for a renewed commitment to the common good. Addressing an audience of 1,700 students, faculty, and local residents, Bellah ignited a community-wide discussion that reverberated across university classrooms, Ozarks congregations, and in the pages of the Springfield News-Leader.

Bellah’s questions remain no less relevant today: How can we balance individualism with our shared commitments? How …

Are We Still Bowling Alone – Part I: Religious Communities, Nancy T. Ammerman

eJournal of Public Affairs

Editor’s note. The following is based on a panel session from the 2024 Public Affairs Conference, presented by Nancy Ammerman, Harry Bruinius, and Kenneth Woodward. The panel was a reflection on what has happened since authors Robert Putnam and Robert Bellah issued warnings on the decline of community in America.

Are We Still Bowling Alone – Part Ii: Lost In Culture, Harry Bruinius

eJournal of Public Affairs

Editor’s note. The following is based on a panel session from the 2024 Public Affairs Conference, presented by Nancy Ammerman, Harry Bruinius, and Kenneth Woodward. The panel was a reflection on what has happened since authors Robert Putnam and Robert Bellah issued warnings on the decline of community in America.

Fantasies Of Just Torture: On Violent Efforts To Navigate The Intolerable, Tonya Sims

Philosophy Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines why torture, despite being among the clearest objects of moral revulsion available to us, remains imaginable as a serious moral possibility. I begin by refining the concept of torture through an examination of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, while arguing that insufficient attention has been paid to what I take to be its paradigmatic form, namely sadistic torture. Against definitions that treat torture primarily in instrumental terms, I argue that torture is best understood as the intentional infliction of extreme pain upon an unwilling person in order to dominate or otherwise manipulate their autonomy. Drawing on …

Aggregation And Collation Of Texas Crayfish Museum Specimens To Determine Their Current Conservation Statuses, Adrian Alvarez

Biology Theses

Crayfish account for over half of the macroinvertebrate biomass in many ecosystems and serve as crucial bioindicators because of their behavioral and physiological adaptability to environmental changes. Despite being home to approximately 52 native crayfish species, Texas currently lacks protective regulations. This gap is primarily because of insufficient information regarding their distribution and occurrences within the state, including their statuses as Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN). This study focuses on compiling and comparing crayfish museum records with current iNaturalist field survey data across Texas to address these knowledge gaps and recommend updates to SGCN statuses. Five species not currently …

Dungeons And Dragons As Game-Based Learning, Moses Allen

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This phenomenological qualitative study explored the use of the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) Role-Playing Game as a Game-Based Learning (GBL) model, measuring middle school student perceptions of engagement, motivation, and skill development through interactive storytelling. The study used a Practitioner Research theoretical framework and Thematic Analysis to identify emergent themes from the collected data. The study included gameplay of D&D after school with a small group of participants grades 6-8. Results indicated that participants reported consistently high levels of motivation and engagement. Participants perceived that D&D gameplay promoted the development of 21st Century Skills and middle school curricula skills, specifically …

The Goad, The Bad, & The Ugly: The Livestreamed Vice Signaling & Body Fascism Of Clavicular & Asmongold, Jacob T. Fry

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores the rhetorical, material, and symbolic implications of fascist livestreaming in the United States through two popular streamers: Clavicular and Asmongold. These two streamers represent a small slice of the rise of different reactionary rhetorics online and how the use of different masculine subcultures—in this case ‘Looksmaxxing’ or Gamer inspired rhetoric—are used as ideological texts for white male supremacy. Whether in front of the glow of their gaming monitor or the flashing lights of a nightclub, the livestreaming of the body, home, relationships, and lifestyles challenge rhetorical conceptions of style, the ‘public/private sphere,’ and political communication. As different …

The Impact Of Anti Lgbtqi+ Legistlation On Diplomacy And Economy In Africa: A Case Study Of Ghana, Hunvilla Agyemang

Master of Public Administration for Senior Leadership

This  research  examines  the  impact  of  anti LGBTQI+  legislation  on  diplomacy  and  economy in Africa, using Ghana as a case study. The study is motivated by the renewed wave of  anti-LGBTQI+ legislative activism across parts of Africa and the significant domestic and  international debate surrounding Ghana's Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill. The paper  asks three central questions: what drives the rise of anti-LGBTQI+ legislation in Ghana, what  economic consequences are associated with such legislation, and what diplomatic implications  follow when a state adopts or advances laws widely perceived as discriminatory. To answer these  questions, the study employs a …

Understanding And Managing Stress In The Public Sector: A Focus On Municipal Government, Emmanuel N. Asante

Master of Public Administration for Senior Leadership

This Capstone examines workplace stress among municipal government employees, using the City of Worcester, Massachusetts, as a practical case study. Municipal employees play a critical role in delivering essential public services, yet they often work under challenging conditions, including heavy workloads, limited resources, strict rules, and high public expectations. Over time, these pressures can negatively affect employee well-being, job performance, and the quality of services provided to residents.

The purpose of this project is to understand better the causes and effects of workplace stress in local government and to identify practical ways municipalities can address it. The study uses an …

Bounded Transformation: From Static Readiness To Trajectory Based Change Viability, Mary Piecewicz, Manjari Gupta

Master of Public Administration for Senior Leadership

Most organizational transformations do not fail loudly. They fade, fragment, and quietly exhaust the people expected to sustain them. What practitioners often diagnose as resistance, poor adoption, or weak execution may begin earlier, with an untested assumption that the organization is stable, coherent, and capable enough to absorb planned change. Existing change frameworks offer useful guidance for implementation, but they do not formally ask whether the organization is currently moving in a direction, and with enough stability, to make planned change viable.

This capstone introduces Bounded Transformation: From Static Readiness to Trajectory-Based Change Viability, a trajectory-based pre-condition framework for …

May 2026, Volume 22, Number 1, Winthrop University Archives And Special Collections

Retrospect: News from the Louise Pettus Archives and Special Collections at Winthrop University

No abstract provided.

Leveraging Data Analytics For Student Success: Lessons From Building An Analytics Program At Bentley University, Jane De Leon Griffin, Edlira Stefani, Rahat Sabyrbekov, Patrick Dickson, Annie Raunikar

Student Success Publications

Higher education institutions across the United States face an unprecedented convergence of challenges: a shrinking pool of college-aged students, persistent learning gaps from the COVID-19 pandemic, the destabilization of longstanding federal support structures, and the rising cost of attendance, which increases public skepticism about the value of higher education and challenges access for low-income learners. In this environment, student success is no longer simply a strategic priority—it is an institutional imperative.

One way in which Bentley University has responded to these pressures is by launching the Building a Data-Driven Student Success Ecosystem (BaSSE) initiative, a comprehensive analytics program designed to …

Void, Voidable, And The Limits Of Finality: Reconciling Equity And Public Policy In Illinois Child Support Orders, Julie M. Pirtle

Northern Illinois University Law Review

What happens when a 2012 agreed order, which dismisses a 2009 paternity finding, waives child support, and sets no parenting time, is challenged as void twelve years later and now Mother says Father has a $63,219.60 arrearage? My client, the Father and payor of support, was facing just that scenario. It is common knowledge that an out of court agreement to modify/terminate child support is not enforceable unless it is reduced to writing and approved by the courts. However, a party to a litigation should be allowed to rely on the orders the court enters. Father has every right to …