Digital Commons Network^™

Table Of Cases And Other Authorities, Anthony G. Amsterdam, Randy A. Hertz

Trial Manual for the Defense of Criminal Cases

References are to section numbers.

Pride And Portrayal: The Effects Of Gender Identity And Generational Cohort On Lgbtq+ Perceptions Of Media Coverage, Dang H. Le

Communication Theses - Archive

Public debates over LGBTQ+ issues have intensified in the United States in recent years, placing news media at the center of conflicts over representation, fairness, and credibility. While a substantial body of research has analyzed how LGBTQ+ people are portrayed in news coverage, far less attention has been paid to how LGBTQ+ audiences themselves evaluate that coverage. Understanding these perceptions is increasingly important as declining trust in journalism intersects with political polarization and ongoing policy debates surrounding LGBTQ+ rights. This study examines how generational cohorts and gender identity shape LGBTQ+ audiences’ perceptions of news coverage quality, perceived media hostility, and …

Contractors State License Board, Konstantin Huck, Katie Gonzalez, Marcus Friedman

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Public Utilities Commission, Azad Hassan Khanzadeh Faal, Kelly Downes, Annika Kjos, Marcus Friedman

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Department Of Financial Protection And Innovation, Irene Lau, Katie Gonzalez, Marcus Friedman

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Key

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Improving Early Detection And Response To Clinical Deterioration Among Nurses Through Competency-Based Interventions, Courtney E. Miller

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Scholarly Projects

Problem: Clinical deterioration among hospitalized patients remained a significant contributor to preventable morbidity and mortality, often due to delayed recognition and response in general care settings (Choi et al., 2025; Chung & Jung, 2024).

PICOTS: For registered nurses working on a general level of care inpatient hospital unit (P), how did a competency-based training program bundle incorporating didactic educational intervention of learning how to use technology, machine learning (ML) based early warning system (EWS) of trends and patterns to identify at risk patients, and low-fidelity simulation-based education (SBE) (clinical readiness to improve confidence with education and coaching) (I), …

The Role Of Parenting In Mitigating Epigenetic Cardiometabolic Risk In Predominantly Latino Preschoolers, Adamari López

Open Access Master's Theses

Background: Childhood obesity is a highly prevalent public health concern with significant consequences for health and development across the lifespan. Risk is disproportionately elevated among children from marginalized racial and ethnic groups and socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, highlighting persistent disparities in long-term health outcomes. Epigenomic mechanisms, including DNA methylation (DNAm), have emerged as a promising approach for understanding the biological embedding of metabolic risk; however, prior research has largely emphasized deficit-based models, with limited attention to protective family-level factors. The present study examined whether participation in a positive parenting intervention was associated with epigenetic cardiometabolic risk among preschool-aged children. Methods …

An “Outburst Of Irish Feeling”: Fascism In The Irish Free State, Keira Ilene Codey

Open Access Master's Theses

This study examines the ideological development and political significance of the Blueshirt movement in the Irish Free State, focusing mainly on how the transnational fascist thought developed amidst local conditions. It argues that although the Blueshirts, associated with organizations such as the Army Comrades Association (ACA) under the leadership of Eoin O'Duffy, incorporated aesthetic and ideological features of other interwar European fascisms into their program, including palingenetic ultranationalism, corporatism, and paramilitarism, these elements developed within the context of Ireland’s postcolonial political culture. These ideas were rooted in commonly held anti-British sentiment, which linked fascist politics of resentment and national regeneration …

“For Rescuing His Horse”: An Anthrozoological Approach To Dissent In Seventeenth-Century New England, Richard Mcgee

Open Access Master's Theses

The seventeenth-century colonization of New England entailed varying social, political, economic, cultural, and religious processes that were driven by and impacted several peoples. However, the presence of animals is undermentioned. This thesis forms an animal history of seventeenth-century New England, explains how different peoples understood human-animal relations, and evaluates how human-animal connectivity impacted how people conceptualized and conducted settler-colonialism. This thesis especially interrogates why some Puritan colonists limited different understandings of human-animal relations in the 1600s, namely from Indigenous Peoples, Quakers, and dissenting colonists deemed criminals. This thesis proposes that some Puritans restricted different concepts of human-animal relations because those …

Ensemble Dependence Of Mechanical Relaxation In Molecular Dynamics Simulation, Mason E. Hyde

Open Access Master's Theses

This thesis investigates whether the selection of thermodynamic ensemble introduces quantifiable differences in the stress relaxation modulus G(t), storage modulus G”(w), loss modulus G”(w), and phase angle d(w) computed from equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of the AAA-1 asphalt model. A 72-molecule, 12-component representation of AAA-1 bitumen was simulated under three ensembles (NPT, NVT, and NVE) at three temperatures (400.15 K, 443.15 K, and 533.15 K) with three independent replications at each condition, yielding 27 total simulations. Stress autocorrelation functions were computed from each production trajectory and Fourier-transformed to obtain frequency-dependent rheological properties.

The computed properties …

Kinematic And Muscle Activity Differences During Dual Task Cutting In Ncaa Soccer Players, Abigail Mccarthy

Open Access Master's Theses

Lateral ankle sprains (LAS) are one of the most common musculoskeletal injuries in collegiate soccer, but also in the world. Professional soccer observes a prevalence of around 10-18 percent (Walden et al., 2013). The United States alone reports up to 2 million acute ankle sprains annually (Herzog et al, 2019). LAS ranked top 3 in types of injuries within collegiate soccer with hamstring tears and concussions (Chandran et al., 2021). Around 40 percent of people who experience a lateral ankle sprain will experience chronic ankle instability, and since spraining ankle once at a greater risk now for spraining ankle again. …

Data Improved Models Applied To Essential Oceanographic Processes In Rhode Island Coastal Waters, Ainsley Fruhwirth

Open Access Master's Theses

The Ocean State Ocean Model (OSOM), funded and developed through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), was designed to simulate the physical dynamics of Rhode Island’s estuaries and shelf waters. However, the model struggled to capture key features of summer circulation in Rhode Island Sound (RIS), most notably the westward flowing coastal current and vertical stratification profile found in May through September. Significant errors in modeled lateral and vertical density gradients indicated that the thermohaline structure, physical mixing parameters, and forcing inputs required comprehensive revision. Using historical datasets from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric …

Evaluating Training Effectiveness And Learning Transfer In The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Safety Academy, Amanda L. Casolare

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Effective evaluation of safety training is crucial to ensure that learning translates into safe work practices, particularly in high-risk public sector environments. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) is developing a Safety Academy to enhance hazard recognition, risk management, and safety leadership within the organization. However, the Safety Academy has not yet been implemented, and formal evaluation methods for training have not been established. This study aimed to examine evidence-based training evaluation techniques and develop recommendations for evaluating the KYTC Safety Academy prior to program implementation.

This study employed an applied pre-implementation research design grounded in a comprehensive review of safety …

Mental Health And Help-Seeking In Engineering Education: Beliefs, Norms, And Intervention Pathways For Undergraduate Students, Matthew D. Whitwer

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

Engineering education is at a critical juncture where supporting student mental health is essential for fostering persistence, equity, and the development of a resilient and innovative workforce. While engineering students experience high levels of distress and low rates of mental health treatment seeking (known as a mental health treatment gap), there is a gap in knowledge around how this compares to that of students in other fields of study. Further, while efforts have been made to improve the mental health treatment gap in engineering, they are limited by a lack of actionable, theory-based targets. Therefore, this dissertation aims to characterize …

A Specification-Driven Framework For Self-Supervised Learning In Specialized Vision Domains, Mahmut S. Gokmen

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Self-supervised learning (SSL) has emerged as a principled approach to visual representation learning that derives supervisory signal directly from unlabeled data, enabling foundation models to be trained at scale without manual annotation. Deployments in medical imaging and biometric recognition have demonstrated the potential of this paradigm, yet the assumptions that make SSL effective on natural image benchmarks fail systematically in specialized domains. Generic SSL pipelines encode a tacit assumption that the most informative correspondence is spatial proximity within a single acquisition. In specialized domains this assumption breaks at the level of the data-generating process: the signal that carries domain-specific information …

Other Eyes: The Dilemma Of Authorship And Autobiography In Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, And Cristina García, Kevin J.B. O'Connor

Theses and Dissertations--English

This dissertation analyzes authorship in contemporary American literature, harnessing the writings—prose and poetry—of Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, and Cristina García to challenge traditional classification and periodization schema. Hewing to the notion of authorship as a dilemma—a simultaneity of forces pressing upon the author, demanding a response—each chapter unravels critical moments of authorial expression that continually inscribe the importance of praxis and futurity. Comprehending authorship as a relational dilemma to be brooked, and indeed, overcome in a panoply of gestures, frees it theoretically from the perils of prior models by drawing attention to authorship’s agential and multi-modal aspects. Melding archival research …

Shakespeare’S Martyrs And The Poetics Of Transformation, Robert Keim

Theses and Dissertations--English

At the beginning of William Shakespeare’s career as a playwright, England’s most widely read book, after the Bible, was Acts and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Days, commonly known as John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Foxe’s martyrological literature, along with the inherently theatrical nature of martyrdom itself, helped the lives and deaths of Reformation martyrs to assume a prominent place in England’s literary consciousness. Shakespeare was not immune to their influential presence, and though overt representations of martyrdom were too controversial for the popular stage, he did enrich his plays by endowing certain characters—through imagery, allusive diction, …

Benjy's Personhood In The Sound And The Fury, Addison D. Tighe

Theses and Dissertations--English

This thesis will take a look at the way Benjy Compson’s character in William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury can be used to form an anti-eugenic argument. By taking a close look at the historical context of America’s twentieth century eugenic movement, the ways in which the novel presents an argument of personhood for those with disabilities come forth despite the eugenic pressures of the time. By taking the time to closely read Benjy’s section within the novel, a mix of disability studies and feminist disability studies, and understanding the complexity of character and stream of conscious writing, …

An Examination Of University Students’ Experiences Of Period Poverty And Reusable Period Products, Kate Dolan Crowley Ms, Margaret Linehan Prof, Alison Merrotsy Dr

Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies

Period poverty is a persistent international public health struggle affecting millions of people who menstruate. Most academic studies on how mensuration effects university students have been completed in low-to-middle income countries and, specifically, there is a lack of studies conducted in high-income countries (Ross, 2021). The current study was conducted with students in a multi-campus university in the south and southwest of Ireland during 2024. The study had two main aims, first, to explore the students’ attitudes and experiences of period poverty, and second, to investigate their attitudes towards reusable period products.

A mixed methods study was used to collect …

Inside The Box: Containerization And The Limits Of Trade Unionism In The International Longshoremen's Association, 1945-1977, Calvin Horning

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), the union of dock workers on the East Coast of the United States, saw a dramatic change in form and fortune in the middle of the 20^th century as the shipping industry and global labor underwent an immense reorganization. In the context of this reorganization, I argue that due to internal conservatism and racism alongside external state pressure, the ILA moved from an unruly, mafia-ruled union to a highly organized, professionalized, well-paid core of workers that served to support the United States’ capitalist-imperialist project.

Through archival material spanning over three decades, I analyze the …

(En)Counter Cartographies: Data Collection, Interpretation, And Visualization In Lexington’S Urban Forest, Claire Hilbrecht

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This thesis examines how urban forestry data practices shape relationships between people, trees, and knowledge in Lexington, Kentucky. Drawing on political ecology, science and technology studies, and critical making, it argues that conventional methods of data collection, interpretation, and visualization privilege Western scientific and market-based frameworks that often exclude affective, embodied, and more-than-human ways of knowing. Using autoethnography and six semi-structured interviews with urban forestry professionals, the study explores how practitioners experience tensions between treating trees as measurable commodities and engaging them as relational beings. It finds that while urban foresters rely on dominant discourses such as ecosystem services to …

Spatial Marginalization Of Emotional Support: Understanding Animal-Human Dynamics Of Care On College Campuses, Aleksandra Craine

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

In 2015 Kearny-Nebraska court case determined that student campus housing is considered a dwelling and is therefore covered by housing antidiscrimination laws. Since then, increasing numbers of students across U.S. campuses applied to bring an emotional support animal to live with them. Emotional Support Animals (ESAs) are defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as “trained or untrained animals that do work, perform tasks, provide assistance, and/or provide therapeutic emotional support for individuals with disabilities.” Persons requesting ESA accommodations usually must provide documentation from a medical provider or therapist. ESAs remain a legally and socially contested category …

Entre Irse Y Quedarse: Sociolinguistic Effects Of The H-2a Program In The U.S. And Mexico, Hayden D. Holman

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation examines stabilized circular migration as a distinct sociolinguistic condition through a study of Mexican participants in the U.S. H-2A temporary agricultural worker program. Whereas much migration scholarship presumes linear settlement and cumulative immersion, the H-2A program institutionalizes repeated cycles of departure and return between specific origin and destination communities. This patterned mobility produces recurrent immersion in an English-dominant environment followed by re-centering in a Spanish-dominant community, creating conditions of cyclical activation and recalibration of linguistic repertoires.

The study investigates two interrelated questions: (1) how sustained participation in stabilized circular mobility shapes participants’ spoken repertoires, contact-induced features, and language …

Visual Genealogies Of Disability In Mexican Visual Culture, Daniela Calvache Garcia

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Disability in Mexico is a visually constructed category, shaped by a long genealogy of representation in which images of bodily difference actively participate in defining power and the management of all bodies. The discursive forces that define disability as unproductivity reduce body-minds to the service of the economic system, affecting our relationship with death, illness, reproduction, size, youth, and beauty. Across the Mesoamerican visual space, such representations have long unsettled dominant systems of truth about bodies. This dissertation examines how conceptions of disability are produced, negotiated, and reimagined through three historical moments and cultural expressions: Pre-Hispanic Mayan imagery, Mexican colonial …

Economic Inequality And Family Formation In The United States, Elizabeth S. Krause

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation evaluates economic inequality and family formation in the United States in three essays. In Essay 1, I estimate the effect of providing subsidized access to immediate postpartum contraceptives on birth spacing and infant health among low-income teen mothers. The intent-to-treat estimates indicate a 20% reduction in the monthly short-interval birth rate among teens 12-14 months after policy enactment. I also find evidence that the policy increased the average interval between births and reduced preterm and low-birth weight births and NICU admission rates. In Essay 2, I provide evidence that single mothers and single women without children are important …

The Rhesus Macaque Model Of Mycobacterium Avium Infection Reveals That Age-Related Disease Is Due In Part To Chronic Inflammation And Lung Microbial Dysbiosis, Ethan G. Napier

Theses and Dissertations--Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics

Aging is associated with dysregulated immunity and increased susceptibility to infection, a phenomenon dubbed as immunosenescence and characterized by reduced naïve T and B cell pools, altered innate immune function, and chronic low-grade inflammation. Nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) pulmonary disease (NTMPD) is an increasingly relevant chronic lung infection that disproportionately affects older adults (65+ years) and immunocompromised individuals. However, the host factors underlying increased disease severity in aged patients remain poorly defined. Literature suggests that effective control of NTM relies on coordinated innate and adaptive immune responses, particularly macrophage activation and Th1 cytokine signaling. Using a rhesus macaque model that closely …

Environmental Predictors Of Human Lyme Disease Incidence Across Appalachian Counties In Kentucky, Virginia, And West Virginia, 2000-2019, Karlie D. Rennison

Theses and Dissertations--Epidemiology and Biostatistics

This ecological study examined county-level environmental, landscape, and host-related predictors of Lyme disease incidence across Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia from 2000-2019. Lyme disease is an emerging public health concern in the Appalachian region, where geographic expansion and shifting ecological conditions may influence disease risk.

Lyme disease case rates (per 10,000 population) were analyzed in relation to climate variables, land cover metrics, host density measures, and rurality using publicly available data sources. Descriptive and regression analyses were conducted to evaluate associations between candidate predictors and disease incidence.

Substantial geographic variation in Lyme disease incidence was observed, with higher case rates …

Essays In Consumer Credit Markets, Sarah Najafzadeh Khoei

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

This dissertation studies how technology, market structure, and contract design shape outcomes in consumer credit markets, with a particular focus on auto lending and leasing. In the first chapter, I investigate the performance of automated underwriting systems relative to human underwriters in the auto loan market. While prior studies document the advantages of automated underwriting, I show that its performance deteriorates under conditions of heightened data uncertainty. Exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic as an exogenous shock and using a combination of difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity designs, I find that automated underwriting performs significantly worse than human underwriting during this period, particularly …

Beyond The Veil: Critical Black Kantianism And The Ethics Of Structural (In)Visibility, Paradise A. Stanford

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This dissertation develops what I call Critical Black Kantianism, a reconstructive approach to Kantian moral philosophy that centers race, recognition, and the structural conditions under which moral agency is formed. While Kantian ethics typically presumes idealized agents operating within just social contexts, this project argues that such abstraction obscures how racial domination actively shapes autonomy, dignity, and self-consciousness. Drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois’ account of double consciousness, Black feminist thought, and contemporary theories of recognition, I show that moral agency is not merely exercised within social environments but is constituted through them—often under conditions of misrecognition that fracture autonomy.

Against …