Digital Commons Network^™

Fully Decentralized Hierarchical Federated Learning At The Edge With Post-Quantum Secure Communication, Tariq Qayyum

Dissertations

Federated learning (FL) enables collaborative model training without centralizing raw data, but deploying FL at scale in real edge environments remains challenging because iterative training and aggregation must operate over heterogeneous, resource-constrained, and often mobile devices with time-varying connectivity. Conventional hierarchical federated learning (HFL) partially mitigates communication cost by introducing fog/edge aggregation, yet many designs retain cloud-based global aggregation and cloud-centric coordination. This places wide-area network latency on the critical path of every training round, creates a single point of failure, and limits responsiveness as model sizes and federation scale grow. Moreover, moving coordination and aggregation closer to the edge …

Training Language Models For Bilateral Trade With Private Information, Dirk Bergemann, Soheil Ghili, Xinyang Hu, Chuanhao Li, Zhuoran Yang

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Bilateral bargaining under incomplete information provides a controlled testbed for evaluating large language model (LLM) agent capabilities. Bilateral trade demands individual rationality, strategic surplus maximization, and cooperation to realize gains from trade. We develop a structured bargaining environment in which LLMs negotiate via tool calls within an event-driven simulator, separating binding offers from natural-language messages to enable automated evaluation. The environment serves two purposes: as a benchmark for frontier models and as a training environment for open-weight models via reinforcement learning. In benchmark experiments, a round-robin tournament among five frontier models (15,000 negotiations) reveals that effective strategies implement price discrimination …

From Conversations To Mechanisms: Aligning Advertiser Incentives In Ai-Powered Product Recommendations, Dirk Bergemann, Marek Bojko, Paul Dütting, Renato Paes Leme, Haifeng Xu, Song Zuo

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We study the design of efficient dynamic recommendation systems, such as AI shopping assistants, in which a platform interacts with a user over multiple rounds to identify the most suitable product among those offered by advertisers. Advertisers have multi-dimensional private information: their private value from a purchase and private information about the user’s preferences. In each round, the platform displays recommendations; the user learns product characteristics of the shown items and then chooses whether to purchase, exit without purchasing, or submit a new query. These actions generate a stream of feedback—purchase, exit, and follow-up queries—that is informative about the user’s …

The Impact Of Multimedia Glossing In Vocabulary Retention In Farsi Learning: Challenges And Opportunities, Farideh Langari Ferdowsi

Doctoral Dissertations

Vocabulary acquisition is key to developing foreign language skills, but students, especially those learning less commonly taught languages, often struggle with new words’ retention. Multimedia glossing, which combines text, audio, and visuals, aims to help students manage cognitive load and learn vocabulary more effectively. While most research has focused on student perspectives, little is known about Farsi language teachers’ views on multimedia glossing and its challenges. This qualitative study explores Farsi teachers’ opinions on using multimedia glossing to support vocabulary learning and retention, as well as the obstacles they face.

This study took place at a Bay Area language school …

From New Orleans To Orléans: How Perceived Connections Shape Destination Image, Hilmi A. Atadil, Helena F. Allman, Erol Pala, Qiulin Lu, Alison J. Green, Felicia N. Morgan

AMTP Proceedings 2026

Have you ever enjoyed a dish so much that it sparked an interest in experiencing the place where it was originally created? Culinary encounters may spark interest in distant destinations, but broader cultural, historical, and symbolic meanings often drive this interest through perceived connections. For example, exposure to French-influenced cuisine in New Orleans may draw individuals to France, driven not only by culinary authenticity but also by historical ties to Orléans. Grounded in social exchange theory, this study pursues two objectives: (1) to examine the underlying dimensions of perceived connections between destinations, and (2) to assess how these dimensions influence …

What Graduates See And What Employers Pay; Reconciling Salary Reporting And Total Compensation In Sales And Marketing, John Ertel, George Talbert Jr.

AMTP Proceedings 2026

College students frequently rely on university career centers for salary information when evaluating early-career opportunities. In sales, however, reported compensation figures often reflect base pay only and exclude performance-based earnings such as commissions and bonuses. This study uses a single-university case study to examine whether university-reported salary data for sales roles accurately represents total compensation. Institutional career center reports and national salary projections were compared with insights from employers, sales professionals, and recent graduates. Findings indicate that performance-based compensation constitutes a substantial portion of total earnings in sales roles but is frequently omitted from reported figures, leading to systematic understatement …

Managed Service Providers As Strategic Partners: Reframing Outsourcing Through Relational Governance And Dynamic Capabilities, Melissa N. King, Douglas Johansen

AMTP Proceedings 2026

This conceptual paper examines the strategic role of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in the context of buyer-supplier relationships, and how MSPs create value for customers by enabling dynamic capabilities, relational governance, and organizational learning. Drawing from institutional theory, the resource-based view, and relationship marketing, the paper synthesizes literature on the supply chain’s evolution from transactional cost savings to strategic partnerships. It highlights how service providers such as MSPs, facilitate capability transfer, adaptability, and institutional alignment. This perspective is particularly salient in the post-2020 environment, where pandemic-related supply chain disruptions, renewed trade protectionism, and geopolitical fragmentation have challenged traditional assumptions underlying …

A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Community College Presidential Job Announcements And The American Association Of Community Colleges Competencies For Community College Leaders, Leslie M. Boon

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Women are overrepresented as students and employees of community college, yet they are underrepresented in presidential leadership roles. Prior research has examined the career trajectories and experiences of women aspiring to community college presidencies; however, less research has examined how discourse shapes expectations of leadership. Because community colleges have been described as gendered, the language used to describe leadership competencies may reinforce gendered assumptions about effective leadership. The purpose of this study was to examine the discourse of community college presidential job announcements and the American Association of Community Colleges’ (AACC) Competencies for Community College Leaders (4th edition) to examine …

An Integrated Bayesian Network-Based Zero Trust Model To Quantify Cyber Risk In Small-Medium Businesses, Ahmed Abdelmagid

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Small-medium businesses (SMBs) play a pivotal role in the worldwide economy as they constitute the most considerable portion of businesses in developed countries like the UK and the US. As such, SMBs are likely targets of cybercrimes by malicious agents because of their vulnerable IT systems. The digital infrastructure of SMBs is more likely to be hit by cyberattacks than large businesses due to many factors that facilitate hackers’ missions. These factors include a limited financial budget devoted to cybersecurity, a lack of knowledge, an underrating of how dangerous cyber threats are, and a shortage of IT expertise. The enormous …

Women's Displacement And The Reclamation Of Identity: Navigating Landscapes Of Contestation In The Postcolonial Novel, Carol P. Harvest

English Theses & Dissertations

Landscapes affected by colonial domination are contested landscapes—places not only in danger of environmental destruction through colonial and neocolonial violence but also landscapes of struggle for people who survive in these precarious spaces. Historically, separate postcolonial and ecocritical literary analysis addressed contested landscapes; postcolonial critique centered on the lasting devastation of colonial violence on people and place, while ecocriticism, in its infancy, enjoyed the privilege of ignorance, focusing on endangered species and the preservation of land, but it did not consider the impact of landscapes on the very people who were largely forced to either leave or cross “natural” spaces. …

Trade Liberalization Under Safta And Bimstec: Evidence From A Cge-Gtap Case Study Of A Small Open Economy, Gita Bhushal, Pankaj Lal

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Regional trade liberalization via preferential agreements increasingly shapes economic outcomes in small open economies embedded in overlapping regional frameworks. This study evaluates the short-run economy-wide effects of tariff and non-tariff measure (NTM) reforms under the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model calibrated to the GTAP 10 database. Gravity-based estimates of ad valorem equivalents (AVEs) of NTMs are integrated into the CGE framework, enabling explicit modeling of regulatory barriers alongside tariff reductions. Policy simulations examine scenarios involving a 90 percent tariff …

Sensemaking By Rural Community College Mid-Level Academic Leaders During Localized Disruptions: A Critical Incident Technique Study, Donata Worrell

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Mid-level academic leaders in community colleges play a critical role in the success of community colleges. Beyond performing administrative tasks, they advocate for faculty, staff, and students as well as implement directives. Their work is affected by localized disruptions. However, limited research has examined how these leaders experience such disruptions. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how mid-level community college leaders experience and make sense of those unexpected operational disruptions and their emotional responses to those events. Guided by Weick’s theory of sensemaking, this study used the critical incident technique (CIT) to collect detailed accounts of the …

Quantifying Nutrient Fluxes Across The Sediment-Water Interface In The Lafayette River Estuary, Adriana E. Amrhein

OES Theses and Dissertations

The Lafayette River, a shallow, eutrophic tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, experiences seasonal harmful algal blooms (HABs). While management efforts focus on reducing external nutrient inputs, internal loading from benthic sediments remains poorly constrained. This study quantifies spatial and seasonal variability in nutrient and radium isotope fluxes across the sediment–water interface at three sites where HABs are known to initiate and represent contrasting sediment textures and hydrodynamic conditions. Sediment cores and porewater samples were collected in summer 2023 and winter 2024 to measure grain size, porosity, dissolved nutrients (NH₄⁺, NOₓ⁻, PO₄³⁻), and radionuclide activities (²²⁴Ra and ²²⁸Th). Radium isotope disequilibrium …

The Effects Of Covid 19 Job Demands On Public Sector Employees’ Organizational Commitment: The Mediating Roles Of Work Engagement And Job Burnout, And The Moderating Role Of Supervisor Support, Benjamin R. Kaufman

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

United States citizens rely on state government employees to provide essential public services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these employees responded by administering both routine and novel procedures to protect public health, often placing them on the frontlines and at increased risk of contagion. Concurrently, the pandemic-driven economic downturn created budget shortfalls that threatened the job and financial security of the state workforce. Together, these conditions substantially increased job demands for state government employees.

Guided by the Job Demands–Resources (JDR) Model, this study examined how COVID‑19-related job demands influenced state employees’ work engagement, job burnout, and organizational commitment, and whether supervisor …

Herding Cats: The Behavioral Foundations Of Successful Multi-Sector Partnerships, Paul B. Olsen

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Multi-sector partnerships (MSPs) are problem-solving groups composed of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, private firms, community groups, and individuals. These partnerships have often struggled to achieve consistent success, with performance rates estimated at 30%–50%, largely because MSPs are tailored to the specific interests, resources, and implementation contexts of the constellation of stakeholders involved in each project. This situation raised important questions regarding how MSP performance can be predicted and whether the likelihood of success can be enhanced during the early planning stages of partnership formation.

Social value orientation (SVO) is a behavioral public administration theory that may help explain variation in …

Biocrude From Organic Waste And Its Conversion To Hard Carbon: Experimental And Modeling Study, Isamu Umeda

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This study establishes a technical and theoretical foundation for the efficient conversion of organic waste into biocrude and high-value carbon materials, aiming to facilitate the industrialization of hydrothermal and solvothermal liquefaction. The dissertation research is structured as follows:

Chapter 2 developed a novel chemical kinetic model for the HTL of corn stover based on elemental balances (C, H, N, and O). By incorporating temperature, residence time, solid loading as an independent variable, the model successfully predicted product yields and properties, revealing that there was non-pseudo-first-order reaction pathways in the conversion of water soluble organics in aqueous phase (AP) to hydrochar. …

Gregor Samsa’S Pagkagimata (Awakening) In Bikol: A Becoming-Minor In Translation, Victor John M. Loquias

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Kristian Cordero’s translation of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis instantiates what the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call minor literature. Preferring the Bikol term Pagkagimata—the literal event of Gregor Sama’s becoming-animal in the novel as title of the translation and the utilization of the Rinconada Bikol language for the transformed Samsa—Cordero has typified a perspective of translation that challenges the popular view of fluent translation from the source text to the target language. Exemplifying the concept of becoming-minor of Deleuze and Guattari and deploying Lawrence Venuti’s notion of the “remainder,” An Pagkagimata ni Gregor Samsa exhibits a deterritorialization of Bikol …

Narratives Of Dis-Ease: A Genre Study Of Pathography, Sylvelyn Jo A. Almanzor

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This essay establishes pathography as a distinct genre of creative nonfiction, tracing the development, form, and cultural significance of this body of literature. I have broadly defined it as narratives on personal experiences of Gabriel Marcel's "dis-ease"—covering and critiquing the human understanding and experience of sickness, pain, and grief—which has evolved from autobiographical narratives and life-writing of patients and medical professionals to a recognized form of creative nonfiction. This study will analyze the genre's structure, themes, and rhetorical strategies with consideration to cultural significance and how it negotiates the human understanding of suffering, healing, and societal attitudes toward existence and …

The Ten Commandments, Stripped Of Slavery, Exodus & Jubilee, Christopher D. Hampson

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The Ten Commandments are back on public classroom walls and in federal court, after several states passed new laws requiring school districts to post the text. As attorneys, judges, and amici debate whether First Amendment law has changed enough since Stone v. Graham in 1980 to allow the posting of the ancient religious text, this Essay comes at the situation from an entirely different angle. The precise text proposed by the states might be a good example of “ceremonial deism,” but it removes biblical law from biblical narrative – and, in doing so, unsets the Ten Commandments from their original …

Scraping Bad: The Case For A Unified Scraping Framework, Eunchong Moses Park

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Note explores the growing legal and regulatory landscapes of web scraping in the United States and argues that web scraping should be regulated through a unified federal framework tailored to its unique technological and economic realities. Web scraping allows organizations to collect massive amounts of data essential to their operational needs—often without the consent of data holders. Thus, web scraping has become a powerful engine of innovation used across virtually every sector of the economy but with a serious risk to privacy and property interests. Yet the current U.S. legal framework lacks a coherent regulating structure. Courts and litigants …

Evolution Of Antibiotic Responses During Chronic P. Aeruginosa Infections In The Human Lung, David Frank Ritz

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Typical antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) of microbial samples is performed in homogeneous cultures in batch environments, which does not account for the highly heterogeneous and dynamic nature of antibiotic responses. The most common mutation found in P. aeruginosa lineages evolved during chronic cystic fibrosis infections in the human lung, a loss of function of repressor MexZ, increases basal levels of multidrug efflux MexXY, but does not increase resistance by traditional minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) assays. Here, we use single cell microfluidics to show that P. aeruginosa’s response to aminoglycosides is highly heterogeneous, with only a subpopulation of cells surviving exposure. …

Moral Repair, Forgiveness, And Collective Minds, Songzhi Wu

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Human lives are increasingly shaped by collective entities (e.g., corporations, governments, nonprofits) that make consequential decisions and evoke trust, blame, and praise. Yet how people perceive and relate to these non-individual agents remains underexplored. This dissertation investigates collective mind perception, moral repair, and forgiveness across three chapters using experimental, neuroimaging, and corpus-based methods.

Chapter 1 examines how collective entities repair their moral standing after wrongdoing. Across four studies, agentic cues such as responsibility-taking and corrective plans consistently outperform experiential expressions such as remorse in eliciting forgiveness toward organizational transgressors. Agentic apologies also reshape memory: participants recall the apology content more …

Advancement And Characterization Of Next-Generation Solid-State Photon-Counting Image Sensors For Astrophysics Applications, Nicholas R. Shade

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Astronomers’ pursuit of detecting light from increasingly faint and distant objects in the expanse of space necessitates continuous improvement in signal-to-noise ratio of camera technology. Recent advancements in solid-state detector technologies have enabled the determination of photon-number, including single photon events, enabling observations at the fundamental limits of physics. These developments are instrumental not only for standard two-dimensional imaging but also for advanced spectroscopy, which increasingly drives future astrophysical applications. This thesis presents an evaluation of three next-generation silicon-based detectors capable of photon-counting with deep-sub-electron input-referred read noise: the electron-multiplying charge-coupled device (EMCCD), the single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD), and the …

A Conceptual Framework For Robust Few-Shot Learning: Integrating Unbalanced Optimal Transport And Self-Supervised Transformer Representations, Hayati Abd Rahman, Pang Yun

Malaysian Journal of Computing (MJoC)

Few-shot learning (FSL) aims to enable deep models to generalise from extremely limited labelled data, yet unstable metric matching, distribution imbalances, and weak structural representations in low-data regimes often constrain its performance. This paper proposes a conceptual framework that unifies metric-based similarity learning, Unbalanced Optimal Transport (UOT) via Unbalanced Sinkhorn Distance (USD), and self-supervised Transformer representations to conceptually address the theoretical and structural limitations of existing FSL approaches. The framework theoretically unifies distribution-aware USD matching, SSL-enhanced ViT/Swin feature representations, and metric-based inference within a coherent pipeline. This work aims to provide a theoretical foundation and research roadmap for future empirical …

Teaching A Social Justice Approach To Leadership In Law Schools, Tamar Ezer

Articles

Leadership is critical for social justice. Our law students have the potential to serve as future social justice leaders, building strong organizations and movements to carry out this work. Drawing on both leadership theory and practical examples from clinical legal education, this piece argues for a broad definition of leadership, embracing diversity and encompassing the counter-cultural values of listening and humility. It further proposes a three-dimensional model of social justice leadership, engaging the mind, heart, and spirit, and suggests teaching practices to strengthen each component. The first dimension focuses on cognitive competencies, including substantive mastery of an area of law …

An Analysis Of Global And Regional Human Rights Standards On Gender-Based Violence, Tamar Ezer, Denisse R. Cordova Montes

Articles

No abstract provided.

Konstytucja Gospodarcza Przed Sądem – Analiza Porównawcza Wyroków Sądu Najwyższego W Sprawie Iii Sk 5/17 Oraz Trybunału Sprawiedliwości Ue W Sprawie C-413/14 (Intel Przeciwko Komisji), Piotr Oliński

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

Zarówno art. 20 Konstytucji RP, jak i art. 3(3) Traktatu o Unii Europejskiej zawiera tę samą zasadę organizacji życia gospodarczego – społeczną gospodarkę rynkową. W poniższym artykule społeczna gospodarka rynkowa traktowana jest jako obowiązująca konstytucja gospodarcza w obu porządkach prawnych. Przez jej pryzmat porównawczo analizowana jest aksjologia wyroku polskiego Sądu Najwyższego w sprawie III SK 5/17 oraz Trybunału Sprawiedliwości UE w sprawie C-413/14. Artykuł poświęcony jest poszukiwaniu odpowiedzi na pytanie o podobieństwo recepcji stojącej za społeczną gospodarką rynkową myśli ordoliberalnej w obu porządkach prawnych.

American Public Law Revolution, Victoria Frances Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court has birthed a public law revolution. This revolution should not be known as a constitutional revolution because it is bigger than constitutional law—it covers statutory and administrative law as well. This revolution has been powered not by social movements, but by an interpretive philosophy known as originalism. Originalism has been deeply misunderstood by its critics. This Article examines three myths about originalism—that it is primarily about history, that it is a traditional theory of adjudication, and that it is democratic. Originalism is a semantic theory, not a theory of history, and it is a theory that privileges …

(Mis)Judging Suspicion, Sherri Lee Keene

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Twenty-five years ago, the Supreme Court decided Illinois v. Wardlow, a Fourth Amendment case that allowed the high-crime nature of a location to be considered in determinations of whether there was reasonable suspicion to support a police stop. In making these determinations, courts rarely acknowledge the role that race can play in decisions that factor in the nature of a location as context. Yet even when the race of a defendant is not mentioned, high-crime area designations can act as a proxy for race inviting racial bias into courts’ analyses. Reasonable suspicion analysis involves the interpretation of a suspect’s …

Framing Emirati Womanhood: Heritage, Modernity, And Soft Power In Tourism Discourse, Valerie Priscilla Goby

All Works

This paper examines how Emirati womanhood is framed within the tourism discourse of the United Arab Emirates, analysing how gendered representation operates as both a cultural and political instrument in nation branding. Drawing on framing theory and informed by feminist perspectives on tourism and media representation, this study explores the visual and textual portrayal of women on official online platforms, including Visit Dubai, Visit Abu Dhabi, Emirates Airlines, and the UAE Ministry of Culture and Youth. These materials constitute a state-sanctioned narrative of national identity that integrates cultural heritage with modernity. Through qualitative framing analysis, four recurrent interpretive frames were …