Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluation Associations As Catalysts For The Professionalization Of Evaluation Practice: A Comparative Case Study Of Brazil, Ghana, Indonesia And Uganda, Amy C. Jersild

Dissertations

Professional associations are recognized as key actors in promoting the development of the evaluation field across the globe. There has been exponential growth of Voluntary Organizations for the Professionalization of Evaluation (VOPEs) in the Global South in the past several decades in response to an evolving international aid agenda and a mobilized international evaluation field intent on supporting the development of national monitoring and evaluation systems and the professionalization of the field. VOPEs have featured as a central actor in the Global Evaluation Agenda, an initiative developed by the international community aimed to promote professionalization of the evaluation field as …

Towards Auto-Evaluation For Large Language Models, Jiahao Ying

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs) has created an urgent need for evaluation methodologies that are timely, scalable, reliable, and informative. Conventional evaluation benchmarks, although essential for measuring model capabilities and guiding model development, are often constructed and maintained through labor-intensive human annotation. As LLMs continue to improve through increases in model scale, training data, and computational resources, static benchmarks may quickly lose discriminative power. Moreover, the growing use of large and diverse training corpora increases the risk of benchmark leakage, which can inflate evaluation results and obscure the true capabilities of models. These challenges call for a …

Financing Climate Action Through Fair Taxation: How Sdg Engagement Reduces Corporate Tax Avoidance, Ahmed Aboud, Niccolò Nirino, Panagiota Papadimitri, Michael Christofi

All Works

The transition to a low-carbon economy, central to achieving Paris Agreement targets and Sustainable Development Goal 13 (Climate Action), requires unprecedented public and private investment. A significant climate financing gap persists, however, exacerbated by corporate practices that erode the public revenue base. This paper investigates a critical, yet often overlooked, component of corporate responsibility: tax avoidance. We examine the impact of firm-level sustainable development goal (SDG) disclosure on corporate tax avoidance using an international sample of 7213 firms operating in 81 countries over the period 2019–2023. Our analysis reveals a robust inverse relationship between SDG disclosure and corporate tax avoidance, …

Long-Term Mine Planning: A Survey Of Classical, Hybrid And Artificial Intelligence-Based Methods, Nurul Asyikeen Azhar, Aldy Gunawan, Shih-Fen Cheng, Erwin Leonardi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The aim of long-term mine planning (LTMP) is two-fold: to maximize the net present value of profits (NPV) and determine how ores are sequentially processed over the lifetime. This scheduling task is computationally complex as it is rife with variables, constraints, periods, uncertainties, and unique operations. In this paper, we present trends in the literature in the recent decade. One trend is the shift from deterministic toward stochastic problems as they reflect real-world complexities. A complexity of growing concern is also in sustainable mine planning. Another trend is the shift from traditional operational research solutions — relying on exact or …

When Politics Meets Digital Assets: Gender Identity Salience And Nft Pricing After Roe V. Wade, Xiang Liu, Yao Zhao, Ping Fan Ke

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Major sociopolitical events can reshape public attention toward identity-related issues, potentially influencing valuation patterns in digital markets where identity-related characteristics are embedded in digital assets. Using the overturning of Roe v. Wade as an exogenous policy shock, this paper examines how gender attributes represented in non-fungible token (NFT) avatars affect market outcomes. Using transaction data from six major avatar-based NFT collections traded on Etherscan in 2022, we apply a quasi-experimental design combining propensity score matching and a difference-in-differences model. The results indicate that the policy shock significantly increased the resale prices of NFTs representing female avatars. These findings suggest that …

Rode: Linear Rectified Mixture Of Diverse Experts For Food Large Multi-Modal Models, Pengkun Jiao, Xinlan Wu, Bin Zhu, Jingjing Chen, Chong-Wah Ngo, Yu-Gang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Large Multi-modal Models (LMMs) have significantly advanced a variety of vision-language tasks. The scalability and availability of high-quality training data play a pivotal role in the success of LMMs. In the realm of food, while comprehensive food datasets such as Recipe1M offer an abundance of ingredient and recipe information, they often fall short of providing ample data for nutritional analysis. The Recipe1M+ dataset, despite offering a subset for nutritional evaluation, is limited in the scale and accuracy of nutrition information. To bridge this gap, we introduce Uni-Food, a unified food dataset that comprises over 100,000 images with various food labels, …

Frozen Lvlms For Micro-Video Recommendation: A Systematic Study Of Feature Extraction And Fusion, Huatuan Sun, Yunshan Ma, Changguang Wu, Yanxin Zhang, Pengfei Wang, Xiaoyu Du

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Frozen Large Video Language Models (LVLMs) are increasingly employed in micro-video recommendation (MVR) due to their strong multimodal understanding. However, existing apporches typically deploy LVLMs as fixed black-box feature extractors without systematically comparing alternative representation strategies. To address this gap, we present the first systematic empirical study on various feature extraction paradigms and integration strategies, along with hierarchical representations from frozen LVLMs for MVR. Extensive experiments on representative LVLMs reveal that hidden states from multiple decoder layers provide richer and more effective representations for MVR. Guided by this insight, we propose the Dual Feature Fusion (DFF) Framework, a lightweight approach …

“Grandpa, Can You Speak Nicer?”: Envisioned Chatbot Roles And Design Tensions In Intergenerational Communication Conflicts, Tianyi Zhang, Emran Bin Elias Poh, Yueyue Hou, Yi-Chieh Lee, Renwen Zhang, Jiannan Li, Anthony Tang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Intergenerational conversations often break down when differences in tone, language, or expectations lead participants to feel dismissed or misunderstood. In this work, we explore how people envision AI-driven chatbot interventions for addressing communication problems in text-based intergenerational family chat. We conducted a scenario-based design interview with 10 pairs of family members from different generations, in which participants designed chatbot interventions that varied in intervention target and timing. Our findings show that participants expect chatbots to perform multiple themes of intervention, including mediating understanding, providing emotional support, offering evaluative commentary, and guiding interaction through behavioral suggestions. These expectations varied systematically across …

Group Conversational Agents: A Review Of Designs That Support And Shape Group Interaction, Shunyi Yeo, Tianyi Zhang, Scott Bateman, Gary Hsieh, Young-Ho Kim, Simon Tangi Perrault, Jiannan Li, Anthony Tang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Conversational agents that participate in or mediate group interaction introduce challenges that extend beyond supporting individual users, raising new questions about how agents participate in and influence groups. To characterise this emerging design space, we present a systematic review of 53 peer-reviewed studies on group conversational agents (GCAs). We analyse how GCAs intervene in group-level processes, including participation regulation, conflict mediation, task alignment, and execution support. Using concepts from group research as an analytic lens, we organise prior GCA work around recurring group interactional challenges (orientation, conflict, alignment, and execution), and examine the roles agents are designed to play in …

Context Matters: Auditing Gender Bias In T2i Generation Through Risk-Tiered Use-Case Profiles, Jose Luis Luna Campoverde, Yankun Wu, Xiaofei Xie, Noa Garcia

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Text-to-image (T2I) generative models are increasingly used to produce content for education, media, and public-facing communication, and are starting to be integrated into higher-impact pipelines. Since generated images tend to reinforce stereotypes, producing representational erasure via “default” depictions and shaping perceptions of who belongs in certain roles, a growing body of work has proposed metrics to quantify gender bias in T2I outputs. Yet existing evaluations remain fragmented. Metrics are often reported without a shared view of what they measure, what assumptions they entail, or how their results should be interpreted under different deployment contexts. This limits the usefulness of gender …

The Martha Wright-Reed Act: How The Fcc Took One Step Forward For Communication Equality For Deaf Individuals In Correctional Facilities And How It Could Be Expanded, Ashley Seebold

Seattle University Law Review

For decades, phone companies preyed on incarcerated individuals and their loved ones due to the lack of regulation of jail phone calls.2 In 2021, the average cost of a fifteen-minute jail phone call was about $3.3 In 2022, the average cost rose to $5.74, while some individuals faced an extreme charge of $24.82 for the same amount of time.4 In the early 2000s, consumer advocate and concerned grandmother Martha Wright-Reed called upon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fix the imbalance so she could speak to her incarcerated grandson.5 Eventually, in 2023, the FCC answered her call to action and …

Making The Party Presentation Principle Safe For Originalism, Randy E. Barnett, Lawrence B. Solum

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court sometimes adheres to what it calls the “party presentation principle”—terminology that dates back to 2008. Although judicial articulations of the principle have been inconsistent and imprecise, the gist is the familiar notion that courts should resolve cases on the basis of the issues and reasons presented by the parties to the dispute. Conversely, questions not properly raised by the parties should be avoided by the Court. Thus, the Court has on several occasions declined to address arguments outside the scope of the questions raised by the parties in their petition for certiorari.

For originalists, the importance of …

Rf Fingerprinting: Neural Networks For Device Identification, Pranav Chainani, Maxwell Gertner, Genevieve Patmore

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Conventional cybersecurity protocols authenticate devices using digital credentials that can be stolen, copied, or extracted from compromised hardware. Radio frequency (RF) fingerprinting offers a complementary physical-layer authentication mechanism that binds device identity to the unforgeable manufacturing variations present in every transmitter’s analog hardware. This thesis explores the application of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to RF fingerprinting, focusing on the identification of nominally identical IoT transmitters from raw I/Q samples of the LoRa preamble’s turn-on transient.

We developed an end-to-end system consisting of a modular data collection testbench using a USRP B210 software-defined radio, a 1D CNN trained directly on raw …

Ai Suppression: E-Discovery Software And Brady, Jason Hartline, Liren Shan, Alec Sun, Rebecca Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

Prosecutors regularly rely on AI e-discovery software, known as technology assisted review (TAR) tools, to sort and prioritize digital evidence. These tools implicate constitutional concerns: they can either risk suppressing or help to surface exculpatory and impeachment evidence that prosecutors must disclose under the Brady due process rule. Yet doctrine, agency guidance, and scholarship offer virtually no direction on their use.

This Article examines how TAR affects Brady compliance. Using computer science simulations on synthetic data sets, we show that TAR can either hide or help to expose Brady evidence, depending on how it is configured and the configurations of …

Some Realism About Constitutional Remedies, Thomas P. Schmidt, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court has wavered between two approaches to questions of executive power, which are often labeled institutional formalism and realism. Formalism treats an institution like the presidency as a “black box” to which the Constitution assigns certain powers. In Trump v. Hawaii,  for example, the Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s infamous travel ban by focusing not on the “particular President” and his past call for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” but rather on “the authority of the Presidency itself.” That is the language of institutional formalism.

Realism, on the other hand, peers into the “black …

Reforming Funding To Better Defend Families: Holistic Preventive Legal Advocacy That Checks Cps Agency Power, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

The federal government has provided funds to support legal representation of parents facing allegations of child neglect or abuse since 2019, across administrations of both parties. That funding illustrates the field’s recognition of parent defense’s importance to improving outcomes and reducing harms from the family regulation system, especially once CPS agencies file petitions against parents. Federal Title IV-E funding supports parent representation in those family court cases and for parents at risk of facing such cases. That funding has been an essential boon to parent representation and the benefits that flow from it. It is nonetheless time to take a …

Public Perceptions Of Family Caregiving Of Children Versus Older Adults, Elizabeth S. Scott, Tamar Kricheli-Katz

Faculty Scholarship

The population of older adults in the United States is growing at a rapid rate, both because people are living longer lives and because older adults are an increasingly large share of the population as baby boomers age. It is predicted that by 2030, one in ¿ve adults in the United States will be of retirement age, and one in six people worldwide will be age 60 or older. By 2034 there will be more adults age 65 and older in this country than minor children under age 18.

Among the important consequences of this demographic trend will be a …

Five Urban Futures For A Hot Planet: U.S. Legal Scenarios, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

If current climate change trends continue, flooding, extreme heat, wildfires, and water scarcity will make the homes of millions of people in the United States increasingly uninhabitable. This change could happen by the end of the century, perhaps sooner. Most people will want to stay in their current homes, but there is no coherent policy to fortify the most vulnerable places. Nor is the current legal system equipped to handle what may become one of the largest migrations in U.S. history, as people flee intolerable climate conditions. This Article envisions five scenarios for cities in the future: sprout, grow, stay, …

Here, There, And Absent From The Film: Carving Out A Protection For Trailers In California’S Anti-Slapp Statute, Zach Cogan

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

California’s anti-SLAPP statute is designed to encourage free speech and to prevent litigation that chills participation in public discourse, including the creation and promotion of media. It is a standard industry practice for filmmakers to use trailers to promote their films before the final cut and to gauge the success of certain cinematic elements—such as characters, plot points, and overall tone—so the necessary adjustments can be made before the film is released to audiences. Subjecting studios and filmmakers to litigation for adjusting these relatively minor elements that were present in the trailers will chill this beneficial and standard industry practice. …

Who's Afraid Of Copyright And Ai?, Deborah R. Gerhardt

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Copyright and AI need not be a copyright no man’s land. Recent decisions by the Copyright Office have gotten so much media attention that many creators are unsure if they can secure copyright protection if they use AI as a creative tool. The proposed creative control paradigm can help us all tackle the challenge of determining when works created with the assistance of AI are copyrightable. Instead of relying on long-established nuanced precedent for protecting works generated with new technology, the Copyright Office asserts that any content generated with assistance from AI tools is unprotectable. This position is radically inconsistent …

When Robots Read Westlaw: Linking Inputs And Outputs In Generative Ai Fair Use Analysis, Aaron Lam

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Generative artificial intelligence has revealed a novel tension in copyright law: a two-stage act (input and output) of copying that traditional fair-use doctrine never squarely anticipated. In the input stage, vast swaths of copyrighted expression are reproduced and ingested to train large language models. In the output stage, those models generate works that may substitute for or dilute the market of the originals. Courts now face both stages. Their rulings diverge when they consider training and outputs together. In Bartz v. Anthropic PBC and Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc., the courts characterized training uses as “highly transformative,” yet reached opposite …

When The Purse Strings Paint The Picture: Executive Overreach And Censorship In Federal Arts Funding, Megan Brown

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

For decades, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has been tasked with distributing federal funds to museums, galleries, and artists to promote visual artwork for its meritorious qualities and cultural impact. However, the NEA’s role as both a patron and regulator of visual artwork has placed it at the center of a balancing act—funding creative expression that often displays controversial themes, while facing political pressure to define what is a worthy investment of taxpayer dollars. This conversation continues in light of recent executive orders: “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” and “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs …

Limiting Inconsistencies In Legal Languages, Sarah B. Lawsky

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Inconsistencies play different roles in law and in logic, respectively, and programming languages designed to code law should therefore, when possible, be designed to prevent the encoding of inconsistencies. While inconsistencies in standard logic “explode” the argument, allowing anything at all to be proven, apparent inconsistencies in law simply indicate that further guidance is needed. Programming languages should be limited not because such inconsistencies do not exist in the statute, but rather exactly because they do. Inconsistencies in the law should, as they are now, be addressed by Congress, the courts, and administrative agencies, and any computer code implementing the …

Updated 2026 Comprehensive Evidence-Based Guidelines For Facet Joint Interventions In The Management Of Chronic Spinal Pain: American Society Of Interventional Pain Physicians (Asipp) Guidelines, Laxmaiah Manchikanti, Mahendra R. Sanapati, Sheri L. Albers, Alan D. Kaye, Vinita Singh, Nebojsa Nick Knezevic, Rajesh Naidu Janapala, Amol Soin, Annu Navani, Adam M. Kaye, Ahad Mussarat, Alexander Bautista, Dajie Wang, Paul J. Christo, Maged Mina, Daneshvari R. Solanki, Devi Nampiaparampil, Gerard Limerick, John Manor, Kris Ferguson, Lynn Cintron, Michael Bottros, Shirley Chen, Shivam S. Shah, Vahid Grami, Douglas P. Beall, Shalini Shah, Sairam Atluri, Mittal S. Prajapati, Alaa Abd-Elsayed, Salahadin Abdi, Steve Aydin, Sanjay Bakshi, Joseph Cabaret, Aaron K. Calodney, Kenneth D. Candido, Christopher G. Gharibo, Mayank Gupta, Michael Harned, Standiford Helm Ii, Sachin Sunny Jha, Radomir Kosanovic, Vidyasagar Pampati, Ramarao Pasupuleti, Bradley W. Wargo, Hermant Kalia, Gary Schwartz, Joshua A. Hirsch

Department of Anesthesiology Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Chronic axial spinal pain is a major contributor to disability and healthcare expenditures, with facet joints recognized as one of the established sources of pain.

OBJECTIVE: To provide evidence-based guidance in performing diagnostic and therapeutic facet joint interventions.

METHODS: A multidisciplinary panel of experts from various medical and pharmaceutical disciplines, convened by the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP), reviewed the available evidence, considered patient perspectives, and formulated recommendations for facet joint interventions in the management of chronic pain.The methodology included the development of key questions with evidence-based statements and recommendations. Grading of the evidence and recommendations followed …

The International Glossary On Infertility And Fertility Care, 2025†., Fernando Zegers-Hochschild, Silke Dyer, G David Adamson, Valerie Baker, Kurt Barnhart, Siladitya Bhattacharya, Clare Boothroyd, Georgina Chambers, Jacques De Mouzon, Eman Elgindy, Bart Fauser, Karin Hammarberg, Marcos Horton, Osamu Ishihara, Seung Chik Jwa, Mohamed Khrouf, Markus Kupka, Dolores J. Lamb, Martha Luna, A Gustavo Martinez, Brent Monseur, Peter Nagy, Anja Pinborg, Catherine Racowsky, Laura Rienzi, Peter Schlegel, Lone Schmidt, Lan Ngoc Vuong, Tari Turner, Mónica Hebe Vázquez-Levin, Ibrahim Wada, Dagan Wells, Christine Wyns

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

STUDY QUESTION: What updates of the International Glossary on Infertility and Fertility Care are required, to reflect contemporary scientific knowledge, social needs, and inclusive definitions, while harmonizing international communication across clinical, research, policy, and public domains?

SUMMARY ANSWER: This 4th edition presents 348 consensus-based terms and definitions, including numerous revisions from the previous edition and 79 newly introduced definitions reflecting advances in reproductive science, technology, and evolving social contexts.

WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: Previous glossary editions (2006, 2009, 2017) established internationally recognized definitions related to clinical practice, research, and policy. The 2017 edition comprised 283 terms and, among many others, …

Incidental Colorectal Adenomas In Adolescents: Clinical Management, Genetic Evaluation, And Surveillance., Brett J. Hoskins, Shlomi Cohen, Colleen B. Flahive, Isabel Rojas, Aparajita Singh, Thomas M. Attard

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

The rising incidence of early-onset colorectal cancer has renewed attention to colorectal adenomas in adolescents and young adults (AYA), although these lesions remain rare and poorly characterized in adolescents. Lack of age-specific guidance creates uncertainty regarding genetic evaluation, surveillance intervals, and long-term management when these lesions are identified in adolescents. This narrative review synthesizes current evidence and expert perspective on epidemiology, evaluation, endoscopic management, surveillance, genetic considerations, and psychosocial implications of incidentally identified colorectal adenomas across the AYA spectrum, with emphasis on adolescents as a distinct clinical population. Available data largely derive from adults aged 20-49 years but suggest that …

Legal Ethics Of Ai Snake Oil: Navigating The Hype, Harm, And Hope Of Legal Ai, Drew Simshaw

Michigan Law Review

A review of AI Snake Oil.By Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor.

“I Will Experience This Trauma Over And Over Again”: Sexual And Gender-Based Violence, Forced Migration And Structural Violence, Jenny Phillimore, Karen Block, Hannah Bradby, Hoayda Darkal, Lisa Goodson, Anna Papoutsi, Cathy Vaughan

School of Psychology

Forced migration has reached unprecedented levels as millions are forced to seek refuge from conflict, persecution, and violence. This exodus includes women enduring the traumas of displacement alongside sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Upon reaching supposed places of refuge, they encounter the structural violence of immigration and asylum regimes. Against this backdrop, the intersection of SGBV, forced migration, and structural violence emerges as an urgent area of study. Drawing from extensive qualitative interviews in Australia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, we set out to examine the impact of structural violence on the lives of forced migrant survivors of SGBV. The …

Supramolecular Assembly In Short Peptide Systems For Selective Metabolite Recognition And Drug Nanoencapsulation, Maithreyi Ramakrishnan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Short peptides can form adaptive supramolecular assemblies, and understanding how minimal sequences organize around neurometabolites or hydrophobic cancer drugs enables the rational design of functional materials. This thesis combines molecular dynamics with experimental validation to establish design rules linking peptide sequence to emergent structure and function. Chapter 1 outlines the molecular determinants governing peptide assembly. Chapter 2 reviews computational workflows that reveal sequence-dependent conformations and supramolecular organization. Chapter 3 applies these principles to Dynamic Peptide Libraries which identify tetrapeptides that selectively interact with neurometabolites. Chapter 4 extends the same interaction-driven framework to design tryptophan-rich pentapeptides that co-assemble with kinase inhibitors …

Goddess In A Trash Can: Religious Ritual Disposal In New York City Public Parks, Zoe Oro-Hahn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Practitioners of Afro-Caribbean religions, including Santería, Vodou, Espiritismo, and Las 21 Divisiones, utilize the New York City Public Parks system to hold rituals, connect with spirits and ancestors, and dispose of religious remains leftover from trabajos (workings) and brujería (witchcraft). Utilizing photos from Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, my thesis considers the religious, political, social, and practical rationale behind this phenomenon, explores the rituals occurring, and provides policy suggestions that balance religious needs of practitioners with the safety and wellbeing of New York City’s parks.