Digital Commons Network^™

From Bushwick To Portland: Bori Girls Of The Diaspora Revolutionizing The Puerto Rican Coming-Of-Age Narrative, Lily V. Alvarado

Dissertations and Theses

Trailblazing Puerto Rican women in the diaspora have challenged dominant imagery and fought against patriarchy, U.S. imperialism, and white supremacy through their writing. Writers like Esmeralda Santiago and Nicholasa Mohr have transformed the literary canon via the bildungsroman, highlighting the unique struggles of Boricua girlhood and proving that our stories matter. Two prominent female Boricua writers today, Elisabet Velasquez and Gabby Rivera, have raised the baton that has been passed down to them and revolutionized the Diasporican literary canon. In their respective texts, When We Make It: A Nuyorican Novel and Juliet Takes a Breath, Velasquez and Rivera highlight the …

An Optical Aptamer-Based Carbon Nanosensor For Cortisol Detection, Jessica Kretli Zanetti

Dissertations and Theses

Cortisol is a hormone related to numerous biological functions. This hormone is primarily associated with regulating the body’s stress response, including its effects on metabolism, immune function, and energy balance. Additionally, it plays a critical role in maintaining physiological homeostasis during periods of physical or psychological stress. Consequently, it is critical to monitor levels of this hormone to understand different vital processes it can impact. This work presents the development of an optical aptamer-based carbon nanosensor for the detection of cortisol. The sensor utilizes single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) functionalized with a specific DNA aptamer to achieve high specificity and sensitivity. …

Change Of Metal Oxidation State At High Temperature, Impact Of Temperature And Reactive Gases, Yegor Nikitin

Dissertations and Theses

The fundamental understanding of gas-solid reactions enables a wide range of applications to be developed and improved. Specifically, the use of metal-based materials is critical to ensuring robust, safe, and long-term operations. For example, in power systems where boilers are used to generate steam for heat or electricity generation the use of stainless metal alloys is critical to allow high quality steam to be produced in a very harsh environment. Alternatively, in catalysis, the use of metal doped heterogeneous catalysts are essential in achieving selectivity and conversion performance for chemical synthesis to emissions abatement. Typically, these metal alloys must withstand …

The Effect Of Nanoconfined Liquid Properties On The Water-Responsive Behavior Of Bacterial Cell Walls, Seungri Kim

Dissertations and Theses

Water-responsive (WR) materials have the ability to mechanically swell and shrink in response to changes in relative humidity (RH). These WR materials are used by many biological systems to perform essential tasks; for example, pinecones use WR materials to release their seeds in dry environments, and wheat awns open and close to propel seeds into the soil, driven by daily RH changes. The WR actuation of some biomaterials is extremely powerful, for example Bacillus subtilis cell walls display record-high actuation energy and power densities of 72 MJ m^-3 and 9.1 MW m^-3, surpassing those of all existing …

Blockchain Based Framework For Secure And Decentralized Energy Trading - Transforming Local Energy Markets For Sustainable Communities, Saurabh Sachdeva

Dissertations and Theses

The emergence of prosumers provides an opportunity for the setup of a local energy market (LEM) where individual households with distributed energy resources (DERs) can produce, store, and trade energy. Peer-to-peer(P2P) and decentralized energy trading (ET) can be implemented between the participants within or across microgrids. Several solutions based on the existing technologies have been proposed worldwide for the integration of prosumers in the existing energy setup and to enable and support ET, but these solutions present the issues of centralization, data integrity, and confidentiality, user and anonymity, and transparency. The applications of blockchain technology have recently become fascinating for …

Optimizing Transcranial Focused Ultrasound: Calibration, Neuro Navigation, And Bold Fmri Evidence Of Neuromodulation, Amilcar J. Malave

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis presents the development, calibration, and initial implementation of transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) for neuromodulation in a human study. The primary objectives were to design a system capable of delivering precise and safe ultrasound stimulation to targeted brain regions and to conduct preliminary trials to assess its effects on brain activity. A custom calibration device was developed to ensure accurate measurement of acoustic pressure, addressing challenges such as voltage alterations caused by changes in system impedance. Additionally, a neuro-navigation tool was created to facilitate precise targeting of the right subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (right sgACC), enabling accurate placement of …

Implementation Of Acid/Gas Digestion Approach To Maximize Volatile Fatty Acids Production From Municipal Sludge And A Techno-Economic Feasibility Study, Aykut Sayin

Dissertations and Theses

Acid digestion, which is the first step of two-phase acid/gas anaerobic digestion process, was studied to identify the optimum operating conditions that would maximize the production of volatile fatty acids (VFAs). Batch and semi-continuous acid digesters were operated using combined primary sludge and waste-activated sludge as the feedstock from New York City (NYC)’s Wards Island water resource recovery facility (WRRF). Operating conditions tested in batch acid digesters for maximizing VFAs production included temperature (35-70°C), inoculum-to-substrate ratio (0.0-0.5 mgVS/mgVS), thickening (3-13%TS), and contact time (0-10 days), while simultaneously inhibition mechanisms on VFAs production were investigated. Once the optimum operating conditions for …

Analysis Of Energy Savings And Feasibility Of Retrofitting New York City Midrise Multifamily Buildings With Air Source Heat Pump Technology, Samuel Chussid

Dissertations and Theses

Motivated by reducing impacts of climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions, many dense urban cites throughout the United States have set into law ambitions decarbonization policies that will require buildings to replace fossil fuel space and water heating systems with electric powered alternatives. In many cities, especially in the northeast, fossil fuel space and water heating systems are used in a vast majority of buildings and significantly contribute to citywide carbon emissions. In New York City (NYC), it is estimated that over 40 percent of citywide emissions come from space heating and water heating systems that run on fossil …

Surface Activity At The Air-Water Interface And Self-Stratification Of Silica Nanoparticles Functionalized With Tri-Methoxy Poly(Ethylene Glycol) Silane, Hyeongoo Jung

Dissertations and Theses

Aggregated silica nanoparticles (SNPs) have been functionalized with tri-methoxy poly(ethylene glycol) silane (mPEG silane), end-capped with a methyl group. This functionalization imparts surface activity at the air-water interface due to the hydrophobic nature of the end-capped methyl group. To determine the surface coverage of silane on the particle surface, solution-state ¹H-NMR spectroscopy was utilized for characterization, and surface tension measurements were conducted to assess their tension-lowering ability. Solutions containing 10 wt% of the functionalized SNPs reduced the quasi-static surface tension to approximately 53 mN/m, regardless of the amount of reacted mPEG silane. However, the quantification of mPEG silane influenced …

Ring Resonators Intergrating With Dichoric Materials And In Spin-Valley Controlled Photonic Topological System, Yuma Kawaguchi

Dissertations and Theses

Photonic technology plays an important role in the development of diverse applications, ranging from optical telecommunications to sensing and imaging. The utilization of photonic circuits emerges as a promising platform for the establishment of advanced communication systems characterized by high speed and large capacity. This advancement is crucial to facilitate fast and efficient data transfer while concurrently managing multiple devices. It is imperative that essential components such as lasers, modulators, and isolators exhibit compactness without incurring significant losses.

Non-reciprocal devices represent a valuable addition to photonic circuits, enabling the creation of unidirectional waveguides that function as optical isolators, preventing signals …

Alkaline Potassium Polyacrylate Electrolytes For Rechargeable Zinc-Manganese Dioxide Batteries, Jungsang Cho

Dissertations and Theses

Zinc (Zn)–manganese dioxide (MnO₂) rechargeable batteries have high specific theoretical capacity as well as being environmentally friendly, intrinsically safe and low-cost. Liquid electrolytes, such as potassium hydroxide (KOH), are historically used in these batteries; however, many failure mechanisms of the Zn–MnO₂ battery chemistry result from the use of liquid electrolytes, including the formation of electrochemically inactive compounds and shape change of Zn electrodes during charge and discharge cycling. This led to incorporation of an alkaline polymer electrolyte as an alternative to the liquid KOH electrolyte in Zn-MnO₂ rechargeable batteries, with the aim of making them non-spillable …

Hydrodynamics Of Drops And Particles Driven By Marangoni And Diffusiophoretic Forces, Subramaniam Chembai Ganesh

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigates the hydrodynamics of particles and drops driven by forces generated by an asymmetrical physical and chemical surrounding environment. In the first part, a novel colloidal motor design driven by surface tension forces is proposed, utilizing an active Janus particle encapsulated in an immiscible liquid drop to form a compound drop/particle. Marangoni forces induced by asymmetric solute adsorption at the liquid-liquid interface of the drop propels the compound system. The propulsion speeds of the motor are analyzed for various relative sizes and configurations of the Janus particle and the encapsulating drop and the effects of varying the transport …

Hyperspectral And Polarimetric Imaging Of The Ocean For The Characterization Of The Surface Effects And Measurement Uncertainties, Mateusz Malinowski

Dissertations and Theses

Ocean and coastal waters are monitored by Ocean Color satellite sensors to determine concentrations of chlorophyll and water properties and identify areas of algal blooms and other events. The light radiance from the ocean is weak in comparison with the sky radiance, which requires very accurate atmospheric correction of the radiance measured at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) on the satellite and heavy validation of the derived water leaving radiance by field measurements from the ships and ocean platforms. For TOA and especially above water radiance the skylight reflected from the ocean surface represents one of the main sources …

A Global Multicohort Study To Map Subcortical Brain Development And Cognition In Infancy And Early Childhood, Ann M Alex, Kelly Botteron, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

The human brain grows quickly during infancy and early childhood, but factors influencing brain maturation in this period remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we harmonized data from eight diverse cohorts, creating one of the largest pediatric neuroimaging datasets to date focused on birth to 6 years of age. We mapped the developmental trajectory of intracranial and subcortical volumes in ∼2,000 children and studied how sociodemographic factors and adverse birth outcomes influence brain structure and cognition. The amygdala was the first subcortical volume to mature, whereas the thalamus exhibited protracted development. Males had larger brain volumes than females, and …

Research Access To Social Media Data: Lessons From Clinical Trial Data Sharing, Christopher J. Morten, Gabriel Nicholas, Salomé Vilgoen

Articles

For years, social media companies have sparred with lawmakers over how much independent access to platform data they should provide researchers. Sharing data with researchers allows the public to better understand the risks and harms associated with social media, including areas such as misinformation, child safety, and political polarization. Yet researcher access is controversial. Privacy advocates and companies raise the potential privacy threats of researchers using such data irresponsibly. In addition, social media companies raise concerns over trade secrecy: the data these companies hold and the algorithms powered by that data are secretive sources of competitive advantage. This Article shows …

Valuing Social Data, Amanda Parsons, Salome Viljoen

Articles

Social data production—accumulating, processing, and using large volumes of data about people—is a unique form of value creation that characterizes the digital economy. Social data production also presents critical challenges for the legal regimes that encounter it. This Article provides scholars and policymakers with the tools to comprehend this new form of value creation through two descriptive contributions. First, it presents a theoretical account of social data, a mode of production that is cultivated and exploited for two distinct (albeit related) forms of value: prediction value and exchange value. Second, it creates and defends a taxonomy of three “scripts” that …

Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Drug Development, Louise C. Druedahl, Nicholson Price, Timo Minssen, Dipl Jur, Ameet Sarpatwari

Articles

Considerable focus has been placed on the health care applications of artificial intelligence (AI). Already, machine learning, a subset of AI that involves “the use of data and algorithms to imitate the way that humans learn” has been used to predict diseases, while AI-powered smartphone apps have been developed to promote mental health and weight loss. Owing in part to such successes, the market for AI in health care has been forecasted to increase more than 1000% between 2022 and 2029, from $13.8 billion to $164.1 billion. One area of substantial promise is drug development, which is poised to benefit …

Meme Corporate Governance, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, Yoon-Ho Alex Lee

Articles

Can retail investors revolutionize corporate governance and make public companies more responsive to social concerns? Beginning in 2021, there was a dramatic influx of retail investors into the shareholder base of “meme” stock companies such as GameStop, AMC, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Observing the unprecedented, coordinated trading among retail investors, scholars and practitioners predicted that the influx of retail investors would reduce the power of large institutional investors and democratize corporate governance. These predictions were driven by three factors: generational, with assumptions that millennial and Gen Z investors would challenge corporate management; societal, reflecting growing discontent with slow progress …

An Evolutionary Algorithms Approach To Physical Modelling Of Vocal Synthesis, Jared Drayton

School of Art, Design and Architecture Theses

This thesis documents the application of Evolutionary Algorithms to the Acoustic Articulatory Inversion of vowels using the Praat physical model. Speech synthesis by computational means has been a field for many decades, giving rise to several differing approaches. While the physical modelling approach has been a continually active area of research, it has yet to prove a viable solution to applied TTS systems partly due to the complexity of the model parameters, hence why an efficient and robust method of Acoustic-Articulatory Inversion of parameters for these models would benefit the field. To do so, the use of Evolutionary Algorithms as …

Before Sensing Becomes A Some-Thing: Writing With The Bodily Experience Of Liminality In Processes Of Social Organising, Juliana Schneider

School of Art, Design and Architecture Theses

The research addresses organisational practitioners’ capacity for noticing and responding to fleeting, small gestures and indeterminate impressions that register as bodily sensations in the midst of dynamic circumstances. The thesis explores such experience as occurring in the realm of the liminal - liminality taken up as a quality of experience when vague perceptions are sensed and felt viscerally at the very edge of articulation.The research asks how this domain of experience, here discussed as liminal perceptive sensibility, may be brought further into articulation while retaining the quality of the experience. This involves experimenting with a combination of first person reflexive …

Foreign Intervention And Internal Displacement: Urban Politics In Postwar Beirut, Amanda Rizkallah

All Faculty Open Access Publications

Uneven democratization is a common yet poorly understood legacy of civil war. In the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), wartime processes of displacement interacted with Syria's intervention to transform local postwar political orders. In Beirut's suburbs, the bonds built between armed actors and displaced populations created opportunities for displaced people to extract responsiveness from local institutions, despite their vulnerability. But the power of displaced populations in their host community hinges on the fate of the locally dominant armed actor. If the armed actor is an ally of the intervening power, it can maintain political control over its strongholds, …

Peak Detection In Intracranial Pressure Signal Waveforms: A Comparative Study, Miaomiao Wei, Solventa Krakauskaite, Sreya Subramanian, Fabien Scalzo

All Faculty Open Access Publications

Background: The monitoring and analysis of quasi-periodic biological signals such as electrocardiography (ECG), intracranial pressure (ICP), and cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) waveforms plays an important role in the early detection of adverse patient events and contributes to improved care management in the intensive care unit (ICU). This work quantitatively evaluates existing computational frameworks for automatically extracting peaks within ICP waveforms. Methods: Peak detection techniques based on state-of-the-art machine learning models were evaluated in terms of robustness to varying noise levels. The evaluation was performed on a dataset of ICP signals assembled from 700 h of monitoring from 64 neurosurgical …

Cross-Temporal Hierarchical Forecast Reconciliation Of Natural Gas Demand, Colin O. Quinn, George F. Corliss, Richard J. Povinelli

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Local natural gas distribution companies (LDCs) require accurate demand forecasts across various time periods, geographic regions, and customer class hierarchies. Achieving coherent forecasts across these hierarchies is challenging but crucial for optimal decision making, resource allocation, and operational efficiency. This work introduces a method that structures the gas distribution system into cross-temporal hierarchies to produce accurate and coherent forecasts. We apply our method to a case study involving three operational regions, forecasting at different geographical levels and analyzing both hourly and daily frequencies. Trained on five years of data and tested on one year, our model achieves a 10% reduction …

Self-Rectifying Magnetoelectric Metamaterials For Remote Neural Stimulation And Motor Function Restoration, Abdeali Dhuliyawalla, Katie J Hogan, Antonios G Mikos, Jacob T Robinson

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Magnetoelectric materials convert magnetic fields into electric fields. These materials are often used in wireless electronic and biomedical applications. For example, magnetoelectrics could enable the remote stimulation of neural tissue, but the optimal resonance frequencies are typically too high to stimulate neural activity. Here we describe a self-rectifying magnetoelectric metamaterial for a precisely timed neural stimulation. This metamaterial relies on nonlinear charge transport across semiconductor layers that allow the material to generate a steady bias voltage in the presence of an alternating magnetic field. We generate arbitrary pulse sequences with time-averaged voltage biases in excess of 2 V. As a …

Campus Leaders’ Support Of Culturally Responsive Classroom Management Strategies: Single Exploratory Case Study, Charmon L. Barksdale

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract This study addressed the growing concern regarding the disproportionate suspension rates experienced by African American students. The problem addressed in this study was the variation in leadership support for teachers implementing culturally responsive classroom management strategies to manage culturally diverse student behaviors. This is important to African American students' educational experiences within the learning environment. This exploratory single case study examined school leaders' and teachers' perspectives on the use of culturally responsive strategies to answer the research questions regarding the definition and descriptions of culturally responsive practices, participants' perspectives on the benefits and challenges of these practices, and the …

Physical Violence And Aggression In Parkinson's Disease: A Systematic Review, Ana Guerra, Gursimrat Bhatti, Dakota Broadway, Juliann Tea, Aksa Prasad, Rachel Gates, Elizabeth Hinton, Ricardo E Jorge, Laura Marsh

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: Physical violence and aggression (PVA), defined as behaviors with the potential to cause bodily injury, are unfortunate risks in the management of all-cause neurodegenerative dementias. While dementia in Parkinson's disease (PD) may not be evident for many years after clinical onset, neuropsychiatric disturbances occur at all stages of the disease. At issue is whether PVA in PD is associated with clinical factors that can be targets for prevention and management in the absence of a prevailing dementia syndrome.

Objective: This systematic review examined the extent to which PVA in PD without dementia is a clinically significant concern and whether …

Planning For Children In Disasters: Education And Strategies For The Best Outcomes, Steven Krug

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

No abstract provided.

Development Of A Statewide Network Hub For Screening, Referral, And Enrollment Into Food As Medicine Programs Across Kentucky, Christa Mayfield, Carolyn Lauckner, Joshua Bush, Ethan Cosson, Lauren Batey, Alison Gustafson

Behavioral Science Faculty Publications

Widespread recognition of food as medicine interventions' role in reducing food insecurity and improving health outcomes has recently emerged. Several states have released In Lieu of Services, state-approved alternative services that may be offered by managed care organizations in place of covered benefits, or 1,115 Medicaid waivers, which may allow for expanded nutrition services to reduce food insecurity and improve health outcomes. However, there are significant gaps in understanding how to create a statewide system for delivering "healthcare by food" interventions. The University of Kentucky Food as Health Alliance first piloted the development of a statewide hub facilitating referral to, …

Applying The Normative Design Approach To Civil Engineering, Justin R. Vander Werff

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

In 1986, the book Responsible Technology [1] was published as an important compilation from a number of thoughtful Christians engaged in technology and engineering in that era. In many ways, this book and those involved with it laid the foundation for what has become the Christian Engineering Society. A particularly valuable aspect of this work was that it laid out a biblically normative framework for doing engineering based on Herman Dooyeweerd’s modal aspects [2], fleshing out how the higher aspects such as faith, ethics, and justice should play an integral role in engineering development, even though we often have a …

Isoflurane Conditioning Improves Functional Outcomes After Peripheral Nerve Injury In A Sciatic Cut Repair Murine Model, Yameng Xu, Ying Yan, Gregory J Zipfel, Matthew Macewan, Wilson Z Ray, Umeshkumar Athiraman

2020-Current year OA Pubs

INTRODUCTION: Anesthetic conditioning has been shown to provide neuroprotection in several neurological disorders. Whether anesthetic conditioning provides protection against peripheral nerve injuries remains unknown. The aim of our current study is to investigate the impact of isoflurane conditioning on the functional outcomes after peripheral nerve injury (PNI) in a rodent sciatic nerve injury model.

METHODS: Adult male Lewis rats underwent sciatic nerve cut and repair and exposed to none (Group 1, sham), single isoflurane exposure (Group 2), three-time isoflurane exposure (Group 3), and six-time isoflurane exposure (Group 4). Isoflurane conditioning was established by administration of 2% isoflurane for 1 hour, …