Digital Commons Network^™

Calibration Methodology, Diagnostic Performance, And Redesign Of The Current Monitors On The Z Machine At Sandia National Laboratories, Stacie Hernandez

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

A proper evaluation of the current diagnostics fielded in the inner-MITL region of the Z facility in 3D simulation models had not been performed until now. The evaluation of the current monitors has brought insight to their performance in a new view that has led to discoveries. The B-dot probe was the current diagnostic-of-choice since before the refurbishment of the Z facility [1] and until the development of the Inductively Driven Transmission Line (IDTL) current diagnostic [2]. Experimental data has shown that the IDTL can produce cleaner signals and it is more robust than conventional B-dots. Simulation (modeled using COMSOL …

Millimeter-Wave Antenna Gain Enhancement Through Stacked Planar Substrates, Zachary Bergstedt

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

This work presents a new wideband millimeter-wave (mmWave) and sub-terahertz antenna design with flexible directivity through the integration of stepped horn antennas and transverse substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) slots for radar and communication applications. The work gives a theoretical and analytical basis for this filter-inspired approach to improving bandwidth and directivity, and presents design and results for a standalone stepped horn, a Ka-band antenna with a solid stepped horn and SIW feed, and W-band antennas with empty SIW feeds and stepped horns manufactured out of multiple planar layers. The realized antennas show bandwidth up to 40% and gain up to …

Hierarchical Safe Reinforcement-Learning Framework For Mission-Aware, Edge-Enabled Multi-Uav Iot Networks, Abee F. Alazzwi

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

This Ph.D. dissertation presents a unified Hierarchical Safe Reinforcement Learning (HSRL) framework for mission-aware, edge-enabled multi-UAV Internet of Things (IoT) networks. The work addresses the need for autonomous aerial infrastructures capable of delivering low-latency communication, scalable edge computation, and provably safe operation in dynamic environments. The dissertation develops three primary contributions. First, it formulates longhorizon drone base station placement and load balancing as a strategic actor–critic learning problem, enabling proactive adaptation to spatiotemporal demand variations. Second, it introduces a mission-aware multi-agent reinforcement learning controller for coordinated mobility, sensing, and computation offloading under latency and energy constraints. Third, it integrates a …

Applications And Comparisons Of Machine Learning Methods In Ultra-Fast Laser Control, Aasma Aslam

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

This dissertation demonstrates the applications and comparative analyses of machine learning methods in ultrafast laser control. By learning the relationship between the system’s input parameters and output pulse characteristics, the performance of a laser can be significantly improved. In this work, the results are presented in two stages by utilizing data from the femtosecond laser system. The first stage concerns two neural networks, named NN1 (fitrnet) and NN2 (feedforwardnet). The second stage, which extended with five different models, namely the linear regression (fitlm), the support vector machine (SVM), the Gaussian process regression (GPR), the boosted tree (fitrensemble), and LASSO (fitrlinear), …

Investigating Workforce Development Gaps In Tribal Transportation Agencies, Benson Long Jr

Civil Engineering ETDs

Tribal transportation programs face challenges in recruiting and retaining qualified staff, prompting reliance on external consultants for key responsibilities. This study explores how workforce constraints and organizational structures influence tribal outsourcing decisions. Survey data from 57 tribes informed a logistic regression model examining how geographic isolation, population size, training access, and the presence of a transportation department affect preferences for internal work, actual task completion, and instances where tribes intended to perform tasks in-house but outsourced instead. Findings indicate that outsourcing is driven by limited internal capacity, including staffing shortages, lack of certified personnel, and training opportunities. Geography also plays …

A Colonial Past Revisited: An Authethnography Of Outsider And Insider Identities In Indigenous Education Communities, Tara L. Deyoung

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

In the late 90s, at Rehoboth Christian school, a small private boarding school in northwest New Mexico, I had four different English teachers in my four years of high school. All but two of my teachers at that time would be considered outsiders to the community in which they taught. Teacher outsiders leave schools and districts at higher rates than insiders to a community; this is especially true for rural and remote areas (Hudson et al., 2020). The purpose of this autoethnographic study is to analyze my history as a cultural outsider and insider in relation to my core beliefs …

Commencement 2026

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Remaking Buford Highway: Immigration And The Struggle For Walkable Suburbia, Amit Kamma

Harvey M. Applebaum ’59 Award

Constructed according to a car-centric vision typical of American suburbs, one segment of Buford Highway outside Atlanta has become a corridor defined by immigrants who often walk and use public transit. These behaviors conflict with the existing car-focused infrastructure, compelling government actors to make the Highway more multimodal. Progress towards that goal is ongoing and precarious, demonstrating wider systemic challenges in U.S. planning and local governance.

Negotiating Professional Identity Development Across Contexts: A Collaborative Autoethnography, Clark D. Ausloos, Rebecca J. Vannest, Hayley Ostlund

Journal of Counselor Preparation and Supervision

This collaborative autoethnography (CAE) explores how two counselor educators and one doctoral student navigate professional identity formation across three intersecting contexts: school counseling, clinical mental health counseling, and counselor education. Through critical reflection and collaborative analysis of focus-group data and individual reflections, we identify four themes: Career Flexibility & Adaptability, Identity Formation in Supportive and Restrictive Systems, Role Strain & Stigma, and Values-Driven Practices. Implications call for counselor education programs and higher education systems to embrace multiplicity, non-linear careers, redefine mentorship structures for doctoral students and faculty, and revise promotion criteria to value relationality, and creative, student- and community-engaged …

Predicting Counseling Student Well-Being: The Role Of Faculty And Stress, Kendall G. Woods, Elizabeth K. N. Harper, Michell L. Temple

Journal of Counselor Preparation and Supervision

Approximately one-third of Americans live in areas with limited access to mental health services, with only one mental health provider for every 350 people (Health Resources and Services Administration [HRSA], 2024; Reinert & Nguyen, 2022). The shortage of mental health providers persists as the need for services grows, a challenge compounded by the 40-60% attrition rate among counseling trainees (Chrzanowski, 2018). Improving counseling program completion is essential to address the mental health workforce shortage. While previous research has emphasized the importance of faculty support for graduate students (Estrada et al, 2019), little research has examined how faculty-student interactions and academic …

Combat Fatigue, Katie Thorn

Studio One

No abstract provided.

U-Turns, Loralee Clark

Studio One

No abstract provided.

Studio One Volume 50, Studio1 Literary Club

Studio One

No abstract provided.

Electrode Coating Methods For Water Treatment: A Comprehensive Review And Comparative Analysis, Noor H. Hamza, Zainab Y. Shnain, Mohammad F. Abid, Ali A. Yahya

Engineering and Technology Journal

Electrochemical water treatment technologies have emerged as highly efficient strategies for environmental remediation, yet their large-scale implementation remains constrained by electrode performance and longevity. The fabrication of dimensionally stable anodes (DSAs) through precise coating methodologies critically determines their electrocatalytic activity, cost-effectiveness, and operational stability. This review systematically evaluates and compares eleven major electrode coating techniques, bridging the knowledge gap between fundamental material science and practical engineering applications. The study critically analyzes the underlying mechanisms, strengths, and inherent limitations of vapor-phase methods (CVD and ALD), solution-based processes (sol-gel, co-precipitation, solvothermal), electrochemical techniques (electrodeposition and electroless plating), thermal decomposition, and mechanical approaches …

Llm-Driven Dynamical Adaptation Of Window Layout Based On Available Displays, Aurélien Pomini, Nicolas Zimmermann

Defensive Publications Series

Techniques are described for automatic inference of window layouts based on available displays, e.g., based on detecting connection or disconnection of an auxiliary display. Upon detection of a change in display configuration, contextual information regarding active applications, window metadata, and display parameters is obtained, with user permission. Application categories are determined based on semantic analysis. An on-device large language model is utilized to determine an optimal arrangement of windows across the available displays based on the aggregated context and historical usage patterns. Windows are automatically moved and/or resized according to the inferred layout.

Semantic Photo Search With Compositional Spatial Reasoning, Tamar Yakar, Ilia Labzovsky

Defensive Publications Series

Photo search technologies can identify the content of an image but cannot answer queries relating to the spatial relationships between entities in an image. This disclosure describes computational architectures and techniques for spatial compositional photo search and retrieval. Subjective, spatially rich natural language queries are translated into strict geometric and relational constraints, which are evaluated efficiently against a large corpus of pre-computed spatial indices. Upon ingestion, an image is processed to generate a highly compressed, pre-computed spatial scene graph G = (V, E, C), where V is a set of multimodal entities and bounding boxes; E …

Privacy-Preserving Generative Inpainting, Tamar Yakar, Ilia Labzovsky

Defensive Publications Series

People frequently capture images in public or semi-public settings (e.g., schools, parks, parties) that include incidental subjects and may share such images with others. The person that captures such images may not have consent from such incidental subjects to publish such images. This disclosure describes generative augmentation techniques that preserve privacy for digital media. Incidental subjects (bystanders) in photographs are automatically protected prior to social sharing. Unlike conventional redaction methods (blurring/pixelation) which degrade visual fidelity, or manual object removal which alters the scene's composition, the techniques semantically substitute unauthorized subjects with context-appropriate, non-identifiable synthetic elements. The synthetic elements can be …

Memory-Bounded, Provenance-Preserving Canonical Feature Generation For Normalized Entity Keys In Distributed Transaction Aggregation, Arnab Dutta, Rafael Ostrea, Pawan D. Parchani

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure relates to a method and a system for generating canonical features for normalized entity keys in distributed transaction aggregation. The present disclosure suggests receiving transaction data comprising a plurality of transaction records, each transaction record associated with an entity identifier derived from one or more entity attributes. After receiving the data, the present disclosure suggests aggregating the transaction records using a normalized merchant entity key, which consolidates multiple entity identifiers corresponding to a same merchant entity. Thereafter, the present disclosure suggests generating an intermediate data structure for each normalized merchant entity key and for each selected attribute …

Artificial Intelligence Social Companion, D Shin

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes an AI-generated social role-play companion that provides emotionally intelligent virtual friends to help users develop social skills through interactive scenarios. Per the techniques, a general-purpose large language model (LLM) is augmented with persona-specific low-rank adapters (LoRA). The LoRA manage multiple AI friend characters, each with distinct personality, communication style, and emotional model. An emotional intelligence module detects the user’s emotional context, using, e.g., voice prosody. A social scenario generator creates age-appropriate social situations focused on, e.g., sharing, conflict resolution, and empathy building. A progress tracker monitors social skill development over time. Aside from character voice responses through …

Geomagnetic Kinetic Energy Storage Using Oscillating Ion Cluster Kickers For Orbital Power Infrastructure, Daniel Austin Harbison

Defensive Publications Series

A method is described for storing electrical energy in space using a charged particle beam circulating in Earth's geomagnetic field, with energy injection and extraction performed by oscillating ion cluster kickers (OICKs) mounted on a constellation of satellites operating within the inner Van Allen belt (approximately 2,000–3,000 km altitude). The system functions as a kinetic battery for orbital power infrastructure, complementing existing or proposed space-based solar power architectures. Unlike chemical batteries, the storage medium does not degrade with cycling. The geomagnetic field provides the confining structure without mass cost. This disclosure describes the architecture, the underlying physics, energy balance estimates, …

Multi-Material Die/Chip To Reduce Package Warpage By Reducing Die To Substrate Cte Mismatch, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes a multi-material semiconductor die designed to mitigate package warpage by adjusting the overall coefficient of thermal expansion of the die structure. By incorporating a secondary material with a higher thermal expansion coefficient than silicon, such as copper, the thermal expansion of the die is increased to more closely match the expansion characteristics of a package substrate. This is achieved through a layered configuration where the secondary material is deposited as a subsection of the die or sandwiched between silicon layers. This approach provides a flexible method for tuning the thermo-mechanical characteristic of the die to improve manufacturing …

Verifiable Api Key Revocation Using Dns-Based Cryptographic Attestations, Mei Yue Liu

Defensive Publications Series

Revoking compromised application programming interface keys in distributed cloud systems can involve a propagation gap, where a revocation may not be instantly effective across all enforcement points, and this process can lack external verifiability. This disclosure describes a framework that can use the domain name system (DNS) as a public ledger to address these potential issues. Upon revocation, a signed status record may be published to a deterministic DNS namespace derived from the key identifier. Concurrently, individual enforcement points can apply the revocation and return cryptographically signed attestations of this action. These attestations may be aggregated into a composite, signed …

Leveraging Citizen Science To Advance Environmental Justice In Climate-Vulnerable Communities Post-Loper Bright, Lauren Valli

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

The Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v.

Raimondo removed the judicial obligation to defer to the Environmental

Protection Agency’s statutory interpretations, overturning forty years of

Chevron v. NRDC jurisprudence. Now, generalist judges must

independently evaluate complex scientific data when determining

statutory meaning, creating the risk that well-resourced industry parties

will use their litigation advantages to secure pollution-permissive statutory

interpretations. Without deference to EPA’s technical understanding and

public welfare considerations, environmental litigation outcomes

increasingly depend on which party can most persuasively present

environmental data in court. This interpretation shift widens the

environmental enforcement gap and disproportionately harms historically …

Enacting Leadership And Transforming The World: Hannah Arendt, The Private, The Public, And Transfigurations In Between, Xochitl Mendez

Educational Studies Dissertations

In this dissertation I propose a framework that emphasizes transitions between Private and Public. I argue that individuals can consciously reshape and reformulate these transitions to assert themselves in the world. How can the individual’s own internal realities, ventures, projects and selfhood assert themselves in a fraught world as an act of self-affirmation, leadership, and transformation? New approaches to this question can all be revealed by using transitions between Private and Public as actionable strategies. I re-interpret Hannah Arendt’s Private and Public as she presented them in The Human Condition (1958). I turn these into multivalent and multilayered spaces of …

Through A Pedagogy Of Play: Kindergarten Teachers' Professional Identity, Self-Efficacy, And Well-Being, Jennifer L. Berube

Educational Studies Dissertations

Abstract

This convergent parallel mixed methods study examined how kindergarten teachers who implement a play-based pedagogy describe its influence on their professional identity, self-efficacy, and well-being. Kindergarten represents a critical educational juncture where tensions between developmental practice and academic acceleration are most pronounced, yet existing research has not adequately examined how pedagogical approaches affect the teachers who implement them. While extensive research documents the benefits of play-based learning for children’s development, the experiences of the teachers who facilitate that learning remain largely unexamined. This study addressed that gap through three integrated frameworks: Self-Determination Theory, Seligman’s model of well-being encompassing positive …

A Vision For S.P.A.M. — Smart Planning For Accessibility In Micro-Communities, Alexis Myra Castillo Tamayo

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

The selection of a capstone topic is therefore deliberate. It requires engaging with issues that are not only architecturally relevant, but personally meaningful and socially significant. In this project, that focus returns to my hometown of Lāhainā, Maui—a place deeply rooted in history, culture, and community. In recent years, and especially following the events of 2023, the need to reconsider how design can support resilience, safety, and connection has become increasingly urgent. These conditions reveal that rebuilding is not solely about replacing what was lost, but about rethinking systems that shape everyday life. This capstone is grounded in that premise. …

From Anxiety To Resilience: A Case Study Of Female-Identifying Middle School Students At A Math Summer Camp, Elizabeth Teixeira

Educational Studies Dissertations

Mathematics anxiety, defined as a fear that hampers engagement in mathematical tasks (Richardson & Suinn, 1972), affects nearly 50% of students (Johnston-Wilder et al., 2014) and has a disproportionate impact on female students (Devine et al., 2018; Stoet et al., 2016). Math anxiety is often treated in the research literature as a relatively stable trait. This perspective may not fully capture how anxiety manifests in specific moments of mathematical engagement or account for the role of environmental conditions that can both precipitate and mitigate anxious responses. In response to these gaps, this study investigates how mathematics anxiety manifests in …

The “Fallen Woman” Reconsidered: Inner And Outer Redemption In Victorian Literature, Caroline Kramer

English Honors Theses

This undergraduate thesis critically examines three female protagonists situated within the “fallen woman” character archetype of Victorian literature through a lens of redemption: Ruth Hilton in Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell (1853), Mercy Merrick in The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins (1873), and Tess Durbeyfield in Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (1891). While nineteenth-century readers may have expected that these women needed to undergo a moral transformation based on circumstances of their past, this thesis argues that none of them fundamentally require “redemption” according to any of the word’s typical definitions; rather, the question posed regards the modes through …

Review Of Sustainable Development In The Baked Food Industry : Innovations From Raw Materials, Processing To Packaging, Wang Yujia, Ma Shunzhang, Feng Muyu, Hou Dianzhi, Zhou Sumei

Food and Machinery

From the orientation of the global baked food industry toward health and sustainable development in recent years, this paper systematically reviews the innovations and progress across three core dimensions: raw material substitution, process optimization, and packaging improvement. First, regarding raw materials, conventional wheat flour is replaced with ingredients such as whole-grain flours and plant-based food by-products. Natural functional additives and novel protein sources (e.g., plant proteins, insect proteins, and microbial proteins) are developed to enhance the nutritional and health value of products and realize the efficient utilization of resources. Second, in the core process, techniques such as dough mixing, fermentation, …

Design And Experiment Of Camellia Oleifera Fruit Grading And Shelling Processing Line, Liu Mingyong, Jin Zixuan, Zhan Quanshuai, Chen Zihao, Wang Yanqing

Food and Machinery

[Objective] To address the common problems existing in current Camellia oleifera fruit shelling equipment, such as easy damage to seeds, poor integrity of shells, and unsatisfactory processing effect of fresh fruits. [Methods] A disc grading and rubbing type Camellia oleifera fruit production line is designed by integrating a feeding machine, a disc grader and three rubbing shelling machines. Taking the feeding speed, classification accuracy rate and classification radius error as indicators, the discrete element simulation analysis is conducted on the feeding machine and the disc grader. With the shell-breaking rate and seed-breaking rate as indicators, a joint simulation of the …