Digital Commons Network^™

Annual Report Of The Officers, Trustees, Boards, Committees And Agents For The Town Of Nottingham, New Hampshire For The Year Ending December 31, 2025, Nottingham Town Reports

Nottingham, NH Annual Reports

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire.

Francestown, Nh, Annual Reports Of The Officials, Departments And Committees Of The Town Of Francestown For The Calendar Year Ending December 31, 2025, Francestown Town Representatives

Francestown, NH Annual Reports

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire.

Town Of Bath, New Hampshire Annual Report Of The Town Officers Year Ending December 31, 2025, Bath Town Representatives

Bath, NH Annual Reports

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire.

Harvesting Hope In Central Florida With Second Harvest Food Bank, Shayna Caddell, Lucia Hernandez, Correna Bartow, Jonathan Lungstrum, Kevin Wechsler

High Impact Practices Student Showcase Spring 2026

We conducted a culture audit on Second Harvest Food Bank, where we examined the organization and its enacted and espoused values. We used the Social Change Model and the 7Cs to evaluate our observations.

We completed this by individually volunteering for 15 hours. We did many tasks including but not limited to, examining donations, packaging meat, and boxing up meals. Throughout our time, our group learned about the different processes this organization uses. Based on concepts from our Intermediate Foundations of Leadership class and our interview with Sarah Heath, Volunteer Lead, we were able to reflect on how Second Harvest …

Battling Human Trafficking: How Social Media Advertising Influences Awareness, Cami Dobson, Addyson Jones, Giovanni Gioia, Alexandra Boveil

High Impact Practices Student Showcase Spring 2026

In our Principles of Advertising class, our group analyzed an anti-human trafficking non-profit organization, The Lifeboat Project, to create an ad campaign. Specifically, we focused on how to utilize social media in order to reach a target demographic. The Lifeboat Project aims to raise awareness on human trafficking, while also supporting victims through their resources. The purpose of our project was to promote the organization's goal of visibility and prevention tools.

First, we developed our target audience, and created a target persona. We conducted research on the organization and competitors. Using this information, we constructed survey questions, and distributed them …

Predicting Vehicle Combat Effectiveness In Ukraine, Griffin Seel, Cameron Cummins, John O'Toole, Andrew Alexander

High Impact Practices Student Showcase Spring 2026

The 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict has been a series of relentless tragedies for the people of Ukraine, as well as the ultimate test for NATO defense initiatives. Today, over 3000 Armored Fighting Vehicles (AFV’s) from across NATO member states have been contributed to the Ukrainian army, doubling the size of its armored divisions since 2021. With vehicles sent in from nations as far away as the United States and Sweden, many are asking which vehicles have proved their worth, what makes these vehicles fit to survive on a modern battlefield, and what lessons can we take from the last 4 years …

Variations In Dissolved Oxygen Across Vegetation Zones In A Freshwater Marsh, Stephanie N. Lievano, Aliah Wales Miller, Marissa Pratt, Anya Spara

High Impact Practices Student Showcase Spring 2026

Dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations are critical indicators of aquatic ecosystem health, yet these levels fluctuate significantly based on the structural and physiological characteristics of dominant vegetation. This study investigated the extent to which DO levels differ among wetland zones dominated by submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), emergent plants, or floating plant cover. It was hypothesized that SAV-dominated areas would exhibit higher DO concentrations than emergent zones due to the direct release of photosynthetic oxygen into the water column. Data were collected across three diel blocks—morning, afternoon, and evening—in a UCF freshwater marsh using a YSI multiparameter sonde to measure DO, temperature, …

J Am Coll Dent 2026 92 3

Journal of the American College of Dentists

The Journal of the American College of Dentists (JACD) publishes scholarly articles, editorials, essays, and reflections addressing the ethical, professional, and social dimensions of dentistry. The Journal serves as a forum for advancing ethics, professionalism, leadership, and excellence within the dental community. By fostering dialogue across disciplines and perspectives, JACD provides readers with insights that encourage ethical, professional practice, lifelong learning, and service to the public, reinforcing dentistry’s commitment to advancing oral healthcare and the common good.

Evaluation And Impact Of 4th Grade Writing Instruction And Intervention, Sasha R. Smith

Education Theses and Dissertations

The implementation of Texas's redesigned State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) introduced extended constructed response (ECR) items that required students to demonstrate reading comprehension through written responses. At the study site, fourth-grade students consistently demonstrated stronger reading comprehension than writing performance, revealing a gap in their ability to communicate understanding using evidence-based written responses. The purpose of this Improvement Science Dissertation in Practice was to evaluate the implementation and impact of a systems-based instructional intervention designed to improve fourth-grade students' performance on constructed response writing tasks through increased instructional coherence and explicit writing instruction. This embedded mixed-methods case …

The Impact Of Leadership Skills On Pbl Group Dynamics, Jaime W. Burke Hicks

Education Theses and Dissertations

This Improvement Science Dissertation in Practice examined the role of intentional leadership instruction in addressing persistent challenges in Project-Based Learning (PBL) group dynamics within a middle school setting. The Problem of Practice centered on students’ inconsistent demonstration of leadership behaviors, including communication and accountability, which limited the effectiveness of group work despite prior exposure to PBL structures. This study was conducted at a university-affiliated public charter school in East Texas, where PBL serves as a core instructional model.

Guided by an Improvement Science framework and structured through a Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle, this study employed a mixed-methods embedded design to evaluate …

Perception Of Transportation Challenges And Their Influence On Mode Choice In A Small Us City: A Generalized Structural Equation Modeling Approach, Anindya Kishore Debnath, Suman Kumar Mitra

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study profiles individuals encountering transportation challenges by analyzing factors influencing their perceptions and how they affect mode choice decisions in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Using primary travel survey data, we estimated a multinomial logit (MNL) within a Generalized Structural Equation Model (GSEM) that controls for residential self-selection and car ownership endogeneity. We find that individuals from low-income households are more likely to perceive transportation challenges, particularly due to a lack of a car and inadequate public transport. Higher household car ownership generally diminishes perceived challenges, except regarding limited bike lanes. Weekend or late-shift workers are more likely to own cars …

Nonlinear Control Of A Ciws-Style 2-Dof Turret, Ryan Baur, Ethan Wang, Nilay Kant

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper develops and compares multiple control strategies for a two-degree-of-freedom CIWS (Close-In Weapon System)-style turret tracking rapidly maneuvering airborne targets. A simplified nonlinear manipulator model with realistic actuator torque limits is used as the plant. Five controllers are implemented: a baseline PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) controller, a feedforward PID, a Kalman-filter-assisted PID, and two feedback-linearized designs using PID and LQR (Linear-Quadratic-Regulator)-based surrogate dynamics. Controller performance is evaluated on increasingly aggressive three-dimensional target trajectories under varying sensor noise. Results show that PID-family controllers achieve competitive tracking accuracy while remaining torque-efficient and largely unsaturated. Feedback-linearized controllers improve tracking accuracy only when sufficient actuator …

Tomo-Piv Study Of A Parallel Two-Dimensional Jet In Supersonic Flow, Josiah Mcdermott, Connor Bell, Davide Vigano

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Stabilizing combustion in supersonic flows is a formidable challenge due to the small time scales afforded for air-fuel mixing. Numerous studies in this area have demonstrated the potential of strut-style platforms for fuel injection and mixing enhancement, which remains an active area of research. In the Aerodynamics Research Laboratory at Missouri S&T, a strut-style injector system has recently been installed. In this study, we characterize the flow structures behind this platform in a range of injection pressures and corresponding mass flux ratios. The wake generated by a strut and injection plume, even absent combustion or mixing enhancement geometry, has an …

Editorial: Sustainable Management Of Tuta Absoluta, Ahmad A. Omar, Inusa Jacob Ajene, Hafiz Muhammad Usman Aslam, Fathiya Mbarak Khamis

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

The tomato leafminer, Tuta absoluta (Meyrick), remains one of the most devastating global threats to tomato production. Its rapid invasion across continents, exceptional reproductive potential, cryptic foliar-mining behavior, and accelerated evolution of insecticide resistance have significantly complicated management efforts. The persistent failure of conventional chemical strategies underscores an urgent need for integrated solutions that combine molecular innovation, ecological engineering, and rigorous resistance monitoring. This editorial synthesizes key insights from recent contributions by Ullah et al., Bavithra et al., and Adams et al., which collectively outline a transformative, multi-dimensional framework for sustainable T. absoluta suppression.

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Hard Coastal Protection Structures For Long-Term Erosion Mitigation, Case Study: Eastern Rosetta Shoreline, Nile Delta, Egypt, Basma Sayed, Ayman Sabry Koraim, Tarek Hemdan Nassrallah, Ahmed Abouelfetouh Abdelaziz, Nada Mansour, Fahmy Salah Fahmy Abdelhaleem

Mansoura Engineering Journal

Coastal erosion threatens densely populated shorelines worldwide. At the Rosetta Promontory (Nile Delta), shoreline retreat has accelerated since the construction of the Aswan High Dam due to reduced fluvial sediment supply. This case study numerically evaluates shoreline response to six hard-protection scenarios along the eastern promontory, combining groins and detached breakwaters, over a 20-year forecast (2022–2042). Offshore wave conditions were transformed to nearshore hydrodynamics using MIKE21 Spectral Wave, and long-term shoreline evolution was simulated with DHI-LITPACK. The numerical models were forced using a 40-year wave dataset derived from the ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis. Results indicate that the configuration with eight detached …

A Comparative Review Of Roller Compacted And Conventional Concrete: Performance, Economics, And Environmental Sustainability, Masood Abu-Bakr, Hersh F Mahmood, Soran Abdrahman Ahmad

Mansoura Engineering Journal

Roller Compacted Concrete (RCC), distinguished by its zero-slump consistency and high density achieved through heavy roller compaction, has gained recognition as an effective alternative to conventional concrete in applications such as pavements, industrial flooring, and dam construction. This paper reviews the evolution, material composition, and common uses of RCC in comparison with Conventional Concrete (CC), emphasizing the advantages and limitations of each. Key performance aspects, including mechanical strength, durability, workability, construction efficiency, and maintenance demands, are examined. The findings indicate that RCC can reduce construction time by up to 25% and lower maintenance costs by approximately 30–40%. Additionally, life-cycle cost …

Reimagining Doctoral Supervision And Mentorship In Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence From Ethiopia, Kenya And Rwanda, Tom Peter Migun Ogada, Kevin Okoth Ouko, Eunice Omwoyo, Agnes Lutomiah, Nicholas Odongo, Caroline Mbaya, Eric Magale, Clarisse Mideva, Joel Onyango, Samwel Oyugi, Cynthia K. Orang’O, Bonface Nyagah, Everlyn Nguku

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Doctoral education is central to strengthening research capacity and advancing knowledge production in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, challenges in supervisory quality, mentorship systems, and institutional governance continue to constrain doctoral completion, productivity, and equity. Comparative empirical evidence on supervision and mentorship systems in African higher education remains limited. This study examines how governance arrangements, supervisory practices, and mentorship structures shape doctoral supervision ecosystems in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rwanda. Using a mixed-methods design, it integrates survey data (n=154), interviews (n=27), and policy dialogues under the Regional Scholarship and Innovation Fund (RSIF). Guided by the Doctoral Supervision Ecosystem Framework, the study explores institutional …

Environmental Risk Modeling For Heavy Rainfall Events In Jeddah City Between The Years (2000-2025), Amina Atallah Al-Rehaili

University of Tabuk Journal for Humanities and Social Sciences

This study models the potential environmental risks associated with heavy rainfall events that affected Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, between 2000 and 2025. A descriptive-analytical approach based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was employed to analyze spatial patterns of rainfall and assess their environmental implications. The methodology included a literature review, collection of daily rainfall data, identification of extreme rainfall events, and spatial analysis of rainfall distribution across the city. A suitability model was then developed to determine areas most vulnerable to heavy rainfall hazards. Results indicate that heavy rainfall events and their environmental impacts on residents and property correspond to 70.37% …

Characterization Of The Genetic Diversity Of Curlyleaf Pondweed (Potamogeton Crispus L.) In The Contiguous United States And Canada And Analysis Of Possible Hybrid Potamogeton Crispus Lineages, Mallory M. Kaiser

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Curlyleaf Pondweed (Potamogeton crispus L.) is a prolific invasive species that has spread across the United States and into parts of Canada since its introduction to North America in the 1840s. It causes extensive economic and environmental damage across its invasive range, and its control and eradication are of utmost importance to agricultural, ecological, recreational, and transportational stakeholders. Developments in molecular ecology and invasive management have found that genetic diversity and hybridization of aquatic macrophytes may affect their susceptibility to herbicide treatments, and genotype or lineage identification are important control variables that must be considered in field and …

Transformed, Not Resolved: Ethnic Federalism And The Politics Of Conflict In Ethiopia, Melayae L. Houser

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis investigates whether Ethiopia's system of ethnic federalism resolved the longstanding conflicts that have characterized the country's political history or instead transformed them into new manifestations. Introduced in 1991 after the collapse of the Derg regime, ethnic federalism reorganized Ethiopia into ethnically defined regional states and granted groups constitutional rights to self-governance and self-determination. The system aimed to address historical grievances stemming from decades of centralized, exclusionary governance.

Employing a four-part analytical framework, this thesis analyzes two case studies: the Tigray War of 2020–2022 and the Oromia-Somali border conflict, to argue that ethnic federalism did not resolve Ethiopia's underlying …

The Economics Of The U.S. Student Loan Market And The Case For The Education Development Financial Institution, Ian Akers

CMC Senior Theses

The United States student loan market is shaped by a variety of market failures–credit constraints, positive externalities, behavioral frictions including myopia, debt aversion, and misperception–that together justify government intervention in the market. Yet the design of federal intervention is just as important as its existence. This thesis details the economic theory underpinning the market for student loans, evaluates three historical federal student loan programs (the Perkins Loan Program, the Federal Family Education Loan Program, and the Federal Direct Loan Program) through the lens of that theory. The thesis then proposes a novel institutional model as a targeted response to the …

Pillpetz: A Smarter Way To Encourage Medication Adherence In Children, John H. Begley

CMC Senior Theses

Medication adherence is usually framed as a problem of patient behavior, but this thesis argues that it is equally a problem of design. Children who take daily medication face barriers that adults often do not: developing executive function, dependence on caregivers, shifting school and home routines, privacy concerns, and stigma around being perceived as different. The standard prescription bottle, by contrast, was designed primarily for dispensing efficiency, safety, and accidental ingestion prevention—not for sustained daily use by a developing child.

This thesis proposes PillPetz, a smart pill case and digital companion that uses routine, play, dose confirmation, and caregiver-connected support …

Revenge Of The Interceptors? The Dod, Congress, And The Return Of Space-Based Missile Defense During Trump 45, Chad Mcelroy

CMC Senior Theses

The initiation of the Golden Dome for America program has brought space-based missile defense (SBMD) to the forefront of American national security policy and rekindled debates that had laid dormant since the administration of President Ronald Reagan. How, forty-two years after President Reagan first proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, did SBMD return as a national priority? In lieu of public information about the ongoing Golden Dome initiative, this thesis explores the first Trump administration, otherwise known as Trump 45, in order to analyze the development of SBMD proposals by its proponents in Congress and the Department of Defense. I used …

Algorithmic Trading In Idiosyncratic-Payoff Markets: A Multi-Agent System For On-Chain Prediction Contracts, Saif Aldeen A.K. Agha

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis documents the design, deployment, and forward-test evaluation of an evolutionary multi-agent algorithmic trading system on Polymarket, the largest decentralized prediction market. The system pairs a locally-hosted 72-billion-parameter language model with a gradient-boosted statistical filter and an evolutionary selection mechanism that maintains a population of approximately 500 autonomous trading agents. Each agent generates a probability estimate for an event, compares it to the prevailing market price, and trades the resulting disagreement.

The central empirical exercise estimates a panel regression of trade-level profit on the absolute disagreement between the agent's probability estimate and the market price, controlling for agent identity, …

From Reconstruction To The Carceral State: Law, Labor, And Punishment In Black America, Nicolas S. Changbencharoen

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the reconfiguration of racial and labor subordination in the United States from Reconstruction to the present, arguing that the legal abolition of slavery did not dismantle the economic and institutional structures on which it rested. It traces a continuous trajectory through which law and the criminal justice system were systematically weaponized to reconstitute slavery's essential functions under successive institutional forms, each serving as a deliberate mechanism for the extraction of Black labor in service of private and state interests. The analysis culminates in an examination of the modern carceral state, concluding that contemporary prison labor programs continue …

Goods, Practices, Excellence, And The Law: Steps To An Internal Theory Of Value, Rowan Gray

CMC Senior Theses

Practices are the coherent and complex social activities we spend much of our lives engaging in. This category encompasses everything from figure skating to wine-tasting to friend relationships. We gain immense value from participating in practices, and philosophers have articulated a number of accounts for where the value emerges from and how we can best experience it. Many of these theories are ‘externalist’, because they posit that value is incidental to practices and emerges from outside of them.

In contrast, this thesis will argue that the value in practices is internal to each practice. The value comes from each practice’s …

Authoritarian Development & Political Economy Of East Asia: The Making Of South Korea’S Developmental Regime, Christopher J. Chung

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the historical evolution of South Korea's developmental trajectory during the Park Chung-hee era (1961-1979), a period that left an indelible mark on the country's political economy and industrial landscape. Rather than treating Park's regime as its own starting point, this thesis situates it within a longer historical arc beginning with Japanese colonial rule and continuing through Syngman Rhee's aid-dependent republic, arguing that Korea's developmental success was neither institutionally inevitable nor externally engineered, but the product of a historically specific and ideologically driven state-building project. Four primary questions guide this research: what historical conditions shaped the institutional landscape …

Top-Tier Venture Capital Backing And Startup Acquisition Speed: Evidence Of Certification Signaling In Private Markets, Nicolas Wilde

CMC Senior Theses

The venture capital market is defined by information asymmetry, and private acquisitions represent the setting where that asymmetry bites hardest. Acquirers evaluating private targets have no prospectus, no analyst coverage, and no independent market price to anchor their judgment. This paper asks whether the reputation of a startup's lead investor shapes how quickly that startup is acquired. Using a sample of 1,000 acquired United States technology startups founded between 2008 and 2016, sourced from Crunchbase, I estimate a cross-sectional OLS regression of months from founding to acquisition on a binary indicator of top-tier venture capital backing based on the 2016 …

Modulating Oran Nitrate-Reducing Bacteria To Enhance Nitric Oxide Bioavailability As A Therapeutic Target For Atherosclerosis, Donovan C. Davidson

CMC Senior Theses

Atherosclerosis remains the primary driver of global cardiovascular disease, yet clinical interventions are largely restricted to high-cost, invasive procedures only after it has reached a critical stage. Recent research has identified a connection between the oral microbiome and vascular health via the enterosalivary nitrate-nitrite-nitic oxide (NO) pathway. Oral nitrate-reducing bacteria (ONRB) drive the synthesization of NO by reducing dietary nitrate into nitrite, which is then converted into bioavailable NO. NO is a potent vasodilator that maintains endothelial health by suppressing inflammation through inhibiting the expression of adhesion molecules VCAM-1 and ICAM-1. However, this pathway is easily compromised by dysbiotic oral …

The Jamaica That Dreams: A Normative Application Of Developmental Theory, Tamoy Pitt

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines Jamaica’s persistent underdevelopment through Martha Nussbaum's normative application of the capabilities approach as per her conception in Creating Capabilities. Through this approach, the paper will argue that Jamaica’s underdevelopment is a result of the failure of its domestic institutions to provide all citizens with the substantive freedoms and capabilities necessary to live lives of dignity. Originally detailed by Amartya Sen in his book Development as Freedom, the capabilities approach posits freedom as both the means and ends to development while rejecting contemporary approaches to development such as GDP, Utilitarianism, or Rawlsian resource-based approaches as insufficient frameworks for …