Digital Commons Network^™

Integrating Environmental Impact Assessment Into International Shipping Governance : A Bbnj-Pssa Synergy Framework, Thi Thuy Linh Pham

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Occupational Safety In Fishing Vessels : A Comparative Analysis Of Namibia, South Africa And Mozambique In The Sadc Region, Fiina Ndakulilwa Twiihaleni Shaanika

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Optimization Of Aids To Navigation System In Papua New Guinea, Justus Wayne

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

An Assessment Of The Impact Of Illegal Sand Mining On The Coastline Of Liberia, Alphena J. Logan

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Atmospheric Turbulence On Cloud Droplet Distribution And Droplet Impaction On An Airfoil, Arash Shad, Hashnayne Ahmed, ‪Nadim Zgheib, S. Balachandar, S. A. Sherif

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

We conduct turbulence-informed Euler–Lagrange simulations of droplet-laden flow to examine the effects of atmospheric turbulence on droplet impingement characteristics on a NACA 0012 airfoil. We implement statistical overloading, whereby we inject millions of droplets, ranging in diameter from 1 to 160 microns, upstream of the airfoil at an average streamwise velocity of 120 m/s. Within a fraction of a second, these droplets would have either impinged on the airfoil or continued downstream. While the incoming air flow is maintained uniform, droplet injection is informed by ambient turbulence, affecting both the droplet velocity distribution as well as the size-dependent preferential concentration …

Bridging Cultures, Building Communities: The Role Of Academic Libraries In Fostering Multicultural Engagement And Digital Inclusion, Emily Chan, Catarina Lei

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

This paper explores the evolving role of academic libraries in small, multicultural settings. Using the University of Saint Joseph (USJ) in Macao as a case study, we examine how the library acts as a catalyst for interdisciplinary collaboration. By bridging the gap between diverse faculty departments—such as History, Sound Engineering, and Design—the library facilitates innovative projects that preserve local heritage and promote Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This document outlines two specific case studies: the "First Global Typhoon Macau 1874" exhibition and the "OttoSonic" sound installation.

Light & Faith: November 2025, Taylor University

Light & Faith

No abstract provided.

Free-Dom In Creativity: Cost-Accessible Ai Tools For Makerspaces In Academic Libraries, Marvin Factor, Kate Lora Cruz, Yugosto Balbas

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into academic library makerspaces presents emerging opportunities for enhancing innovation, creativity, and user engagement. However, financial considerations often influence the adoption of advanced technologies, particularly in academic institutions located in developing regions. This study systematically reviews freely available AI tools applicable to makerspace environments in academic libraries, providing a descriptive and comparative analysis of their functionalities and potential applications.  By mapping the current landscape of open-access on a gratis level,  this research identifies key categories of AI applications such as design generation, image generation, language processing, and data visualization, highlighting the strengths, limitations, and …

Reimagining Library Services In The Age Of Ai: A Case Study From A Canadian Academic Library, Wei Xuan, Christine Shaw

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

As artificial intelligence reshapes higher education, academic libraries are reimagining their services to meet emerging challenges and opportunities. This article presents a case study of the University of Manitoba Libraries (UML), a Canadian academic library actively integrating AI to improve service delivery, enrich research support, and enhance user engagement while upholding core values of access, equity, and scholarly integrity.

Four key initiatives are discussed: (1) the development of an in-house AI chatbot built on Microsoft Azure services, offering real-time conversational assistance grounded in trusted library content; (2) the implementation of Ex Libris’ Primo Research Assistant to enhance discovery with GPT-based …

Generative Ai As Disruptor And Driver For Library Data Services, Shahira Khair

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

Over the past decade, academic libraries around the world have focused on developing new services to support data-intensive research and open science. This shift has been driven by funder and publisher mandates emphasizing transparency, reproducibility, and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) research l data. Just as these services are maturing, the rapid rise of generative AI tools and their application in research presents a disruptive l force, but also a transformative opportunity for library data services. This paper addresses the evolving impact of generative AI and library data services, contextualized by the experiences of researchers captured in a series of …

Ai Empowerment Of Medical Libraries For Promoting Accessible Reading Of Evidence-Based Health Guidelines, Wenjing Ding

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

In an age marked by overwhelming information and a rapidly aging global population, the need for accessible, comprehensible health information has never been more urgent. Although evidence-based health guidelines play a crucial role in supporting informed medical decision-making, their dense medical language and structural complexity often render them inaccessible to lay audiences. This study investigates the transformative role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in enabling medical libraries to serve as dynamic platforms for promoting the accessible reading of such guidelines, thereby advancing public health literacy and equity.

A dual challenge emerges: on one hand, the expanding volume and sophistication of clinical …

Navigating Transformation: Staffing, Structure, And Strategy In The Ai-Integrated Academic Library, Renji Jacob, Beth Russell

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

The rapid integration of AI, automation, and digital transformation necessitates a strategic evolution of academic libraries in staffing, structure, and strategy. At NYU Abu Dhabi, a global campus navigating a transient, multicultural environment, workforce development is paramount for sustained innovation, service excellence, and future readiness.

This presentation outlines our library's transition from a traditional repository to a dynamic knowledge facilitator and inclusive community hub. We are actively redefining roles to include AI competencies, creating professional development pathways that support AI literacy, and fostering hybrid positions that promote flexibility and growth. Key initiatives include cross-training, peer mentoring, and comprehensive AI literacy …

Hard Lessons, Stronger Banks, Gloria Yang Yu

Asian Management Insights

The enduring wisdom of the Savings and Loan crisis veterans.

When Deep Learning Meets Information Retrieval-Based Bug Localization: A Survey, Feifei Niu, Chuanyi Li, Kui Liu, Xin Xia, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Bug localization is a crucial aspect of software maintenance, running through the entire software lifecycle. Information retrieval-based bug localization (IRBL) identifies buggy code based on bug reports, expediting the bug resolution process for developers. Recent years have witnessed significant achievements in IRBL, propelled by the widespread adoption of deep learning (DL). To provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of the art and delve into key issues, we conduct a survey encompassing 61 IRBL studies leveraging DL. We summarize best practices in each phase of the IRBL workflow, undertake a meta-analysis of prior studies, and suggest future research directions. …

Do Code Semantics Help? A Comprehensive Study On Execution Trace-Based Information For Code Large Language Models, Jian Wang, Xiaofei Xie, Qiang Hu, Shangqing Liu, Yi Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Code Large Language Models (Code LLMs) have opened a new era in programming with their impressive capabilities. However, recent research has revealed critical limitations in their ability to reason about runtime behavior and understand the actual functionality of programs, which poses significant challenges for their post-training and practical deployment. Specifically, Code LLMs encounter two principal issues: (1) a lack of proficiency in reasoning about program execution behavior, as they struggle to interpret what programs actually do during runtime, and (2) inconsistent and fragmented representation of semantic information, such as execution traces, across existing methods, which hinders their ability to generalize …

Efficient Integration Of External Knowledge To Llm-Based World Models Via Retrieval-Augmented Generation And Reinforcement Learning, Chang Yang, Xinrun Wang, Qinggang Zhang, Qi Jiang, Xiao Huang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

World models achieve remarkable success in predicting future states and planning in complex environments and Large Language Models (LLMs) serve as promising foundation to build general world models. However, their performances are usually constrained by the limited external knowledge to specific environments. Existing research attempts to enhance LLM-based world models through prompting or fine-tuning approaches, which are either requiring human knowledge or computationally extensive. Therefore, we introduce Retrieval-Augmented World Models (RAWM), a novel framework that leverages retrieval-augmented generation to efficiently integrate the external knowledge to LLM-based world models. Our main contributions are threefold: (i) We introduce a memory system and …

Usefulness And Diminishing Returns: Evaluating Social Information In Recommender Systems, Qing Meng, Huiyu Min, Ming Shan Hee, Roy Ka-Wei Lee, Bing Tian Dai, Shuai Xu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social recommendation, which leverages users’ social information to predict users’ preferences, is a popular branch of recommender systems. Many existing studies have attempted to advance the performance of collaborative filtering methods by leveraging the user-user matrix to enhance user embedding learning with user’s social connections. While the existing social recommender systems have demonstrated good performance in various recommendation tasks, the extent of social information usefulness in recommender systems remains unclear. This paper addresses the research gap by designing experiments to answer three research questions: (i) How useful is social information in varying user-item data sparsity? (ii) How much social information …

Distillcaps: Enhancing Audio-Language Alignment In Captioning Via Retrieval-Augmented Knowledge Distillation, Thinh Pham, Nghiem Diep, Lizi Liao, Binh Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Automated audio captioning (AAC) benefits from incorporatingexternal context to interpret complex sounds, but doing so withretrieval-augmented generation (RAG) at inference is sometimesinfeasible due to data availability or incurs significant latency andcomplexity. We propose DistillCaps, a novel training-time frame-work that leverages RAG to guide knowledge distillation for im-proved audio-language alignment, while lessening the relianceon retrieval during inference. In our framework, a RAG-equippedteacher model retrieves relevant textual information (e.g., simi-lar captions) for each audio clip and uses it for training to gener-ate context-enriched captions. Simultaneously, a student model istrained to imitate this teacher, learning to produce high-qualitycaptions from audio alone. We further …

Damslnet: Dual-Attention Multi-Scale Lightweight Network For Plant Disease Classification, Linfan Deng, Juan Qin, Kun Li, Jinhua Zhu, Zhaoxia Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Accurately identifying crop diseases plays a crucial role in advancing intelligent and modern agricultural production. Deep learning techniques have performed robust performance in classifying plant disease images. However, current studies face the challenge that many plant disease datasets are generated in controlled environments, leading to reduced model performance in real-world agricultural settings. This paper aims to provide a lightweight model that can accurately classify plant diseases in natural environments. Specifically, this paper investigates the Dual-Attention Multi-Scale Lightweight Network (DAMSLNet), which combines dual-attention-based multi-scale feature extraction and deep information fusion, to classify plant diseases. At the front end, the model employs …

A Comprehensive Overview Of Chronic Wound Infections And Current Treatment Methods, Sarah Fakher, David J. Westenberg

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Chronic wound infections pose significant healthcare challenges due to persistent biofilms, antibiotic resistance, and impaired healing pathways. These wounds are characterized by prolonged inflammation, microbial colonization, and disrupted tissue regeneration, leading to substantial morbidity and healthcare costs. This article reviews current knowledge on chronic wound types, their pathophysiology, and the mechanisms underlying biofilm formation to examine the latest advancements in antimicrobial-based strategies aimed at addressing these challenges. It highlights how diverse materials and technologies have been engineered to improve infection management, enhance tissue regeneration, and overcome the limitations of traditional treatments as well as advances that leverage innovations such as …

The Impact Of Sanctions On Github Developers And Activities, Youmei Fan, Ani Hovhannisyan, Hideaki Hata, Christoph Treude, Raula G. Kula

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The GitHub platform has fueled the creation of truly global software, enabling contributions from developers across various geographical regions of the world. As software becomes more entwined with global politics and social regulations, it becomes similarly subject to government sanctions. In 2019, GitHub restricted access to certain services for users in specific locations but rolled back these restrictions for some communities (e.g., the Iranian community) in 2021. We conducted a largescale empirical study, collecting approximately 156 thousand user profiles and their 41 million activity points from 2008 to 2022, to understand the response of developers. Our results indicate that many …

‘Earth System Engineers’ And The Cumulative Impact Of Organisms In Deep Time, Simon A. F. Darroch, Michelle M. Casey, Alison T. Cribb, Amanda E. Bates, Matthew E. Clapham, Dori L. Contreras, Matthew Craffey, Ivo A. P. Duijnstee, William Gearty, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Marcus J. Hamilton, Riley F. Hayes, Pincelli M. Hull, Daniel E. Ibarra, V. A. Korasidis, Jaemin Lee, Cindy V. Looy, Tyler R. Lyson, Benjamin Muddiman, Peter D. Roopnarine, Alex B. Shupinski, Felisa A. Smith, Alycia L. Stigall, Catalina P. Tomé, Katherine A. Turk, Amelia Villaseñor, Peter J. Wagner, Steve C. Wang, S. Kathleen Lyons

College of Life Sciences Faculty Papers

Understanding the role of humans as 'ecosystem engineers' requires a deep-time perspective rooted in evolutionary history and the fossil record. However, no conceptual framework exists for studying the rise of ecosystem engineering in deep time, requiring us to consider effects that fall outside the scope of traditional definitions. Here, we present a new framework applicable to both modern and ancient engineering-type effects. We propose a new term - 'Earth system engineering' - to describe biological processes that alter the structure and function of planetary spheres, and which combines core tenets of ecosystem engineering, niche construction, and legacy effects. We illustrate …

When Performance Takes Priority, Matthew D. Whitwer, Joseph H. Hammer, Brenna Gomer, Elahe Vahidi, Sarah A. Wilson

Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology Faculty Publications

Engineering education is at a critical juncture where supporting student mental health is essential for fostering persistence, equity, and the development of a resilient and innovative workforce. Yet, undergraduate engineering students experiencing mental health concerns are often unlikely to seek professional help. To identify factors that account for this gap in treatment, this project administered the Undergraduate Engineering Mental Health Help Seeking Instrument to 1903 engineering undergraduates across five institutions. Correlations and regression were used to examine the links between help-seeking intention and (a) help-seeking mechanisms (e.g., attitude, perceived norm, self-efficacy) and (b) beliefs about seeking help. Students’ personal evaluation …

U.S. Climate Litigation During The Biden Years, Margaret Barry

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Using cases collected in the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law’s Climate Litigation Database, this report analyzes the 630 climate change lawsuits filed in United States courts while President Joseph R. Biden was in office. During the Biden administration, the federal government reversed course on the first Trump administration’s climate deregulation and embarked on a “whole-of-government approach to combatting the climate crisis.” Many states and municipalities pursued their own efforts to mitigate and prepare for climate change, while other states undertook climate deregulatory efforts. During the four years of the Biden administration, many areas of the U.S. experienced disasters linked …

The World Is Beautiful, Chelsea Demott Wildey

Theses

My thesis, The World is Beautiful is a short, digitally animated film that follows the journey of a jaded employee working at a dystopian fishery. The intention of this piece was to tell a well-paced, coherent story that also served as an allegory to spark verbal discourse in an audience. As a surface level story, the film portrays a working protagonist who has been forced to remain seated at her desk by a mechanical chair. She, presumably, has been monotonously pressing icons on a screen for her entire life until something catches her eye and prompts her to break free …

Three-Dimensional Cfd Analyses Of Natural Circulation In A Pressurized Water Reactor During A Loss Of Coolant Accident, Arad Dehestany

Theses

In this research, ANSYS FLUENT simulations will be performed on natural circulation cooling performance during loss of coolant accident on the semi-scale Mod-2A geometry. Natural circulation experiments were performed in the semi-scale Mod-2A test facility which is a small-scale model of the primary system of a four-loop PWR nuclear power generating plant. The CFD results are validated using the tests done in the facility. The scope of the research is to understand the flow, temperature distribution, inventory coolant losses, and pressure drop in the system. These findings can provide insights into the performance of such systems and identify potential improvements …

Bicontinuous Interconnected Porous Biomaterials For Tissue Engineering And Regeneration, Aihik Banerjee, Anjana Khanal, Prince D Okoro, Shankar P Kharal, Kevin Dalsania, Baishali Kanjilal, Shiril B Iragavarapu, Yiqing Chen, Janitha M Unagolla, Huinan H Liu, Joshua T Morgan, Robert P Hesketh, Arash Pezhouman, Reza Ardehali, Bahman Anvari, Martin F Haase, Iman Noshadi

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Biomaterials mimicking natural extracellular matrix are necessary to create an optimal microenvironment for cell adhesion, migration, proliferation, and differentiation. These scaffolds must possess bicontinuous interconnected porosity to ensure the effective exchange of oxygen, nutrients, and metabolic waste, which are crucial for developing functional tissues. Here, a novel bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion (BIJEL)-Integrated PORous Engineered System (BIPORES) is developed to confer bioinert synthetic polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) with unique bicontinuous interconnected porosity and surface topography. This platform is fabricated through controlled phase separation and interfacial stabilization of two continuous phases by nanoparticles. Functional validation using human mesenchymal stem cells, and human …

Alterations In Cardiovascular Parameters In 5xfad Murine Model, Andrea G Marshall, Dominique Stephens, Kit Neikirk, Sepiso K Masenga, Bryanna Shao, Amber Crabtree, Zer Vue, Heather K Beasley, Edgar Garza-Lopez, Estevão Scudese, Benjamin I Rodriguez, Han Le, Steven Damo, George E Taffet, Okwute M Ochayi, Ronald Mcmillan, Jeremiah M Afolabi, Vernat Exil, Ashton Oliver, Vineeta Sharma, Pamela Martin, Amadou Gaye, Chanel Harris, Briar Tomeau, Lacara Bell, Markis Hamilton, Taneisha Gillyard, Railyn Webster, Marcus Jackson, Prem Prakash, Shanilah Frierson, Chandravanu Dash, Margaret Mungai, Annet Kirabo, Jennifer A Gaddy, Nelson Wandira, Antentor Hinton, Anilkumar K Reddy

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a global health issue, affecting over 6 million people in the United States, with that number expected to increase as the population ages. As a neurodegenerative disorder that affects memory and cognitive functions, it is well established that AD is associated with cardiovascular risk factors beyond only cerebral decline. In this study, we measured hemodynamic parameters related to cardiovascular and cerebrovascular function in 5xFAD mice with AD and their littermates. Specifically, we measured cardiovascular pulse wave velocity parameters, a marker of arterial stiffness and cardiovascular risk, and cerebrovascular pulse wave velocity, a novel technique to measure …

The Effect Of Perceived Principal Leadership Styles And School Type On Elementary Teacher Self-Efficacy, Karen M. Gonzalez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of perceived principal leadership styles and school type on elementary teachers’ self-efficacy. The study examined two research questions. The first examined differences between teachers’ self-efficacy in Title 1 and non-Title 1 schools, and the second examined differences in teacher self-efficacy and perceived principal leadership styles (authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire). The convenience sample included 129 elementary teachers from social media teacher groups that taught in various Title 1 and non-Title 1 school districts. I used a quantitative, causal-comparative method to collect data and survey questionnaires that identified trends in leadership styles …

Understanding The Retention Of Alternatively Certified Teachers: Key Factors And Insights, Donna M. Hardy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The problem addressed in this study was the high attrition rate of alternatively certified teachers

who often exit the classroom at greater rates than traditionally trained teachers, particularly

within their first 5 years of teaching. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived

experience of alternatively certified teachers to identify the support, conditions, and leadership

practices that contributed to their persistence. A qualitative phenomenological study was used,

with data collected from 14 alternatively certified teachers who work in a Central Texas school

district, utilizing semistructured interviews. Data collection methods included interviews,

member checking, and researcher field notes. Research …