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Pragmatic Steps Toward An Empirical Psychology Of The Whole Person (Editor's Introduction), Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Critiques of materialism within humanistic and transpersonal psychology now target an outdated ontology, since materialism has given way to physicalism. Drawing on Strawson’s argument that a physicalism claiming to encompass all facts must account for consciousness, this essay proposes a pragmatic physicalism that must also account for lived experience. It traces the marginalization of experience to Galileo’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities, carried forward by Descartes and Newton and echoed in reductive accounts of mind as “what the brain does.” A pragmatic physicalism, applied with integrity through mixed methods and inclusive of a complete range of human experiences, capacities, …

Probiotics In Clinical Practice: Mechanisms, Applications, And Evidence-Based-Use, Christopher Dimatteo

Capstone Showcase

Probiotics, are live microorganisms that can provide health benefits when consumed in the right amounts, have gained attention as potential therapies for a range of conditions. This article examines the current understanding of probiotics, focusing on how they work, the conditions they might help manage, and the challenges that come with probiotic use. Research shows that probiotics can support gut health by balancing the microbiome, strengthening the intestinal barrier, and influencing the immune system. They have shown promise in conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, antibiotic-associated diarrhea, and some inflammatory disorders. However, their effectiveness depends on the specific strain used, and …

Streamlining The Data Mining Process Through Ai-Driven Prompt Templates, Mia Montevirgen, Drew Yan, Clara Lu, Laurent Shen, Weihong Ni

Capstone Showcase

With the increasing use and relevancy of AI in the world, this project aims to harness the power of AI, specifically ChatGPT, to streamline the process of data mining workflows. By developing custom prompt templates, this project seeks to utilize OpenAI API to assist with key data mining tasks, including data understanding, importing, and cleaning. This approach aims to increase workflow speed, reproducibility, and accessibility in data mining projects. The effectiveness of these prompt templates is evaluated by applying them to diverse datasets and assessing their impact on accuracy, efficiency, and reproducibility. Overall, the project highlights the potential to use …

From Campus To Career: Enhancing Career Support Services For Graduate International Students At The University Of Kentucky, Aku Fiagbeto, Ratwah Alhazmi

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

During the 2023–2024 academic year, the University of Kentucky enrolled a total of 1,285 international students, with 784 (61%) being graduate students. International students play a crucial role in enriching the university’s cultural and academic landscape. While UK has achieved record enrollment and improved student success rates, including a 66% graduation rate that places it among the top 100 public institutions in the U.S., it is important to consider whether these trends apply to international students as well. Retention and graduation rates for this demographic may differ from those of domestic students, highlighting potential challenges such as visa restrictions, financial …

Managing Kentucky's Coal Severance Tax Decline: Lessons From Other States, Ryan Reed

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Governments levy severance taxes on the extraction of natural resources such as coal, oil, and natural gas. This can be a substantial source of revenue for these entities, but overreliance on this has led to what is now known through extensive research as the so-called ‘resource curse’. This has been observed to create political instability, corruption, and repression within resource-rich areas. Additionally, it cripples the ability of the area to pursue future non-resource related economic development after the resource is depleted. A Sovereign Wealth Fund has been touted as one such solution to bridge this gap as an intergenerational wealth …

Beyond The Gas Tax: Evaluating Oregon’S Road Usage Charge (Orego) As A Model For Sustainable Infrastructure Funding, Gilles David Kwekam

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Fuel tax revenues are declining nationwide due to electric vehicle adoption, improved fuel efficiency, and long periods without rate adjustments. This erosion has created long-term instability in transportation funding, including in Oregon, where revenue no longer aligns with road use. Road usage charges (RUCs) offer a potential replacement by charging drivers per mile traveled rather than per gallon consumed. However, their success depends less on technology and more on how programs are designed and governed.

This capstone examines which design features make RUC programs effective, using Oregon’s OReGO program as the central case. A Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) comparing Oregon, …

2025-2026 Risd Course Catalog, Risd Registrar's Office, Risd Archives

RISD Course Catalogs / Announcements

No abstract provided.

Investigating The Effect Of Ai Use Disclosure And Identity On Faculty Evaluation, Nchimunya Mwiinga

Honors Program Theses

This study examines how professors' disclosure of artificial intelligence (AI) use affects student evaluations and whether these effects vary by professor ethnicity and gender. Participants reviewed identical course materials attributed to professors varying in gender and ethnicity (Asian, Black, Hispanic), with half explicitly disclosing AI use in material preparation. Results revealed that professors who disclosed AI use received significantly lower ratings across all evaluation dimensions. Furthermore, ethnicity interacted significantly with disclosure—Asian professors experienced the most substantial negative impact, Hispanic professors showed moderate negative effects, and Black professors demonstrated minimal differences between disclosure conditions. No significant gender effects were observed. These …

Recovering Twice: An Autoethnographic Account Of Healing As An Injured Athlete, Aleksa Allen

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

This autoethnographic thesis explores the deeply personal and culturally embedded experience of injury, recovery, and identity as a collegiate athlete. It foregrounds the psychological toll of physical injury, the silence around disordered eating in athletics, and the gendered dynamics that render certain injuries and bodies invisible. This narrative is not meant to stand in for every athlete’s experience, but to ask what one individual experience reveals about the broader systems collegiate athletes inhabit. These systems are shaped by performance-based expectations, disposability, and silence. Drawing from lived experience, I trace my own trajectory as an athlete through the tightrope of recruitment, …

The Ascendance Of Influencers: Saints Of Capitalism In The Digital Age, Riley R. Hourihan

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

This thesis examines the rise of social media influencers as modern-day saints within the cultural and economic framework of late capitalism. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship from religious studies, media theory, and cultural criticism, it argues that influencer culture does not replace religion but retools its structures—ritual, authority, devotion, and community—for the digital age. Through detailed case studies ranging from Hailey Bieber and Taylor Swift to Ballerina Farm and MrBeast, the paper explores how influencers shape identity, mediate ethics, and mobilize affect through algorithmic rituals and parasocial relationships. Influencers perform a form of digital sanctity that parallels traditional hagiography, guiding followers …

Intersectionality Of Women's Rights Advocacy: Resource Equity, Protection From Violence, And Legal Equality, Erin Hunt

Integrated Studies

Placing a frame of intersectionality on women’s rights advocacy changes not only the way the movement is viewed, but it also strengthens the actions taken and the future processes as well. There are many intricate issues within the context of women’s rights advocacy. However, examining the intersectional issues and aspects of resource equity, protection from violence, and legal equality can attest to the fundamental concerns continually being faced. In exploring the current difficulties along with the past outcomes from an intersectional standpoint, there is a more significant possibility for affirmative change moving forward. Intersectionality within women’s rights shows the overlapping …

The Importance Of Astronomy: Practical And Fundamental Aspects, Bailey N. Rossetti

Integrated Studies

Astronomy is both a field that answers fundamental theories and questions about our universe, while also advancing practical innovations that are used today. Astronomy analyzes questions about life beyond planet Earth and explores how planets, galaxies, and stars form. From early stargazers who only depended on stars for timekeeping and navigation to new advances in telescopes and space missions, astronomy has deepened the knowledge of humans for centuries. Astronomy has also supplied us with ways to track time, make calendars, and use navigation such as GPS systems. Beyond expanding discoveries, astronomy created technologies with wide-ranging features-- including medical imaging, satellite …

Between Science And Fantasy: Dirt In Kingsley’S Fairy-Tale Vision, Sandra M. Alba Jimenez

Student Papers (English)

No abstract provided.

Spatial Vulnerability Towards Flooding And Mitigation Of Three Coastal Cities: Charleston, South Carolina | Passaic City, New Jersey| Virginia Beach, Virginia, Kory Abbott

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This meta-analysis investigates the impact of flooding on three coastal communities along the Atlantic Coast: Charleston, South Carolina; Passaic City, New Jersey; and Virginia Beach, Virginia. One goal of this paper is to determine the adequacy or inadequacy in the flood mitigation responses of these communities so that future actions can be taken to improve flood mitigation measures. Another goal is to consider whether the cities experience environmental injustice in terms of flooding mitigation. This paper draws from governmental documents, news reports, local experiences, updated storm management systems, and scholarly articles. The methodology used in this meta-analysis is as follows: …

The Next Chapter Of Apartheid Is "Gender Apartheid", Naheed A. Farid

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Shield To A Sword: Using The Dormant Commerce Clause To Challenge State Laws Promoting Fossil Fuels, James Crisafulli

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Caught In The Crosshairs: Predictive Policing And The Use Of Force, Matthew D. Zampa

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Precision Bootstrap Studies Of Fermions And Stress Tensors In Conformal Field Theories, Matthew Stephen Mitchell

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Conformal field theories (CFTs) describe a wide variety of scale-invariant phenomena. As CFTs are tightly constrained by symmetry, unitarity, and self-consistency, it is possible to compute rigorous bounds on their observables by translating these constraints into a semidefinite programming problem. This approach, known as the numerical conformal bootstrap, has been used to great success in recent years, and has produced the tightest bounds to-date on the critical exponents of 3d Ising and O(N) models. In this work, we conduct bootstrap studies of spinning operators in several CFTs.

First, we present a numerical bootstrap analysis of the critical 3d Gross–Neveu–Yukawa models, …

Experimental And Computational Analysis Of Pfas Adsorption And Transport Through A Soil-Bentonite Cutoff Wall Amended With Activated Carbon, Leeann B. Michael

Master’s Theses

Due to their toxicity, prevalence, and persistence in the environment, poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) pose a significant threat to human health and ecological systems. When conventional groundwater remediation methods are ineffective for PFAS, in situ containment using engineered vertical barriers (cutoff walls) becomes a potentially viable alternative. This research investigates the efficacy of soil-bentonite (SB) cutoff walls amended with granular activated carbon (GAC) for long-term PFAS containment in groundwater. The focus of this work is characterizing PFAS adsorption onto the mixed matrix for determination of isotherm parameters for modeling. Along the way, considerations for sample handling were investigated to …

Same Dynamics, Different Graph: Exploring Correlations, Similarities, And Renormalization Of Dynamics On Networks Using Temporal Distance Theory, Matthew Hockenbrock

Master’s Theses

Analyzing dynamics that take place on graphs (networks) is fundamental to modern network theory, with applications spanning biology, social networks, and engineering systems. A significant body of research exists that considers the similarity and scaling of network topologies. However, understanding how dynamic behavior varies across different graph topologies - particularly how signals propagate and dynamic behaviors scale between small and large networks - remains a significant challenge.

To address this challenge, this thesis presents a comprehensive framework to analyze how dynamic signals propagate and scale on network topologies using temporal distance theory. Three research goals were accomplished. First, a …

Transformer-Based Symbolic Music Generation, Ben Buentello

Master’s Theses

This thesis investigates the capacity of transformer-based architectures to learn generalized musical patterns through symbolic generation. To support this exploration, a complete music generation pipeline was developed, beginning with the construction and classification of a large-scale dataset of over 170,000 MIDI files. The dataset was processed using rule-based heuristics and custom neural classifiers to separate tracks by musical function and contour. A novel tokenization scheme, MINTii, was introduced to encode musical information compactly through interval-based representations, reducing redundancy and promoting generalization. Using this infrastructure, a transformer model was trained to generate single-track melodic sequences. Its performance was evaluated through both …

On The Applicability Of Generating Pathological Speech Data Using Large Language Models, Caroline Hopkins

SURF Posters 2025

Pathological speech data is scarce in Speech-Language Pathology (SLP). Synthetic data, thus, is an appealing alternative. It extends the amount of usable data without the risk for privacy concerns that naturally occurring data may bring. In this work, a collection of Large-Language-Model-based methods for generating synthetic pathological speech data are studied. Human experts in SLP as judges delivered negative opinions on the quality of the synthetic data generated by a variety of prompt engineering methods. From the judgements, the resulting data was found to be weak in reflecting the characteristics of the target disorders. Further research will involve fine-tuning the …

Supercapacitors With Cotton Shell-Derived Activated Carbons And Porous Polymer Electrolyte Films, Saurabh Singh, Yulin Zhang, S. A. Hashmi, Fuqian Yang

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

Some of the well-known challenges in the field of supercapacitors (SCs), or more specifically, electrical double-layer capacitors (EDLCs), such as low energy density and high cost, have proven to be major barriers to their widespread market success despite having some excellent electrochemical merits such as high-power density and good cyclic stability. In this work, efforts have been made to overcome these gaps and eventually enhance the performance of EDLCs via a cost-effective and eco-friendly approach. To fabricate these EDLCs, a bio-waste, namely, cotton-shell-derived activated carbons (ZnACs) (activated with ZnCl2), was used in a mass ratio of 1 : 2 for …

Improvement Of Cellular Pattern Organization And Clarity Through Centrifugal Force, Lauren E. Mehanna, James D. Boyd, Shelley Remus-Williams, Nicole M. Racca, Dawson P. Spraggins, Martha E. Grady, Brad J. Berron

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

Rapid and strategic cell placement is necessary for high throughput tissue fabrication. Current adhesive cell patterning systems rely on fluidic shear flow to remove cells outside of the patterned regions, but limitations in washing complexity and uniformity prevent adhesive patterns from being widely applied. Centrifugation is commonly used to study the adhesive strength of cells to various substrates; however, the approach has not been applied to selective cell adhesion systems to create highly organized cell patterns. This study shows centrifugation as a promising method to wash cellular patterns after selective binding of cells to the surface has taken place. After …

Integrating Protein Language Model And Molecular Dynamics Simulations To Discover Antibiofouling Peptides, Ibrahim A. Imam, Shea Bailey, Duolin Wang, Shuai Zeng, Dong Xu, Qing Shao

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

Antibiofouling peptide materials prevent the nonspecific adsorption of proteins on devices, enabling them to perform their designed functions as desired in complex biological environments. Due to their importance, research on antibiofouling peptide materials has been one of the central subjects of interfacial engineering. However, only a few antibiofouling peptide sequences have been developed. This narrow scope of antibiofouling peptide materials limits their capacity to adapt to the broad spectrum of application scenarios. To address this issue, we searched for antibiofouling peptides in the vast sequence pool of the microbiome library using a combination of deep learning-based high-throughput search and molecular …

Clarifying The Role Of Η-Phase With Varying Chemistry On Localised Corrosion Of A Cu-Containing 7xxx Al-Alloy By Quasi-In-Situ Tem, S. K. Kairy, Y. Wu, S. Turk, A. Shekhter, Rudolph Buchheit, N. Birbilis

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

Quasi-in-situ transmission electron microscopy was employed to study dissolution associated with η-phase (Mg(Zn,Al,Cu)₂) precipitates in a Cu-containing 7xxx Al-alloy. Two distinct η-phase chemistries, with Cu to (Zn+Mg+Al) ratios ∼0.12 and ∼0.2, were studied in 0.01 M NaCl at pH 6 and 2. In near-neutral NaCl, both η-phase precipitates exhibited ‘duplex’ behaviour, i.e., they were primarily more noble with respect to the surrounding Al-matrix, causing matrix dissolution, and simultaneously established nanoscopic active sites within the noble precipitate itself by generating nanoscale pits. Conversely, η-phase precipitates rapidly dealloyed in acidic NaCl, forming nocrystalline Cu remnants containing twins, which subsequently caused …

Enhancing Intrinsic Ductility In Vnbmotaw High Entropy Alloy: A Combinatorial Investigation With Experimental Evaluation Of Theoretical Predictions, Taohid Bin Nur Tuhser, Ian Stewart Winter, Daryl Chrzan, Thomas John Balk

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

The application of refractory high entropy alloys (RHEAs) as engineering materials has been hindered by their poor inherent ductility. In this study, a novel approach combining thin film combinatorial screening with fragmentation testing was employed to identify intrinsically ductile alloy compositions. Inspired by the physics-based intrinsic ductility parameter, the ‘χ-parameter,’ we investigated the replacement of group VI elements (W/Mo) with group V elements (V, Nb, Ta) in the VNbMoTaW system. Conventional combinatorial analyses, including composition, phase, and hardness assessments, were conducted across a wide range of non-equiatomic configurations. The results revealed a broad compositional space favoring a single-phase body-centered cubic …

The Signal Of Airplane Combustion In Soil At A Small Airport In Ohio, Rachel Engels

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Leaded gas has been banned for automobile use in the interest of public health since 1996. However, leaded gas is still used for small piston aircraft so the engine can run safely. To investigate potential environmental impacts of leaded gas, 90 soil samples were taken from around a small airport in Ohio. Soil elemental composition was measured by X-ray fluorescence (XRF), soil organic content determined by Loss-on-Ignition (LOI), and soil ferrimagnetic content measured by magnetic susceptibility. There is an unmistakable airplane fuel combustion signal in the soil at the ends of the runway, where aircraft wait to take off on …

Treating Social Media Addiction In Adolescents: A Scoping Review With Implications For Music Therapy Practice, Roman D. Swain

Theses and Dissertations--Music

With the rapid expansion of online connectivity, concerns have emerged regarding the influence of digital interactions on adolescents’ real-world relationships and mental health. Social media use can expose adolescents to harmful content and disrupt the brain’s pleasure centers, increasing the risk of developing addictive patterns of use. Such disruptions may interfere with daily functioning and contribute to negative mental health outcomes. Given the impact of music on the brain’s reward system, music therapy may offer a beneficial approach for helping adolescents develop mindfulness of social media use and strengthen offline social connections. This thesis presents a scoping review of current …

Engagement In Practice: Partnering With Communities To Address Nuisance Flooding Challenges, Carol L. Considine, Mujde Erten-Unal, Dalya Ismael, Luka Alandra Hamal-Serenity, Farzaneh Soflaei

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Many communities are already experiencing the impacts of climate change that disrupt their daily lives. In Coastal Virginia, these impacts take the form of nuisance and stormwater flooding caused by sea level rise and changes in precipitation. Coastal Virginia has one of the highest relative sea level rise rates on the Atlantic Coast and the regional planning district commission recommends that Atlas 14 rainfall intensity, duration, and frequency curves be increased by 20% to account for changes in rainfall. The Coastal Community Design Collaborative (CCDC), a partnership between Hampton University Architecture and Old Dominion University Engineering & Technology, has had …