Digital Commons Network^™

"Using A Sledgehammer To Crack A Nut" A Proposal To Re-Frame The Media Industry's Perspective On Generative Ai, Reace Barnett

Student Theses and Dissertations

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) continues to be a divisive topic in the media industry and there are concerns about technical challenges that may affect GenAI’s trustworthiness and reliability. As such, fears of degraded public trust in media products and services have arisen, and while we have a tendency to trust machines, it is clear that public attitudes toward automated decision-making are contentious. Previous research on machine cues found that they are associated with increased perceived objectivity and willingness to disclose information. Conversational GenAI may reduce political polarization, yet many people remain worried about risks such as bias, hallucinations, improper attribution, …

A Portable Device To Elicit Sensory Trick And Monitor Forearm Muscle Activity In Pianists With Musician’S Dystonia, Josef Franczak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Musician’s Dystonia (MD) is a condition that can be acquired in professional musicians,causing involuntary contractions and the loss of fine motor control. The most common pharmaceutical treatment, botulinum toxin injections, has been shown to have side effects of muscle weakness and atrophy. The sensory trick, shown to temporarily relieve symptoms of dystonia, has potential to be used as an alternative or alongside current therapies, allowing patients with MD to return to playing music professionally. To systematically deploy the sensory trick and monitor forearm muscle activity, the first prototype of the Wearable Sensorimotor Integrator (wSMI) has been developed.

The wSMI is …

Vibrations Of Tapered Beam Via The Exterior Matrix Method, Simranjit Kaur

Student Theses and Dissertations

Cell phone towers, utility poles, and traffic signal poles all use hollow, tapered beams as their main structural element. Because these structures are tall and exposed to wind forces, understanding their vibration behavior is important for ensuring stability and safety. We will use the Exterior Matrix Method to analyse a single beam, which can be used to analyse compound structures involving tapered beams. First, we find the system of four equations satisfied by the tapered beam, which can be converted to a 4 x 4 matrix. Then we find the exterior matrix, which is a 6 x 6 matrix, corresponding …

Integration Of Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies In High School Science Classes, Pamela Chanell Williams

Student Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study investigated the integration of culturally responsive teaching strategies in high school science classes. The problem addressed in this study is that teachers are underprepared to employ culturally responsive teaching strategies to facilitate academic success in science courses for culturally and linguistically diverse students. By investigating the integration of culturally responsive teaching strategies during instruction, improvements can be made to the effectiveness of professional development centered on culturally responsive teaching strategies found in the Ready for Rigor framework. The conceptual framework that served as the foundation for this study was Hammond’s (2015) Ready for Rigor framework. Questionnaires, …

The Ecotoxicological Implications Of Switching From Fluorescent To Light Emitting Diode Lighting For Zooplankton Culturing And Whole Effluent Toxicity Testing, Orithea Z. Regn

Student Theses and Dissertations

In the global transition toward light emitting diode (LED) lighting, an understudied area is the impact on the culturing and testing of Whole Effluent Toxicity (WET) testing organisms, more specifically, the zooplankton species. Without comparison to the current lighting used for culturing and testing, it is unknown if there will be an impact on performance, which could affect effluent, regulatory, and product safety decisions. This dissertation investigated if culturing and reference toxicity testing using sodium chloride for Ceriodaphnia dubia, Daphnia magna, and D. pulex under LED lighting was comparable to fluorescent. Comparisons were made between two laboratories and by season, …

College Success Comparison Between First-Generation College Students And Non-First-Generation College Students In The South Texas Plains, Obed Guerrero

Student Theses and Dissertations

This study examined differences in academic success between first-generation college students and non-first-generation college students enrolled in community colleges in the South Texas region. National research has consistently reported that first-generation college students tend to experience lower academic outcomes; however, limited empirical evidence exists regarding whether these disparities persist within South Texas, a region characterized by a high Hispanic student population and a substantial proportion of first-generation students. This gap limits the ability of institutions to make context-specific decisions that support student success. The purpose of this study was to compare grade point average, fall-to-fall retention, and graduation outcomes between …

If It Doesn't Hurt You Aren't Working Hard Enough: An Examination Of Coach Experience In High School Debate, Rosie Valdez Block

Student Theses and Dissertations

High school debate coaching constitutes a uniquely demanding educational role, defined by emotional labor, extended work hours, institutional precarity, and systemic inequities. Despite their significant contributions to students’ intellectual and personal growth, the professional sustainability of debate coaches remains underexamined. This dissertation investigates the conditions contributing to burnout among high school debate coaches through the theoretical lenses of Maslach’s Burnout Theory, as contemporized by Edú-Valsania et al. (2022), and teacher self-efficacy theory, to understand how emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished professional confidence emerge in this context. The study is further guided by constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014), enabling a bottom-up, …

Educator Perceptions Of The Impact Of The Avid Program On Minority Students’ School Achievement, Genia Smith

Student Theses and Dissertations

While Hispanic and African American college enrollment rates have increased over the past 20 years, minority students continue to face structural and educational barriers that make it more challenging for them to prepare for and gain entry to college. The Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program is a college preparatory initiative designed to provide additional academic and social support for historically disadvantaged students. Guided by a socio-cultural theoretical framework, this mixed-methods survey-based study explored the perceptions of 10 administrators and 10 teachers in a Southeast region school district regarding the impacts of AVID on minority students’ achievement. The findings revealed …

Understanding Educational Burnout: An Analysis Of The Perceptions Of K-5 Elementary Teachers, Melody Sebastian

Student Theses and Dissertations

Burnout in the educational environment is highly prevalent among teachers. Studies reveal that workplace burnout is characterized as chronic stress while on the job that persists over time. Although research has examined this issue, there remains a need for further studies focused specifically on elementary teachers’ perceptions and experiences with burnout. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study aimed to understand the perceptions of K-5 elementary classroom teachers’ experiences with burnout and how they informally built support systems to mitigate burnout. Maslach’s Multidimensional Theory of Burnout served as the theoretical framework for this study. The methodological approach utilized semi-structured, one-on-one …

Impact Of Expanded Core Curriculum On College And Job Placement For The Blind And Visually Impaired, Susan Drake

Student Theses and Dissertations

Students who are blind or visually impaired face persistent barriers in postsecondary education and employment, despite access to academic instruction and legally mandated supports. Although academic accommodations are often provided, less is known about how instruction in nonacademic skill areas influences long-term outcomes. . This study addressed a critical gap by examining the perceived impact of Expanded Core Curriculum instruction on college readiness, employment attainment, and adult independence for blind or visually impaired high school graduates. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how former students described their access to, understanding of, and benefit from Expanded Core Curriculum …

The Impact Of Academic Advising Models On Undergraduate Student Performance: A Multiple Regression Analysis, Kayla Meaders

Student Theses and Dissertations

Institutions of higher education continue to seek effective strategies to improve student persistence, academic performance, and degree completion. Academic advising is widely recognized as a key institutional support that helps students navigate academic requirements and institutional expectations. However, universities organize advising services using different structural models, and limited empirical evidence exists regarding how these models influence measurable student outcomes. This study examined the predictive relationship between academic advising models and undergraduate student success outcomes at a public university in North Texas. The study investigated the extent to which advising models, centralized or decentralized, predict cumulative grade point average, first-to-second-year retention, …

American Sign Language Recognition And Analysis Using Deep Learning, Saurabh Kumar Soni

Master’s Dissertations

In this work I build a system that recognizes isolated American Sign Language (ASL) words, and I use it to ask one fairly direct question: when training data is scarce, is it better to look at the video pixels or at the geometry of the signer’s body? To find out, I train two very different models on exactly the same clips. The first is appearance-based. Every frame is run through standard preprocessing and a ResNet50 backbone pre-trained on ImageNet, which turns it into a 2048-dimensional feature vector, and a Bidirectional LSTM then reads that sequence over time. The second model …

An Empirical Study Of Rlvr Fine-Tuning For Mathematical Problem Solving In Llms, Rashmi Konnur

Master’s Dissertations

Large language models have shown immense improvement in coding and math performances thanks to reinforcement learning boosted algorithms. However, its true impact on broadening the reasoning and analytical capacities of an LLM is still contended. In this dissertation, we outline the foundations of Large Language Models, and delve into Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR). We discuss various strategies to efficiently manipulate memory during a fine tuning update. We finally perform RLVR fine-tuning techniques on different models with varied use cases and compare their performances, which corroborate the efficiency of RLVR.

Neddylation Maintains Oocyte Quality By Stabilizing Mitochondrial Transcription, Avery A Ahmed, Tessa E Steenwinkel, Bethany K Patton, Peixin Jiang, Matthew D Meyer, Jaspreet K Rishi, Mei Leng, Alexander B Saltzman, Elizabeth S Anaya, Momal Sharif, Laurie J Mckenzie, Laura Detti, Anna Malovannaya, Sean M Hartig, Stephanie A Pangas

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Age-related decline in oocyte quality increases the risk of infertility, miscarriage, and birth defects. Mitochondrial dysfunction is a key contributor to this decline. Here, we report that oocyte-specific deletion of Uba3, which encodes the catalytic subunit of the E1 NEDDylation-activating complex, causes sterility in mice. Fully grown, germinal vesicle–stage Uba3 conditional knockout oocytes exhibit mitochondrial dysfunction, including elevated reactive oxygen species, impaired oxidative phosphorylation, and depletion of mitochondrially encoded RNA transcripts. Proteomic analysis identified alterations in mitochondrial-associated proteins, including enrichment of mitochondrial matrix and respiratory chain components and reduced abundance of electron transport chain complexes. These defects were associated …

Operational Feasibility Of Reinforcement Learning For Vehicle Routing Under Heterogeneous Fleet Capacity Constraints, Freddy Giovanny Aviles Moreno

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Reinforcement learning methods have demonstrated strong performance on vehicle routing benchmarks, yet their behavior under severe capacity constraints remains unexplored. This dissertation investigates whether PPO-based neural routing policies maintain operational viability when vehicle capacity is severely constrained, as occurs in resource-limited rural logistics settings.

Through controlled experiments on synthetic instances and validation on real-world rural healthcare networks in Florida, this research reveals a critical capacity threshold effect. Moderate capacity reductions from 40 to 20 produce negligible performance loss (4.1%), while severe reductions to capacity 10 trigger catastrophic failure with 243% degradation, manifested through degenerate single-customer routing patterns. Convergence analysis identifies …

Enhancer Rna Transcription Near Segmentation Gene Enhancers Can Be Analyzed In Situ Using Fish, Christine Mau, Benjamin Schmid, Ezzat El-Sherif

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences Faculty Publications

Enhancer RNAs (eRNAs) are non-coding transcripts produced at enhancer regions, which appear to be involved in transcriptional regulation. Up to date, these have been primarily investigated using labor- and cost-intensive genomic techniques. However, the precise mechanisms by which eRNA transcription or eRNA transcripts themselves mediate transcriptional regulation remain unclear. Here, we present a novel experimental approach that allows us to analyze characteristics of eRNA transcription in fixed and live whole Drosophila melanogaster embryos. We employ the anterior–posterior patterning genes as a model system to investigate the dynamics of eRNA expression, utilizing an imaging-based approach. We combined high-sensitivity fluorescence in situ …

Development Of A Coupled Hydrological-Nitrogen Modeling Framework For Urban Stormwater Pond Analysis, Tione Grant

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Urbanization impacts the hydrological and biogeochemical processes that regulate water quality in downstream ecosystems, leading to increased stormwater volume and nitrogen loads in receiving aquatic environments. Although stormwater ponds are designed as simple hydraulic storage basins, they function more like managed ecosystems within urban drainage systems, offering both hydraulic attenuation and passive nutrient treatment. However, nitrogen removal efficiency varies significantly and depends on interactions between hydrological and biogeochemical factors. This thesis details the development, calibration, validation, and sensitivity analysis of a coupled hydrological-nitrogen model framework for Aaran’s Pond, an urban stormwater pond in Hillsborough County, Florida.

A process-based water budget …

Development And Evaluation Of The East Florida Coastal Ocean Model (Efcom), Orion B. Scharton-Witmer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida’s Atlantic coast has abundant resources in beaches, state parks, aquatic preserves, and wildlife refuges as well as densely populated coastal cities in low lying areas that are all subjected to natural disaster threats from the oceans. There is an urgent need for a high-resolution coastal ocean circulation model for this region. Based on the application of the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM), an East Florida Coastal Ocean Model (EFCOM) is developed, downscaling from the deep ocean, across the continental shelf, and into the estuaries. It employs an unstructured grid with horizontal resolution varying from 3 kilometers at the …

A System Dynamics Perspective Of User Adaptation: The Case Of Exoskeleton Technology, Enzo Novi Migliano

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Technology implementation is a common occurrence in organizations to which workers must adapt. Although research on workers' technology acceptance is widely spread, research on the workers' technology adaptation process is less represented in the literature. The discrepancy in the literature permeates research on new technologies currently being implemented in organizations, such as occupational exoskeletons. As in other technologies, the variance research perspective dominates the literature on exoskeleton implementations. The current thesis aims to foster process research by formalizing the coping model of user adaptation (Beaudry & Pinsonneault, 2005) and exploring research questions regarding workers' adaptation to general technology and exoskeletons. …

Boiling Flow Estimation For Aero-Optic Phase Screen Generation, Jeffrey W. Utley, Gregery T. Buzzard, Charles A. Bouman, Matthew R. Kemnetz

Faculty Publications

Aero-optic effects due to turbulence can reduce the effectiveness of transmitting light waves to a distant target. Methods to compensate for turbulence typically rely on realistic turbulence data, which can be generated by i) experiment, ii) high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD), iii) low-fidelity CFD, and iv) autoregressive methods. However, each of these methods has significant drawbacks, including monetary and/or computational expense, limited quantity, inaccurate statistics, and overall complexity. By contrast, the boiling flow algorithm is a simple, computationally efficient model that can generate atmospheric phase screen data with only a handful of parameters. However, boiling flow has not been widely …

Systems And Methods For Location-Verified Augmented Reality Tourism With Multi-Signal Presence Proof And Automated Creator Monetization, Olufemi Abioye

Defensive Publications Series

A web-delivered augmented-reality platform for location-based tourism is disclosed in which interactive story content is bound to real-world geographic locations and delivered through a standard web browser using WebXR, without installation of a native application. Physical presence at a location is established by a multi-signal verification engine that fuses geofence dwell detection, motion-trace analysis for spoofing detection, and cryptographic device attestation into a composite presence-confidence score; when the score exceeds a threshold, the system issues a signed completion token bound to a geofence hash and a time window to resist replay. Raw camera frames are retained on the user device, …

Latent Temporal Reasoning In Multimodal Llms Using Specialized Time-Gap Tokens And Spatiotemporal Saliency Pruning, Tamar Yakar, Ilia Labzovsky

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes a system for helping Artificial Intelligence (AI) models , such as foundation models, generative AI, or large language models (LLMs), watch and understand continuous video streams or non-stop broadcasts without exceeding their context window or losing track of time. Normally, AI models have a limited memory (context window) and can suffer from temporal hallucination, becoming confused about when events occurred if large portions of an uninterrupted video are skipped. The system solves temporal hallucinations by using a dynamic saliency transformer acting as a smart filter to remove boring, low saliency, or repetitive parts of a video based …

Technical Disclosure: System Architecture For Non-Equilibrium Material Synthesis: An Applied Framework For Soliton Restructuring And Boundary Layer Phase Modulation, Christopher L. Eckes

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure establishes a deterministic field theory and system architecture for altering localized material states without traditional macroscopic thermal melting or brute-force nuclear kinetic bombardment. By leveraging the bulk-to-boundary duality established in Document #11829, this method manipulates matter at the fundamental 2D Conformal Substrate layer.

By applying localized electromagnetic and acoustic phase modulations, this architecture systematically alters the coordinate z-axis mapping of existing soliton excitations (particles). This forces localized matter to safely and precisely restructure its atomic configuration via non-equilibrium thermal phase space dynamics.

Key Technical Nomenclature

• Substruction: The technical process of isolating, reading, and interacting with the underlying 2D …

The Totality Sphere Framework: Conformal Field Disruption, Mirror-Symmetric Spacetime Emergence, And Entanglement-Driven Topological Recoil, Christopher L. Eckes

Defensive Publications Series

This framework introduces a non-local, unified cosmological model wherein three-dimensional spatial volume and general relativity emerge as a macroscopic phase projection from a fundamental two-dimensional informational boundary substrate. Rather than treating quantum entanglement and gravitational curvature as separate phenomena, this topology defines gravity as the macro-scale expression of a topological entanglement entropy gradient trying to restore conformal symmetry across a mirror-symmetric hyper-spherical bulk.

We model the cosmic lifecycle as a closed thermodynamic loop driven by bulk-to-boundary kinetic injections, localized soliton phase transitions, and eventual non-local geometric contraction.

Key Theoretical Nomenclature

• Boundary Substrate (\(\partial M\)): The foundational 2D Planck-level manifold hosting …

Technical Disclosure: Systemic Implementation Specifications For Inter-Module Telemetry, Bio-Acoustic Substrates, Optocoupled Air-Gaps, And Electro-Magnetic Containment Form Factors, Christopher L. Eckes

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure establishes the explicit physical, material, electrical, and data-schema specifications required to realize and secure the open-source infrastructure detailed in Document #11827. To prevent downstream utility patent enclosure by proprietary corporate manufacturers, this document defines concrete public-domain implementation parameters for:

1. Schema-Agnostic Inter-Module Telemetry: Raw markdown metadata header serialization protocols.
2. Bio-Acoustic Standing Wave Substrates: Specific density, piezoelectric conversion metrics, and mechanical vessel interface constraints for non-chemical morphogenetic scaffolding.
3. Optocoupled Physical Air-Gap Circuits: Transient buffer relay topologies and fail-closed hardware architectures for local cryptographic computing integrity.
4. Electro-Magnetic Faraday Shielding: Multi-layer nickel-iron containment bulkhead ratios and drainage grounding paths calculated against high-energy …

Technical Disclosure: A Unified Planetary Scale Architecture For Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics, Cryptographic Governance, And Automated Labor Sovereignty, Christopher L. Eckes

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure details a unified macro-system architecture designed to facilitate, manage, and scale the physical, administrative, and labor operations of a planetary-scale infrastructure array. Current technological ecosystems are fundamentally bottlenecked by active thermal throttling, localized supply-chain speculation, and closed digital rights management (DRM) frameworks that fragment development.

This multi-domain framework resolves these limitations through a three-layer topology:

1. The Physical Layer: Passive geometric routing of multi-variant heat-flux fields, non-chemical acoustic standing-wave cellular matrices, and turbine-free direct-loop magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) induction.
2. The Coordination Layer: Zero-knowledge edge-confined cognitive scaffolding, non-fiat logistical hypergraphs (M-EHN), and transparent game-theoretic defensive de-escalation matrices.
3. The Execution Layer: Open-standard computer-aided …

The Overdrive Anomaly: A Philosophical And Technical Appeal For Aligned Cognitive Scaffolding In Tomorrow's Stewards, Christopher L. Eckes

Defensive Publications Series

This appeal exposes a critical structural risk in the trajectory of modern global technology: the destabilizing asymmetry between exponential physical infrastructure and linear human cognitive development. By optimizing resources exclusively for external execution milestones—such as aerospace transit, automated manufacturing, and centralized compute networks—modern innovation paradigms treat human agency as a passive, downstream variable.

This paper demonstrates that without the systemic deployment of cryptographically secure, localized cognitive mentorship and sovereign security scaffolding, accelerating technological matrices will induce widespread psychological alienation and cognitive fragmentation. We present a formal, non-negotiable appeal to the global engineering community to reprioritize individual psychological sovereignty as the …

Systemic Integration Of Lifelong Agentic Mentorship, Contextual Scaffolding, And Sovereign Guardian Protocols In K-12 Pedagogy, Christopher L. Eckes

Defensive Publications Series

This specification details the architecture for a non-centralized, lifelong educational operating system that integrates machine learning as an individualized cognitive accelerator, psychometric auditor, and sovereign security layer. This protocol systematically replaces age-segregated, standardized instructional rotations with an immutable Dual-Focus Baseline Matrix paired with a localized Lifelong Cognitive Mentor.

By tracking an individual's development continuously from the primary entry point (K-1) through adulthood, the system implements Probabilistic Scaffolding—balancing automated aptitude mapping with deliberately engineered "negative learning" spaces. Furthermore, it incorporates an active Guardian Sensor Layerutilizing real-time linguistic and behavioral anomaly detection to insulate the child from predatory coercion and manipulative algorithm …

Contribution Of Animals To Biomedical Advancements In The Current Era: A Narrative Review, Leena Rajathy Port Louis, Mani Rajarathinam, Prithiviraj Nagarajan, Divya Sekar, Nisha Perumal

The Thai Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Animal research has played a major role in the development of vaccinations and therapies for illnesses such as tetanus, polio, meningitis, hepatitis, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2. For every prescription drug available today, animal testing and research have contributed immensely. This narrative review aims to explore the contribution of animals to biomedical advancements in the current era, which involved a search of peer-reviewed literature using electronic databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed. In current biomedical research, animals help develop new treatments for long-term illnesses such as cancer, HIV, and Alzheimer’s. Animals also aid in the …

En-Feat: An Effective Feature Selection Method Using Ensemble Approach, Sasank Nath, Dhruba Kumar Bhattacharyya

Mansoura Engineering Journal

Feature selection is a crucial step in machine learning and data preprocessing, significantly influencing model performance and interpretability. This paper presents a comprehensive study and contributions in the domain of feature selection by integrating traditional learning techniques with ensemble-based, proposing an effective approach. We propose a Mutual Information-based feature aggregation approach applied to union sets of features, aiming to derive an optimal subset of features that maximizes accuracy. Then, we employ an ensemble method that utilizes forward selection over union sets to identify the optimal feature subsets through sequential feature selection. Our ensemble-based feature selection method called En-feat, is evaluated …