Digital Commons Network^™

Kitchen Table Press: A Case Study Of Regression To The Neoliberal Mean, Alaina Disalvo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the idealistic founding of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980 and its slow downfall, culminating in the cession of ownership of the Press to a university in 1992. It traces the ideological development of Kitchen Table Press’s key founders, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde, and their respective relationships to the ideologies of other renowned feminist figures of the era, specifically June Jordan and Adrienne Rich. It examines the history of the Press through historical, intersectional, affective, and socialist lenses. This thesis argues that neoliberal pressures can bend even the most radical organizations away from their …

Elite Manipulation Of Accountability Institutions: A Comparative Analysis Of Cicig And Maccih, Kevin E. Contreras

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Strong accountability institutions are expected to limit elite manipulation. Yet elites continue to manipulate them. This paper shows that strong accountability institutions are insufficient to prevent elite manipulation. A comparative analysis of Honduras (MACCIH) and Guatemala (CICIG) traces the relationship between institutional strength and elite manipulation. The findings indicate that this relationship is contingent on context. Preventing manipulation would require accountability institutions to sustain greater mobilization and institutional leverage than elites. Accountability institutions alone are insufficient to achieve this condition.

Twitteratura: Digital Social Reading And Active Reception Of Literary Texts In The Context Of Italian Contemporary Literature, Iuri Moscardi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores Digital Social Reading (DSR) as a novel mode of literary engagement, focusing on the Italian project Twitteratura, a series of social reading experiments conducted on Twitter (2012–2016) and later on the Betwyll app. The research situates Twitteratura within the intersection of Reader-Response Theory, Digital Humanities, Reception Studies, and Sociology of Literature, demonstrating how digital environments reshape the act of reading and interpretation. Through detailed analyses of four DSR projects centered on major twentieth-century Italian authors—Cesare Pavese, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino, and Natalia Ginzburg—this dissertation argues that Twitteratura provides a concrete, data-rich demonstration of Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response …

Investigating Individual And Group Level Mediators Of Fear Acquisition, Rachel S. Lese

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The ability to discriminate between cues predictive of threat vs. safety (fear acquisition) and subsequently update fear responding when contingencies change (fear extinction) is crucial to survival for all organisms. While these processes have been the subject of intense experimental scrutiny for several decades, most human fear learning studies have focused primarily on extinction learning and fear recovery processes, with less focus on fear acquisition itself. Indeed, researchers typically aim to minimize variability during fear acquisition in order to rule out differences in extinction being driven by variability during the initial learning phase. Thus, experimental protocols are often optimized to …

The New Middle Cinema: Aesthetic Restraint, The Urban Middle Class, And The Reconfiguration Of Mainstream Bollywood (2007–2017), Hasnatun Nabi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 2007 and 2017, a distinctive wave of mainstream Hindi films, termed here as the “New Middle Cinema”, employed aesthetic restraint to reconfigure Bollywood’s identity in response to a rapidly changing India. Rejecting the industry’s traditional spectacle, melodrama, and visual opulence, these films embraced naturalistic visuals, grounded performances, character‑driven narratives, and a muted color palette. Drawing on industrial analysis, close textual reading, and audience reception data, this thesis examines seven representative films (Chak De India, Wake Up Sid, My Name is Khan, The Lunchbox, Piku, Kapoor & Sons, and Lipstick Under My Burkha …

Assessing Family Planning Progress In Exemplar Countries: Development Of A Conceptual Framework And Case Study Methodology, Zahid Memon, Hina Najmi, Abeer Mian, Sacha Ahmad, Muhammad Islam, Kevin Samuel, Marleen Temmerman, Ali Mohammad Mir, Zeba Sathar

Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health

Family planning (FP) is a critical component of reproductive health, enabling individuals to plan the number and timing of children through various contraceptive methods.

We outline the conceptual framework and country case study methodology used by the Exemplars in Family Planning (EFP) project. This was based on the wider Exemplars in Global Health programme, which uses mixed-methods to examine determinants of FP progress in countries that exceed expectations for health outcomes. The EFP project integrates findings from case studies on six such countries, including quantitative analyses of trends and drivers of modern contraceptive prevalence, systematic reviews, policy, programme and financing …

Family Planning Exemplar Country Selection Methodology: Time Lag And Trends Analysis, Zahid Memon, Abeer Mian, Ira Martopullo, Narjis Hussain, Zeba Sathar, Ali Mohammad Mir, Michael Mbizvo, Marleen Temmerman, Jen Drake, Zulfiqar Bhutta

Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health

Introduction While many countries achieved notable gains in contraceptive use levels after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development which redefined family planning (FP) as a human right, there was a long period of 15 years when contraceptive use levels did not receive due attention. It was only later that its subsequent inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2012 London Summit on FP renewed global commitment and a focus towards FP. This paper aims to select countries that identify as ‘exemplar’ low-middle-income countries that have achieved exceptional progress in FP. Examining these outliers can uncover actionable drivers …

Aging Actively, Jada Lindblom, Guangzhou Chen

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Understanding Formal Financial Access In Indonesia: Evidence From Micro Data, M. Aulia Rachman, Yozi Aulia Rahman, Maulida Dewi Pangestika, Risanda Alirastra Budiantoro

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

This study examines the determinants of access to formal financial institutions using secondary household survey data from Indonesian Family Life Survey, Wave 5 (IFLS-5). Logistic regression analysis reveals that loan amount, savings, education level, age, housing status, and internet usage are positively and significantly associated with greater access. Individuals with higher savings, higher education, and homeownership exhibit a higher probability of utilizing formal financial services. Although the significance of internet usage varies across models, it remains a strong predictor when properly controlled, particularly due to its role in enhancing digital literacy. In contrast, income and health insurance ownership do not …

Beyond Numbers: Governance, Capital Structure, And The Contribution Of Village Cooperatives To Regional Economic Output In Indonesia, Mohamad Dian Revindo, M. Fajar Ramadhan, Nia Kurnia Sholihah, Indri Br Situmorang, Hilda Fachrizah

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

Although cooperatives are widely regarded as an important part of Indonesia’s economy and have a  large membership base, the contribution of cooperatives to regional economic output in Indonesia has never been systematically examined. This study provides the first multi-year, fixed-effects panel evidence of cooperative–GRDP linkages for all 34 Indonesian provinces (2017–2023) in a Cobb-Douglas production function framework with province and year fixed effects. Two outcome variables are estimated: Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) and the Unemployment Rate (Unemp). The findings indicate that active cooperatives are associated with higher provincial GRDP and lower open unemployment; despite, the associations should be read …

Beyond The Generations: Building A High-Quality Workplace For An Age-Diverse Workforce, Cal J. Halvorsen, Bruna C. Lopez, Erika Sabbath

Brown School Faculty Publications

At a time when the U.S. is more age diverse than ever before, Americans are extending their careers for financial stability, social connection, and purpose. This article provides a brief background on the history of aging and work, from the late 1800s to present, illustrating the influence that public and organizational policies, as well as personal needs and interests, have on labor force participation. It then provides examples for how employers can create better workplaces for people of all ages, concluding with the case for why more age-inclusive workplaces lead to better results for employees, their families, and their employers.

Indigenous Child Language Research Center Report 3, Saad K’Idilyé, Indigenous Child Language Research Center

Indigenous Child Language Research Center

This report shares some of the preliminary finding of the research work that is being conducted by the Indigenous Child Language Research Center. The ICLRC aims to report to their community partner, Saad K’idilyé, the results of their groundbreaking work. This information is typically delivered in person at a planned meeting. This research is long-term and the data is being prepared for optimal analysis to be shared through published works, workshops, and conference presentations.

Indigenous Child Language Research Report 2, Saad K’Idilyé, Indigenous Child Language Research Center

Indigenous Child Language Research Center

This report shares some of the preliminary finding of the continued research work that is being conducted by the Indigenous Child Language Research Center. The ICLRC aims to report to their community partner, Saad K’idilyé, the results of their groundbreaking work. This information is typically delivered in person at a planned meeting. This research is long-term and the data is being prepared for optimal analysis to be shared through published works, workshops, and conference presentations.

Long-Term Mine Planning: A Survey Of Classical, Hybrid And Artificial Intelligence-Based Methods, Nurul Asyikeen Azhar, Aldy Gunawan, Shih-Fen Cheng, Erwin Leonardi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The aim of long-term mine planning (LTMP) is two-fold: to maximize the net present value of profits (NPV) and determine how ores are sequentially processed over the lifetime. This scheduling task is computationally complex as it is rife with variables, constraints, periods, uncertainties, and unique operations. In this paper, we present trends in the literature in the recent decade. One trend is the shift from deterministic toward stochastic problems as they reflect real-world complexities. A complexity of growing concern is also in sustainable mine planning. Another trend is the shift from traditional operational research solutions — relying on exact or …

Patchfuzz: Patch Fuzzing For Javascript Engines, Junjie Wang, Zhihua Xie, Xiaofei Xie, Xiaoning Du, Xiangwei Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Context: Patch fuzzing is a technique aimed at identifying vulnerabilities that arise from newly patched code. While researchers have made efforts to apply patch fuzzing to testing JavaScript (JS) engines with considerable success, these efforts have been limited to using ordinary test cases or publicly available vulnerability PoCs (Proof of Concepts) as seeds, and the sustainability of these approaches is hindered by the challenges associated with automating the PoC collection. Objective: To address these limitations, we propose an end-to-end sustainable approach for JS engine patch fuzzing, named PatchFuzz. Method: It automates the collection of PoCs of a broader range of …

To Wait Or To Transfer? A Three-Level Optimization Framework For Intermodal Transfer Coordination In First Train Timetabling And Bus Bridging Services Management, Hao Li, Liujiang Kang, Norman Weik, Huijun Sun, Qingying Lai, Zhiguang Cao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study addresses the integrated optimization of the first train timetabling and bus bridging service design (FTT-BBSD) for morning transfer challenges, two critical but interdependent passenger services in the public transit system. In contrast to most existing studies and conventional approaches, this study explicitly models the influence of passenger path choices and transfer mode selections on FTT-BBSD. Through a novel dual-level network representation that integrates subway and bus systems, we formulate the FTT-BBSD problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model. The model simultaneously determines subway and bus timetables and bridging line deployment to minimize total travel time for all first …

A Pruning-Based Question-Answering For Interactive Video Search: A Simple Baseline, Yu Tong Cheng, Phuong Anh Nguyen, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

There are various factors affecting the performance of video search. An imprecise query will enlarge search space and reduce the discriminative power of ranking functions. This problem is further exacerbated by the presence of numerous visually or semantically similar videos in large datasets. Consequently, users need to painstakingly browse through many highly similar candidates to locate the search target, leading to increased cognitive load and inefficient searching. Ideally, engaging users through interactive questioning to resolve uncertainties in the search process is an effective strategy for progressively narrowing down the search space. However, despite rapid advances in deep learning, generating informative …

Benchmarking Gaslighting Negation Attacks Against Multimodal Large Language Models, Bin Zhu, Yinxuan Gui, Huiyan Qi, Jingjing Chen, Chong-Wah Ngo, Ee-Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have exhibited remarkable advancements in integrating different modalities, excelling in complex understanding and generation tasks. Despite their success, MLLMs remain vulnerable to conversational adversarial inputs. In this paper, we systematically study gaslighting negation attacks—a phenomenon where models, despite initially providing correct answers, are persuaded by user-provided negations to reverse their outputs, often fabricating justifications. We conduct extensive evaluations of state-of-the-art MLLMs across diverse benchmarks and observe substantial performance drops when negation is introduced. Notably, we introduce the first benchmark GaslightingBench, specifically designed to evaluate the vulnerability of MLLMs to negation arguments. GaslightingBench consists of multiple-choice …

Language Embeddings Meet Shallow Autoencoders, Rodrigo Alves, Vojtěch Vančura, Pavel Kordík, Antoine Ledent

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Shallow autoencoders are appealing recommenders due to their simplicity, scalability, and competitive retrieval quality, but they struggle in strict cold-start settings where new items have no interactions. We propose an inductive shallow autoencoder that leverages item side information (language embeddings) by fixing the decoder to item features and learning only an encoder in the same semantic space. To prevent trivial self-reconstruction without enforcing a hard zero diagonal, we introduce diagonal gating: a leave-one-item-out objective that blocks the self-copy shortcut only for the item being updated while retaining context from the rest of the user history. An alternating-style optimization trains the …

Ppg-Sport: A Dataset For Reliable Heart Rate Monitoring From Wrist Ppg Under Dynamic Sports Conditions, Changshuo Hu, Hung Manh Pham, Yiming Zhang, Guanru Yan, Xiao Ma, Yuezhong Wu, Thivya Kandappu, Archan Misra, Dong Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Photoplethysmography (PPG) has become a cornerstone of physiological sensing in wearable devices, enabling non-invasive monitoring of heart rate and related biomarkers. However, its reliability deteriorates sharply under dynamic, high-intensity, or non-periodic motions such as those in sports, where existing datasets fail to capture realistic wrist dynamics. To address this gap, we introduce PPG-Sport, the first large-scale dataset designed for heart rate monitoring from wrist-worn PPG under real sports conditions. The PPG-Sport dataset includes synchronized PPG, inertial measurement unit (IMU), and electrocardiography (ECG) recordings from both wrists of 30 participants across six representative activities: stationary, walking, running, badminton, table tennis, and …

A Survey Of Earable Technology: Trends, Tools, And The Road Ahead, Changshuo Hu, Qiang Yang, Yang Liu, Tobias Röddiger, Kayla-Jade Butkow, Mathias Ciliberto, Adam Luke Pullin, Jake Stuchbury-Wass, Mahbub Hassan, Cecilia Mascolo, Dong Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Earable devices, wearables positioned in or around the ear, are undergoing a rapid transformation from audio-centric accessories into multifunctional systems for interaction, contextual awareness, and health monitoring. This evolution is driven by commercial trends emphasizing sensor integration and by a surge of academic interest exploring novel sensing capabilities. Building on the foundation established by earlier surveys, this work presents a timely and comprehensive review of earable research published since 2022. We attempt to answer three core questions: (1) how has earable research evolved in recent years, (2) what enabling resources are now available, and (3) what opportunities remain for future …

Anatomical Domain Shifts: Test-Time Heterogeneous Adaptation For 3d Human Pose Prediction, Qiongjie Cui, Pan Zhou, Jingjing Chen, Na Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The research frontier in human pose prediction (HPP) is advancing toward continual test-time adaptation (TTA), where models must self-adapt to dynamic test distributions. To date, the homeostatic continual TTA remains the sole viable solution, which isolates the model parameters and update domain-sensitive ones. Despite mitigating full-body domain gaps, human anatomical heterogeneity (domain shifts often localize to specific regions) is ignored. This anatomical-agnostic approach forces uniform parameter adaptation across kinematically distinct segments, causing: over-adaptation of stable regions and under-adaptation of shift-prone articulations. To address it, we introduce TT-HA, a novel Test-Time Heterogeneous Adaptation that implicitly estimates domain changes for anatomical segments, …

History To Future: Evolving Agent With Experience And Thought For Zero-Shot Vision-And-Language Navigation, Guangzhao Dai, Shuo Wang, Zihan Wang, Guo-Sen Xie, Yang Yang, Jinshan Pan, Qianru Sun, Xiangbo Shu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Vision-and-Language Navigation in Continuous Environment (VLN-CE) requires an agent to follow language instructions to navigate the target destination. With the advancement of large language models (LLMs), recent efforts have explored adapting them for zero-shot VLN-CE, offering a promising solution in addressing the drawbacks of poor generalization in the training-based paradigm. However, existing LLM-based works primarily perform naive reasoning for decision-making and lack feedback, e.g., reviewing historical errors and predicting future potentials. Consequently, it may suffer from continuous failure for those initial error tasks. In this paper, we rethink LLM-based zero-shot VLN-CE and propose a new paradigm, named EvoNav, to improve …

Adaptive Outlier Detection Over Data Stream, Rui Zhu, Mingyuan Jiang, Xiaochun Yang, Baihua Zheng, Bin Wang, Tao Qiu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Continuous distance-based outlier detection in streaming data poses significant challenges and has a wide range of practical applications. Traditional threshold-based methods perform well under stable streaming conditions, where fixed parameters remain effective. However, they often struggle with dynamic data distributions and high stream speeds, leading to suboptimal performance, limited control over the number of returned outliers, and failure to meet real-time detection requirements. To address these issues, this paper introduces a novel Recall and Proportion-Aware Outlier Detection (RPA-OD) query. In RPA-OD, ρ defines a distance relaxation that enables real-time outlier detection. Specifically, objects with fewer than k neighbors within the …

“Alexa, Do Not Say That In Front Of My Boss!” A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of User And Ai Preferences For Privacy-Aware Smart Speaker Interactions Across Contexts, Lynne Warin, Emily Aurelia, Anthony Tang, Emily Aurelia, Delphine Reinhardt

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Due to their limited ability to reason about the social context in which they are used, smart speakers pose significant privacy risks by responding in ways that may violate people's implicit social boundaries. We conducted a cross-cultural vignette study (N = 944) in Germany and Singapore to investigate how situational factors—specifically social context (bystander relationships and closeness), physical context (location), and interaction context (topic and deceptive intent)—regulate user preferences for smart speaker responses. Our results demonstrate that these factors are superior predictors of response preferences than dispositional user traits (i.e., intrinsic personal traits). We identify two distinct social dynamics: a …

Cfalr: Collaborative Filtering-Augmented Large Language Model For Personalized Fashion Outfit Recommendation, Yujuan Ding, Junrong Liao, Yunshan Ma, Yi Bin, Wenqi Fan, Tat-Seng Chua, Qing Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Personalized outfit recommendation poses a significant challenge in e-commerce and social media platforms, requiring systems that balance user preferences with aesthetic compatibility. Collaborative filtering (CF) provides a traditional solution for this, but it struggles with data-sparse scenarios and complex user-item-outfit relationships. Meanwhile, existing template-based approaches are constrained by rigid pre-designed structures. To bridge these research gaps, we introduce CFALR (Collaborative Filtering-Augmented Large Language Model for Recommendation), a novel framework that synergizes collaborative filtering with large language models for personalized outfit recommendation. Specifically, CFALR describes user-outfit interactions in natural language and leverages LLMs to capture fashion semantics while employing CF-enhanced embeddings …

How Do Machine Learning Models Change?, Joel Castaño, Rafael Cabañas, Antonio Salmerón, David Lo, Silverio Martínez-Fernández

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The proliferation of Machine Learning (ML) models and their open source implementations has transformed AI research and applications. Platforms like Hugging Face (HF) enable this evolving ecosystem, yet a large-scale longitudinal study of how these models change is lacking. This study addresses this gap by analyzing over 680,000 commits from 100,000 models and 2,251 releases from 202 of these models on HF using repository mining and longitudinal methods. We apply an extended ML change taxonomy to classify commits and use Bayesian networks to model temporal patterns in commit and release activities. Our findings show that commit activities align with established …

Genetic Ancestry-Concordant Ceramide Metabolism And Response To Androgen Receptor Pathway Inhibition In Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer, Sean Piwarski, Lauren Howard, Morgan Paul, Nick Bachelder, Bonnie Lacroix, Angela Clayton, Donna Allen, Julie Kephart, Andrew Armstrong, Steven Patierno, Daniel George, Terry Hyslop, Jennifer Freedman

Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Cancer Biology Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: The authors observed differences in response between Black and White patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) who were treated prospectively with androgen receptor pathway inhibition (ARPI) in the Abi Race and PANTHER studies. In addition, genetic ancestry-related single nucleotide variants in ceramide metabolism genes were associated with the time to prostate-specific antigen progression in the Abi Race study. For this report, the authors analyzed ceramide metabolites and their association with response to ARPI treatment in the Abi Race and PANTHER studies.

METHODS: Fasting serum levels were obtained from 22 Black patients and 22 White patients in the Abi …

Developing Sight-Reading Proficiency In Music Education: A Synthesis Of Instructional Strategies And Pedagogical Approaches, Charles Clements Ii

Theses

Sight-reading is a foundational skill in music education that enables students to perform unfamiliar musical material independently. Despite its importance, instruction is often inconsistent and driven by performance priorities rather than systematic skill development. This thesis synthesizes existing research on sight-reading pedagogy to identify effective instructional strategies and organize them into a cohesive framework for educators.

By connecting research to classroom application, this project provides a practical, research-informed model for sight-reading instruction. The findings suggest that effective instruction requires a structured and integrated approach that supports both cognitive processing and musical performance, ultimately promoting greater student independence and musical literacy.

Gender Relations Within 18th And 19th Century Art And How It Affects A 21st Century Learner, Sophie Lima

Theses

This study constructs a curriculum unit comprising five lessons in feminist art history for middle school learners in 5th-8th grade. Drawing on theories and concepts from feminist art history, visual culture, and inquiry in art education, this curriculum aims to address the scarcity of age-appropriate materials in feminist art history. There is a need for curricular materials that help learners critically analyze issues of gender, identity, and power conveyed through visual culture. The curriculum encourages middle-grade students to engage with three approaches to art analysis: formalism, iconography, and feminism. The organized unit focuses on inquiry, interpretation, comparison, production, and evaluation. …