Digital Commons Network^™

Searching For Change: Exploring Historical Silences And Counterstorytelling Through Youth-Led Social Justice Movements, Ariana Varela

Communications in Information Literacy

During a first-year engagement program, a librarian and a cohort of students worked towards a shared understanding of dominant narratives, historical silences, and creating counterstories through research to center marginalized stories and complicate existing narratives. As information literacy professionals, we should design interactive lessons that demonstrate critical search and evaluation skills through topics that are relevant to students and encourage them to work with issues that impact their communities. Incorporating critical information literacy, feminist pedagogy, and critical race theory, this two-day micro-seminar introduced first-year students to the legacy of youth community activism in the neighborhoods around their university. They practiced …

Why Teens Are Particularly Vulnerable To The Harms Of Vaping Addiction: A Literature Review, Chloe Manning-Floch

University Honors Theses

This literature review examines the factors that have been found to place teens aged 12-18 at particular risk of the harms of vaping addiction. Sixteen relevant research studies are cited, along with four other sources containing information from the FDA, CDC, and NPR, to determine which themes are the most significant and widely identified as risk factors adding to teens' vulnerability. While the body of research on teen vaping addiction is relatively new, strong consensus exists: the most significant factors placing teens at risk of vaping addiction's harms are sweet flavoring appealing to young people, marketing of vapes that has …

Security Vulnerabilities And Defense Tactics For Generative Ai Application Development, Kyle Klein

University Honors Theses

Generative AI (GenAI) applications such as OpenAI's ChatGPT leverage large language models (LLMs) trained on enormous amounts of data to accomplish tasks such as document editing, summarization, and query response. Chatbots and LLM programs that are equipped with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) have the ability to draw upon data provided by developers and users to improve the quality of the program's responses. LLM technology has even expanded to generate images, audio, and video from user instructions. Designed around unpredictable user input and typically composed of many opaque components, LLM software products face a paradigm shift of new, constantly evolving security challenges. …

Money At Work: How The Inflation Reduction Act Reshaped The Irs, Richard Hansen

University Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to analyze and explore the ways in which the funding increase for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) present in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) has impacted the real life operations of the agency. These impacts will be examined across two broad categories: the ways in which the IRS has offered improved taxpayer services, and the ways in which the IRS has been better equipped to collect owed taxes and enforce tax compliance since the passage of the IRA. Existing data and literature indicates that the increased IRS funding has been correlated with some improvements across …

Decomposition Processes And Insect Indicators In Forensic Investigations, Eli Taylor

University Honors Theses

Insects play an essential biological and ecological role in human life, and their predictable relationship with decomposing remains has positioned them as a cornerstone of modern forensic science. Since the early 20th century, forensic entomology has provided critical evidence for estimating the postmortem interval (PMI), relying on patterns of colonization, species succession, and insect developmental timelines. Accurate PMI estimations are vital to medicolegal investigations, influencing the interpretation of biological evidence, guiding resource allocation, and informing determinations of cause and manner of death. However, insect activity is profoundly shaped by environmental and ecological variables, including temperature, humidity, seasonal shifts, and geographic …

Interventions For Online Gambling Addiction With Vulnerable Populations, Ethan Sarin

University Honors Theses

This paper looks at the modern rise of online gambling, what has been done to address it, and how we can improve upon them in the future. Online gambling is gambling done through a digital medium with two distinct forms: gambling adjacent activities (GAAs), and general online gambling. GAAs are activities that highly resemble gambling, but are legally distinct from gambling due to different kinds of obfuscation like using in-game currency to gamble instead of directly real world money. General online gambling is much clearer about it being gambling with many kinds of gambling activities to partake in from digital …

The Crumbling Flsa Collective Action: How Bristol-Myers Squibb Shapes The Reach Of Federal Wage Claims, Elijah Phillips

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was meant to help level the playing field and help workers create a healthy working environment for themselves. However, today, due to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court of California, San Francisco County and lower federal courts’ eagerness to expand personal jurisdiction, the FLSA is crumbling. Workers now face great difficulty in combining their claims in collective actions through the FLSA. When workers from many states do combine their claims, the workers often face dismissal from the action because not all claims have sufficient connections with the chosen litigation forum. …

Beyond The Csu Ai Initiative Rollout: Exploring The Continued Uses, Gratifications, And Literacy Of Generative Artificial Intelligence Integration At Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, Marshall Piros, Kaylie Marrs

Communication Studies

This case study examines the use of ChatGPT on the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (hereafter referred to as Cal Poly or Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo) campus as part of the system-wide CSU AI Initiative. This is a follow-up study to previous work in which the researchers examined AI usage and gratifications during the early rollout of the CSU AI Initiative during Spring 2025. Using a qualitative approach, we used semi-structured interviews (N = 24) to gather in-depth perspectives on AI usage, gratifications, concerns, and definitions of AI literacy from students and faculty. Findings indicate that while …

Psychological Effects Of Health Disparities: A Multi-Identity Understanding, Shayda Shokooh, Kiana Hosseinzadeh, Olivia Copeland, Katie Wong

Psychology and Child Development

The United States has a long history of public health inequities which continue to impact individuals based on their varying intersectional identities. These systemic obstacles often impede access to healthcare, comprehensive treatment by physicians, and preventative care, among other factors. Disparities within healthcare consequently result in decreased overall well-being and negative psychological impacts, based on identity. We reviewed a variety of academic peer-reviewed studies, both empirical and systematic, investigating three identity factors: racial and ethnic minorities, socioeconomic status, and cognitive disabilities, and examining how these facets influence a person’s mental state and experience of healthcare. We analyzed each of these …

Violence Against Children And Youth In Humanitarian Settings: Findings From A 2024 Survey Of Refugee Camps In Ethiopia, Refugees And Returnees Service, Unhcr Regional Bureau For The East And Horn Of Africa And Great Lakes, Baobab Research Programme Consortium

Humanitarian Task Force

While several Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys (VACS) have been conducted in development contexts, this survey is only the second-ever VACS carried out exclusively in a humanitarian setting—specifically, within refugee camps in Ethiopia. The first VACS conducted exclusively in a humanitarian context was implemented in refugee settlements in Uganda. Both of these Humanitarian Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys (HVACS) were led by the Baobab Research Programme Consortium.

The survey aimed to assess the prevalence, nature, and consequences of physical, emotional, and sexual violence against children and youth in refugee settings. The findings from this survey provide critical insights …

The Effects Of Mindfulness Meditation On Cognitive Flexibility, Emotion Regulation And Stress Reduction, Angelika Juric

University Honors Program Senior Projects

This study examined the short-term effects of mindfulness meditation on cognitive flexibility, emotion regulation, and stress reduction. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to enhance attentional control, emotional awareness, and adaptive coping, contributing to overall psychological well-being. Using a pre-test/post-test experimental design, 23 adult participants completed the Cognitive Flexibility Scale (CFS), Emotion Regulation Scale (ERS), and Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) before and after a 15-minute guided Open Monitoring Mindfulness Meditation (OMM) session. The meditation emphasized nonjudgmental awareness of thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. It was hypothesized that participants will demonstrate increased cognitive flexibility, improved emotion regulation, and reduced stress, anxiety, …

Investigating Road Salt And Groundwater Contributions To Chloride Toxicity In Hart Brook, Hunter Jackson Houle

Standard Theses

This study investigates chloride loading mechanisms and contamination of Hart Brook, a Class B impaired tributary of the Androscoggin River in Lewiston, Maine. By examining the hydrologic and geochemical response to a precipitation event following one of Maine's most severe recorded droughts, I assessed whether specific conductivity serves as a reliable proxy for field-measured chloride concentrations and evaluated how Hart Brook responds to storm disturbances. Water samples collected from three sites (HB3, HB4, HB5) before, during, and after a 1.9-inch rainfall event on September 25–26, 2025, were analyzed using Mohr titration to quantify chloride concentrations and to validate its relationship …

Divine Detachment: Beachy V. Assemblies Of God And A New Interpretation Of The Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine, Juarez Mcleod Johnson

MC Law Review

In the landmark case of Beachy v. Mississippi District Council for Assemblies of God, the Mississippi Supreme Court redefined its interpretation of the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine—marking a pivotal shift in church-state jurisprudence. Traditionally, this doctrine instructed courts to defer to the highest internal authority of a church when deciding disputes within hierarchical religious organizations. However, the court’s decision in Beachy significantly departed from this principle by designating the local pastor and congregation as the supreme authority over local church affairs, even within a hierarchical structure.

This Casenote explores the profound implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling, focusing on its …

Content And Consequences: Impact Of Representation In Stem Higher Education Instructional Content On Marginalized Students, Nichole Ventura

Doctorate in Education

This qualitative study examined representation of historically marginalized students in STEM instructional content at the higher education level and its impact on their learning experiences. Despite growing diversity initiatives in STEM enrollment, curricular materials often fail to reflect the identities of underrepresented students. Using critical theory and interpretivist approaches, this research investigated how representation—or its absence—shapes students' sense of belonging, academic identity formation, and persistence. Through semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students from historically marginalized backgrounds, and purposeful sampling, this study captured the lived experiences of students engaging with STEM instructional materials. Interview protocols explored how students perceive their representation in …

Realism, Truth, And Commitment: An Exposition And Critique Of Michael Devitt's Constitutive Account Of Realism, Samuel Elias Hobbs

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Michael Devitt argues in Realism and Truth that positive semantic issues are not constitutive of realism concerning the mostly impersonal external world. This is motivated by his second maxim which prescribes that the metaphysical (ontological) issue of realism is to be (sharply) distinguished from any (positive) semantic issue. Devitt’s argument is that his view of realism, entitled ‘Realism’, doesn’t entail and isn’t entailed by any doctrine of truth.

This dissertation presents a critique of the argument indicated above and, thereby, Devitt’s second maxim. I present Devitt’s account of Realism and his overview of theories of truth. I next present Devitt’s …

Evaluation Of Distractor Model Specifications On Assessment Quality Within The Framework Of Assessment Engineering, Sunhyoung Lee

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Responding to the high demand for new test items, model-based item development has emerged as a promising approach for efficient item creation. Item models within Assessment Engineering (AE) offer a systematic framework that effectively generates a large volume of new items. In the development of multiple-choice questions, well-constructed distractors are essential for ensuring item quality, although creating them requires significant time and resources. A distractor model is a sub-model within an item model, producing correct answers and distractors aligned with all potential items to be generated. Various types of distractor models have different characteristics and offer efficient methods for generating …

Recovery And Characterization Of Moraxella Species From Bovine Specimens, Laura G. Leger

School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The family Moraxellaceae is made up of a diverse group of 24 named species that fall into three phylogenetic groups. While most Moraxella spp. act as commensal respiratory and/or ocular flora of mammals, some are associated with disease. One of these diseases, infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis (IBK), has significant welfare and economic impacts to both cattle and cattle producers. Moraxella bovis is the only experimentally determined cause of IBK, however, an association of Moraxella bovoculi with disease has been proposed. Currently, available vaccines do not have high levels of efficacy in the field. Culture based methods are the gold standard for …

Amplifying Mother Leaders’ Voices: A Feminist Inquiry Into Gender Inequity In Higher Education Leadership, Katherine Bard

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Women now comprise more than half of mid- and upper-level administrators in higher education, yet they remain underrepresented in the most senior leadership roles. For mothers in leadership, this underrepresentation is compounded by gendered structures, expectations, and norms that shape their personal and professional lives in distinct ways. While scholarship has examined working motherhood broadly and gender inequity in higher education separately, little research has focused on how mother leaders experience and interpret gender inequity in higher education leadership. This study sought to address that gap by exploring the lived experiences of ten mother leaders working at research-intensive (R1) universities …

Changepoint Detection As Model Selection: A General Framework, Michael A. Grantham

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This dissertation presents a general framework for changepoint detection based on ℓ₀ model selection. The core method, Iteratively Reweighted Fused Lasso (IRFL), improves upon the generalized lasso by adaptively reweighting penalties to enhance support recovery and minimize criteria such as the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). The approach allows for flexible modeling of seasonal patterns, linear and quadratic trends, and autoregressive dependence in the presence of changepoints.

Simulation studies demonstrate that IRFL achieves accurate changepoint detection across a wide range of challenging scenarios, including those involving nuisance factors such as trends, seasonal patterns, and serially correlated errors. The framework is …

Rapid State-Of-Health Estimation Of Batteries Using Machine Learning With Limited Eearly-Discharge Voltage Data, Mohammad Bakhtiari

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The utilization of lithium-ion batteries has been rapidly expanding across diverse sectors, including electric transportation, stationary energy storage systems, and the built environment. Ensuring a high level of reliability in these applications is essential, as the performance and safety of such systems depend strongly on the accurate assessment of the battery’s State of Health (SOH). Conventional SOH estimation techniques—often based on complex electrochemical models or extensive laboratory testing—tend to require a large number of measurements, advanced instrumentation, and high computational cost. These factors make them impractical for large-scale deployment or real-time monitoring. This study introduces a simplified machine-learning-based approach for …

The Graphic Shift: Leveraging Superhero Graphica To Un-Ban Critical Conversations In The Secondary English Language Arts Classroom, Avery Clason

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis investigates the challenges that books are receiving during an era of social and political turmoil based on their content. Understanding why these books are polarizing for most readers and the general public is in direct connection with finding different books that can harbor the same conversations about dense topics and cultivating connections between students, the text, the world, and themselves. While there has been a search to find alternate books that are not considered "political flashpoints,” there has been limited research into the use of superhero graphica in the ELA classroom, especially in connection to utilizing this genre …

Near-Infrared-Spectroscopy-Derived Oxygen Desaturation Rates During Post-Exercise Circulatory Occlusion As Predictors Of Cardiorespiratory Fitness Markers, Carstell Lee

Honors Theses

Cardiorespiratory fitness, measured as maximal oxygen consumption (VO₂max) is a critical predictor of all-cause mortality and overall cardiovascular health. Metabolic carts are the current gold standard for evaluation of VO₂max, but are inaccessible to most facilities and individuals, and are expensive ($20,000+). Near-Infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has emerged as an accessible and affordable ($5,000-$10,000) alternative for evaluating skeletal muscle oxygenation kinetics and mitochondrial oxidative capacity. However, there is limited research in examining whether NIRS-derived oxygen desaturation rates can be a predictor of cardiorespiratory fitness markers (such as VO₂max and peak power output [PPO]), and whether these measurements show a superior predictive …

Volume 12 Issue 3 (Dec 1912)

The Soul Winner

No abstract provided.

From Medical Exceptions To Reproductive Freedom, David S. Cohen, Greer Donley

Michigan Law Review

Since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022, there has been a significant focus on pregnancy complications. This focus has created some risks. Highlighting medically indicated abortion stories could stigmatize the vast majority of abortion seekers who lack medical reasons for abortion and result in narrow remedies that do nothing to undermine abortion bans. This Article presents a way to convert these risks into an opportunity: to use pregnancy complications as a wedge to challenge abortion bans more generally and make abortion more accessible for everyone. We present a long-term strategy to dismantle abortion bans, using several legal …

Presumption Of Creditworthiness, Nakita Q. Cuttino

Michigan Law Review

Creditworthiness, or the likelihood that one will repay one’s debts, is typically signaled through a three-digit number known as a credit score. Yet, over thirty-two million adult-aged consumers lack adequate consumer credit reports and therefore do not have a traditional credit score. As a result of being unscored, these consumers are generally presumed uncreditworthy and foreclosed from mainstream credit markets. Unscored consumers are often relegated to extractive, fringe credit markets that neither require nor build credit scores. More insidiously, however, a growing number of non-credit contexts, including rental housing, utility services, and employment markets, look to creditworthiness to determine eligibility …

Disability Rights On Probation And Parole, Alexis Karteron

Michigan Law Review

This Article addresses disability discrimination in community supervision programs, a large—but frequently overlooked—component of the criminal legal system and important contributor to America’s mass incarceration crisis. The long-standing concerns of legal scholars and advocates about disability discrimination in prisons and policing, particularly against people with mental health disabilities, apply with equal measure to probation and parole. This Article examines the experiences of people with intellectual/developmental, cognitive, and mental health disabilities to understand how disability discrimination manifests in probation and parole programs and identifies numerous policies and practices that likely run afoul of two major federal disability rights laws: the Americans …

Metabolic Screening In Veterans On Antipsychotics Mood Stabilizer, Joy Nneka Eke

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Summary This Doctor of Nursing Practice project was conducted to examine a quality improvement initiative that sought to address metabolic syndrome screening consistency for veterans on antipsychotic medications at a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health system located in the Midwest region of the United States. The project centered on whether the quality improvement program assessing compliance with the current metabolic syndrome screening process reflects increased early detection of metabolic syndrome to prevent cardiovascular complications. Data collection involved comprehensive chart reviews of 50 veterans’ records. The data collected were analyzed using a specially designed quality improvement initiative assessment form developed …

Embodied Encounters With Plankton: Ground Truth Methods As Sites For Human-Ocean Entanglement, Clarissa Chevalier

Study of Women, Gender, & Sexuality: Faculty Publications

This article examines shifting methods of plankton research within contemporary oceanography through direct participatory engagement on a ten-day research cruise off the Santa Lucia Escarp- ment in February 2025. As a feminist visual science studies researcher, I reflect on how seasick- ness, sensory immersion, and embodied participation shaped my experience of plankton sampling and reveal the entanglement of oceanographic knowledge with its contexts. While remote sensing technologies – such as satellites, digital twins, and remotely operated vehicles – are increasingly shaping oceanography and producing intensified modes of ocean quantification, I argue that tactile, physical sampling methods remain indispensable in plankton …

From Feedback To Insight: Using Hierarchical Clustering Analysis To Identify And Analyze Feedback Dimensions In Online Courses, Reagan R. Siggard

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The demand for online courses continues to increase, as do the critiques of their effectiveness. Studies have found that peer interactions positively impact the online course experience and that peers can offer feedback to each other at the instructor's level with proper guidance. To help understand this feedback, researchers have identified feedback dimensions. Most feedback dimensions have been created through inductive coding, not exploratory data analysis approaches. This study sought to identify those feedback dimensions that perhaps had been missed or were highly associated with those already existing in the literature, hoping to inform research and practice to improve the …

Utilizing Diatoms In Wastewater Treatment For Pollutant Removal, Ceaira D. Howard

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Wastewater treatment systems are increasingly challenged by a complex mix of pollutants including excess nutrients, organic dyes, and persistent chemicals like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Conventional treatment technologies often struggle to effectively and affordably remove these contaminants. This study explores the use of two diatom species, Phaeodactylum tricornutum and Navicula cryptocephala var. veneta, both single-celled microalgae with silica-based cell walls, as an environmentally sustainable approach to tertiary wastewater treatment. Diatoms offer dual functionality through surface adsorption properties and metabolic flexibilities, making them promising candidates for integrated treatment strategies.

To test the trophic flexibilities of diatoms, P. tricornutum was …