Digital Commons Network^™

The Rhetoric Of Flattery: Embodiment And Persuasion In Papal Discourse, Gabrielle Wilkosz

All Dissertations

What makes flattery so persuasive? An analysis of three speeches from contemporary popes, preeminent leaders in the Catholic Church, finds strategic use of compliments, emotional language, and ideas about human dignity. These approaches can persuade world leaders and institutions such as the United Nations and the United States Congress to act morally and responsibly. Flattery can encourage ethical action and reduce the feeling of emergency, creating an enduring, complex dynamic of power that is seen at many levels of narrative.

Day-To-Day Ionospheric Variability In The Midlatitudes, Danielle Markowski

All Dissertations

Have you ever been driving down the road around noon, turned on the radio to an AM station and got mostly static breaking up your news, or only pick up stations close to you? Have you ever been driving down the same road around midnight, turned on the radio to the same station, and heard the music come in clearly, with no static at all, or been able to pick up stations 100s of miles away? Well, this is all due to the region of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, known as the ionosphere. Most of Earth’s atmosphere is considered neutral; …

Rhetorics Of The Lost Cause Myth And Its Lingering Hegemony In The South, Frances Chapman

All Dissertations

The Lost Cause of the Confederacy is a myth that is steeped in the consciousness of many white Southerners. For about one hundred years, it was taught in public schools in the South using curricula devised by the United Daughters of the Confederacy with the goal of keeping the Confederate cause alive and visible. The myth dates back to the end of the Civil War in 1865. Basically, it says that the Civil War was not fought about slavery but about states’ rights, and that the South’s cause was just. It believes wholeheartedly in white supremacy.

Generations of people have …

Essays On Opioid Prescription Limit Policy Diffusion, Evaluation, And Opioid Use Disorder Treatment Utilization, Md Ashiqur Rab

All Dissertations

The drivers of the opioid epidemic in the United States include the oversupply of prescription opioids, the availability of illicit drugs, under-resourced healthcare settings, and several socio-economic factors. Federal and state-level initiatives, including policy interventions to curb the oversupply of prescription opioids, providing access to healthcare, prevention and recovery support services, and community-level engagement, have been adopted to combat the opioid epidemic. Motivated by the need to better understand the policy and recovery efforts to address the epidemic, this dissertation examines opioid prescription limit policy diffusion, evaluation, and treatment utilization patterns. This dissertation comprises three manuscripts that offer a comprehensive …

Efficient And Scalable Visual Computing For Nanoscale Imaging, Hao Wang

All Dissertations

Nanoscale analysis often relies on instrument-mediated scientific imaging methods to capture visual signals that are difficult to observe, interpret, or quantify through ordinary perception alone. These domains are often characterized by low signal quality, limited annotations, complex morphology, non-natural visual statistics, and strong dependence on physical acquisition processes. This dissertation focuses on efficient visual computing for nanoscale imaging, with an emphasis on the representation, reconstruction, and analysis of high-resolution scientific visual data. In our early work, we relied on rule-based algorithms and conventional machine learning methods for feature extraction. However, these approaches struggle to scale with the increasing complexity and …

The Past, Present, And Future Of Climate Adaptation In A Widespread Lizard Species, Matthew R. Mcternan

All Dissertations

Climate, as a selective force, shapes patterns of biodiversity globally. However, how species adapt to climate remains a central question of biology. The need to understand climate adaptation is paramount, as global climate change threatens a large portion of global diversity. Climate can impose selection on life by either controlling rates of energy intake and expenditure through effects on body temperature and activity, or by exposing organisms to conditions beyond their physiological limits. Studies of climate adaptation have identified a wide-range of putatively adaptive phenotypic patterns, but genomic evidence is increasingly being used to investigate these patterns and better understand …

Who Gets To Belong: Using A Tier Two Intervention To Increase Student Sense Of Belonging And Supportive Student-Teacher Relationships, Kevin L. Smith

All Dissertations

Students do better in school when they feel like they belong and have positive relationships with their teachers. This study examined whether dialogue circles as a Tier 2 intervention could help students feel more connected to their teachers and school. The study took place in a small, rural, Title I middle school. Although the intervention did not lead to clear improvements in grades, attendance, or discipline, it did achieve its aim of having at least 80% of pre and post survey respondents report having at least one adult who helped them feel a sense of belonging at school. Furthermore, students …

Increasing General Education Teacher Effectiveness When Working With Students Receiving Special Education Services, Taylor Watson

All Dissertations

Although the number of students identified as having disabilities (SWD) continues to increase, general education teachers continue to demonstrate difficulty adequately supporting these students. At one South Carolina school in particular, SWD demonstrate decreased academic achievement and increased rate of discipline referrals when compared to non-SWD. This study utilized an improvement science approach in order to implement targeted instruction on high-leverage practices (HLPs) and its impact on general education teacher effectiveness.

Preliminary findings of the intervention trended positive. Teacher participants demonstrated increased understanding of HLPs following intervention, although this increased knowledge did not necessarily correlate with increased application. Students whose …

Counting The Days: The Impact Of Career And Advanced Coursework On Academic And Perceptual Outcomes For Eighth Grade Students Who Are At Risk Of Experiencing Adverse Educational Outcomes, Jamie Megna

All Dissertations

This study addressed limited academic achievement and limited access to meaningful learning opportunities among eighth grade students who are at risk of adverse educational outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine how implementing career-based and advanced coursework opportunities for eighth grade students who are at risk improves student engagement with relevant and meaningful learning while supporting progress in academic achievement. The study achieved this by reducing barriers to career-based and advanced coursework to expand access to these learning environments for students who are at risk.

Using a mixed-methods design, the team collected and analyzed data to monitor the …

Making The Case For Historically Minoritized Students At Career Centers With A Focus On Agriculture, Janine Honey Sutter

All Dissertations

Historically minoritized students are still underrepresented in many Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs, such as agricultural education, even though these programs offer valuable academic, workforce, and postsecondary opportunities. This dissertation used Improvement Science to explore whether educator perceptions and communication practices played a role in this underrepresentation at Liberty Career Center. It also examined whether targeted informational interventions could help educators become more aware of and more positive about Career Center opportunities.

Following Improvement Science principles, the study used a continuous improvement approach to find system-level barriers and test new ways to improve communication between the Career Center and …

Growing Our Own Garden: The Implementation Of Cross Curricular And Cross Grade Level Teacher Rounds To Increase Professional Learning Individualization And Feedback, Logan Greene

All Dissertations

Educators are constantly faced with balancing the demands of teaching and professional learning expectations from their districts. Concurrently, administrators are routinely prevented from providing adequate feedback for classroom instructional practices with observations instead focused upon generic and formulaic checks for classroom activities. This results in a gap of intentional professional learning and growth for educators.

The idea of instructional rounds sought to provide teacher-to-teacher feedback for educators to grow their practice together. The original theory focused on groups of teachers operating under a school or district goal of improvement. Instructional rounds have shown positive effects for teacher happiness and student …

Teacher Self-Efficacy And Student Engagement In Rural Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics Magnet Schools: A Correlational Study Within An Improvement Science Context, Deirdre L. Appleby

All Dissertations

Teacher self-efficacy in magnet-themed integration represents a critical, district-influenceable condition shaping instructional experiences in rural Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) magnet programs. Persistent under-enrollment of Black, Latinx, and economically disadvantaged students in these settings highlights ongoing inequities in access and participation that may be influenced by upstream instructional conditions. Grounded in Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory and situated within an improvement science framework, this study examines teacher self-efficacy as a key system-level factor associated with student engagement.

This study employs a correlational research design within an improvement science context to examine the relationship between changes in teacher self-efficacy and changes …

Why Technical Readiness Is Not Enough: Institutional Barriers To Full Harvest Strategy Adoption In The International Pacific Halibut Commission, Evelyn Roozee, Owen Temby, Gordon M. Hickey

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Harvest strategies are increasingly promoted as a mechanism to reduce political discretion and align fisheries management with pre-agreed scientific objectives. While substantial progress has been made in tuna regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs), non-tuna RFMOs have lagged behind. Existing research has focused primarily on technical modeling challenges, with comparatively limited attention to the governance dynamics shaping adoption. Using the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) as an instrumental case study, we examine the progress and delays in the development of a harvest strategy policy (HSP) through semi-structured interviews and participant observation. We find that the IPHC successfully addressed commonly cited barriers, …

Viability Of Manually Passing Projectiles Through The Barrel Of A Firearm In Lieu Of Test Firing, Mara V. Mineo

Student Theses

Forensic examinations of discharged projectiles are made possible by the toolmarks and striations made by the barrel the projectiles pass through. Suspect barrels are attached to firearms and test fired to compare these toolmarks and striations with found evidence. However, physically damaged barrels could potentially be unable to produce exemplars. This study tests the viability of manually passing projectiles through stationary barrels as a meaningful and accurate means to produce acceptable exemplars that are able to be compared against recovered evidence. A total of 18 projectiles were manually passed between two distinct Glock handgun barrels and viewed under a comparison …

Interplay Of Atomicity, Polarization, And Quantization On Performance And Reliability In Gan Finfets, Salim I. Almenshad

Dissertations

GaN based nanoscale high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) are the next generation of transistor technology that features the unique combination of higher power, wider bandwidth, low noise, higher efficiency, and temperature/radiation hardness than conventional AlGaAs and Si based technologies. However, enhancement mode operation for nanoscale channel region is the most recent needed area of research. As well as reliability of these devices remains a major concern. The main objective of this proposed research is to numerically investigate the role of atomistic inhomogeneity and quantization in low-dimensionality lateral tri-gated AlGaN/GaN FinFET devices. It is shown that 3-D configured AlGaN/GaN FinFETs with narrow enough …

Quaking Aspen On Cedar Mountain, Utah: Status And Update, Jaycee Cappaert, Larissa L. Yocom, Paul C. Rogers, Darren J. Mcavoy, R. Justin Derose

Wildland Resources Student Research

Quaking aspen forests are important communities in the western United States where they provide preferential food and habitat for animals, limit wildfires from spreading, and have favorable aesthetics, among other things. Their putative decline is an issue for ecology and management. We remeasured the aspen population on Cedar Mountain, Utah, to assess changes to its condition since it was originally measured in 2008 and laid the groundwork for continued aspen monitoring on Cedar Mountain. Our objectives were to compare current metrics of stand structure and composition, mortality, crown dieback, bole damage, regeneration, and recruitment, to those of the original inventory. …

From Understanding To Production: A Qualitative Case Study Of Instructional Alignment And Bar Examination Readiness At One Law School, Mackenzie E. Gray

Education (PhD) Dissertations

Many law students who understand the law struggle to produce it under examination conditions.This qualitative case study examined how instruction in three settings at one ABA-accredited law school (first-year doctrinal, upper-division doctrinal, and for-credit bar preparation courses) shaped students’ perceptions of their readiness for the California Bar Examination. Grounded in metacognitive transfer theory, the study drew on 18 classroom observations across six courses, semi-structured interviews with seven students and four professors, and a simulated bar examination scored against a criterion-referenced rubric, all collected during the Spring 2026 semester. Interview data were analyzed through codebook thematic analysis. Five themes resulted. Students …

Agent-Based Modeling Of Cellular Dynamics In Adoptive Cell Therapies, Yujia Wang

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Adoptive cell therapies (ACT) have shown promising progress in combating cancer, but clinical responses remain heterogeneous. Key determinants, including the functional states of infused cells, tumor–immune interactions, and dosing strategies, are difficult to resolve experimentally in the dynamic and heterogeneous tumor microenvironment, limiting optimization of ACT products and treatment regimens. To address the gap, we developed ABMACT (Agent-Based Model for Adoptive Cell Therapies), a computational framework that reconstruct key cellular functions, interactions, and molecular signatures to recapitulate cell population dynamics associated with differential treatment responses. ABMACT encodes autonomous “virtual cells” using literature-informed rules calibrated with experimental data, enabling simulation of …

Ai-Driven Segmentation And Volumetric Response Modeling Of Liver Regions To Radiotherapy, Aashish Chandra Gupta

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

In liver-directed radiotherapy (RT), liver regions receiving higher doses typically undergo atrophy while contralateral/adjacent lower-dose regions may exhibit compensatory hypertrophy through regeneration of healthy tissue. Optimizing the RT plan to promote regional hypertrophy while minimizing the risk of developing atrophy has the potential to enhance post-RT liver function and long-term survivorship. However, current clinical practice largely relies on global liver dose-volume metrics during RT-planning, which may obscure favorable dose-response correlation and limit actionable guidance for clinicians. Therefore, we hypothesized that post-RT regional liver response is governed by a combination of region-specific dose-volume and patient clinical features, and that these responses …

Oxidative Stress Mediated Glutamate Release And Nmda Receptor-Dependent Synaptic Remodeling In Radiation-Induced Cognitive Dysfunction, Thanh Lam

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

In children younger than 14 years old, the brain and other parts of the central nervous system are the most common sites for solid tumors. Radiotherapy is an effective treatment for central nervous system (CNS) tumors. However, it often causes a progressive decline in cognitive functions, which is especially devastating for pediatric patients. Although post-mitotic neurons are generally considered resistant to radiation-induced immediate cell death, ionizing radiation causes complex neurochemical and structural changes that damage synaptic integrity. In this study, we examined the molecular cascades following a 10 Gy radiation dose applied to mouse cortical neurons. We found that radiation-induced …

From Geometry To Recognition: A Quantitative Framework For Tcr-Pmhc Structural Analysis In The Age Of Predicted Structures, Kun Hee Kim

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Recognition of antigen by a T cell begins with a single physical event, the engagement of the T cell receptor (TCR) with a peptide-major histocompatibility complex (pMHC), and this interaction is encoded in the geometry with which the receptor docks onto the composite pMHC surface. Whether that docking geometry is biologically organized, and whether the structures now produced at scale by prediction preserve recognition or only reproduce that organization, are the two questions this thesis addresses. Two gaps stand in the way. The first is a gap of measurement, because docking geometry has never been made quantitatively comparable across many …

Antigen Discovery In Multiple Myeloma Using Integrated Long-Read Transcriptomics And Immunopeptidomics, Aya Albittar

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Multiple myeloma (MM) remains an incurable plasma cell malignancy, with relapse driven by persistent chemotherapy-resistant cells and residual disease following treatment. Although immunotherapies have transformed MM care, their success depends on identifying tumor-specific antigens that can be safely targeted. While aberrant genomic structural variation and transcriptional dysregulation are increasingly recognized as sources of novel antigens in MM, the HLA-presented antigenic landscape of MM remains incompletely characterized, particularly for non-canonical, structurally-derived peptides, and long-read transcriptome-informed immunopeptidomic data specific to MM remain scarce.

We established an integrated antigen discovery platform combining long-read RNA sequencing (Iso-Seq) with mass spectrometry-based HLA immunoprecipitation and immunopeptidomics …

“We’Re Just Always There For Each Other”: Examining Social Support For African American Caregivers Of Oncology Patients, Madeleine Lee, Keisha White Makinde

Posters

No abstract provided.

Operationalizing Frailty: A Comparison Of Measurement Frameworks, Audrey P. Doege, Madeline Donnelli, Daniel Forsha, Thomas Cochran, William R. Black, David A. White

Posters

No abstract provided.

Low-Cost Modular Transradial Prosthetic System, Caleb E. Barajas

Master's Theses

Upper-limb loss can significantly impact overall quality of life by limiting  a person's ability to perform activities of daily living (ADLs). Although prosthetic devices can help bridge the gap, many upper-limb prostheses are limited by high costs, discomfort, limited repairability, and accessibility barriers. Current commercial myoelectric prosthetic hands can provide high levels of functionality, but are often expensive and require specialized clinical access. In contrast, many current low-cost and open source prosthetic devices improve affordability but are limited in function or designed for partial hand applications rather than full transradial limb loss.

The purpose of this thesis was to design, …

Development And Initial Testing Of Novel Microfabricated Soap Film Frames For Use In Studying Instability Mechanisms In Liquid Sheet Edges, Sam Hastings, Sam Hastings

Master's Theses

The breakup of retracting liquid sheet edges into droplets is governed by instability mechanisms that, in some ways, are not yet fully understood. Previous and limited experimental soap film retraction experiments using straight edges have produced results that differ from the behavior predicted by Rayleigh-Plateau and Rayleigh-Taylor instability models, suggesting that uncontrolled imperfections in traditional wire frames (used to form and detach the soap films) may influence film detachment and the subsequent edge instability observed. This thesis presents the development of a new experimental approach using microfabricated silicon wafer-based soap film frames to provide improved control over the initial conditions …

2025-2026 Internal Funding Bulleting, Uno Office Of Research And Creative Activity

Internal Funding Newsletters

The University of Nebraska at Omaha is committed to exceptional education, groundbreaking research, and the life-long success of our students, alumni, and faculty. The 2025-2026 Academic Year brought many exciting opportunities for us to invest in a multitude of funding programs that promote research and creative activity. This year’s internal funding programs provided over $850,000 in awards for students and faculty. Projects from a wide variety of disciplines reflect the UNO community’s scholarly interests, including utilizing a virtual reality headset to reimagine scenic painting for theater productions, exploring the factors influencing the adoption of generative AI tools in U.S. local …

A Critical-Constructivist Grounded Theory Exploration Of The Mental Health Experiences Of Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities In Post-Secondary Settings, Alyssa L. Decker

Dissertations, 2020-current

Individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) now have access to higher education, often through inclusive post-secondary education programs (IPSE), to increase employability and quality of life. IPSE programs, historically, have provided academic and life skill support and not mental health support within programs’ curricula. A recent review of IPSE programs reveals that if mental health services are included, they are often accessed through university health services. Transitioning from high school to college induces high levels of stress, which can exacerbate underlying mental health conditions. Mental health care is defaulted to an already overburdened college counseling center without the knowledge and skills …

The Ambivalent Wisdom Of Moral Disgust, Brandon Yip

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper has two aims. First, to provide a positive account of moral disgust. I suggest that moral disgust is a response to acts that are socially corrosive, namely, acts that undermine the normative structure to which an agent is attuned. I support this analysis with two lines of evidence: (1) moral disgust serves the important function of guarding normative structures from socially corrosive actions and (2) the analysis provides an illuminating explanation of moral disgust in a wide variety of cases. The secondary aim of this paper is to probe the normative implications of my positive account. I suggest …

Global Prevalence Of Depression Among University Students: A Comprehensive Umbrella Review, Gilda Yun Kai Sam, Xun Ci Soh, Harshitha Balaji, Gabriel X. D. Tan, Shu Fen Diong, Meilan Hu, Andree Hartanto, Nadyanna M. Majeed

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Depression has become a major concern for educational institutes due to its increasing incidence and detrimental impacts on students’ well-being. However, its global prevalence in the context of tertiary education remains unclear. This umbrella review summarised existing meta-analyses and systematic reviews to examine the worldwide prevalence of depression among university students. Several sociodemographic and methodological factors, including differences in depression prevalence before, during, and after COVID-19, were examined as moderators. Structured and exhaustive searches were conducted in five bibliographic databases and five journals, alongside two sources of grey literature. A total of 61 meta-analyses and systematic reviews were included in …