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Did They Think I Was Rude? The Emotional And Relational Consequences Of (In)Congruence Between Perpetrators’ Self- And Meta-Perceptions Of Workplace Rudeness, Nicholas C. Andriese

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

Workplace rudeness negatively impacts employees and costs organizations millions of dollars each year. Although much is known about the consequences of workplace rudeness, little is known about how perpetrators make sense of and respond to their (potentially) rude behavior. In this dissertation, I propose that perpetrators consider not only their self-perceptions of rudeness, or how rude they believe their actions were, but also their meta-perceptions of rudeness, or their beliefs about how rude another person perceived them to be. Because rudeness is subjective and people vary in their perceptual accuracy, self- and meta-perceptions of rudeness are unlikely to consistently …

Numerical Investigation Of Reacting Flow In Pmma-Fueled Solid Fuel Scramjet Combustors Under Experimental Test Conditions, Hunter Bassett

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

A simplified steady RANS-based numerical study of reacting flow in solid-fuel scramjet combustors is presented to evaluate the ability of commercial CFD frameworks to reproduce key features observed in experimental test sections. The work focuses on solid PMMA fuel in two supersonic combustor configurations: a cavity-assisted flameholding combustor and a variable-angle diverging combustor. The cavity combustor is analyzed as a baseline case and results are compared directly with experimental data. Three combustor geometry states corresponding to ignition, early-burning, and steady-burning conditions are investigated. Meshes are assessed through a systematic grid refinement method to establish grid independence. A novel variable-angle diverging …

Connecting The Existing Fiber Infrastructure To The Future With Antiresonant Hollow Core Fibers, Timothy Bate

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

Optical fiber systems based on solid-core silica waveguides underpin modern telecommunications, high-power laser delivery, precision sensing, and coherent optical systems. However, nonlinear effects, material absorption, and thermal limitations within silica increasingly constrain further scaling in both optical power and transmission performance. Antiresonant hollow-core fibers provide a promising alternative by guiding light predominantly in air, substantially reducing nonlinear interactions, latency, and optical damage while enabling transmission regimes inaccessible to conventional solid-core fibers. Despite rapid advances in antiresonant hollow-core fiber attenuation and power handling, one of the largest remaining barriers to widespread adoption is reliable integration with the existing solid-core fiber ecosystem. …

Non-Destructive Hhxrf Archaeometry For Grouping Individuals Via Trace Element Analysis Of Dental Remains, Griffon G. Binkowski

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

Handheld X-ray fluorescence (HHXRF) spectrometry has been validated as an accurate, non-destructive method for analyzing archaeological osseous materials. This study utilizes HHXRF to address key bioarchaeological questions, including population differentiation, individuation, and the interpretation of bioaccumulated trace elements versus diagenetic impacts. Using dental enamel from the Maya site of Altun Ha, Belize (n=20) and several Roman-Christian sites in the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt (n=6), the occlusal surface of molar crowns was assayed in air using a Bruker Tracer III- equipped with a 12 mil Al, 1 mil Ti, 6 mil Cu filter. Semi-quantitative trace element ratios (Sr/Ca, Fe/Ca, and Zn/Ca) …

An Examination Of The Impact Of School Context And Socioeconomic Status On Agency And Creative Productivity In Gifted High School Students, Elizabeth Bronson

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

This explanatory sequential mixed methods study investigated gifted high school students’ perception of the agency afforded them within school settings, and the relationship between these perceptions and their creative productivity. A sample of 140 students was drawn from a population of 966 identified gifted high school students. These students were contacted via their parents and asked to complete the Agentic Engagement Scale (AES) questionnaire which provided gifted high school students’ perceptions of the agency afforded at school. No significant differences in perceived agency were found across demographic variables, including socioeconomic status and school type. Of the respondents, 10 students were …

A Systematic Review And Characterization Of Privacy Noncompliance In Real-World Applications, Alexander E. Charkiewicz

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

Software applications increasingly rely on user data to provide their functionality, but improper handling of such data can lead to serious privacy noncompliance with applicable regulations and policies. A prominent example is the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a third-party application collected the personal data of approximately 87 million Facebook users without users' consent. Despite growing attention to privacy compliance, two key challenges hinder the systematic understanding and analysis of privacy noncompliance. First, unlike security vulnerabilities, which have been systematically categorized through taxonomies such as the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE), privacy noncompliance lacks a technical taxonomy describing how it manifests …

Vaccine Hesitancy In Arabic Discourse: A Multi-Method Social Media Study, Nada Dimashkieh Chehab

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

Vaccine hesitancy — the state of uncertainty about vaccination — poses global public health challenges, undermining efforts to prevent infectious diseases. It is also a contextual phenomenon, shaped by social and political forces. While survey-based research on vaccine hesitancy is abundant both globally and in the Arab world, humanities-oriented approaches using discourse analysis remain limited especially in Arabic on social media: some have tracked trends on Twitter, but virtually none have done so on Facebook. This dissertation addresses these gaps through a multimethod design combining Textual and Trend Analyses and Critical Discourse Study. It examines vaccine-related trends and discourses among …

In Situ Observations Of Thermal Ions In Perturbed Ionospheres: Techniques And Results, Magdalina Louise Moses

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Prediction and mitigation of space weather events are active research topics that require knowledge of the physics governing the ionosphere. Sounding rockets can be used to make in situ observations. The Lynch Rocket Lab created the Petite-Ion-Probe (PIP), a small retarding potential analyzer, to measure thermal ion parameters (i.e., ion density and temperature). A PIP's raw data consists of a series of measured anode currents as a function of screen bias voltages, called IV curves. PIPs can be integrated onto a sounding rocket’s main payload and/or be deployed from the rocket on small platforms called ``PIP-Bobs''. Note that as the …

High Temperature Creep Deformation Mechanism Of Fe28.2ni18.8mn32.9al14.1cr6 High Entropy Alloy And Its Modified Alloys, Edwin S. Jiang, I. Baker

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Fe28.2Ni18.8Mn32.9Al14.1Cr6 eutectic high entropy alloy exhibits a good combination of room-temperature and high temperature properties, including tensile strength, ductility, and corrosion resistance, making it a promising candidate for structural applications in extreme environments. However, the creep deformation behavior of this alloy— and high-entropy alloys (HEAs) in general—remains insufficiently understood. This dissertation systematically investigates the high-temperature creep deformation mechanisms of Fe28.2Ni18.8Mn32.9Al14.1Cr6 and its derivatives.

Creep mechanisms and associated microstructural changes were examined across a wide range of strain rates using strain-rate jump and constant-stress tests. Two dominant regimes were identified: dislocation glide/solute-drag at low strain rates, and dislocation climb at high …

Climate And Environmental Controls On Forest Soil Organic Matter Cycling, Genevieve Goebel

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Climate change factors act on the soil environment in complex ways, known to disturb soil organic carbon (C). Rising global temperatures and alterations to regional precipitation and nitrogen deposition regimes may contribute to the intensification of global change by accelerating the rate of biological decomposition and CO2 efflux to the atmosphere. The magnitude and endurance of the disturbance to soil organic C across landscapes and throughout time that climate change factors may pose to soil C cycling are not comprehensively understood. These knowledge gaps in our field make it challenging to anticipate how soil environments and the vast ecosystems that …

Immune Suppression And Epigenetic Reprogramming In Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition, Hanxu Lu

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is increasingly recognized as a dynamic spectrum of cellular programthat contributes to tumor progression, metastasis, and therapeutic resistance. Rather than existing as discrete epithelial or mesenchymal phenotypes, tumor cells undergo intermediate EMT states in which epithelial and mesenchymal features are partially and variably expressed. In this thesis, I studied EMT state heterogeneity through two complementary and integrated dimensions: tumor-immune interactions and the dynamic remodeling of epigenetic programs across the EMT spectrum. Using a clonal EMT model derived from the murine triple-negative 4T1 mammary carcinoma cell line, including epithelial, intermediate, and mesenchymal states that are stably maintained in …

Genomic Determinants Of Appetite Regulation And Their Role In Obesity Risk, Timothy J. Renier

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Over 40% of US adults and 20% of children live with obesity. It is related to increased risks of diseases including type II diabetes and cancer, is a source of harmful stigma, and impairs child development. Appetitive traits describing patterns of food approach and avoidance behaviors may serve as windows into the underlying pathophysiology of obesity. As both obesity and appetitive traits are heritable, common genetic drivers of obesity may lead to phenotypic obesity through appetitive traits as a disease mechanism. Additionally, GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) have been shown to exert their profound clinical effects in part by modulating appetite. …

Basis Design For Electronic Structure And Beyond, Weishi Wang

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

At the intersection of quantum physics, quantum chemistry, and materials science, electronic structure is the study of electrons in solid-state and molecular systems. Electronic-structure computation relies on discretizing the many-electron Hamiltonian with a finite single-particle basis set. However, basis-set construction is conventionally treated as an ad hoc preprocessing step. This thesis develops an expressive and flexible framework for active, system-oriented basis-set design and numerical modeling strategies that treat basis functions as tunable representations to encode electronic ground-state information.

We first introduce a multi-layered, differentiable basis-construction framework that embeds a set of primitive parameters into mixed-contracted Gaussian-type orbitals. We then develop …

Active Galactic Nuclei Across Scales: From Blazar Jets To Dark Matter Halos, Stephanie Ann Podjed

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Within ΛCDM, galaxies form and evolve within dark matter halos, with both central and satellite galaxies contributing to the total stellar mass content. Virtually every massive galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at its center, with a small fraction of the population growing by actively accreting material; we call this an active galactic nucleus (AGN). The processes giving rise to an AGN phase (i.e., growth of a SMBH) releases enormous amounts of energy in the form of radiation, outflows, and relativistic jets that are able to significantly affect the formation and evolution of galaxies. Blazars are an extreme class …

Structural And Magnetic Characterization Of A Magnetite Nanoparticle-Based Aggregation Assay And Its Application To In Vitro Cytokine Monitoring, Gabrielle Rose Moss

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Magnetic particle spectroscopy (MPS) based aggregation assays rely on target induced changes in functionalized magnetic nanoparticle (fMNP) hydrodynamic diameter and/or changes in fMNP aggregation level to enable target detection. fMNP target binding can be modeled via Brownian and Néel relaxation. We are engineering an MPS-based aggregation assay to sense tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-⍺ in a 3D melanoma tissue culture to aid in the development of immunotherapies for cancer treatment. TNF-⍺ is an inflammatory cytokine, whose production can be linked to cell death.

The first part of this thesis investigates the effects of ligand density, off-target proteins, and salts on fMNP …

Experimental And Computational Investigation Of Defect-Tolerant Pnictide Semiconductors, Gideon Belay Kassa

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

The discovery of new photovoltaic semiconductors is challenging because performance depends on the simultaneous optimization of band gap, optical absorption, carrier lifetime, and defect tolerance. We address this challenge through an experiment-theory feedback loop, testing a promising group of pnictide semiconductors identified through high-throughput computational screening. Our experimental results provide more insights to further improve the theoretical screening process. We present an investigation of the optoelectronic properties of the Zintl pnictide BaCd2P2 (BCP), showing that it exhibits bright band-to-band photoluminescence emission, strong photoconductive-current generation, a room-temperature carrier lifetime of up to 300 ns, and an implied open-circuit voltage comparable to …

Advancing Cns Tumor Management: Novel Modalities In Surgery, Radiation, And Chemotherapy, Armin David Tavakkoli

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Most tumors affecting the brain and spine are managed through a combination of surgical resection, radiation, and chemotherapy; however, operative morbidity from invasive surgery, the narrow therapeutic window of conventional radiotherapy, and poor blood-brain barrier penetration of systemic agents are critical barriers that hinder long term tumor control. This thesis presents three complementary strategies to advance brain and spine tumor therapy. First, we investigate laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT) in the treatment of spinal tumors with metastatic epidural spinal cord compression, replacing “separation surgery” with a minimally invasive, image-guided approach that maximizes tumor ablation while preserving neurologic function. Second, we …

Engineering Disorder, Defects, And Electrical Transport For High-Performance Thermoelectric Fe2val Heusler Alloys, James Russell Taylor Iv

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Fe₂VAl is a promising low-temperature thermoelectric material for waste-heat energy conversion because it is easily processed and comprised of earth-abundant, non-toxic, and low-cost elements. However, viability for applications faces two major challenges: high thermal conductivity and low p-type Seebeck coefficients. This primarily experimental work aims to address these issues through extrinsic and self-doping, point-defect and disorder generation through thermal and electrical processing, disordered and metastable phase composition quantification, and comparison of transport measurements to modeled electronic features.

An accessible phase quantification method was developed for bulk Fe₂VAl using laboratory X-ray diffraction equipment to compare thermoelectric properties …

The Serotonin 1b Receptor In Psilocybin’S Therapeutic-Like Mechanisms: From Behavior To Network Reorganization, Sixtine Fleury

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Mood disorders represent a substantial and growing global health crisis, with ~10 million adults in the US meeting criteria for a major depressive disorder (MDD). Current first-line treatments such as SSRIs require long-term daily administration and fail a significant proportion of patients, driving renewed interest in rapid-acting alternatives. Psilocybin, a serotonergic psychedelic, shows growing clinical evidence of efficacy in treating depressive and anxiety disorders, often producing therapeutic effects persisting weeks to months following a single dose. Yet, the neural mechanisms underlying these enduring effects remain poorly understood and have been largely attributed to the serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2AR) based on …

The Influence, Dependency, And Targeting Of Fatty Acid Uptake In Er+ Breast Cancer, Abigail E. Goen

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Estrogen Receptor-positive/ Human Epidermal Growth Factor 2-negative, breast cancer (ER+/HER2- BC) is the most prevalent subtype of BC, impacting millions of individuals. Although early screening and treatment with endocrine therapy has greatly enhanced survival, this subtype sustains a steady increase of risk for recurrent disease for decades after diagnosis, indicating the persistence of residual cancer cells that are capable of maintaining dormancy for >20 years prior to metastatic outgrowth. Dormant cells reprogram metabolic pathways which can be profoundly influenced by the tumor microenvironment in promoting quiescence or proliferation. Fatty acid oxidation dependency has been noted as a hallmark of drug …

Early-Time/High-Frequency Electromagnetic Induction Sensing For Minimal-Metal And None-Metallic Subsurface Targets, Michele Louise Maxson

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Conventional electromagnetic induction (EMI) systems operate within the quasi-static regime, where measurements are dominated by conduction currents and are primarily sensitive to highly conductive targets and bulk soil properties. As a result, these systems exhibit limited sensitivity to low-conductivity and layered media, such as permafrost, composite materials, and minimum-metal landmines, where diagnostically relevant information resides in early-time/high-frequency electromagnetic responses, generally above 100 kHz. This limitation reflects a mismatch between conventional EMI system design and the underlying target physics, restricting the ability of standard EMI approaches to resolve fine-scale non-metallic subsurface structure.

In this thesis, I investigate early-time/high-frequency sensitivity as a …

Governing Agroecological Transitions: Landscape Legacies, Participation, And Socioecological Change In The Northeastern United States, Kristen Jovanelly

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Agroecological transitions are often presented as purposeful shifts toward more resilient, equitable, and ecologically sustainable landscapes. In practice, these transitions unfold through histories, ecological feedback, institutional arrangements, and contested forms of participation. This dissertation examines how these forces shape what agroecological transitions become, for whom, and with what socioecological consequences across urban and working landscapes in the northeastern United States.

Drawing on historical and critical analysis, ecological modeling, greenhouse experimentation, ethnographic fieldwork, and institutional analysis, I trace transition through urban forests, community-garden seed banks and soils, temperate agroforestry systems, and a participatory tree nursery. Analyses of urban greening and agroforestry …

Cross-Temporal Statistical Approaches For Evaluating Predictor-Outcome Relationships, Jeff Joseph

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Central auditory function is linked with cognitive deficits, but few research projects use existing statistical approaches or develop new ones to forecast cognitive deficits using the results of central auditory tests. To address this limitation, we use a series of statistical learning frameworks for predicting a child’s cognitive abilities based on his/her central auditory performances and demographic factors. Two key challenges exist. First, children may start the study at a time when they are unable to perform the central auditory tests or cognitive tests. Second, cognitive performance is age-dependent, particularly in the early formative years of childhood and adolescence. To …

Black Ecological Care: Conservation, Environmental Justice, And Sovereignty In Baltimore, Maryland, Alexandria Nicole Casteel

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Dominant traditions of urban planning, municipal policy, and environmental science register Black urban spaces through a vocabulary of pathology, as sites of ecological deficit, contamination, and social decay. This dissertation investigates how Black communities in U.S. cities attend to the environment in ways that address legacies of environmental and social injustice while opening pathways toward different environmental futures. I gather these practices under the analytic of Black ecological care, which captures the generative labor of making and maintaining livable worlds within, alongside, and beyond histories of harm. I develop the analytic across twenty-nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2021 and …

Ice Stream Formation, Activation, And Evolution, Logan E. Mann

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

While the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets deform as slow viscous fluids, ice streams are regions of ice that flow several orders of magnitude faster than the surrounding ice ridges. Ice streams form the primary drainage networks for ice sheets and are currently responsible for the majority of discharge from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Many catchments like the Siple Coast of West Antarctica display a complex array of flow morphologies that are not primarily determined by bed topography. Instead, flow is primarily governed by thermal conditions along the bed and in shear margins that lead to rapid till deformation. …

A Generalized Framework For The “Core” Thalamocortical Circuit Computation, Charles Liu

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

This thesis explores a biologically inspired computational framework based on a common excitatory-inhibitory circuit in the superficial layers of the cortex. By varying the strength of local feedback inhibition, this single circuit gives rise to distinct unsupervised learning behaviors: strong inhibition leads to clustering and hierarchical clustering, while weak inhibition produces principal component-like representations. From this principle, we develop three algorithms: Lateral Inhibition Clustering (LI-C), Lateral Inhibition Hierarchical Clustering (LI-HC), and Antipodal Iterative Mean Estimation (AIME).

LI-C performs clustering without requiring a predefined number of clusters, using a competitive learning rule to extract dominant patterns from data. LI-HC extends this …

From Meaning To Memory: Assessing The Capacity And Representational Structure Of Visual Working Memory With Meaningful Stimuli, Yong Hoon Chung

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Visual working memory is thought to be strictly limited. Yet we remember meaningful, real-world objects better than abstract stimuli. Here I show that this advantage arises from the semantic structure of meaningful objects, not their perceptual features alone, and that it extends even to memory for associated features such as color. In the brain, meaningful objects elicit greater and more distributed delay activity, consistent with the recruitment of higher-level neural processes during maintenance. I propose that semantic knowledge adds representational dimensions that make items more distinctive, and that these dimensions are organized hierarchically with lower-level visual features. These findings recast …

A Long-Acting Farnesoid X Receptor (Fxr) Agonist Prevents Fibrosis, Ashrafi Sultana, Grace Bybee, Anup S. Pathania, Weimin Wang, Nam Thai Hoang Le, Brandon W. Hanson, Christopher D. Bauer, Deanna D. Mosley, Howard Gendelman, Samuel M. Cohen, Todd A. Wyatt, Larisa Y. Poluektova, Benson J. Edagwa, Natalia A. Osna

Journal Articles: Environmental, Agricultural & Occupational Health

Despite effective vaccines and antiviral therapies, patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) remain at risk of developing progressive liver fibrosis and cirrhosis. Vonafexor (VON), a second-generation synthetic non-steroidal, non-bile acid farnesoid X receptor agonist, has been shown to prevent liver fibrosis and target the HBV cccDNA reservoir. However, adherence to daily oral therapy is an established barrier to successful treatment of chronic infections. To overcome this barrier, VON was transformed into a long-acting (LA) prodrug nanosuspension. The LA prodrug formulation suppressed αSMA, TGFβ, and Col1A1 gene expression in the LX2 hepatic stellate cell line. The formulation was well tolerated and …

Intratracheal Interleukin-10 Administration Reduces Acute Lung Injury Induced By Sulfur Dioxide Exposure In Mice, Amy J. Nelson, Todd A. Wyatt, Bradley W. Richmond, Belinda Diaz, Angela Gleason, Michael J. Duryee, Geoffrey M. Thiele, Ted R. Mikuls, Jill A. Poole

Journal Articles: Environmental, Agricultural & Occupational Health

Therapies capable of reducing acute high-consequence airborne chemical exposure-induced lung disease are lacking. This study seeks to determine the therapeutic potential of interleukin (IL)-10 administered following acute sulfur dioxide (SO₂) exposure in mice. C57BL/6 male and female mice were exposed to SO₂ gas at 125 ppm for 4 h and subsequently treated 2-3 h later with IL-10 (1 μg) or vehicle control by intratracheal instillation for a total of 3 doses over 2 days with comparisons to sham-treated mice (N = 20 mice/group). IL-10 treatment reduced SO₂-induced weight loss with corresponding reductions in SO_{2 …}

Blocking Interleukin 33 Reduces Joint, Systemic, And Lung Inflammatory Responses In The Combined Collagen-Induced Arthritis-Inhalant Endotoxin Exposure Model, Jill A. Poole, Jacob L. Larsen, Geoffrey M. Thiele, Todd A. Wyatt, Amy J. Nelson, Michael J. Duryee, Angela Gleason, Oliver W. Schanze, Aaron D. Schwab, John D. Dickinson, Deanna Mosley, Michael Lush, Han-Jun Wang, E. Suzanne Cohen, Bryant England, Ted R. Mikuls

Journal Articles: Environmental, Agricultural & Occupational Health

Therapies capable of resolving rheumatoid arthritis (RA)-associated lung disease, particularly in the setting of environmental exposures, are lacking. This study sought to determine whether blocking interleukin (IL)-33 in a murine model of RA-associated lung disease induced by combined collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) and repeated inhalant lipopolysaccharide (LPS) exposures could be advantageous. Arthritis prone male DBA/1J mice received CIA (vs saline) injections (days 1 and 21) plus intranasal LPS (100 ng) or saline daily for 4 weeks and were subsequently treated with 5 doses of anti-IL-33 (10 mg/kg) or isotype over 11 days. Anti-IL-33 therapy significantly (P < .05) mitigated several CIA+LPS-induced effects. Anti-IL-33 reduced arthritis inflammatory score by 76% and serum acute phase reactant pentraxin-2 by 70% and reversed weight loss induced by CIA+LPS coexposure. Anti-IL-33 reduced CIA+LPS-induced antimalondialdehyde acetaldehyde but not anticitrullinated autoantibodies in serum and reduced serum levels of inflammatory mediators. Lung cell infiltrates induced by coexposure, including neutrophils, activated lung macrophages, transitional monocytes-macrophages, monocytic-like cells, and dendritic cells, were reduced with anti-IL-33. Anti-IL-33 also reduced CIA+LPS-induced lung levels of chemokines involved in monocyte-macrophage recruitment and fibrotic/repair mediators collagen deposition, IL-33 expression, inflammatory CC motif chemokine receptor 2