Digital Commons Network^™

Sec-Saxs And Sans Analyses Of The Talin•Vinculin Complex, Gilbert Reyes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focal adhesions (FA) are integrin-based cell-matrix adhesion sites composed of adaptor proteins that facilitate the generation of traction forces important for biological functions such as cell migration, embryo development, wound healing, tissue organization and stability, and immune responses. Mature FA are observed when both autoinhibited multi-domain scaffolding protein talin and membrane-cytoskeletal protein vinculin are activated and interact thus promoting the assembly and function of FA. While research has resolved truncated sections of autoinhibited talin and recruitment of vinculin due to mechanotransduction that exposes cryptic vinculin binding sites (VBS), little is known about the global modifications of full length talin in …

Modeling And Generating Trustworthy Speech, Yuwen Yu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As virtual agents become increasingly integrated into everyday communication, trust has become essential for effective human-AI interaction. Although recent advances in natural language generation and speech synthesis have significantly improved fluency and intelligibility, most systems are not designed to control how trustworthy they are perceived. As a result, a mismatch can emerge between perceived trustworthiness and actual system capability, leading to over-trust or under-trust. While trust is critical for meaningful interaction, current text-to-speech (TTS) systems are primarily optimized for naturalness and intelligibility rather than calibrated trustworthiness.

This dissertation investigates the perceptual foundations of trust in both human and synthesized speech …

Urban Counterpoint (1992–2003): The Piano Music Of Ed Bland, Joseph Vaz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the piano music of Ed Bland, a politically and philosophically vocal composer active in the second half of the twentieth century, whose music draws on both the European and American twentieth-century avant-garde, and on African American vernacular music genres from ragtime to hip-hop. A review of the historical and personal context for these pieces, and a detailed examination of the compositional processes used in this music, work together to demonstrate how Bland thought about the relationship between different musical genres and languages.

Through this combination of theory of musical genre, historical and biographical study, and detailed analysis …

Investigating The Role Of Striatal Cholinergic Interneuron D2 Receptors In Behavioral Flexibility, Janyn J. Alfred

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dopamine (DA) and acetylcholine (ACh) interact within the striatum to shape reward-based learning and choice behavior. DA D2 receptors on cholinergic interneurons (CIN D2Rs) were genetically knocked out to investigate their role in choice allocation using a two-lever matching paradigm. Behaviorally, both knockout (KO) and wild-type (WT) mice learned the initial task equally well. When shifted to asymmetric matching schedules (VI-90 vs. VI-180), ideal matching predicts that mice should allocate exactly 67% of their total responses to the rich lever. Neither group matched as predicted by the matching law. Instead, the KO mice showed a pattern where the higher rate …

The Role Of External Factors In Shaping Carbohydrate Conformational Landscapes, Murat Yaman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Carbohydrates (glycans) are among the most structurally diverse biomolecules and participate in a wide range of biological processes, including molecular recognition, cell adhesion, immune response, host-pathogen interactions, and cellular signaling. Their biological functions are governed by a complex interplay between sequence, stereochemistry, conformational flexibility, and environmental factors. However, the structural heterogeneity and dynamic nature of glycans present significant challenges for both experimental characterization and theoretical modeling. In particular, the relationships between glycan structure, conformational dynamics, and the resulting potential energy surfaces remain incomplete.

This dissertation investigates how external factors modulate the potential energy surfaces of carbohydrates through a combination of …

‘A Sense Of The Sea’: Grassroots Culture, Care, And Endurance In Swansea, Cymru, Katy Clark

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues that under present conditions, everyday political-aesthetic life is not only about resistance or reproduction but about holding: the work of keeping people, practices, and attachment present and oriented as conditions change. Holding takes the form of care and maintenance; as practices of making, assembling, and imagining; and as the work that keeps open the possibility of renewed attachment to public things and to each other. In the field, this was named as ‘a sense of the sea’, an affective register characterized by wariness, attunement, attentiveness, orientation, and endurance. I am calling this a fragile infrastructure of …

New York City Women’S Experiences With Perinatal Depression Inquiries, Diagnosis, And Treatment Initiation, Caterina Pisciotta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Perinatal depression represents a significant public health concern, yet many women who experience depression symptoms during the perinatal period (either during pregnancy and/or after birth) do not receive treatment. Initiatives, such as ThriveNYC, were designed to address these gaps by screening and treating perinatal women for maternal depression, integrating screening into routine perinatal care and strengthening pathways to treatment. Using representative survey data collected between 2016 and 2021 via the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), this study examined trends in perinatal depression inquiries (a proxy for “screening”) and postpartum diagnosis, as well as …

Mesoscopic Scaling Of Microwave Transmittance And Disorder-Induced Alignment, Israel Kurtz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis presents microwave measurements and numerical simulations of wave propagation and transmission through random mesoscopic waveguides. We analyze the scaling of mesoscopic microwave conductance, including departures from Ohm’s law near channel openings, which are frequencies at which new propagating modes enter the system, and the evolution of modal phase alignment within the medium, which leads to the observed diversity of transmission eigenvalues. We extend the transmission matrix formalism to all sample depths using the flux matrix, which relates the flux amplitude within the sample to the incident flux, and decompose the flux at each sample depth into forward- and …

Ultrafast Spectroscopy Of Organic Materials In Strong Light–Matter Interaction And Terahertz Optics, Kamyar Rashidi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ultrafast spectroscopy is a powerful tool for investigating phenomena that occur on extremely short timescales and for probing ultrabroadband spectral responses enabled by its ultrashort laser pulses. These capabilities are essential for advancing both the fundamental understanding of light–matter interactions and the development of next-generation optoelectronic technologies. The first part of this thesis investigates the ultrafast dynamics of organic exciton–polaritons and their application to controlling molecular excited-state processes using momentum-resolved pump–probe spectroscopy. A major challenge in these systems is the dark-state problem, where photoexcitation predominantly populates long-lived excitonic reservoir states that obscure the in trinsic dynamics of the hybrid light–matter …

Opportunities For Learning Through Object Exploration During Early Physical Therapy: Physical Therapists’ And Caregivers’ Assistance And Interference Behaviors, Michele Goncalves Maia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Early physical therapy (EPT) for infants with motor delays has traditionally emphasized motor milestone acquisition, yet growing evidence indicates that motor and cognitive development are fundamentally interconnected. Grounded in embodied cognition and developmental cascade theories, this dissertation conceptualized object exploration as a primary mechanism through which infants learn during EPT and examined how intervention approaches and adult behaviors shape opportunities for object exploration. Using retrospective analyses of video-recorded EPT sessions, two studies investigated how intervention approaches and adult behaviors influence infants' opportunities to learn through object exploration. Study 1 compared object exploration in the START-Play (SP) intervention and Usual Care …

Nāgasvaram Ensemble Music In Contemporary South India: Perspectives Of Revival, Rajeswari Ranganathan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a study of nāgasvaram ensemble music in South India based on ethnographic research in Tamil Nadu conducted between 2022 and 2026. Drawing from observations of its various performance contexts and extensive interviews with contemporary practitioners, teachers, students, impresarios, and archivists, this study examines how the aesthetics, social contexts, and circulation of nāgasvaram ensemble music have evolved over the last four decades. Countering prevalent narratives of its decline and highlighting its endurance, I argue that this musical practice is undergoing a revival, both shaped by and contributing to ongoing social transformations.

Nāgasvaram ensembles featuring the double-reed woodwind instrument …

Theoretical Analysis And Performance Interpretation In Thomas Adès’S Traced Overhead, Han Chen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While many post-tonal composers avoid any inkling of tonality by embracing dissonance or breaking tonal resolutions, Thomas Adès does not shy away from the traditional harmonies that strongly relate to tonal music, such as the circle of fifths, major and minor triads, and the horn-call motif, but adopts several intervallic systems that govern all the notes, including aligned cycles, parsimonious voice leading, and the twelve-tone aggregate.

To examine how Adès uses these intervallic systems to repurpose traditional harmonies, this dissertation presents a close tonal analysis of his solo piano work Traced Overhead. Integrating historical, pianistic, and extramusical contexts, this …

Comparative Risk Metrics For U.S. Commercial Aviation, September 2026, Mihhail Berezovski

BCAAS Reports

No abstract provided.

Gene-Environment Interactions In Cardiovascular Aging: Volunteering, Polygenic Risk, And Biomarker Change In European And African Ancestry Populations, Seoyoun Kim, Byeongju Ryu, Erin Ware, Koichiro Shiba, Cal J. Halvorsen

Brown School Faculty Publications

Volunteering has been associated with better cardiovascular health, but whether this association varies by genetic susceptibility to cardiovascular disease remains unclear. This study examined associations between volunteering and cardiovascular biomarkers, assessed associations between biomarker-specific polygenic scores (PGSs) and these outcomes, and tested whether polygenic risk moderated volunteering–biomarker associations among U.S. adults aged 51 years and older.

Synthesis Of Fe-Doped Porous Carbon Catalyst Derived From Coconut Shell Waste Using Ferric Nitrate Nonahydrate (Fe(No3)3.9h2o) As An Iron Precursor, Ilham Lestadi Putra, Sukarni Sukarni, Heru Suryanto

Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science and Technology (JMEST)

Renewable energy from lignocellulosic biomass is a promising alternative to fossil fuels. Coconut shell (CS) waste is a favorable precursor for porous carbon due to its high carbon content, abundance, and non-food nature. However, conventional biochar often has limited surface area and catalytic active sites, hindering its effectiveness as a catalyst. While Fe-based modifications are promising, the use of ferric nitrate-assisted activation of coconut-shell-derived porous carbon remains underexplored. This research focused on developing an Fe-doped porous carbon catalyst from CS via ultrasound-assisted impregnation, followed by activation in a tube furnace. CS biochar was produced through pyrolysis at 550 °C and …

Prune: A Patching Based Repair Framework For Certifiable And Privacy-Robust Unlearning Of Neural Networks, Xuran Li, Jingyi Wang, Xiaohan Yuan, Peixin Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Machine unlearning has emerged as a key mechanism for enabling the “right to be forgotten” in neural network models, allowing the selective removal of specific training data upon request. Existing approaches typically rely on retraining models with the remaining data, which is computationally expensive and difficult to verify, especially when deployed models are distributed or resource-constrained. To address this challenge, our prior conference work introduced PRUNE, a patching-based framework that formulates unlearning as a neural network repair problem. PRUNE achieves targeted forgetting by learning lightweight patch networks that redirect model predictions on the data to be unlearned while preserving performance …

Neural Symphony Of Flow Experience: Evidence For High-Dimensional Metastable Dynamics, Abdelrahman B. M. Eldaly, Kris Zhangguang Kang, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Leanne Lai-Hang Chan, Keng Siau, Xiao Fan Liu, Richard Huskey, Langtao Chen, Tejaswini Yelamanchili, Rene Weber

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Flow, an optimal experience characterized by deep immersion and engagement in an activity, has been extensively studied in behavioral research. However, its neural dynamic mechanism remains poorly understood. In a within-subject video gaming experiment, we captured neural activity underlying flow, boredom, and anxiety using a 64-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) system. Compared to boredom and anxiety, flow exhibits the highest global functional connectivity, metastability, and dimensionality of dynamic functional connectivity patterns, suggesting that flow is a highly adaptable process that is supported by high-dimensional neural dynamics. Unlike previous studies that focused on identifying static or localized brain activity, we examine the neural …

Generalized Logit Adjustment: Improved Fine-Tuning By Mitigating Label Bias In Zero-Shot Vision Models, Beier Zhu, Qianru Sun, Xun Yang, Hanwang Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Foundation models like CLIP allow zero-shot transfer on various tasks without additional training data. Yet, the zero-shot performance is less competitive than a fully supervised one. Thus, fine-tuning and ensembling are also commonly adopted to better fit the downstream tasks. However, we argue that such prior work has overlooked the inherent biases in foundation models. Due to the highly imbalanced Web-scale training set, foundation models are inevitably skewed toward frequent semantics, and thus the subsequent fine-tuning or ensembling is still biased. In this study, we systematically examine the biases in foundation models and demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed Generalized …

Smart: When Is It Actually Worth Expanding A Speculative Tree?, Lifu Wang, Pan Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Tree-based speculative decoding accelerates autoregressive generation by verifying a branching tree of draft tokens in a single targetmodel forward pass. However, existing methods prioritize maximizing token-level likelihood or the number of accepted tokens while ignoring a critical “efficiency paradox”: the computational overhead of drafting and verifying big trees can grow super-linearly, particularly at scale. This often leads to negative wall-clock speedup when batch sizes increase or hardware saturation limits are reached. To address this, we propose SMART, a System-aware Marginal Analysis framework for Runtime Tree construction. SMART reformulates tree expansion as a hardware-aware optimization problem that directly maximizes end-toend speedup. …

A Framework For Automated Quantity Extraction From .Ifc Models And Normalized Bid Comparison, Asmaa Mohamed Farouk

Theses and Dissertations

Accurate bid comparison remains a major challenge in construction tendering due to

differences in Bill of Quantities formats, item naming conventions, and pricing methods across

contractor submissions. These variations require time-consuming manual work and often lead to

subjective decisions. This research presents a computational framework that uses Building

Information Modeling through the .ifc file format, combined with text analysis techniques for

automated bid normalization.

The developed system uses a dual-component approach. Phase 1 extracts quantities from .ifc

model files using 3D geometric calculations, automated element classification. Phase 2 uses text

mining with a domain-specific dictionary of construction terms to interpret …

The Game Within: An Anthropological Approach To Games And Play, Nehal Maged Mohamed

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is based on an eighteen-month ethnography of El Ghawasa, an Egyptian play-based organization that designs educational games, tools, and services. Claiming that El Ghawasa, with its ethos of play, seeks to create an alternative to the capitalist corporate structure. Through tracking how this organization navigates ruptures, negotiates constraints, and experiments with different practices and internal restructuring, I explore the possibilities and limitations of El Ghawasa, while attempting to resist absorption by the very system it opposes. I ask: when the rules keep changing (while the logic of the capitalist corporate structure remains the same), and the boundaries of …

Effect Of Multisensory Stimulation On Delirium, Pain, And Anxiety Among Patients Undergoing Major Abdominal Surgery: A Quasi Experimental Study, Nesma Yousef Said Said

Nursing

Background: Major abdominal surgery is frequently associated with postoperative complications, including delirium, pain, and anxiety, which may delay recovery, increase healthcare utilization, and negatively affect patients' overall well-being. Multisensory stimulation has emerged as a promising non-pharmacological intervention that may improve postoperative outcomes by creating a calming and supportive healing environment. Purpose of the study: This study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of multisensory stimulation in reducing delirium, pain, and anxiety among patients undergoing major abdominal surgery Method: A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design was employed at National Liver institute, Menoufia university, Egypt. A purposive sample of 150 patients (75 intervention group …

Deployment-Oriented Evaluation Of Temporal And Spatial Forecasting Approaches For Electric Vehicle Charging Demand In Energy Systems, Maher Alaraj, Eyob Solomon Getachew

All Works

Accurate short-term electric vehicle (EV) charging demand forecasting is important for charging infrastructure operation, grid management, and energy-system planning. This study presents a deployment-oriented and reproducible evaluation of temporal, spatial, and unified spatio-temporal forecasting approaches for day-ahead EV charging demand prediction. Using publicly available charging-session data aggregated at hourly resolution across ZIP-code regions, we compare persistence and ARIMA baselines, XGBoost, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs), and a unified GCN+LSTM architecture under a consistent preprocessing pipeline, leakage-free validation protocol, and rolling-origin evaluation framework. For the Boulder ZIP-code dataset considered in this study, temporal information provided the dominant …

Light-Wdef: Lightweight Deepfake Evaluation Framework For Efficient And Reliable Visual Detection, Muhammad Yousaf, Sarwar Shah Khan, Babar Shah, Muhammad Shehzad Khan, Muhammad Awais Bacha, Mian Saeed Akbar, Ijaz Ali, Fernando Moreira

All Works

Deepfake technology synthesizes and manipulates digital content to produce artificial videos in which an individual’s identity, facial appearance, or actions are convincingly altered. These forgeries can be highly realistic, posing serious risks to trust in digital media and undermining personal reputation, dignity, and the integrity of public discourse. This paper presents the Lightweight Deepfake Evaluation Framework (Light-wDEF)– a resource-efficient, reproducible framework tailored for large-scale evaluation of visual deepfake detectors on modest hardware. Light-wDEF combines deterministic frame sampling, batched MTCNN face extraction, streaming append-only storage with lazy offset indexing, online Albumentations augmentations, stratified splits with class-aware sampling, and robust training (AdamW, …

Front Matter

Journal of Science & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Autonomy, Adolescents, And Artificial Intelligence, Michael J. S. Beauvais

Journal of Science & Technology Law

In this essay, I explore the potential implications of adolescent use of AI assistants on the development of adolescents’ capacities for autonomy. Thinking through these issues from the perspective of first principles is, I believe, needed in order to sharpen our understanding of some of the issues AI assistants pose for young people. A clear analysis will suggest which legal or policy prescriptions should follow.

I first give an overview of adolescent use of AI assistants, noting their popularity and the variety of use contexts. Drawing upon the work of Catriona Mackenzie, I then outline a relational conception of autonomy …

Central Bank Financial Strength, Credibility, And Global Market Risk: Evidence From Southeast Asian Economies, Mega Fauziah, Hermanto Siregar, Solikin M. Juhro, Tanti Novianti, Sigit Wibowo

Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking

This paper examines central bank credibility in the context of its financial strength, independence, and global market uncertainty in five Southeast Asian countries between 2005 and 2023. We find that the global market risk indicated by VIX reveals that these Southeast Asian economies, despite achieving considerable central bank independence and institutional development, remain fundamentally constrained by global market conditions in maintaining their credibility, measured by the difference between the inflation rate and its target in the same year. We argue that in emerging economies exposed to global uncertainty, central bank profitability, conditional on its independence, is vital for central banks …

Inflation-Differential Rule Versus (De Facto Soft-Peg) Discretion: Exchange-Rate Management Approach In Developing Economies, Behnam Ebrahimi, Mohammad Vaez Barzani Dr.

Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking

Many developing and emerging economies officially report a managed floating exchange-rate regime tailored with a fundamental exchange rate management approach, while in practice operating a de facto soft peg, characterized by discretionary, near-constant exchange-rate depreciation aimed at dampening inflation expectations. This discretionary approach—often justified as a pragmatic response to inflationary pressure—produces a hybrid regime that lacks the transparency and credibility emphasized in IMF policy guidance. This study evaluates whether substituting Discretionary Soft-Peg Exchange Rate Management approach with an Inflation-Differential Rule of Exchange Rate Management approach, which links exchange-rate adjustments to the inflation differential between domestic and rest of the world, …

Fiscal Decentralization, Local Government Size, And Regional Economic Growth: Evidence From Indonesia, Faizul Mubarok, Hasta Dwi Pradana, Etty Puji Lestari

Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking

This study investigates the dynamic relationship between fiscal decentralization, local government size, and regional economic growth in Indonesia. Integrating fiscal federalism theory with the Armey curve framework, the study examines whether decentralization reshapes the scale of subnational governments and how this influences growth outcomes. Using balanced panel data from 26 Indonesian provinces over the period 1995–2020, the analysis employs dynamic panel estimators based on the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to address endogeneity, persistence, and unobserved heterogeneity. The results reveal a nuanced relationship between fiscal decentralization and government size. Greater revenue autonomy is associated with a contraction in government size …

Oil Futures Reactions To Monetary Policy Surprises: A High-Frequency Analysis, Syed Mujahid Hussain Dr., Basel Awartani, Farrukh Javed, Iqbal Khadaroo Dr., Nader Virk Dr.

Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking

This study examines how oil futures respond to monetary policy shocks arising from FOMC and ECB target-rate announcements, using high-frequency data. The results indicate that both sets of announcements significantly influence oil futures prices. However, FOMC decisions have a more pronounced effect on oil futures, whereas ECB interest rate surprises predominantly have a limited impact on the oil futures return and volatility. The analysis further uncovers an asymmetric response to positive versus negative interest rate shocks. These findings enhance the understanding of how monetary policy surprises are transmitted to oil futures markets. Therefore, these results have important implications for policymakers …