Digital Commons Network^™

Drought And Diet Breadth: Does Insect Specialization Influence Herbivory When Plants Are Under Stress?, Jakob Palmer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Climate change will alter precipitation worldwide, causing more frequent and severe drought events worldwide. Drought affects many ecological processes, including plant-herbivore interactions, which are critical to biodiversity and ecosystem health. A variety of plant characteristics can influence herbivory – such as how hairy, nutritious, or toxic a leaf is – and drought has been shown to alter many of these traits. Unique characteristics of herbivore species are also important: herbivores can either feed on a variety of plants (generalists) or a group of closely related plants (specialists). Specialists can cope with traits of the plants they eat, while generalists are …

A Social-Ecological Systems Approach To Integrating Outdoor Recreation And Black Bear Management: A Michigan Case Study, Megan Dorothy Stone

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Outdoor recreation sits at the intersection of social and ecological systems, representing one of the primary ways in which humans directly interact with their natural environment. As a result, outdoor recreation management must balance providing high-quality outdoor recreation opportunities while simultaneously protecting natural resources in protected areas. Balancing these concurrent management goals has become more challenging in recent years as participation in outdoor recreation increases. This can lead to numerous negative impacts on the environment, such as wildlife disturbance. In this study, I explore the challenges and opportunities for collaboration between managers of outdoor recreation and black bears in the …

Fostering Safe Space For Children In Online Navigation And Parent-Child Interactions, Rizu Paudel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

As children and teenagers spend increasingly more time online, digital devices have become a major source of family friction. Disagreements frequently arise over privacy boundaries, and online activities. When these conflicts are unresolved, they often lead to broken trust and secretive behavior, leaving children vulnerable to digital harms like cyberbullying, toxic content, or account hacking. Therefore, it is important to create a safe and open environment for children where in order for them to share their feelings with parents. This dissertation investigates the human and technological dynamics of parent-child interactions, developing new ways to support collaborative conflict resolution and online …

Evaluating Data Management Practices And Ontology Development For Transportation Safety Assets, Brig Dean Adams

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Data has begun to permeate transportation agencies, with every process, asset, and event generating a great volume of data. This data helps engineers and decision makers determine maintenance schedules, devise infrastructure investment strategies, improve safety, and plan for future needs. Due to the size of transportation agencies and the diversity of the data they collect, their data is often stored in different systems, managed by different groups, and described using inconsistent terminology. These challenges make it difficult to locate information, combine data from multiple sources, and confidently use data to support important decisions.

This research examined how transportation safety asset …

Behavioral And Landscape Factors Affecting The Effectiveness Of Egg-Bait Management For Common Ravens In The Great Basin, Usa, Sierra L. Pederson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Common Ravens have become increasingly common across the Great Basin of the western USA, largely because human activities, such as roads, agriculture, livestock operations, and human-made structures, provide them with abundant food, water, and nesting sites. As raven numbers have grown, so has their impact on vulnerable species like the greater sage-grouse. Like many other ground-nesting species, greater sage-grouse eggs and chicks are especially susceptible to predation. To help reduce raven numbers in sensitive areas, wildlife managers often place hard-boiled chicken eggs treated with a toxin (DRC-1339) on the landscape, expecting that ravens will die after eating these eggs and …

Bryer Lyons

African American Funeral Programs

No abstract provided.

Public And Self-Stigma Toward Mental Health Among Individuals Of Mexican Heritage, Mitzi Escalante

Theses & ETDs

There are rising concerns about social isolation and declining mental health that have prompted increased attention to the role of culture in shaping mental health experiences, particularly through stigma. Although prior research suggests that mental health stigma varies across and within cultural groups, limited work has focused specifically on Mexican American populations. The present study examined the relationship between Mexican American cultural values and both public stigma and self-stigma toward mental illness. Measures included the Mexican American Cultural Values Scale (MACVS), the Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill scale (CAMI) to measure public stigma, and the Internalized Stigma of Mental …

Issue 26: Labour, Poverty, And Health Concerns Of Migrant Women And Girls Working As Kayayei In Ghana's Urban Centres, Comfort Baidoo, Robert Mcleman

International Migration Research Centre

Over the past four decades, growing numbers of women and girls have left northern Ghana for the country's cities, drawn by the promise of work, independence, and a chance to support their families. Many end up as kayayei, head porters who carry goods through Accra's crowded markets for a negotiated fee. Their labour keeps the informal economy moving, yet it comes at a steep personal cost: unpredictable earnings, punishing physical strain, unsafe housing, and a healthcare system that too often leaves them out. This brief draws together the available evidence on the economic and health conditions of kayayei in Greater-Accra. …

Leapp Scope And Sequence, Chenell Loudermill, Tamar Greenwell

Purdue-LEaPP Assessment Toolkit

The LEaPP Scope and Sequence provides a structured guide for explicit and systematic teaching of phonics, morphology, syllabification, and word study to strengthen orthographic mapping skills and support the development of reading and spelling skills. The document is arranged in order of early basic concepts (EBC; 1-31), Late Basic Concepts (LBC; 32-44) Early Advanced Concepts (EAC; 45-66) and Late Advanced concepts (LAC; 67-86). The Scope and Sequence outlines 86 concepts and allows educators to track skills that have been taught and mastered in reading and spelling for each learner. It contains a form for early learners that allows educators to …

Leapp Writing Rubric, Chenell Loudermill, Tamar Greenwell

Purdue-LEaPP Assessment Toolkit

The LEaPP Writing Rubric can be used to assess foundational and compositional writing skills for all learners. Foundational skills that are assessed include capitalization, spacing, punctuation, and spelling. Compositional skills that are assessed include writing purpose, topic maintenance, vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar usage, and organization. This rubric allows an educator to quantify and categorize a learner’s writing skills as poor, emerging, developing or consistent. It can be tailored for use with any writing sample at the sentence, single paragraph, or essay level. This document contains directions for use and a brief scoring guide.

Leapp Decoding Screener, Chenell Loudermill, Tamar Greenwell

Purdue-LEaPP Assessment Toolkit

The LEaPP Decoding Screener is an educational tool to systematically map a learner's phoneme/grapheme knowledge and decoding skills along a progression. The screener starts with establishing phoneme/grapheme knowledge and continues to word level decoding skills from basic to advanced. The screener can be used in part or whole and can be repeated as needed for progress monitoring. Tables for data analysis are provided. Data from the decoding screener can be mapped to the scope and sequence progress monitoring form to help determine point of instruction.

Leapp Basic And Advanced Spelling Inventories, Chenell Loudermill, Tamar Greenwell

Purdue-LEaPP Assessment Toolkit

The LEaPP Basic and Advanced Spelling Inventories are educational tools to systematically map and track a learner’s ability to encode words containing spelling features along a progression. The Basic screener starts with single graphemes and closed syllable words and moves through additional concepts such as digraphs, blends, VCe, vocalic r, basic vowel teams, and basic roots and affixes. The Advanced screener starts with beginning advanced code such as blends and moves through additional advanced concepts such as vocalic r, vowel teams, diphthongs, complex consonants, roots, affixes, and syllable junctures. The screeners can be used in part or whole and can …

Analysis Of The Cannabinoid Compositions, Byproducts And Heavy Metals In Unregulated Cannabinoid Products By Hplc-Ms/Icp-Ms, Simone K. Melle

All NMU Master's Theses

The rapid expansion of unregulated hemp-derived products has created a need for analytical methods that characterize both cannabinoid composition and contaminant occurrence. This thesis used liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) to quantify cannabidiol (CBD), Δ8-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ8-THC), and Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC), and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to measure Al, As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mg, Ni, Pb, and Zn in commercial hemp-derived products, laboratory-prepared hemp oils, cultivated hemp tissues, extracted material, and post-harvest soil. Commercial products showed wide cannabinoid variability, with several samples containing more than one target cannabinoid, while laboratory-prepared plant oils showed a more consistent profile dominated by …

The History Of Poro College From 1902-1965, Chajuana V. Trawick Ferguson

Dissertations

This study investigates the development, operation, decline, and historical erasure of Poro College, the first multimillion‑dollar, minority‑owned higher education institution and vertical beauty‑culture enterprise, founded by Annie Turnbo Malone in St. Louis, Missouri. Drawing on Poro College documents, Black newspaper archives, National Trust for Historic Preservation records, and interviews with individuals knowledgeable about the institution, the research addresses four central questions: how Poro College was developed; its impact on students, employees, and the surrounding community; its relevance for current and future minority women educators and entrepreneurs; and the factors that contributed to its closure and eventual demolition. Evidence from the …

Commitment To Community (2026), University Of Dayton. Campus Ministry, University Of Dayton. Student Development

Student Development Documents

Catholic Marianist vision of education makes the University of Dayton community unique. It shapes the warmth of welcome we experience and the family spirit we treasure. It calls us — across a variety of faith traditions and perspectives — to a learning and working environment where faith and life are integrated. It challenges us to take up the hard work necessary to build the spiritual, moral, physical and social dimensions of our community.

Behavior, expectations, policies and relationships at UD are guided by the Catholic moral tradition. This Commitment to Community highlights three Catholic Marianist principles for learning, working and …

Recover Well: Reducing Readmissions Through Nurse-Led Follow-Up After Urologic Surgery – A Quality Improvement Project, Candace Brigette Mike

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Hospital readmissions within 30 days following urologic surgeries are often associated with catheter complications, infections, poor pain management, and limited patient understanding of discharge instructions and therefore represent a significant quality and safety concern for patients and institutions alike. The purpose of this quality improvement project was to evaluate whether implementing structured, nurse-led telephone follow-up in conjunction with standard discharge education reduced unplanned 30-day hospital readmissions among adult patients undergoing urologic surgery. Guided by the Logic Model framework, this project used a quasi-experimental, two-group pre- and post-intervention design to compare outcomes at a high-volume outpatient urology clinic in Houston, Texas. …

Light & Faith: August 2026, Taylor University

Light & Faith

No abstract provided.

Content Mapping: An Experimental Analysis Of Missing Message Content, Jeannette Sutton

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

The Warning-Response Model recommends the inclusion of five key content areas in warning messages to reduce information seeking that can lead to warning response delay: the message source, hazard (including its impact), affected location, recommended guidance, and time. Research has found that complete messages, that is, those that include all of five recommended content areas, help people make decisions about the protective actions they may take.  Unfortunately, a large majority of WEA messages omit information from one or more of the recommended content areas. This study examined the impact of omitting each of the five recommended content areas on message …

Myocarditis, Children's Mercy Kansas City

Clinical Pathways

No abstract provided.

Human-Centered Electric Vehicle Adoption Framework For Smart Mobility: Modeling Perceived Range And Charging Anxiety As A Psychological Barrier, Fatemeh Nazari, Abolfazl (Kouros) Mohammadian, Thomas Stephens

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Electric vehicles (EVs) offer a transformative pathway toward reducing the environmental, economic, and health-related externalities of internal combustion engine vehicles in urban settings. Despite substantial advances in battery technology, charging infrastructure expansion, and supportive policy incentives, EV penetration remains limited which poses challenges for smart and sustainable mobility planning. A critical yet insufficiently modeled barrier to adoption lies in the psychological perceptions surrounding electric driving range and charging reliability, which is commonly framed as “range anxiety,” but more broadly reflecting perceived range and charging anxiety. To address this gap, this study introduces a latent psychological construct capturing individuals’ perceived range …

A Novel Edge-Based Accuracy Assessment Framework For Target Detection From Remotely Sensed Images, Yingfan Zhang, Weiyi Hou, Lyndon Estes, Rui Lu, Shijie Zhu, Aiyin Zhang, Zhou Shi, Su Ye

Geography

Accuracy assessment is critical for evaluating map quality and improving algorithms for target detection in remotely sensed images. Traditional methods for assessing a target-detection task were often performed by estimating the relative pixels of correct and incorrect identifications (e.g., F1 score). However, this approach only considers the pixel-by-pixel agreement and ignores important aspects of positional errors and target object quality. To provide comprehensive diagnostic information, we propose a novel edge-based accuracy assessment framework. This framework firstly applied a newly proposed assessment tool, Dynamic Epsilon-band Accuracy Function (DEAF), which is a linear fitting function from a series of edge accuracies associated …

Library Dispatch

Campus Department Newsletters

Newsletter with updates and event information for the Jane Bancroft Cook Library.

Llm-Based Early Rumor Detection With Imitation Agent, Fengzhu Zeng, Qian Shao, Ling Cheng, Wei Gao, Shih-Fen Cheng, Jing Ma, Cheng Niu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Early Rumor Detection (EARD) aims to identify the earliest point at which a claim can be accurately classified based on a sequence of social media posts. This is especially challenging in data-scarce settings. While Large Language Models (LLMs) perform well in few-shot NLP tasks, they are not well-suited for time-series data and are computationally expensive for both training and inference. In this work, we propose a novel EARD framework that combines an autonomous agent and an LLM-based detection model, where the agent acts as a reliable decision-maker for \textit{early time point determination}, while the LLM serves as a powerful \textit{rumor …

A Deep Reinforcement Learning Framework For Dynamic Order And Rack Scheduling In Robotic Mobile Fulfillment Systems, Lingjun Wang, Bayi Cheng, Zhiguang Cao, Aldy Gunawan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Robotic mobile fulfillment systems play a vital role in modern e-commerce, but their efficiencydepends on overcoming a critical challenge: coordinating orders and racks effectively under dynamicorder arrivals, diverse delivery deadlines, and resource sharing among multiple stations. This papertackles the resulting dynamic order and rack scheduling problem and proposes an intelligentscheduling framework centred on deep reinforcement learning. At its core is TriNet-PPO, whichtrains a scheduling policy using TriNet, a tripartite graph neural network encoder tailored to capturethe many-to-many relationships among orders, racks, and items. Furthermore, we introduce IPCSA,an integer programming-based cooperative scheduling algorithm that maps station-level actionpreferences to conflict-free joint decisions …

Bank Competition Amid Digital Disruption: Implications For Financial Inclusion, Erica Xuewei Jiang, Gloria Yang Yu, Jinyuan Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine how digital disruption affects bank competition using the staggered rollout of 3G mobile networks. 3G expansion increased mobile banking adoption among tech-savvy households, reducing branch networks—especially in younger counties. Banks' strategies diverged: Less branch-reliant banks closed branches and competed on price, while more branch-reliant banks maintained branches but raised spreads. A structural model shows that perceived digital service improvements among younger consumers drove these shifts, reducing welfare for older savers. Counterfactuals demonstrate that subsidizing adoption for older savers can cost-effectively reduce these disparities, facilitating a smoother digital transition.

Optimal Scheduling Of Virtual Power Plants Considering Photothermal Power Stations And Hydrogen Energy Utilization, Yousong Chen, Ruofa Cheng, Yi Liu, Yi Zhang, Zhihao Zuo

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To enhance the operational stability and low-carbon performance of virtual power plants (VPPs) with high shares of renewable energy, a coordinated dispatch model integrating concentrated solar power (CSP) plants with power-to-gas (P2G) and carbon capture is developed. An optimal VPP scheduling strategy is proposed, combining a stepped carbon trading mechanism with a compensation coefficient and dynamic hydrogen blending. To address multi-source uncertainties in wind power, CSP power, and loads, an envelope boundary model is used for simulation. Information gap decision theory (IGDT) is applied to provide customized solutions for decision-makers with different risk preferences. A bi-objective optimization model is …

Fault-Tolerant Control Method For All-Type Actuator Faults Of Evtol Aircraft, Juan Wang, Guorui Li, Zhiyong Fan, Huijie Chen

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address all-type actuator faults, especially nonlinear distortion issues, in multi-rotor eVTOL aircraft, a novel fault-tolerant control method was proposed. A fault function was established at the rotor speed level, and a fault-tolerant control algorithm combining dynamic robust nonsingular fast integral terminal sliding mode with a high-order finite-time disturbance observer was designed to achieve fault-tolerant control through rotor redundancy allocation. The nonsingular fast integral terminal sliding mode algorithm was improved, and a dynamic system containing actuator faults and their derivatives was constructed via a dynamic surface to achieve system convergence within finite time, avoiding the singularity and chattering problems …

A Method For Assessing The Contribution Degree Of An Aviation Delivery System And Identifying Key Equipment, Xiaofeng Liu, Chengze Jiang, Xingyu Chen, Deyin Jiang, Bolin Shang, Bifeng Song

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Based on the delivery efficiency and delivery quality, a general aviation delivery system effectiveness evaluation model was constructed, and a calculation method of system contribution degree based on efficiency was given. By combining the system calculation experiment and simulation experiment based on agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS), the design idea of the Monte Carlo simulation experiment for key equipment identification and equipment technology development trend analysis was sorted out, and the key equipment identification method based on ABMS and contribution evaluation was proposed. By taking the intercontinental long-range aviation delivery mission as an example, a variety of simulation experiments …

Optimization Of Node Deployment For Three-Dimensional Heterogeneous Wsn In Elongated Structural Space, Jiguang Yang, Jiuyuan Huo, Fang Cao, Cong Mu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To achieve effective coverage of key monitoring points in an elongated structural space, a heterogeneous wireless sensor network(HWSN) deployment optimization method combining the virtual force algorithm(VFA) and multi-strategy improved whale optimization algorithm(MSIWOA), namely HVF-MSIWOA, was proposed. A dynamic adaptive weight mechanism and a t-distribution perturbation operator with heterogeneous degrees of freedom were designed, enabling the whale optimization algorithm(WOA) to balance global exploration and local exploitation and jump out of local optima; combining the topological characteristics of the elongated space and node density distribution, an adaptive virtual force distance threshold between heterogeneous nodes was constructed; the mapping relationship between network …

Three-Dimensional Gaussian Reconstruction Of Large-Scale Scenes Under Multi-View Geometry Constraints, Haohao Cui, Yanqiang Di, Qing Liu, Xianguo Meng

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To enhance the geometry reconstruction quality of the GS algorithm in large-scale scene reconstruction, an optimization method constrained by multi-view geometry reconstruction results was proposed. 2D Gaussian planes were used as geometric primitives to overcome depth anisotropy, and dense depth maps generated by DUSt3R and aligned by sparse point clouds were introduced as constraints. By designing a multi-stage optimization strategy that decouples geometry and rendering, the gradient conflict problem in multi-objective training was solved. Experiments on the MatrixCity dataset indicate that the method surpasses comparison methods in related indicators of geometry reconstruction quality and rendering quality in large-scale scenes. …