Digital Commons Network^™

Optimizing Urban Forestry Through Green Infrastructure: Tree Health And Water Retention In Ciudad Juarez Rain Gardens, Tomas Rogelio Lizarraga Ruiz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Urban green spaces (UGS) in arid regions face significant challenges due to water scarcity and extreme thermal demand. This study evaluates the efficacy of Nature Based Solutions (NBS), rain gardens and median strips, in enhancing the physiological resilience of urban trees in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Using a comparative framework, the research monitored a native evergreen (Dermatophyllum secundiflorum) and an introduced deciduous species (Morus sp.) across six planting treatments. Statistical analysis reveals that green infrastructure (GI) acts as a critical physiological accelerant. Trees situated within rain gardens and medians significantly outperformed those in restricted pot and sidewalk settings, maintaining higher stomatal …

A Computational Approach To Electronic Coupling In Molecular Dyads, Irving Alejandro Lopez Ruiz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Excitation energy transfer (EET) is a fundamental process in photosynthetic systems and molecular photonic devices, where the efficient transport of electronic excitation between donor and acceptor chromophores determines the overall performance of the system. The electronic coupling V_DA between the transition densities of the two fragments is the central quantity governing this process in the weak-coupling (Förster) regime, and its accurate numerical evaluation is the main objective of this work. Two independent computational implementations of the Coulomb interaction between transition densities were developed and applied to a set of five anthracene-BODIPY donor-acceptor dyads, studied under two geometric configurations: one preserving …

Hfir Antineutrino Flux Mapping With Scale Mesh Tallies, Jacob Adam Mireles

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis develops and demonstrates a workflow for mapping the spatial distribution of reactor electron antineutrino flux around the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) using three-dimensional mesh tallies from the SCALE 6.3.1 Monte Carlo transport suite. A detailed HFIR model is executed with KENO, and the mesh-tally output is post-processed to construct a voxelized antineutrino source term. The source field is normalized to reactor power and propagated to sampled spatial points surrounding the reactor to generate three-dimensional source-side flux maps. The main analysis focuses on how the mesh-based HFIR antineutrino flux differs from an ideal point-source approximation. In the point-source …

Physics Model Calibration Via Functional Kernel Regression, Kwesi Appau Ohene-Obeng

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Physics based computational simulators encode the governing equations of complex physical phenomena through parameters that must be inferred from empirical observations, and the observational record in modern experimental campaigns is increasingly a high dimensional functional response rather than a scalar summary. The canonical treatment of this calibration problem through the additive discrepancy decomposition of Kennedy and O'Hagan incurs O(N^3obs) Gaussian process inversion costs at functional resolution, sensitivity to discrepancy prior specification, and the confounding identifiability between the calibration parameter and the discrepancy function; scalar reduction strategies bypass the cost but discard the morphological information that the functional response carries about …

A Hybrid Vsm-Des Approach For Bottleneck Identification And Reduction In A Continous One-Piece Flow Assembly System, Ana Sofia Rey Nevarez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Identifying bottlenecks in a production line is rarely as easy as pointing to the slowest station and assuming that's where the problem is. The real question is which stations moves the system when you change them. Lean manufacturing has been one of the initiatives that major companies in the U.S. have been trying to adopt to remain competitive. This thesis aims to understand the results of applying a combination of a Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) with a Value Stream Mapping (VSM), to find the bottleneck of a continuous one-piece flow assembly line of a tier-1 power management manufacturer from the El …

Towards A Multi-Framework Approach To Explainable Artificial Intelligence, Henry Salgado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models are increasingly being deployed to support decision-making in high-stakes domains such as healthcare, criminal justice, and education, where trust, accountability, and transparency are critical. However, increasing model complexity has made many modern systems insufficiently transparent. Existing approaches to explainable AI (XAI) typically emphasize either intrinsic model simplicity or post-hoc attribution methods that estimate feature importance for predictions. While these approaches provide valuable insights into model behavior, they do not necessarily establish whether the identified importance is grounded in the underlying data patterns or in the structural relationships that generate model behavior. Many …

Mija, Yes You Can: Faith And Motherhood In The Making Of A Scholar, Alejandra Salgado-Hernandez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This autoethnographic study examines how motherhood, faith, and borderlands identity shaped persistence throughout my journey as a Chicana mother-scholar in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Grounded in Borderlands Theory and Chicana Feminist Epistemology, the study centers lived experience, testimonio, spirituality, emotion, and embodied knowledge as legitimate forms of inquiry. Data included reflective journals, personal memory work, and selected family contributions. Through iterative narrative and thematic analysis, I organized experiences chronologically, coded recurring patterns and critical incidents, tested candidate themes across sources, and interpreted the resulting themes through the study's theoretical and scholarly literature. Four interconnected themes emerged: living in nepantla through borderlands …

Behavioral And Dietary Associations Of Vitamin D Deficiency Among Landscaping Workers: An Analytical Cross-Sectional Study In El Paso, Texas., Cristela Anahi Avila

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background: Vitamin D deficiency is a persistent public health concern, even among outdoor workers who receive substantial sunlight exposure. Landscaping workers may still be at risk because sun-protective clothing, early work hours, behavioral practices, and low dietary intake can reduce effective vitamin D synthesis. Purpose: This pilot study examined dietary vitamin D intake, sun exposure behaviors, and serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D status among male landscaping workers in El Paso, Texas, to identify behavioral and nutritional factors associated with deficiency. Methods: Twenty participants completed a culturally adapted food frequency questionnaire and behavioral assessment and underwent capillary point-of-care testing for serum 25(OH)D. Descriptive …

Mda Insurance: Voluntary Benefits Help With Employee Recruitment, Satisfaction, Retention, Craig Start

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

1

This article discusses how voluntary employee benefits can strengthen recruitment, retention, and employee satisfaction in dental practices. Topics include health insurance, disability coverage, life insurance, critical illness protection, accident insurance, vision plans, and cafeteria plans. The author explains how benefit offerings can improve workplace competitiveness while helping employees manage financial risks and healthcare costs.

Daily Consumer Expenditures And Income: New Evidence From A Payment Diary, Shaun Gilyard, Scott Schuh

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

This paper demonstrates that unique daily consumption and income transactions data derived from the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (DCPC) produced unplanned benefits: they cover high percentages of U.S. data, forecast well in real time, offer new insights to payday and pay-cycle effects, and suggest selection effects in convenience samples of transactions data. Relative to other transactions data, DCPC data are more representative, publicly available, and offers other advantages. Daily data more clearly exhibit three explicit features largely absent from lower frequencies: 1) discrepancy between consumption and expenditures; 2) discrete expenditures and income; and 3) asynchronous consumer expenditures (daily) and …

2026 August News Report, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Communications and Marketing Publications Archive

The August 2026 Morehead State University News Report.

From The President, Tamika Barnes

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Summer 2026 - Full Issue, Georgia Library Quarterly

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Georgia Library Quarterly Thanks Past And Current Members Of The Peer Review Board, Wilhelmina Randtke, Chelsee Dickson

Georgia Library Quarterly

The purpose of this article is to acknowledge recent past peer reviewers for the Georgia Library Quarterly (GLQ), serving since 2021 when the peer review board was established, and to provide background on the current peer review process at GLQ for other journals wishing to establish or modify their peer review processes or to formalize and expand their peer review.

Georgia Library Association Executive Board Officer Candidates For 2026, Karen Manning

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Graduate School Blog - August 2026, Cynthia Haynes

UofM Grad School Blog

This issue welcomes our newest graduate students and highlights Fall 2026 Graduate Student Orientation, featuring insights on navigating graduate school and connecting with the UofM community. We also spotlight Dr. Deborah Tollefsen’s latest installment of the Removing Barriers to Graduate Student Success series, upcoming graduate student events and webinars, opportunities to get involved through the Graduate Student Association and Graduate School Ambassador program, and important academic dates.

Development And Evaluation Of Alternative Mandrel Materials For The Fabrication Of In-House Silicone Vascular Models, Cole Capitani

Master's Theses

Dr. Kristen Cardinal’s Tissue Engineering Laboratory at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo develops tissue-engineered blood vessel mimics (BVMs) for preclinical testing of neurovascular devices. These BVMs are reliant on silicone vascular models that define the vessel geometry, support endothelial cell attachment, and allow devices to be evaluated in a controlled in vitro environment. Previous work in the lab established injection molding as a viable method for fabricating silicone vascular models and utilized acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) for sacrificial mandrels. However, this workflow relied on the use of acetone for mandrel dissolution, required single-use mandrels, had extended post-processing times, …

When Does Emigration Reduce Domestic Economic Activities? Evidence On The Loss Of Management Capacity From A Visa Lottery, Marup Hossain, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

Discussion Papers

Economic development is often conceived as structural transformation and migration out of rural agriculture (Lewis, 1954; Fei & Ranis, 1964). Understanding development therefore requires us to identify how rural economies transform in response to emigration. We study how international migration reshapes domestic economic activity in origin households using a randomized visa lottery that gave Bangladeshi men job opportunities in Malaysia. Winning the lottery raises total household income through remittances, but income earned in Bangladesh declines due to contractions in nonfarm business activity. In contrast, crop income remains stable despite large reductions in agricultural input expenditures, because farming gets delegated through …

Peaks Island Star : August 2026, Vol. 46, Issue 8, Service Agencies Of The Island

Peaks Island Star, 2026

The Peaks Island Star is the newsletter of the island's service agencies and other community news.

Guest Editor’S Introduction: Liah Greenfeld And The Future Of Comparative Civilizational Studies, Monika Monika, Guest Editor

Comparative Civilizations Review

Every scholarly life leaves behind unfinished questions. Professor Liah Greenfeld was acutely aware of this. Throughout a career spanning more than four decades, her research never settled into the repetition of established arguments. Each major work emerged from the unresolved problems of the previous one, enlarging both the scope of its inquiry and the range of disciplines with which it engaged. Nationalism led her to questions of modernity (Greenfeld, 1992) and the foundations of economic development (Greenfeld, 2001). The growth of the modern economy and the emerging new forces of globalization, in turn, raised broader questions about the self and …

In Memoriam: Liah Greenfeld A Reflection From The President Of The Comparative Civilizations Forum, Bibi Pelić

Comparative Civilizations Review

It is with sorrow and gratitude that the Comparative Civilizations Forum dedicates this special 2026 Fall issue of the Comparative Civilizations Review to the memory of Professor Liah Greenfeld, who passed away in May of this year.

Professor Liah Greenfeld was a sociologist, an anthropologist, a political scientist — and more than any single label can hold. Across four decades at Harvard and then at Boston University, she built a body of work, from Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity to The Spirit of Capitalism to Mind, Modernity, Madness, that stepped outside the boundaries the modern academy likes to draw. …

Liah Greenfeld: Scholar, Thinker, Friend, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

Professor Liah Greenfeld and I met several years ago when she submitted an article to the Comparative Civilizations Review. Her thoughtful demeanor and personal kindness to all were quickly evident, but so, too, was her scholarship, especially her probing theories of state, society, and civilization.

The Information Content Of The Implied Volatility Term Structure Slope For Forecasting Commodity Market Volatility, Lawrence E. Mckenzie

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

This study evaluates the implied volatility term structure (IVTS) slope (𝜅) for forecasting 21-day realized volatility against traditional time-series benchmarks and a 3-month continuous futures baseline. Using a matched sample of eight energy and agricultural commodities spanning 2007 to 2019, the study explicitly tests whether the option-implied slope contains unique predictive information beyond deferred price histories. The empirical findings yield three primary insights. First, redundancy testing indicates that the slope parameter delivers a statistically significant, independent risk signal even when controlling for deferred continuous futures paths. Second, an integrated joint encompassing framework that combines near-term historical volatility, generalized autoregressive conditional …

Mission Parkinson Possible: Building Confidence In Parkinson’S Disease Care In Skilled Nursing, Theresa Tran

Master's Projects and Capstones

Objective: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disease that requires specialized, interdisciplinary care. Despite this, staff in the skilled nursing setting often receive limited PD-specific education. This contributes to inconsistencies in care, improper medication administration, and reduced confidence in disease management. Aim: This project aimed to improve staff self-reported confidence, competence, and workflow in Parkinson’s disease care and disease management by 15%, from a baseline of 60% to 75%. Methods: The project implemented a PD-specific educational program that consists of an hour-long PowerPoint presentation and distribution of physical brochures to staff, residents, and their families. Pre- and post-surveys were …

Constructing Executive Presence Within The Double Bind: Women’S Experiences Of Leadership Communication, Sydney Anne Shumaker

Communication Studies

Women in executive leadership often face a gendered double bind, expected to be warm and approachable, while also appearing competent and confident. This qualitative study examines how women executives develop executive presence and navigate these workplace expectations. Drawing on Warmth-Competence Theory and Impression Management Theory, the study explores how women leaders adapt their communication, manage self-presentation, and balance perceptions of warmth and competence in professional settings. This study involved conducting semi-structured interviews with four women in corporate executive-level roles. Thematic analysis of participant responses revealed five key themes: adaptive communication, varied experiences with gendered workplace expectations, the importance of credibility …

Using Assessments Intentionally With Consideration For English Language Learners, Elizabeth Ropp

Masters Projects

Assessment systems in the United States are failing English Language Learners (ELLs), and it has become apparent that action must be taken to try and right this injustice. There is a wide achievement gap between native English speakers and non-native English speakers when it comes to performance on state, local, and classroom assessments. Unfortunately, many teachers report that they do not feel adequately prepared to support ELLs both on classroom assessments and on mandatory state or local tests. With an ever-growing increase in ELL enrollment in American schools, it is imperative that teachers are given tools to help them better …

Co-Creation Of Global Public Health Interventions Within The Context Of Limited Resources: A Conceptual Qualitative Framework For Modest Co-Creation, Kahabi Isangula, Constance Constance Shumba

School of Nursing & Midwifery, East Africa

Co-creation is increasingly promoted in global public health as a participatory methodology that centres lived experiences, the preferences, and structural realities of those most affected by health interventions. Within human-centred design (HCD), co-creation is typically operationalised through intensive cycles of qualitative inquiry, in-person workshops, facilitation, and iterative prototyping. While these approaches are methodologically robust, they are often resource-intensive and difficult to implement in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and other low resource settings, precisely where context-sensitive and equitable intervention design is most needed. Despite this tension, existing literature offers limited guidance on how co-creation can be meaningfully adapted to such …

Maternal, Perinatal, Neonatal, And Postpartum Outcomes Following Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - Coronavirus-2 Infection In Pregnancy: A World Health Organization Multi-Country Prospective Cohort Study, Edna Kara, Sami Gottlieb, Nathalie Broutet, Anna Thorson, Marie Delnord, Ibukun-Oluwa Abejirinde, Ronaldo Silva, Marleen Temmerman, Rodney Adam, Ingrid Gichere

Pathology, East Africa

Background Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has raised global concerns regarding its impact on pregnant women and their infants, particularly across evolving variants. This study aimed to determine if infection during pregnancy increased the risk of adverse maternal, perinatal, neonatal, or postpartum outcomes during pre-Omicron and Omicron periods.

Methods We conducted a prospective cohort study in 10 primarily low- and middle-income countries, comprising public and private maternity hospitals in rural and urban areas. Maternal age and comorbidity adjusted mixed-effects models with country-specific random intercepts were used to estimate relative risks (RRs) comparing participants with and without infection …

The Effect Of Childcare On Female Labor Supply And Child Development In Low And Middle Income Countries, Serena Goldberg, Costas Meghir

Discussion Papers

Childcare services can offer an opportunity for women to develop their careers and increase household income. At the same time, it can affect the development of children, depending on the quality of care. We first develop a collective model of the household as a conceptual framework to show how improving the availability of childcare can affect mothers’ labor market opportunities and earnings and how it can affect child development. We then review the literature on the effects of childcare on the employment and earnings of women and on child development. Childcare can increase mothers’ employment. However, limited work opportunities or …

Nasa Earth Exchange HawaiʻI Downscaled Climate Projections Cmip6 (Nex-Hidcp-Cmip6) Dataset, Bridget Thrasher, Ian Brosnan, Abby Frazier, Kristen Sanflippo, Matthew P. Lucas

Geography

Hawaiʻi’s complex topography, pronounced microclimates, and geographic isolation make coarse-scale global climate model output inadequate for local planning, and high-resolution climate projections tailored to the state have until now been lacking. To address this gap, we introduce the NASA Earth eXchange Hawaiʻi Downscaled Climate Projections CMIP6 (NEX-HIDCP-CMIP6), a new archive of downscaled historical and future climate projections based on output from Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) over the State of Hawaiʻi. The dataset covers the years 1950–2100 and includes three variables (maximum temperature, minimum temperature, and precipitation) from five CMIP6 experiments (the historical experiment and the …