Digital Commons Network^™

Predicting Newborn Low Birth Weight: A Machine Learning Approach Using Maternal Health And Demographic Data, Rayan Elsayed

Theses

Low birth weight (LBW), defined by the World Health Organization as a birth weight under 2500 grams, remains a major global health challenge due to its association with increased risks for adverse neonatal and long-term health outcomes. This study aims to identify maternal health factors that contribute to LBW and to develop predictive models to support early identification of at-risk pregnancies. Two machine learning models, Logistic Regression (LR) and Random Forest (RF), were developed to analyze the relationship between maternal factors and LBW outcomes. The RF model achieved an accuracy of 96.36%, demonstrating robust predictive performance across metrics, making it …

Tehran Is Ours, Hamideh Azimi

Theses

Tehran is Ours is a thesis film, mainly 2D animation, with some experimental and 3D parts. This film dramatizing the movement that is happening in Iran which is about women’s rights. 2D fluid animation represents the movement that never stops.

Recast, Reform, Reshape: Surreal Figurative Painting, Keely Wu

Theses

This thesis explores the use of surreal imagery and the reimagining of historical subjects as a means to discuss complex ideas of identity. In this exploration, I chose to use the human figure as a vessel for expressing my own intimate viewpoints and experiences. Through a series of paintings, I investigate how the juxtaposition of human forms with non-human elements challenges conventional notions of gender and sexuality to empower marginalized perspectives. My Master’s degree started with my transition from commercial illustration to fine art. The study examines my evolution of thematic and stylistic choices, emphasizing the creation of new works …

Impact Of Coolant Temperature On Boiling Chamber Performance For Cooling Electronic Chips, Nooruldeen Mustafa

Theses

Data centers in their quest for ever-increasing processing power are generating more heat than ever before. This heat, if not effectively managed, can lead to equipment failure, reduced performance, and significant financial losses. The development of efficient cooling systems is therefore a pressing need. While numerous two-phase techniques have been developed to meet this escalating heat dissipation demand, their compatibility with free-to-air cooling, especially at higher temperatures, remains a challenge. To address this issue, we propose the use of boiling chambers employing subcooled boiling and submerged condensation mechanisms, an innovative solution that promises effective heat dissipation. This study delves into …

Utilizing Machine Learning For Categorizing Disaster-Related Tweets, Ahmad Alfalasi

Theses

This study presents the development of a machine-learning model that recognizes tweets about disasters in real-time. The fast-paced development of social media, especially Twitter, has drastically changed the field of news transmission during crises. This change creates new challenges for the management of the volume, velocity, and veracity of data that are generated in such situations. The present tools do not have the capabilities of real-time processing of the huge volume of data; hence, new solutions are required. The model we are proposing addresses this problem by using advanced machine learning methods, such as natural language processing, to filter and …

Heat Transfer During Air-Water Two Phase Flow, Saumitra K. Deshpande

Theses

The effects of air injection on the heat transfer coefficient for the liquid flow in two-phase in microchannels are studied. Different manifolds and microchannel configurations are used for studying the effects of air injection. The manifold has a uniform gap of 400μm between the heater chip and the cover. A manifold is designed and manufactured to provide different air water flow patterns for different combinations of liquid and air flow rates. The effect of these flow rates on the heat transfer coefficient are studied. The flow rate for air injected is kept very small with respect to the flow rate …

What Explains State-Level Variation In Refugee Resettlement In The United States?, Rebekah Walker

Theses

The history of refugee resettlement in the United States reveals an ad hoc system that relies heavily on non-governmental agencies and state social services. Rates of acceptance for refugees vary greatly by state, yet the particulars of refugee placement are under-studied. This thesis seeks to explain why refugees are likely to be resettled in some states more than others–what factors are associated with higher or lower levels of refugee resettlement? Most literature looks at the economic impact from refugees and on refugees or analyzes the political environment that supports (or does not support) them, but refugee resettlement itself–the how and …

Unstable, Virginia Guerrero

Theses

Unstable is a film about a music-driven, psychedelic journey of reality slipping into a frenzy of madness. It explores bringing music to life with emphasis placed on music pacing, mood, and my own simultaneous, involuntary experience of color when listening to music. The film tells the story of a trapped, creepy, skeletal character escaping his shackles and causing mayhem. He bends reality and experiences several transformations as the music becomes increasingly aggressive. The story is primarily narrative with experimental features, including abstract backgrounds, varying art styles, and unexpected transitions. The main character goes through painful, physical changes and eventually reaches …

Shape Between Intimacy, Mackenzie Serwa

Theses

This thesis examines the parallel exploration of raw tactile materials and relationships to develop a personal dialogue of intimacy. It breaks down the materiality of glass, clay, and the impulse of collecting, aiming to communicate the human connections shared between each. By engaging with materials in this way, this study aims to foster a deeper understanding of the existence, influence, and expression of intimate relationships.

The Mythical Nexus: Illuminating The Rich Tapestry Of Global Folklore, Trishala Parmar

Theses

There is a lack of accessibility and exposure to global folklore for a wider audience. Despite the richness and diversity of folktales worldwide, many people may not have access to them due to limited resources, language barriers, cultural isolation, and a lack of exposure. I saw a need to preserve and celebrate cultural heritage through stories and make it fun. I created an interactive website called The Mythical Nexus which allows an audience to interact with different stories and cultures through a series of rotating cubes. This website connects stories and folklore from around the globe through the power of …

Masthead

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Working From 10 To 5, What A Way To Make A Livin’: The Sec’S Most Recent Amendments To Promote Corporate Governance And Curb Exploitative Hedge Fund Activism, Richard Young

UC Law Journal

This Note investigates the evolving regulatory landscape following the 2023 SEC amendments regarding beneficial ownership reporting. It begins by analyzing the rise of hedge fund activism and its influence on corporate governance strategies, addressing benefits, controversies, and criticisms associated with this form of shareholder activism. This Note then traces the historical development of the regulatory requirements for beneficial ownership reporting such the Williams Act and now nearly forty years later, the 2023 SEC amendments to Schedule 13(d) and Schedule 13(g). Lastly, this Note analyzes the ongoing limitations and challenges in balancing market transparency with market competition, gleaning into the future …

Artificial Intelligence And Cracks In The Foundation Of Intellectual Property, Robin Feldman

UC Law Journal

Our implicit image of progress and the standards we use to calibrate human contribution to progress are quietly at risk from the onslaught of artificial intelligence (AI). AI has the potential to significantly shrink the pool of creative work that is protectable by intellectual property (IP) law and the range of information that is protectable, as well as shrinking the value proposition of IP regimes themselves.

As society faces this changing landscape, we must tread carefully to distinguish fears about AI from the task of defining the boundaries of intellectual property, whose theoretic concepts aren’t designed to bear such weighty …

Free The Market: How We Can Save Capitalism From The Capitalists, Mark A. Lemley

UC Law Journal

The free market works because no one person or company is making the decisions. In a competitive market, businesspeople make the wrong decisions all the time, just as central planners do. But the consequences of those decisions don’t infect the market as a whole. Businesses that guess wrong lose money or go out of business. But as long as there is a competitor out there who guesses right, the market provides people what they want.

But it turns out that the very last thing capitalists want is a free market. Capitalism may thrive under conditions of robust market competition, but …

Patent Infringement, Private Law, And Liability Standards, Robert P. Merges

UC Law Journal

Private law governs interactions among private parties. A large body of private law theory holds that private law is aimed at corrective justice: doing justice as between the two parties to a private interaction (the private law dyad). This in contrast to public law, the law of state-citizen interactions, whose purpose is usually said to be the pursuit of society-wide fairness, often understood as distributive justice. Torts, contracts and property are the three classic areas of private law in common law jurisdictions. A sizeable literature now concerns itself with classic private law topics as they apply to intellectual property (IP). …

Debt End: The “Texas Two-Step” And The Constitution, Kirk Rider

UC Law Journal

The “Texas Two-Step” is a novel means of forcing a settlement agreement on mass-tort claimants. Corporations utilize the Two-Step bankruptcy strategy using a state law merger statute to split itself in two. One half of the corporation retains all the value, and the other half retains all the liabilities associated with the mass tort claims. The shell-company, which inherits the liabilities and then files a bankruptcy petition, uses the Bankruptcy Code’s powers to attempt a forced settlement on all current and future litigants and shield its financially healthy parent company in the process. Throughout this Note, I will survey the …

Operation Webs - Tiny Home On Wheels: Quantity Take-Off, Estimate, And Site Logistics, Brendan Moynahan

Construction Management

The objective of this paper is to highlight and discuss the process of performing quantity take-offs, completing an estimate, and creating a site logistics plan for the Operation WEBS (Women Empowered Build Strong) Tiny Home on Wheels project performed at the Paso Robles State Fair. This project is a part of the interdisciplinary project based senior project completed by California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, College of Architecture and Environmental Design students Brendan Moynahan and Jake Torres. Brendan Moynahan performed the deliverables covered in this paper while Jake Torres completed his own deliverables for another paper. Our individual responsibilities …

Building Safely: How Spanish Specific Safety Can Impact Job Sites, Luis D. Aguilar Montano

Construction Management

This project explores how Spanish Specific Safety Training is being approached in the construction industry, with an attempt to identify some possible issues associated with language barriers and accessibility to these trainings. This research involved data collection through thirty analytical surveys, in addition to conducting three semi-structured interviews with construction workers and supervisors. The focus of the data collection was to gain insights into several key areas, including training accessibility, workplace injuries, language barriers, and worker comfort. The survey results indicated strong support for Spanish-language safety training, with respondents recognizing its potential to improve safety and overall worker comfort. Many …

Lab Exercise For Cm 114: Static Bending Of Timber And Its Alternatives, Samuel E. Arreola

Construction Management

This lab exercise investigates the static bending behavior of various structural materials. In this lab, the primary objective is to evaluate and compare the stress, strain, and deflection of 2” x 10” lumber, TJI joists, LVL beams, and steel studs under controlled loading conditions. This lab will require the calculation of cross-sectional properties, applying incremental loads until failure, and recording all corresponding deflection values. Material failure was visually documented using photographs to understand structural performance under the load. By using structural engineering principles and the formulas for stress and strain, the completion of this lab exercise provides a comprehensive analysis …

Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis In Children Born After Assisted Reproductive Technology, Carrie L Williams, Kathryn J Bunch, Charles Stiller, Michael F G Murphy, Beverley J Botting, Melanie C Davies, Barbara Luke, Philip J Lupo, Alastair G Sutcliffe

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

Research question: Are children born after assisted reproductive technology (ART) at higher risk of developing Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH)?

Design: Records of children born after ART recorded by the UK Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority were linked to National Registry of Childhood Tumours records to determine the number of children developing LCH. Calculated person-years at risk were used in conjunction with the incidence of LCH in the general population to determine the expected number of cases if the cohort had the same incidence as the general population with similar age and sex, over the same calendar years. The standardized incidence …

Mathematics Education Reform Through Socio-Political Means: A Synthesis, Nadine Ferguson

University Honors Theses

Mathematics education urgently needs reform, as traditional approaches fail to meet the diverse needs of today's student populations. Conventional teaching methods, which often focus on rote memorization and procedural understanding, overlook mathematics being a human activity that is inherently interlinked with culture. This paper explores three key approaches to reforming mathematics education: differentiation, culturally responsive mathematics (CRM), and critical mathematics. Grounded in Rochelle Gutiérrez's definition of equity--which emphasizes nurturing students' mathematical identities and agency--this analysis evaluates how each approach addresses four critical goals: ensuring access for all students to complex mathematics, fostering student confidence, promoting collaboration, and making mathematics relevant …

Landscaping Impacts On Urban Soil Development, Fry Lundgren

University Honors Theses

Urban soils can play a key role in flood mitigation, water filtration, and supporting urban plant communities, however many are highly disturbed due to development and management practices. Although full recovery will take time (centuries), in the short term managing soils in ways that conserve organic matter inputs and promote nutrient cycling can support important soil functions and likely promote long term development. To understand how landscaping impact soil development on PSU campus, organic matter content, moisture content, and respiration rates were measured in soils from four area types with different long term weed management strategies (mulch- M; sustained plant …

Urban Japanese, Rural American: How Regionality Shaped Nisei Girlhood In Prewar America, Lauren Reiko Yanase

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores Nisei girls' racial and cultural identity formation in the American West before their forced removal to the World War II Japanese American mass incarceration camps. Japanese American history has long been dominated by male narratives, from labor histories of the 1880's first-generation Issei to the American patriotism of the 1930's second-generation Nisei. Japanese American women are generally considered through generational categories, promulgating a linear story of American progress. I argue that regionality is the main factor that shaped Nisei girls' self-identity, employing transcribed interviews with Nisei women born 1924-1929 as primary sources to write narrative histories differentiated …

School-Based Health Centers And Mental Health Stigma Before And During The Pandemic, Dara Shifrer, Suzy Fly, Rachel Springer, Xuan Dinh

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The mental health of children, and especially adolescents, has been a global public health priority for decades. School-based health centers (SBHCs) are health clinics established in close proximity to elementary and secondary schools for the purpose of increasing access to medical, and particularly mental health services, for children and adolescents. Yet, like other health clinics, SBHCs struggle to overcome structural and interpersonal stigma related to mental health conditions and support. Then, the pandemic threatened the sustainability and efficacy of SBHCs just as youth's mental health needs skyrocketed. We use Stangl et al.’s (2019)framework for health-related stigma to analyze data from …

Supporting Well-Being For The Home Visiting Workforce: Organizational Supports For Experiences Of Bias & Discrimination, Beth L. Green, Nicole M. Lauzus, Yumi Lee, Ron Joseph, Erin Gaines, Center For Improvement Of Child And Family Services

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

This learning brief is the third in a series to share findings from a 2023 statewide survey of over 700 members of Oregon’s home visiting workforce. This study has provided a wealth of information about Oregon’s home visiting workforce and what could be done to improve and support worker well-being and retention, with a focus on the needs and experiences of home visitors of color and those who speak languages other than English.

Little research has examined the extent to which home visitors experience racism or discrimination on the job, how this may impact their professional and personal well-being, and …

Synthesis Of Binary-Input Multi-Valued Output Optical Cascades For Reversible And Quantum Technologies, Ishani Agarwal, Miroslav Saraivanov, Marek Perkowski

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper extends the decomposition from the group theory based methods of Sasao and Saraivanov to design binary input multivalued output quantum cascades realized with optical NOT, SWAP, and Fredkin Gates. We present this method for 3, 5, and 7 valued outputs, but in general it can be used for odd prime valued outputs. The method can be extended to realize hybrid functions with different valued outputs. A class of local transformations is presented that can simplify the final cascade circuits. Using these simplifying transformations, we present an upper bound on the maximum number of gates in an arbitrary -variable …

Training-Informed Air Traffic Control Workforce Scheduling, Eli Winett

Theses and Dissertations

The Radar Control Facility (RCF) at Eglin Air Force Base creates monthly workforce schedules. Adherence to regulations must be verified manually and no evaluation criteria exist to compare schedules. A mixed-integer program model for air traffic controllers allocates workers across 19 positions for a user-defined number of weeks of 24-hour operations. Across eight consecutive months, this model produced schedules to nearly eliminate all shifts with critical shortages from the reference schedules. Without civilian overtime work, gains in positional coverage require a 35% increase in overtime work for military workers and 35% reduction in monthly training instances. We recommend users adopt …

Mitigating Code Reuse Attacks On Risc-V Binaries: Minimizing Gadget Availability Using The Compressed Extension, Heitor Vieira

Theses and Dissertations

Embedded systems are vital in civilian and military applications, requiring high performance and security. The open RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) offers significant advantages, including security through community review and strategic independence in microchip supplies. Brazil’s recent partnership with RISC-V highlights its potential for national technological sovereignty. However, RISC-V is not inherently resistant to code reuse attacks (CRAs), highlighting the need to integrate security measures early in development. The RISC-V Compressed extension, while beneficial for optimizing performance and code flexibility, introduces security trade-offs. As RISC-V adoption grows, particularly in critical systems, addressing these security challenges from the start is crucial …

Dual-Channel Side Channel Attack: Improved Aes Key Decryption By Combining Power And Electromagnetic Side Channels With Convolutional Neural Networks, Sean P. O'Neill

Theses and Dissertations

This research introduces a novel DL approach for SCA that combines power consumption and EM signals to enhance encryption key deduction by leveraging a dual-channel CNN architecture. A new dataset, consisting of simultaneous power and EM signal collections during 128-bitAES encryption, was developed to train and evaluate the model’s effectiveness. The combined approach achieved an 88% reduction in traces needed, from 50 traces to 6, for encryption key classification, outperforming traditional methods such as random forest, DPA, DEMA,and individual side channel CNN models. These findings highlight the potential of integrating multiple side channels in SCA to improve performance without the …

Extracting Permittivity And Permeability Using The Position-Insensitive And Calibration-Independent Method On A Rectangular Waveguide, James Conrad Denemark

Theses and Dissertations

Classic methods for extracting material characteristics require known measurements to accurately calibrate the network analyzer. Previous work demonstrated a position-insensitive and calibration-independent (PiCi) transmission/reflection method to extract a material’s permittivity. This thesis proposes a method with the same function, manipulated to use one empty measurement and then two samples of different thicknesses. The PiCi method is first adopted for rectangular waveguide which resulted in inaccurate permittivity data when compared to the calibrated solution. Once detector mismatch corrections were applied, the PiCi method produced accurate results. Using a 2-D numerical root search, permittivity and permeability material characteristics are now successfully extracted …