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Disseminated Nocardiosis Secondary To Chronic Prednisone Abuse: A Case Report, Rahul Nimmagadda Do, Luke Ciminera Do, Jacqueline Aronin Md, Muhammad Usman Zafar

Department of Medicine

No abstract provided.

Esophageal Diverticulum Presenting As Chest Pain In A Patient With Significant Cardiac History: A Diagnostic Challenge, Sujan Shrestha, Alnimer Khabbab, Kamal Khalil, Malitha Hettiarachchi

Conference Presentation Abstracts

Introduction: Esophageal diverticula are uncommon structural abnormalities that may present with nonspecific symptoms such as dysphagia, regurgitation, and chest discomfort. It accounts for < 5% of all cases of dysphagia. In elderly patients with significant cardiac comorbidities, chest pain and dysphagia may be initially attributed to cardiovascular pathology, potentially delaying the correct diagnosis. This case highlights the importance of comprehensive history taking in identifying esophageal diverticulum as an alternative etiology of chronic symptoms. Case presentation: A 77-year-old female with a history of atrial fibrillation, unstable angina, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, and diastolic heart failure presented with chest pain. Given her significant cardiac history, she underwent extensive cardiac evaluation, including serial troponins, electrocardiography, echocardiography, and stress testing, all of which showed no evidence of acute ischemia. Further history revealed intermittent dysphagia to both solids and liquids for over three years, occurring approximately twice weekly. The patient described a sensation of food getting stuck in her throat, occasionally requiring expectoration. Gastroenterology was consulted, and esophagogastroduodenoscopy revealed minimal esophagitis with a distal esophageal diverticulum. The patient was managed conservatively with pantoprazole 40 mg daily, resulting in symptomatic improvement. Discussion: Esophageal diverticula are often associated with underlying esophageal motility disorders and can present with dysphagia to both solids and liquids. Symptoms may mimic or coexist with cardiopulmonary complaints, particularly in elderly patients with multiple comorbidities. While barium esophagography remains the diagnostic modality of choice, endoscopy can identify associated mucosal pathology and confirm the diagnosis. Management is individualized based on symptom severity and diverticulum size, with conservative therapy appropriate for mildly symptomatic patients. Conclusion: This case underscores the importance of considering esophageal diverticulum in the differential diagnosis of chronic dysphagia and chest discomfort, even in patients with significant cardiac disease. Careful history taking and multidisciplinary evaluation are essential to avoid misattribution of symptoms and to ensure timely diagnosis and appropriate management.

Operative Versus Non-Operative Management Of Infant Perianal Abscesses: A Pediatric Surgery Research Collaborative Prospective Quality Improvement Study, Leigh Selesner, Chakshu Soni, Romeo C. Ignacio, Rimla Khan, Robert Wright, Alicia Mcintire, Bethany J. Slater, Nathan M. Novotny, Ryan T. Davis, Artem F. Dadamyan

Conference Presentation Abstracts

Abstract: Purpose Treatment of infant perianal abscesses (IPA) remains controversial, with ongoing debate between operative and non-operative management. Recurrence is common and prospective data to guide care are lacking. We performed the first multi-institutional prospective quality improvement (QI) study comparing non-operative to operative IPA management. Methods The primary endpoint was time to complete abscess resolution. Secondary endpoints included surgical intervention (incision and drainage ± fistulotomy) and abscess recurrence. Institutions were recruited through a national research collaborative. IRB approval was obtained individually. Between 2022 and 2025, we prospectively enrolled patients < 1 year of age with an abscess ≤2 cm from the anal verge. Patients with predisposing conditions (e.g. inflammatory bowel disease) were excluded. Management was determined by the treating provider, with either upfront surgical intervention (control group) or non-operative care per our QI protocol (protocol group, Figure 1). Data were collected on management prior to surgical evaluation, presentation, subsequent treatment and outcomes. Statistical analyses were performed using STATA, with p < 0.05 considered significant. Endpoints were compared between groups by non-parametric methods, with denominators based on available data. Results Fourteen institutions participated across the U.S., with a total of 288 patients (108 control, 180 protocol) enrolled. Median follow-up was 0.99 (interquartile range 0.23-3.93) and 1 (0.16-4.56) months for control and protocol groups. Abscess resolution occurred in 155 patients during follow-up (36/71 (51%) control, 119/134 (89%) protocol, p < 0.01). Median time to abscess resolution was 1.21 (0.33-4) and 1.13 (0.57-3.83) months for control and protocol groups (p=0.64). Recurrences were frequent in both cohorts (34/93 (37%) control, 62/153 (41%) protocol). Surgical intervention was significantly more common in the control group: incision and drainage were performed in 61/107 (57%) versus 19/166 (11%) and exam under anesthesia with fistulotomy in 31/106 (29%) versus 20/166 (12%) (both p< 0.01). Conclusions Time to abscess resolution was similar between patients treated with upfront surgical intervention and non-operative management according to our QI protocol. Significantly more patients underwent surgical intervention in the control group, without an impact on time to resolution. Our data support initial non-operative management of infant perianal abscesses, emphasizing antibiotics at initial presentation, sitz baths and family reassurance. Abbreviations: IPA - infant perianal abscess; QI - quality improvement; IRB - institutional review board

Novel Applications Of Coronary Cta In Patients With Intermediate Risk Of Cad, Ashley Armstrong, Luai Madanat, Robert D. Safian

Conference Presentation Abstracts

Background: ACC/AHA guidelines provide class 1 and 2A recommendations respectively for coronary CTA and FFRCT in patients with chest pain and intermediate risk of CAD. We present a case in which novel applications of CTA excluded obstructive CAD, identified the correct diagnosis, and allowed optimization of medical therapy. Case: In a 72-year-old male with stable angina and HEART score 6, stress ECG was positive for angina and frequent PVCs (Fig 1A). Coronary CTA (Fig 1B) and FFRCCT (Fig 1C) showed non-obstructive CAD and intramyocardial bridging/severe systolic compression in the mid-LAD (Fig 1D). AI plaque analysis demonstrated a mixed plaque burden …

An Investigation Of Data Granularity In Rag Pipelines For Personalized Medicine, Paritosh Pandey

Master's Theses

Generative AI, exemplified by large language models like the OpenAI GPT and Meta LLaMA families, can produce diverse content in response to prompts. This capability offers a promising solution to challenges in precision medicine, which seeks to tailor treatments to individual clinical profiles but often struggles with data collection, cost, and privacy concerns. By generating realistic, privacy-preserving patient data, generative AI has the potential to transform patient-centric healthcare. With such motivation, this research develops a comprehensive Generative AI pipeline emphasizing data granularity for accurate prediction of personalized treatments. The pipeline features a central Large Language Model interacting with a Machine …

Simulation Of A Buried Hydrogen Pipeline In Kansas State Soil, Sidney Hines

Master's Theses

Underground pipelines can be used to transport large amounts of pressurized hydrogen gas over several hundred kilometers. The design will be sensitive to the pipe material, diameter, and trench construction, and traffic loads above the pipe. The purpose of this paper is to conduct various geotechnical engineering analyses (seepage, stress, and slope stability) using the software program GeoStudio (version 2025.2.0) on a buried steel or FRP pipe section in a specific soil type, Harney Soil. Harney soil is of particular interest, because it is the Kansas State Soil and the analysis is for a buried gas pipe to run through …

Agentcite: Trustworthy Ai Agents For Information Verification Across Referenced Documents, Eymen Yigit

Master's Theses

This thesis presents AgentCite, a multi-agent framework for automated verification of referenced numerical data in research documents. The framework employs a hybrid design in which LLM-based agents handle document understanding and evidence retrieval, while deterministic components manage structured parsing and value comparison, improving consistency and reproducibility while reducing token consumption and execution time compared to fully agentic approaches.

AgentCite consists of three autonomous agents: a Negotiator, a Main Document Agent, and a Source Documents Agent, coordinated through a fixed tool-call pipeline. The Negotiator orchestrates verification by extracting tabular data from the main document, retrieving evidence from per-source vector stores, and …

Probing Representational Emergence In Large Language Models, Shawn Ismail

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates whether abrupt behavioral gains in large language models under scaling are accompanied by systematic changes in internal representations. It combines a behavioral screen of 65 tasks per family with targeted layerwise probing across eight decoder-only, open-weight model families. Behavioral emergence is defined for each family-task trajectory using an empirical jump detector, with segmented regression retained only as a diagnostic. The representational follow-up analyzes 27 selected MMLU subtasks shared across all families, spanning 37 checkpoints and 216 family-task units.

For each follow-up checkpoint, frozen linear probes are trained on every layer's hidden states to measure how much task-relevant …

Preserving Cherokee Culture Through Literacy And Literature: A Study Of Gendered Literacy, Rhetoric, And Cultural Continuity In The Cherokee Nation, Diana W. Baber

Master's Theses

Early explorers to what is now America, beginning with Hernando DeSoto in 1530, stole the dignity and the lands of the Indigenous peoples of America, of whom the Cherokees are only one nation. Two of the things that could not be taken was the Cherokees’ rich cultural tradition and oral histories. Stories passed orally from generation to generation to ensure that histories were preserved. They were largely preserved by the women of the tribe.

After the American Revolution, there was pressure from the new government to force the Cherokees to assimilate to the new American culture—to speak English, dress and …

Ai-Enabled Autonomous Visual Navigation In Complex And Data-Constrained Agricultural Environments By Leveraging Image Augmentation And Translation Methods, Robel Mamo

Master's Theses

The field of agricultural robotics remains one of the most underexplored domains within the broader robotics community. As a result, there is a scarcity of robust, scalable, and adaptable robotic systems capable of operating under the highly variable conditions of real-world farms. Visual navigation is essential for field autonomy, yet state-of-the-art perception models rely heavily on large annotated datasets and consistent environmental conditions. This thesis addresses these limitations by proposing two novel frameworks to enhance model robustness against structural occlusions, environmental variability, and low-visibility conditions under nighttime settings. First, I introduce Crop-Aligned Cutout (CA-Cut), a spatially guided augmentation method that …

Toni Morrison's New World Black Woman: Refuting, Deconstructing, And Redefining Black Women's Identity, Victoria L. Bell

Master's Theses

Abstract

Through critical analysis of media: literary works, performance, and television, this thesis explores the prejudices, silencing, dehumanizing, sexualization, and marginalization of Black women, their bodies, identity, and trauma inflicted by White-authored texts, specifically the American canon. I analyze the works of Black women authors, scholars, and activists, who counter the false representation of the patriarchy. Their literary works refute, deconstruct, and redefine the canon’s distorted, racial and gendered stereotypes, later to be named controlling images.  While narrating the Black woman’s authentic self, experience, body, and womanhood they reclaim space, authenticity, and agency.

In my research and analysis, the central …

Deep Learning For Predicting Impact Energy And Compression After Impact Strength Of Composite Materials Using C-Scan Images, K. T. Tan, Jason P. Mack, Faizan Mirza, Zhong-Hui Duan

University Research

Traditional assessment of post-impact performance in carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites often relies on simplified scalar metrics that fail to capture the complex spatial interactions driving failure. This study addresses this limitation by developing an automated, end-to-end deep learning framework that shifts from manual feature extraction to the direct interpretation of raw damage morphology from ultrasonic C-scans. Using a ResNet18-based convolutional neural network (CNN) trained on 1,428 augmented images, the model achieved coefficients of determination (R2) of 0.7948 ± 0.0847 for compression after impact (CAI) strength and 0.9436 ± 0.0098 for impact energy. Beyond prediction, this dual-purpose methodology serves …

The Southampton Plot: The Case For Innocence (1415), Haley Buckles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the "Southampton Plot" of 1415, a famous conspiracy to overthrow King Henry V of England. While history often portrays the plotters as simple traitors against the government, this study reexamines original records to show a more complex story. By looking closely at how the English government handled the trials, the research reveals that the English Crown may have exaggerated the threat to strengthen the King’s political power before he invaded France. This study shows that what we call "treason" was often shaped by the government’s need to control its public image and hold on to power. Ultimately, …

Perceptions Of Effective Co-Teaching Partnerships In High School Inclusive Classrooms, Korri-Lee S. Wood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the characteristics and contextual factors that general education and special education teachers perceive as essential for effective co-teaching partnerships in high school inclusive classrooms. The study, which involved in-depth interviews with general and special education teachers in co-teaching partnerships, was conducted within a constructivist paradigm to shed light on interpersonal, communicative, and systemic variables that contribute to a positive, productive co-teaching experience. Purposeful sampling was employed to select general and special education teachers who were part of co-teaching partnerships. Thematic analysis was used to analyze data from semi-structured interviews, and an …

Attendance Matters: Incentive Programs And Chronic Absenteeism In Elementary Schools, Aubryn Street

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chronic absenteeism is a common challenge in elementary education. Schools often use attendance incentive programs, such as rewards or recognition, to encourage students to attend regularly. However, it is not always clear whether these programs actually improve attendance. This study examined whether attendance incentive programs are effective and how school staff view and use these programs.

This mixed-methods study used both school attendance data and interviews with school personnel. Attendance data from two school years showed that schools with incentive programs did not have lower absenteeism rates than schools without them. However, attendance improved overall from one year to the …

Bergsonian Blend: Subjective Temporality Within Modernist Aesthetics Of Mental Illness, Lydia Victoria Gervais

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Henri Bergson was a modernist French philosopher who wrote extensively on the topic of the lived experience of time, which he called durée, or duration. His contemporary, Sigmund Freud, was developing psychoanalytic theory in a growing field of psychological study, which serves as a prominent ancestor to modern psychiatry and current psychoanalytical literary studies. Fiction writers of the 1900s absorbed the zeitgeist of melded chronology and consciousness, interweaving themes of time and trauma in their works. Utilizing Henri Bergson’s durée as a philosophical framework, I examine the moralization of time-consciousness in connection with mental illness and investigate representations of …

Discrete-Event Simulation: A Leslie System Model For Transportation Demography, Md Zobaer Ahammad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transportation systems are influenced by demographic change, household formation,and patterns of vehicle ownership. These factors affect long-run transportation demand and congestion levels within urban infrastructure. Understanding how demographic dynamics interact with transportation behavior is therefore important for analyzing the long-term evolution of transportation systems. This thesis develops a modeling framework that integrates discrete-event simulation with a Leslie-type matrix model to study transportation–demography interactions.Simulation outputs are aggregated to construct a transition matrix describing changes in transportation states. This matrix acts as a linear (or affine) transformation on the transportation state vector, allowing the system to be analyzed as a discrete linear …

Machine-Learning Landslide Susceptibility And Runout Modeling In The Nolichucky River Gorge After Hurricane Helene, Grace Braver

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Extreme rainfall from Hurricane Helene (September 2024) triggered widespread landslides across the southern Appalachian region, highlighting the need for rapid landslide susceptibility assessments that capture both landslide initiation and downstream runout. Traditional susceptibility models often focus solely on initiation zones, limiting their ability to identify which slopes will generate destructive landslides or where material will travel. This study addresses that gap by (1) integrating Geographic Information System (GIS)-based machine learning susceptibility modeling using ArcGIS Pro: Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) and Random Forest-Based and Boosted Classification and Regression (FBBC) and (2) the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Grfin (Growth, Flow, and Inundation) runout …

Behavioral Bottlenecks In Belizean Smallholder Farming: An Action Plan, Mckinley A. Almeida

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Behavioral Bottlenecks in Belizean Smallholder Farming: An Action Plan investigates why Belizean smallholders hesitate to adopt new practices informed by a two-month internship with the Ministry of Agriculture at the Stann Creek branch. During the internship, a seventeen-page bilingual farm plan outline integrating SMART goals, a standard business plan, and farming essentials relevant to the local culture and environment was designed and developed. The Farm Plan Outline is grounded in observations in goal-setting theory, risk aversion under price uncertainty, and knowledge gap literature (AKIS/AKAP) tailored by smallholder Belizean contexts. Farmers were assisted with the Sustainable & Inclusive Belize Program grant …

Do I Have To Know Someone? The Impact Of Factors Beyond The Playing Field That Affect Mlb Hall Of Fame Voting., Jackson Wollscheid

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

With the creation of WAR (Wins above Replacement), it has created an index to measure the player’s value using a variety of statistics relevant to that player’s position. The higher a player’s career WAR then the greater the impact that player had on the game during his career. However, players are not simply inducted into the Hall of Fame on this measure of value but on voting from members of the BBWAA (Baseball Writers’ Association of America). This research investigates external factors outside of standard playing statistics’ influence on Hall of Fame voting, including team affiliation, career length, and other …

Income Distribution And Poverty Rate Changes In Hurricane Katrina-Affected Parishes: A Case Study Of Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines, And St. Bernard, 2000-2023, Carly L. Day

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

On August 28^th, 2005, the National Hurricane Center announced that a category five hurricane sustaining over 160-mile winds was cruising through the Gulf of Mexico, headed straight for the coasts of Louisiana and Alabama. By August 29^th, 2005, Katrina made landfall in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana as a category three hurricane. After surviving a significant amount of rainfall, the levee system in New Orleans failed, putting over 80% of the city of New Orleans underwater and leaving many residents without homes (“Hurricane Katrina”, 2025). Despite a mandatory evacuation order, many people were forced to take shelter in …

Manipulation Or Monetization?: The Rise Of Stock Buybacks And Their Effects On Firm Valuation And Investment, Thomas H. Serrano

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract:

This thesis uses basic econometrics to examine the relationship between stock buybacks, firm valuation, and investment among publicly traded firms from 2000-2024. Using firm-level data pulled from Compustat North America and a fixed-effect multivariate regression, it evaluates whether buybacks are associated with higher valuation and stronger productive investment as defined in the paper. The results show that buybacks are positively associated with firm valuation the first year that they occur, but the relationship disappears when they are lagged for a year. Furthermore, the analysis does not find strong statistical evidence that repurchases are associated with changes in investment, or …

The Impact Of Change In The Legal Definition Of Confidentiality On The Redaction Behavior Of U.S. Firms, Alexey Alferov

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

U.S. public companies may redact information from material contracts in SEC filings as long as such information is not considered to be material by the SEC and when it is the type of information that the registrant treats as private and confidential. In 2021, the SEC revised redaction regulations in response to the expansion of the legal definition of ‘confidential’ by the Supreme Court of the United States. In this paper I examine whether these changes, referred to as FMI Amendments, impact companies’ decision to redact information from their material contracts filed with the SEC. In addition, I extend Thompson …

Structural Evidence For Innervation Of A Single Epitheliomuscular Cell By Multiple Sensory Neurons In The Sea Anemone Nematostella Vectensis, Aparajita Das

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Here, I report new ultrastructural evidence for multineuronal innervation (many-one) of a single epithelia-muscular cell in sea-anemone cnidarian Nematostella vectensis. Using Serial Block-Face Scanning Electron Microscopy (SBF-SEM) and ImageJ, I found that EMCs are located at the base of ectoderm, with an elongated cell body that includes basal processes, a bilobed nucleus, and myofibrils aligned parallel to the basal surface along with their structural quantification. Notably, I found multiple mechanosensory neurons form synapses with a single EMC. These findings enhance our understanding of cnidarian neuromuscular organization and reveal that coordination between sensory and contractile systems in N. vectensis is …

Gun Violence Prevention In The Christian Church: A Deductive Content Analysis Of Faith-Based Firearm Education Resources, Sarah Winn

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzed whether Christian faith-based curricula and toolkits regarding firearm safety and violence prevention align with established best practices in public health, social work, and education research. Previous research has explored the prevalence and impact of gun violence, best practices regarding gun violence and safety interventions, the effectiveness of churches as public health initiative partners, and the relationship between Christianity and views on firearms. In this study, qualitative deductive content analysis indicated that faith-based gun violence prevention toolkits are strongly oriented toward advocacy, community mobilization, and public health framing. At the same time, gaps remain in their integration of …

Nanoscale Electrochemical Measurements: Theory, Instrumentation, And Operation, Kamsy Lerae Anderson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Electrochemical processes underpin many modern technologies (e.g., batteries, fuel cells, and corrosion protection systems), and because these processes are often controlled by interactions that occur at the nanoscale, gaining insight into nanoscale electrochemical behavior is essential to advancing these technologies. Nanoscale electrochemical imaging probes measure electrochemical activity with nanoscale spatial resolution and have enabled researchers to gain new insights into diverse experimental systems. However, limitations remain, including a lack of methods for direct quantitative interpretation, the influence of atmospheric conditions on experimental reproducibility and stability, and a knowledge barrier resulting from limited accessible resources, all of which continue to restrict …

Will The Demons Follow (And Other Stories), Eberechi Onyekachi Mcbride

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Will The Demons Follow (and Other Stories) is a collection of interconnected short stories that examines memory, trauma, migration, and womanhood across Nigerian and diasporic spaces. Set in both Nigeria and the United States, the stories move between villages, cities, and immigrant communities, presenting characters whose lives are shaped by cultural expectations, spiritual beliefs, family authority, and personal longing. Through multiple narrative voices, the collection considers how the past continues to shape the present. Characters struggle with family conflict, religious pressure, sexual violence, and the psychological burdens carried across borders. In the title story, “Will The Demons Follow?”, the narrator …

Design And Evaluation Of A Single-Gate Multi-Threshold Null Convention Logic Architecture For Area Efficiency, John Edward Swaim

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Asynchronous circuit design paradigms, such as NULL convention logic (NCL) and Multi-Threshold NCL (MTNCL), offer increased energy efficiency over synchronous equivalents and robust pipelines with minimal timing analysis. However, their dependency on dual-rail signal encoding causes significant overhead compared to single-rail equivalents. Previous single-gate and single-rail NCL paradigms have sought to reduce circuit area, but most compromise their quasi-delay-insensitivity and correct-by-construction nature with logic gate and system-level design choices. This thesis presents Single-Gate MTNCL (SG-MTNCL), a register controlled, single-gate, and dual-rail asynchronous architecture to improve the area efficiency of MTNCL without compromising the reliability of previous paradigms. The benefits of …

Across The Pond And Veil: Spiritualists, Female Mediums, And Ghosts In The Nineteenth-Century United States And Britain, Allison Tucker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how women mediums in the late nineteenth-century United States and Britain shaped Spiritualism and interpreted their respective social landscapes. Spiritualist mediums claimed the ability to communicate with spirits in the spirit world. These conversations with ghosts allowed mediums to speak on recent events, traverse social boundaries, and assume positions of authority. Drawing on trance writings, spirit-authored books, newspaper articles, and the performances of women mediums, this study compares the development and practices of Spiritualism in both countries. This thesis argues that proximity to violence significantly shaped Spiritualism during its formative years. The Civil War placed Americans in …

Of Dunes And Ice: A Surface-Atmosphere Investigation Of Mars Co2 Sublimation Features And Titan Aeolian Fields, Racine D. Cleveland

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates a central question: How do planetary boundary layer processes manifest in observable surface geomorphology, and how can planetary imagery be used to quantify those effects? The planetary boundary layer (PBL) governs near-surface exchanges of momentum, heat, and volatiles, yet direct atmospheric measurements remain spatially and temporally limited on most planetary bodies. By analyzing geomorphic features preserved in high-resolution imagery, this work quantifies how boundary-layer processes leave measurable signatures on planetary surfaces. For Mars, high-resolution images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) HiRISE instrument were used to map CO2 sublimation features, or Swiss Cheese Features (SCFs), on the …