Digital Commons Network^™

Sanctuary: Counter-Oppressive Relationships With Farmed Animals As An Ecopsychological Imperative, Kelsey Bomboy

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

Consumers are intentionally shielded from and often misled about the process of breeding, raising, and slaughtering animals for consumption. By confining most farmed animals to warehouses in rural areas while the majority of humans are sequestered in urban areas, we have effectively created a world where humans do not have to contend with the sense of interconnectedness that arises when witnessing and being witnessed by a farmed animal. Within industrial slaughterhouses, the physical act of killing is minimized to just a fraction of the workers, so that even those who are responsible for rendering a once living being will never …

Social Emotional Learning (Sel) For Secondary English Language Learners (Ells), Summer E. Wallace

Honors Projects

This literature review and unit plan seeks to understand what Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is and provide resources to educators on its importance in the classroom. The literature review provides an overview of peer-reviewed sources from various educational journals, as well as online publications. It also contains interviews with two educators currently in the field. This project examines the benefits of SEL within the classroom and beyond, and proposes steps and considerations for implementing SEL into the classroom. It also includes specific provisions for SEL instruction to secondary English Language Learners (ELLs). Additionally, it discusses specific strategies to implement in …

Political Uncertainty And Firm-Level Stock Market Reactions In The United States, Nozomi Tanaka

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Political uncertainty has become an increasingly important feature of the global economy, with major geopolitical events often triggering rapid reactions in financial markets. This study examines how geopolitical shocks affect firm-level stock market performance in the United States. Using an event study framework, the analysis evaluates cumulative returns and stock return volatility for fourteen publicly traded firms across nine major geopolitical events between 2016 and 2022, including the Brexit referendum, the U.S.–China trade war, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russia–Ukraine war.

The results indicate that most firms experienced negative abnormal returns around geopolitical events, suggesting that political uncertainty is generally …

Impact Of An All-Gender Cabin Intervention At A Residential Summer Camp On Self-Esteem And Perceived Social Support In Lgbtq+ Youth, Suzanne D. Dinubile

Doctoral Dissertations

This study is a program evaluation with a mixed-methods design that evaluated the impact of Camp Tawonga’s All-Gender Cabin Intervention and LGBTQ+ programming showed no statistically significant changes, likely due to small sample size, but descriptive trends indicated improved outcomes for LGBTQ+ youth in All-Gender cabins. Semi-structured interviews with six LGBTQ+ campers revealed increased self-awareness and acceptance, empowerment, self-confidence, and a stronger sense of belonging within the LGBTQ+ community, along with positive interactions with non-LGBTQ+ peers. Notably, the three campers in All-Gender cabins highlighted unique themes of identity affirmation, emotional and behavioral growth, and relief from minority stress. Findings support …

Artificial Intelligence And Translation: Exploring Current Applications, Limitations And Future Potential Of Language Models Through Japanese-English Translation, Loklin Elias Nord

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

This thesis highlights the recent improvements and capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), specifically their ability to produce translations between different languages. The continued up-scaling of model sizes has led to breakthroughs in the level of their observed intelligence, allowing them to produce translations that are similar in quality to highly skilled human translators. However, to facilitate the reasoning processes that LLMs now possess, their demand for computational power and the supporting hardware and resources has increased proportionally. Considering the impacts of this technology on the environment, energy resources, and its accessibility, my research explores the possibilities of smaller, highly …

How Does Foreign Direct Investment (Fdi) Impacts Egypt Economic Stability From The Specific Focus Of Exchange Rate And Economic Growth, Mohamed Medhat Merdan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic dependency in Egypt, focusing on two channels through which such dependency may manifest: exchange rate volatility and economic growth. FDI has historically financed a disproportionately large share of Egypt's gross fixed capital formation relative to comparable regions, yet rigorous empirical research on its macroeconomic consequences within the Egyptian economy remains limited. Drawing on Dunning's eclectic (OLI) paradigm and Porter's diamond model, this study develops three hypotheses and tests them using an ARDL bounds testing approach applied to fifty-five years of annual data spanning 1970 to 2025.

The empirical …

Digital Maturity In The Administrative Prosecution In Egypt, Asmaa A. Hassan

Theses and Dissertations

The growing deployment of information and communication technologies in public service delivery, in general, and in the judiciary in particular, underscores the need for an assessment tool to evaluate digital maturity. Understanding digital maturity, a state in which an organization has completed digital development, helps diagnose the status quo, identify enablers, and address challenges, and consequently provide a roadmap for efficient improvements. This study aims to examine key factors affecting digital maturity within the Administrative Prosecution (AP) in Egypt, a pillar of the judicial authority and mandated to investigate financial and administrative violations committed by public servants. A mixed-methods approach …

Eritrean Refugees Between Securitization And Survival Along The Sahara Route To Egypt, Zeina Shoukry

Theses and Dissertations

Eritrea remains one of the largest refugee-producing countries in the world, with mandatory military conscription serving as a primary driver of displacement. This thesis examines the precarious journey of Eritrean refugees across the Sahara Desert en route to Egypt, situating this movement within the broader context of border securitization. It argues that the journey itself constitutes a critical and often overlooked phase of the migration process, as significant as both departure and destination.

Drawing on migration infrastructure theory and migrant network theory, this study foregrounds Eritrean refugees’ agency and resilience. It analyzes how refugees mobilize knowledge, digital technologies, social networks, …

Organizational Planning Practices Under Uncertainty: The Case Of Ngos In Hadhramaut, Yemen, Khulood Taleb Alamodi

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Hadhramaut, Yemen plan and operate under conditions of fragility and uncertainty. Although strategic planning is often presented as a formal and structured process, NGOs in fragile settings face ongoing disruption, unstable funding, and weak institutions. This study asks how planning takes place in practice under these conditions. The study uses qualitative data from 22 semi-structured interviews with NGO leaders, staff, and external actors. A conceptual framework combining contextual fragility, resource dependence, organizational capacity and resilience, and legitimacy and networks was used to examine how these factors shape organizational planning. The findings …

Palestinian Motherhood In Lebanon: An Analysis Of The Legal And Humanitarian Systems, Enje Matar

Theses and Dissertations

The lives of Palestinians in Lebanon are shaped by a diversity of factors that are exogenous and endogenous. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the impact of existing institutional, legal, and societal structures on Palestinian refugee mothers. It answers the following main question: how do the legal and humanitarian systems in Lebanon impact Palestinian mothers? It specifically scrutinizes 1) How do these systems shape family dynamics, maternal relations with children, and mothers’ daily lives? 2) How are these systems gendered in ways that represent broader questions of power and control? 3) How do mothers respond to these systems …

From Planned To Lived: Street-Level Transformation And The Production Of Urban Space In New Cairo, Seba Abouyoussef

Theses and Dissertations

Egypt's new cities program has produced four generations of satellite developments, yet none have been systematically evaluated for how they perform once inhabited. Each is planned as a prototype — functionally zoned, automobile-oriented, image-driven — with little regard for the social, cultural, and behavioral dynamics that will shape it. This thesis examines the gap between the planned city and the lived city by tracing how three streets in New Cairo transformed over a fifteen-year period (2010–2025) through everyday use, stakeholder interaction, and pivotal trigger events.

The research follows a qualitative, multi-phase methodology — combining historical and physical mapping, behavioral observation, …

Beyond The Legal Black Hole: Hyper-Legality, Deferral, And Detention In Northeast Syria, Grace T. Harmon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the detention of suspected ISIS affiliates and their family members held in facilities administered by the Kurdish-led authorities in North-East Syria. Thousands of foreign nationals remain detained without trial, without repatriation, and in conditions widely criticized as inhumane. Existing scholarship and political discourse often describe these facilities as legal voids, limbo, or black holes where law has broken down or ceased to apply. This thesis challenges that characterization. Rather than existing outside the law, the facilities are governed through overlapping frameworks of international humanitarian law, international human rights law, counterterrorism security resolutions, and domestic laws. I argue …

Co-Creation Of Classroom Language: Supporting Learners To Develop Expressions Of Uncertainty And Statistical Concepts, Jioo Nimkar, Nayanatara Ruth Gautham

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This qualitative study explored how Grade 4 students and the researcher co-created language to express statistical concepts in a multilingual Indian classroom during a week-long instructional sequence. The analysis draws on a situated socio-cultural perspective on language in mathematics. Students’ language progressed from simple claims to more refined and sophisticated expressions, enabling them to discuss central tendencies and distributions while acknowledging uncertainty. Co-created phrases such as āsapās reshā (the nearby line) not only supported communication but also deepened reasoning. The article also discusses what role scaffolding played in refining these informal resources.

Evolution Of Pre-Service Teacher Beliefs Along The Traditional-Reform Continuum: An Examination Of Normative Beliefs And Discursive Claims A Decade Later, Mary Elizabeth Riley Lloyd, Adam Jordan

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This study replicated an earlier study that explored the beliefs of a sample of K-8 pre-service teachers (PSTs). Results of this study position PSTs’ beliefs along a traditional-reform continuum. The positioning from the current study is compared to that of the former study, to determine the level of progress made toward the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ commitment to high-quality instruction. To position beliefs, PSTs completed a Likert survey, including open-ended questions, three times throughout their teacher preparation program (TPP): before taking any of their mathematics education courses, after taking both required mathematics education courses, and after student teaching. …

Multimodal Interpretation Of Notation, Dave Hewitt, Jenni Ingram

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Challenges related to the teaching and learning of formal notation in school mathematics are widely documented, and specifically in relation to the underlying mathematical structures that the notation is intended to convey. In this article, we draw on embodied cognition to examine the interactions among three students working with the software Grid Algebra. Embodied cognition emphasises the role of gesture and movement in learning and understanding mathematics. Grid Algebra uses movement to direct students’ attention to mathematical operations on numbers and numerical expressions within the grid and the structure of these operations, while the software takes care of the …

Linguistic And Conceptual Transfer: Crosslinguistic Translanguaging In The English-French Bilingual Mathematics Classroom In The Uk, Jo Skelton, Jane Spiro

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This paper presents the findings of a study, conducted as part of a PhD thesis, exploring ways in which translanguaging can be used to support the development of conceptual understanding of division. The study focused on 18 8-9-year-old pupils learning mathematics through the instructional languages of English and French in an ‘immersion-style’ bilingual education context in England. The data was collected from four consecutive mathematics lessons focusing on division, the first two taught through English by a monolingual English teacher and the second two taught in French by a bilingual French teacher. Both teachers were interviewed directly following their second …

Pre-Service Teachers’ Noticing Of The Function Of Mathematical Naming In The Teaching Of Fractions, Juan Manuel González-Forte, Núria Planas

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In this paper, we present the rationale and results of a study conducted with 79 pre-service primary-school teachers on their sensitivities to notice the pedagogic function of naming practices in the language of teaching fractions. Our results are a contribution to noticing research on mathematics teacher education and language. Although participants were not familiar with discussions of the language of teaching mathematics in general and the language of teaching fractions in particular, they engaged in an intervention with a professional task that provided opportunities to notice potential relationships between mathematical naming and the conceptual understanding of fractions. The written answers …

From Words To Worlds: Concluding Reflections And Emerging Directions, Jenni Ingram, Núria Planas, David Pimm

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In concluding the second series of eight articles in the double special issue on ‘Engaging with communication and language in relation to mathematics and its education’, we take the opportunity to reflect across the articles to prompt us all to consider potential and emerging directions for future research. This final article is overall a commentary inspired by the communication-centred and language-centred contributions to mathematics education across the entire collection of articles, that is, all those comments that situate mathematics and its education as language and communication praxis. We explore this relationship between mathematics and its education with communication and language …

An Analysis Of The Pedagogical Price Of Mathematical Tricks: The Case Of Factoring, John Beam, Jason Belnap, Eric Kuennen, Amy Parrott, Jennifer E. Szydlik

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Students are exposed to a variety of mathematical tricks that ostensibly make it easier for them to solve problems. But tricks also undermine their understanding that mathematics is supposed to make sense; they rob students of opportunities to explore and struggle with ideas; and they obscure mathematical structure.

Affordances For Graphical Shape Thinking Through Vivid Informal Classroom Talk, Elizabeth Kimber, Cathy Smith

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The shape of a graph arising from the covariation of variables is a crucial idea in reasoning about functions and graphs. Students’ perspectives on graph shape may foreground visual features and consider the shape to be a fixed property of the function (static graphical shape thinking). In contrast, students can perceive the graph as a trace of covarying quantities, through which its shape arises (emergent graphical shape thinking). It is of interest to understand how these perspectives are supported and promoted by teachers in classroom discourse. We present findings from a study of classroom discourse in which we used systemic …

From Uncertainty To Dialogue: Visualising Collaborative Noticing And Mathematical Intuitions In Students' Narratives Within Probability Learning, Daniela Diaz-Rojas

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This study explores the critical role of language and communication in fostering collaborative noticing practices that display mathematical intuitions within probability learning. Through an analysis of student interactions, I show how the joint articulation of ideas and the exploration of shared doubt enable intuition, often perceived as an object that is held and a solitary experience, to become a socially shared and co-constructed process. The observed collaborative dialogue concerns shared content and form, constructing a joint narrative architecture that enables common understanding and allows the group to notice, examine, and reshape their intuitions. Collaborative noticing when working with probability problems …

Teachers’ Knowledge And Use Of Mathematics Register For Teaching And Communication, Pauline Tiong, Sheena Tan

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Research has progressively considered a resource-oriented rather than a deficit-based approach towards understanding the role of language in helping students learn mathematical concepts. Notably, there has been a call for greater attention to the notion of mathematics teaching talk, which focuses on teachers’ use of language as a resource to teach mathematics (and the language of mathematics). It is argued that mathematics teaching talk plays an important role in enabling teachers to communicate mathematical ideas or meanings of mathematical concepts and in turn, preparing students to participate better in mathematical discourse practices. Specifically, this paper seeks to exemplify what teachers …

Affectivity As A Form Of Communication During Interactions Between Parent, Child, And Touchcounts, Qiang Lin

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This qualitative study examines communication in family mathematics settings, focusing on how embodied communication is constituted during parent–child interaction with a multitouch technology application, TouchCounts. Moving beyond information–transmission perspectives, the study adopts an embodied and relational approach centered on affectivity—conceptualized as the circulation of attunement, resonance, and intensity of movement and feeling across human and non-human components of the parent–child–TouchCounts assemblage. Drawing on close qualitative analysis of two selected video-recorded excerpts, the study traces how mathematical events unfold moment by moment through bodily action and material engagement, and how affective flow shapes how participants respond to one …

Book Review: Irrationality, Transcendence And The Circle-Squaring Problem: An Annotated Translation Of J. H. Lambert’S Vorläufige Kenntnisse And Mémoire (2nd Ed.), Bharath Sriraman

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This review examines Irrationality, Transcendence and the Circle-Squaring Problem (2nd ed., 2024) by Eduardo Dorrego López and Elías Fuentes Guillén, offering the first complete annotated English translations of Johann Heinrich Lambert’s two foundational texts on the irrationality of π: the semi-popular Vorläufige Kenntnisse (1766/1770) and the rigorous Mémoire (1761/1768). The review situates these translations within Lambert’s remarkable and largely underappreciated life—a self-taught polymath who rose from a tailor’s workshop in Mulhouse to the Berlin Academy of Sciences—and gives careful attention to the proof of irrationality of π via continued fractions, placing it in dialogue with the Niven–Hermite integral approach, the …

Book Review: Mathematical Geography In The Eighteenth Century: Euler, Lagrange And Lambert, Bharath Sriraman

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This review examines Mathematical Geography in the Eighteenth Century: Euler, Lagrange and Lambert, edited by Renzo Caddeo and Athanase Papadopoulos (Springer, 2022), a volume bringing together ten historical and mathematical essays alongside complete English translations of six foundational memoirs on cartography by Euler (four), Lagrange (one), and Lambert (one). The review assesses the volume’s mathematical depth across its core topics: Euler’s system of differential equations establishing the non-existence of perfect maps, the derivation of the Mercator and conformal projections via partial differential equations, Lagrange’s introduction of the Cauchy–Riemann equations and holomorphic functions into cartographic theory, and Lambert’s construction of …

Ai Failures In The Eyes Of The Downstream Developer: A First Look At Concerns, Practices, And Challenges, Haoyu Gao, Mansooreh Zahedi, Wenxin Jiang, Hong Yi Lin, James C. Davis, Christoph Treude

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the advancement of AI models, more software systems are adopting AI as a component to facilitate automation. Pre-trained models (PTMs) have become a cornerstone of AI-based software, allowing for rapid integration and development with lower training cost. However, their adoption also introduces failure modes such as data leakage and biased outputs, that may require careful handling by downstream developers. While previous research has proposed taxonomies of these technical concerns and various mitigation strategies, how downstream developers address these issues during the development of general AI-based software when reusing PTMs remains unexplored. Understanding downstream developers’ perspectives is essential because they …

Computational Modeling Of Crack-Tip Fields In Transversely Isotropic Strain-Limiting Solids Subjected To Piecewise Linear Slope Loads, S. M. Mallikarjunaiah, Saugata Ghosh, Dambaru Bhatta

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

Crack-tip fields within a transversely isotropic strain-limiting elastic body are investigated under the influence of piecewise linear slope boundary loads. The mechanical response is characterized via a nonlinear constitutive framework relating the Cauchy stress to the linearized strain, by which non-physical strain singularities at the crack tip are eliminated. The governing system is formulated as a quasi-linear elliptic boundary value problem in terms of the displacement field and is solved utilizing a continuous Galerkin finite element method coupled with a Picard linearization scheme. Boundary conditions are prescribed such that the vertical displacement varies piecewise linearly along the top and bottom …

A Hands-On Lab On Agentic Scientific Discovery For Time Series With The Model Context Protocol, Dhaval Patel, Miaomiao Feng, Chathurangi Shyalika, Shuxin Lin, Hasnat Md. Abdullah

Publications

Agentic AI offers new opportunities to accelerate scientific discovery for time series by enabling autonomous systems to inspect data, formulate hypotheses, compose experiments, and refine models based on empirical evidence. However, building agents that make sound modeling decisions requires more than connecting a language model to forecasting tools. Key challenges include exposing large model catalogues without overwhelming the agent, grounding parameter choices in data characteristics, supporting iterative experimentation, and evaluating the quality of the reasoning behind each decision.

This hands-on lab introduces participants to agentic scientific discovery for time series using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Through five interactive sprints, …

Determinants Of Panic Buying And Cognitive Dissonance During Economic Crisis: Evidence From The Marketing Environment In Egypt., Hossam A. Deraz (Phd), Marwa Mahmoud (Phd)

Business Administration

This study examines panic buying during Egypt’s economic crisis, such as currency devaluation, rising inflation, and product shortages. This study integrates the scarcity principle, reactance theory, and cognitive dissonance theory to create and assess a new framework designed to investigate how both cognitive factors (such as risk perception and future orientation) and economic factors (such as product unavailability/scarcity and consumption shift) directly and indirectly influence panic buying through the mediating influence of price consciousness. Moreover, the article examines how panic buying may influence cognitive dissonance. A total number of 423 Egyptian consumers were surveyed via an online questionnaire. The structural …

Effect Of Casting Conditions On Interface Formation In Aluminum–Brass Bimetal Produced By Compound Die Casting, Farida Boulos

Theses and Dissertations

This research work investigates compound die casting of aluminum-brass hybrid metal. AA7075 and AA1050 were cast around a cylindrical brass substrate and the interface region is studied. Casting temperature as well as substrate diameter were varied with the objective of studying their influence on the structure of the interface and the thickness of the intermetallic layers (IMLs). Light Optical Microscopy (LOM) overview images and high magnification images were obtained, and the interface was characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy equipped with Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). Moreover, nano-indentation hardness measurements were conducted. Results showed that porosity significantly affected the integrity of …