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An Introduction To Field Excursions For The 2026 Geological Society Of America Cordilleran Section Meeting In Loreto, Baja California Sur, México, Scott E.K. Bennett, Michael H. Darin, Genaro Martínez Gutiérrez

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The 122nd annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA) Cordilleran Section will be held in Loreto, Baja California Sur, México, an idyllic and historic Sonoran Desert city nestled on the eastern shore of the Baja California peninsula. The 2026 Loreto meeting marks a milestone for GSA as it is the first time in the Section’s century-plus history that the meeting has been held on the Baja California peninsula and only the third time that the meeting has been held in México. Thus, the 2026 Loreto meeting and related field trips represent a meaningful expansion of the Section’s engagement …

Wise Beyond Our Years: Menopause, Negative Body-Image, And Art As A Catalyst To Self-Acceptance, Nicole Lea

Art Therapy | Master's Theses

This mixed methods study examined the impact of menopause on women’s body image and self-acceptance through an arts-based group intervention. Quantitative data was collected using the Body Image Self-Compassion Scale, and qualitative data was gathered through art-making, group discussion, and individual interviews. Participants were (n=5) menopausal women aged 46-52 from the Bay Area who reported negative body image related to menopause. The intervention consisted of four one-hour open studio workshops with a fifth meeting added in which participants created altered books while engaging in peer support and discussion. Descriptive statistics indicated an increase in mean body image self-compassion scores from …

Effective Deep Learning Architectures For Structured Data Analysis And Generation, Md Atik Ahamed

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

The effective utilization of structured data is fundamental to modern machine learning, yet it presents distinct challenges in both predictive analysis and generative modeling. Traditional deep learning architectures, particularly Transformers, often suffer from quadratic computational complexity when processing long sequences. This dissertation addresses these limitations by introducing novel architectures based on State-Space Models (SSMs) and Diffusion Models. In the area of predictive analysis, we focus on overcoming the computational bottlenecks of attention mechanisms for tabular and time-series data. First, we introduce MambaTab, a selective state-space architecture designed for efficient tabular classification. By leveraging the linear complexity of SSMs, MambaTab significantly …

Unpacking And Re-Imagining Dental Ethics With Anti-Oppressive And Interdisciplinary Praxis, Eleanor Fleming Phd, Dds, Mph, Ficd, Facd

Journal of the American College of Dentists

Dental ethics are assumed to be neutral in their intent. With a social contract grounded in liberalism and assumptions centering whiteness, the resulting ethics reinforce hierarchy, otherness, and inequities. Because concepts and practices are rarely neutral, dental ethics is embedded with biases, which results in it falling short of the demands of the 21st century and exacerbating health inequities rather than supporting efforts for health justice. This manuscript invites the reader to reflect critically and re-imagine dental ethics using anti-oppressive and interdisciplinary praxis. For the improvement of public health, the narrowing of inequities, and a functioning oral health system, the …

Dr. William Thomas Green Morton, Civil War Hero, Peter H. Jacobsohn Dds, Facd

Journal of the American College of Dentists

This article examines the overlooked Civil War contributions of Dr. William Thomas Green Morton, the dentist best known as the Father of Surgical Anesthesia. While Morton’s role in introducing ether anesthesia to surgery is well documented, his service as a volunteer anesthetist for the Union Army remains largely unrecognized in Civil War literature. Drawing on contemporary accounts, letters, and eyewitness descriptions, the article highlights Morton’s presence on major battlefields, where he administered ether to thousands of wounded soldiers. His work dramatically reduced surgical pain, improved morale, and marked the earliest example of organized military anesthesia in American history.

Discrepancies In Diagnosis Experience And Ongoing Care Satisfaction Between Pediatric And Adult Type 1 Diabetics (Paper), Hayden Bentz

Honors Capstone Projects

Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease which leads to an eventual stopping of insulin production by the body. The disease requires extensive education, management, and collaboration with a patient’s care provider. As such, the patient’s diagnosis experience and ongoing satisfaction with their provider play a large role in their perceived success in managing the disease. T1D can occur in pediatric and adult populations alike. However, historical bias often caused T1D to be overlooked as a diagnosis in adult populations. As a result, discrepancies between pediatric and adult patients may exist with regards to their diagnosis experience and ongoing …

The Innocence Trap, Caitlin Glass, Julian Green

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

What makes a conviction wrongful? Developments in DNA science have led to a wave of exonerations over the past thirty years, revealing sources of error in the criminal legal process. Innocence organizations proliferated to represent people whose convictions could be overturned by newly discovered evidence. This is vital work for the individuals who are released and for the purpose of systemic change. At the same time, a focus on exonerations constructs a relatively narrow conception of wrongful convictions—one that is synonymous with factual innocence.

This Article argues that a broader conception of wrongful convictions may be revealed through co-ideation with …

Regulatory History And Judicial Review, Todd Phillips, Anthony Moffa

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires federal agencies to simply “incorporate in the rules adopted a concise general statement of their basis and purpose” after they receive comments from the public, and the Supreme Court ruled in Overton Park that courts are to adjudicate whether rules are arbitrary and capricious based on agencies’ contemporaneous rationales. Judge-created doctrines incentivize agencies to rely on these “concise” statements to elucidate their rationales, and, as a result, rulemaking preambles have ballooned in size as agencies seek to insulate themselves from critical courts.

This Article contends that although the APA’s statutory requirement is in tension …

Imminent Harm As A Requirement For Forcing Guardianship: Why Guardianship Law Should Follow Civil Commitment Law, Sophia Antonio

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

Approximately fifteen million adults live with severe mental illness in the United States. They are our neighbors, family, and friends. Often, concerned family members or professionals initiate guardianship proceedings to protect the assets and health of people experiencing severe mental illness. But guardianships subject people to a severe removal of individual rights. Guardians can decide where their ward lives, what medical care they can receive, and who they can associate with.

People experiencing severe mental illness are uniquely ill-suited for an arrangement that restricts their autonomy because it exacerbates their illnesses, and their symptoms are more likely to go into …

Fine And Punishment: Remedial Versus Punitive Penalties Under The Eighth Amendment, Jack Swain

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

The Bank Secrecy Act, enacted in 1970, was intended in part to prevent American taxpayers from hiding funds in secret bank accounts overseas. At the time of the Act's enactment, a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York named secret foreign accounts as the single largest loophole in American tax law. This problem persists today. Over the last two decades, several of the largest banks in Switzerland have paid billions in fines after admitting to helping American clients hide billions in taxable assets.

Obtaining a bank account in a foreign jurisdiction like Switzerland is a luxury that …

The "Miscarriage Of Justice" Exception To Appeal Waiver Enforcement: Debunking And Demystifying The Circuit Split, Bex Warner

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

Ninety-seven percent of all federal criminal convictions come from a plea agreement, and two-thirds of federal plea agreements contain an appeal waiver. The Supreme Court has held that appeal waivers can be enforced, but not under what circumstances. What happens if a criminal defendant waives their right to appeal and then is sentenced to time incarcerated that is higher than the statutory maximum? Or what happens when a defendant claims counsel was ineffective in giving them advice about entering into the plea agreement? Or when a criminal defendant claims the judge gave them a higher sentence because they are Black? …

Presidential Control Of The Civil Service, Nicholas Bednar

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

Conventional wisdom treats the federal civil service as largely beyond the President’s reach. This Article challenges that assumption. Legal scholars too often focus on constitutional powers rather than statutory authority. Yet the President has possessed statutory authority to regulate entrance into the civil service and the conduct of federal employees since before the passage of the Pendleton Act. Through detailed case studies spanning recruitment, conduct, unionization, and removal, this Article demonstrates how Presidents routinely alter the structure of the civil service. The analysis shows how Presidents can use this statutory authority to strengthen administrative capacity when used in good faith …

Flexible Work, Rigid Discrimination, Natalia Ramírez Lee

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

Legal scholars optimistically predicted that the adoption of remote work would provide historically excluded workers upward mobility through an opportunity to join the workforce or access better jobs. Remote work is now widespread and the empirical data on it demonstrates that, in practice, remote work arrangements are subject to the same workplace norms and biases that disadvantage marginalized groups on-site, risking exacerbating instead of remediating inequalities. Specifically, the data suggests that, in some instances, employers are deploying remote work unequally, denying remote work to workers of color who particularly benefit from flexibility.

This Article explains how the legal system is …

The Judiciary's Intrusion Into The Power To Tax: The Constitutionality Of Taxing Unrealized Gains And Argument For Deference To The Elected Branches, Blaise Knueppel

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

In the United States, investment income (e.g., capital gains, dividends, interest) is favored over earned income (e.g., salary, self-employment, tips). While Congress bears some responsibility for the favorable treatment that investment income gets, it has not acted alone. The judiciary, for its part, has contributed a rule that shields any taxation of investments until they have become realized. In Eisner v. Macomber (1920), the Supreme Court determined that investments must be separated from their capital and that there must be some form of receipt before the gain is considered taxable. In other words, the Macomber Court read a rule that …

Improving Psychiatric Paraprofessional Preparedness Through Mental Health First Aid Training In An Outpatient Mental Health Clinic, Anisha Hampton

DNP Scholarly Projects

BACKGROUND: Paraprofessional staff in outpatient mental health clinics play a critical role in monitoring clients with serious mental illness (SMI) and supporting continuity of care in community-based settings. However, the absence of standardized training contributes to variability in staff knowledge, confidence, and ability to recognize early signs of mental health deterioration. Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is an evidence-based training designed to improve mental health literacy and crisis response skills among frontline workers.

METHODS: This quality improvement project utilized a pre-post design within a Plan-DoStudy-Act (PDSA) framework at an outpatient mental health clinic. Paraprofessional staff completed the Mental Health Literacy …

Integrating Brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Into Telepsychiatry: A Professional Development Model For Pmhnps, Catherine A. Roberts

DNP Scholarly Projects

Background: Mental illnesses remain among the most prevalent health conditions in the United States, affecting approximately 23% or nearly one in five adults in 2025 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2025); National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH], 2024a). Despite this high prevalence, only 50.6% of adults living with mental health disorders receive treatment (NIMH, 2024a); although the expansion of telepsychiatry has improved access to mental healthcare, medication-management visits are frequently brief and primarily focused on pharmacotherapy thereby limiting opportunities for delivery of psychotherapeutic interventions. This limitation highlights the need for structured, evidence-based psychotherapeutic approaches that can be …

Effects Of Perching Behavior In Broilers On Welfare And Production Benefits, Natalie G. Bunn

Honors Theses and Capstones

Broiler chickens are bred for feed efficiency, rapid growth rate, and muscle development. Conventional broiler farms utilize fast-growing breeds that reach market weight rapidly and present welfare concerns. Primarily raised indoors with little enrichment, the genetics and husbandry practices of broilers encourage inactivity and perpetuate health problems such as skeletal deformities, lameness, and pododermatitis. Despite the commonness of these issues, there is little research on the reduction of such health complications through production management. This study investigated methods to promote perching behavior and the effects of riser perch and platform perch utilization in broilers. A mixed flock of slow-growing Gray …

Mansfield And More, Dorothea A. Boulukos

2026

In this paper, I argue that Jane Austen’s treatment of Fanny Price, a character who embodies the conservative feminine ideal, exposes the contradictions within that ideal. I take Hannah More’s 1799 Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education: With the View of the Principles and the Conduct Prevalent Among Women of Rank and Fortune as a paradigmatic representation of this ideal. Fanny is often in agreement with More, not least on the subject of German playwrights, whom both women find subversive. Fanny also obeys many of More’s prescriptions: she is quiet, submissive to male authorities, and prone to self-doubt. …

Occupational Therapy’S Role In The School System: Educating Teachers On The Role Of Occupational Therapy And Providing Them With Sensory Processing Strategies, Kiley N. Carter

OTD Capstone Projects

This capstone project addresses the limited understanding and communication between teachers and occupational therapists (OT) in elementary school settings, particularly in Southern Illinois. Although occupational therapist are essential members of special education teams, teachers often lack clarity about the scope and impact of occupational therapy in schools. The project’s primary aim was to educate teachers about the role of OT and provide them with practical sensory strategies to support students with sensory processing disorders in the classroom. The methodology involved assessing teachers’ needs through observation, reviewing current literature, and collaborating with site and faculty mentors. An educational module and a …

Occupational Therapy For Perinatal Mothers In Rural Community Practice: Development & Implementation Of Educational Modules, Hannah M. Johnson

OTD Capstone Projects

There are significant gaps in maternal healthcare in rural communities in Illinois where only 65.4% of pregnant people live within 30 minutes of a hospital that provides maternity care (State of Illinois, 2025). Pregnant and postpartum individuals in the region are inadequately supported during their transition to motherhood within the current healthcare system. This capstone project aimed to serve women in Southern Illinois during the perinatal period through occupational therapy-based and trauma-informed educational content. The project was conducted at The Little Resource Center, a parenting and family support center in Carbondale, under the guidance of their staff. Three educational modules, …

Instruction Request: Podcasting In An Academic Library To Connect Library Instruction With Campus And Community, Lauren Odom, Beryl White-Bing

Library Faculty Presentations & Publications

The Instruction Request podcast is co-hosted by two librarians at the University of North Florida: Beryl White-Bing, Virtual Learning Librarian, and Lauren Odom, Instruction Librarian. Both of us serve in the Instruction Unit at the Thomas G. Carpenter Library. In an era where digital content is essential for engagement, we sought a way to modernize our library outreach without compromising our instructional mission. Podcasting emerged as the perfect format for highlighting educational content while being accessible and scalable.

Lift And Drag Benefits Of Morphing Aircraft, Joseph Lombardi

Master’s Theses

Aircraft use the ability to change the geometry of their wings to produce lift and drag as needed to maintain flight conditions. While the wings themselves are not physically changing shape, flaps and ailerons are used to alter the lift and drag coefficients experienced. Flaps have been used and changed over the years in order to produce better lift to drag ratios. The most commonly used flaps have been plain, slotted, and double slotted. Each type features slightly different mechanical structures, thus producing differing amounts of lift and drag. The introduction of new materials allow for a morphing flap to …

Reframing Coral Reef Monitoring With Machine Learning And Remote Sensing: Detection, Classification, And Change, Gabrielle Ann Trudeau

Doctoral Dissertations

Coral reefs are vital ecosystems facing rapid decline from climate-driven stressors, yet existing monitoring approaches lack the spatial coverage and temporal resolution needed to capture ecosystem dynamics at meaningful scales. This thesis develops a scalable, integrated remote sensing framework by combining ICESat-2 LiDAR, multispectral imagery, and machine learning to move beyond static habitat maps toward quantitative, multi-factor characterization of reef structure and change. First, machine learning models were applied to ICESat-2-derived rugosity, slope, and bathymetric metrics to detect and delineate coral reef habitats at large scales. Next, a novel nonlinear spectral unmixing approach integrating Planet imagery and ICESat-2 terrain metrics …

Ai-Enabled Urban Decision-Making: From Infrastructure To Policy Implementation, Amir Hosein Taherkhani

Doctoral Dissertations

Urban infrastructure systems face unprecedented compound threats from aging physical stock, climate-driven hazard escalation, and large-scale systemic shocks, yet the analytical tools available to decision-makers remain inadequate in both empirical scope and equity orientation. This dissertation advances urban resilience science along two complementary empirical frontiers.The first investigation develops a deep reinforcement learning framework for socially equitable, flood-aware bridge portfolio maintenance optimization. Using Proximal Policy Optimization, a portfolio of 19 flood-vulnerable bridges in Suffolk County, Massachusetts is optimized over a multi-year planning horizon integrating HAZUS-based flood hazard simulation across four return-period scenarios (10, 50, 100, and 500 years), HEC-18 hydraulic scour …

The Long And Short Of It: Exploring The Essential Dynamics Of Select Geophysical Flows, Adhithiya Sivakumar

Doctoral Dissertations

Geophysical flows are central to important climatological processes, yet their strong turbulence and additional complexities -- density stratification, wave-current interaction, and phase change -- make analytical prediction and direct numerical simulation infeasible in many regimes. This dissertation adopts a reductionist approach in which simplified representations -- often inspired by observed scale disparities -- are utilized to isolate and investigate the organizing mechanisms of these complex flows. Within this framework, three distinct but thematically connected problems are studied.

We first study Langmuir turbulence in the open ocean, in which surface gravity waves interact with wind-driven currents to organize the mixed layer …

Tighter Bidirectional Heuristic Search And Lazy Optimal Sampling-Based Motion Planning, Yi Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

Heuristic search is a core area of artificial intelligence (AI) that explores state spaces using heuristic estimates to support planning and decision-making. In robotics, motion planning is a fundamental problem of computing feasible robot motion under constraints. A central challenge shared by both domains is how to substantially reduce unnecessary computation while preserving strong theoretical guarantees, such as completeness and optimality.

In response to this challenge, each domain has developed its own distinct methodological paradigms. In heuristic search, approaches broadly fall into unidirectional and bidirectional paradigms. Unidirectional heuristic search (Uni-HS) has a mature ecosystem, supported by decades of theory and …

Guía Para Planes Escolares De Gestión Del Riesgo De Desastres, Universidad De Cundinamarca

Ciencias Agropecuarias

No abstract provided.

In Their Own Words: Why First-Generation Minority Students Take On Leadership Roles At Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Suzette Ramsundar Ed.D

Theses and Dissertations

While there is an abundance of research on student leadership and how it impacts student retention (Tinto, 1987 and Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005), it is typically from the university's perspective. This phenomenological study, however, investigated the experiences and perceptions of first-generation minority students who commuted to campus and pursued leadership roles at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). Utilizing phenomenological methodology, this research examined the lived experiences of eight student leaders to understand how they made meaning of their leadership engagement.

Student leaders in this study shared the details of the significant challenges they navigated, including financial pressures, commuting demands, cultural barriers, and …

Threshold Asymmetric Conditional Autoregressive Range (Tacarr) Model, Isuru Ratnayake, V. A. Samaranayake

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper introduces a Threshold Asymmetric Conditional Autoregressive Range (TACARR) model for analyzing the daily price ranges of financial assets. The proposed formulation assumes that the conditional expected range switches between two regimes, representing upward and downward market states, with the disturbance distribution also allowed to vary across regimes. A self-adjusting threshold component, determined by past values of the series, is used to identify the prevailing market regime. In this way, the model is able to capture asymmetric and heteroscedastic volatility behavior in financial markets. The TACARR model is designed to address several limitations of existing price range models, including …

Resilience In The Aftermath Of A Technological Disaster: A Community-Based Mixed Methods Research Study Author Links Open Overlay Panel, Jasmín D. Llamas, Melissa L. Morgan

Counseling Psychology

This study tests a disaster model of resilience in the aftermath of a natural gas pipeline explosion. This technological disaster occurred in a residential neighborhood in the Western United States. Traditionally, disaster literature has focused on the negative impacts of disasters, emphasizing distress and psychopathology; however, there has been a shift towards exploring protective factors that prevent psychopathology. The present study, guided by Community-Based Participatory Research, expands our understanding of disaster resilience. A mixed methods design was employed using a quantitative survey of 146 participants to test a model of resilience and qualitative open-ended questions to explore methods of coping …