Digital Commons Network^™

Letter From The Editor, Lilli B. Rudine

Anthós

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Lilli B. Rudine

Anthós

No abstract provided.

Erasing The Artist, Policing The City: Michael Stewart And New York’S War On Graffiti, Vladislav Kirilov

Anthós

The 1983 death of Michael Stewart, a young Black graffiti artist, exposes the violent logic at the center of New York City’s War on Graffiti. Under Mayor Ed Koch and the rise of broken windows policing, graffiti was framed as a racialized symbol of disorder used to justify intensified control of public space. Rather than becoming political in this moment, graffiti is understood here as an already politicized form of expression shaped by racial and spatial inequality. The article examines how Stewart’s killing made police violence visible, provoking responses from artists, activists, and graffiti writers while revealing the human costs …

The Public Relations Of Microtonal Music Through The Eyes And Ears Of Microtonalists, Tristan B. Young

Anthós

In this article, I attempted to answer the question of how microtonal musicians and music theorists view the general public's perception of microtonal music. To do this, I had three one-on-one interviews and one focus group with microtonal musicians, which were all audio recorded with consent from the participants. Patterns that emerged from their responses included blaming corporate and academic establishments for their conservatism in music theory, mentioning the different possible definitions one may make for microtonality based on geographic culture and so on, and bringing up the idea that people think that microtonality is less diverse than it actually …

Drag’S Impact On Drag Lives, José L. Oropeza Iii

Anthós

Drag’s Impact On Drag Lives

In light of recent political developments where Drag and Trans identities are being punished, why do people still participate in Drag? If there are repercussion to face for being a Drag Queen, then surely it must affect their lives for the better for them to continue the practice.

Through an autoethnographic approach to researching the Portland, OR Drag community, I collected transcripts of conversations with local Queens, took notes of community interactions, and put myself in Drag for the first time as a Queer man to better understand the Drag community and why they Drag. …

From Policy To Practice: Strengthening Black Intellectual Engagement In Psu’S Resr Curriculum, Chantell Wesley

Anthós

This article examines how Portland State University’s Race, Ethnicity, and Social Justice (RESR) requirement, while framed as an institutional commitment to equity and inclusion, can inadvertently reproduce White Language Supremacy within Black Studies classrooms. The central question guiding this analysis is how general education equity mandates shape the pedagogical and linguistic conditions of discipline-specific courses, particularly when those courses are positioned as service spaces for non-majors. I argue that RESR implementation often shifts instructional emphasis toward students less familiar with Black intellectual traditions, thereby displacing disciplinary rigor and marginalizing Black students’ intellectual labor.

Methodologically, this study draws on autoethnographic reflection …

Optimisation Of Sampling For A New Skin Microbiome Assay Pilot Study, Anita Smith

Theses

Recent interest in the diverse ecosystem of bacteria, fungi and viruses that make up the skin microbiome has led to numerous studies investigating the microbiome in healthy skin and in dermatological diseases. An imbalance of the normal skin microbial flora can cause some skin diseases, and current culture techniques are often unable to detect a microorganism to further our understanding of the clinical–microbiological correlates of disease and dysbiosis. Atopic dermatitis and rosacea are presentations that General practitioners (GPs) often manage that may have an infective or microbiological component and can be challenging to treat. Further research using culture-independent techniques is …

The Middle School Transition: Exploring Student Perceptions On The Transition From Elementary To Middle School, Cody T. Weed

Education Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand middle school students’ perceptions of their transition from elementary school to better learn the interactions and dynamics that unfold between them and their immediate environment. The middle school transition is a pivotal developmental phase marked by significant logistical, academic, and social–emotional challenges. Grounded in transition theory, the 4S framework, and stage-environment fit theory, this research explores the interactions between students and their new environment. Utilizing an embedded design mixed-methods approach, this study surveyed sixth-grade students at a public middle school in Eastern Washington. The goal was to illuminate students’ needs and concerns …

The Impact Of School Leadership Styles On Teachers’ Attitudes, Pedagogy, And Skills Related To Technology Integration, Shuai Gong

Education Dissertations

Emerging technologies have a profound influence on contemporary schools. School leaders, such as principals, grapple with balancing and leveraging these transformations through various leadership styles. A review of the literature revealed an absence of consistent quantitative data on how principal’s leadership styles impact technology integration, as well as limited understanding within qualitative studies on teachers’ experiences with leadership in this phenomenon. Drawing on transformational leadership theory and organizational theory, this mixed-method study examined the impact of school leadership styles on teachers’ attitudes and abilities toward technology integration in K-12 education, aligning with the Full-Range Leadership Model (FRLM) and the Will, …

Mid-Infrared Spectroscopy And Machine Learning For Chlorogenic Acid Quantification In Coffee, Deborah Herdt, Felix Wühler, Thomas Kunz, Victoria Schiwek, Sarah Kühnemuth, Brian Gibson, Matthias Rädle

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

To predict chlorogenic acid (CGA) concentration in coffee during roasting, a machine learning algorithm was applied to mid-infrared (MIR) data. A total of 44 roasting samples between 140 and 220 °C, along with an unroasted control, were dry-heated in an eddy current roaster and subsequently ground and measured. CGA concentrations were predicted from MIR spectroscopy data using a multilayer perceptron (MLP) regressor and validated against a high-performance liquid chromatography with diode array detector reference. The algorithm performed spectral preprocessing and selected relevant wavenumber regions. The MLP-based model achieved a high coefficient of determination, outperforming classic peak evaluation, indicating that automated …

Identification Of Microbial Hotspots And Biofilm-Forming Bacteria In A High Output Industrial Cheese Plant: Comparative Evaluation Of Enzymatic Versus Sodium Hydroxide-Based Cleaning-In-Place (Cip) For Biofilm Removal, Karan J. Pant, Martin G. Wilkinson, Murali Kumar, Hend Roshdy, Sai Ravi Chandra Nori, Vincenzo Fiore, Antonio Lourenco, Jamie A. Fitzgerald, Wiley Barton, Paul D. Cotter, Jeremiah J. Sheehan

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Effective cleaning and sanitation are essential in cheese manufacturing to control microbial contamination and prevent biofilm formation. A multi-step approach was undertaken to assess microbial persistence and cleaning-in-place (CIP) strategies at an industrial Cheddar cheese facility with a production capacity of ∼40,000 tonnes. Pre- and post-CIP environmental swabs were analysed using plate counts and high-throughput (16S rRNA amplicon and shotgun) sequencing to identify microbial hotspots. Traditional CIP was broadly effective, however residual contamination persisted in critical zones such as the Alfomatic weir, curd distribution tank (CDT), and block formers. Industrial-scale trials comparing caustic and acid-based CIP with an enzymatic alternative …

Fuzzy Logic-Based Driving Style Classification For Lane-Change Prediction In Intelligent Transportation Systems, Muhammed Fatih Koc, Nouman Ashraf, Pramod Pathak, Sachin Sharma

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

In recent years, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) have emerged as a solution to mitigate the problem of traffic congestion. Understanding human driving styles such as aggressive, normal, and cautious is crucial for safe driving. In particular, predicting lane-change manoeuvres may be further supported by combining vehicle state information with driving style information. However, existing vehicle trajectory datasets lack driving style information, making classification challenging. To address this limitation, this paper proposes a fuzzy logic-based driving style classification framework in a Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) environment. The model uses vehicle state information, including speed, longitudinal acceleration, lateral acceleration, and distance headway to classify …

Video-Dprp: A Differentially Private Approach For Visual Privacy-Preserving Video Human Activity Recognition, Allassan Tchangmena A. Nken, Susan Mckeever, Peter Corcoran, Ihsan Ullah

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Considerable effort has been made in privacy-preserving video human activity recognition (HAR). Two primary approaches to ensure privacy preservation in Video HAR are differential privacy (DP) and visual privacy. Techniques enforcing DP during training provide strong theoretical privacy guarantees but offer limited capabilities for visual privacy assessment. Conversely, methods such as low-resolution transformations, data obfuscation and adversarial networks, emphasize visual privacy but lack clear theoretical privacy assurances. In this work, we focus on two main objectives: (1) leveraging DP properties to develop a model-free approach for visual privacy in videos and (2) evaluating our proposed technique using both differential privacy …

Techmate:: Translating Gender Equality Research Into Actionable Practice For Computing Educators, Alina Berry, Susan Mckeever, Brenda Murphy, Sarah Jane Delany

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

The persistent underrepresentation of women in computing higher education remains a global challenge, with women comprising less than 20% of ICT specialists across the EU. While substantial research has identified effective interventions to support underrepresented groups, this evidence remains fragmented across academic publications, grey literature, and institutional reports. Educators seeking to implement gender-inclusive practices face significant barriers in identifying relevant initiatives, understanding implementation requirements, and accessing practical guidance suitable for their institutional contexts. This work presents TechMate, a fully operational (https://ascnet.ie/techmate/) web-based, open-access toolkit designed to bridge the gap between research evidence and practical implementation. The toolkit consolidates over 25 …

Educating The Next Generation Of Engineers: Spatial Thinking Is Key To Their Success, Sheryl Sorby, Gavin Duffy, Jack Parkinson, Gibin Raju, John Lynch, Muhammad Asghar

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

This paper attempts to answer questions regarding the link between engineering success and spatial skills through three themes. The previous research of the authors in examining the questions surrounding each theme is the focus of this paper; we acknowledge that others around the world may have conducted similar research, but the specific findings of the authors are the main focus of this paper. In the first theme, we examine data from several author-led studies where positive correlations have been found between spatial skill levels and proficiency in tasks that are a part of what it means to be an engineer. …

Gender Differences In Mental Rotation And Visualisation Across Adolescence: Large Scale Evidence From The United States, Ireland, And Austria With Single-Paper Meta-Analyses, Jeffrey Buckley, Sheryl Sorby, Gavin Duffy, Günter Maresch, Jason Power

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Spatial ability has been identified as an essential cognitive ability for educational performance broadly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Further, children with higher levels of this ability are more likely to choose STEM educational pathways. It is theorised that a benefit of spatial ability lies in affording young people further capacity to think and reason effectively in diverse problem-solving contexts, which translates into desirable educational outcomes. However, substantial evidence has identified a gender gap favouring boys particularly in the mental rotation spatial factor, and there is less evidence for any similar gender gaps for other spatial factors, …

Practicing Professionalism Framework: A Coherent Course Structure Aligned With Effective Practices For Physics Programs (Ep3) Guidelines, Martha-Elizabeth Baylor, Suzanne White Brahmia

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Work

Many physics educators seek to improve their courses but feel constrained by traditional post-secondary structures and norms. Instructors often perceive a false tension between fostering inclusive learning environments and maintaining the rigor central to the discipline. The Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3) Guide synthesizes decades of research-based recommendations for improving physics education. However, it offers limited guidance on how to integrate these diverse recommendations into a coherent, course-level approach—a responsibility that falls to individual instructors, whose graduate training prepared them primarily as researchers rather than as educators. This paper begins by motivating and introducing the Practicing Professionalism Framework (PPF), …

Monopolizing The Harvest: Corporate Influence And Regulatory Gaps In Global Seed Governance, Mia Mahmudur Rahim

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

No abstract provided.

Voyage Of Injustice: The Socioeconomic Exploitation In The Cruise Industry, Tarissa L. Peterson

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

No abstract provided.

Numerical Analysis And Simulation Of Enhanced Performance In Nanowire Cds/Cdte Solar Cells: A Pathway To Greater Than 25% Efficient Cdte Solar Cell, Riasad Badhan

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

This Thesis finds a pathway to a significantly high-efficient CdTe based solar cell by demonstrating and harvesting the advantages of a nano-structure configuration in CdTe based solar cells. Nanowire CdS window layer and the “control”, planar CdS window layer films were fabricated in the laboratory and compared for their optical transmission and other characteristics affecting the performance of the CdS-CdTe solar cell. Numerical simulations were performed for a comparative evaluation of the embedded nanowire CdS-CdTe solar cell device and the traditional planar CdS-CdTe solar cell device. Experimentally measured spectral transmission of nanowire CdS film was used in the simulation environment. …

Robotizing Complex Welding Processes Through Imitation Learning And Generative Models From Human Demonstration, Yue Cao

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Arc welding processes demand real-time adaptive control that current robotic systems cannot achieve autonomously. This dissertation develops a systematic framework to robotize complex welding by learning from human demonstration, integrating generative modeling, physics-informed reconstruction, and model-based imitation learning. First, human--robot collaboration systems are established for both Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW) and Double-Electrode Gas Metal Arc Welding, combining robotic teleoperation with virtual reality interfaces to capture high-quality operator demonstrations. Second, a physics-informed neural network framework reconstructs complete molten pool flow fields from high-speed imaging, enriching process understanding beyond direct sensor observation. Third, generative models, including a hybrid latent variational autoencoder …

Strain-Induced Nonvolatile Domain Switching And Tunable Elastic Modulus In Ba1-Xsrxtio3 Membrane By Phase-Field Simulation., Laveeza Ahmad

Material Science and Engineering Dissertations

Ferroelectrics underpin a broad spectrum of technological applications due to its switchable ferroelectric polarization and the associated electro-mechanical responses under electrical, optical, thermal, and mechanical stimuli. Recent advancement in membrane technology offers new opportunities to tune ferroelectric polarizations via mechanical strains at relatively large magnitude and scale. However, its influence on the tunability of mechanical responses of the membrane remains underexplored. Herein, we developed a phase-field model for free-standing Ba_1-xSr_xTiO₃ ferroelectric membranes with stress-free boundary conditions on top/bottom surfaces and achieved strain-induced nonvolatile ferroelectric domain switching in the membrane. It is discovered that a …

Preserving Their Institutions While Living Among Strangers: Heritage Adaptation Exhibited Within Missoula, Montana’S Chinese Community, 1860 – 1940, Sophia Hattie Etier

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation by publication reconstructs the history, cultural institutions, and adaptive strategies of Missoula, Montana’s Chinese community between 1860 and 1940, arguing that the population underwent a long-term, multi-generational process of heritage adaptation shaped by exclusion, isolation, and demographic decline. Drawing from Kalervo Oberg’s 1954 culture shock model, the study proposes a new theoretical framework—heritage shock—that extends the four-stage adjustment process from individuals to cultural communities. This model demonstrates how diasporic populations collectively navigate periods of arrival, crisis, adjustment, and long-term adaptation when confronted with sustained external pressures. Using an interdisciplinary methodology that integrates archival research, archaeological and faunal analysis, …

Challenges And Applications Of Fine-Grained Temporal Action Understanding: Modeling Temporal Granularity And Data Efficiency, Halil I. Helvaci

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Fine-grained Temporal Action Segmentation (TAS) has become a cornerstone of video understanding, offering dense frame-level predictions essential for clinical assessment, surgical skill evaluation, and human-computer interaction. While TAS methods have delivered strong results on coarse-grained benchmarks, two fundamental challenges persist: (1) global attention mechanisms dilute boundary information critical for subsecond precision, a phenomenon we term the temporal granularity bottleneck, and (2) dense frame-level annotation remains prohibitively expensive, with most datasets requiring exhaustive labeling of lengthy untrimmed videos. These challenges are particularly pronounced in medical domains, where sub-second primitives define clinical outcomes while expert annotation remains scarce. In this dissertation, we …

Design Of Energy-Efficient, Scalable, And Flexible Tensor Processing Architectures With Electro-Photonic Integrated Circuits, Oluwaseun Alo

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

In recent years, artificial intelligence has achieved remarkable success across domains such as computer vision, natural language processing, and scientific computing. This progress has been driven largely by advances in deep learning, particularly deep neural networks (DNNs), including convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and transformer-based models. While these models deliver unprecedented accuracy, often surpassing human performance, their computational complexity continues to grow rapidly due to multibillion- and trillion-parameter designs. As model sizes and deployment scales expand, the demand for energy-efficient and high-throughput hardware accelerators has intensified. Conventional electronic platforms based on CPUs, GPUs, ASICs, and FPGAs are increasingly constrained by the …

An Institutional And Policy Analysis Of Climate Adaptation In Dhaka, Bangladesh: An Examination Of Urban Heat Island Mitigation Strategies, Tamanna Binte Mesbah

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines the institutional capacity for Urban Heat Island (UHI) mitigation in Dhaka, Bangladesh, focusing on governance structures, institutional arrangements, and implementation effectiveness. An analytical framework is applied to assess the capacity of key urban institutions including Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK), Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC), Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), and the Department of Environment (DoE) across dimensions of leadership, resources, coordination, and learning capacity. The study also examines governance dynamics such as inter-agency coordination, knowledge exchange, and mobilization capacity as they relate to the planning and implementation of heat mitigation strategies. Through semi-structured expert interviews the research …

Learning-Enabled Methods For Optimal, Constrained, And Fault-Tolerant Robot Motion Planning, Charles L. Clark

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Safe and efficient motion planning is a core requirement for robots operating in complex real-world environments, yet traditional model-based approaches struggle to simultaneously achieve computational efficiency, solution optimality, and the ability to handle complex constraints and potential hardware failures. This dissertation investigates how neural networks, as general purpose function approximators, can be leveraged in both traditional and novel ways to overcome these limitations and advance beyond what purely model-based methods can offer. Three distinct contributions are presented. First, a new motion planner is developed that uses ReLU neural networks to decompose the configuration space into linear cost regions, enabling existing …

Advancing Edge Intelligence: Strategies For Improving Machine Learning On Embedded Devices, Prakash Dhungana

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Artificial intelligence (AI) has demonstrated tremendous success in handling complex tasks across multiple domains, a leap largely attributed to complex deep neural network (DNN) architectures. However, the increasing demand for real-time processing, low latency, limited connectivity, and enhanced privacy necessitates edge intelligence, where computation is performed directly on resource-constrained embedded devices rather than relying on cloud infrastructures. While optimized TinyML techniques such as pruning, quantization, and neural architecture search (NAS) have made edge deployment feasible by significantly reducing computation and memory demands, achievable performance remains severely limited by hardware constraints. Furthermore, models deployed in highly dynamic real-world environments suffer from …

Frequency And Phase Synchronization Of Antenna Arrays With Phase Incoherent Microcontrollers, Harley W. Byrd

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

The construction of phased array antennas has traditionally been an expensive and complex task. It has recently been claimed that it is possible to construct high-performance Wi Fi antenna arrays using inexpensive consumer components. Motivated by some limited data available from online presentations of such devices, this thesis covers an attempt to construct a phased-array Wi-Fi antenna using several ESP32 chips, which have native Wi-Fi modulation and demodulation capabilities. While there are many positive aspects associated with utilizing ESP32 chips for this purpose, a key challenge is the inherent phase incoherence of their internal Phase Locked Loops (PLLs). The approach …

Breast Milk Versus Formula Feeding In The Development Of Necrotizing Enterocolitis Among Nicu Infants: An Integrative Review, Mackenzie Jameson, Faye Li, Liudmila Ryzhova, Mia Smith

Master's Projects

Introduction/Question: NEC is a serious condition characterized by the death of intestinal tissue, primarily affecting premature infants or those with low birth weight. The incidence of NEC poses a significant concern in neonatal healthcare due to its substantial mortality risk, particularly among vulnerable populations. This condition can lead to various complications, including sepsis, nutritional deficiencies, delays in growth and development, and, in severe cases, death. NEC not only impacts the health of the infant but also affects the emotional well-being and bonding experiences of parents. Despite advancements in neonatal care, the rate of NEC has increased, highlighting the need …