Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Towards Novel Porphyrinoid Architectures: Synthesis Of Porphyrin Analogues With Two Six-Membered Exocyclic Rings, Amy L. Le, Timothy D. Lash

Faculty Publications – Chemistry

Tripyrranes with terminal ester protective groups were prepared by reacting 7-acetoxy-4,5,6,7-tetrahydroindoles with 3,4-diethylpyrrole in refluxing acetic acid-ethanol. Dibenzyl esters were deprotected by hydrogenolysis over 10% Pd/C and the resulting dicarboxylic acids were condensed with a series of dialdehydes in the presence of trifluoroacetic acid, followed by oxidation with FeCl₃ or DDQ, to give porphyrinoid products with two six-membered exocyclic rings. Reactions with a pyrrole dialdehyde gave porphyrins in 27-30% yield and good yields were also obtained using 2,5-furandicarbaldehyde and 4-hydroxy-2,6-pyridinedicarbaldehyde to prepare oxaporphyrins and oxypyriporphyrins. However, poorer results were noted for thiaporphyrins, benzocarbaporphyrins and oxybenziporphyrins due to their poor …

Amorphous Selenium Photodetectors For Liquid Noble Detectors, Michael Rooks

Physics Dissertations - Archive

Physics offers a way to connect deeply with the mysteries that surround us. Advances in detector physics, particularly in neutrino experiments and rare-event searches, have expanded our ability to probe phenomena that challenge how we describe the universe. Each discovery brings us closer to understanding the unknown, returning us to a sense of wonder that motivates exploration. My work on detector technology was inspired by a concept paper from Professor David Nygren, in which he noted the speculative possibility of integrating photon detection into a charge readout for pixelated liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs) using the photoconductor amorphous selenium …

Tackling The Societal And Regulatory Challenges Of Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Deepfake, Jingyao Li

2026

Governing emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses enduring challenges for policymakers, industries, and societies. Early-stage governance is often hindered by limited understanding of technological implications, rapid innovation cycles, and resistance from powerful industry actors who favor minimal oversight. Yet, timely and effective governance is essential, as new technologies are most malleable in their formative stages. This dissertation examines how emerging technologies can be governed effectively by using deepfakes technology as a focal case. This dissertation comprises three interrelated studies.

The first paper reviews the literature on deepfakes and emerging technology governance, identifying the distinct characteristics of deepfake technology …

Do Developers Read Type Information? An Eye-Tracking Study On Typescript, Samuel W. Flint, Robert Dyer, Bonita Sharif

Research & Publications

Statically-annotated types have been shown to aid developers in a number of programming tasks, and this benefit holds true even when static type checking is not used. It is hypothesized that this is because developers use type annotations as in-code documentation. In this study, we aim to provide evidence that developers use type annotations as in-code documentation. Understanding this hypothesized use will help to understand how, and in what contexts, developers use type information; additionally, it may help to design better development tools and inform educational decisions. To provide this evidence, we conduct an eye tracking study with 26 undergraduate …

Neighborhood Embeddings And Scalable Learning For Optimal Transport And Unbalanced Optimal Transport, Muhammad S. Rana

Mathematics Dissertations - Archive

Dimensionality reduction techniques are developed from the assumption that high-dimensional data often arises from low-dimensional structures embedded into the high-dimensional ambient space. Classical dimensionality reduction methods rely on the Euclidean distance, which may fail to capture the geometric structures of the datasets. This dissertation includes alternative metrics for dimensionality reduction techniques and challenges in applying these techniques.

First, we investigate the Wasserstein distance based neighbor embeddings for dimensionality reduction methods and compare the classification and clustering performance with the classical Euclidean based methods. The Wasserstein distance models the data as probability distributions and compares two distributions applying optimal transport (OT) …

Exploratory Investigation Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions In A Natural And Restored Salt Marsh, Sophia Motta

Open Access Master's Theses

Coastal wetlands are typically considered greenhouse sinks, specifically playing an important role in the global carbon cycle (Chmura et al., 2003), but new studies have pointed to anthropogenic interference leading to the understanding that altered tidal salt marshes may also be producers of methane to the atmosphere, contributing to the greenhouse effect. Hydrologic alteration including due to sea level rise (SLR), peat subsidence, impounded water, and decreased accretion rate disruption can have negative effects on marsh biochemistry leading to potential changes in electron acceptor availability, redox gradient shifts, and microbial community structure within the environment. This research is intended to …

A Specification-Driven Framework For Self-Supervised Learning In Specialized Vision Domains, Mahmut S. Gokmen

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Self-supervised learning (SSL) has emerged as a principled approach to visual representation learning that derives supervisory signal directly from unlabeled data, enabling foundation models to be trained at scale without manual annotation. Deployments in medical imaging and biometric recognition have demonstrated the potential of this paradigm, yet the assumptions that make SSL effective on natural image benchmarks fail systematically in specialized domains. Generic SSL pipelines encode a tacit assumption that the most informative correspondence is spatial proximity within a single acquisition. In specialized domains this assumption breaks at the level of the data-generating process: the signal that carries domain-specific information …

Understanding The Drivers Of Marine Sediment Diagenesis In Carbonate-Bearing Sediments, Alex Reis

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

Marine sediments serve as an important geochemical record used to study how the Earth’s climate and oceans have changed throughout geologic time. As such, it is critical to understand how these sediments can be altered following deposition on the seafloor. This dissertation targeted two key geochemical archives, carbonate and pyrite, to link changing burial conditions with the resulting marine sediment chemistry. In particular, primary carbonate minerals record several indicators of past ocean chemistry, while pyrite preserves information related to the redox state of the sediment during deposition and burial. Additionally, secondary processes associated with changes in pore fluid chemistry and …

Use Of Stable Isotope Geochemistry To Determine The Paleoenvironment Of The Pond Creek Coal Bed, Pike County, Eastern Kentucky, Vivian A. Edwards

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

Wetlands are both critical habitats and bellwethers of the health of the environment. Coal, being the remains of wetlands, offers the possibility of understanding the evolution of wetlands over large climatic shifts. The paleoenvironment of coals can be determined from palynology, petrology, and geochemistry. Stable isotope ratios within coal, including carbon (δ¹³C), nitrogen (δ¹⁵N), and sulfur (δ³⁴S), are established tools for paleoenvironmental reconstructions. These ratios can be correlated to flora, geochemistry, macerals, and bacterial activity. However, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur have given conflicting results in some studies and their correlation to known variables is …

On Stripping And Antipodes In Motivic Steenrod Algebras, Joshua A. Peterson

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

We generalize the stripping process to the (mod 2) $\mathbb{C}$- and $\mathbb{R}$-motivic settings. Throughout, we include discussion on how the process changes and the difficulties moving to more general settings. We also introduce antipodes and consider what a potential $\mathbb{R}$-motivic analogue may look like. Finally, we elaborate on how the results may be used in future work to generalize a nilpotence result of Walker and Wood.

Extensions Between Modules Defined By Lattice Paths In The Preprojective Algebra, Chloe Napier

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

In 2001, Fomin and Zelevinsky introduced cluster algebras which appear as coordinate rings of many varieties. We study cluster algebras coming from Richardson varieties. Leclerc gives a cluster structure on Richardson varieties using the representation theory of preprojective algebras. While this construction is very algebraic, we take a more combinatorial approach. The main goal is to find a combinatorial description for when certain cluster variables are compatible, or equivalently when modules defined by lattice paths in the preprojective algebra have trivial extensions. We extend the known results from Geiss, Leclerc, and Schröer that answer this question in the case of …

A Character Theory For Loop Representations Of Symmetric Monoidal Bicategories, Jordan Sawdy

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

Character theory arises in many distinct fields of mathematics, but its many instantiations often share a few key features: they arise in contexts where one object is acted on or parametrized by another, and they are often computed via "trace-like" formulas. Focusing on these properties, we present a categorical formalism for constructing such characters. We first define a notion of "loop representation" for symmetric monoidal bicategories, then build a character for such representations via the canonical symmetric monoidal trace. We then show that this character defines a symmetric monoidal functor which satisfies commutativity properties with respect to both restriction- and …

Inverse Problems For The Radiative Transport Equation In Local And Non-Convex Geometries, Faith E. Hensley

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

Inverse problems for the radiative transport equation (RTE) arise in a wide range of imaging applications, including optical tomography and problems motivated by non-line-of-sight imaging. Classical reconstruction methods rely heavily on ballistic, or unscattered, photons and typically require full boundary access, leading to severe instability and limited applicability in geometrically constrained settings. This dissertation investigates inverse radiative transport problems with restricted boundary data and develops reconstruction techniques based on scattered photons. The central focus of this work is the analysis and isolation of the single-collision term in the collision expansion of solutions to the RTE. By exploiting its distinct analytical …

Combinatorial Models For Nonnegativity In Flag Varieties, Williem L. Rizer

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

The nonnegative Grassmannian admits a widely studied cell decomposition due to Alexander Postnikov, whose cells are indexed by positroids and modeled by several equivalent combinatorial objects. Subsequent work by authors including Lauren Williams, Suho Oh, and Carolina Benedetti has further developed the combinatorics and geometry of these structures. In this dissertation, we extend some of Postnikov’s combinatorial framework to the nonnegative flag variety. While cell decompositions in this setting were previously obtained, notably in work of Konstanze Rietsch, our focus is on providing new combinatorial models that make this structure more explicit and computationally tractable. We introduce flag positroid pipe …

The Interaction Between Additive And Multiplicative Structures In Arithmetic Settings, Ali Alsetri

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

The first part of this thesis is concerned with Goldbach-type problems. In recent years, there has been an interest in developing density versions of Goldbach-type results. Namely, given a relatively dense subset A of the primes, one may study representations of integers as sums of primes belonging to the subset A. These density Goldbach-type results have been facilitated by the development of new tools from additive combinatorics, in particular the Fourier-analytic transference principle due to Green. We apply the transference principle to obtain a variant of Vinogradov’s theorem involving subsets of primes confined to the residue class 1 (mod 3). …

Local Energy Decay For Non-Stationary Damped Wave Operators, Nicholas Dj Arsenault

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

This work establishes integrated local energy decay (ILED) estimates for the damped wave equation on certain non-stationary spacetimes. The main technical result is a high frequency estimate that holds in great generality, provided that null geodesics trapped in a compact region are sufficiently damped. This is combined with low- and medium-frequency estimates to establish full local energy decay. We conclude by providing a counterexample where the damping assumption fails and local energy decay does not hold.

Understanding Möbius Inversion As Composite Of Dual Pairs, Isaac B. Kochmaan

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

Möbius inversion is a well-studied computational tool in number theory and combinatorics, but it exhibits a pattern which may be familiar to those who study categorical traces. In 2016, Kate Ponto and Michael Shulman characterized duality and traces in the bicategory of profunctors for a particularly nice class of one-cells. We extend these results. Consequently, we construct, for a given poset, a profunctor whose Euler characteristic is the Möbius function of said poset. In light of this, we propose a categorical notion of Möbius inversion.

Exploring The Limitations Of Substrate Scope In Dimethylallyltryptophan Synthases, Evan T. Miller

Theses and Dissertations--Pharmacy

Natural products (NPs), are the largest source of bioactive compounds in Nature, and are essential to the treatment of human disease. Nearly 50% of drugs approved for use from 1981 to 2019 owe some aspect of their development to NPs, either in terms of their structure, pharmacophore, or mechanism of action. However, NPs are difficult to structurally optimize. Chemoenzymatic methods for NP derivatization have been increasingly seen as practical alternatives to traditional synthetic methods. Prenyltransferases (PTs) are involved in the primary and secondary metabolism of plants, bacteria, and fungi, and they are key enzymes in the biosynthesis of many clinically …

Using Camera-Based Unmarked Spatial Capture-Recapture Modeling To Estimate Reintroduced Elk (Cervus Canadensis) Population Parameters And Distribution In Southeastern Kentucky, Claire Marie Muia

Theses and Dissertations--Forestry and Natural Resources

Estimation of population parameters is important for wildlife management decisions. Elk reintroduced to southeastern Kentucky experienced early irruptive population growth and are currently monitored using a statewide harvest-based statistical population reconstruction model (SPR) across the Kentucky Elk Restoration Zone (KERZ). Because the SPR model is spatially coarse and difficult to scale to the smaller management units comprising the KERZ, we conducted a spatially explicit capture-recapture study using a clustered camera-trapping array deployed for 10 weeks from June–August 2024 to estimate elk population parameters within Management Unit 4. Due to a lack of resights of GPS-marked elk, population parameters were estimated …

Barycentric Subdivision And Hyperbolic Geometry, Hannah Elisabeth Steger

Dissertations and Theses

Barycentric subdivision of a triangle is the geometrical process of repeatedly subdividing a triangle by connecting the midpoints of the sides to the opposite vertices. The transformations which determine this subdivision form a group acting on the hyperbolic plane, action which we will show is topologically transitive. We find specific cases when the barycentric subdivision process leads to flat triangles (all vertices on the x-axis) and, on the contrary, situations when shapes are positioned on an orbit that is a circle, hence never becoming flat. We will also analyse this process when the starting triangle is already flat and we …

Supplementary Material For Experimental Constraints On Rock And Mineral Alteration By Magmatic Gas: Implications For Mars (Safari Et Al., In Review), Natalie Zimmermann

Geosciences Research Data

This file contains supplemental data for the JGR manuscript Experimental Constraints on Rock and Mineral Alteration by Magmatic Gas: Implications for Mars (Safari et al., in review). It includes SEM images and associated EDS spectra of altered targets and phase coatings produced in gas-rock alteration experiments.

Iere Annual Report 2026, Erin Largo-Wight, Heather Barnes Truelove, Kelly Rhoden, Jessica Barnes, Lauren Canady, Nicole Lowe, Ruby Cox, Sydney Barrett, Kathleen Hutton

Annual Reports

2026 Annual Report of the Institute for Environmental Research and Education

Counseling Professionals' Perspectives On Ai Integration In Education And Supervision: A Concept Mapping Study, Hank Crofford, Elif Bor, Gülşah Kemer

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

The rapid emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has raised important questions about how new technologies will shape professional norms and practices in counseling. The purpose of this study was to understand how counseling professionals expect AI to be integrated into counselor education and supervision (CES). Using a mixed‐methods concept mapping design, 31 participants generated and sorted statements about the potential roles, benefits, and concerns associated with AI in the profession. Participants represented diverse counseling roles, including counselor educators, licensed professional counselors, supervisors, master's‐ and doctoral‐level trainees, and other counseling‐related professionals. Standard concept mapping procedures were conducted using R, resulting in …

Volatility Modeling With An Application To Risk Parity Portfolios, Kenneth Hou

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis studies volatility modeling in the context of risk parity portfolio construction. I compare three risk parity portfolios that differ only in their underlying volatility model: a historical covariance baseline, a Bayesian stochastic volatility model, and a GRU–GARCH hybrid neural network. Using daily returns on Kenneth French’s five industry portfolios from January 2016 through December 2025, I construct monthly rebalanced portfolios under each model, with the SV and GRU forecasts embedded in hybrid covariance matrices that combine forecasted volatilities with rolling historical correlations. The results document a divergence between forecast accuracy and portfolio performance: the SV model is the …

Rank Rebalancing In Commodity And Foreign Exchange Markets, Prateek D. Vyas

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis empirically tests the rank-rebalancing mechanism of Stochastic Portfolio Theory (SPT) across commodity futures, foreign exchange futures, and equity ETFs. The Reverse Price-Weighted strategy (RPW) assigns, to each asset, the market weight of the asset at the opposite price rank, and generates an annualized excess return of 2.90% over the price-weighted (MKT) commodity benchmark, during the period of November 1977 to October 2025 (HAC t = 2.058, p = 0.040). The differential Sharpe ratio (dSharpe) of 0.245 is confirmed by a stationary block bootstrap, with a 𝑝-value of 0.015, and factor regressions controlling for carry, momentum, and value yield …

Microbial Community Structure In Global Soils, Matthew Jabro

CMC Senior Theses

Soil harbors the most diverse microbial communities on Earth, yet whether predictable community types exist across biomes and whether taxonomic composition encodes habitat of origin remain open questions at global scale. This thesis addresses both questions by applying unsupervised clustering and supervised classification to transformed 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) amplicon profiles from two independent datasets: the global topsoil survey of Bahram et al. (193 samples) and the Earth Microbiome Project (EMP) soil subset of Thompson et al. (2,209 samples). Application of a sample clustering method based on a mixture of Gaussian Graphical Models (MixGGM) identified 19 clusters in the topsoil …

Wiener-Granger Causality To Model Banking Sector Contagion, Riya Bhasin

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, we explore the main drivers behind the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and how the interconnectivity of banking sectors contributed to the worldwide spread of its effects. To understand how this became a global phenomenon, we apply linear Wiener-Granger Causality as a form of network analysis, building on pre-existing methodology in order to study continent banking indices. We find connections across locales on the continent and country level, but ones that are weak. Our modelling was insufficient to completely capture existing and well-known relationships accurately. This occurs due to limitations of the data and of the linear models’ …

Analysis Of Δ¹¹B As A Seawater Ph Proxy: Comparing Ocean Circulation Inverse Model Output With Marine Calcifier Geochemistry, Jesse I. Dong

CMC Senior Theses

Increasing anthropogenic carbon flux into the oceans decreases seawater pH, alters dissolved inorganic carbon speciation, and reduces biogenic calcification. The marine calcifiers— specifically corals and coralline algae—incorporate elements from surrounding seawater into their carbonate structures, which preserve past records of ocean carbon chemistry. In particular, boron in biogenic carbonate is a potentially valuable proxy for historical ocean pH across human timescales. Within seawater, boron primarily exists as boric acid B(OH)3 and borate ions B(OH)4 - , where higher pH favors the formation of borate ions. Borate ions preferentially incorporate the heavier ¹¹B isotope over 10B. On the other hand, if …

Machine Learning For Predicting Prosthetic Limb Movements, Jessica Alexandra Cegarra Arraiz

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis develops and evaluates a deep learning-based prediction model capable of identifying intended limb movement from surfaced electromyography (sEMG) signals using sequence learning techniques. sEMG signals change over time due to multiple factors such as muscle fatigue or user variability. Traditional prosthetics control methods rely on static feature extraction, ignoring how signals change over time, thereby limiting their ability to capture the temporal changes of muscle activity. As a result, these approaches often lead to poor accuracy, robustness, and generalization. Limited experimental validation has been conducted on sequence-based machine learning approaches using temporal sEMG data from publicly available datasets …

Evaluating Hybrid Quantum-Classical Models For Image Classification In The Nisq Era, Utku Binkanat

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a systematic empirical evaluation of quantum machine learning performance under noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era constraints. Through 670 controlled experiments, it evaluated quantum kernel support vector machines and variational quantum classifiers against classical baselines on MNIST binary and multiclass classification tasks with systematic variation of problem difficulty, feature dimensionality (4, 8 qubits), and training set size (n ∈{100, 250, 400, 500, 2000, 4000}). Statistical rigor was ensured through five random seeds per condition and comprehensive significance testing. During the testing with binary datasets, classical methods (SVM, logistic regression, k-NN, neural networks) achieved 85.9% to 99.6% accuracy with …