ADSORPTION OF NATIVE WASTEWATER VIRUSES BY IRON OXIDE-COATED SAND

Waterborne pathogenic viruses pose a significant risk to public health. Although modern wastewater treatment facilities employ potent methods to remove microorganisms, disinfection is not 100% effective, and some microbes persist. Further, resource-limited regions lack adequate infrastructure to support tertiary processes and conventional wastewater treatment altogether. Mounting interest in nanotechnology has spurred investigation into new antimicrobial agents, and current environmental studies recommend iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) for their sorbent and catalytic capabilities. Literature suggests that IONPs could play a substantial role in wastewater reclamation by electrostatic adsorption and degradation of recalcitrant contaminants of emerging concern. Because both viral protein capsids and IONPs have ionizable functional groups, their surface charges are variable depending on solution potential of hydrogen (pH) and ionic strength. Batch microcosm experiments were conducted to determine the optimal reaction conditions for viral adsorption and inactivation by iron oxide-coated sand. Virus-like particle (VLP) abundance and community composition were measured pre- and post-equilibration using epifluorescence microscopy (EFM) and genetic fingerprinting (RAPD-PCR) to learn the extent of adsorption and changes in viral composition following reaction with uncoated and iron oxide-coated sand (IOCS). The greatest reduction in virus count and alteration in community composition occurred in IOCS treatment groups. IOCS significantly decreased the number of VLPs post-equilibration, on average, by 92.63%

Being Asian American in Southern Appalachia: Counternarratives of Race and Space in Higher Education

The experiences of Asians and Asian Americans in the South and Appalachia have been historically overshadowed by the imagined bifurcated Black/white racial landscape of the South and the imagined homogenous white racial landscape of Appalachia. Students were interviewed through a semi-structured and dialogic approach and engaged through photovoice submissions. By examining college students’ experiences through guiding questions of how the geographic contexts of the South and Appalachia and the spatial context of a predominantly white institution (PWI) affect their experiences and perceptions of racial and cultural identity development, as well as how being Asian American affects their daily life at their PWI, it illuminates how geography, regionality, and race affects students’ identity and daily lives. This paper responds to a call by Asian American scholars to investigate the racialized experiences of Asian Americans east of California, particularly those of college students

Forging Ahead in Florida: Teaching and Supervision Strategies in the Face of Legislative Restrictions and Medical Bans

As a nation and a profession, we have witnessed a spark in the momentum and uplifting of social justice movements and advocacy concerning the ongoing oppression of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) as well as sex and gender-expansive (SGE) people in our community. In response, Florida and other states face an onslaught of restrictive medical bans and legislative bills surrounding how counselors and educators address race, sexuality, and gender in treatment and training programs. Florida has notably been at the forefront of adopting this legislation, not only regulating instructor-led discussion around racism, same-sex relationships, and gender identity in various educational settings but also banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. In this article, we review the legislative and regulatory impacts of race, sex, and gender-based legislation in Florida on education and healthcare, providing strategies for counselor educators, counselors, and trainees in the areas of teaching and supervision

Empowering Voices: The Unsung Role of Women in Establishing and Sustaining the Pelindaba Treaty for an African Nuclear Weapon–Free Zone

The Pelindaba Treaty, officially known as the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (NWFZ) Treaty, stands as proof of Africa’s collective commitment to a nuclear-weapon-free continent. It was opened for signature in 1996 in Cairo, Egypt, and entered into force in 2009. Its main aim is to prevent the development, acquisition, possession, or stationing of nuclear weapons within the zone, thereby promoting peace and security for all African nations. The treaty outlines an array of comprehensive measures to achieve this goal. State parties are prohibited from engaging in any nuclear weapon–related activities. Also, the treaty requires parties to maintain the highest standards of physical protection of nuclear materials, facilities, and equipment to prevent theft or unauthorized use and handling. Additionally, the treaty requires parties to concurrently achieve the highest standards of physical protection of nuclear material, which can be used for peaceful purposes. According to the United Nations (UN), 51 of the 55 African states have signed the Pelindaba Treaty, and 43 of them are parties to the treaty. Although the treaty is rightfully viewed as a monumental diplomatic achievement, the indispensable groundwork and ongoing stewardship by African women activists and policymakers that enabled its success often remains overlooked. This paper illuminates the bold vision and vital contributions of female diplomats, protest organizers, and governance leaders in actualizing and faithfully upholding the Pelindaba Treaty over the past three decades by review women’s involvement in African peace and security organizations operating. Additionally, this work highlights women’s contribution to disarmament efforts and their engagement’s effect in the NWFZ, sustaining and enforcing the Pelindaba Treaty within their positions of influence. The paper profiles pioneering negotiators such as Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, former chairperson of the African Union Commission, known as the depositary of the African NWFZ Treaty, noting her role in overseeing the treaty\u27s implementation and compliance. On the diplomatic front is Nigeria’s Ambassador Joy Ogwu, whose wise leadership guided the treaty from conception to ratification, building consensus across diverse African interests

Using Human Interaction with Natural Language Processing Techniques to Reinforce Vocabulary Comprehension and Usage

This dissertation proposes SENCE: SENtence Curation and Evaluation - a Natural Language Processing (NLP) aid to be used in an educational setting for children. SENCE is designed as an AI-augmented tool for educators such as general and special education teachers and practicing school-based speech-language pathologists who work with children. While several commercially available products incorporate NLP techniques for teaching adults language skills, the field is still nascent for incorporating NLP into teaching aids for children with learning disorders. SENCE uses NLP techniques to reinforce vocabulary comprehension and usage in children. Additionally, it integrates human interaction with NLP techniques, allowing domain specialists to improve results before they are presented to students. SENCE uses off-the-shelf NLP libraries such as spaCy and Stanza in combination with NLP techniques such as lemmatization, part-of-speech tagging, and vocabulary similarity. These methods are integrated to identify key vocabulary words and sentences using those keywords. An evaluation is created based on these keywords and sentences. SENCE thereby creates an automated process to gauge students’ vocabulary comprehension over time. The evaluations can be shared between classes and instructors. Further, students can be quickly assessed for retention of words taught earlier in the school year. Through these methods, SENCE provides a novel and easy-to-use NLP-powered application for non-computer scientists to use NLP for everyday classroom tasks

Neuroendocrine mechanisms contributing to individual differences and experience-dependent plasticity in stress-related behavior

Stress is a contributing factor in the etiology of several mood and anxiety disorders, and animal models of social defeat have been used to investigate the biological basis of stress-related psychopathologies. Syrian hamsters are highly aggressive and territorial, but after social defeat they exhibit a conditioned defeat (CD) response which is characterized by increased submissive behavior and a failure to defend their home territory against a smaller, non-aggressive intruder. We have previously shown that obtaining a dominance status in male hamsters will contribute to a reduced conditioned defeat response compared to subordinate counterparts. We have also shown that dominant males obtain greater androgen receptor (AR) expression and display greater expression of c-Fos+ cells in the posterior medial amygdala (MeP) after social defeat exposure compared to subordinates. Together, this suggests that the development of a dominance status contributes to neuroplasticity in the MeP including neuroendocrine mechanisms such as AR that contribute to the resistance of social defeat stress. The overall goal of the research projects in this dissertation was to discover neuroendocrine mechanisms that contribute to experience-dependent changes in stress-related behavior. The overarching hypothesis that distinct neuroendocrine mechanisms in the MeP contributes to changes in stress vulnerability in dominant and subordinate hamsters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the current literature with aims for the research conducted. Chapter 2 investigated whether male and female hamsters differ in their patterns of agonistic behavior during the formation and maintenance of dominance relationships. Chapter 3 investigated whether AR+ cells in the MeP are activated during social defeat stress or testing for anxiety-like behavior in dominant and subordinate male hamsters. Chapter 4 aimed to determine whether activation of MeP and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) neurons are associated with female status-dependent differences in resistance to social defeat stress and defeat-induced loss of social motivation. Chapter 5 tested whether AR expression in BNST-projecting MeP cells is essential for resistance to social defeat stress in dominant males. Collectively, these projects delineate neuroendocrine mechanisms by which dominance status influences stress-related behavior

Essays in Macroeconomic Analysis: Oil Shocks, Textual Forecast, and Bubble Cycles

This dissertation consists of three essays in macroeconomic analysis. The first essay introduces a new method for studying the macroeconomic effects of oil price shocks by incorporating textual analysis of news articles on OPEC announcements. Text features extracted from major newspapers serve as external instruments in a proxy SVAR model to capture shifts in oil price expectations. The results show that 91.3% of oil price surprises are linked to OPEC-related factors, 85.6% from supply decisions, and 5.7% from sentiment and demand expectations. Historical decomposition reveals supply news dominates during geopolitical crises, while demand sentiment is more influential during downturns like the Global Financial Crisis and COVID-19. Experiments using synthetic news confirm that real narratives significantly affect market behavior, underscoring the importance of news-driven expectations. The second essay proposes a method to improve text-based forecasting of crude oil prices. Using advanced techniques such as pattern validation and attention mechanisms, the study finds substantial improvements in predictive accuracy. Notably, incorporating the full text of articles, instead of just headlines, enhances forecasts. A model leveraging verb-noun and noun-verb collocation pattern validation (e.g., “prices tumbled”) outperforms benchmarks and headline-based models across forecast horizons. Integrating macroeconomic indicators with textual features further improves prediction accuracy, showing the value of combining structured and unstructured data. The third essay develops a continuous-time heterogeneous agent model to examine the relationship between bubbles, financial frictions, and wealth inequality. The model features entrepreneurs facing productivity shocks governed by a Cox-Ingersoll-Ross (CIR) process. These agents allocate wealth across capital, credit markets, and a speculative bubble asset, subject to borrowing constraints. Firms operate in perfectly competitive markets with endogenous capital returns. The equilibrium is defined by a coupled system of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations and Kolmogorov Forward Equations (KFEs), which together characterize individual behavior and the aggregate evolution of productivity, capital, wealth, and bubble holdings

STRENGTHENING THE ECOSYSTEM OF CARE AND RESILIENCE: A BASIC QUALITATIVE STUDY OF THE EXPERIENCES OF THOSE WHO LEAD THREAT ASSESSMENT TEAMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Threat assessment teams (TATs) are multidisciplinary teams that mitigate risk and enhance campus safety to ultimately prevent crisis. Although campus safety concerns are not a new phenomenon, the physical and mental safety of faculty, staff, and students can affect how they work and learn. TAT leaders guide and support a critical component of care and resilience for campus communities. This basic qualitative study examines the experiences of TAT leaders, specifically to understand how they describe and operationalize success. Through document analysis and nine semi-structured interviews, the following themes were created: Establishing and Maintaining Norms, Acquiring and Leveraging Resources, Recognizing the Human Element, and Commitment to Protecting Campus. Bolman and Deal’s organizational model framed the study. The four frames—structural, human resource, political, and symbolic—serve as the lenses through which teams navigate threats in innovative and effective ways. Findings reveal that TAT leaders used all four frames to balance process, people, and politics. By understanding the experiences of TAT leaders—specifically how they describe and operationalize success—this research can inform institutional policy and procedures and potentially motivate the people doing this work. The findings offer valuable insights that can assist leaders and other stakeholders as they strive to elevate threat assessment and case management at institutions of higher education

The Role Of Hydropower In An Energy Stable, Economically Viable, and Environmentally Sustainable Future

Hydropower’s ability to quickly adapt to the variable generation of wind and solar can allow the electricity grid to integrate more renewable capacity. However, changing hydroelectric output to increase or decrease generation in response to solar or wind output changes the quantity of water flowing through the generators. Rapid flow fluctuations, required to closely correlate with changes in solar wind output can negatively impact downstream aquatic ecosystems. Additionally, the dispatch of hydroelectric generation must consider other uses for the water and storage provided by the facility such as recreation and flood control. This dissertation explores the energy-environmental-economic nexus of five case study conventional hydropower facilities when operating in a range of run-of-river conditions. We also analyze pumped storage hydropower’s ability to meet future short-term energy dispatch needs, and the feasibility of converting non-powered dams to power producing ones using Archimedes screw turbine technology. Findings from this dissertation demonstrate operation of five case study facilities (without considering non-power license restrictions included within a project’s operating license) within a discharge range of 140% to 200% of inflow supports both environmental sustainability and energy system stability. Additionally, modeling pumped storage hydropower to assume increased conventional hydropower demands reveals that pumped storage can meet at least 75% of required demands, if output was not restricted by the project’s operating license. This need for pumped storage to meet demands is influenced by variable renewable energy generation and battery capacity within the same balancing area. Lastly, this dissertation identifies the potential of using Archimedes screw turbines as a dual-purpose technology, offering fish passage and energy generation. However, projected changes in precipitation trends from 2024 to 2050 are expected to reduce the number of viable sites for such implementations. Our result suggests hydropower operations can aid in increasing renewable energy generation while limiting environmental impacts because pumped storage in the region can make up for the potential generation loss. We also present a framework for considering social, environmental and economic impacts of non-powered dam conversions using Archimedes screw turbines in future changing precipitation trends

Consumer Returns in Electronic Commerce

This dissertation has two empirical essays that explore consumer returns in electronic commerce. The goal of this work is to help online retailers to improve customer satisfaction, enhance customer loyalty, and eventually increase profitability by optimizing consumer returns management strategies. The first essay explores the effects of customer procrastination and reverse logistics time on customer loyalty from the customer co-production perspective. We construct econometric models for the entire online return process. Using a proprietary dataset from one reverse logistics management firm, we apply logistic regression and the Cox proportional hazards regression models to verify our hypotheses. We find that both customer procrastination and reverse logistics time negatively affect customer loyalty. Our results suggest that reducing customer procrastination or shortening reverse logistics time can decrease consumer return rates and enhance customer retention. Further analysis using consumer psychology theories indicates that customer procrastination is associated with demographic factors like gender and ethnicity. These results suggest that online retailers should reconsider consumer returns not merely as an unavoidable cost of doing business but as a strategic opportunity for fostering positive customer engagement. By leveraging returns as a touch-point for enhancing customer experience, retailers can drive future sales and achieve long-term profitability. Motivated by differences in customer procrastination across gender and ethnicity, the second essay examines how gender and ethnic diversities impact consumer returns in the luxury fashion industry. Although both gender and ethnicity are well studied in consumer behavior and retail operations, the academic literature lacks insights into how a consumer’s gender and ethnicity drive their return behaviors. We address this gap by analyzing 1.8 million online transactions across the US, using algorithms to predict customers\u27 gender and ethnicity from their names and neighborhood demographics. Through logistic regression and mediation analysis, we identify distinct return patterns across different demographic groups. These findings enable targeted operational strategies to reduce returns and increase retention, allowing firms to tailor marketing approaches to accommodate varying return tendencies among consumer groups, ultimately improving operational efficiency and supporting localized marketing strategies