University of Illinois at Chicago
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Circular Chemistry in Action: Building Sustainable and Smart Specialty Chemical Supply Chains
No full textThe specialty chemical sector faces growing pressure to reduce environmental impact while maintaining product performance and scalability. This white paper explores the role of circular economy principles in reimagining chemical sourcing, formulation, and distribution. We introduce a framework rooted in green chemistry, smart sourcing, and AI-enhanced decision-making-aimed at minimizing waste, optimizing inventory cycles, and empowering smaller buyers. Case concepts from ChemeNova LLC illustrate early-stage strategies that blend sustainability with digital intelligence.</p
TIGER: Testing and Improving Generated Code with LLMs
No full textThis thesis presents a test-driven framework for enhancing the reliability of code generated
by Large Language Models (LLMs), focusing on real-world applicability and minimal developer
assistance. The system is designed to simulate a realistic development environment where
no ground-truth implementations are available to the model, relying exclusively on textual
artifacts such as documentation, docstrings, and test outcomes. This constraint ensures that
every generated function is derived from semantic understanding rather than replication or
pattern-matching.
A core innovation of this work is the integration of an iterative refinement loop, which
introduces structured feedback into the code generation process. After producing an initial
function from a natural language prompt, the model’s output is immediately tested. If failures
occur, relevant error signals are extracted and used to update the prompt, allowing the model
to revise its solution. This loop continues until the implementation passes all associated tests
or a retry limit is reached. The system thus mirrors a human-like workflow of test-driven
development and debugging.
To assess the contribution of this iterative process, the same framework is also evaluated in
a non-iterative configuration, where each function is generated only once based on its prompt
and tested without revision.
The evaluation is conducted on entire Python repositories—not isolated functions—making
the task significantly more complex. Functions are embedded in larger software structures,
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SUMMARY (continued)
depend on shared state or class behavior, and are often indirectly tested through multi-layered
scenarios. The system parses these repositories to extract structural metadata, resolve function-
to-test mappings, and build context-aware prompts that support both initial generation and
iterative correction.
The results demonstrate that embedding LLMs into a feedback-rich environment substan-
tially increases their capacity to produce robust, test-passing code. Despite added computa-
tional cost, the iterative approach leads to higher success rates across a diverse range of code-
bases, showing that language models, when guided by empirical signals and properly contextu-
alized, can evolve from static generators into adaptive agents capable of producing functionally
correct and maintainable code.</p
Synthetic Food Dyes in Foods and Beverages Advertised on Television in the United States.
No full textThis research brief describes the extent of exposure in the U.S. in 2022 to television advertising for food and beverage products that contain synthetic food dyes, for both children and adults by age group, using data from The Nielsen Company.</p
A Case Study Analysis of Settings Approaches to Health Promotion in Higher Education
No full textHigher Education Institutions (HEIs) in The United States of America (U.S.) play an important role in shaping society through significant social, environmental, and economic impacts at the regional, national, and global levels. These institutions also provide opportunities for comprehensive strategies and infrastructure for health promotion. While many institutions offer wellness programming and health education, few engage in the broader process of health promotion as defined by international frameworks. Even fewer apply a settings approach, which emphasizes changing the social, organizational, and environmental contexts in which people live, work, and learn. The Okanagan Charter: An International Charter for Health Promoting Universities and Colleges (The Charter) calls on HEIs to embed health into all aspects of campus life and institutional culture using a settings-based, whole university lens. In the U.S., where public health efforts often emphasize individual behavior change, this approach remains underexplored and unevenly applied.This qualitative case study examines how U.S. HEIs that have adopted the Okanagan Charter interpret and integrate settings approaches to health promotion. The study explores alignment with the Charter’s calls to action, identifies facilitators and barriers to integration, and gathers recommendations to enhance settings-level integration among aspiring health promoting campuses. Data were collected in two phases: document analysis of materials submitted to the United States Health Promoting Campuses Network (USHPCN) and semi-structured interviews with campus representatives. Thematic analysis was conducted using MAXQDA® software, applying both a priori and emergent codes.</p
Exploring Ethnocultural Empathy and Cultural Attunement in Youth Mentoring: A Multi-Method Study
No full textThis multi-method study explored volunteer mentors’ ethnocultural empathy and cultural attunement. Ethnocultural empathy involves understanding and responding to another’s racial/ethnic experiences, and attunement includes a behavioral response that prioritizes the other’s needs. Cultural attunement combines these interpersonal skills, requiring a critical self-reflection of one’s emotional responses and perceived ability to communicate about another’s racial experiences, and a corresponding behavioral response. This study examined the relationship between ethnocultural empathy and attunement and what cultural attunement and misattunement look like in youth mentoring relationships. Among 235 mentors, quantitative findings showed that initial ethnocultural empathy did not directly predict later attunement, but higher initial ethnocultural empathy did strengthen the association between later ethnocultural empathy and attunement. Qualitative analyses identified key components of cultural attunement and misattunement and explored patterns in how mentors’ cultural attunement and misattunement changed over time. These findings highlight the evolving nature of mentors’ interpersonal skills related to racial/ethnic experiences and offer insights for training and interventions to best support mentees’ racialized experiences
What a Drag! Censorship and the Criminalization of Alternative Gender Performance
No full textThe rise of censorship laws targeting drag performance and gender expression reflects a broader political and ideological effort to regulate LGBTQIA+ visibility and reinforce heteronormative norms. These laws, often justified under child protection rhetoric and morality-based policymaking, rely on vague legal language and selective enforcement to suppress gender nonconformity while maintaining plausible deniability of discriminatory intent. Despite significant scholarship on LGBTQIA+ rights, policy diffusion, and free speech, little research has examined how contemporary censorship policies construct, justify, and enforce restrictions on drag performance and alternative gender expression. This study addresses that gap by analyzing the language, justification, and enforcement processes and patterns of recent state-level censorship legislation. Using an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that combines queer theory, social construction theory, policy diffusion theory, and legislative policy making models (Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, Multiple Streams Framework, Moral Foundations Theory, and Critical Policy Analysis), this research critically examines how these laws function as tools of ideological governance. The study reveals that conservative policymakers intentionally deploy legal ambiguity, model legislation, and moral panic rhetoric to facilitate the rapid diffusion of censorship policies across multiple jurisdictions. Furthermore, it highlights how these policies disproportionately impact trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals, reinforcing broader systems of social and legal exclusion. By situating contemporary anti-drag legislation within a historical trajectory of morality-based censorship and gender policing, this study provides critical insights for legal scholars, policymakers, and social work practitioners. The findings underscore the urgent need for stronger legal protections, clearer statutory language, and proactive advocacy strategies to combat the continued erosion of LGBTQIA+ rights. As legislative attacks on gender expression escalate, this research serves as both an academic contribution and a call to action for those working to resist censorship, protect free expression, and advocate for the visibility and rights of marginalized communities
A Secret Third Thing: Explicating the Role of FilmTok Influencers in Cultural Production
No full textThe influencer industry continues to experience growth in the mid-2020s. Intersecting with the film industry, hobbyists and aspirational laborers alike now engage in influencer practices on TikTok to make visible their relation to the film world. This study utilizes thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 20 FilmTok content creators to examine how these digital laborers negotiate their legitimacy with regards to industry, platform, and audience. The experiences of these content creators showcase how they push and pull on previously imagined boundaries between what is considered critical as opposed to commercial through their platformized work. They highlight neoliberal conditions in the 21st century, experiencing precarity from industry opportunities, TikTok as a platform, and their audiences. Given that academic explication of FilmTok is minimal, this study is exploratory. This work has implications for who gets to be seen as doing legitimate work, in whose eyes, and under which conditions
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