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Next-Generation Nanostructures: Exploring Synthesis, Structures and Optical Insights
No full textThe pursuit of advancements and miniaturization in science and technology has driven the exploration of lower dimensional materials to develop faster, more efficient, and cost-effective devices. In this regard, the fast-evolving field of semiconductor materials at nanoscale have come out with new avenues for high performance devices in major fields like optoelectronics. This thesis focuses on the fabrication of two distinct semiconductor nanomaterials using separate synthesis approaches for optoelectronic applications: (i) nanostructured patterns of the group III nitride material gallium nitride (GaN) were fabricated using a vapor-phase technique known as sequential infiltration synthesis (SIS), and (ii) spherical silicon nanoparticles were synthesized via a thermal disproportionation method at 1500 oC. Compared to the conventional nanofabrication techniques, SIS can produce high quality, scalable, well-ordered nitride materials with the focus on exploring their structural integrity, and optical responses. We have successfully used SIS technique for fabrication of gallium nitride using polystyrene-block-polymethylmethacrylate (PS-b-PMMA) and polystyrene-block-poly (α-caprolactone) (PS-b-PCL) block copolymers as the guiding templates. The fabricated nanopatterns were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). To investigate the optical response of the nanopatterns, UV–Vis spectroscopy was employed to measure the absorbance, followed by their photoluminescence emission measurements. Concurrently, high index dielectric spherical silicon nanoparticles were synthesized using high-temperature fabrication method (~1500 oC). In this method, a solid state disproportionate of Si nanoparticles embedded in silicon dioxide (SiO2) matrix was obtained after high temperature annealing at 1500 oC of silicon monoxide (SiO) powder followed by chemical etching of the SiO2 matrix using hydrofluoric acid (HF) to obtain colloidal Si nanoparticles. SEM images and measurement software were used to characterize the shape and size of these nanoparticles. We used UV-Vis spectroscopy to observe the extinction spectrum of the colloidal solution of nanoparticles and single particle vector spectroscopy to observe the scattering of particles. By integrating the observations, the goal was to identify and produce proto-type next generation devices for large scale industrial applications
Interfaith Marriages: Exploring the Role of Upbringing and Lived Experiences on Interfaith Couples\u27 Unions
Get PDFThis study on interfaith marriages is an example of the micro-macro linkage that we seek to make in sociology. Marriage is a “primary,” intimate relationship, but one that increasingly involves “intermarriage” across lines of race/ethnicity, religion, and cultural backgrounds. Interfaith marriages, which refer to unions between individuals from different religious backgrounds, are becoming more common in today’s contemporary society. Therefore, it is relevant to understand the experiences of couples in interfaith marriages. It highlights how individual decisions in intimate relationships are influenced by larger social structures, such as religious norms and cultural expectations. This study explores how upbringing and lived experiences shape the ways interfaith couples make decisions to intermarry, before the couple is committed, and successful accommodations of differences once married. This study addresses motivations to participate in an interfaith marriage despite societal resistance. There is a relative lack of attention to the interpretive, contextual understanding of “interfaith marriage,” still less that focuses on the married dyad as the unit of analysis. Therefore, I conducted online interviews with five interfaith couples by interviewing both spouses separately; they are living in the United States and belong to Christian, Hindu, or Muslim religious backgrounds.
This study revealed that personal autonomy and individual choice often prevail over upbringing and societal pressures, as people seek out interfaith marriages despite external resistance. In this small-scale study, we gain insight into the choices and accommodations of differences that the predominantly young, educated couples in my sample make when it comes to managing everyday negotiations within their interfaith union. By focusing on how couples negotiate religious and cultural differences, my study contributes to discussions about identity formation and cultural hybridity. This adds to sociological understandings of how people construct meaning within their relationships in multicultural societies. Another key finding of this research is that while religious and societal norms shape marriage choices, interfaith couples actively exercise agency by negotiating, compromising, and reshaping traditional norms of endogamy. Also, my future findings may inform clinical/counseling professionals who must deal with the array of issues surrounding couples that shape the quality and longevity of such marriages
Navigating Acculturation: Opportunities, Challenges, and Community Support for African Immigrants in the U.S.
Get PDFAfrican immigrants in the United States encounter complex acculturation challenges that are often shaped by systemic barriers such as language exclusion, financial insecurity, limited employment access, and time-restricted support services. This qualitative study explores how African immigrants experience the acculturation process and how community-based programs support or fall short in supporting their acculturation. Semi-structured individual interviews with Somali immigrants and community practitioners in the Midwest. While most African immigrant narratives reflect the experiences of Somali immigrants, practitioners provide insight into the broader African immigrant population based on their work with diverse African immigrant clients. Findings revealed three central themes: (1) American Dream vs. American Reality, (2) Community as a Pillar for Immigrant Adaptation and Growth, and (3) Community-Based Programs Help but Leave Critical Service Gaps. Although participants expressed a desire to integrate, structural barriers often limited their ability to do so. Results highlight the need for culturally grounded, linguistically, and relationship-based interventions. This contributes to acculturation research by emphasizing the communal and systemic nature of acculturation and calls for sustained, equity-focused investments in programs serving African immigrants
Attitudes and Perceptions toward the Qassimi Dialect
Get PDFThis study explores attitudes and perceptions surrounding the Qassimi dialect within Saudi Arabia. It addresses two primary questions: What are the attitudes of Qassimi speakers toward their own dialect? and What are the perceptions of non-Qassimi Saudi citizens regarding the Qassimi dialect in terms of stereotypes and its speakers? To investigate these questions, the research employed two population-specific surveys—one for Qassimi speakers and another for non-Qassimi participants—alongside semi-structured interviews with selected Qassimi individuals to gain deeper qualitative insights. The findings reveal that Qassimi speakers generally express strong pride and a positive emotional connection to their dialect, viewing it as a vital component of their regional identity. However, their attitudes are also shaped by perceived societal stereotypes, with some expressing concern over negative judgments from the broader Saudi society. In contrast, non-Qassimi participants demonstrated a mix of perceptions: while their personal views were more favorable, they acknowledged the persistence of negative stereotypes about the dialect in wider Saudi discourse. These findings contribute to the field of sociolinguistics by shedding light on how dialectal variation—particularly the Qassimi dialect—is experienced, perceived, and socially interpreted in contemporary Saudi Arabia
Do Exploratory Probing Movements Predict Perceived Geometric or Affordance Properties of a Surface?
Get PDFPeople use different exploratory movements to perceive different properties of a handheld object and different exploratory wielding movements to perceive different properties of a wielded object. We investigated whether people use different exploratory probing movements to perceive different properties of a surface. Participants probed a surface and attempted to perceive either an affordance (whether they could stand on that surface) or a geometric property (angle of inclination) of that surface. Perceived angle was nearly perfectly correlated with (but imperfectly scaled to) surface angle. The perceived boundary between surfaces that could be stood on and those that could not be stood on closely matched the actual boundary on this behavior. With respect to the exploratory probing movements, mixed effects modeling showed that neither mean accelerations of probing movements nor variability of accelerations of probing movements predicted perceived angle. However, the coefficient of variation of probing movements tended to decrease as surface inclination increased, and the value of ETC (Effort-to-compress) increased as angle of inclination increased
What’s Age Got to Do with it? The Cognitive Effects of Racial and Gendered Microaggressions among Black Women and the Role of Age, Colorblindness and Racial Identity
Get PDFRacial microaggressions are brief, everyday derogatory interactions in the form of subtle insults, gestures, or slights (Sue et al., 2007). Microaggressions often are intentional or unintentional interactions that communicate denigrating messages to individuals holding marginalized identities. Previous research suggests that exposure to microaggressions directly results in cognitive depletion (Banks & Landau, 2021). The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of exposure to racial and gendered microaggressions on Black women’s cognitive functioning and the role of racial centrality, age, and colorblind attitudes. I hypothesized that (a) condition assignment would predict changes in cognitive functioning for Black women, (b) racial centrality would moderate the relation between condition assignment and cognitive depletion, and (c) perceptions of colorblindness would mediate or explain the relation between age and cognitive depletion for participants in the experimental condition. Condition assignment predicted depletion of cognitive resources, but racial centrality did not moderate the relation between condition assignment and cognitive depletion, and colorblind attitudes did not mediate the relation between age and cognitive depletion. Future research should examine variables that may exacerbate or mitigate cognitive depletion after exposure to microaggressions for Black women
Parent Child Communication About Money: A Memorable Messages Study
No full textMy thesis research focuses on the types of parent-child discussions revolving around money and the impact that these discussions could have on their financial wellbeing. I am hoping to learn more about how participants perceive the messages they received from their parents, and I will be analyzing how that perception correlates with their financial literacy. This image represents the lasting impact of the messages that parents discuss with their child, even after the transition to adult life. One might look in their wallet, or more broadly examine their overall financial state, and recall a time when they were positively or negatively impacted by an earlier conversation with their parents. To extend this representation, the phenomenon might occur if one is looking to purchase a new car. They may recall their mother’s helpful advice about debt, which could influence their financial wellbeing as an adult during this process.https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/ior2025/1003/thumbnail.jp
Telling The Future Through a Portal
No full textMy practice broadly spotlights and upends the pillars of relationship and difficulty. I am interested in the spaces where order and obscenity are negotiated, whether interpersonal, intrapersonal, or within our ecological/planetary context. I consider it my responsibility to create work that inspires—perhaps requires—these negotiations. In Telling the Future Through a Portal specifically, I use performance art, video, and saliva as material to examine control and distance in relationships in the face of arriving climate catastrophe. I utilize Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of rhizome to interconnect these concepts, with the primary goal to ask: what does futurity, especially queer futurity, look like or mean in these climates (in both a literal, warming sense and an increasingly fascistic, political one), and how do we actualize that future?https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/ior2025/1002/thumbnail.jp
Barriers to Open Access Publishing in the Arts and Humanities: Real, Artificial, Superficial?
Get PDFAlthough open access (OA) has the capacity to democratize knowledge and access for readers worldwide, arts and humanities scholars do not publish their work OA as frequently as their colleagues in the sciences. A variety of factors contribute to their relative lack of engagement with OA publishing, including disparities in research funding, the format of research outputs, and the availability and prestige of OA publishing venues. In this session, we will report on interviews conducted with arts and humanities scholars that explored participants’ approaches to OA, their motivations for engaging with OA, and the barriers they encounter.
Even though most participants had positive views about the principles underpinning OA, each scholar’s positionality impacted their perception of its practical application, and several themes emerged about the real and perceived barriers to OA publishing. Although scholars agreed that insufficient funding presents a real and significant challenge, the interviews surfaced nuanced and often contrasting views regarding the reputational costs associated with OA publishing, the pressures of tenure and promotion when selecting publication venues, the feelings of exploitation adjacent to current payment-based OA publishing models, and the amount of time spent navigating the OA publishing landscape. While most voiced concerns about the ethics of payment-based OA, the majority indicated that they would publish in a payment-based venue provided that the publication was sufficiently rigorous and they were not responsible for covering the cost, indicating dissonance between scholars’ principles and practices.
The authors, all of whom work as academic librarians, will present these findings along with implications for arts and humanities scholars navigating OA and how the library can support them. We investigate OA publishing in the arts and humanities through the lens of “real, artificial, superficial,” examining real barriers that inhibit meaningful engagement with OA, artificial but powerful pressures related to research evaluation, and superficial yet persistent concerns about reputational costs
On Solving Differential Equations Describing the Ecology of Shallow Lakes: A Comparison of Classical and Modern Computational Methods Through Python
Get PDFIn this exposition paper, we describe some computational methodologies to solve numerically differential equations modeling the shallow lake ecosystem, with particular focus on the dynamics of the phosphorus. We describe in detail Python implementations of classical algorithms, like Runge-Kutta, and more modern approaches, including physics-informed neural networks