Institutional Repository

The UDSpace Institutional Repository collects and disseminates research material from the University of Delaware.

Faculty, staff, and graduate students who want their research material hosted in UDSpace should contact the University of Delaware Insitutional Repository team at openaccess@udel.edu.
Faculty may use UDSpace to fulfill the University of Delaware Faculty Senate Open Access Resolution, and in many cases may use it to fulfill open access requirements from grant funding agencies.
Departments can use UDSpace to publish or distribute their working papers, technical reports, or other research material.
UDSpace also includes all doctoral dissertations from winter 2014 forward, and all master's theses from fall 2009 forward.

To learn more about UDSpace, and how you can make your research openly accessible to the public, visit our UDSpace Information website.

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Recent Submissions

When AI Rewrites the News: How Sentiment, Framing, and LLM Disclosure Shape Perceptions
(Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2026-04-13) Khatiwada, Prerana; Pappu, Varun; Bagozzi, Benjamin E.; Mauriello, Matthew Louis
Public concern over media-driven polarization and the rise of AI modified news has sparked interest in how sentiment and framing shape perceptions. This study examines variations in sentiment (neutral vs. extreme) and framing (balanced vs. one-sided) in LLM transformed news, along with disclosure of LLM involvement, to assess effects on readers’ emotions, perceptions, and credibility judgments. In a 2×2 between-subjects experiment (≈180 U.S. participants) plus a baseline control (45), articles were adapted from real news and transformed with LLMs. Results show extreme sentiment worsened outcomes, heightening negative emotions and lowering trustworthiness, while framing exerted more nuanced effects. Balanced news articles with extreme sentiment elicited amplified perceptions of bias and surprise consistent with the Hostile Media Effect, where balanced coverage appears biased due to amplified opposing viewpoints. Disclosure of LLM involvement modestly improved trustworthiness without undermining fairness or credibility. Overall findings highlight the need for transparent, user-facing interventions and editorial oversight in AI-mediated journalism.
AN EXAMINATION OF THE STABLE ISOTOPE DYNAMICS OF CLEARNOSE SKATE (ROSTRORAJA EGLANTERIA) TISSUES
(University of Delaware, 2023-05) Bandlow, Serena
Rostroraja eglanteria is a common, but under-researched elasmobranch species in the Delaware Bay. This study sought to elucidate the stable isotope dynamics, such as turnover rate and trophic discrimination factor, of R. eglanteria dermis, muscle, and blood plasma through a months-long diet-swap experiment with 12 fully-grown specimens in captivity. The results from this study indicate that R. eglanteria displays a remarkably slow turnover rate, as evidenced by strikingly high trophic discrimination factors ranging from 4.06 - 7.42, even after 5 months of experimentation. Potential explanations for this slow rate of isotopic incorporation include the lack of visible growth displayed by R. eglanteria in captivity, as well as the generally low metabolic rates of benthic species. These results have significant implications for future ecological studies into R. eglanteria and other similar organisms, suggesting the need for longer-term research. The methodologies presented in this study are broadly applicable to stable isotope analysis research in both laboratory and field settings, offering a viable approach to further explore the ecological role of under-studied species like R. eglanteria.
CalmSet: A Domain-Specific Test Collection for Affective Music Retrieval for Children with ASD
(Proceedings of the 49th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 2026-07) Karwankar, Abhishek; Stapley, Liam; Stevens, Daniel; Mauriello, Matthew Louis
Information Retrieval (IR) increasingly relies on subjective, graded, and natural-language notions of relevance, motivating the development of reproducible test collections for ranking and recommendation. In affect-sensitive music domains, however, such resources with human-validated relevance signals remain scarce. We introduce CalmSet, a test collection for emotion-tagged music retrieval and recommendation in a therapeutic context for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). CalmSet contains 432 modular music tracks instantiated from four purposefully composed base songs with controlled provenance, each formed by distinct combinations of seven active musical layers. Each track is annotated with ranked top-3 therapeutic intent labels and natural-language descriptions. Annotations are produced via a hybrid human-in-the-loop pipeline: CLAP proposes candidate intent labels, a large language model generates auxiliary semantic descriptions, and crowd workers provide ranked judgments without exposure to model outputs; f inal labels are aggregated using a Borda-based procedure. As initial baselines, we evaluate five one-vs-rest multi-label classifiers over CLAP audio embeddings, observing moderate micro-F1 scores (up to 0.60) but low exact-match accuracy (<0.10), while top-3 label overlap is substantially higher (Jaccard@3 up to 0.48), motivating graded-relevance evaluation. CalmSet supports both sparse (e.g., BM25) and dense audio–text retrieval models using therapeutic labels or natural-language descriptions as queries.
Advected carbon younger than the sediment fuels microbial metabolism in a pumped deep aquifer
(Communications Earth & Environment, 2026-05) Mailloux, Brian J.; Ahmed, Kazi Matin; Akter, Afsana; Blau, Sarah; Bostick, Benjamin; Buchholz, Bruce A.; Choudhury, Imtiaz; Ellis, Tyler; Harvey, Charles; Khan, Mahfuzur; Killough, Madeleine; Vetter, Maggie C. Y. Lau; Michael, Holly; Mozumder, Rajib; Scanlan, Katharine; Slater, Greg; Trembath-Reichert, Elizabeth; van Geen, Alexander
Ever deeper wells are drilled worldwide to pump potable groundwater. Recent studies argue that over pumping compresses clays and releases reactive dissolved organic carbon (DOC), which in turn drives a series of microbial reactions that affect groundwater potability including arsenic concentrations. Here, we use a novel method to measure the radiocarbon ages of microbial RNA to determine the source of reactive or metabolizable DOC and argue against the compression of clays as the sole source of carbon. We show that microbial RNA (5,230; 5,550; 6,250 yr; n = 3 wells), DOC (280-10,800 yr; n = 13), and methane (modern to 6,240 yr; n = 3), from an overpumped deep aquifer in Bangladesh are much younger than the overlying clay layers deposited during the Pleistocene over 12,000 years ago. Mass-balance indicates that at least half of the carbon incorporated into RNA has to come from reactive DOC or methane that is advected downward via vertical recharge. This metabolism of advected organic carbon could have implications for the quality of water pumped from deep aquifers.
Four-week time restricted eating intervention is associated with improvements in cardiometabolic risk factors and dysregulated eating among emerging adult women: a single-armed trial
(Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity (EWD), 2026-05-08) Vizthum, Diane; Earthman, Carrie P.; Patterson, Freda; Melough, Melissa M.; Allison, Kelly C.; Pacanowski, Carly R.
Purpose Time restricted eating (TRE) improves cardiometabolic (CM) health. However, TRE’s usefulness as a preventative intervention, particularly among women at risk for dysregulated eating is unknown. This single-arm study examined the impact of a 4-week TRE intervention on eating behaviors, body composition, and dietary intake in women at risk for dysregulated eating. Methods 36 emerging adult women with eating windows ≥ 12 h and moderate–high dietary restraint completed 1 baseline week and 4 weeks of TRE (10 h eating window ending by 8 pm). Participants completed the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire, 3-day food logs, anthropometric measurements, and DXA scans at baseline and post-intervention. Ecological momentary assessments (EMA) were administered 5x/day during baseline and weeks 1 and 4 of TRE to assess eating in the absence of hunger (EAH). Results Adherence with TRE and EMA was above 85%. Significant decreases occurred in emotional eating (p = 0.009, Cohen’s d = − 0.470), caloric intake (p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = − 0.750), body weight (p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = − 0.649), and visceral fat (p = 0.026, Cohen’s d = − 0.452) between baseline and end of TRE. The odds of EAH were significantly lower during TRE than baseline (week 1 OR: 0.48, 95% CI 0.32–0.71; week 4 OR: 0.46, 95% CI 0.29–0.71, both p < 0.001). Compared to baseline, EAH decreased during fasting and the first 4 h of the eating window (p = 0.002–0.033), but not later in the eating window (p = 0.579–0.763). Conclusions A brief TRE intervention reduced emotional eating and visceral fat in emerging adult women. However, results are preliminary and caution is still warranted when implementing restrictive interventions in this population. Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT06145009, submitted 10/17/2023.