Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Racial Profiling: Understanding The Practice Of Stop-And-Frisk In New York City, Lisa Ly

Spectra Undergraduate Research Journal

Racial profiling has become a prominent issue in modern policing today. Instead of being based on individual suspicion, racial profiling embodies a belief that people of color are continuously singled out by the police for scrutiny and harassment. Policies and procedures make the Black community vulnerable to police discrimination and racial profiling. Floyd et al. v. City of New York et al. (2013) declared that the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) practice of stop-and-frisk was racially profiling Black civilians. This study sought (1) to determine if the NYPD post-Floyd is still engaging in racial profiling towards Black civilians; and (2) …

Environmental Rhetoric And An Ecology Of Transcendence: A Rhetorical Criticism Of Awake, A Dream From Standing Rock, Alyssa Kahn

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My project blends Burkean theory with Indigenous rhetoric to argue that the counter- story of Awake proposes an ecology of transcendence to make sense of human-nature relationships. I wanted to analyze Awake A Dream From Standing Rock. The documentary is explicitly about Indigenous peoples. This documentary tells the story of the peaceful protests and resistance led by Native people at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation or Lakota Tribe in North Dakota. The activists were protecting the water otherwise known as water protectors/warriors from the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The assembly of DAPL is intended to carry perforated …

A 155-Year Tree-Ring Based Record Of Warm And Dry Snow Droughts For The Cascade Range, Usa, Laura A. Dye

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Contributing 50-80% to the surface water for the region, mountain snowpack is a pillar of the hydrologic cycle in the western US, and is projected to decrease to 44% by 2100 in the Cascade Mountains alone. The western US has recently been identified as a global snow drought hot spot, exhibiting more frequent, intensified, and lengthened snow drought events in recent decades. Only recently has the need to understand the types of snow droughts and their driving mechanisms become critical to understand and quantify. Recent research suggests ‘warm’ snow droughts caused by winter precipitation falling as rain rather than snow …

Topology Identification In Distribution System Via Machine Learning Algorithms, Peyman Razmi, Mahdi Ghaemi Asl, Giorgio Canarella, Afsaneh Sadat Emami

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper contributes to the literature on topology identification (TI) in distribution networks and, in particular, on change detection in switching devices' status. The lack of measurements in distribution networks compared to transmission networks is a notable challenge. In this paper, we propose an approach to topology identification (TI) of distribution systems based on supervised machine learning (SML) algorithms. This methodology is capable of analyzing the feeder's voltage profile without requiring the utilization of sensors or any other extraneous measurement device. We show that machine learning algorithms can track the voltage profile's behavior in each feeder, detect the status of …

Estimation Of Spatial Change In Cropland Area And Evaluation Of Irrigation Performance In Imperial Valley Using Remotely Sensed Data, Usha Poudel

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Imperial Valley (IV) in the US is an extensively irrigated agricultural region, which includes multiple crops changing on an annual and semiannual basis. The valley is facing grave concerns about water management due to its semi-arid environment, water intensive crops, and limited water supply. A simple, inexpensive, and repeatable method to detect changes in cropping patterns may assist irrigation managers to understand crop diversification and associated consumptive use. In addition, a spatial assessment of existing water irrigation system performance and productivity is crucial to benchmark and improve current water management strategies. This thesis estimates the spatial pattern of change …

Kaleidoscope Of Urban Evapotranspiration: Exploring The Science And Modeling Approaches, Rubab Saher

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Urban evapotranspiration is a complex physical process. It depends on various critical drivers, including the land surface temperature (LST), surface albedo, landscape types, and building orientations. All of these factors create difficulties in the estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) by changing the microclimate conditions. The literature has oversimplified microclimate conditions by considering temperature difference as the only variable defining climate. The physical process depends on land-use changes, building proximities, and landscape types. This study devised three objectives to understand the microclimate effects on ET.

In the first objective, land-use change effects on LST, surface albedo, and ET were analyzed over a …

Overcoming The Overgeneration Of Renewables, Joshua Kaze, Ryan Barnard

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Many states are addressing the issues of climate change, by changing how they produce their energy. The effects of these policies are causing many renewable sources to be underutilized. This paper analyzes how the diversification of energy generation is leading to inefficiencies in the California energy market and the western US market as a whole. The change in curtailment of non-dispatchable renewables is positively correlated with the growth of renewables. Summary statistics and regression analysis show that an increasing portion of renewables is being wasted as the quantity of renewables is increasing. The Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) that California introduced …

Growing Biodiverse Urban Futures: Renaturalization And Rewilding As Strategies To Strengthen Urban Resilience, Steffen Lehmann

Architecture Faculty Research

How are our cities using nature-based solutions to confront the challenges posed by a warming climate, the loss of biodiversity and major resource depletion? This article discusses the opportunities and benefits of applying the concepts of regreening and rewilding of cities. The article engages with key sources and summarizes the background and development of regreening and nature-based solutions and important policies, concerns and perspectives of international and national organizations. It introduces the integration of nature-based solutions (NBS) as a strategy in urban planning with the aim to strengthen urban resilience and to slow down the biodiversity decline. Rewilding areas in …

An Ideological Criticism Of The Green New Deal And Media Responses, Corynn Miller

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Using an ecofeminist lens, this project aims to analyze the ideologies surrounding the creation and response to the Green New Deal (GND). By completing an ideological analysis of the GND, in addition to examining some news media portrayals of the GND, this thesis analyzes the underlying motivations and ideologies surrounding female politicians, climate change, and climate policies. This thesis examines reads the GND not as a policy that was meant to be passed, but instead as an ideological statement about humans and their relationship to the environment. The news media portrayals exhibit varying coverage of the GND’s effectiveness, varying use …

On Muddy Banks: An Ecoethnography Of A River Island Community, Nicholas Baxter

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this study, I examine the relationship between a river and a community. Specifically, I analyze the processes and patterns that organize the nature-society relationship and define the river town of Sabula, IA. To guide my historical and ethnographic analysis, I utilize a co constructionist posture (Rice 2013), which sees culture, community, economy, and physicality as much a product of bio-physical forces as social forces. My aim is to understand how Sabula is conjointly constructed and reveal the nuanced interconnections between human communities and nature through which social and environmental problems play out. My analysis clarifies patterns in residents’ identity …

On The Human Factors Impact Of Polyglot Programming On Programmer Productivity, Phillip Merlin Uesbeck

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Polyglot programming is a common practice in modern software development. This practice is often considered useful to create software by allowing developers to use whichever language they consider most well suited for the different parts of their software. Despite this ubiquity of polyglot programming there is no empirical research into how this practice affects software developers and their productivity. In this dissertation, after reviewing the state of the art in programming language and linguistic research pertaining to the topic, this matter is investigated by way of two empirical studies with 109 and 171 participants solving programming tasks. Based on the …

Leadership’S Influence On Environmental Sustainability, Stallar Lufrano-Jardine

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

A phenomenological study within the gaming industry is currently being conducted to determine influential indicators within business operations. Based on interviews of executive leadership at global companies, participants disclosed the environmental developments at their organization based on industry norms and the ability to develop/execute environmental initiatives. Four themes emerged: the leader’s ideology and the political climate; the company’s founding principles; support from the industry and/or within the company; and the ability to change industry dynamics. Each leader touched on these four points. Regardless of department type, level of leadership, and the desire to be globally conscious, all participants remarked on …

Potential Fossil Yield Classification (Pfyc) Survey Of Nevada Surficial Geology, And A Multi-Sensor, Remote Sensing, Change-Detection Study Of Land-Use/Land-Cover Urbanization Impacting The Las Vegas Formation Located In Northwestern Las Vegas Valley, John Jayson Medema

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis is a combination of two separate but related projects. The first project is a Potential Fossil Yield Classification (PYFC) survey. The PFYC is a Bureau of Land Management funded survey designed to synthesize paleontologic information into a geographic information system (GIS) as a distributable geodatabase. The database is designed to represent surficial geologic deposits contained in a polygon shapefile. Throughout the State of Nevada each polygon represents a mapped geologic unit at a scale of at least 1:250 k. Each mapped geologic unit is then assigned a “potential fossil yield classification”, a numerical ranking value of 1-5 based …

Impact Of Carb's Tailpipe Emission Standard Policy On Co2 Reduction Among The Us States, Jaewon Lim, Doohwan Won

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications

U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set the nationwide emission standard policy, but each state in the U.S. has an option to follow the higher emission standard policy set by CARB (California Air Resources Board) in 2004. There are 14 “CARB states” that follow California’s more restrictive standards. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of CARB’s tailpipe emission standard policy. Using the panel dataset for 49 U.S. states over a 28-year study period (1987–2015), this paper found the long-term policy effect in reducing CO2 emission from CARB’s tailpipe standard, and its long-run effect is 5.4 times higher than …

Employee Perceptions Of Organizational Corporate Responsibility And Their Effect On Employee Organizational Commitment, Lisa R. Davis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The debate over whether organizations play a part in society beyond economic profit has been a major focus of research in corporate social responsibility (CSR). These debates have been mainly looked at from the macro (societal) or the meso (institutional) level. Very little research has been done on the role of the firm and looking at CSR from the micro (individual) level. Questions regarding the role of work for employees, securing economic benefits or making a difference in the world, would vary greatly depending on the individual and the importance they place on these areas in their own lives. Scholars …

The Circulation Of Climate Change Denial Online: Rhetorical And Networking Strategies On Facebook, Emma Frances Bloomfield, Denise Tillery

Communication Studies Faculty Research

This study uses a topical, rhetorical approach to analyze how climate change denial circulates online through the 25 most popular posts on the Watts Up With That and the Global Warming Policy Forum Facebook pages. These groups adopt the appearance of credibility through reposting and hyperlinking, thus establishing a supportive, networked space among other skeptical sites, while distancing readers from original sources of scientific information. Visitors use a variety of rhetorical strategies to echo posts’ main themes and to discredit alternative viewpoints. Differences between the topoi and rhetorical strategies of WUWT and the GWPF show that the climate change denial …

Review Of: The World Of Scary Video Games: A Study In Videoludic Horror, Approaches To Digital Game Studies, Matthew Murray

Library Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Elevation And Azimuth-Aided Channel Estimation Scheme For Airborne Hyperspectral Data Transmission, Vahid Vahidi, Ebrahim Saberinia

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

A channel-estimation (CE) scheme is proposed to estimate the complex amplitude, Doppler shift, angle-of-departure, and angle-of-arrival of the channel taps for sparse and doubly selective channels for hyperspectral image transmission from unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs) to ground stations. The proposed method is dubbed as compressed-sensing joint parameter estimation (CS-JPE) and finds the channel parameters matrix by employing a compressed-sensing (CS)-based method. Afterward, a modified version of the joint parameter estimation (JPE) is proposed as CS-JPE and is dubbed as M-CS-JPE, which employs the elevation-azimuth angles of the line-of-sight channel tap to estimate the channel parameters with higher accuracy and lower …

Review Of: Families At Play: Connecting And Learning Through Video Games, Matthew Murray

Library Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Thing-Makers, Tool Freaks And Prototypers: How The Whole Earth Catalog’S Optimistic Message Reinvented The Environmental Movement In 1968, Andy Kirk

History Faculty Research

In the fall of 1968 a Stanford-trained biologist, organizer of the legendary Trips Festival and Merry Prankster named Stewart Brand published the first Whole Earth Catalog. Between 1968 and 1972, the Catalog reached millions of readers and won the National Book Award. The title and iconic cover image of this counterculture classic celebrated the first publicly released NASA photographs showing the whole planet Earth from space. These images profoundly changed the way humans thought about the environment. And the Catalog played an important role in that change.

Evaluation Of A Continuous Air Monitoring System On An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle For Measurement Of Airborne Radioactive Material, Adam Pfannenstein

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The release of airborne radioactive material presents a health risk hazard to many individuals, emergency responders and public. It is necessary to characterize the unknown radioactive dangers produced in the event of these incidents. Advantages to utilizing unmanned aerial systems in this effort are personnel risk reduction and quick attainment of data points in a plume. By pairing a continuous air monitor and detector with a drone, radioactive material concentration can be quantified, and thus the extent of potential doses can be estimated. A small, low-flow air sampler with a Geiger-Mueller counter was characterized using measurements of sources representing a …

Humans Thrived In South Africa Through The Toba Eruption About 74,000 Years Ago, Eugene I. Smith, Zenobia Jacobs, Racheal Johnsen, Minghua Ren, Erich C. Fisher, Simen Oestmo, Jayne Wilkins, Jacob A. Harris, Panagiotis Karkanas, Shelby Fitch, Amber Ciravolo, Deborah Keenan, Naomi Cleghorn, Christine S. Lane, Thalassa Matthews, Curtis W. Marean

Geoscience Faculty Research

Approximately 74 thousand years ago (ka), the Toba caldera erupted in Sumatra. Since the magnitude of this eruption was first established, its effects on climate, environment and humans have been debated1. Here we describe the discovery of microscopic glass shards characteristic of the Youngest Toba Tuff—ashfall from the Toba eruption—in two archaeological sites on the south coast of South Africa, a region in which there is evidence for early human behavioural complexity. An independently derived dating model supports a date of approximately 74 ka for the sediments containing the Youngest Toba Tuff glass shards. By defining the input of shards …

Rock Paper Scissors And Evolutionary Game Theory, Christian Cordova, Rudolf Jovero, Evan Thomas

Math 365 Class Projects

In Rock Paper Scissors (RPS), three different "species" compete, but no single species has a dominating strategy. In evolutionary game theory, replicator equations model population densities over time. When a mutation is introduced, they are called "replicator-mutator" equations. Using the replicator-mutator equation in [1] we have shown how population density of three species change.

Remote Sensing Of The Environmental Impacts Of Utility-Scale Solar Energy Plants, Mohammad Masih Edalat

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Solar energy has many environmental benefits compared with fossil fuels but solar farming can have environmental impacts especially during construction and development. Thus, in order to enhance environmental sustainability, it is imperative to understand the environmental impacts of utility-scale solar energy (USSE) plants. During recent decades, remote sensing techniques and geographic information systems have become standard techniques in environmental applications. In this study, the environmental impacts of USSE plants are investigated by analyzing changes to land surface characteristics using remote sensing. The surface characteristics studied include land cover, land surface temperature, and hydrological response whereas changes are mapped by comparing …

Numerical Methods For Option Pricing Under The Two-Factor Models, Jiacheng Cai

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Pricing options under multi-factor models are challenging and important problems for financial applications. In particular, the closed form solutions are not available for the American options and some European options, and the correlations between factors increase the complexity and difficulty for the formulations and implements of the numerical methods.

In this dissertation, we first introduce a general transformation to decouple correlated stochastic processes governed by a system of stochastic differential equations. Then we apply the transformation to the popular two-factor models: the two-asset model, the stochastic volatility model, and the stochastic interest rate models. Based on our new formulations, we …

Table Of The Sun, Christine Bettis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My creative thesis is a 48-page collection of poems titled Table of the Sun. Each poem is an intimate interrogation of varied ecological, romantic, and/or political disasters ranging from the Dakota Access Pipeline, cruel love, and Donald Trump. Some poems are reckonings, and others work to heal trauma, heartache, clinical illness, and supernatural afflictions like those experienced by the Tarantati of Puglia. Some are combative, it's true. Water is everywhere and it is multitudinous as an agent of destruction, cleansing, and transformation, and as a life-giver. The collection was influenced by readings, lectures, and courses I've experienced at UNLV, including …

Unlv Title Iii Aanapisi & Mcnair Scholars Institute Research Journal, Nir Herscovici, Joyce Hsu, Matthew Khumnark, Joy Lamug, Jeong Lim Lee, Kendall Lyons, Andrea Mandril, Niroshini Moodley, Eric Ng, Timothy Ogburn, Andrew A. Ortiz, Emily Khanh Pham, Nha Trang Vivian Sam, Devlynn Scarpati, Olivia Tsang, Termaine Antonio Turner Ii, Pang Kou Vang, Kanisha Wilson, Shannon Zayas, Claudia Chiang-Lopez, Victoria Copeland, Andrea Darby, Bridgett Giordmaina, Briceida Hernandez-Toledo, Mark Larubio, Ana Lesquives, Yessenia Madrigal, Summer Millwood, Angel Mims, Blaine Pennock, Katie Randolph, Amber K. Stephens, Sarah Werman, Eben-Ezer Arias-Garcia, Ernesto H. Bedoy, Royale Cannon, Irma De Santiago, Lorraine Louise K. Francisco, Imani A. Gayden, Jeffrey Gonzalez, Isaiah Shornell Henry, Ashley C. Lee, Marielle Leo, Elizabeth Ochoa, Bernajane Palisoc, Sean Tanzey, Howard Yanxon

McNair Journal

Journal articles based on research conducted by undergraduate students in the AANAPISI and McNair Scholars Programs

Table of Contents

About AANAPISI

Biography of Dr. Ronald E. McNair

Statements

Dr. Len Jessup, UNLV President

Dr. Juanita P. Fain, Vice President for Student Affairs

Dr. William W. Sullivan, Associate Vice President for Retention and Outreach

Mr. Keith Rogers, Deputy Executive Director of the Center for Academic Enrichment and Outreach

Title III AANAPISI and McNair Scholars Institute Staff

Ms. Terri Bernstein, Director for College Programs

Dr. Matthew Della Sala, Assistant Director for Undergraduate Research

Environment And Sustainability In Nevada, Jennifer Stevens, Genevieve Minter, Robert Futrell

Social Health of Nevada Reports

When the inaugural Earth Day launched the first environmental decade in the U.S. more than forty years ago, protecting our air, water, land and other natural resources seemed a relatively straightforward task. Environmental polluters and exploiters would be brought to heel by tough laws. The U.S. and other industrialized nations responded to quality of life concerns associated with environmental degradation by adopting dozens of major environmental and resource policies and creating new institutions such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to manage environmental programs. Following these national developments, states and local communities began systematic efforts to address environmental problems.

What …

Vulnerability Analysis And Security Framework For Zigbee Communication In Iot, Charbel Azzi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Securing IoT (Internet of Things) systems in general, regardless of the communication technology used, has been the concern of many researchers and private companies. As for ZigBee security concerns, much research and many experiments have been conducted to better predict the nature of potential security threats. In this research we are addressing several ZigBee vulnerabilities by performing first hand experiments and attack simulations on ZigBee protocol. This will allow us to better understand the security issues surveyed and find ways to mitigate them. Based on the attack simulations performed and the survey conducted, we have developed a ZigBee IoT framework …

The Proof Is In The Pots: Residue Analysis Of Virgin Branch Puebloan Ceramics, Brenna Lynn Wilkerson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study focuses on better understanding diet and subsistence strategies among Virgin Branch Puebloan groups living in the Moapa Valley in southern Nevada and on the Shivwits Plateau in northwestern Arizona. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was used to identify absorbed food residues in three types of Virgin Branch Puebloan ceramics (Moapa Gray Ware, Shivwits Ware, and Tusayan Virgin Series). The data produced by the residue analysis were used to compare patterns of subsistence between Virgin Branch Puebloan sites in the lowlands along the Muddy River and at upland sites on the Shivwits Plateau as these two areas have different environments …