Digital Commons Network^™

Sedimentological Characterization Of Main And Chute Channel Scroll Bars Along The Kantishna River, Alaska, Cooper Sentz

Honors Theses

Scroll bars, arcuate sediment ridges found along the inner banks of river bends, are common floodplain features in meandering river systems that form during lateral channel migration. Two hypothesized formation mechanisms described in prior studies are the aggradation of suspended load onto abandoned inner bank levee (IBL) deposits during overbank flow and the migration of transverse bar packages from the channel bed up onto the point bar during flooding events. To study the sedimentology and geometry of these features, we conduct remote sensing and field analysis on a 60 km portion of the Kantishna River, AK: a highly sinuous, pro-glacial …

Anuran Occupancy Of Created Wetlands Within Reforested Legacy Surface Mines In Kentucky And West Virginia, Jillian C. Newman, Steve Price, Jacquelyn C. Guzy, Joshua Castle, John J. Cox, Jeffery L. Larkin, Christopher D. Barton

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Restoration of habitat is an important component of wildlife management. Surface coal mining has altered forest cover in the Central Appalachians, and most reclamation activities on previously mined lands result in non-native grasslands or shrub lands. The Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA), which emphasizes non-native vegetation removal, soil decompaction, planting of native trees and shrubs, and, in some cases, wetland creation represents an alternative to grassland-based reclamation that may promote forest-associated wildlife on legacy surface mines. We used automated recording units to evaluate the response of anurans to created wetlands and the FRA in Kentucky and West Virginia, USA. We used …

Law Librarianship And Legal Information Science In The Age Of Genai, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

This article examines the relationship between law librarianship and legal information science in the age of generative AI (GenAI), arguing that closer integration between the two is essential to navigating a rapidly evolving legal information landscape. It contends that law librarianship—long grounded in stable classification systems and cognitive authority—must adopt the analytical methods of legal information science to remain effective in the digital era. Together, these fields can reinforce the rule of law by improving the organization, retrieval, and stability of legal information. The article identifies emerging subfields of legal information science that support this integration and develops several concepts …

Deep Crustal Boundaries As Fluid Conduits: A Geochemical Investigation Of Mvt Mineralization In Kentucky And Beyond, Dairian Boddy M. Boddy

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

Critical minerals are vital to the United States economy and national security, yet their supply chains are at risk. Common minerals in Mississippi Valley-type (MVT) deposits, such as sphalerite, galena, fluorite, and barite, host critical metals such as barium, gallium, germanium, and zinc, which are essential for energy technologies. An investigation of three MVT mineral districts in Kentucky elucidated previously unrecognized systematics, genetic relationships, and sources of ore components using stable and radiogenic isotope geochemistry, particularly from galena, sphalerite, barite, and gangue minerals (e.g., carbonates). The localization and dominant type of mineralization in each district are potentially influenced by deep …

Large Aerosol Particles Favor Haze Conditions Through Limitations On Water Budget And Activation Kinetics, Hamed F. Sadi, Ernie Lewis, Kadja Flore Gali, Fan Yang, Jesse Anderson, Suryadev Pratap Singh, Jae Min Yeom, Will Cantrell, Raymond Shaw

Michigan Tech Publications

Experiments in the Pi Convection‐Cloud Chamber conducted by systematically changing the diameter of injected dry aerosol particles while holding the temperature difference constant demonstrate that dry diameter strongly influences the onset of haze‐dominated conditions. Two factors contribute: the system becomes water‐limited, resulting in reduction of supersaturation by growing aerosol particles to the activation diameter; and the activation process becomes kinetically limited. Dry aerosol diameter exerts a strong influence on activation time, with a power‐law exponent of 9/2. Kinetically limited activation occurs when the ratio of the activation and droplet residence times is greater than unity. The findings demonstrate that a …

Using Grounded Iceberg Wake Patterns To Interpret Catastrophic Flood Events In Southcentral Alaska, Jana K. Macinnis

All Master's Theses

Catastrophic flood events such as landslide tsunamis and jökulhlaups in glaciated areas can transport and strand icebergs, which obstruct the flow of floodwaters and leave a unique and recognizable grounded iceberg wake pattern in the sediment surface. Grounded iceberg wake patterns (GIWs) were identified at the two study areas in Southcentral Alaska; the outwash plain of a 1967 landslide tsunami at the Grewingk Glacier and proglacial lake, and the Matanuska River valley which experienced an unrecorded jökulhlaup in recent geological times. From these sites, 110 GIWs were identified through visual interpretation of lidar imagery and characterized by measuring their geometry, …

Spatial Patterns And Morphometric Evolution Of Sinkholes In Response To Watershed Hydrogeomorphology: Examples From A Karst Landscape In The Missouri Ozarks, Usa, Marcell Tóth

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Sinkholes are characteristic enclosed depressions with internal drainage connecting the surface and subsurface karst hydrologic system. Their morphological evolution involves gradual subsidence of the ground surface and hazardous collapses. Therefore, understanding sinkhole morphometry and linked spatial distribution is critical for managing geohazards in karst watersheds. Sinkhole occurrence shows spatial variability based on watershed geomorphological attributes, surficial hydrological patterns, hydrogeological and geological settings. The aim of this research is to investigate morphometric properties and distribution of sinkholes in the carbonate karst-dominated lands of Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri, USA. The specific objectives were to (1) identify sinkhole clusters based on …

A Nonstandard Exploration Of Approximate Identity And Unitization, Tong (Nicole) Wu

HMC Senior Theses

The goal of this senior thesis is to explore general nonstandard analysis and some possible applications to 𝐶^*-algebras in functional analysis. More specifically, we shall define an approximate identity of a 𝐶^*-algebra using nonstandard analysis and study nonstandard hulls of internal 𝐶^*-algebra in the context of different unitizations. We shall also prove a few results for ideals in 𝐶^*-algebra using nonstandard definitions of approximate identities. We shall also briefly discuss the history and developments of nonstandard analysis.

Supporting K-5 Computer Science Integration Through High-Quality Teacher Professional Development, Shanan Chappell Moots, Joanna K. Garner, Joseph A. Brobst, Melani Loney, Lisa Steffian, Jennifer Maeng

Center for Educational Partnerships Publications

Workforce development and education leaders have increasingly emphasized the need for high-quality computer science (CS) instruction for K-12 students. Though states have created and mandated the implementation of CS curriculum standards, few in-service teachers have been provided sufficient opportunities to develop CS pedagogical content knowledge and self-efficacy. This study evaluated the effect of a CS integration professional development (PD) program on K-5 teachers' perceptions of their capacity to teach CS and their implementation of CS-integrated lessons using a randomized controlled trial design. Treatment included an intensive online summer institute with school year follow-up. Results indicate statistically significant effects of the …

A Transdisciplinary Approach To Advancing Water Security And Public Health: The “Nurse + Engineer” Model For Achieving Sustainability In Wash Systems Using Community-Based Participatory Research, Daniel B. Oerther, Sarah Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Human health is linked to the health of the environment, a concept referred to as planetary health. As environmental challenges become increasingly complex, single-disciplinary approaches are insufficient to achieve sustainable solutions. This article presents a transdisciplinary framework, termed the "Nurse + Engineer" model, as a novel methodology for addressing complex problems at the nexus of environmental engineering and public health. The model integrates the technical design and systems-level thinking of environmental engineering with the community-based, patient-centered care of nursing. This work details the key lessons learned from the retrospective application of this framework to a series of multi-year, community-based participatory …

First Remi Experiments At A Cryogenic Ion Storage Ring, M. Schulz, F. Herrmann, W. Zhang, A. Dorn, M. Grieser, F. Grussie, H. Kreckel, O. Novotny, A. Wolf, T. Pfeifer, C. D. Schröter, R. Moshammer

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We have recorded double, triple, and quadruple coincidences between neutralized projectiles, recoiling target ions, and two electrons created in collisions of slow anions with neutral atoms. The experiments were performed at the cryogenic storage ring in Heidelberg. The recoil ions and ejected electrons were momentum-analyzed using a Reaction Microscope (ReMi) spectrometer. Various processes involving electron detachment from the projectile accompanied by various transitions in the target were investigated. Detachment without any transition in the target is qualitatively well described by a quasi-free electron model in the case of an Ar target. In detachment with single target ionization, no signatures of …

Environmental Engineers Develop Solutions To Problems Of Planetary Health: The Legacy Of Professor P. Aarne Vesilind, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The principal ethical obligation of the engineering profession, to "hold paramount the health, safety, and welfare of the public," has been challenged for decades. Professor P. Aarne Vesilind identified two primary deficiencies: an anthropocentric bias that values nature only instrumentally and the use of non-mandatory, aspirational language for environmental protection, which resulted in the exclusion of enforceable environmental canons. This paper argues that two recent developments provide a comprehensive response to Vesilind's recommendations for engineering ethics. First, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has redefined environmental engineering as "developing solutions to problems of planetary health." Second, Oerther proposed a …

Smartflow: A Communication-Efficient Sdn Framework For Cross-Silo Federated Learning, Osama Abu Hamdan, Hao Che, Engin Arslan, Md Arifuzzaman

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Cross-silo Federated Learning (FL) enables multiple institutions to collaboratively train machine learning models while preserving data privacy. In such settings, clients repeatedly exchange model weights with a central server, making the overall training time highly sensitive to network performance. However, conventional routing methods often fail to prevent congestion, leading to increased communication latency and prolonged training. Software-Defined Networking (SDN), which provides centralized and programmable control over network resources, offers a promising way to address this limitation. To this end, we propose SmartFLow, an SDN-based framework designed to enhance communication efficiency in cross-silo FL. SmartFLow dynamically adjusts routing paths in response …

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter, January 2026, University Of Northern Iowa. Iowa Waste Reduction Center.

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter

Contents:

--- Retirement Celebration: Jim Olson

Effectiveness Of Walleye Stocking In Winter Kill Lakes, Tyler Haus

Journal of Earth and Life Science

Winter kill events, marked by extensive fish mortality due to hypoxic conditions under the ice, are a common phenomenon in shallow eutrophic lakes, especially in the northern lakes in the northern United States. These events can drastically alter fish communities and often result in the elimination of top predators. Though these lakes will typically slowly bounce back to what they were in a couple of years. This study evaluates the effectiveness of walleye, Sander vitreus, stocking in lakes after a winter kill. For this study, four known winter kill lakes that are consistently stocked with walleye were studied. Pre- …

Assessing Urban–Rural Differences In Largemouth Bass Abundance In Minnesota, Jonathan Gates

Journal of Earth and Life Science

Urbanization can significantly alter freshwater ecosystems and influence sport fish populations. This study examined differences in largemouth bass Micropterus nigricans catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) between urban and rural lakes in Minnesota and evaluated temporal changes between 2000–2010 and 2011–2021. Forty lakes (20 urban, 20 rural) were selected using Minnesota Department of Natural Resources fisheries survey data. Lakes were classified using NLCD 2019 land cover data, with ≥10% developed land designated as urban. Nonparametric analyses (Wilcoxon rank-sum and signed-rank tests) were used to assess spatial and temporal differences in CPUE. Results showed that rural lakes had consistently higher median CPUE than urban lakes …

Neonicotinoid Bioaccumulation In Bluegill And Bullhead Within Lake Julia And Lake Zumwalde, Jake Stuber

Journal of Earth and Life Science

Brown Bullhead Ameiurus nebulosus, Yellow Bullhead Ameiurus natalis, and Bluegill Lepomis macrochirus are unique in their stark differences. Bullhead are scaleless bottom feeders that can tolerate high pollution and low O₂ conditions. In contrast, Bluegill are scaled, aggressive nesters and are less tolerant of high pollutants or low-oxygen conditions. Among these pollutants include a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids (hereafter referred to as neonics). Neonics are a class of insecticides primarily used within agriculture and pest management. Due to the effectiveness, application has escalated on a global scale. They have been well documented by many toxicology assessments. …

Indigenous Land Seizure & Environmental Injustice: Impacts Of Settler Colonialism, Lydia Moorman

Journal of Earth and Life Science

The fields of conservation and environmentalism prioritize ecosystem health, yet both emerged from western frameworks that displaced and criminalized Indigenous land stewardship. The idealization of “pristine wilderness” narratives served to justify the removal of Indigenous peoples from their homelands and erased millennia of sustainable land stewardship that had maintained ecological balance long before western conservation existed. These narratives not only misrepresented Indigenous relationship with land but also constructed a false dichotomy between humans and nature that positioned Indigenous presence as a threat rather than a source of ecological knowledge. Simultaneously, anthropogenic expansion; such as pipelines, mining, railroads, and other extractive …

Powering The Machine, Draining The Planet: Whether U.S. Environmental Law Is Equipped To Regulate The Energy And Water Demands Of Ai Data Centers, Michael Marcu

Journal of Earth and Life Science

Artificial intelligence (AI) data centers have become one of the United States' fastest-growing and least-regulated sources of environmental stress. In 2024 alone, U.S. data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity more than the entire nation of Pakistan and consumed an estimated 17 billion gallons of water (IEA, 2025; Berkeley Lab, 2024). By 2030, electricity demand from these facilities is projected to reach 426 TWh, a 133% increase in six years (Pew Research Center, 2025). This paper examines whether the existing U.S. environmental regulatory framework put by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), and the …

Using L1-Magic For Feature Enhancement And Reduced Redundancy In Hyperspectral Data, Ashley Alfred

Mathematics Dissertations

Hyperspectral imaging offers detailed spectral information, but achieving high spatial resolution typically requires large and expensive equipment. This study explores an alternative approach: enhancing low-quality hyperspectral bands using an L1-norm minimization technique known as L1-magic. The goal is to improve the utility of low-cost hardware by preserving discriminative features, promoting sparsity, and reducing spectral redundancy. We apply L1-magic to enhance low-quality bands and hypothesize that this method selectively amplifies key features while suppressing redundant information. Experimental results indicate that the enhanced bands approach the quality of high-resolution data, enabling robust feature extraction without reliance on high-end hyperspectral cameras.

Ultra-Low Noise Ion Detection For Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Searches, Karen E. Navarro

Physics Dissertations

Neutrinos are the most abundant particles in the universe that carry mass. Yet, we know very little about them since they are electrically neutral and interact weakly. A small instance after the Big Bang, an imbalance occurred that caused matter to be produced in greater quantities than antimatter. A leading candidate for this unexplained process is leptogenesis. Leptogenesis predicts that neutrinos are Majorana particles: a particle that is its own antiparticle. Today, particle detectors are being constructed to search for this property through the yet unobserved neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) . If observed, this would demonstrate that neutrinos are …

Applied Machine Learning In Mineral Prospectivity Mapping In The South Pass-Granite Mountains Of Wyoming, Carl D. York

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The South Pass-Granite Mountains, comprised of Archean to Tertiary rocks embedded with an Archean greenstone belt in Central Wyoming, have historically been mined for gold, iron, steel, and silver. Rare earth elements have been of increasing interest in the region and thus, several datasets have become available. Knowledge driven and data driven models are used in mineral prospectivity mapping with input data including geological mapping, geochemical data, geophysical (USGS Critical Mineral magnetic and gravity data), radiometric (U, Th, K) data and multispectral remote sensing data. Mineral prospectivity has seen a rapid improvement in recent years using advancements in machine learning …

Flow Regime Shifts And Channel Morphological Adjustments In Response To Changing Climate Patterns: Examples From Gasconade River, Missouri, Usa, Katherine E. Brand

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Recent changes in climate patterns due to anthropogenic inputs (i.e. greenhouse gases/CO₂) have caused alterations to precipitation events leading to altered flow regimes. Changes in the magnitude and frequency of flood events results in physical adjustments to river morphology, including changes in width and depth. As rivers experience more frequent and larger flood events, they accommodate by changing their morphological characteristics. The Gasconade River, a tributary of the Missouri River located in southcentral Missouri, USA, has exhibited recent patterns of acute bank erosion with limited understanding of its causes and effects on the river. This study aims to understand how …

Pursuer Evader Surveillance Game, Zijie Mu

Honors Theses

This thesis studies the pursuer evader surveillance game with a triangular obstacle in the short-term. In the game, the pursuer aims to maintain surveillance of the evader as long as possible while the evader aims to break surveillance in a finite time. We classify the player strategies into  ideal ones and best admissible ones. The outcome of the game is determined by line of sight. We reduce the 4D game to a 3D game with a boundary separating two different local regimes. When the evader starts inside the threshold, we show that there exists an admissible evader that maintains an …

Education And The Maternal Childcare Gap: Evidence From The Uk Covid-19 Pandemic, Lara Bakhaya

Honors Theses

This paper examines whether college education shapes working mothers’ access to remote work, flexible working, and childcare hours in the United Kingdom, and whether COVID-19 school closures amplified these inequalities. Using data from the UK Time Use Survey (2016–2021), a repeated cross-sectional diary dataset spanning the pre-pandemic period and five COVID-19 waves, this paper estimates weighted logistic and ordinary least squares regressions on a sample of married or cohabiting, employed mothers. School closures serve as a natural experiment, providing an exogenous shock to caregiving demands that affected all mothers simultaneously regardless of education level. College education significantly predicted working from …

Spillover Effects Of Medicare Advantage On Fee-For-Service Post-Acute Care Spending, Nyel Bangash

Honors Theses

Does the growth of Medicare Advantage reduce fee-for-service post-acute care spending through practice-pattern spillovers, or do observed spending differences primarily reflect favorable selection? Using a county-level panel of roughly 2,700 counties (2014–2023) and a two-way fixed effects specification, I find that a one percentage-point increase in MA penetration is associated with $9.54 less per-capita standardized FFS spending. Spending per episode falls while participation rates remain stable, consistent with practice-pattern spillovers rather than compositional changes from selection. Welfare indicators from County Health Rankings, CDC PLACES, and CMS Care Compare show no evidence that spending reductions harm health or care quality. The …

Net Carbonyl Ene Reactions Of Olefins With Aldehydes, Alexandra Mock

Honors Theses

Aldehydes and olefins react in the presence of base and TMSOTf to yield homoallylic alcohols. In this net ene reaction, TMSOTf acts as a Lewis acid to activate the aldehyde, leading to a strong oxygen-silicon bond that acts as a driving force in the reaction. In the proposed mechanism, the α-methylstyrene attacks the carbonyl carbon of the TMSOTf-activated aldehyde to produce a carbocationic intermediate. Elimination using a relatively bulky base (2,6-lutidine) provides the homoallylic alcohol. This reaction has proven robust in terms of the aldehyde and olefin scope.

Rockyou2024: What’S Your Password?, Yixuan Zhang

Honors Theses

Passwords remain a critical part of almost every account security system. As a result, password guessing attacks remain one of the most widespread yet profitable attacks possible. Setting a password resistant to attacks is thus an important task for account holders. In this paper, we use the RockYou2024 database, a collection of approximately 10 billion real-world passwords collected from data breaches, to analyze the characteristics of passwords found in real life. We start with basic statistical property analysis, such as length, distribution of digits and symbols, and proceed onto more complicated properties such as frequencies of combinations of characters, entropy …

Field-Scale Evaluation Of Satellite- Derived Vegetation Indices And Image Timing For In-Season Nitrogen Management In Corn, Ana Morales-Ona, Katsutoshi Mizuta, James J. Camberato, Robert Nielsen, Yuxin Miao, Davide Cammarano, German Mandrini, Daniel Quinn

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

Introduction: Traditional methods to determine the agronomic optimum nitrogen rate (AONR) for corn (Zea mays L.) rely on grain yield data, limiting in-season decision-making for nitrogen (N) management. Vegetation indices (VIs) derived from satellite imagery can serve as proxies for grain yield and help estimate in-season AONR, enabling timely sidedress applications. This study aimed to (1) quantify how VI–yield relationships vary during the vegetative period across fields with different tillage systems and crop residue; (2) determine whether VI–N response curves can be used to estimate AONR (AONRvi); and (3) assess the accuracy of AONRvi relative to yield-based AONR (AONRy). …

Ovipositional Behavior Of The Twig Girdler (Cerambycidae: Oncideres Cingulata) On Stems Of Mockernut Hickory (Carya Tomentosa) In Arkansas, R. Tumlison, L. Serviss

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

The Twig Girdler (Cerambycidae: Oncideres cingulata) is a long-horned beetle that girdles stems of certain species of trees to prepare a habitat for its offspring. The stems eventually die, break, and fall from the tree, but the beetle usually had already laid its eggs within the stems. Eggs are laid singly, almost always at growth rings or leaf bases. Because the space for the young to develop is finite, laying too many eggs could cause reproductive failure and too few eggs would be suboptimal. We hypothesized that the female laying eggs should be able to evaluate the stem and …