Digital Commons Network^™

A Hug For Humanity: Metamodernism And Masculinity On Television In Ted Lasso, Kennedy Lesley Koford

Theses and Dissertations

The Apple TV+ sports comedy Ted Lasso has been a hit among fans, who flock to the show and its positive messages. The show offers a refreshing tone, one that promotes positivity and optimism even when faced with the reality of a cynical world. By using the analytical perspective of metamodernism to understand its popularity, scholars and fans alike can gain a deeper understanding of core message of the show, which mimics the oscillation between the cynical and the sincere. Fundamental scholars in the emerging study of metamodernism, such as Robin Van Den Akker, Timotheus Vermeulen, and Alison Gibbons will …

Transforming Gps Points To Daily Activities Using Simultaneously Optimized Dbscan-Te Parameters, Gillian Michele Riches

Theses and Dissertations

With the recent upsurge in mental health concerns and ongoing isolation regulations brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to understand how an individual's daily travel behavior can affect their mental health. Before finding any correlations to mental health, researchers must first have individual travel behavior information: an accurate number of activities and locations of those activities. One way to obtain daily travel behavior information is through the interpretation of cellular Global Positioning System (GPS) data. Previous methods that interpret GPS data into travel behavior information have limitations. Specifically, rule-based algorithms are structured around subjective rule-based tests, clustering …

Are Changes In Muscle Blood Flow Associated With The Age-Related Decrease In Critical Power?, Abigail Dorff

Theses and Dissertations

Aging results in lower exercise tolerance, manifested as decreased Critical Power (PCRIT). Aging is also associated with reduced physical activity, decreased muscle mass, and altered muscle blood flow, all of which may contribute to the age-related decrease in PCRIT. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if the age-related decrease in PCRIT occurs independently of changes in physical activity and muscle mass and if it is related to impaired muscle blood flow. Methods: 10 Old (63.1 ± 2.5 years, 5 female and 5 male) and 10 Young (24.4 ± 4.0 years, 5 female and 5 male) physically active …

Forecasting Ride-Hailing Across Multiple Model Frameworks, Christopher Stephen Day

Theses and Dissertations

The advent of on-demand transport modes such as ride-hailing and microtransit has challenged forecasters to develop new methods of forecasting the use and impacts of such modes. In particular, there is some professional disagreement about the relative role of activity-based transportation behavior models -- which have detailed understanding of the person making a trip and its purpose -- and multi-agent demand simulations which may have a better understanding of the availability and service characteristics of on-demand services. A particular question surrounds how the relative strengths of these two approaches might be successfully paired in practice. Using daily plans generated by …

University Inclusion Index: Inclusion At Brigham Young University, Rachel Zierenberg, Brigit Cooper, Amanda Foltz

Student Works

In order to investigate inclusion specifically at Brigham Young University (BYU), we measured students’ perception of belonging and representation through the use of our University Inclusion Index (UII). The UII is a measure of belonging and representation with 16 items on a 5-point Likert scale. This measure was distributed to a total sample of 171 BYU students, 60 of whom were self-identified minority students. The UII had high reliability (α = .92), high validity, and high internal consistency (≥ .55). The UII reports high face validity with 97% of respondents identifying inclusion at BYU. Factor analysis revealed one primary factor, …

Methods For Single-Cell And Low-Input Proteomics, Yiran Liang

Theses and Dissertations

Single-Cell Proteomics (SCP) can provide unique insights into biological processes by resolving heterogeneity that is obscured by bulk measurements. Gains in the overall sensitivity and proteome coverage through improvements in sample processing and analysis increase the information content obtained from each cell, particularly for less abundant proteins. In addition to achieving in-depth proteome coverage from single cells, higher throughput measurements enable large-scale and statistically significant features within single cell populations. This dissertation focuses on method development to improve the sensitivity and throughput of SCP based on the nanoPOTS (nanodroplet Processing in One pot for Trace Samples) platform. The methods discussed …

Fault Tolerant Robotics Using Active Diagnosis Of Partially Observable Systems And Optimized Path Planning For Underwater Message Ferrying, Devon M. Webb

Theses and Dissertations

Underwater robotic vehicles are used in a variety of environments that would be dangerous for humans. For these vehicles to be successful, they need to be tolerant of a variety of internal and external faults. To be resilient to internal faults, the system must be capable of determining the source of faulty behavior. However many different faults within a robotic vehicle can create identical faulty behavior, which makes the vehicles impossible to diagnose using conventional methods. I propose a novel active diagnosis method for differentiating between faults that would otherwise have identical behavior. I apply this method to a communication …

Sitting Time And Insulin Resistance In 6,931 United States Adults: The Role Of Abdominal Adiposity, Kayla Marie Parker

Theses and Dissertations

This cross-sectional investigation of 6,931 U.S. adults examined the relationship between sitting time and insulin resistance. A primary objective was to evaluate how this relationship was mediated by the following variables: age, sex, race, year of assessment, cigarette smoking, physical activity, body mass index (BMI), and waist circumference. Self-reported sitting time, measured in minutes per day, was the exposure variable. Insulin resistance, indexed by the homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), was the outcome variable. Data were used from the 2011-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Results showed a strong, positive association between sitting time and insulin …

Review Of The Hidden Inequities In Labor-Based Contract Grading, By Ellen C. Carillo, Current Arguments In Composition, 2021, Amanda Sladek

Journal of Response to Writing

This review considers Ellen C. Carillo's The Hidden Inequities in Labor-Based Contract Grading, an important contribution that examines labor-based grading contracts through a disability studies lens.

Feedback As Boundary Object: Intersections Of Writing, Response, And Research, Lindsey Harding, Joshua King, Anya Bonanno, Joseph Powell

Journal of Response to Writing

While a great deal is known about instructor response to student writing—from commenting practices to student perceptions—less is known about how feedback impacts students’ writing and writerly development. While we set out to study students’ explicit engagement with written instructor feedback, our initial experimental design was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, we describe the dialogic collaborative process that emerged as we considered both the data we were able to collect and, in turn, feedback anew. This article proposes that feedback on student writing is a boundary object which affords those interacting with it the opportunity for collaboration despite the …

“I Suppose An Island Dweller Should Expect It To Be So”: The Contradiction And Drama Of Maternity And Islands In Caleb’S Crossing, Shayla Frandsen

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Islands have a long tradition of capturing human imagination and functioning as a space that nurtures both magic and mystery. As geographic locations, they seem to avoid easy taxonomy even while behaving easily categorizable: they exist as tourist fantasies separate from everyday landscape even while many operate as an othered land that is still “safe” enough to visit. They are isolated yet capable of nurturing strong cultural identity. They also act as autonomous entities while still being interconnected within larger natural structures, coastlines, and waterways. In these ways and more islands navigate as border spaces of inherent contradiction—contradictions which are …

Full Issue

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

The Only Way Out Is Through: Community, Death, And The Desacralization Of Trauma In George Saunders’ Lincoln In The Bardo, Josey Gardner

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

The arrival of George Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo as yet another trauma narrative is not surprising. What began as a desire for representation of trauma in media and literature has morphed into an obsession in which trauma is the gold standard. Upon becoming so, trauma is inevitably placed upon a pedestal—the shining object that all other decisions are measured against and based upon. Its placement on this pedestal marks the “sacralization” of trauma. However, Lincoln in the Bardo fills a unique niche in the current portrayals of trauma found in popular media by seeking to minimize its importance …

Interconnected Precarity: A Contemporary Reframing Of Bodily And Earthly Health In Wendell Berry's The Unsettling Of America: Culture And Agriculture, Abigail Pinegar

Theses and Dissertations

Published in 1977, Wendell Berry's book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture gained widespread popularity. More than half a century later, many of the notions of the body and the earth presented in its seventh chapter, "The Body and the Earth," remain relevant and important for environmental discourse today. Berry's discussion of the body and the earth examines their mutuality and codependence from an ontological, theological, agricultural, and even biological perspective. The coupling of this text with Judith Butler's, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? contemporizes his argument through its more socio-political and philosophical claims regarding life and …

Reservoir Computing Solutions For Streamflow Modeling And Prediction In Real World Scenarios, Paden Allsup

Undergraduate Honors Theses

With severe drought continuing in the western United States and the effects of climate change becoming more apparent across the world, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to predict the impact of extreme weather events like storms, droughts, and fires on streamflow dynamics. This includes flow regime as well as biogeochemical behavior of river systems and their watersheds. This project explores the use of Echo State Networks (ESN), a subset of Reservoir Computing, on modeling and predicting streamflow variability with a focus on biogeochemical patterns. In this project ESNs are tested and compared in the hope of creating …

The Development Of A Genomic Toolbox For Studying The Evolutionary Genetics Of Reptilian Lungs Using The Chicken Model, Logan Thomas Edvalson

Theses and Dissertations

There is a vast diversity in tetrapod lung branching morphology. Phylogenetically, much of the pulmonary diversity among vertebrates appears to arise from the way epithelial tubes branch or form saccular (cyst) structures. Fgf10 activity has been shown to play a critical role in regulating branch versus cyst morphology. We hypothesize that the species-specific differences in lung morphology may be primarily due to species-specific differences in Fgf10 expression. To test this hypothesis, we have performed bioinformatic analyses on the Fgf10 locus and have identified a conserved 11 kb noncoding region that potentially contains the Fgf10 lung enhancer. We are taking a …

Mindful Musicians: Trait Mindfulness, Deliberate Practice, Anxiety And Depression In College Musicians, Sally S. Wynn

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Background. Mindfulness is understood as a capacity to cultivate moment-to-moment awareness with a sense of nonjudgement, curiosity, and kindness. Anxiety and depression are prevalent in the undergraduate musician population, despite positive effects on mental health that are often associated with listening to music. This study explored factors of music practice including instrument category, practice time, and the use of deliberate practice techniques. Our objective was to test the relationships between dispositional mindfulness, musicianship, and mental health among college instrumental musicians. I hypothesized first, that dispositional mindfulness would be positively associated with musicianship; second, that mindfulness would be negatively associated with …

Front Matter, Vol. 82 No. 3

Western North American Naturalist

No abstract provided.

Circadian Misalignment And Childhood Obesity: An Unexplored Target For Intervention And Treatment, Mason Pilling

Student Works

Childhood obesity is a pandemic affecting almost 40 million individuals aged 5-18 globally. Many current interventions are relatively successful at treating childhood obesity, yet the rate of childhood obesity continues to increase from year to year, and current intervention methods are struggling to keep up. Mounting evidence suggests that sleep may be a crucial mechanism for understanding and treating obesity, yet sleep still remains a relatively unexplored target for intervention. Circadian misalignment, a measure of the difference between the body’s preferred sleep timing and actual bed and wake times, has been almost completely ignored in the literature, despite preliminary findings …

A Holocene Record Of Vegetation Change And Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreaks At Lake Of The Woods, Montana, Usa, Jennifer H. Watt, Andrea R. Brunelle, Simon Brewer, Barbara J. Bentz, Jesse Morris, R. Justin Derose

Western North American Naturalist

Recent mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreaks have been characterized as unprecedented largely in the absence of information about their occurrence prior to historical documentation. The ability to reconstruct presettlement outbreaks from sediment cores requires the identification and validation of appropriate proxies. In this paper, we provide a Holocene record of vegetation change indicating putative mountain pine beetle outbreaks in a lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta)/mixed-conifer forest at Lake of the Woods, Montana. Using a normalized difference pollen index, we positively identified postsettlement mountain pine beetle outbreaks, which served as calibration points for identifying other outbreaks through …

Dating App Facilitated Sexual Assault: A Retrospective Review Of Sexual Assault Medical Forensic Examination Charts, Julie L. Valentine, Leslie W. Miles, Kristen Mella Hamblin, Aubrey Worthen Gibbons

Faculty Publications

Dating app facilitated sexual assault (DAppSA) is a concerning phenomenon with minimal published research. This retrospective study explored if DAppSAs were different than other sexual assaults (SAs) committed by acquaintances through a review of 3,413 sexual assault medical forensic examination (SAMFE) charts from 2017 to 2020 in a Mountain West state in the United States. Routine Activities Theory and Confluence Model of sexual aggression provided the theoretical framework for the study. Inclusion criteria for DAppSA cases included (1) victim was 14 years of age or older; (2) victim indicated meeting the perpetrator on a dating app; (3) SA occurred at …

Barrier Or Benefit? Media Use During Infant Feedings, Shannon Haddock

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

How To Make Fomo Work For You, Lauren Hansen

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Family Outcomes And Resilience In Adult Children Of Late-Life Divorce, Kaitlyn Larsen Dyshkant

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Caring For Your Marriage When Your Child Has Disabilities, Meghan Cawley

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Devices: Tools Or Vices?, Rebekah Case

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Loving Your Partner Enough To Give Them Space, Dallie Johnson

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Mindfulness In University Students: A Tool For Managing Stress, Lyndsey Kunzler

Family Perspectives

Mindfulness can be a meaningful practice across different stages of life: it can help improve well-being for young children (Becker & Whitaker, 2018; Esmaeilian et al., 2018; Li et al., 2019), adolescents (Leavitt et al., 2020; Oppo et al., 2019), and adults (Berk et al., 2018; Pierson et al., 2019). Mindfulness is the act of clearing the mind, being present, and paying attention with the intent to improve well-being (Greeson et al., 2014). Mindfulness began as a common Buddhist practice, but in the 1970s Jon Kabat-Zinn created mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) in an attempt to aid mental health issues (Greeson …

Preparation And Engagement Throughout Cultural Immersion Experiences: Helping Nursing Students Gain Awareness, Erin Minhondo, Karen H. De La Cruz

Student Works

Objectives: This review explores evidence-based methods of increasing cultural awareness in pre-licensure nursing students during cultural immersion experiences (CIEs).

Design: A literature review was conducted in March of 2022.

Data sources: Databases employed included CINAHL and MEDLINE. The search strategy included publication dates between 2017 and 2022, English-only transcripts, and full-text references from academic journals, dissertations, and books.

Review methods: The review assessed for quality by searching relevant articles for bias and ensuring each study was from an accredited journal. Editorials and opinion pieces were omitted.

Results: Three major themes emerged from the literature including pre-departure preparation, in- country …

Parental Reports Of Vaccine Information Statement Usage In Utah, Angela T. Jacobs

Theses and Dissertations

Objective: Little is known about the parental perception of usage and delivery of Vaccine Information Statements (VISs), the timing of VIS delivery, parent opportunity to read VISs, and time for discussing content of VISs with providers. Parental reports of dissemination and use of VISs are explored in this study, including parental use, experience, and perceptions. Method: Data for this pilot cross-sectional descriptive study were collected via an online survey. The instrument consisted of 21questions including five demographic questions, 11 questions about VIS distribution, four questions about parental use and understanding of VISs, and one open-ended question about finding information about …