Digital Commons Network^™

Ecological Analyses Of Macroinvertebrate And Fish Species In Six Streams On A Louisiana Military Base From 2001 To 2019, Danielle Joerger, Marsha Williams, Lance Williams

Open Water Journal

An in-depth ecological analysis of how and why the aquatic community changes over time was conducted for 6 streams on the Fort Polk military base in Louisiana using data collected from 2001 to 2019. Fort Polk is a unique location as nineteen first-order streams are located on the premises belonging to three separate drainages. The primary goal was to determine whether temporal or between-drainage variation has a larger effect on community structure. To accomplish this the effects of disturbance on fish and macroinvertebrate assemblages was determined temporally and between drainages. Several hypotheses were drawn from this: 1) temporally, assemblages exhibit …

Drought In The West: Embedded Water Demand Stationarity Compromises System Vulnerability Analysis, Ryan C. Johnson, Margaret Wolf, Logan Jamison, Steven Burian, Carlos A. Oroza, Paul D. Brooks, Courtenay Strong, Jesse Stewart, Tracie Kirkham

Open Water Journal

Hydrological drought is challenging managers of western U.S. snowpack-dependent urban water systems. Snowpack, reservoir storage, streamflow dynamics, and demand are routinely assessed to guide water system management and operations, assuming per-capita demand stationarity. Using the Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities and two drought scenarios, we investigate water system vulnerability differences between unchanging industry per-capita forecasting methods and dynamic demands driven by hydro-climate-demand relationships. The introduction of dynamic demands estimates a 42% reduction in system vulnerability during supply limiting conditions than the industry methods. These modeled water use behaviors also suggest a reduction in the peak timing and volume …

Discussion Guide For Using Data From The Student Risk Screening Scale - Internalizing And Externalizing: A Qualitative Study, Justina Grubb

Theses and Dissertations

School-wide screening can be used to effectively identify students within schools struggling with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD), so that school teams can implement instructional strategies and interventions to provide early and timely supports for all students. While research has explored many aspects of screening within schools, the extant research lacks studies reviewing screening data interpretation process. This research study was designed to investigate how school teams could use a discussion guide to facilitate using their screening data. This involved having school leadership teams answer a series of guiding questions about data from the Student Risk Screening Scale -- Internalizing …

The Associations Of Extraversion And Heart Rate Variability, Rachel Marie Channell

Theses and Dissertations

Heart rate variability as a measure of cardiovascular health and autonomic activity correlates with psychological resiliency but is not consistently related to trait extraversion, a strong predictor of emotional well-being. This study intends to clarify research findings about trait extraversion and heart rate variability by identifying the context and nature of the relationship between extraversion and physiological responses. As a secondary analysis of data from a study comparing biofeedback and compassionate breathing, extraversion scores were compared with heart rate variability data at three different points including prior to a stressor, during exposure to a stressor, and recovery to a stressor …

A Simple Method For Restraint Of Small Mammals For Sampling Blood Or Tissue In The Field, John L. Orrock

Western North American Naturalist

Because wild rodents often harbor zoonotic pathogens that can be transmitted via saliva, urine, or feces (e.g., hantaviruses), researchers can be at risk when collecting rodent blood or tissue samples that are required for innumerable assays (e.g., infection status, hormone assays, etc.). I describe how inexpensive, readily available 50-mL centrifuge tubes can be easily modified to create a handling tube for the safe restraint of small rodents while a blood and/or tissue sample is collected from the tail. This approach has been used to successfully sample thousands of deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), the primary host for Sin Nombre …

Musculoskeletal Injuries In The Austere Setting: A Pilot Training For Student Nurses, Diego H. González

Student Works

Registered Nurses (RNs) make up the largest proportion of healthcare workers in the United States. As such, RNs are frequently involved in responding to emergencies in austere settings such as natural disasters and wilderness environments. Many injuries in the austere setting are categorized as musculoskeletal. Currently, nursing programs do not provide any curricular training on austere medicine. This leaves nurses unprepared to face the challenge of responding to emergencies in the austere environment.

Purpose: Create and pilot test an effective training for a nursing program at a private university in the Western United States on musculoskeletal injuries in the austere …

Publishing Metrics In Arl Libraries, Cory L. Nimer

Faculty Publications

This presentation examines the applicability of bibliometrics for assessing the scholarship of faculty librarians at American research universities. This review includes a comparison of publication rates in academic disciplines and librarianship, as well as between areas within librarianship. It concludes by suggesting the importance of understanding disciplinary norms when considering using publishing statistics in retention, tenure, and promotion decisions.

Presentation was originally made at the Utah Library Association annual meeting in 2021.

Professional Development And Change In Teachers' Beliefs And Practice For Teaching English Language Learners, Kerong Wu

Theses and Dissertations

To provide quality education to all students, including ELLs, teachers need professional development designed and enacted according to best practice. However, a common problem for professional development is that teachers' practices often do not change. Implemented through the partnership collaboration with university, education, and public school faculty, the professional development designed in this study focused on educating teachers about needed content and engaging them in ways that would increase the likelihood they would enact such practices in their classrooms (Desimone, 2009; Opfer & Pedder, 2011; Penuel et al., 2007). The professional development program comprised six courses that adhered to the …

The Effect Of Depression, Anxiety, And Stress On Heart Rate Variability During Self-Critical And Self-Compassionate Exercises, Derek C. Bartlett

Theses and Dissertations

The cognitions of individuals who experience symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress have been well documented, but their physiological reactions have not. The present study examines the physiological reactions of individuals with elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and stress during a self-critical and self-compassionate writing exercise to see if there is a difference in comparison to healthy participants. This study is a secondary analysis of data that was collected from a randomized controlled trial where participants followed a protocol. This protocol consisted of a 5-minute baseline, a 10-minute breathing exercise or nature video, 5-minutes of a self-critical writing exercise, 5-minutes …

The Utah Covid-19 Digital Collection: Best Practices For Born-Digital, Crowdsourced Collections, Jeremy Myntti, Anna Neatrour, Rachel Wittmann

Faculty Publications

“Traditionally archivists collected material years following an event. This is no longer the case. Digital content and documenting current events both require information specialists to act quickly and be involved in the initial development of potential collections to ensure they are identified, described, and preserved for future retrieval.”

Effects Of Psychosocial Support Interventions On Survival In Inpatient And Outpatient Healthcare Settings: A Meta-Analysis Of 106 Randomized Controlled Trials, Connor Workman, Caleb Andrews, Bonnie Barton, Matthew Cook, Ryan Layton, Alexandra Morrey, Devin Petersen, Julianne Holt-Lunstad

Faculty Publications

Background

Hospitals, clinics, and health organizations have provided psychosocial support interventions for medical patients to supplement curative care. Prior reviews of interventions augmenting psychosocial support in medical settings have reported mixed outcomes. This meta-analysis addresses the questions of how effective are psychosocial support interventions in improving patient survival and which potential moderating features are associated with greater effectiveness.

Methods and findings

We evaluated randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of psychosocial support interventions in inpatient and outpatient healthcare settings reporting survival data, including studies reporting disease-related or all-cause mortality. Literature searches included studies reported January 1980 through October 2020 accessed from Embase, …

Very Young Child Survivors Of Parent Suicide: Perspectives On Children's Literature For Bibliotherapy, Cortland L. Watson

Theses and Dissertations

The death of a parent by suicide is especially traumatic. Researchers estimate the number of children in the United States annually who experience their parent's suicide ranges from 7,000 to 30,000. These child survivors experience more complicated grief as compared to children bereaved by a parent's non-suicidal death. In particular, very young children have difficulty understanding that their parent completed suicide. Across time they struggle with confusion and intense emotions associated with their parent's suicide. Due to the stigma associated with suicide, feelings of guilt, and intense grief, surviving family members avoid talking about the suicide. Young children are often …

Effects Of Psychosocial Support Interventions On Survival In Inpatient And Outpatient Healthcare Settings: A Meta-Analysis Of 106 Randomized Controlled Trials, Timothy B. Smith, Julianne Holt-Lunstad

Faculty Publications

We evaluated randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of psychosocial support interventions in inpatient and outpatient healthcare settings reporting survival data, including studies reporting disease-related or all-cause mortality. LOdds ratio (OR) and hazard ratio (HR) data were analyzed separately using random effects weighted models. Of 42,054 studies searched, 106 RCTs including 40,280 patients met inclusion criteria. Across 87 RCTs reporting data for discrete time periods, the average was OR = 1.20 (95% CI = 1.09 to 1.31, p < 0.001), indicating a 20% increased likelihood of survival among patients receiving psychosocial support compared to control groups receiving standard medical care. Among those studies, psychosocial interventions explicitly promoting health behaviors yielded improved likelihood of survival, whereas interventions without that primary focus did not. Across 22 RCTs reporting survival time, the average was HR = 1.29 (95% CI = 1.12 to 1.49, p < 0.001), indicating a 29% increased probability of survival over time among intervention recipients compared to controls. Among those studies, meta-regressions identified 3 moderating variables: control group type, patient disease severity, and risk of research bias. Studies with patients having relatively greater disease severity tended to yield smaller gains in survival time relative to control groups. In this meta-analysis, OR data indicated that psychosocial behavioral support interventions promoting patient motivation/coping to engage in health behaviors improved patient survival, but interventions focusing primarily on patients’ social or emotional outcomes did not prolong life. HR data indicated that psychosocial interventions, predominantly focused on social or emotional outcomes, improved survival but yielded similar effects to health information/classes and were less effective among patients with apparently greater disease severity.

Exploring The Performance Impacts Of Harmful Fpga Configurations, Tanner Gaskin

Theses and Dissertations

In this work a new technique for accelerating the aging of FPGA devices is proposed and demonstrated. The proposed technique uses harmful configurations (short circuits) to accelerate the aging process on targeted portions of an FPGA chip. A testbed is developed for the purpose of measuring FPGA degradation. Using this testbed it is shown that implementing thousands of short circuits in FPGA fabric generates enough heat to cause significant damage to the chip, reducing switching speeds by up to 8%. It is also demonstrated that different parts of the FPGA fabric can be aged at different rates, with some parts …

Grace, Legalism, And Life Outlook In Lds Students, Justin Brent Top

Theses and Dissertations

Intrinsic Spirituality has been linked to lower rates of depression and anxiety and higher positive mental functioning (Pargament, Exline & Jones, 2013). This may be due in part to beliefs which foster values that are important to positive outlook, such as faith, forgiveness, humility, love and community. It is also possible for strongly religious individuals to have maladaptive beliefs that may be problematic for their happiness and adjustment. Understanding how beliefs influence mental health can be helpful to therapists; particularly to those who deal with religious clients who are heavily influenced by their spiritual beliefs. This study looks at the …

Cognitive Empathy And Longitudinal Changes In Temporo-Parietal Junction Thickness In Schizophrenia, Derin J. Cobia, Tatiana Karpouzian-Rogers, Julie Petersen, Lei Wang, Vijay A. Mittal, John G. Csernansky, Matthew J. Smith

Faculty Publications

Objective: Deficits in cognitive empathy are well-documented in individuals with schizophrenia and are related to reduced community functioning. The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is closely linked to cognitive empathy. We compared the relationship between baseline cognitive empathy and changes in TPJ thickness over 24 months between individuals with schizophrenia and healthy controls. Methods: Individuals with schizophrenia (n = 29) and healthy controls (n = 26) completed a cognitive empathy task and underwent structural neuroimaging at baseline and approximately 24 months later. Symmetrized percent change scores were calculated for right and left TPJ, as well as whole-brain volume, and compared between groups. …

Pyrolysis Kinetics Of Wildland Vegetation Using Model-Fitting Methods, Ellie Amini, Mohammad-Saeed Safdari, Nathan Johnson Brigham, David R. Weise, Thomas H. Fletcher

Faculty Publications

Slow-heating pyrolysis experiments of 14 plant species native to forests in the southern United States were conducted in a TGA to find the kinetic parameters for slow pyrolysis of all live and air-dried plant samples. Kinetic coefficients were determined from the data using model-fitting methods, resulting in single kinetic parameters for the entire pyrolysis process which can be used by wildland fire modelers. The model forms explored here are a simple one-step model and single and multiple reaction distributed activation energy (DAE) models. The mass loss and derivative mass loss data were fitted simultaneously at heating rates of 10, 20, …

Brand Activism And Gender: Nike As A Case Study, Kirsten Rasmussen

Theses and Dissertations

Nike is a prominent company that engages in brand activism, a marketing approach wherein they brand themselves as socially progressive by adopting public stances on controversial social issues. Because Nike resides at the intersection of media and sports, both of which are institutions that gender plays an important role in, an exploration of how Nike constructs gender in its commercials may illuminate the authenticity of its brand activism and progressive politics. Through a content analysis of 131 commercials released by Nike in the past decade, I explore whether their reputation as a socially progressive company extends to genuinely diverse and …

Effects Of Elk And Bison Herbivory On Narrowleaf Cottonwood, Linda C. Zeigenfuss, Kathryn A. Schoenecker

Western North American Naturalist

Ungulate browsing influences the structure and composition of woody plant communities, including species composition and biomass production as well as age distribution, recruitment, and mortality. We evaluated effects of elk and bison herbivory on narrowleaf cottonwood (Populus angustifolia) communities in a semiarid ecosystem in southern Colorado. Cottonwoods in this ecosystem have been aged at ≥300 years old and are among the oldest cottonwood trees in North America. We compared browsing intensity and structural and productivity responses of cottonwood to ungulate herbivory. We compared responses in sites with elk and bison, sites with elk but no bison, and sites …

Front Matter, Vol. 81 No. 1

Western North American Naturalist

No abstract provided.

End Matter, Vol. 81 No.1

Western North American Naturalist

No abstract provided.

Estimating Abundance Of Desert Mule Deer Using Fecal Dna–Based Capture-Recapture, Stephen S. Pfeiler, Mary M. Conner, Jane S. Mckeever, Rachel S. Crowhurst, Clinton W. Epps, Gerald P. Mulcahy, Erin P. Meredith, Thomas R. Stephenson

Western North American Naturalist

Wildlife conservationists and managers often need to estimate abundance and demographic parameters to monitor the status of populations, and to ensure that these populations are meeting management goals. DNA capture-recapture surveys have become increasingly common in situations where physical surveys are consistently difficult or counts are small or variable. Desert mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus eremicus) inhabit rugged terrain, occur at low population densities, and demonstrate cryptic behaviors, making monitoring and assessing population status difficult. We assessed the effectiveness of a fecal DNA–based capture-recapture method for estimating abundance and survival of desert mule deer. We designed and implemented a …

Seasonal Activity And Diets Of Bats At Uranium Mines And Adjacent Areas Near The Grand Canyon, Ernest W. Valdez, Mollie K. Hanttula, Jo Ellen Hinck

Western North American Naturalist

Little information exists on the habitat use and feeding ecology of insectivorous bats in arid ecosystems, especially at and near uranium mines in northern Arizona, within the Grand Canyon watershed. In 2015–2016, we conducted mist-netting, nightly acoustic monitoring (>1 year), and diet analyses of bats, as well as insect sampling, at 2 uranium mines (Pinenut and Arizona 1) with water containment ponds. Because of physical barriers and limited general access to areas within the mine yard, mist-netting was limited to outside of the perimeter fence and away from the containment ponds. Mist-netting also occurred at 2 nearby sites that …

Facilitating Effective Utilization Of Water Science Research Among Emergency Flood Responders, Whitney E. Henson, Richard Garth, Christopher Franklin

Open Water Journal

Emergency management practitioners, at all hierarchical levels, consider a communication gap to exist between the critical applied knowledge and understanding among emergency first responders (i.e., in the "social cloud" domain) of the scientific data and derived information available from water science research (i.e., in the "science cloud" domain). We posit that this communication gap and information transparency (i.e., synthesis) does not represent an engineering or hydrologic science problem but rather a translation and interpretation problem. The keys to understanding and resolving this chasm are efficiently and effectively sorting, organizing and synthesizing scientific information into useable, "personalized" packets for first responders …

Google Earth Engine Tools For Long-Term Spatiotemporal Monitoring Of Chlorophyll-A Concentrations, Anna Cardall, Kaylee Brook Tanner, Gustavious Paul Williams

Open Water Journal

We present a set of Google Earth Engine (GEE) tools to process long-term satellite imagery to analyze the time history of algal concentrations in a lake or reservoir. We demonstrate these tools with a case study on Utah Lake, Utah, USA. Our tools collect and process Landsat surface reflectance images from three different Landsat missions: Landsat 5, Landsat 7, and Landsat 8. These satellites represent data from 1984 until the present at 16-day intervals: over 1,000 images, though not all images are usable due to weather, ice, and other issues. We present the GEE commands or tools to mask these …

Design And Development Of A Tethys Framework Web Application To Elucidate The Hydroshare.Org Application Programmer Interface, Abhishek Amalaraj, Daniel P. Ames

Open Water Journal

In recent years, data and file sharing have advanced significantly, opening doors for engineers from all over the world to stay connected with each other and share data, models, scripts and other information required for scientific and engineering purposes. HydroShare (www.hydroshare.org) was developed by a consortium of universities sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a means for improving data and model sharing. Originally released in 2014, and continually updated since that time, HydroShare has proven to be a valuable resource for a growing number of active users in the field of water resources and environmental research. …

Tapering Buprenorphine, Alexis Diane Snyder

Student Works

Opioid use disorder (OUD) is increasing in incidence in the United States. Buprenorphine is the mainstay of medication-assisted treatment for OUD. Nurse practitioners play an essential role in solving the opioid epidemic and are increasingly relied on to prescribe buprenorphine. Even though buprenorphine is considered a long-term therapy, many patients request to taper off the drug. Evidence suggests that tapering from buprenorphine is frequently unsuccessful and remains as a challenge. The purpose of this article is to provide the best available evidence regarding the taper of buprenorphine in patients with OUD. Considering a buprenorphine taper should begin by evaluating if …

Design And Development Of A Web Mapping Prototype For Participatory Water Quality Mapping, Austin Adkison, John D. Morgan, Dallas Snider, Matthew Schwartz

Open Water Journal

Citizen science is becoming more and more prominent in everyday life. With this growth in the participation and contribution of scientific research comes an ever-increasing amount of data and findings. The collection of water quality data is just one example out of a plethora that exists. While these types of data are being collected, there are very few open options that allow users to engage with said data. Further, with the continuous evolution of technology and the general public coming to understand how earth feature representations in a spatial format, we see the emergence of web mapping and ways to …

Exploring The Physical Attributes Of 21st Century Large Dams: A Descriptive Study From Ecological And Sustainability Perspectives, Atal Ahmadzai

Open Water Journal

In response to growing energy needs and emerging water insecurity, countries around the world have resorted to building dams of unprecedented size. This dynamism emerged following a global consensus at the end of the 20th century that vowed to transform the large dam industry into one that was sustainable and ecologically sensitive. The consensus evolved due to years of popular anti-dam activism on a global scale and the emergence of new knowledge on various aspects of large dams. Although the number of large dams built has sustained its descending pattern that has initiated in the late 1970s, hundreds of dams …

Low Immunization Rates In The United States, Asia Haslam, Harper Forsgren

Ballard Brief

Vaccination hesitancy has been a concern for some time in the United States, but it is an issue that has become increasingly prevalent in the past 20 years. This hesitancy and mistrust of vaccinations has translated into lowered immunization rates for children and adults. The reduction in vaccination rates is driven mainly by concerns over safety, perpetuation of misinformation about vaccinations, and the increased polarization of immunizations in the United States. Low vaccination rates can cause serious consequences including re-emergence of dangerous diseases, economic consequences for communities. and furthered perpetuation of political divides. The US government and many public health …