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Comparative Civilizations Review

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Son Preference In India, Susan May Watts

Ballard Brief

Son preference, based on the belief that sons are more valuable than daughters, creates environments where girls are neglected and discriminated against all over the world. India has one of the strongest cultures of son preference, as evidenced by its abnormal sex ratio at birth (SRB) of 110 boys born for every 100 girls. Son preference in India is caused by cultural norms placing sons in positions of importance, as sons are tasked with performing funeral rites for parents, supporting parents financially, and taking care of their parents in their old age. Additionally, having daughters is a financial burden on …

Macintosh Type / Creator Codes: Improving Identification Of Files From Macos Classic, Tyler Thorsted

Faculty Publications

Working with Macintosh files from the 1980 to early 2000’s can be challenging as they are often on difficult to access disks, unique encoding, have resource forks, and often don’t use extensions. Identification of files from a Macintosh formatted disk can be accomplished with identification methods such as PRONOM, but what if those standard methods come up empty or are misleading? This paper investigates a method of identification which can provide better results compared to existing methods. The Macintosh operating system used special extended attribute codes to not only identify the file type, but also the original creating application. Called …

A Descriptive Study On Holistic Nursing Education: Student Perspectives On Integrating Mindfulness, Spirituality, And Professionalism, Sara P. Prescott Student Nurse, Adrianna L. Watson Phd, Rn, Ccrn, Tcrn, Chelsey D. Young Msn, Rn, Carly Peterson Msn, Aprn, Nnp-Bc, Doctoral Candidate, Daphne Thomas Dnp, Rn, Chse, Cne, Cnml, Cen, Matthew Anderson Dnp, Aprn, Fnp-C, Samuel B. Watson M.A., Doctoral Candidate

Student Works

Background: Mindfulness has gained prominence in education as a method for enhancing student well-being and learning, yet its integration into nursing curricula remains underexplored. Student lived experiences are essential to understanding the potential benefits and challenges of mindful nursing practice.

Aim: To explore the lived experiences of undergraduate nursing students who practice mindfulness as it relates to nursing education.

Methods: This was a qualitative descriptive phenomenological study. Data was collected using semi-structured Zoom interviews. Recruitment used word of mouth and snowball sampling. Out of 80 applicants, 17 undergraduate nursing students were interviewed until data saturation was achieved. Data were analyzed …

Analysis Of Isotopic Effects On Hydrogen Oxidation, Jacob Carter Wilde

Theses and Dissertations

Tritium generation presents a significant hazard during operation of nuclear reactors and necessitates safety precautions in the case of a combustion incident. Accurate kinetic models should inform these safety precautions, however, reliable tritium data do not exist to generate such models. This work focuses on laminar flame speed, which is an important component of kinetic models. Current estimates based on established kinetic theories and experimental measurements of the other isotopes of hydrogen predict tritium to have a flame speed approximately 70% that of standard protium over a broad range of stoichiometries at one atmosphere in air. These estimates are based …

Geology Of Sinai Tholus, Thaumasia Plateau, Mars, Haley Mosher

Theses and Dissertations

A new geologic map of the Sinai Tholus region on the Thaumasia plateau, Mars reveals the structural, magmatic, and stratigraphic complexity that can be found in the Tharsis region on Mars, and may help answer key questions about the origin of the subvolcanic basement, evolution of the regional stress field, development of Valles Marineris, and magmatic history of the region. Sinai Tholus is a topographic high in a relatively flat, lava flow covered part of Thaumasia Plateau, just south of the central part of Valles Marineris. Here, five stratigraphic units and one generalized impact unit have been mapped at a …

Economic Impact Considerations For Sustainable Design Engineering As Derived From The Literature, K. Joshua Kelley, Christopher A. Mattson, Nile Hatch, John L. Salmon

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis contributes to the scholarship on sustainable development by presenting a review of the literature on the economic impacts of engineering design decisions and engineered products. Many design engineers already consider the economic impacts of their work, especially those impacts related to production cost and the economic feasibility of their products. However, we believe that a review of our findings can help design engineers consider a more comprehensive set of economic impacts that apply to their work, leading to greater sustainability. Presented in this thesis are 11 economic impact categories, spanning three economic scopes.

Diversification And Evolution Of Hawaiian Megalagrion Damselflies (Pinapinao, Odonata: Coenagrionidae), Robert K. Hadfield

Theses and Dissertations

The Megalagrion damselflies of HawaiÊ»i present a valuable study system for understanding the impacts of geology on evolutionary processes. Despite their significance, our understanding of the temporal, geographic, and phylogenetic origins of these damselflies remains incomplete. Prior phylogenetic studies have proposed adaptive ecological and morphological progressions, but evaluating these hypotheses relies on a sound understanding of phylogenetic relationships within the genus. Previous phylogenetic analyses have produced conflicting topologies. To resolve these uncertainties, we performed phylogenetic analyses including divergence time estimation with 90 nuclear loci (>50 kbp) and 2 mitochondrial loci (>1000 bp), sampling representatives from each genus within …

A Comprehensive Review And Meta-Analysis Of Breast Cancer Gene Expression Data: Understanding The Molecular Complexity Of A Silent Epidemic, Ifeanyichukwu O. Nwosu

Theses and Dissertations

Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer type and the leading cause of cancer death; it accounts for 23% of total cases and 14% of deaths, with over 2 million new cases diagnosed and 600,000 deaths in 2020. This is a huge public health burden. Traditionally, clinical subtypes of breast cancer are defined based on a patient's immunohistochemistry profile. These profiles are determined by the combined expression status of three receptors: estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. It has also been observed that women of African descent, more commonly present with ER, PR and …

The Effects Of Writing Groups On Student Self-Efficacy, Katie Francom

Theses and Dissertations

High school students often lack confidence in their writing. One way to change this is by increasing their self-efficacy regarding writing. Previous studies suggest that writing groups have effectively improved students' self-efficacy in higher education. However, more must be done to see if this same intervention would succeed in high school. This study aimed to test this hypothesis and answer the question: How does participating in writing groups shape adolescents' writing self-efficacy? To do this, 57 11th-grade students participated in writing groups in an Honors English 11 class over a semester. For the study, they were surveyed about their writerly …

Enhancing Surface Texturing Of Zirconia Toughened Alumina Ceramic Through Optimized Electric Discharge Machining Utilizing The Assistive Electrode Method, Yazan Eyas Tuffaha

Theses and Dissertations

Zirconia toughened alumina (ZTA) is a durable and biocompatible ceramic material commonly used in prosthetic hip implants because of its excellent mechanical properties and wear/corrosion resistance. Surface texturing can improve the lubricity and longevity of hip implant bearing surfaces, but precision machining of ceramic materials such as ZTA is very difficult due to suboptimal surface integrity results of traditional machining techniques. This thesis explores the optimization of machining ZTA using electric discharge machining (EDM) - a process usually reserved for conductive metals - to machine holes into the ceramic to create surface textures. EDM is made possible through the assistive …

Implicit Vs. Explicit Approaches When Teaching Reflexive Structures In A Fifth-Grade Spanish Dual Immersion Classroom, Paula Valeria Ward

Theses and Dissertations

Dual language immersion (DLI) students can develop high levels of proficiency in their second language at a young age. However, they often have difficulties with their accuracy using advanced grammatical constructions (Watzinger-Tharp et al., 2018), such as using different verbs tenses or gender and number agreement in speaking and writing (Bateman et al., 2020). The goal of this study is to test whether explicit or implicit instructional approaches are more effective in the teaching of one such grammatical concept, specifically reflexive constructions, in two DLI classrooms. In this research, I investigated results from a five-lesson treatment in a case study …

Reconstructing Visual Narratives: Mary Colter, Fred Kabotie, And The Myth Of The West At Desert View Watchtower, Allison M. Foster

Theses and Dissertations

Desert View Watchtower opened in 1933 on the Grand Canyon South Rim, under the management of the Fred Harvey Company. The structure contains many self-contradictions, in terms of style and use. In this thesis, I argue that these contradictions come from the dichotomous motives of Desert View Watchtower's architect, Mary Colter, and her employers, the Fred Harvey Company and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. New western history theory of the Mythical West is used to explain Harvey/Santa Fe marketing, which created a narrative suggesting that Native American lifeways were going to disappear from the Southwest. I argue that …

One-Dimensional Cores Of Peano Continua, Shogo Starr

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, we define a berbering of a Peano continuum, which is the space one gets by attaching a null sequence of circles to a countable dense subset of a Peano continuum. The topology of a berbering is one that recognizes which circles are small, in the sense that any neighborhood of the original Peano continuum will entirely contain all but finitely many of the attached circles. We then show that given a berbering of any simply connected, locally simply connected Peano continuum $Y$, there exists a one-dimensional Peano continuum $X$ and a map from $X$ to the berbering …

Optimal Limb Regeneration Strategies In Hemigrapsus Sanguineus, Laura S. Fletcher

Theses and Dissertations

Diet quality and energy allocation influence an individual’s life-history traits by determining how much energy is available for processes such as growth and reproduction. One common method of assessing diet quality involves measuring gut length or size, which is typically inversely related to diet quality. However, this often requires animal sacrifice and time- consuming dissections. Similarly, many traditional bioenergetics models fail to capture the context-dependence of energy allocation, as these models rely on fixed energy allocation rules. One such rule is the κ-rule of dynamic energy budget theory, which assumes a fixed proportion (κ) of assimilated energy is always allocated …

Feature Engineering For Grain Boundaries And Other Variable-Sized Atom Clusters, C. Braxton Owens

Theses and Dissertations

Obtaining microscopic structure-property relationships for grain boundaries are challenging because of the complex atomic structures that underlie their behavior. This has led to recent efforts to obtain these relationships with machine learning, but representing a grain boundary structure in a manner suitable for machine learning is not a trivial task. There are three key steps common to property prediction in grain boundaries and other variable-sized atom clustered structures. These are: (1) describe the atomic structure as a feature matrix, (2) transform the variable-sized feature matrices of different structures to a fixed length common to all structures, and (3) apply machine …

Wind-Carved Wonders: An Aerial Study Of Yardangs In The Puna, Argentina Using Drone And Satellite Imagery, Derek Gordon Ashliman

Theses and Dissertations

Yardangs, elongated landforms sculpted by wind erosion, are prominent features in the Campo de Piedra Pomez (CPP) region of the Puna-Altiplano Plateau, Argentina. This study explores their formation and evolution through the examination of a 6 km by 0.5 km area captured in 2019 and a 5 km by 0.5 km area in 2024. High-resolution drone imagery and satellite data were employed to classify and quantify yardangs, gravel, and underlying bedrock across a vast study area. The research reveals a variation in yardang distribution and morphology from northwest (windward) to southeast (leeward), noting a significant decrease in yardang and bedrock …

Fission Product Thermodynamics, Solubility, And Extraction In Molten Salts And Lead, Richard Lee Fitzhugh

Theses and Dissertations

Chemical behavior of fission products in systems relevant to two major advanced nuclear reactor systems, namely the lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) and molten-salt reactor (MSR), has been studied with a heavy emphasis on thermodynamics. The behavior of fission products in molten salts is examined from a theoretical perspective, with an emphasis on the standard state used to define the thermodynamic activity. A standard state extrapolated from infinite dilution behavior, which is fairly common practice in electrochemistry, is found to facilitate faster, easier, and simpler analysis while retaining much of the accuracy of the complex Modified Quasichemical Model. Inductively-coupled plasma mass …

Dynamics Of Dissolved And Particulate Trace Metals In A Snowmelt-Dominated Stream, Provo River, Utah, Usa, Kendra Louise Caskey

Theses and Dissertations

Trace element concentrations vary substantially during snowmelt runoff, with changes in the dissolved versus particulate fractions potentially impacting their movement at the catchment scale. To investigate trace element behavior in a snowmelt dominated stream, we measured concentrations in different size fractions in the Provo River (northern Utah, USA). We sampled the river at three locations during water years 2016-2018 and 2021-2023 for trace metal and major ion concentrations. During the final year, we collected three fractions (unfiltered, <0.45 µm filtered, and <0.22 µm filtered) for trace metal chemistry and calculated the particulate concentration as the difference between the unfiltered and 0.45 µm fraction. Stream measurements included pH, discharge, turbidity, and fluorescent dissolved organic matter (fDOM). We also sampled water sources (soil water, ephemeral streams, and snowpack) to compare trace metal concentrations across the watershed with the stream. Trace metal (Al, Be, Fe, Pb) and rare earth element (REE +Y) concentrations had the highest particulate and dissolved concentrations during snowmelt runoff. In contrast, major cations were primarily found in the dissolved fraction with lowest concentrations during snowmelt runoff. Major cation and particulate metal concentrations increased from upstream to downstream. The increased trace metal and REE + Y concentrations during snowmelt relative to baseflow may be explained by increased discharge and associated increased turbidity and fDOM. A comparison with water sources suggests that dissolved and particulate trace metals in the stream are sourced from flushed soil water, as trace metal transport through the watershed is facilitated by suspended sediment and dissolved organic matter. For most of the trace metals and REE +Y, concentrations were similar in the <0.45 µm and <0.22 µm fractions. Yet Al tended to have higher concentrations in the <0.45 µm fraction, suggesting a colloidal form of Al between 0.22 µm and 0.45 µm may exist. Differences from upstream to downstream may be related to changes in pH, from ~7 at the upper site to ~8 at the lower sites, which would change sorption capacity, saturation indices, or speciation. Our study demonstrates that trace metal concentrations are variable during snowmelt as the metals interact with suspended particles or dissolved organic matter and are influenced by changing water chemistry, with implications for understanding water quality impairments in snowmelt-dominated streams.

Void Formation During Liquid Composite Molding Under Varied Pressure With Mechanical Properties Validation, Neil Russell Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

Composite materials have revolutionized products and how they are manufactured. Most large-scale aerospace companies utilize a carbon fiber pre-impregnated with a resin in conjunction with an autoclave to minimize voids, but it is very expensive and requires a great amount of space. The less expensive alternative to prepreg-autoclave processes is known as Liquid Composite Molding (LCM), in which the resin is brought into a mold via overpressure on the resin supply or by a vacuum in the mold. But this process is more prone to voids due to bubble formation. Voids are a critical issue as common failure modes such …

Linguistic Perspectives In Ecuadorian Amazonian Kichwa, Max Nathan Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the fact that Amazonian Kichwa speakers consider themselves to be both linguistically and culturally distinct from their highland counterparts (Ennis 2020; Wroblewski 2012), relatively little has been done to document their language attitudes and how these attitudes are reflected in their speech. This study shows this to be a valid line of questioning. Using commentary from interviews with Amazonian Kichwa people, I show that views on the status and future of the language are divided, as well as perspectives on the role of non-Kichwa sources like schools and governments in language maintenance. Older and native speakers of Kichwa are …

Deep Learning For Source Localization In A Laboratory Tank, Corey Emerson Dobbs

Theses and Dissertations

Deep learning has been applied to underwater acoustics problems in many forms. One difficulty in applying deep learning techniques to ocean acoustics is the spatially and temporally varying environmental properties. Another challenge is the lack of labeled data for training large networks. The overall goal of this work is to develop deep learning approaches for source localization that can be adaptable to different conditions. In this work, a convolutional neural network was trained on acoustic data measured in a water tank, while the water was at room temperature, to predict source-receiver range. Tests were done to ascertain ideal quantities of …

An Investigation Of University General Education Assessment Practice, Joseph H. Hanks

Theses and Dissertations

Many-facets Rasch modeling (MFRM) is an effective way to compensate for rater effects (e.g., rater leniency/severity) in the ratings assigned during rater-mediated assessment. While a fully crossed MFRM rating design, in which all raters rate every rating object, is the ideal from a psychometric standpoint; fully crossed designs are rarely implemented in practice because of the resource burden they impose on assessment personnel. Thus, incomplete rating designs, where each rater does not rate all rating objects, are the norm. However, unless assessment personnel consciously attend to a variety of aspects of rating design, incomplete rating designs may suffer from design …

Emergent Leadership, L2 Oral Proficiency, And Social Networks During Study Abroad, Nicole C. Whitby

Theses and Dissertations

Research shows that study abroad (SA) provides a unique, yet varied outcome for students seeking to improve their target language oral proficiency during study abroad SA (Freed et al., 2004). Contemporary work in second language acquisition (SLA) during SA has looked beyond individual behaviors of sojourners to analyze social networks as a structure with significant influence on outcomes, yet emergent leadership has not been addressed within social network analysis in SA. To address this gap the current study employed a computational social network approach. This mixed methods study analyzes the social networks of 30 SA sojourners from a large private …

Linking Geospatial Trends And Geochemical Fingerprints To Anthropogenic Phosphorus Dust Deposition In Subalpine Soils, Austen Michael Lambert

Theses and Dissertations

This study shows that fugitive emissions associated with the surface mining of phosphate rock are a significant phosphorus (P) source to surface soils in northeastern Utah. Phosphorus is a nonrenewable resource essential for all life. Anthropogenic alterations to the P-cycle have led to widespread P pollution, and the unsustainable management of P has led to the threat of global depletion of P resources. Thus, accounting for both natural and anthropogenic flow paths of P is essential for the conservation and pollution reduction of P. One such source of human alteration to the P-cycle is the mining of phosphate rock. Mining, …

Microbial Hydrolysis Process To Improve Anaerobic Digestion For Biofuel Generation, Caleb Michael Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

Human development results in billions of tons of waste per year, which contributes to major issues such as pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction. In this study, we explored the impact of bacterial inoculation on volatile fatty acid (VFA) production, volatile solids (VS), and gas output in anaerobic digesters under different substrate treatments. Our results reveal that bacterial inoculation significantly boosts VFA levels, especially acetic acid, with both Caldicellulosiruptor bescii and mixed Caldicellulosiruptor, cultures showing notable differences compared to controls, especially in untreated manure and WAS treatments. Acetic acid and VS/TS increased in untreated WAS when inoculated with C. bescii …

The Cofactor Matrix For Optimized Normal Transformations & Real-Time Caustics And Refractions Using Signed Distance Fields, Dane William Christensen

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis contains two distinct manuscripts both focused on real-time rendering research; an abstract for each is provided: 1. We survey methods for mapping normal vectors to a transformed surface with emphasis on the cofactor matrix form. We demonstrate that the cofactor matrix uniquely and correctly supports matrix transformations that are rank deficient or have negative determinants, while also generalizing to operations such as rotation, scaling, translation, and shearing. We derive and demonstrate the completeness of this new convention in contrast to other approaches, while also establishing its computational efficiency benefits. 2. We present SDF volumes as an efficient datastructure …

Quiescent Condensation Heat Transfer On Vertical Cicnt Structured Superhydrophobic Surfaces, Clint Mach Hubbard

Theses and Dissertations

This study experimentally investigates the impact of the subcooling magnitude, the carbon-infiltrated carbon nanotube (CICNT) diameter, the time duration of condensation, and amount of non-condensable gases on the nature of dropwise condensation and condensate removal, and heat flux and heat transfer coefficient measurements. Experiments were conducted in a vacuum chamber on a vertically oriented test CICNT surface. The CICNT diameter was varied between 15-120 nm and the subcooling ranged from 0.5-9 °C. Each test ran for a duration of at least one hour and video was recorded at 20-minute intervals. Three modes of condensation were observed: drop jumping, drop wetting …

A Sensitivity Equation Framework For Parameter Estimation In Dynamical Systems, Joshua Newey

Theses and Dissertations

We present a new framework for understanding parameter estimation in dynamical systems. The approach is developed within the modeling approach of continuous data assimilation. We outline the basic assumptions that lead to our derivation. Under these assumptions we show that the parameter estimation turns into a finite dimensional nonlinear optimization problem. We show that our derivation reproduces and extends the algorithm originally developed in [9]. We then implement these methods in three example systems: the Lorenz '63 model, the two-layer Lorenz '96 model, and the Kuramoto Sivashinsky equation. So as to remain sufficiently general, our derivations are largely formal; we …

Behavior Of Reinforced Lightweight Cellular Concrete Backfill For Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls With Welded Wire Reinforcements, Cole Max Larsen

Theses and Dissertations

Lightweight cellular concrete (LCC) consists of a mixture of cement, water, and a pre-formed foam. The pre-formed foam entrains a high proportion of air voids into the cement water slurry at the time of casting, decreasing the product's overall weight. LCC is also a viable alternative when low native soil strengths prevent the use of traditional backfill methods through mitigating settlement and increasing strength. Due to these benefits, the use of LCC behind mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls is gaining popularity. Despite LCC gaining popularity behind MSE walls, the exact nature of the failure envelope is poorly understood. The pullout …