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Spike Timing Depended Plasticity Produces Unsupervised Learning Of Synergistic Muscle Feedback In A Synthetical Neural Network, Mark Allen Pupkiewicz Dec 2025

Spike Timing Depended Plasticity Produces Unsupervised Learning Of Synergistic Muscle Feedback In A Synthetical Neural Network, Mark Allen Pupkiewicz

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigates how type Ia feedback from muscle spindles can be organized into groups representing agonistic muscle pairs through Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP). A single degree of freedom joint is actuated with four biologically modeled muscles forming two agonistic pairs. In order to emulate the sensory dynamics of biological muscle spindles, sensors in the model record the active length and velocity states of each muscle, the two primary factors eliciting type Ia afferent responses. In biological networks, synapses from Ia sensory neurons frequently activate interneurons representing agonistic muscle sources. This research investigates whether this organization can emerge in …

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Systematics And Systems Theory: Reconstructability Analysis Of The Tetrad, Martin Zwick Dec 2025

Systematics And Systems Theory: Reconstructability Analysis Of The Tetrad, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

This talk discusses the relationship between systems theory, specifically Reconstructability Analysis, and Systematics, a systems theory-like framework of number symbolism developed by John G. Bennett, which he presented in his four-volume magnum opus, The Dramatic Universe. The talk, given to a community of people interested in Bennett's ideas, focuses on Martin Zwick's paper "Ideas and Graphs: the Tetrad of Activity" archived at https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/36249.

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Hint-Guided Video Frame Interpolation For Video Compression, Pan Tan, Wu-Chi Feng Dec 2025

Hint-Guided Video Frame Interpolation For Video Compression, Pan Tan, Wu-Chi Feng

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Traditional video compression continues to advance, but the gainsin efficiency are diminishing and come at the cost of higher compu-tational complexity. Despite achieving competitive rate-distortionresults, current neural video codecs (NVCs) generally lack sup-port for a wide range of quality levels, often requiring multiplemodels to achieve flexible rate control, which increases both train-ing cost and deployment complexity. To address the limitations ofboth traditional codecs and current NVCs, we propose a hybridvideo compression framework that integrates traditional codecswith hint-guided video frame interpolation (VFI), a learning-basedtechnique for synthesizing intermediate frames. By using decodedreference frames and leveraging compressed-domain hints to guideinterpolation, our method improves …

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Adaptive Image Acquisition Algorithms For Resource-Constrained Single-Photon Cameras, Yeganeh Jalalpour, Wu-Chi Feng Dec 2025

Adaptive Image Acquisition Algorithms For Resource-Constrained Single-Photon Cameras, Yeganeh Jalalpour, Wu-Chi Feng

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Emerging single-photon camera (SPC) technologies have unique challenges in data acquisition and processing. Unlike conventional sensors that produce a single 8- to 16-bit brightness value per pixel, SPCs record photon arrivals with many more samples per pixel, using high floating-point precision for each photon collected. This means that they must handle potentially millions of timestamps, especially at higher spatial resolutions and in the presence of ambient light, creating bottlenecks within the pixel circuitry. To address these challenges associated with SPCs, this paper proposes adaptive algorithms designed to efficiently distribute hardware resources among groups of pixels. By selectively subsampling the data …

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Capstone Reflection: Developing A Muslim Prayer App For Psu Students, Jeremiah Su Dec 2025

Capstone Reflection: Developing A Muslim Prayer App For Psu Students, Jeremiah Su

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines the development process of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) App, a computer science capstone project. The app strives to help the Muslim community at Portland State University (PSU) and the Portland area by consolidating essential information for prayers, such as local prayer times, nearby masjids, and the direction of Qibla. The team behind this project was developed by 6 computer science developers, a majority of whom were from the Muslim culture and background. This paper describes the entire capstone development process from the perspective of a developer who is not rooted in Muslim customs. It also describes …

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The Social Side Of Aging In Place: Community, Belonging, And Cultural Fit, Michael Crespo Dec 2025

The Social Side Of Aging In Place: Community, Belonging, And Cultural Fit, Michael Crespo

University Honors Theses

Aging in place, or the capacity of older adults to remain in their homes and communities as they age has been a central tenet of the field of gerontology and the gerontological social policy area. Although access to physical facilities and service provision has been the main focus of traditional studies, contemporary experience demonstrates that social and cultural issues are equally important as determinants of the quality of life. This thesis discusses the influence of social networks, cultural congruence, and community belonging on the aging in place experience. The content of the study is based on the Ecological Model of …

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Signal Processing Of Ecologically Significant Signals For Transient Bedload Characterization, Nathan R. Sjullie, Quinn B. Morgan, David Burnett Dec 2025

Signal Processing Of Ecologically Significant Signals For Transient Bedload Characterization, Nathan R. Sjullie, Quinn B. Morgan, David Burnett

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

When rivers achieve a great enough flow rate, sediment along their riverbed becomes mobilized and transported downstream. This process is known as bedload transport. As bedload transport initiates, micro-collisions of various sediments and gravel generate underwater acoustic signals that can be detected by hydrophones. While there is extensive research on underwater acoustic theory and surrogate methods for monitoring bedload transport, there is a lack of heuristic work that analyzes collected bedload samples in conjunction with underwater acoustic recordings. The aim of this work is to complete an analysis on collected bedload samples and the simultaneous underwater acoustic recordings via signal …

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Addressing Injustices Toward Individuals With Schizophrenia-Spectrum Conditions: A Call To Action For Social Work Practice, Shannon M. Blajeski, Lindsay A. Bornheimer, Jessica A. Wojtalik, Lynette Studer, Shelly Ben-David, Patricia R. Turner, Ana T. Flores, Matthew J. Smith, Nev Jones, Jordan E. Devylder Dec 2025

Addressing Injustices Toward Individuals With Schizophrenia-Spectrum Conditions: A Call To Action For Social Work Practice, Shannon M. Blajeski, Lindsay A. Bornheimer, Jessica A. Wojtalik, Lynette Studer, Shelly Ben-David, Patricia R. Turner, Ana T. Flores, Matthew J. Smith, Nev Jones, Jordan E. Devylder

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

The field of social work has a lengthy history of training social workers for community mental health settings, and an ethical commitment to advance human rights and social justice. However, individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum conditions continue to suffer from myriad social injustices, including poverty, social isolation, and lower-life expectancy. This paper outlines these injustices, and reviews historical social work contributions and current training for supporting this population. Finally, the authors outline actions to 1) adopt national practice guidelines that formally acknowledge injustices, including anti-oppressive practice guidelines that are inclusive of lived experience, and 2) revitalize social work’s contributions to models of …

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Experience From A Distance: Improving Transparency For The Multnomah Athletic Club, Matthew Penner Dec 2025

Experience From A Distance: Improving Transparency For The Multnomah Athletic Club, Matthew Penner

University Honors Theses

Portland is home to the largest and one of the most prestigious athletic clubs in the world: Multnomah Athletic Club. In many ways, it is the pinnacle of luxury and innovation, and over time, it finds any way to entice prospective members to pay the expensive upfront fee of $6000 and monthly membership fees exceeding $300. Due to the previous technological barrier, which was not being able to see the full extent of what amenities the club had to offer, the club faced major challenges in recruitment and marketing. Over two academic terms, a team of six computer science capstone …

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Medicaid Funding And Health-Related Social Needs: A Policy Analysis, Passion Ilea Dec 2025

Medicaid Funding And Health-Related Social Needs: A Policy Analysis, Passion Ilea

Dissertations and Theses

The U.S. has disproportionately high health care spending compared to other high-income nations and comparatively poor health outcomes. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have recently increased emphasis on addressing Medicaid member social needs. CMS believes addressing health-related social needs (HRSN) may reduce costs and improve health outcomes for Medicaid members. CMS has begun to test theories regarding the impact of member HRSN on health care by designing federal mechanisms to address HRSN, such as in lieu of services and settings-funded services, and by encouraging state Medicaid programs to develop their own approaches, such as Flexible Services. Information …

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In-Between Spaces: First-Generation College Immigrant Experiences, Silvina Alamo Sousa-Ransford Dec 2025

In-Between Spaces: First-Generation College Immigrant Experiences, Silvina Alamo Sousa-Ransford

Dissertations and Theses

It is human nature to seek a sense of belonging, acceptance, and community. College students also share this desire for connection in higher education, but some face more barriers and challenges. This study examined the experiences of first-generation college students who are also immigrants. The goal was to understand how to best support students in college, including through academic advising, at a four-year research university in the Pacific Northwest. To gain insight into the students' experiences, I interviewed participants using narrative qualitative methods guided by the framework of sense of belonging and analyzed the data utilizing Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Model. The …

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Leveraging Student Data To Assess, Inform, And Develop Teachers Capacities, Nathan D. Koerber, Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner Dec 2025

Leveraging Student Data To Assess, Inform, And Develop Teachers Capacities, Nathan D. Koerber, Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This quantitative study analyzed 47 survey responses to gauge in-service, pre-licensed teacher, and paraprofessional perceptions of cultural competency. Participants responded to the Central Vancouver Island Multicultural Society’s Cultural Competence Self-Assessment Checklist (Alpha = 0.7) to explore their awareness, knowledge, and skills in cultural competency. Moreover, through the application of Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) as a theoretical framework, this study highlighted how these perceptions related to culturally responsive teaching and provided several implications for their future preparation to further develop their cultural competency through the tenets of CRT. The analysis identified participant unfamiliarity with privilege and its impact, as well as …

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Once Upon An Early Writing Experience: Connecting Memory With Literacy Instruction In Pre-Service Teacher Education, Jue Wang, Jingru Lu Dec 2025

Once Upon An Early Writing Experience: Connecting Memory With Literacy Instruction In Pre-Service Teacher Education, Jue Wang, Jingru Lu

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Through a narrative-based case study design, this research connects pre-service teachers’ early writing memories with their studies in writing instruction to explore how multi-layered and multi-faceted writing experiences across time and space influence teaching beliefs and practices. This article invites audiences to vicariously experience these pedagogical encounters, reflect on journeys to becoming writing teachers, and shed light onto the implications of teaching early writing. Comic artifacts and interview data were collected from nine pre-service teachers who learned to teach early writing/language arts in a four-year public university in the Inland Northwest. Based on the participants’ comics and narratives, four themes …

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Undergraduate Stem Student Reflections On The Academic Support Ecosystem At A Rural Minority Serving Institution: The Importance Of Relationship, Stephany Runninghawk Johnson, Jessica L. Black, Karolynn Tom Dec 2025

Undergraduate Stem Student Reflections On The Academic Support Ecosystem At A Rural Minority Serving Institution: The Importance Of Relationship, Stephany Runninghawk Johnson, Jessica L. Black, Karolynn Tom

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This paper presents a research project with a group of STEM majoring undergraduates attending a Hispanic Serving Institution participating in the CRESCENT program intended to support undergraduates through their basic math and science courses. The research questions addressed in this paper include: What part of CRESCENT were students utilizing the most and how were they helpful? How did CRESCENT support students through COVID? What can we learn from this data to make future programs more responsive and relevant to STEM majoring students? We found that during COVID students were missing in person contact, had heightened responsibilities and distractions at home, …

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Protests, Epistemic Injustice, And The Movement For Black Lives, Sofia De Ferrari Dec 2025

Protests, Epistemic Injustice, And The Movement For Black Lives, Sofia De Ferrari

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

Epistemic injustice provides a powerful perspective for understanding media narratives of the Movement for Black Lives (#BlackLivesMatter). To understand the media coverage, I draw on Foucauldian theories and critical race theory, as well as accounts of hermeneutical and recognition injustice, which show how “truth” emerges as a product of knowledge/power/resistance. Special attention is given to the question of violence: what is violent and what isn’t? Who gets to decide? What are the consequences? Media narratives favor the status quo and delegitimize social movements which challenge it. This is achieved by prioritizing the voices of officials and law enforcement in coverage …

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Cartographic Dialogue: A Pedagogy For Emotion And Critical Consciousness In Language Teacher Educator Identity Development, Camille Ungco‐Santos, Rachel S. Snyder Bhansari Dec 2025

Cartographic Dialogue: A Pedagogy For Emotion And Critical Consciousness In Language Teacher Educator Identity Development, Camille Ungco‐Santos, Rachel S. Snyder Bhansari

Educator Licensure Faculty Publications and Presentations

Language teacher educators (LTEs) enter their roles with complex personal histories and experiences. Little research exam-ines the ways in which LTEs of varying backgrounds reflect on these histories, their emotional responses to these reflections,and their connections to cultural contexts or systemic (in)justice. In this article, we treat the examination of our own personalhistories and their intersections with systems of power, as well as our related emotions, as pedagogy or as a reciprocal way ofteaching and learning. We critically map out and discuss our journeys towards an LTE identity, including our emotions, througha reflective, collaborative, and ongoing method we call cartographic …

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Searching For Change: Exploring Historical Silences And Counterstorytelling Through Youth-Led Social Justice Movements, Ariana Varela Dec 2025

Searching For Change: Exploring Historical Silences And Counterstorytelling Through Youth-Led Social Justice Movements, Ariana Varela

Communications in Information Literacy

During a first-year engagement program, a librarian and a cohort of students worked towards a shared understanding of dominant narratives, historical silences, and creating counterstories through research to center marginalized stories and complicate existing narratives. As information literacy professionals, we should design interactive lessons that demonstrate critical search and evaluation skills through topics that are relevant to students and encourage them to work with issues that impact their communities. Incorporating critical information literacy, feminist pedagogy, and critical race theory, this two-day micro-seminar introduced first-year students to the legacy of youth community activism in the neighborhoods around their university. They practiced …

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Why Teens Are Particularly Vulnerable To The Harms Of Vaping Addiction: A Literature Review, Chloe Manning-Floch Dec 2025

Why Teens Are Particularly Vulnerable To The Harms Of Vaping Addiction: A Literature Review, Chloe Manning-Floch

University Honors Theses

This literature review examines the factors that have been found to place teens aged 12-18 at particular risk of the harms of vaping addiction. Sixteen relevant research studies are cited, along with four other sources containing information from the FDA, CDC, and NPR, to determine which themes are the most significant and widely identified as risk factors adding to teens' vulnerability. While the body of research on teen vaping addiction is relatively new, strong consensus exists: the most significant factors placing teens at risk of vaping addiction's harms are sweet flavoring appealing to young people, marketing of vapes that has …

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Security Vulnerabilities And Defense Tactics For Generative Ai Application Development, Kyle Klein Dec 2025

Security Vulnerabilities And Defense Tactics For Generative Ai Application Development, Kyle Klein

University Honors Theses

Generative AI (GenAI) applications such as OpenAI's ChatGPT leverage large language models (LLMs) trained on enormous amounts of data to accomplish tasks such as document editing, summarization, and query response. Chatbots and LLM programs that are equipped with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) have the ability to draw upon data provided by developers and users to improve the quality of the program's responses. LLM technology has even expanded to generate images, audio, and video from user instructions. Designed around unpredictable user input and typically composed of many opaque components, LLM software products face a paradigm shift of new, constantly evolving security challenges. …

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Money At Work: How The Inflation Reduction Act Reshaped The Irs, Richard Hansen Dec 2025

Money At Work: How The Inflation Reduction Act Reshaped The Irs, Richard Hansen

University Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to analyze and explore the ways in which the funding increase for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) present in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) has impacted the real life operations of the agency. These impacts will be examined across two broad categories: the ways in which the IRS has offered improved taxpayer services, and the ways in which the IRS has been better equipped to collect owed taxes and enforce tax compliance since the passage of the IRA. Existing data and literature indicates that the increased IRS funding has been correlated with some improvements across …

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Decomposition Processes And Insect Indicators In Forensic Investigations, Eli Taylor Dec 2025

Decomposition Processes And Insect Indicators In Forensic Investigations, Eli Taylor

University Honors Theses

Insects play an essential biological and ecological role in human life, and their predictable relationship with decomposing remains has positioned them as a cornerstone of modern forensic science. Since the early 20th century, forensic entomology has provided critical evidence for estimating the postmortem interval (PMI), relying on patterns of colonization, species succession, and insect developmental timelines. Accurate PMI estimations are vital to medicolegal investigations, influencing the interpretation of biological evidence, guiding resource allocation, and informing determinations of cause and manner of death. However, insect activity is profoundly shaped by environmental and ecological variables, including temperature, humidity, seasonal shifts, and geographic …

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Interventions For Online Gambling Addiction With Vulnerable Populations, Ethan Sarin Dec 2025

Interventions For Online Gambling Addiction With Vulnerable Populations, Ethan Sarin

University Honors Theses

This paper looks at the modern rise of online gambling, what has been done to address it, and how we can improve upon them in the future. Online gambling is gambling done through a digital medium with two distinct forms: gambling adjacent activities (GAAs), and general online gambling. GAAs are activities that highly resemble gambling, but are legally distinct from gambling due to different kinds of obfuscation like using in-game currency to gamble instead of directly real world money. General online gambling is much clearer about it being gambling with many kinds of gambling activities to partake in from digital …

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The Librarian Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale, Maoria J. Kirker, David X. Lemmons Dec 2025

The Librarian Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale, Maoria J. Kirker, David X. Lemmons

Communications in Information Literacy

Teaching self-efficacy is a critical factor in instructional success. Little research has been conducted on how academic librarians perceive their own teaching abilities. This study introduces and validates the Librarian Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale, a tool designed to measure self-efficacy beliefs among academic librarians engaged in information literacy instruction. By adapting established self-efficacy scales to the library instruction context, this study examines key factors influencing librarian teaching self-efficacy, including instructional strategies, lesson planning, and collaboration with faculty. Collective self-efficacy, which is perceptions of colleagues’ teaching confidence, is also examined. Statistical analysis indicates a reliable and valid scale which may benefit …

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Social Work In Times Of Genocide: A Palestinian Feminist Praxis Of Social Work, Stephanie Wahab Dec 2025

Social Work In Times Of Genocide: A Palestinian Feminist Praxis Of Social Work, Stephanie Wahab

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

The abstract is translated in Arabic below. Social work cannot meaningfully claim a commitment to justice, human dignity, and the worth of people while simultaneously remaining committed to colonial logics. Recognizing and resisting collusion with settler colonialism demands structural shifts in knowledge production, curriculum, practice, and institutional alignment. This article speaks to organized social work’s collusion with the zionist project of Palestinian erasure amid the ongoing Nakba and genocide. Since Palestinian social workers are living and surviving genocide as they practice social work, worn binaries, such as provider–client, are unsettled in ways that make a Palestinian feminist praxis of social …

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Fractional Order Hierarchical Decompositions Using Multigrid Components, Panayot S. Vassilevski Dec 2025

Fractional Order Hierarchical Decompositions Using Multigrid Components, Panayot S. Vassilevski

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Motivated by the fractional order multilevel decompositions of finite element spaces developed previously, we exploit additive representations of popular multigrid (MG) cycles to design fractional order MG decompositions. The additive representations enable us to scale the individual hierarchical components thus ending up with fractional order hierarchical decompositions that are based on the readily available MG components. This results in a highly efficient and scalable (in terms of high-performance) fractional order hierarchical MG decompositions that we tested in the setting of finite element white noise sampling as an alternative to PDE-based white noise sampling using fractional order shifted Laplacians.

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"I Wished I Could Have Said Bye": Exploring Youth Reactions To Formal Mentoring Relationship Endings, Thomas E. Keller, Martha J. Mccormack, Miriam Miranda-Diaz, Alison L. Drew, Renee Spencer Dec 2025

"I Wished I Could Have Said Bye": Exploring Youth Reactions To Formal Mentoring Relationship Endings, Thomas E. Keller, Martha J. Mccormack, Miriam Miranda-Diaz, Alison L. Drew, Renee Spencer

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Youth mentoring programs strive to create stable, supportive relationships between adult mentors and youth mentees to promote positive youth development. Although these formal relationships always reach a conclusion, little is known about how mentees experience the endings of their relationships. This study elicits the words and perspectives of mentees to investigate the emotional reactions provoked by mentoring relationship terminations. Participants were youth (n = 72) in a prospective study of mentoring relationship development who completed a survey following the official closure of their match. Asked how they felt about the match ending, mentees more often indicated negative rather than positive …

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Jhtdb-Wind: A Web-Accessible Large-Eddy Simulation Database Of A Wind Farm With Virtual Sensor Querying, Xiaowei Zhu, Shuolin Xiao, Ghanesh Narasimhan, Luia A. Martinez-Tossas, Michael Schnaubelt, Gerard Lemson, Hanxun Yao, Alexander S. Szalay, Dennice F. Gayme, Charles Meneveau Nov 2025

Jhtdb-Wind: A Web-Accessible Large-Eddy Simulation Database Of A Wind Farm With Virtual Sensor Querying, Xiaowei Zhu, Shuolin Xiao, Ghanesh Narasimhan, Luia A. Martinez-Tossas, Michael Schnaubelt, Gerard Lemson, Hanxun Yao, Alexander S. Szalay, Dennice F. Gayme, Charles Meneveau

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper introduces JHTDB-wind (https://turbulence.idies.jhu.edu/datasets/windfarms), a publicly accessible database containing large-eddy simulation (LES) data from wind farms. Building on the framework of the Johns Hopkins Turbulence Database (JHTDB), which hosts direct numerical and some large-eddy simulation datasets of canonical turbulent flows, JHTDB-wind stores the full space-time (4D) history of the flow and provides users the ability to access and query the data via a web-based virtual sensor interface. The initial dataset comprises LES results from a large wind farm with 6 X 10 turbines, modeled using a filtered actuator line method, under conventionally neutral atmospheric conditions. This data comprises one …

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Participatory Development Of A Suicide Prevention Program For Autism Community Organizations., A V. Kirby, K Feldman, B Duncan-Ishcomer, R Kripke-Ludwig, A Joyce, W Lee, K Rodriguez, Z Siddeek, A Darlington, A Atisme, W Clark, K Murthi, L Wexler, C Nicolaidis Nov 2025

Participatory Development Of A Suicide Prevention Program For Autism Community Organizations., A V. Kirby, K Feldman, B Duncan-Ishcomer, R Kripke-Ludwig, A Joyce, W Lee, K Rodriguez, Z Siddeek, A Darlington, A Atisme, W Clark, K Murthi, L Wexler, C Nicolaidis

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Participatory research is critical for developing appropriate and effective programs for specific communities. Suicide is a health inequity for autistic people and prevention is a high priority for autistic community members. Using community-based participatory research with autistic partners, we aimed to develop a research-informed, conceptually grounded, and community-supported suicide prevention program for the autism community. The participatory, multistep program development process included regular meetings to integrate existing research with an established intervention framework and was informed by 38 qualitative research interviews with autistic adults, family members, and mental health providers. The development process resulted in a four-part, virtual, education and …

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Flow Control Tactics For Photovoltaic Modules: Coherent Structure And Heat Shedding Amplification, Sarah Elizabeth Smith Nov 2025

Flow Control Tactics For Photovoltaic Modules: Coherent Structure And Heat Shedding Amplification, Sarah Elizabeth Smith

Dissertations and Theses

Solar photovoltaic systems have become the fastest growing renewable technology in the last several years. However, large-scale systems are at the mercy of their external environments, where extreme heating and wind-flung debris impact their efficiency and useable life. The work in this dissertation presents studies aimed to both understand and mitigate for these effects by identifying the underlying physics which govern them. Exploring flow control as a tactic to combat environmental heating, collective work discusses the role of turbulent fluid dynamics within large-scale systems as pertains to convective heat transfer, turbulent structure formation, and particle-laden environments. Wind tunnel experiments on …

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A Geothermal Amoeba Sets A New Upper Temperature Limit For Eukaryotes, H Beryl Rappaport, Natalie A. Petek-Seoane, Tomáš Tyml, Felix Mikus, Kurt Labutti, Godwin Ani, Jessica K. Niblo, Ethan Macvicar, Rachel M. Shepherd, Ignacio De La Higuera, Samuel J. Lord, Kenneth M. Stedman, Multiple Additional Authors Nov 2025

A Geothermal Amoeba Sets A New Upper Temperature Limit For Eukaryotes, H Beryl Rappaport, Natalie A. Petek-Seoane, Tomáš Tyml, Felix Mikus, Kurt Labutti, Godwin Ani, Jessica K. Niblo, Ethan Macvicar, Rachel M. Shepherd, Ignacio De La Higuera, Samuel J. Lord, Kenneth M. Stedman, Multiple Additional Authors

Center for Life in Extreme Environments Publications

The study of temperature limits has transformed our knowledge of the boundaries of life but has been largely focused on bacteria and archaea. We isolated a novel geothermal amoeba, , that divides at 63°C (145.4°F), establishing a new record for the upper temperature limit across all eukaryotes. We demonstrated cellular proliferation with growth experiments and visualized mitosis expansion microscopy. Using high-temperature live-cell imaging, we quantified movement up to 64°C. We assembled the genome of and using comparative genomics found an enrichment of genes related to proteostasis, genome stability, and sensing the external environment. Taken together, our findings challenge the current …

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