Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluation Of Cytocompatability And Safety Of Nerve Retraction Compounds For Local Disc Denervation To Treat Disc-Associated Low Back Pain, Fei San Lee, Uyen N. Nguyen, Rebecca A. Wachs

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Low back pain (LBP) is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Aberrant nerve growth into intervertebral discs is a common pathological feature of disc-associated LBP. Current treatments rely on short-term solutions using opioids or anti-inflammatory prescriptions which can lead to addiction and side effects, respectively. We hypothesize that removal of aberrant nerve fibers in the disc using nerve retraction compounds can alleviate discassociated LBP. We performed screening of nerve retraction compounds using adult rat dorsal root ganglia (DRG) explant culture in hydrogels to mimic disc innervation in vitro. Capsaicin, known to induce nerve retraction, was used as a positive control …

Revisiting The Rainbow: Culturally Responsive Updates To A Standard Clinical Resource, Angela M. Dietsch, Richard Mocarski, Debra A. Hope, Nathan Woodruff, Miechelle Mckelvey

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose

Cultural responsivity is essential for efficacious and affirming clinical relationships. This may be especially important with historically marginalized clients, such as transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) people seeking behaviorally based affirming communication services. We recommend modifications to standard tools for diagnostics and training that otherwise might undermine our efforts to create an inclusive and affirming environment.

Method

Modifications to the Rainbow Passage, a standardized paragraph utilized for eliciting speech samples in clinical settings, focused on nongendered terminology and the elimination of content with religious connotations.

Results

The recommended edits to the Rainbow Passage maintain similar length, cadence, and phonetic balance …

Brain Activity Associated With Taste Stimulation: A Mechanism For Neuroplastic Change?, Angela M. Dietsch, Ross M. Westemeyer, Douglas H. Schultz

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose: Neuroplasticity may be enhanced by increasing brain activation and bloodflow in neural regions relevant to the target behavior.We administered precisely formulated and dosed taste stimuli to determine whether the associated brain activity patterns included areas that underlie swallowing control.

Methods: Five taste stimuli (unflavored, sour, sweet-sour, lemon, and orange suspensions) were administered in timing-regulated and temperature-controlled 3 mL doses via a customized pump/tubing system to 21 healthy adults during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Whole-brain analyses of fMRI data assessed main effects of taste stimulation as well as differential effects of taste profile.

Results: Differences in …

Correlates Of Covid-19 Vaccine Uptake Among U.S. College Students, Julia N. Soulakova, Lisa Crockett, Mary Schmidt-Owens, Eric W. Schrimshaw

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Hesitance toward COVID-19 vaccination has greatly decreased over the course of the pandemic in the U.S. However, some populations have lower vaccination rates than the general population. This study was conducted to identify correlates of being fully vaccinated (i.e., having received all doses required to be fully vaccinated) among college students using students’ responses to the 2022 Spring American College Health Association—National College Health Assessment. The surveys were administered in March of 2022. The sample (n=617) included 18-to-30-year-old students. Firth logistic regression models were performed that controlled for age, sex assigned at birth, and food security (at a 5% significance …

Writing Statistical Methods For Ecologists, Amy J. Davis, Shannon Kay

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

The Methods section is a key component of any ecology research publication containing detailed information on how the data were collected and analyzed. However, descriptions of which statistical methods were used and how they were applied can substantially vary and may not provide enough information for the analyses to be reproducible. Computational and statistical programming advances have allowed ecological researchers without a strong statistical or mathematical background to access and use increasingly complex statistical methods. Thus, statistical methods are written by and need to be accessible to researchers across a range of quantitative expertise. Poorly written Methods sections can incorrectly …

Livestock Producers' Perceptions Of The American Black Vulture Conflict In The Midwestern United States, Marian L. Wahl, Brooke Mcwherter, Patrick A. Zollner, Zhao Ma, Grant C. Burcham, Lee A. Humberg, Brian M. Kluever

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Human‐wildlife interactions are present wherever both humans and wildlife are found. Interactions can be positive or negative for humans and can include impacts that range from damage to property, agriculture, health and human safety, to emotional effects. Livestock‐wildlife interactions form a major component of human‐wildlife conflicts with foci often centered on the implications of livestock predation by wildlife. While most vulture species are obligate scavengers, several species, including the American black vulture (Coragyps atratus), may attack weak or newborn livestock. Black vulture populations and distributions are expanding in the Midwestern U.S., and attacks create a novel problem for …

Dispersal Of Blackbird Flocks From Sunflower Fields: Efficacy Influenced By Flock And Field Size But Not Drone Platform, Conor C. Egan, Bradley Blackwell, Esteban Fernández‐Juricic, Page Klug

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Crop depredation by blackbirds (Icteridae) results in substantial economic losses to the United States sunflower industry, and a solution to effectively reduce damage remains elusive. We evaluated the utility of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS), or drones, as hazing tools to deter foraging blackbirds from commercial sunflower (Helianthus annuus) fields in North Dakota, USA, between September and October 2017. We compared the efficacy of 3 drones: a fixed‐wing predator model mimicking the form of an aerial raptor, a fixed‐wing airplane of similar size, and a multirotor drone. Multirotor drones are relatively easy to fly and are a multifunctional tool for agricultural …

Predicting Dispersal And Conflict Risk For Wolf Recolonization In Colorado, Mark A. Ditmer, George Wittemyer, Katherine A. Zeller, Stewart W. Breck, Robert J. Fletcher Jr., Kevin R. Crooks

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

1. The colonization of suitable yet unoccupied habitat due to natural dispersal or human introduction can benefit recovery of threatened species. Predicting habitat suitability and conflict potential of colonization areas can facilitate conservation planning.

2. Planning for reintroduction of gray wolves (Canis lupus) to the United States state of Colorado is underway. Assessing which occupancy sites minimize the likelihood of human-wolf conflict during dispersal events and seasonal movements is critical to the success of this initiative.

3. We used a spatial absorbing Markov chain (SAMC) framework, which extends random walk theory and probabilistically accounts for both movement behavior …

Type And Frequency Of Wild Pig-Domestic Livestock Contacts And Operator Concern For Disease Spread, Sophie C. Mckee, Daniel F. Mooney, Ryan S. Miller

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) can levy substantial costs to domestic livestock operations and global supply chains due to disease introduction. Producers can take defensive action to avert these costs, but the factors influencing these decisions are not well understood. We examined survey data to characterize the type and frequency of contacts between wild pigs and domestic livestock and investigated the determinants of farm operator concern for disease introduction using an ordered logit model. We found that operators with livestock kept in buildings were more concerned about disease than those with livestock kept in fenced areas or that roam …

Rethinking ‘Responsibility’ In Precision Agriculture Innovation: Lessons From An Interdisciplinary Research Team, Edward Prutzer, Maaz Gardezi, Donna M. Rizzo, Mary Emery, Scott Merrill, Benjamin E.K. Ryan, Panagiotis D. Oikonomou, Juan P. Alvez, Damilola T. Adereti, Rubaina Anjum, Appala R. Badireddy, Dwarika Bhattarai, Skye Brugler, Nicholas Cheney, David Clay, Sharon Clay, Ali Dadkhah, Joshua W. Faulkner, Deepak R. Joshi, Christopher Koliba, John Mcmaine, Semhar Michael, Sardorbek Musayev, Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne, George Pinder, Taylor Ricketts, Andrew W. Schroth, Scott Turnbull, Asim Zia

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

We examine the interactions, decisions, and evaluations of an interdisciplinary team of researchers tasked with developing an artificial intelligence-based agricultural decision support system that can provide farmers site-specific information about managing nutrients on their land. We answer the following research questions: (1) How does a relational perspective help an interdisciplinary team conceptualize ‘responsibility’ in a project that develops precision agriculture (PA)? and (2) What are some lessons for a research team embarking on a similar interdisciplinary technology development project? We show that how RI is materialized in practice within an interdisciplinary research team can produce different understandings of responsibility, notions …

Generativity Development Among College Students Who Mentor: A Sequential Multi-Method Quantitative Study., Hannah Sunderman, Lindsay J. Hastings

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

Purpose Generativity, defined as care for the next generation, is a hallmark of developmental theory (Erikson, 1950). Mentoring is an antecedent to generativity (Doerwald et al., 2021), with college students who mentor demonstrating higher generativity than their peers (Hastings et al., 2015). Yet, no research has studied generativity development longitudinally among college students who mentor.

Design/methodology/approach Using MANCOVA analyses, Study One (N = 91) cross-sectionally examined the influence of years spent mentoring on generativity levels among college students who mentor in the United States. Study Two (N = 44) employed growth curve analyses (GCA) in multilevel modeling (MLM) …

How I See Myself, Lindsay J. Hastings

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

The way we see ourselves is critical to our development as leaders. The more we know about ourselves, the more strategic we can pursue leadership roles that fit our talents and values. The more we understand ourselves, the more easily we can understand others. The more mindful we can be of our feelings and state of mind, the more intentionally positive our actions can be. In short, our self-awareness as leaders is foundational and serves as an essential starting block for leadership development.

Assessing And Measuring Leadership Identity, Lindsay J. Hastings, Hannah Sunderman

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

This article explores numerous complexities involved in assessing and measuring leadership identity development. It also reviews leader and leadership identity as well as prior attempts to assess leader and leadership identity development. Recommendations for effective assessment andmeasurement practices when diagnosing development in leader and leadership identity are offered.

Nitrates In Nebraska, Michelle Zenk

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

For my senior thesis project, I decided to study nitrate pollution to better understand and analyze how college students in Nebraska viewed and understood the complex issue of nitrate pollution. From my study only half of college students surveyed viewed nitrate pollution as a problem. Only 15 percent of college students test their water for nitrates, and most college students were knowledgeable on how nitrate pollution occurs. Due to the negative impacts of nitrate pollution within human health, soil health, and ecosystem function further work needs to be completed to raise awareness and knowledge on the impacts of nitrate pollution.

Off The Rails: Cinematic Trains As Technological Controls Of The Natural World, Trinity Thompson

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Short train rail lines across the United States are seeing increased national funding to reduce toxic chemical spills caused by train derailments, the most notable of which happened in February 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio. A year prior, the film White Noise (2022) featured a similar toxic train derailment incident, taking place, too, in Eastern Ohio, and featuring actors from the town of East Palestine. In considering other films featuring trains, I identified a pattern of environmental conflict, leading me to question the relationship between trains and the natural environment as portrayed in popular cinema. To conduct my research, I …

Nebraska Law Review 2022 Vol. 101, No. 2 - Masthead And Table Of Contents

Nebraska Law Review

In Memoriam Dean Anna Williams Shavers

Fifty Years of the UNL College of Law Multicultural Legal Society Anna Williams Shavers 355

Picturing Anna Williams Shavers Steven L. Willborn 374

Anna Williams Shavers— In Grateful Memory Josephine (Jo) R. Potuto 378

In Memoriam–Anna Shavers Richard Moberly 382

Bright, Elegant, and Important: Remarks from Dean Shavers’ Memorial Natasha Naseem 385

Lessons from Dean Shavers Endeliza Hampton 389

Articles

Scrap McDonnell Douglas and its Burden-Shifting! Carlissa Carson 392

All Rise: Pursuing Equity in Oral Argument Evaluation Rachel Stabler 438

Due Process in Solitary Confinement: It’s Time to Overrule Sandin and Revise Wilkinson Russell …

Due Process In Solitary Confinement: It’S Time To Overrule Sandin And Revise Wilkinson, Russell E. Lovell Ii

Nebraska Law Review

Sandin and Wilkinson were decided during Chief Justice William Rehnquist's tenure, and the Chief Justice played the lead role in reshaping the Court's solitary confinement caselaw over the past thirty years. It was Chief Justice Rehnquist who fashioned the “atypical, significant hardship” test in Sandin v. Conner and it would have to be exhibit 1 demonstrating the Chief Justice's “indifference to prison terrors,” to borrow Professor Judith Resnik's eloquent phrase. The Hijacking article contended that the Sandin Court totally ignored the facts of the case and time-honored settled precedent that required due process protection prior to imposition of even short-term …

No Dogs Allowed (Without A Warrant): Expanding The Fourth Amendment Sanctity Of The Home To Interior Threshold Searches For Tenants In Multiunit Dwellings–United States V. Mathews, Katelin O'Connor

Nebraska Law Review

Ambiguous privacy expectations under the Fourth Amendment have left tenants in multiunit dwellings vulnerable and lacking full constitutional protection from the government’s prying eyes. The storied history of Fourth Amendment interpretation lacks clarity regarding what comprises a permissible search and what limitations are placed on a tenant’s reasonable expectation of privacy, particularly concerning the utilization of dogs to conduct sniff searches. As a result, tenants in multiunit dwellings have traditionally received fewer constitutional protections under the Fourth Amendment compared to those who live in single-family, stand-alone homes.

This Note argues the Eighth Circuit, and further, all circuits, should utilize the …

Masthead & Table Of Contents, Vol. 102, No. 1

Nebraska Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Case Against Officer Fiduciary Duties, Paul D. Weitzel

Nebraska Law Review

This article argues that fiduciary duties owed by officer to shareholders are counterproductive, theoretically unsound and unnecessary in practice. Using experimental data from behavioral ethics research, the article shows that fiduciary duties expand the range of morally justifiable behavior, which increases self-serving transactions. This harm is not offset by the constraints created by fiduciary duties because officer fiduciary duties are rarely enforced and almost never result in actual damages paid by the officers themselves.

The article further shows that fiduciary duties owed by officers to shareholders are theoretically unsound. Fiduciary theory is premised on opportunism, vulnerability, entrusted assets and costly …

Masthead & Table Of Contents, Vol. 102, No. 2

Nebraska Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Joker Controversy: An Origin Story, Brandon Bosch, Lisa Kort-Butler

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The Joker has been in the Batman comics for over 80 years and appeared on small and large screen as Batman’s violent arch-nemesis. In the month prior to its theatrical release, commentary about the 2019 film Joker spurred a viral media reaction with concerns about the film inciting violence. To understand this phenomenon, we used Google Trends to trace a timeline of online media reactions mapped to events. Then, we analyzed over 200 news stories, commentary articles, and film reviews for explanatory narratives. We noted four key moments: the Venice Film Festival; an open letter by family members of victims …

Religious Exemption, Lgbt Rights, And The Social Construction Of Harm And Freedom, Emily Kazyak, Kelsy Burke, Maia Behrendt, Marissa Oliver

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

In this article, we examine how courts make decisions in religious exemption cases that implicate LGBT rights in a wide range of contexts including education, employment, and medical care. Through an in-depth qualitative analysis of 50 federal cases decided between 1990 and 2020, we demonstrate a shift in how anti-LGBT sentiment is expressed by parties bringing religion-based claims—from a broad condemnation of LGBT identity to a narrow condemnation of same-sex marriage—and find that courts are more likely to rule in favor of the latter. We show how courts construct competing understandings of harm and religious freedom depending on the context …

Making The Case: Examining Outcomes Of Religious‑Based Claims In Federal Litigation Involving Lgbt Rights, Emily Kazyak, Kelsy Burke, Marissa Oliver, Maia Behrendt

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Introduction In this manuscript, we analyze 62 US federal cases from 1990 to 2020 that implicate the issue of religious freedom and LGBT rights. Popular and scholarly commentary on the advancement of LGBT rights in the twenty-first century has speculated a rise in religious exemption litigation as a strategy to oppose such rights. Yet, we lack empirical data to confirm or reject this assumption and to understand patterns and trends within such cases.

Methods We perform bivariate analyses to examine trends with regard to how the court rules on these cases.

Results Our findings show that religious litigants are not …

Nebraskans Attitudes Towards Innovations In Food Production And Processing 2019 And 2020 – Methodology Report, Julia Mcquillan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

SURVEY QUESTIONS

Social Vulnerability And The Prevalence Of Opioid Use Disorder Among Older Medicare Beneficiaries In U.S. Counties, Tse-Chuan Yang, Seulki Kim, Stephen A. Matthews, Carla Shoff

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Objectives: Recent research has investigated the factors associated with the prevalence of opioid use disorder (OUD) among older adults (65+), which has rapidly increased in the past decade. However, little is known about the relationship between social vulnerability and the prevalence of OUD, and even less about whether the correlates of the prevalence of OUD vary across the social vulnerability spectrum. This study aims to fill these gaps. Methods: We assemble a county-level data set in the contiguous United States (U.S.) by merging 2021 Medicare claims with the CDC’s social vulnerability index and other covariates. Using the total number of …

Prospective Attitude About The Importance Of Planning Pregnancies Is Associated With Retrospective Attitude Toward A Specific Pregnancy, Arthur L. Greil, Karina M. Shreffler, Stacy M. Tiemeyer, Julia Mcquillan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Several theories of fertility behavior assume that planning is important to women. Is this a reasonable assumption? To answer this question, the authors used the National Survey of Fertility Barriers. Among women with unsure or positive fertility intentions at wave 1, most (75 percent) agreed with the statement “It is important to plan my pregnancies.” Logistic regression, adjusted for control variables, indicated that fertility intentions are a distinct construct from pregnancy planning attitudes. Multinomial regression of retrospective pregnancy attitude three years later among a subsample of women who had pregnancies during that period indicated that women who felt that it …

“Just Attaching A Face”: Engaging Local Refugee Communities In Preservice Teacher Education Focused On Students With Immigrant/Refugee Backgrounds, Stephanie Wessels, Theresa Catalano, Jenelle Reeves, Alison E. Leonard, Uma Ganesan, Alessia Barbici-Wagner, Consuelo Gallardo

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This arts-practice research study explores what happens when preservice high school teachers (aka teacher-learners) and local refugee communities engage in the co-creation of art together via an arts-and community-based project. Grounded in social justice teacher education, the researchers conducted a 2-week workshop in which participants included preservice high school teachers and local Yazidi community members who explored art in a museum together, spent time getting to know each other and their backgrounds, and re-created some of their stories in the form of dance. Findings reveal a variety of ways in which the workshops helped teacher-learners develop interculturality, increase understanding of …

Scaffolding Learning For Teachers Of Multilingual Learners Through Agency, Leadership, And Collaboration, Kara Viesca, Cindy H. Linzell, Peiwen Wang, Molly Heeren, Jessica Mitchell-Mccollough, Alexa Yunes-Koch

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Grounded in findings from multiple disciplines (e.g., neuroscience, human, development, cognitive science, and social psychology), Lee, Meltzoff, and Kuhl (2020) propose a framework to understand human learning. Composed of multiple propositions, one aspect of this framework emphasizes the social nature of learning. Specifically, they argue, “A comprehensive theory of human development must take into account basic motivations for learning from, through, and in relationship with social others” [emphasis added] (p. 25). Education researchers and practitioners working with multilingual students and their teachers have extensively argued for attention to “learning from, through, and in relationships with social others” (Lee et al., …

“It Was Just My Name!”: A Crt/Crf Analysis Of International Female Graduate Students’ Perceptions And Experiences Regarding Their Ethnic Name, Peiwen Wang, Xiaoyan Gu, Amanda Morales

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Although international female students accounted for 44% of the enrolled international students in the United States (U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, 2020), their experiences regarding their ethnic name are relatively understudied in the onomastic literature. This study considers the experiences of eight international female graduate students of Color who are studying at a Midwestern predominantly White university. Utilizing critical race theory (CRT) and critical race feminism (CRF) as the theoretical and analytical lenses, this qualitative phenomenological study collected data through semistructured, in-depth interviews. We explore the meaning of ethnic names and their connection to …