Digital Commons Network^™

Model Stormwater Standards 2026, Unh Stormwater Center

UNH Stormwater Center

The purpose of post-construction stormwater management standards is to provide reasonable guidance for the regulation of stormwater runoff to protect local natural resources from degradation and prevent adverse impacts to adjacent and downstream land, property, facilities, and infrastructure. These standards regulate discharges from stormwater and runoff from land development projects and other construction activities to control and minimize increases in stormwater runoff rates and volumes, soil erosion, stream channel erosion, and nonpoint source pollution associated with stormwater runoff.

How Presentation Shapes Multisensory Category Learning, Hooman Main Amiri

Master's Theses and Capstones

Category learning allows people to group complex sensory input into categories, helping them generalize knowledge from familiar exemplars to novel stimuli. In everyday life, categories are often learned from more than one sense, yet most prior work on category learning has focused on learning in a single sensory modality. Here, we asked whether the way category information is presented across modalities, simultaneously or separately, shapes multisensory category learning in adults. In Experiment 1, participants learned the categories with either simultaneous or separate presentation of auditory and visual information and then completed a test phase to assess not only whether they …

Characterizing Effects Of Basal Ganglia Dysfunction On Implicit-Statistical Learning: Evidence From Parkinson's Disease, Alyson Rose Brown

Master's Theses and Capstones

This study investigated implicit statistical learning (ISL) ability in individuals with Parkinson’sdisease (PD) to further characterize the influence of the basal ganglia degeneration on ISL. The first research aim looked to investigate ISL ability in individuals with PD in comparison to age- matched healthy controls. Additionally, the relationship between cognitive measures and ISL task performance was investigated to identify potential interactions between ISL and aspects of cognition considered to be necessary for it. In this study four participants with PD were administered an auditory ISL experimental task. In an exposure phase, participants were familiarized with a target grammar pattern. Then …

Have You Seen This? Impact Of Concussion And Memory On Narrative Retells Of Silent Animated Films, Lauren Kate Harrington

Master's Theses and Capstones

AbstractBackground: Concussions are mild traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) that are often associated with short- and long-term cognitive impacts. Two specific cognitive skills people with concussion exhibit deficits in are working memory- the ability to retain and manipulate newly presented information- and episodic memory- memory of scenes that have occurred, similar to recalling a television episode. Previous studies have revealed mixed results in differences of narrative length between speakers with and without concussion; however, more information is needed on the relationship between memory and narrative production in speakers with concussion. Aims: This study compares the total number of utterances and mean …

Optimal Robust Maximum Entropy Behavioral Cloning, Francesco Alessandro Stefano Mikulis-Borsoi

Master's Theses and Capstones

Behavioral Cloning (BC) is an imitation learning approach in which a policy is learned from demonstrations represented as sequences of state-action pairs. Standard BC treats all demonstrations as equally trustworthy; consequently, suboptimal or adversarially corrupted demonstrations can disproportionately influence the learned policy. Robust Maximum Entropy Behavioral Cloning (R-MaxEnt BC) addresses this limitation by learning per-demonstration trust weights M and fitting a maximum-entropy policy that is conditioned on these weights.

In this thesis, I propose OR-MaxEnt BC (Optimal Robust Maximum Entropy Behavioral Cloning), a Convex Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Program (MINLP) with optimality guarantees for selecting which demonstrations to trust given the hyperparameter …

A Data-Driven Assessment Of Coastal Roadway Vulnerability Using Observed Storm Damage Locations, Jack Kearing

Master's Theses and Capstones

Coastal roadways are increasingly vulnerable to storm impacts and sea level rise. One common failure mode during these events is roadway washout, defined in this study as the physical loss or structural failure of roadway segments due to erosion, overtopping, or hydraulic failure. Washout events can disrupt transportation networks, restrict emergency access, and isolate coastal communities, highlighting the need for improved predictive methods that move beyond index-based assessments toward data-driven identification of vulnerable roadways.This study develops a data-driven framework for assessing roadway washout vulnerability using observed damage data and environmental predictors. Machine learning models, including random forest and decision tree …

Scaling Of Thermal Conductivity In The Eliot Formation, Ryan Todd Siegel

Master's Theses and Capstones

Heat flow governs the performance of geothermal energy systems, and thermal conductivity is the primary material property controlling subsurface heat transfer. This study investigates heat flow through media with spatially variable thermal conductivity within the heterogeneous Eliot Formation, a metamorphic unit extending across the coastal region of northeast New England. The objective of this work is to develop an approach for scaling thermal conductivity from core-scale measurements to field-scale values representative of geothermal borefield systems.Divided bar thermal conductivity testing, petrographic analyses, geological observations, and existing literature were integrated to construct a MODFLOW model that captures the heterogeneous thermal behavior of …

Identifying Landscape And Behavioral Drivers Of Human-Black Bear Conflict In New Hampshire, Shea O'Connor

Master's Theses and Capstones

Abundant American black bear (Ursus americanus) populations and increasing human development in New Hampshire have led to a prevalence of human-bear conflict across the state. This conflict negatively impacts humans, bears, and even the surrounding environment as safety is put at risk and environmental roles are disrupted. This thesis aimed to address both the ecological and human dimensions of human-bear conflict by combining a quantitative spatial analysis with a qualitative thematic analysis. Chapter One examined anthropogenic and landscape factors influencing human-black bear conflict levels across New Hampshire. I utilized ordinal logistic regression to analyze how various ecologically relevant predictor variables …

Vegetation Mediates Methane Ebullition Across Temporal Scales In A Temperate Peatland: A 10-Year Dataset, Apryl L. Perry

Master's Theses and Capstones

Wetlands are the largest and most variable natural source of methane (CH₄) to the atmosphere, contributing an estimated 161 Tg CH₄ yr-1 globally. Climate and anthropogenic changes can alter hydrology, geochemistry, and vegetation, generating substantial variability in CH₄ emissions across landscapes. Long-term measurements of CH₄ fluxes, inclusive of all transport pathways (ebullition, plant transport and diffusion), are rare but essential for understanding wetland contributions to the global carbon cycle. We present a decadal dataset of ebullitive CH₄ emissions from a temperate peatland, examining variation among vegetation types and relationships with environmental drivers. We found that ebullitive CH₄ fluxes were highest …

"Smart" Cities And Due Care With Emerging Technologies, Anthony J. Luppino

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

The rapid development of increasingly powerful technologies presents new opportunities to produce public benefits, as exemplified by the “Smart Cities” movement. Conversely, emerging technologies pose significant threats to public safety and individual rights, as evidenced by high-profile cyberattacks and other technology-related incidents, and in warnings issued by some Artificial Intelligence experts. This article examines the responsibilities of local governments in the United States as users of technology and as regulators of uses by other actors—arguing that they have a duty of care, traceable to the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, to act diligently in that dual role whether or not …

A Case With Bite: Royal Canin U.S.A., Inc. V. Wullschleger And The Updated Removal Jurisdiction Landscape, Nicholas G. Glover

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Subject-matter jurisdiction is critical to every case, small or large.  Establishing the court’s authority to adjudicate a present matter is tantamount to every case and for every judge.  Despite the importance of properly entering and remaining in federal courts, civil procedure cases often receive far less fanfare than most others before the Supreme Court.  Such was the case last term in Royal Canin U.S.A., Inc. v. Wullschleger, an overlooked case which silently reshaped removal jurisdiction jurisprudence. This Article details the importance of this quiet case.  Through outlining entry into federal courts, introducing and reviewing the Eighth Circuit’s outlier—but correct—opinion …

The Fourth Amendment And Geofence Warrants: Safeguarding Geofencing's Constitutionality Through Particularity And Reasonableness, Mathias Lang

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Geofencing, a location-based investigative technique that uses digital mapping to identify individuals within a defined geographic area, has become an increasingly common yet constitutionally contentious tool for law enforcement. Federal courts remain deeply divided on whether geofence warrants comport with the Fourth Amendment. The Fifth Circuit has held that such warrants constitute unconstitutional general warrants, while the Fourth Circuit has concluded that they do not even amount to searches under the third-party doctrine. This circuit split exposes a broader tension between technological innovation and foundational constitutional privacy protections.

This Article argues that geofence warrants should be treated as searches subject …

Revocation Reconsidered: Probation Advocacy Through A Litigation Lens, Shira Diner

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Being found in violation of probation has dire consequences. The person found in violation can be imprisoned, upending them from their job, family, and community. Unlike incarceration after a criminal trial, a sentence after a violation of probation is not the result of a legal process characterized by robust due process protections. It is also often not the result of a forceful and thorough defense. It is instead the consequence of a hearing where lawyers with the fixed mindset of an inevitable finding of a violation don’t engage in the same preparation that they would if it was a trial. …

Shared And Unique Neural Correlates Of Sign And Spoken Language Production: An Ale Meta-Analysis, Grace Robertson

Master's Theses and Capstones

This coordinate-based meta-analysis aimed to identify brain areas that are uniquely active in sign language production during single word/sign production tasks using Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE). Evidence from a pooled ALE of all studies revealed a shared network between sign and spoken language for language, specifically lexical, syntactic, and semantic selection and retrieval, motor planning and execution, sensorimotor integration, phonological working memory, and visual and multimodal processing. The ALE subtraction (sign language > spoken language) did not reveal any significant clusters above the corrected threshold. However, visual inspection of an uncorrected map revealed that regions responsible for language, spatial attention and …

Advancing Bathymetric Lidar Nearshore Mapping With Self-Supervised Learning, Joseph Wilder

Master's Theses and Capstones

The application of AI/ML to shallow bathymetric mapping with airborne lidar remains limited by a lack of high-quality labeled datasets, extreme spatial variability, and noise introduced by environmental conditions and hardware limitations. These issues reduce the generalizability of traditional statistical approaches for extracting bathymetric points from lidar point clouds, with additional challenges for supervised neural networks arising due to the amount and quality of labeled data required to properly capture broad seafloor characteristics. Recent advances in point cloud machine learning methods have the potential to improve conventional bathymetric processing workflows. This work examines modern self-supervised learning (SSL) methods for bathymetric …

Conserved Spatial Proximity And Immune-Linked Evolution Of Lncrnas From Protein-Coding Genes In Vertebrates, Sahar Jamialahmadi

Master's Theses and Capstones

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are widespread components of vertebrate genomes, yet theevolutionary principles governing their genomic positioning, origin, and functional associations remain incompletely understood. Here, we performed a comparative genomic analysis across 96 vertebrate species to investigate the spatial relationship between lncRNAs and protein-coding genes, their evolutionary trajectories within gene families, and their functional and genomic contexts.

We show that lncRNAs are consistently positioned in close proximity to protein-codinggenes across vertebrates, with distance distributions significantly deviating from random genomic placement in all species examined. Despite this non-random organization, genome-wide lncRNA–mRNA distance distributions were highly conserved across species. Ancestral state reconstruction …

How To Build A Successful High School Sports Program, Jacob Jude Mulligan

M.S. in Leadership

The goal of this study was to explore the most influential factors for building a successful high school sports program. Through an expansive literature review, including testimonies from Hall of Fame coaches, themes emerged around the importance of Vision, Relationships, Belief, and Identity when it comes to the question of how to build a successful high school sports program. This research was conducted with the purpose of highlighting evidence of how these four themes have led to a positive culture and success for sports programs and athletes. This study is designed to help current and future high school coaches so …

Do We Even Know What ‘Even’ Does? A Ca Investigation, Emily Johnson

Comm-entary

Emily is a Senior communication major with a Business Administration minor. She is originally from Merrimack, NH, and is planning on working in PR or something similar when she graduates in May.

What does “even” do in conversation? This study shows that when used mid-turn, “even” functions as a systematic device for intensifying stance. Analyzing naturally occurring interactions, I demonstrate how speakers use “even” to upgrade assessments, noticings, and complaints, making them more extreme or noteworthy. Recipients consistently orient to this intensification through agreement, accounts, or escalation. Even when the upgrade is left incomplete, others step in to realize it, …

Language Deprivation In Deaf Children, Kaleb Holske

Comm-entary

Kaleb is an American Sign Language English Interpreter with a double major in Linguistics, from Chester, NH. He’s also a professional balloon twister!

This piece examines how language deprivation affects deaf children when they don’t necessarily receive early access to natural language, especially during the most critical developmental years. It further explains how the medical model of deafness, reliance on cochlear implants or hearing aids, schooling, and limited sign language access can negatively impact the emotional, social, and academic growth of these children. This piece argues that early access to sign language and deaf centered support is essential for preventing …

Conventions Of Photography As Means Of Social And Technological Critiques, Ava Lannery

Comm-entary

Ava is a Communication major with a specification in Business Applications. She’s an Irish dual citizen from Newton, MA.

This piece looks  at how photography can be used as a form of Social and technological critique. Through Mark Peterson’s ICE’s Spectacle of Intimidation and Jack Latham’s Beggars Honey, this essay argues that photographers can manipulate composition, technology to create deeper meanings about power, style, social stage agency, immigration enforcement, and modern digital manipulation. Ultimately, this writing piece shows how photography depends on audience context and literacy to be fully understood. 

How The Word ‘Fucking’ Constructs Emotional Stance In Conversation, Madeline Riechers

Comm-entary

Madeline Riechers is a Communication major at UNH set to graduate in 2026. She is originally from Dalton, Massachusetts, and plans to continue her education in Language and Social Interaction after graduating from UNH. She is a part of UNH GIVE, and is an editor at the Comm-entary!

This piece uses conversation analysis concepts to examine what the word ‘fucking’ does in everyday conversation and how it conveys the emotions and stance of the participants. It examines 4 real-life cases of ‘fucking’ being used, demonstrating how it changes the meaning of the utterance and therefore the course of the conversation.

Ice Cliff As Classroom? Outdoor Recreation Program Takes Students Ice Climbing, Makena Lee

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

Merrimack County Advisory Council 2025-2026 Meeting Minutes, Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Unh Speech And Language Therapy Collaboration Improves Communication For Client With Aphasia, Aaron Sanborn

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

Trust: The Invisible Force Behind Effective Leadership During Times Of Change, Lindsay Atoro

M.S. in Leadership

Workplace change is constant, yet most change management models focus on logistical, financial, and operational factors, overlooking the human aspects. Strategies to support employees often neglect the critical role of trust in effectiveness and success. To more deeply explore the role of trust, this study combined a comprehensive literature review with leader interviews to compare theoretical findings with real-world practices. Results revealed that while leaders acknowledged the importance of trust in leading teams through change, fewer than half explicitly identified it without prompting. Trust was consistently referenced, though often implicitly, reflecting a pattern in the literature where trust was acknowledged …

Nh Ece Data Collection Efforts Running Inventory, Jess Carson, Evan England, Tyrus Parker

New Hampshire Early Care and Education Research Consortium

Updated April 2026!

The NH ECE Research Consortium maintains an inventory of current and complete NH ECE-relevant data collection efforts. Included are surveys, interviews, focus groups, needs assessments, and other ways people in the field collect information. The inventory strengthens public access for data users, improves awareness and coordination among researchers, and minimizes duplication.

Beyond A Protagonist Bias In Narrative Identity Research: Methods For Identifying Master Narratives In Interview Data, Andrew D. Coppens, Jayson Seaman, Cindy Hartman

Faculty Publications

This article advances a methodological shift in narrative identity research by addressing the field’s protagonist bias – the tendency to rely on first-person autobiographical accounts as the primary evidence for identifying cultural master narratives. We integrate Erikson’s psychosocial identity framework, Vygotsky’s “tool and result” methodological insight, and sociolinguistic approaches to narrative to develop a three-stage analytic logic: (1) identifying small-n narratives through scenes conveyed in discourse; (2) grouping these into Big-N narratives that cohere thematically across scenes (Tannen, 2007, 2008); and (3) assessing candidate master narratives using McLean and Syed’s (2016) five criteria. We demonstrate this approach through a case …

Nh Guide To 4-H Dog Shows, Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

The Way Of The Moderns: Six Perspectives On Modernism In Music, Edited By Antoni Pizà, Rob Haskins

Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Leonard Bernstein In Context, Edited By Elizabeth A. Wells, James Leve

Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal

No abstract provided.