Digital Commons Network^™

2025 North Haverhill Fair 4-H Animal Packet, Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

2025 North Haverhill Fair 4-H Exhibit Hall Packet, Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Leading Like Jesus In Organizations: Assessing The Practices Of Servant Leadership, Keenan A. Siegal

M.S. in Leadership

This project explores the concept of servant leadership through examining biblical accounts of Jesus Christ’s life and teachings. This project highlights how Jesus exemplified key principles of servant leadership, including humility, empathy, self-sacrifice, and a deep commitment to serving others before himself. The project contrasts Jesus’ leadership style with modern leadership models and discusses its relevance in today’s professional settings. Overall, it aims to explore a transformational approach to leadership in which it that prioritizes compassion, integrity, and the empowerment of others over meeting the needs of the business or serving yourself as a leader.

Managing Change In Higher Education: Implementing Mobile Credentials Across Usnh, Amy R. Gray

M.S. in Leadership

As higher education institutions continue to embrace digital transformation, mobile credentials are emerging as an innovative solution for modernizing campus ID systems. Literature suggests that these digital versions of campus ID cards, stored on smartphones, offer enhanced security, operational efficiency, and a more seamless campus experience. This research project explored best practices and key factors necessary for implementing mobile credentials across the University System of New Hampshire (USNH), with a focus on leadership’s role in managing change. Using a mixed-methods approach—including case study analysis, a literature review, and survey research—this study examined best practices, challenges, and strategies for successful adoption. …

Layered Alignment, Spencer Williams

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Most artificial intelligence (ai) researchers now believe that ai represents an existential threat to humanity. The most dangerous threat posed by ai is an issue known as the alignment problem: the risk that a sufficiently intelligent and capable ai system could become misaligned with the goals and values of its human creators and instead pursue its own objectives to the detriment of humanity, including the possibility of extinction. The tension at the heart of the alignment problem is familiar to scholars of agency, contracts, and corporate law, though it goes by a different name: the principal-agent problem. In the traditional …

Time Variant Particle Swarm Optimization For Autonomous Dynamic Rescue And Recovery, Kyle Sanders

Master's Theses and Capstones

Rescue and recovery missions on extraterrestrial sites are an inevitable necessity, especiallywith increased extraterrestrial exploration. Robotic and crewed missions provide significant challenges due to budgetary restrictions and time constraints. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) techniques leverage shared swarm knowledge for solution convergence. However, traditional PSO exhibits performance degradation in dynamic scenarios. The author presents Time-Variant Particle Swarm Optimization (TVPSO), which weighs newer measurements higher than previously held values. This is achieved through implementation of a configurable comparison function as part of the survival of the fittest logical calculations. Three versions of this comparison function are evaluated (exponential, linear, and logistic) against …

Robust Edge Machine-Learning For The Real-Time Processing And Prediction Of Geomagnetic Anomalies And Geomagnetically Induced Currents (Gics), Talha Siddique

Doctoral Dissertations

Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs) are currents induced in the Earth's surface conductors and are caused by geomagnetic disturbances or storms (GMDs). Such disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field are the result of interactions between the Earth's magnetosphere (the region of space dominated by the Earth's magnetic field) and the solar wind (a continuous stream of charged particles from the Sun) \cite{camporeale_machine_2018} \cite{geosciences12010027}. These induced currents considerably threaten vital technological systems, notably the electrical power grids. This research addresses the critical challenges of robust, real-time forecasting and monitoring of GICs using machine learning (ML). The project initiative responds to the inherent …

Socioeconomic Status And Its Relationship To Mathematics Achievement: Using A Meta-Analysis, Bitna Choi

Doctoral Dissertations

Educational inequality mirrors broader societal disparities. There are various factors that represent educational inequality, such as socioeconomic status (SES), school environment, teacher quality, gender, and support services. Among these, SES is commonly used as a key indicator of educational inequality. Consistently, studies have shown that students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds have higher academic achievement (Johnson et al., 2022; Murphy, 2019; Tate, 1997). This disparity is particularly evident in mathematics, which is crucial for academic and career opportunities. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and mathematics achievement of K-12 students. In addition, this …

A Daughter’S Inheritance: The Construction Of Motherhood Through Death, Michaela George

Doctoral Dissertations

Mother-daughter relationships have been of feminist interest for decades as this relationship shifts narrative focus to underrepresented characters. In literature their relationship illustrates and complicates what it means to be ‘woman’ and provides access to educational theories, political understanding, and familial ideologies. Further, examining how these relationships shift and alter through eras of narratives offers tangible patterns for study. My dissertation examines the mother-daughter relationships in late eighteenth-century, early nineteenth-century prose by investigating how social constructions of gender are complicated, critiqued, shaped, and altered as they are passed from parent to child in deathbed scenes. I engage with medical humanities …

Improving Quality Of Experience With Http/3 And Extensible Prioritization Scheme, Abhinav Gupta

Doctoral Dissertations

The internet is an indispensable part of modern life, with billions of users accessing countless web pages daily. While loading speed is crucial, the overall Quality of Experience (QoE) significantly influences user satisfaction and engagement with websites. Incomplete or delayed page loading can lead to frustration, reduced site visits, and financial losses. In our preliminary study, we examined how network protocols like HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 impact both Quality of Service (QoS) and QoE by assessing throughput and six Lighthouse performance metrics. Our findings highlight the relationship between QoS and QoE, emphasizing the need for efficient resource scheduling and prioritization to …

Assessing The Roles Of Corticosterone And Familiarity In Prosocial Helping Tasks, Taylor Anne Kimball-Sabatella

Doctoral Dissertations

Studies have suggested that rats may be motivated by empathy, a characteristic that has been historically viewed as uniquely human, when engaging in helping other individuals escape stressful situations. Some researchers refute this idea, suggesting rats may be motivated by social interaction or other factors. To better understand what is driving helping behavior, it is critical to investigate the effectiveness of the stressors used in previous studies, how stress levels change over time, and how the stress of the recipient is related to the actions of the helper. If restraint is causing sufficient stress to the trapped individual and a …

Static Risk Sensitive Reinforcement Learning, Jia Lin Hau

Doctoral Dissertations

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a core area of artificial intelligence (AI) that enables systems to make decisions in complex environments. RL algorithms have shown promise in various domains, including resource management, robotics, and games. However, most existing RL approaches fail to account for the risks associated with decision-making. This oversight becomes particularly critical in high-stakes settings, such as healthcare, finance, criminal justice, and autonomous driving, where poor decisions can have significant consequences.

To address risk in decision-making, another line of research explores the properties (axioms) of "desirable" risk measures. This desirability is defined as the ability to quantify the capital …

Logistic Regression And Cox Hazard Modeling With Sparse High Dimensional Data Via Elastic Net Regularization And Graph-Guided Aggregation, Matthew Duckett

Doctoral Dissertations

Rare features are predictor variables with excessively low rates of nonzeros. It is not uncommon to encounter rare features in settings where data is quantified through one-hot encoding, such as text mining data or genomic data. Rare features pose problems for classic regression techniques due to instability of effect estimates. The problem is compoundedwhen the dimension of the feature space is high. Yan and Bien (2020) explored methods for aggregating rare features in high dimensions by leveraging side-information about relations between features that can be organized as a tree graph. While their work is restricted to standard Gaussian regression, we …

Consumptive And Energetic Responses Of Fishes Under Pressure Of Climate Change, Nathan Thomas Hermann

Doctoral Dissertations

Marine organisms are confronted with warming waters due to climate change requiring species to exhibit responses to persist. For many fish, these responses have included range shifts to cooler waters, but are species-specific which may create further disruption through trophic mismatches. To identify potential mismatches and estimate their implications for the quality of consumption within major predators, analyses of predator stomach contents were integrated with reviews of organismal energetics and physiological parameter values. The energy density of prey that is consumed dictates the consequences of consumption, so having data expands general understanding of diet. To that end, published records (n …

Double Segregated Districts And The Persistence Of The Education Debt: A Study In Three Research Essays – Desegregation, The Education Debt, And Brown To Brownsville: A Case Study., Shantel Palacio

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the persistence of double segregation—the racial and socioeconomic isolation of students—in New York City public schools. Using a three-article, mixed-methods design grounded in Gloria Ladson-Billings’ education debt framework, it explores how legal precedent, school-level demographics, and community perspectives interact to sustain unequal educational opportunity.The first article provides a legal-historical analysis tracing desegregation efforts from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) to IntegrateNYC v. State of New York (2024). Using the IRAC method, it examines how federal courts shifted from enforcing desegregation to limiting race-conscious remedies, leading advocates to pursue equity through state-based legal strategies. The article highlights the increasing …

Analysis And Procedures For Conducting Laboratory And Field Dielectric Measurements For Asphalt Pavement Density Evaluation, Anh Tran

Doctoral Dissertations

Achieving proper asphalt concrete pavement density, through combination of rigorous field and laboratory practices, is one of the top priorities of state agencies and contractors due to its significant impact on pavement performance and longevity. The field and laboratory traditional methods have limitations and pose challenges in terms of equipment and measurements which can influence the accuracy and efficiency of pavement density evaluation. In the field, various methods such as field coring, nuclear and non-nuclear density gauges are costly, time-consuming and only provide limited coverage of density assessment. In the lab, methods for evaluating the bulk specific gravity (Gmb) of …

Probing Neutron Star Interiors: Insights Into Asymmetric Dark Matter, Dark Energy, And The Cold Dense Matter Equation Of State, Nathan Rutherford

Doctoral Dissertations

The combination of derived neutron star mass-radius measurements from NASA's Neutron Star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER) mission, constraints from chiral effective field theory (chiEFT), and mass-tidal deformability constraints from gravitational waves has led to significant improvements in the understanding of the cold dense matter equation of state (EoS) of neutron stars. Interestingly, asymmetric dark matter (ADM) and dark energy may also be present within neutron star interiors, potentially impacting their global properties. Taking these effects into account, neutron star measurements can not only offer new insights into the dense matter EoS, but also serve as a hunting ground for dark …

Design And Synthesis Of Single Atom Catalysts For Solar Fuel Generation, Allison Harper St. John

Doctoral Dissertations

Solar fuel generation from photocatalytic carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction is a growing area of interest to mitigate global energy and climate crises. Graphitic carbon nitride (C3N4) is a light-absorbing semiconductor with a promising outlook for solar fuels, gaining popularity in recent years due to its low cost and appropriate band positions for many environmentally relevant reactions. The addition of atomically dispersed single atom catalysts (SACs) to semiconducting materials is a viable strategy for creating active sites to improve photocatalytic performance of the semiconductors studied. Designing C3N4 materials as a support for SACs with well-defined binding motifs and sufficiently high concentrations …

Evaluation Of The Role Of Bet Inhibitors On The Bone Marrow Microenvironment, Victoria Aumann Dos Reis

Master's Theses and Capstones

Waldenström Macroglobulinemia (WM) is an incurable subtype of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma characterized by high levels of circulating serum IgM and bone marrow infiltration by malignant cells. As in other hematological malignancies, the tumor microenvironment (TME) is crucial for tumorigenesis and survival of WM cells. The TME is composed by non-cancer cells, including stromal and endothelial cells, immune cells, and adipocytes, metabolites, lymphatic and blood vessels, extracellular matrix, and signaling components, such as chemokines, cytokines and growth factors. Bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) are essential for hematopoiesis, since they secrete stromal factors and cytokines, including Interleukin (IL)-6. IL-6 modulates the secretion of …

Adélie Penguin Vocalizations Reflect Breeding Phenology, Danielle Therese Fradet

Master's Theses and Capstones

Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) are bellwethers for Antarctic climate change because their breeding phenology is closely linked to sea-ice extent. Researchers need long-term, large-scale phenology data to make informed Antarctic climate and conservation insights. However, traditional breeding phenology data collection is resource intensive, limiting research to small colonies located near research stations. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is a low-disturbance, easily scalable method which facilitates large-scale data collection and has been successfully applied at multiple seabird colonies to collect breeding phenology data. In this thesis, I provide a framework to implement a custom BirdNET wind detector to identify wind distorted recordings, …

Private Conservation And Indigenous Groups With Contested Identities: How Are Land Trusts Navigating Recognition Politics And Controversy?, Geneva Nuttall Lish

Master's Theses and Capstones

New Hampshire has no state or federally recognized Indigenous tribes, and the identities of its self-recognized Abenaki tribes have been publicly contested by Canadian scholars and the Odanak and Wolinak First Nations. As a result, conservation practitioners within New Hampshire land trusts face challenges in making decisions about collaborations, cultural access, and land management involving tribal entities. Our research thus explores how land trusts currently incorporate Indigenous relationships in their operations, and how these practices may be affected by (a) an absence of tribal federal recognition and (b) the publicly contested nature of a tribe. We conducted six semi-structured interviews …

A Random Forest Regression Approach For Prediction Of Specific Flux For Ultrafiltration Membranes, Isabel Medeiros

Master's Theses and Capstones

Ultrafiltration (UF) membrane operation is strongly affected by fouling, where dissolved and suspended water quality constituents interact with each other and the membrane surface, leading to pore blockage. As a result, a fouled membrane loses filtration efficiency, reducing the volume of treated water produced and increasing operation and maintenance costs associated with membrane cleaning. At a Dutch full-scale facility in North Holland, fouling is indicated by both an increase in the amount of pressure required across the membrane, known as transmembrane pressure (TMP), and a decrease in permeability, represented by specific flux (SF). The facility performs hydraulic backwashing - both …

High Frequency Analysis Of The Carbon Dioxide Linkage Between Terrestrial And Aquatic Ecosystems, Amanda G. Theall

Master's Theses and Capstones

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a potent greenhouse gas, and surface water concentrations are often supersaturated relative to the atmosphere. To fully quantify CO2 dynamics in stream ecosystems, it is critical to understand sources of stream CO2, particularly the link between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. It is unclear how soil CO2 enters streams and to what magnitude. To address this knowledge gap, I analyzed high-frequency CO2 time-series of soil and stream water sensor data to understand source-sink dynamics and time lags between the two pools. I used seven years of hourly sensor data from three soil depths with upscaled 15-minute stream …

Flexibly Changing Resource Allocation In Individuals With Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (Mtbi), Alyssa Walker

Master's Theses and Capstones

Introduction: The current study examined how individuals with mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs) can shift their attentional efforts in real-time. These abilities were examined within a dual-task, during which individuals had to perform two tasks simultaneously. The first research question compared the performance of healthy controls and concussion participants on individual subtasks of the dual-task. The second research question explored how effective healthy controls versus concussion participants were in shifting their attentional resources. The final research question examined the effect of fatigue, specifically whether concussion participants would demonstrate a greater fatigue effect and have more difficulty at the end of …

Concord Monitor: One Year After Unh Protest, New Police Body Camera Footage Casts Doubt On Assault Charges Against Students, Jeremy Margolis

Digital Edition

No abstract provided.

Using Hyperspectral Uas To Map Hydrated Compounds In Martian Terrestrial Analog Systems, Andrew G. Fleming

Master's Theses and Capstones

Hypersaline lakes and playas in arid environments on Earth can serve as analogs for paleolake environments of interest on Mars because the hydrated compounds within these systems indicate the presence of ancient hydrologic networks and display strong relationships with microbial life. Traditional orbital observations map these compounds at spatial resolutions ranging from tens to hundreds of meters per pixel. This study uses in-situ measurements, Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) hyperspectral mapping (10 cm), and EnMAP satellite hyperspectral mapping (30 m) to map heterogeneous mineralogical assemblages in hypersaline lakes in Southcentral British Columbia, Canada (BC). We tested the ability of high-resolution UAS …

Linking Nutrient Cycling And Ecological Dynamics: A Case Study Of Internal Phosphorus Loading In The Lake Kanasatka Watershed, Georgia Bunnell

Master's Theses and Capstones

Even with extensive implementation of best management practices to mitigate external nutrient loading, numerous New Hampshire lakes are experiencing diminished water quality due to internal phosphorus loading (IPL). Remobilization of legacy nutrients like phosphorus can lead to more frequent and prolonged cyanobacteria blooms and exacerbate the process of eutrophication. This is the case for Lake Kanasatka, located in Moultonborough, New Hampshire, where IPL contributes to nearly 25% of its total phosphorus budget, with that percentage increasing towards 50% by the end of summer, as the hypolimnion becomes anoxic. After years of monitoring and watershed management, Lake Kanasatka received an aluminum …

Effects Of Foil Thickness And Trailing Edge Thickness On The Performance Of Cross-Flow Turbines, Katie Dold

Master's Theses and Capstones

The University of New Hampshire (UNH) and Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) collaborated on the fabrication and testing of various blade shapes for cross-flow turbines (CFT). The UNH Wave and Tow Tank was used to test seven different 1.0 m scale, three-bladed cross-flow turbines with modified NACA 0018, 0021, and 0024 hydrofoil profiles with trailing edge thickness of 0.4%, 4.0%, and 8.0% of chord length. The effects of different foil thicknesses and trailing edge thicknesses on the performance of cross-flow turbines were examined motivated by factors such as manufacturability, cost, and structural integrity. These blades were constructed using a novel …

Understanding The Epigenetic Role Of Prmt5 Inhibitors In Rna Binding Proteins And Histones Involved In Merkel Cell Carcinoma Tumorigenesis., Devya Gurung

Master's Theses and Capstones

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare and aggressive neuroendocrine skin cancer with a 30% mortality rate. In the United States, 80% of MCC cases are linked to the integration of Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCPyV), while the remaining cases are associated with excessive ultraviolet (UV) exposure, leading to UV-induced DNA damage. The therapeutic targets for MCC remain largely unknown. Elevated expression of Protein Arginine Methyltransferase-5 (PRMT5) has been observed in various cancers. My research aims to investigate how arginine methylation impacts the regulatory mechanisms of RNA-binding proteins and histone residues during neuroendocrine transdifferentiation in MCC. Recent studies suggest that low …

King Stephen's War: Military Strategy In A Time Of Anarchy, Keith Sloan

Master's Theses and Capstones

This paper examines military strategy during the mid twelfth century civil war in England, the so-called “Anarchy.” It demonstrates that King Stephen and his Angevin opponents both employed what would be recognized today as strategy in their conduct of the war. It posits that the two largest factors influencing their respective strategies was the permeability of the English countryside, allowing the easy movement of military forces, and the expensive and time-consuming necessity of besieging castles to gain control of territory, the latter a reality of contemporary technology. Using concepts from the field of strategic studies, it demonstrates that, rather than …