Digital Commons Network^™

Aging Actively, Jada Lindblom, Guangzhou Chen

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Nh 4-H Horse State Show Class Patterns, Unh Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Widespread Concern Over Gas Prices In Nh As Consumer Confidence Shows Sudden Slump 5/28/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Six in ten New Hampshire residents are worried about paying for gas and believe gasoline prices will rise over the next twelve months. Two-thirds believe President Trump is very responsible for the increase in gasoline prices. As gas prices increase, Granite Staters are less positive about their personal finances compared to a year ago and many expect to be worse off a year from now. New Hampshire residents are also downbeat on the national economy, as nearly half anticipate bad times over the next year and two-thirds believe the economy is getting worse.

Most Mainers Worried About Gas Prices, Nearly Half Have Driven Less Amid Price Spike 5/28/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Majorities of Mainers are worried about the cost of gasoline and believe gas prices will continue to rise. Nearly half have limited their travel because of the price increase, while more than a third have cut spending on non-essentials in their life. More than three-quarters believe oil companies and President Trump are very or somewhat responsible for the rise in the price of gasoline. Mainers are generally pessimistic about the economy; half expect bad economic times over the next year and nearly two-thirds believe the economy is getting worse. More than half of Mainers say their personal finances have declined …

Platner Leads Collins In Maine Senate Race 5/27/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

With the Maine primary only two weeks away, Graham Platner holds a dominant lead in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate following the withdrawal of Governor Janet Mills. Platner leads incumbent Republican Susan Collins in a general election matchup. Troy Jackson and Nirav Shah are tied in the race for the Democratic nomination for governor. On the Republican side, Robert Charles leads the field, followed by Jonathan Bush. No clear frontrunner has emerged in the race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. House in Maine's Second Congressional District, while most likely Republican voters are undecided on a GOP nominee for …

Belknap County 4-H Fair Animal Handbook, Alison Coleman

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Senior Farewell: Delaney Nickerson, Delaney Nickerson

Digital Edition

No abstract provided.

4-H Exhibit Hall Packet For The 2026 North Haverhill Fair, Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Strategies For Improving Preventive Health Outcomes In Long-Term Care Case Management At Molina Healthcare Of Wisconsin, William W. Feilbach Jr.

M.S. in Human Services Administration

This research evaluates strategies to improve preventive health outcomes in long-term care case management at Molina Healthcare of Wisconsin, with a specific focus on improving participation in annual wellness visits.  Increasing health care costs and gaps in preventive care engagement among Medicare and Medicaid populations underscore the need for effective interventions. A systematic literature review of recent peer-reviewed and governmental sources was conducted to examine the relationship between preventive care, health outcomes, and cost containment. Findings show that greater engagement in preventive services, including annual wellness visits and screenings, supports early detection, reduces high-cost service utilization, and improves overall health …

Systematic Reviews Across Disciplines: Comparing Quality And Publication Practices, Megan Bresnahan, Eugenia Opuda

Faculty Publications

As the publication of systematic reviews has proliferated across the sciences in the past decade, librarians have a role in helping researchers select the appropriate type of review, providing best practice guidelines, and under-standing variations in disciplinary practices for evidence synthesis. Using a title-abstract search filtered by 10 research areas in the Web of Science, we collected a sample of 100 systematic reviews from a range of disciplines, including “Fisheries,” “Forestry,” “Health Care Sciences & Services,” and “Veterinary Sciences.” Our analysis of this data explores to what extent these articles include the basic components of a systematic review and adhere …

Granite Staters See Social Media As Harmful To Society But Most Still Use It At Least Occasionally 5/5/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Social media users in New Hampshire on average report using social media platforms nearly 17 hours per week, with YouTube and Facebook being the most popular. A majority say their social media usage has stayed about the same over the past 12 months but just over half want to use social media less often. About a third of users in the state believe social media has a negative effect on their mental health and overall life, particularly those under the age of 35, women, and those with a college degree or more education. Granite Staters overall are quite critical in …

Massachusetts Users Split On Personal Impact Of Social Media But Most See Negative Effect For Society 5/5/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Social media users in Massachusetts report using social media platforms just over 18 hours per week and nearly half want to use social media less often. YouTube is the most commonly used platform, though the small number who use Snapchat and Discord report using it quite frequently. Democrats and those under the age of 35 report being the most prolific users of social media. Three in eight users in the state believe social media has a negative effect on their mental health, but a plurality of the heaviest social media users say it improves their mental health. Bay Staters are …

More Than A Quarter Of Social Media Users In Rhode Island Feel Addicted, Most Young Users Want To Use It Less 5/5/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Social media users in Rhode Island report using social media platforms nearly 22 hours per week. More than half of social media users want to use it less, particularly those under 50, and more than a quarter feel addicted to social media. YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are used by the most Rhode Islanders, but the fifth of state residents who use TikTok report using it most frequently. Heavy users of social media report higher feelings of anxiety, depression, and stress. Most Rhode Islanders believe social media has a negative effect on productivity, mental health, and on society in general, and …

Connecticut Residents Report Higher Social Media Use Than Neighbors, Most Say Social Media Negative For Society 5/5/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Social media users in Connecticut report using social media platforms just over 24 hours per week, higher than residents of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. More than half of social media users want to use it less, particularly those under 50, and a quarter feel addicted to social media. YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are the most popular platforms among Connecticut residents, with YouTube used most frequently. Connecticut residents generally believe social media has a somewhat positive effect on creativity, but most feel it has a negative effect on productivity, mental health, and on society in general, and bipartisan majorities …

Neurodiversity In The Workplace: Organizational Approaches To Supporting Neurodiverse Employees, Madison Vasquez

M.S. in Leadership

Despite growing conversation around neurodiversity in the workplace, many organizations lack clear understanding and structured strategies to support neurodivergent employees. This study examines existing research on how organizations can more effectively support neurodiverse employees across the employee lifecycle. Using a qualitative literature review, this study addresses the research question by examining literature on neurodiversity within workplace contexts. This includes investigating common representations of neurodiversity and reviewing the strengths and challenges of neurodiverse individuals, including those who have autism, ADHD, and other forms of neurodivergence. The study also reviews workplace barriers, support strategies, and organizational outcomes identified across the literature. Key …

Black Athens: Organic Intellectuals And The Civil Rights Movement In Boston, 1920–1985, Raymond Dinsmore

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the history of Boston’s civil rights movement through the lives,ideas, and accomplishments of its most influential leaders within what this study terms “Black Athens.” Despite Boston’s reputation as a premier global center of intellect and thought leadership, its Black community has rarely received due recognition for its vital contributions to the city—and particularly to its twentieth-century freedom movement. While many historians have examined the political, social, and cultural dimensions of Boston’s freedom struggle and the broader civil rights movement, few have foregrounded its intellectual history. I argue that this omission has produced an incomplete understanding of both …

Support, Collaboration, And Trust: A Mixed Methods Social Network Perspective Of Teacher Turnover, Danielle S. Donovan

Doctoral Dissertations

Purpose: Despite decades of research, teacher turnover remains a consistent challenge for schools and communities. In an effort to better understand why teachers continue to leave the classroom, this dissertation focuses on support, collaboration, and trust ties as an aspect of social working conditions through a social network lens. Methodology: Guided by critical realism as an ontological and epistemological framework, this study uses a sequential research design to implement an ego-centric mixed-methods social network perspective (MMSNP). Findings: Instrumental (pedagogical and instructional resources) and expressive social capital (emotional support and a sense of belonging) exist within teacher networks. Teachers who maintain …

Permeability And Mechanical Response Of Propped Fractured Rocks Under Varied Fluid Viscosities, Hebatalla A. Ghoneim

Doctoral Dissertations

Hydraulic fracturing relies on proppants to preserve fracture conductivity under reservoir stresses. The long-term performance of propped fractures is influenced by grain crushing, redistribution of fines, pack rearrangement, proppant–rock embedment, and shear deformation. These mechanisms are not fully understood under combined compression and shear stress paths, particularly when viscous carrier fluids interact with fractured rock and proppant packs. This dissertation provides experimental data and device development to characterize proppant and rock behavior relevant to these coupled mechanical and hydraulic processes.Proppant grain-scale strength and pack-scale mechanical response were first examined through uniaxial grain tests, crushing tests, and drained and undrained triaxial …

J.R.R. Tolkien’S Creation Of The Modern Fantasy Genre As A Response To Modernity By Way Of A Return To A Past Inspired By The Middle Ages, As Revealed Through The Creatures Of Middle-Earth, Regarding Race, Gender, Empire, And Religion, Jonathan Levitt

Doctoral Dissertations

Fantasy authors existed well before and during J.R.R Tolkien’s time, but he brought a new gravitas to the genre, building upon but disposing of and reconceptualizing conventional notions (such as the presence of fairies) to earn his moniker as the father of the modern fantasy genre. Although Tolkien’s stories are inspired by Northern myths, the world he creates is to be understood as historically real, as it incorporates authentic linguistic and cultural underpinnings of a society informed by his experience as a philologist and professor of Anglo Saxon. The intensity and longevity of Tolkien’s influence on the literary world and …

Neutral Giant: The United States And The Costa Rican Civil War Of 1948, James Irving

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a narrative microhistory of American diplomacy during Costa Rica’s transformative 1948 civil war. Emerging out of a contested presidential election, the war pitted the Costa Rican government of Teodoro Picado and its communist allies against an anticommunist, nationalist rebel movement led by José Figueres in a monthlong fight for political power. While existing histories of American policymaking have concluded almost unanimously that the United States intervened to support the rebels as part of its Cold War strategy in Latin America—labeling the civil war a precursor to the more infamous coup in Guatemala in 1954—this dissertation seeks to …

Aligning Strategy And Execution: The Role Of Senior Leaders In Project-Driven Organizations, Kenneth J. Boff

M.S. in Leadership

Strategic alignment remains a persistent challenge in project‑driven organizations, where shifting priorities and distributed execution often create gaps between strategic intent and project‑level action. This study examined how Senior Leadership Communication Practices influence Strategy–Execution Alignment and tested whether Organizational Culture for Alignment and Change Management Readiness mediate that relationship. A quantitative, cross‑sectional survey was administered to 54 senior leaders in project‑driven environments. All constructs demonstrated strong reliability, and correlation & regression analyses confirmed significant positive relationships among leadership communication, cultural alignment, readiness, and strategic alignment. Leadership communication significantly predicted culture (R² = .444), readiness (R² = .431), and alignment (R² …

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.

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 …

Wilderness Character Qualities And Visitor Typologies: Advancing Adaptive Visitor Use Management In Parks And Protected Areas, Ethan James O'Leary

Master's Theses and Capstones

Wilderness areas are managed to provide opportunities for solitude, primitive recreation, and the preservation of Wilderness Character Qualities (WCQs), yet visitor experiences within these landscapes are shaped by perceptions of crowding, environmental impacts, management conditions, and more. As visitation to protected areas increases, understanding how visitors perceive and respond to wilderness conditions is critical for sustaining experience quality and informing management. Despite advances in operationalizing WCQs as perceptual and motivational constructs, few studies have embedded WCQ perceptions within a visitor typology framework capable of capturing heterogeneity across wilderness contexts. This gap limits the ability to translate WCQ perceptions into targeted …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Democrats And Young People In Rhode Island Experiencing Higher Stress, Lower Mental Health Than Others 4/29/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Three-quarters of Rhode Island residents rate their mental health as very good or good and a majority say their mental health has stayed about the same over the past 12 months. Nearly half of state residents report feeling bothered by feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge at least several days in the past two weeks and one in five have felt isolated from others at least several days in that time. Just over a quarter of Rhode Islanders report high levels of stress, with politics, work, international news, and physical health the most common contributors to daily stress. Rhode Island …

Most In Connecticut Report Good Or Better Mental Health But Many Stressed By Politics, Work & Finances 4/29/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Just over seven in ten Connecticut residents rate their mental health as very good or good and a majority say their mental health has declined over the past 12 months. About three in eight state residents report feeling bothered by feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge at least several days in the past two weeks and a quarter have lacked companionship at least several days in that time. Just under a quarter of residents report high levels of stress and most often deal with stress by taking action to improve the situation, focusing on self-care, and taking their mind off …

Young Bay Staters Report Considerably Lower Mental Health, Higher Stress Than Older Mass Residents 4/29/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Seven in ten Massachusetts residents rate their mental health as very good or good but a quarter say that their mental health has declined over the past 12 months. Three in eight report feeling bothered by feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge at least several days in the past two weeks and a quarter have felt that they lack companionship at least several days in that time. A quarter of Bay Staters report high levels of stress, with politics, work, international news, and household finances the most common contributors to daily stress. Massachusetts residents report most often dealing with stress …