Digital Commons Network^™

Application Of Signal Processing Techniques For Health Monitoring And Damage Detection Of Memorial Bridge, Forouzandeh Mazaherimeybodi

Doctoral Dissertations

Aging and deterioration and damage to infrastructure elements such as bridges, roads, and tunnels, are some of the biggest concerns to the uninterrupted operation of the US transportation network.Structural health monitoring (SHM) is one of the most powerful tools proposed by the civil engineering research community as an economical and objective method for civil infrastructure management and condition assessment. A typical SHM process consists of continuous or periodic estimations of structural parameters based on a sensor network, feature extraction, and statistical modeling for feature classification to detect any damage that occurred to the structure. Due to the evolution of building …

The Fate Of Organic Nitrogen In Agroecosystems: Drivers And Outcomes, Lauren C. Breza

Doctoral Dissertations

Enhancing soil nitrogen (N) stocks is critical for managing soil health in agroecosystems. Growers apply external N as synthetic fertilizer to increase the amount of available N to crops. However, it is well known that synthetic fertilizer usage in agroecosystems leads to widespread pollution and contributes significantly to climate change. Nevertheless, growers and researchers recognize this N problem as a global problem and are developing solutions via alternative farming methods. Some of these alternative strategies include cover cropping, diversifying crop rotations, organic farming (i.e., no inputs), or combining these methods. Understanding how the different facets of agricultural management influence the …

Single Chain Reversible Addition-Fragmentation Chain Transfer (Raft) Poly(N-Isopropylacrylamide) For Chemical Sensing, Tianyu Ren

Doctoral Dissertations

An approach to single chain poly-N-isopropyl acrylamide (polyNIPAM) with a redox tag was polymerized by the reversible addition fragmentation-chain transfer (RAFT) method. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) technology is the design of an artificial receptor with high selectivity for a specific analyte. The synthesized RAFT polymers were devised to develop conformation-based electrochemical MIP sensors.The material polyNIPAM is attractive as a receptor of a chemical sensor. Due to its thermosensitive properties, polyNIPAM collapses above the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) and returns to its original state when the temperature is reduced below LCST. This reversible aggregation behavior shows that polyNIPAM has a …

Application Of Molecular Tools To Assess Toxicity In Industrial Wastewater And Track Viral Pathogens In Municipal Wastewaters, Mina Aghababaei Shahrestani

Doctoral Dissertations

Wastewater is a complex matrix containing a wide range of microorganisms and chemical compounds. For public health purposes, it is critical to monitor for harmful microorganisms and evaluate the toxicity of chemicals present in industrial and municipal wastewaters on human and ecosystem health. Over the past decade, sophisticated technologies such as high-throughput sequencing have enabled the development of molecular tools, which are now widely employed for tracking pathogens and assessing toxicity of municipal and industrial wastewaters. Molecular tools for biomonitoring of wastewater are designed to target specific microbial biomarkers including nucleic acids, proteins and antigens. Accordingly, this dissertation applied molecular …

Answering Topical Information Needs Using Neural Entity-Oriented Information Retrieval And Extraction, Shubham Chatterjee

Doctoral Dissertations

In the modern world, search engines are an integral part of human lives. The field of Information Retrieval (IR) is concerned with finding material (usually documents) of an unstructured nature (usually text) that satisfies an information need (query) from within large collections (usually stored on computers). The search engine then displays a ranked list of results relevant to our query. Traditional document retrieval algorithms match a query to a document using the overlap of words in both. However, the last decade has seen the focus shifting to leveraging the rich semantic information available in the form of entities. Entities are …

Neighborhood Disorder And Adolescent Psychological Distress: Effects Of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Social Support, And Self Concept, Jean Bessette

Doctoral Dissertations

Sociological research on mental health is often guided by the stress process framework. A key tenet of this paradigm is the proposition that both exposure and vulnerability to social stressors arise from one’s placement in the social structure; those with lower social status face greater exposure and/or greater vulnerability to stressors that detrimentally impact their psychological wellbeing. A consequential social stressor is the neighborhood context in which one resides. Past research has suggested a disadvantageous effect of greater neighborhood physical and social disorder on youth mental health. This research employs the stress process framework to examine how the effects of …

Environmental Implications Of Ubiquitous Dicarboxylic Acid Aerosol And Biomass Burning Generated Reactive Nitrogen, Jackson Hart Kaspari

Doctoral Dissertations

Aerosols impact our lives in many different ways, including the health of our species,visibility and the global climate. In terms of climate effects, large uncertainty still exists surrounding the combined influence of aerosols on the Earth’s radiative budget. This highlights the importance of research that seeks to better understand atmospheric aerosols and associated gas phase compounds, as advances in the field will allow for the production of more accurate climate models. In laboratory studies, great variability in reported deliquescence relative humidity (DRH) warrants the need for new methods of analysis. A custom built electrobalance with variable active particle humidity control …

Essays On The Economics Of Vaccination, Andrew Evans Whitaker

Doctoral Dissertations

I examine vaccination behavior during a measles outbreak. By abandoning the rationalexpectations framework, I develop a model of vaccine behavior which recreates empirically observed vaccine hesitancy, as well as vaccination spikes during an outbreak. I use an agent-based model to simulate disease spread and agent behavior in a measles outbreak, in which rational agents minimize their expected costs by choosing their vaccination state. I allow some agents to instead use a heuristic, and others to have misinformation regarding vaccine risks, and finds that both reduce welfare. Including a social network has an ambiguous effect, as using more relevant local data …

Manual Culture, Women’S Medical Practice, And English Health In Spenser, Shakespeare, And Wroth, Melissa L. Kleinschmidt

Doctoral Dissertations

As England’s boundaries became increasingly permeable due to expanding intercultural interactions in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries, defining what it meant to be “English” became increasingly vital. The English housewife was integral to shaping a national English identity. The creation of a distinctly English housewife, I argue, manifested itself most clearly in what I term “manual culture,” a phenomenon in which manuals were imbued with authority to dictate acceptable behaviors, beliefs, and knowledge for women to have and follow. These domestic and conduct manuals provided instruction on not only how to behave, but also how to maintain healthy minds, bodies, …

A Novel Approach To Damage Detection Using Structural Health Monitoring Data And Convolutional Neural Networks, Dominic Emory

Master's Theses and Capstones

This study investigates the efficiency of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to detect structural damage from measured structural response. In this regard, strain gages were used to measure structural response from live loads. Data used during experimentation was gathered through the testing of a full-scale concrete bridge mockup. The test captured the response of the mock-up bridge utilizing 24 transversely oriented resistance-based strain gages under similar loading conditions, but with different levels of damage induced. There are three levels of damage the bridge was subjected to; crash-induced damage to the barrier, transverse cut on the entire barrier, and transverse cut along …

Concurrent Measurements Of Inflow, Power Performance And Loads For A Grid-Synchronized Cross-Flow Turbine Operating In A Tidal Estuary, Patrick W. O'Byrne

Master's Theses and Capstones

The adaptation of sustainable fluid energy conversion technologies, such as wind or tidalenergy, requires numerical modeling tools that are able to accurately predict device performance and loading in an effort to reduce the costs of turbines, deployment platforms and mooring structures. To validate models, data sets from turbines operating in real flow environments are required. Particularly for tidal energy, data sets of inflow (tidal current resource), power performance (electrical power and shaft speed), and thrust loading for any scale device are rare because the work to date has largely been funded by private developers and the data is not made …

Identifying And Enhancing Key Competencies For Emergency Nursing In Rural Alaska: A Quality Improvement Project, Denise Plano

DNP Scholarly Projects

Identifying and

Enhancing Key Competencies for Emergency Nursing in Rural Alaska:

A Quality Improvement Project

Denise Plano

University of New Hampshire

Faculty Mentor: Cathleen Colleran, DNP

Practice Mentor: Lynn Van Vactor, RN CPHQ

Content Expert: Marianne Murray, DNP

Date of Submission: April 19, 2022

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Rural nurses practice in challenging environments that include remote villages and towns. They are faced with providing emergency care to patients without the resources that are available at larger tertiary hospitals. Low volume and high-risk scenarios challenge the nurse's ability to maintain competencies and respond to emergent patient needs. Identifying the most critical competencies …

Implementation Of A Standardized Suicide Risk Screening Tool: An Improvement Project In A University Counseling Center, Clint Emmett

DNP Scholarly Projects

This article describes a quality improvement project undertaken at the University of Idaho Counseling and Testing Center (CTC). This quality improvement project describes the use of the Ask Suicide Questions (ASQ) screening tool to accurately assess the severity of suicide risk during an initial assessment or crisis visit. Clinicians were provided with education and demonstration of the ASQ and shown how to incorporate this tool into their practice. 86 eligible appointments were included in the project for analysis. Simple descriptive statistics were used to present the resulting data. Results indicate that 30.3% of eligible appointments were screened. 43.8% of clinicians …

Optimizing Mental Health Care By Increasing Access Services Through Evidenced-Based Mhealth Applications, Barbara Laganiere

DNP Scholarly Projects

BACKGROUND: The COVID pandemic has disrupted mental health services leading to an increased need for mental health support. Nearly half of all adults in the United States have reported worry and stress leading to a rise in feelings of anxiety. Currently, there is a mental health workforce shortage, impacting the available treatment services. Mobile Health (mHealth) applications can help bridge the gap in the availability of these services and potentially improve health outcomes through education, social support, self-managed care, and patient-provider communication.

PURPOSE: The purpose is to optimize mental health care and access to services by leveraging the use of …

Workplace Violence Prevention For Nurses And Healthcare Workers In The State Of Maine A Health Policy Initiative, Gretchen Forsley

DNP Scholarly Projects

Abstract

Background: Health care workplace violence is a pervasive and persistent problem, underreported, and when reported it is tolerated, excused, or ignored. Prior to the pandemic, the “normal” demands of a stressful workplace for a resilient nurse might include short staffing, a lack of resources, violence, bullying, and disruptive behaviors from patients or families. Since the pandemic, the rates of increasing healthcare violence can be attributed to several factors such as delays in care and services, reducing admissions and procedures, consistent understaffing, a lack of adequate mental health services, increased violence against women, limited or no visitor policies, low-security coverage, …

Engaging Nurses In Public Policy, Carlene Ferrier

DNP Scholarly Projects

Background: Nurses have been engaged in public policy since the inception of the profession. Academicians and thought leaders recognize the importance of nurses engaging in public policy to improve health and healthcare. Nurses are also the largest healthcare group and the most trusted profession for twenty years, yet they are minimally represented in the state and federal legislature. Nurses possess a skill set that is directly transferable to the policy arena such as listening and communicating effectively, leading by inspiring a shared vision, applying evidence-based research, and collaborating and building relationships to achieve a common goal. Locally, the New Hampshire …

Impact Of Literacy On Obesity And Hypertension: A Quality Improvement Project, Stephanie Penney

DNP Scholarly Projects

Social determinants of health (SDoH) are defined as factors, including things such as food security, housing, literacy, finances, and work and school environments, that affect health risks and outcomes (About Social, 2021). Healthcare disparities are often affected by one’s social determinants. National data shows low-income populations present with considerable unmet needs, including food, housing, clothing, and quality health care. Closing the health disparities gap has long been the focus of healthcare organizations across the board. The care coordination model (CCM) enables organizations to improve care through collaboration. CCM looks at care coordination from the perspective of a patient-centered medical home. …

Implementation And Evaluation Of A Psychoeducation Training Program For Correctional Psychiatric Nurses, Katie Lyn Araja

DNP Scholarly Projects

This article describes a quality improvement project undertaken at a northeastern prison focusing on the psychiatric hospital unit. The project's primary aim is to implement training in nurse-led psychoeducation groups for psychiatric hospital unit nurses with the outcome of increasing confidence and competency through improved self-efficacy. The secondary aim of this project is to positively impact the psychiatric hospital unit nurses' intuition as a component of clinical decision-making through skill training that improves KSAs and care delivery to the highest level of the nurses' licensure. Participating nurses received pre and post-intervention surveys, including the Psychiatric Nurse Self-Efficacy Scales and the …

Tackling Burnout: Investing In Nurse Managers To Secure The Future Of Nursing, Enhance Manager Effectiveness, And Support High Quality Patient Care, Corey French

DNP Scholarly Projects

Background: Burnout is a widespread, pervasive issue the healthcare industry. Many efforts related to burnout reduction have been focused on front line caregivers but there is continued opportunity to address burnout in leadership. The global aim of this quality improvement project was to reduce burnout among the nursing leadership team at a large, academic medical center in the greater Boston area.

Problem Description: A preliminary survey was completed to assess for the presence of burnout within the leadership team. Results revealed that more than half of the nurse leaders surveyed were experiencing burnout at least 50% of the time. This …

Promoting A Culture Of Self-Care: Application Of A Caring Science Framework To Prevent Nursing Faculty Burnout, Angela M. Braswell

DNP Scholarly Projects

BACKGROUND: Threats to nurses’ well-being from chronic workplace stress often leads to burnout. Lack of self-care contributes to nursing faculty burnout due to the inability to maintain well-being. Emerging evidence points to theory guided self-caring practices as effective coping strategies to manage the negative effects of workplace environments on well-being.

METHODS: This quality improvement project aimed to provide nursing faculty and staff in the academic workplace with opportunities to cultivate and enhance self-care practices to promote overall health and well-being following principles of Caring Science and Jean Watson’s 10 Caritas Processes^®. A multifaceted set of interventions were provided: …

Implementation Of A Standardized Medication Reconciliation Protocol In A Psychiatric Stabilization Setting, Sara Robinson

DNP Scholarly Projects

BACKGROUND: Medication errors are a prevalent patient safety concern across healthcare settings. High-quality medication reconciliation is an intervention and expected standard of care that can help to prevent adverse drug events. This quality improvement project focused on implementing a standardized medication reconciliation protocol on a short-stay psychiatric unit.

INTERVENTION: An evidence-based toolkit supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Medications at Transitions and Clinical Handoffs (MATCH) was selected as the framework for developing and implementing this protocol.

Congruent with the evidence-based toolkit recommendations, baseline data collection and needs assessment provided context for tailoring the intervention to the …

Implementing A Health-Related Quality Of Life Assessment Tool In An Outpatient Hematology/Oncology Clinic: A Pilot Quality Improvement Project, Jennifer Holl

DNP Scholarly Projects

BACKGROUND: Although overall and disease-free survival remain the goals of cancer care, health-related quality of life (HRQOL) during and after treatment is increasingly acknowledged as vital to the patient’s outcomes. The purpose of this project was to identify and implement a valid, reliable HRQOL assessment tool into daily clinical practice in an outpatient hematology/oncology clinic at a 25-bed critical access hospital in rural New Hampshire.

METHODS: This project used a methodological design. Descriptive and inferential statistics, plus qualitative analysis were used to determine results. Three nurses and seven patients participated in this quality improvement project.

INTERVENTIONS: The interventions …

Feeding Different Iodine Sources To Dairy Cows: Effects On Colostrum Production And Growth And Health Of Their Calves, Kayla Renee Johnston

Master's Theses and Capstones

Limited research exists on supplementing seaweeds to prepartum cows and its effects on colostrum production and development of their calves in-utero and after birth. The high iodine (I) concentration of seaweeds is concerning, and previous research have shown that excess I supplementation to ewes inhibits immunoglobulin G (IgG) absorption in their lambs. The objectives of this study were: (1) evaluate the effects of incremental amounts of Ascophyllum nodosum (ASCO) meal supplementation (0, 57, and 113 g/d) to prepartum cows on colostrum production and subsequent growth, health, and blood concentrations of glucose, β-hydroxybutyric acid (BHBA), and thyroid hormones (TH) of their …

Seasonal Assessments Of Bioregeneration In Slow Sand Filters Amended With Granular Activated Carbon, Katherine R. Morsefield

Master's Theses and Capstones

The application of slow sand filtration (SSF) has conventionally proven to be a reliable and relatively inexpensive means of producing potable drinking water for decades. As technologies in drinking water treatment continue to advance, innovations to the design and operation of slow sand filtration have the ability to transform its contribution in municipal and industrial settings. SSF amended with granular activated carbon (GAC) has been on the rise in recent decades due to its ability to improve the removal of organic material, while allowing SSF to maintain its innate treatment simplicity.

A slow sand filter amended with granular activated carbon …

Supplementing Sodium Butyrate To Limit-Fed Heifers: Effects On Growth, Health, And Nutrient Digestibility & Effect Of Sodium Butyrate On Viability Of Eimeria Bovis Sporozoites And Ldh Release From Mdbk Cells In The Presence Of Sporozoites, Katrina Klobucher

Master's Theses and Capstones

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of sodium butyrate (SB) supplementation in heifer diets. The objectives of experiment 1 was to evaluate the growth, apparent total tract digestibility, and coccidia levels of post-weaned limit-fed heifers supplemented with SB. A 12 week randomized complete block experiment was conducted using 24 Holstein heifers. Treatments were 100g soybean meal (control; CON) and 0.75 g of SB/kg of body weight + 100g soybean meal (SB). Diets were formulated to contain 16.4 % crude protein (CP), 2.27 Mcal/kg metabolizable energy (ME), and fed at a rate of 2.15% of body weight on a …

Did The Political Climate Exacerbate The Pandemic In The U.S.?, Brittany T. Morin, Joanna Gyory, Anthony F. Morin

Master's Theses and Capstones

The global pandemic that began in the United States in early 2020 continues to be a topic of controversy. The added aspect of affect polarization in the country’s political realm may have exacerbated the effects of COVID-19. In their published article in Nature Human Behaviour, Gollwitzer et. al. found that it was possible to link voting partisanship, physical distancing, and COVID-19 outcomes showing that a county’s partisanship might be used to predict the degree to which that county would socially distance and then, therefore, the rate of cases and fatalities in that error on a lagged timescale. This researcher attempted …

The Biochemistry Of Ursolic Acid: A Potential Therapeutic For Neuro-Inflammation, Emma Jane Arsenault

Master's Theses and Capstones

Ursolic acid (UA) is a naturally occurring triterpenoid found in a variety of plants and berries. This molecule has potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties with the potential to treat a wide variety of conditions, including neuro-inflammatory disorders. However, the exact mechanism of action for UA is unknown. In this thesis, the fundamental biochemistry of UA was investigated by studying two potential targets: lipid rafts and protein phosphatases. Lipid rafts are an important platform for a wide variety of signal transduction pathways and are a docking point for the assembly of the pro-inflammatory NADPH oxidase 2. The impact of UA on …

Investigation Of Multiple Cyanotoxins In Toxic Lake Aerosols, Hailey Carter

Master's Theses and Capstones

Aerosols from freshwater lakes with toxigenic cyanobacteria pose a potentially serious threat to humans and wildlife. The most studied route of exposure to cyanotoxins is direct consumption (i.e., drinking contaminated water or eating contaminated food). However, a less studied but a potentially important route of exposure is inhalation of aerosolized cyanotoxins. Three toxins, produced by cyanobacteria, examined in this study were hepatoxicmicrocystins (MC),and the neurotoxins?-Methylamino-?-alanine (BMAA), and anatoxin-a (ATX). Using a compact lake aerosol monitor(CLAM), this study measured levels of aerosolized cyanotoxins(MC, BMAA, and ATX) at two shallow and inter-connected lakes, Walkers Pond and Lower Mill Pond (Brewster, MA, USA),biweekly …

A Rising Tide? The Role Of Alternative Networks For Women Oyster Farmers In Maine And New Hampshire, Natalie Lord

Master's Theses and Capstones

Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing forms of food production globally. In the United States, there has been a renewed interest in aquaculture development in domestic waters. With widespread expansion of shellfish aquaculture started by local entrepreneurs and fishermen, the states of Maine and New Hampshire have experienced aquaculture driven economic development in coastal communities impacted by the decline in wild capture fisheries. Additionally, aquaculture farming practices can provide ecosystem services such as water quality improvement, nutrient removal, and habitat availability. When implemented carefully, marine food products from aquaculture can be among some of the most environmentally responsible choices …

Using Machine Learning Techniques On Real-World Data To Understand The Characteristics Of The Manchester, Nh Health Care For The Homeless Patient Population For Risk Factor Identification And Intervention Improvement, Kyle Partridge Rasku

Master's Theses and Capstones

This thesis aims to use health care domain knowledge, statistical techniques, and machine learning methods to conduct an exploratory real-world evidence study of the characteristics of the Health Care for the Homeless of Manchester, NH (HCHM) clinics’ patients in collaboration with academic and clinic partners and the public and community health stakeholders supporting their work. By constructing and analyzing a multivariate feature set created from a sample of anonymized patient data from January 1, 2018, through December 31, 2019, I hope to use machine learning methods to accurately represent 2,265 HCHM clinic patients experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity during the …