Digital Commons Network^™

Charting Reciprocity: The Mapping Of Knowledge Production In Collaborative Community Networks, Nicole Cunningham-Frisbey

Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

This dissertation reconceptualizes community-based literacy and writing practices as dynamic processes of reciprocal textual production grounded in feminist and Indigenous methodologies. It challenges traditional hierarchical structures by foregrounding community-generated epistemologies, emphasizing relational accountability, iterative reflexivity, and sustained ethical engagement. Using qualitative methods—including practitioner-created knowledge and social network maps and an analytical mapping method—the study explores how community practitioners strategically leverage their cultural identities and epistemological frameworks within collaborative writing and advocacy.Empirical case studies illustrate reciprocal knowledge production in action, showcasing intentional approaches such as oral storytelling, collaborative writing, and policy advocacy. Findings demonstrate how textual artifacts from reciprocal frameworks …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Dimensions Of Green Crabs, Carcinus Maenas (Linnaeus 1785), And Oysters, Crassostrea Virginica (Gmelin 1791), In Great Bay Estuary, New Hampshire, Kelsey Meyer

Doctoral Dissertations

Invasive species may alter how an ecosystem functions, such as the Great Bay Estuary (GBE) inNew Hampshire. In GBE, an invasive species of particular interest is the green cab (Carcinus maenas) because historically (and currently) there are no mitigation or eradication plans that have been implemented. It is not well-known how green crabs are interacting with oysters in GBE, whether that be wild, restored, or aquacultured. The aim of this dissertation was to document NH oyster growers’ perspectives on the issue of green crabs and oyster predation, understand their abundance, distribution and diet among natural/restored oyster areas and oyster farms …

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 …

Adapting To Climate Change: Outdoor Recreation Impacts In New Hampshire, Visitor Coping Behaviors, & Provider Management Strategies, Madeleine Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

As of 2023, outdoor recreation participation in the United States (U.S.) reached a 15-year high, generating $1.2 trillion in economic output and supporting 5 million jobs. Concurrently, the contiguous U.S. experienced earth surface temperatures averaging above the 20th-century norm for the 27th consecutive year. Climate change presents increasing challenges for outdoor recreation, particularly in the Northeast and North Central U.S., where seasonal shifts, extreme weather events, and resource degradation are projected to acutely impact recreation patterns and management needs. New Hampshire (NH), where nearly 30% of the state is safeguarded for public use, relies heavily on outdoor recreation. As of …

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 …

Age Distribution Of Minors Portrayed In Image-Based Sexual Abuse And Child Sexual Abuse Material, Samantha Jean Sutton

Doctoral Dissertations

Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) poses a significant threat, especially in the current technological age. A better understanding of victim characteristics is needed to direct investigation and prevention efforts properly. However, determining the age distribution of children in CSAM has been difficult due to numerous factors, including differing laws governing CSAM, the priority placed on investigating younger victims, and the difficulty of determining from images alone the age of young people. This meta-analysis sought to understand the proportion of image abuse victims who are under the age of 13 compared to those who are 13 years or older and whether …

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 …

Responding To Range Expansion: Assessing Insect Communities, Tree Decline Symptoms, And Tree Mortality Risk As The Southern Pine Beetle Moves North, Caroline Rachel Kanaskie

Doctoral Dissertations

Climate change is shifting species distributions. In New England, warmer winters allow southern species to survive further north. The northward range expansion of the tree-killing southern pine beetle is the focus of this dissertation. Outbreaks of this beetle cause both ecological and economic damage, which threaten the globally rare pine barrens ecosystem. I used an interdisciplinary approach to study this insect: 1) I synthesized literature on the beetle’s natural enemies; 2) I used a suite of chemical attractants to investigate the insect community attracted to the beetle’s pheromones and assessed the diversity and abundance of its potential predators; 3) I …

Molecular Simulation Studies Of Peptide Transport Across The Mitochondrial Membrane, Son Nguyen

Doctoral Dissertations

Molecular transport across membranes is an important biophysical process. Designing molecules capable of crossing cell membranes and targeting specific organelle is becoming necessary in treating many diseases and disorders. In recent decades, cell-penetrating peptides have been studied and utilized to deliver a variety of cargoes. My dissertation work focuses on studying the molecular details of the peptide translocation process across a cell membrane. Specifically, I investigated the dynamics of mitochondrial-targeting peptides and their mechanisms of translocation across the mitomembrane. I conducted molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of model mitochondrial-targeting peptides with distinct physical and chemical properties such as sequence lengths, functional …

Electrical Potential Gradient Signals Associated With California Earthquakes, Terry Emil Battalino

Master's Theses and Capstones

The purpose of this investigation is to determine whether or not there are any identifiable properties or characteristics in the measurements of the atmospheric electrical potential gradient prior to California earthquakes that could qualify as a precursor signal. Scientists from around the world have reported anomalous behavior in the potential gradient before earthquakes for more than 130 years. The only two previous reports on this subject involving California earthquakes and the potential gradient were inconclusive and based upon limited data. This present study examines an eleven-year database (2009-2019) of the potential gradient observed in the desert regions surrounding Ridgecrest, California …

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 …

Effects Of Winter Severity On Regional Variability In The Timing Of Tree Green-Up Across Eastern North America, Dylan Joseph Smith

Master's Theses and Capstones

Climate change is altering the depth and duration of winter across eastern North America, with implications for ecological processes dependent on the coldness and seasonality provided by it. Tree green-up is a critical ecosystem transition point being affected by changing climatic conditions. This study investigates how winter season severity- the cumulative depth and duration of the winter season- affects the timing of spring green-up across a dynamically changing region. Using site-level linear trend analysis, meta-analysis, and mixed-effects linear regression, I assessed spatio-temporal changes in winter severity and green-up timing, employing a precipitation-based winter season severity index and PhenoCam remote sensing …

Deciphering Tragedy: Understanding Student-Teacher Ratio's Impact On School Shooting Outcomes, Samantha Sutton

Master's Theses and Capstones

Increasingly fatal school shootings present an urgent challenge for researchers. Apart from issues surrounding firearms, factors that can reduce outcomes from school shootings events are increasingly sought after. Student-teacher ratios are associated with outcomes of school based juvenile delinquency and deviance, where more ideal ratios are linked to lower outcomes and less ideal ratios are linked to higher outcomes. Using this background knowledge, this paper tests for associations between student-teacher ratios and the outcomes, in terms of both casualties and fatalities, of school shooting events. Two different theoretical frameworks are tested to determine which better predicts results: social disorganization theory …

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 …

Evaluation Of Artificial Recharge And Groundwater Availability In A Small New England Aquifer, Jon-Erik Tryggestad

Master's Theses and Capstones

Artificial recharge (AR) is receiving increased attention as a means to manage water resources in the Northeast United States, as growing communities and increasing drought frequency increase demands on groundwater supplies. The water supply system serving the University of New Hampshire and the Town of Durham has implemented an AR system that recharges the small stratified-drift Spruce Hole Aquifer with surface water from the nearby Lamprey River. The system has been online since 2016, and the existing hydrogeological and system monitoring datasets provide the foundation to develop a numerical model capable of replicating dynamic responses to withdrawals and AR infiltration …

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.

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 …

Costs And Benefits Of Reactive Streams For Asynchronous Services, Kyle Ouellette

Master's Theses and Capstones

Project Reactor is a Java-based Reactive Streams implementation that provides APIs forasynchronous stream processing. This thesis compares the ease of development, pitfalls, and performance of a network traffic processing application implemented using Reactor against an identical application implemented with plain Java. Due to the popularity of the microservices architecture commonly deployed in cloud environments, implementations are tested in environments with limited resources to emulate a scenario where paying for more resources may not be feasible and to compare the two applications under extreme resource contention. Throughout the development of both implementations, pitfalls were encountered in both that lead to large …

Interpretive Rules Are The New Regulations: Agency Guidance After Loper Bright, Gwendolyn Savitz

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

The Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright to end formal deference under Chevron to administrative agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes forces agencies into an unprecedented situation. Courts had deferred to agencies’ interpretations of binding rules since before the Administrative Procedure Act was passed. Now, for the first time, agencies are functionally unable to create new regulations with any confidence they will be upheld. This understanding is reinforced by the Court’s pivot to Skidmore deference. The Skidmore case, and Skidmore deference, only arose because the agency at issue in Skidmore had not been given the authority to create binding regulations by …

The Loper Bright Two-Step: A Reply And Comment To Professor Savitz, Darren Bush

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

No abstract provided.

2026 Nh 4-H Horse State Show Packet, Hannah Majewski

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Per- And Polyfluoroalkyl Substances In A Suburbanizing Watershed, Bailey Mullins

Master's Theses and Capstones

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are persistent man-made chemicals that accumulate in aquatic environments due to their widespread industrial and commercial use and resistance to degradation. Understanding their spatial distribution and relative abundance in streams draining suburbanizing watersheds is crucial for effective watershed and water quality management. This study investigates how the concentrations and composition of PFAS in surface water and sediment are impacted by urbanization. PFAS were quantified in the Lamprey River watershed, a coastal watershed in southeastern New Hampshire that is experiencing ongoing suburbanization. Sampling sites include tributaries, mainstem, and estuarine areas. Surface water, sediment, and well water …

4h Lancaster Fair Dog Show Freestyle Event, Christine Whiting

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Office Of Research, Economic Engagement And Outreach Update, April 30, 2025, Office Of Research, Economic Engagement And Outreach

Office of Research, Economic Engagement and Outreach

No abstract provided.

Barriers To Using Bicycle Workstations In A Campus Library, Catherine Wong, Cynthia Ferrara, Robyn Lebowitz, Hayleigh Duggan

Faculty Publications

Background

The purpose of this study is to assess campus awareness and attitudes toward bicycle workstations in the library at a small, private college in the New England region of the United States.

Methods

Two recumbent and two Expresso bicycle workstations were placed in public areas of the college library. A short online survey with multiple choice and open-ended questions was designed specifically for the study. Members of the campus community were invited to complete the survey, as approved by the Institutional Review Board. Themes were identified for open-ended questions. Answers were sorted using designated themes.

Results

Ninety-five people completed …

Approval Of Scott Remains Strong In Vermont But Residents Divided On A Sixth Scott Term 4/24/2025, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Nearly two-thirds of Vermont residents approve of Governor Phil Scott's performance, including majorities of both Republicans and Democrats. However, Vermonters are equally divided on whether they want Scott to seek a sixth term in 2026, though less than one-third believe Scott does not deserve to be re-elected if does choose to run. On issues recently discussed by the State Legislature, a plurality of Vermonters support introducing ranked-choice voting for presidential primaries, while a majority support ending the state's use of for-profit prisons. Nearly half of Vermonters say that housing, taxes, or the cost of living is the most important problem …