Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

The Role Of The Gut Microbiota In Opioid Use Disorder, Izabella Jannae Sall

Doctoral Dissertations

Opioids are highly effective analgesics for acute and chronic pain management but carry dangerous side effects that limit their utility and increase the risk of opioid use disorder (OUD). Yet not all individuals prescribed opioids develop an OUD, presenting a conundrum: why are so some individuals develop an OUD and others do not? While genetics, social environment, and behavior contribute to risk, they fail to explain why some individuals transition from prescribed use to an OUD. My doctoral research investigates an increasingly likely culprit that is also a promising therapeutic target: the gut microbiota. The gut microbiota is essential for …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Investigating The Role Of Soundscape Properties And Genetic Material As Sentinel Indicators Of The Acoustic Environment In Gulf Of Maine Coastal Marine Ecosystems, Grant Alexander Milne

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT By identifying soundscape properties and taxa detected with metabarcoding that accurately predict substrate composition, assumptions about propagative properties of the environment can be rapidly formed without the use of active acoustic sensing or invasive environmental sampling techniques. “Sentinel indicators,” are variables, processes, or components within ecosystems that can be measured or quantified and have sensitivity to environmental pressures. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) and metabarcoding of seawater samples (MSS) are two minimally invasive potential methods of identifying sentinel indicators of soundscape and propagation properties of marine habitats by detecting the presence of marine taxa and extracting information from soundscapes. To …

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

Design And Development Of Systems For Wave-Soil-Structure Interaction Modelling In A Geotechnical Centrifuge, Mark Justin Adler

Master's Theses and Capstones

As hurricanes, and therefore storm surges, become stronger on average, civil engineering research has increasingly focused on the impact of flooding on coastal communities. While hurricane-induced flood scour has been understood to be a mechanism of structural failure for decades, there is still not a complete model for scour in the near-coast environment. To build on the current body of scour research, an apparatus for the physical modelling of wave-soil-structure interactions has been developed for the University of New Hampshire geotechnical centrifuge laboratory. The new model container design is capable of wave generation, wave absorption, and the real-time measurement of …

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 …

Fine-Scale Movements And Inferred Behavioral States Of Jonah Crabs (Cancer Borealis) In Relation To Size, Sex, And Claw Removal Using An Acoustic Telemetry Positioning System, Maureen Estella Madray

Master's Theses and Capstones

AbstractJonah crabs (Cancer borealis) are an economically and ecologically valuable fishery species found in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. As fishing pressure on Jonah crabs in US waters grows, catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) has declined in recent years. The notable decline in CPUE seen in the US Jonah crab fishery indicates that alternative fishery practices, such as claw-only harvesting, should be further investigated to determine the potential utility in improving the health and sustainability of this evolving fishery. Claw harvesting, one potential relief to fishing mortality, may offer a decrease in crab mortality but is also affected by removal technique as well as …

Good Vibrations: Low-Frequency Anthropogenic Sound And Blue Mussel Recruitment, Kyrie Elise Newby

Master's Theses and Capstones

Anthropogenic noise pollution is increasing in the world’s oceans, particularly along urbanized coastlines and global shipping routes. Many human activities, such as vessel traffic, pile driving, drilling, and other construction projects, produce loud low-frequency noise (Duarte et al. 2021). Marine invertebrates, including the blue mussel Mytilus edulis, sense sound through particle motion and may use acoustic signals as informational cues. While excessive noise has been shown to have negative physiological effects on adult and larval shellfish, Mytilidae larvae have also demonstrated a positive settlement response to some types of low-frequency anthropogenic noise (Solé et al. 2023). During the summer of …

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 …

Marine Oil Snow Settling Rates In Cold Water Environments, Quinn Richard Wilkins

Master's Theses and Capstones

Naturally forming marine snow has long been studied as a primary transport mechanism of organic carbon from the surface of the ocean to the benthic environments. Before the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, marine snow was not considered a significant transport mechanism for oil spilled at the surface. Interactions between sediment and oil have been studied in the past, however the study of Marine Oil Snow (MOS) is an emerging research topic to better understand the fate of spilled oil. A previous UNH graduate student, Jesse Ross, investigated the potential for spilled oil to interact with marine snow via field …

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 …

University Of New Hampshire 2024-2025 Faculty Senate Xxix - April 21, 2025 Minutes Summary, Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Agendas & Minutes

No abstract provided.

Anchoring ‘Neo-Hahnian Outdoor Education’ In The Cold War Era: A History Of Character Building In The Outward Bound Movement, Jayson Seaman

Faculty Publications

The invitation to comment on a foundational early article from the JAEOL provided a welcome opportunity to engage with Andrew Brookes’s trilogy of ‘neo-Hahnian outdoor education’ critiques (Brookes, 2003a, 2003b, 2023). In this article, I approach outdoor education’s character building ideology by using archival and secondary sources to situate its evolution in four periods corresponding with major geopolitical and cultural movements: (1) 1941–1945 when Outward Bound (OB) was established; (2) 1946–1952 when Hahn exported OB from his perch at Gordonstoun; (3) 1953–1967 when OB expanded to the U.S. and replicated globally, and (4) 1968–1976 when human potentialism replaced muscular Christianity …

Unh To Launch New Public Health Major In Fall 2025, Aaron Sanborn

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

Mapping The Deep, Beth Potier

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

Coos County Project Medal Application, Christine Whiting

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Pollution Solution, Keith Testa

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

A Career Written In The Stars, Rebecca Irelan

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

Honors, Unh Communications And Public Affairs

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

Ethical Robots, Jeremy Gasowski

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

Honors: Selected Accolades To Our Faculty And Graduate Students, Unh Communications And Public Affairs

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.