Digital Commons Network^™

Designing Innovative Science Learning Activities: The Virtual Reality “Charge Playground” And Interdisciplinary Curriculum For Lightning Instrumentation Design, Gus Otto Eberlein

Master's Theses and Capstones

As the population of students learning introductory physics continues to grow and diversify, it becomes necessary to incorporate an equally diverse array of learning materials in these courses to suit the new dynamic of the physics classroom. In this thesis, I present my work designing, developing, evaluating, and refining instructional tools for science educators. First, I present the “Charge Playground,” an immersive Virtual Reality application for the Meta Quest VR headset. The Charge Playground abstractly visualizes the electric field, potential, and force generated by a configuration of electric charges in a novel, interactive way. I describe the motivation behind incorporating …

Mapping The Human Dimension: Spatially Informed Soundscape Management In Saguaro National Park, Anna S. Frisbie

Master's Theses and Capstones

As outdoor recreation surges in popularity, human-made sound reaches even the most protected places. In the United States, the National Park Service is mandated to preserve natural soundscapes, which are a key ecosystem service. Yet many aspects of soundscape management remain underexplored, including the integration of visitor perspectives into strategies to minimize human-made sound in national parks. In 2025, the non-profit organization Leave No Trace and the National Park Service Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division collaboratively outlined new Soundscape Guidelines, urging visitors to minimize their impact on natural soundscapes. Previous research suggests that educational signage can reduce human-made sound …

Have You Seen This? Impact Of Concussion And Memory On Narrative Retells Of Silent Animated Films, Lauren Kate Harrington

Master's Theses and Capstones

AbstractBackground: Concussions are mild traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) that are often associated with short- and long-term cognitive impacts. Two specific cognitive skills people with concussion exhibit deficits in are working memory- the ability to retain and manipulate newly presented information- and episodic memory- memory of scenes that have occurred, similar to recalling a television episode. Previous studies have revealed mixed results in differences of narrative length between speakers with and without concussion; however, more information is needed on the relationship between memory and narrative production in speakers with concussion. Aims: This study compares the total number of utterances and mean …

Optimal Robust Maximum Entropy Behavioral Cloning, Francesco Alessandro Stefano Mikulis-Borsoi

Master's Theses and Capstones

Behavioral Cloning (BC) is an imitation learning approach in which a policy is learned from demonstrations represented as sequences of state-action pairs. Standard BC treats all demonstrations as equally trustworthy; consequently, suboptimal or adversarially corrupted demonstrations can disproportionately influence the learned policy. Robust Maximum Entropy Behavioral Cloning (R-MaxEnt BC) addresses this limitation by learning per-demonstration trust weights M and fitting a maximum-entropy policy that is conditioned on these weights.

In this thesis, I propose OR-MaxEnt BC (Optimal Robust Maximum Entropy Behavioral Cloning), a Convex Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Program (MINLP) with optimality guarantees for selecting which demonstrations to trust given the hyperparameter …

Economic Feasibility Of Aquaponics In The Cold-Climate Eastern United States: A Multi-Facility Monte Carlo Analysis, Ryan Nickerson

Master's Theses and Capstones

Most commercial aquaponics facilities fail to achieve profitability, and this challenge is exacerbated in cold climates, where heating, supplemental lighting, and insulated infrastructure inflate operating costs. Existing economic studies are dominated by warm-climate, single-facility cases, offering limited insight into whether cold-climate operators in the eastern United States can achieve profitability through design choices around scale, species selection, and labor optimization. This thesis evaluated the market feasibility of three research facilities (the University of New Hampshire, the University of Maryland, and Ohio State University) and one commercial facility in New Hampshire. The model used a discounted cash flow framework with parameters …

A Data-Driven Assessment Of Coastal Roadway Vulnerability Using Observed Storm Damage Locations, Jack Kearing

Master's Theses and Capstones

Coastal roadways are increasingly vulnerable to storm impacts and sea level rise. One common failure mode during these events is roadway washout, defined in this study as the physical loss or structural failure of roadway segments due to erosion, overtopping, or hydraulic failure. Washout events can disrupt transportation networks, restrict emergency access, and isolate coastal communities, highlighting the need for improved predictive methods that move beyond index-based assessments toward data-driven identification of vulnerable roadways.This study develops a data-driven framework for assessing roadway washout vulnerability using observed damage data and environmental predictors. Machine learning models, including random forest and decision tree …

Home-Level Flood Damage Assessment With Physics-Constrained Deep Learning, James Ojoawo

Master's Theses and Capstones

Flood damage to residential buildings is commonly estimated using depth-damage functions that treat buildings as interchangeable, ignoring differences in size and layout that influence damage outcomes. In this work, we present a physics-informed neural network that incorporates building characteristics (floor area, bedrooms, bathrooms, stories and garage spaces) and reduces physically implausible predictions in which damage decreases as flood depth rises. The model predicts both the mean and uncertainty of percent damage and is tuned to balance physical consistency and predictive accuracy. Model interpretation shows that building characteristics collectively account for nearly half of predicted damage variability, highlighting the importance of …

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 …

Evaluating The Long-Term Fracture Properties Of Asphalt Additives, Kelsey Page

Master's Theses and Capstones

Asphalt makes up about 94% of the pavements in the United States which are required to withstand traffic demands and environmental conditions throughout their service life. These pavements are susceptible to aging which leads to increased stiffness and brittleness making them prone to low and intermediate temperature cracking. Currently, Balanced Mix Design (BMD) sets performance targets aiming to mitigate cracking and rutting distresses. It also allows for the use of innovative materials such as additives, which may be used to modify the asphalt binder behavior to meet specific performance targets. Although numerous studies have examined several types of additives, few …

Scaling Of Thermal Conductivity In The Eliot Formation, Ryan Todd Siegel

Master's Theses and Capstones

Heat flow governs the performance of geothermal energy systems, and thermal conductivity is the primary material property controlling subsurface heat transfer. This study investigates heat flow through media with spatially variable thermal conductivity within the heterogeneous Eliot Formation, a metamorphic unit extending across the coastal region of northeast New England. The objective of this work is to develop an approach for scaling thermal conductivity from core-scale measurements to field-scale values representative of geothermal borefield systems.Divided bar thermal conductivity testing, petrographic analyses, geological observations, and existing literature were integrated to construct a MODFLOW model that captures the heterogeneous thermal behavior of …

Addressing The Functional Anonymity Of The Post Thaw Microbiome: How Redox And Temperature Conditions Dictate Microbial Community Composition After Permafrost Thaw, Nathan Patrick Alexander

Master's Theses and Capstones

Permafrost is perennially frozen soil that underlays 11% of Earth’s total surface and stores 33%of the planet’s global soil carbon stocks in the form of soil organic matter. Rising global temperatures are causing permafrost to thaw. Permafrost thaw often creates a heterogeneous patchwork of redox conditions on the landscape, resulting in a diversity of microbial metabolisms using alternate terminal electron acceptors. In aerobic respiration, microbes use oxygen as TEAs and soil organic matter as an electron donor; anaerobic respiration is carried out when microbes use alternate electron acceptors, such as NO3-, Fe3+, SO42-, and CO2. Understanding microbial responses to changing …

Identifying Landscape And Behavioral Drivers Of Human-Black Bear Conflict In New Hampshire, Shea O'Connor

Master's Theses and Capstones

Abundant American black bear (Ursus americanus) populations and increasing human development in New Hampshire have led to a prevalence of human-bear conflict across the state. This conflict negatively impacts humans, bears, and even the surrounding environment as safety is put at risk and environmental roles are disrupted. This thesis aimed to address both the ecological and human dimensions of human-bear conflict by combining a quantitative spatial analysis with a qualitative thematic analysis. Chapter One examined anthropogenic and landscape factors influencing human-black bear conflict levels across New Hampshire. I utilized ordinal logistic regression to analyze how various ecologically relevant predictor variables …

Vegetation Mediates Methane Ebullition Across Temporal Scales In A Temperate Peatland: A 10-Year Dataset, Apryl L. Perry

Master's Theses and Capstones

Wetlands are the largest and most variable natural source of methane (CH₄) to the atmosphere, contributing an estimated 161 Tg CH₄ yr-1 globally. Climate and anthropogenic changes can alter hydrology, geochemistry, and vegetation, generating substantial variability in CH₄ emissions across landscapes. Long-term measurements of CH₄ fluxes, inclusive of all transport pathways (ebullition, plant transport and diffusion), are rare but essential for understanding wetland contributions to the global carbon cycle. We present a decadal dataset of ebullitive CH₄ emissions from a temperate peatland, examining variation among vegetation types and relationships with environmental drivers. We found that ebullitive CH₄ fluxes were highest …

Masthead, Editorial Board

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is Hipaa Still Protecting Your Medical Data? An Analysis Of Deidentification As A Security Measure In The Age Of Ai., Jessica Novak

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly altering the landscape of many industries, and for some, faster than the law can necessarily keep up, leaving those industries unprotected from AI-related concerns. For the healthcare industry in particular, the integration of AI presents large-scale data privacy concerns. The current law protecting patient data privacy, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”), is potentially already outdated and inadequate; concerns about HIPAA’s efficacy have long-existed and AI’s integration has only solidified this concern. It is potentially inadequate because of a provision within the law itself-deidentification. HIPAA allows healthcare providers to remove identifying information from a …

"Smart" Cities And Due Care With Emerging Technologies, Anthony J. Luppino

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

The rapid development of increasingly powerful technologies presents new opportunities to produce public benefits, as exemplified by the “Smart Cities” movement. Conversely, emerging technologies pose significant threats to public safety and individual rights, as evidenced by high-profile cyberattacks and other technology-related incidents, and in warnings issued by some Artificial Intelligence experts. This article examines the responsibilities of local governments in the United States as users of technology and as regulators of uses by other actors—arguing that they have a duty of care, traceable to the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, to act diligently in that dual role whether or not …

A Case With Bite: Royal Canin U.S.A., Inc. V. Wullschleger And The Updated Removal Jurisdiction Landscape, Nicholas G. Glover

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Subject-matter jurisdiction is critical to every case, small or large.  Establishing the court’s authority to adjudicate a present matter is tantamount to every case and for every judge.  Despite the importance of properly entering and remaining in federal courts, civil procedure cases often receive far less fanfare than most others before the Supreme Court.  Such was the case last term in Royal Canin U.S.A., Inc. v. Wullschleger, an overlooked case which silently reshaped removal jurisdiction jurisprudence. This Article details the importance of this quiet case.  Through outlining entry into federal courts, introducing and reviewing the Eighth Circuit’s outlier—but correct—opinion …

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 …

Revocation Reconsidered: Probation Advocacy Through A Litigation Lens, Shira Diner

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Being found in violation of probation has dire consequences. The person found in violation can be imprisoned, upending them from their job, family, and community. Unlike incarceration after a criminal trial, a sentence after a violation of probation is not the result of a legal process characterized by robust due process protections. It is also often not the result of a forceful and thorough defense. It is instead the consequence of a hearing where lawyers with the fixed mindset of an inevitable finding of a violation don’t engage in the same preparation that they would if it was a trial. …

Storm Clouds, Disheveled Storks, And Dangerous Animals: The Impact Of Concussion On Narrative Production Of A Silent Animated Video, Aislyn Grace O'Connell

Master's Theses and Capstones

Background: Concussion, or mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), is the most prevalent category of brain injury. Despite its classification as a mild injury, concussion can result in persistent symptoms that impact one’s ability to participate in everyday life. Among the challenges associated with concussion, discourse production (e.g., storytelling) has gained attention as a potential area of subtle impairment in people who have experienced a concussion, as it places high cognitive demands on the individual. Disruptions in cognitive processes may alter how individuals organize, interpret, and convey information in social contexts. However, discourse deficits are typically more apparent in severe TBI, …

Beyond The Switch: Identifying Gli2-Associated Secretory Targets For Igm Regulation In Waldenström’S Macroglobulinemia, Trevor Charles Chapman

Master's Theses and Capstones

Waldenström’s Macroglobulinemia (WM) is a rare non-Hodgkin lymphoma characterized by the increased presence of monoclonal IgM circulating in the blood and the infiltration of lymphoplasmacytic cells into the bone marrow. WM cells are heterogeneous, sharing features of both B-lymphocytes and plasma cells while not being able to terminally differentiate. Our labs’ previous work established that inhibiting and knocking down the GLI2 transcription factor effectively reduces IgM secretion in three different WM cell lines. This observed phenotype was discovered to operate through IL-6Rα signaling but whether IgM was regulated transcriptionally was not assessed. GLI2 was initially hypothesized to regulate IgM production …

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 …

Advancing Bathymetric Lidar Nearshore Mapping With Self-Supervised Learning, Joseph Wilder

Master's Theses and Capstones

The application of AI/ML to shallow bathymetric mapping with airborne lidar remains limited by a lack of high-quality labeled datasets, extreme spatial variability, and noise introduced by environmental conditions and hardware limitations. These issues reduce the generalizability of traditional statistical approaches for extracting bathymetric points from lidar point clouds, with additional challenges for supervised neural networks arising due to the amount and quality of labeled data required to properly capture broad seafloor characteristics. Recent advances in point cloud machine learning methods have the potential to improve conventional bathymetric processing workflows. This work examines modern self-supervised learning (SSL) methods for bathymetric …

Conserved Spatial Proximity And Immune-Linked Evolution Of Lncrnas From Protein-Coding Genes In Vertebrates, Sahar Jamialahmadi

Master's Theses and Capstones

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are widespread components of vertebrate genomes, yet theevolutionary principles governing their genomic positioning, origin, and functional associations remain incompletely understood. Here, we performed a comparative genomic analysis across 96 vertebrate species to investigate the spatial relationship between lncRNAs and protein-coding genes, their evolutionary trajectories within gene families, and their functional and genomic contexts.

We show that lncRNAs are consistently positioned in close proximity to protein-codinggenes across vertebrates, with distance distributions significantly deviating from random genomic placement in all species examined. Despite this non-random organization, genome-wide lncRNA–mRNA distance distributions were highly conserved across species. Ancestral state reconstruction …

2026 Ccfan Priority Area Teams And Goals, Mikayla Cerney

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Federally Funded Research Generates Significant Economic Benefit To N.H., Beth Potier

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

Testing Of Great Bay Oysters For Two Protozoan Pathogens - 2025, Renee Zobel, Robert Atwood

PREP Reports & Publications

No abstract provided.

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 …

Nursing Students Sweep Top Awards At Regional Research Conference, Aaron Sanborn

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

Most Granite Staters Report Good Or Better Mental Health But Anxiety & Depression Higher Than In 2022 4/29/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Three-quarters of Granite Staters rate their mental health as very good or good. Measures of anxiety and depression among Granite Staters have increased since January 2022 and under a quarter report feeling symptoms of loneliness in the past two weeks. A quarter of Granite Staters report high levels of stress, up slightly since January 2022. Politics, international news, and work are the most common contributors to daily stress and residents most often deal with stress by taking action to improve the situation, focusing on self-care, and taking their mind off of the source of stress.