Digital Commons Network^™

“Test Run Or One And Done”: Gender Differences In Lgbtq+ Hookup Experiences, Della Burke

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores queer individuals’ participation within hookup culture, the goals and motivations of those taking part in queer hookup encounters, and the ways queer individuals make sense of their hookup experiences. I analyze data from 24 semi-structured qualitative in-person and online interviews to examine LGBTQ+-identified individuals’ experiences with queer hookup encounters. This dissertation offers several major contributions to the scholarship of LGBTQ+ hookup experiences. First, I find that participants talk about three discrete levels of intimacy: noncommittal hookups, “catching feelings,” and third, “real relationships” or emotional connections. Second, both men and women define hookups as noncommittal sexual encounters, but …

A Memory-Based Approach To Multiple Document Comprehension, Allison Sonia-Bolduc

Doctoral Dissertations

Multiple document (MD) comprehension is of growing interest in the Internet age, in which reading material is readily available from multiple sources. However, comprehension research has typically been dominated by studies investigating single documents (Bråten et al., 2019; McNamara & Magliano, 2009). This dissertation applies a memory-based approach traditionally used in research on single document comprehension to a MD context, with the goal of understanding the on-line processing and integration of information from multiple documents. Expository-style passages were created in which the first half contained information that was either consistent or inconsistent with a target sentence in the second half. …

Essays On The Effects Of Air Quality And Intra-Industry Trade On Labor Market Outcomes, Protika Bhattacharjee

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the impacts of poor air quality and the rise of intra-industry trade on different labor market outcomes like migration, workings hours, and wages. This thesis contributes two distinct strands of literature, literature on air pollution focusing on the economic consequences of poor air quality, and international trade literature. The first two essays examine how a moderate level of air pollution can drive migration decisions and impact working hours in the United States. The third essay investigates the role of the rise in within industry trade on occupational wages in the United States. This dissertation aims to contribute …

Cryopreservation Studies Of An Antifreeze Protein From The Desert Beetle Anatolica Polita, Jonathan Sreter

Doctoral Dissertations

Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) are specialized evolutionary adaptations by certain cold climate organisms, including fish, plants, fungi, bacteria, and insects, to prevent cryo-injury. AFPs contribute to freeze resistance or tolerance by binding to the surface of ice crystals and preventing their growth, as well as inhibiting ice recrystallization (i.e., small crystals restructuring into large crystals) during large temperature fluctuations and constant sub-zero temperatures. AFPs have potential applications in cryopreservation and in the development of cryo-functional materials for medicine, the food industry, and agriculture. We investigated the ability of an antifreeze protein from the desert beetle Anatolica polita, ApAFP752, to confer cryoprotection …

Notes From The Underground: An Exploration Of Burying Beetle Thermal Ecology, Sound Production And Reception, And Brain Morphology., Michelle Ward

Doctoral Dissertations

In a climatically and structurally changing world, it is important to understand how different thermal and social environments influence the behavior and physiology of the pillars of terrestrial ecosystems: insects. In this dissertation, I explored how insects, specifically Nicrophorus beetles, respond to biotic and abiotic challenges. Through this research, I addressed 1) how daily fluctuations in temperature influence Nicrophorus americanus reproductive success, 2) the context in which breeding pairs use stridulation during carcass burial, and subsequently how inhibition of stridulation influences reproductive success, 3) if the clypeal membrane on Nicrophorus beetles has the physiological properties of a tympanum, and if …

Compound, Elemental, And Isotopic Perspectives On Mercury Mobilization During Thaw In A Discontinuous Permafrost Zone, Maria F. Fahnestock

Doctoral Dissertations

Arctic ecosystems are a major global sink for both carbon (C) and mercury (Hg), both of which are influenced by anthropogenic activities. The accelerated climate-change-induced warming documented in the Arctic has led to permafrost thaw resulting in landscape evolution from hydrological, vegetation and microbial shifts. All of these resulting changes have the potential to influence how Hg, a toxic contaminant, is mobilized and re-cycled in this ecosystem. In this body of work, I investigate patterns of Hg speciation, elemental abundances, and stable isotopes across the thaw gradient in a permafrost peatland and interconnected freshwater lakes in Abisko, Sweden to assess …

Othered Ambitions: The Conflation Of Villainy And Homosexuality In 20th Century American Media, Sherard Harrington

Doctoral Dissertations

This work sets out to examine the ways in which homosexuality and villainy have been conflated throughout the 20th Century in American media, and the ways in which that conflation has been reinforced and challenged. My observations about the villainous connotations of homosexuality hold despite the ways in which the boundaries of homosexuality have changed throughout the century. A homosexual is anyone who experiences romantic or amorous affection for someone who presents with the same gender presentation and/or who experiences attraction aversion for those who present with the opposite gender presentation. A villain breaks the law seeking to restructure society …

Query-Specific Subtopic Clustering In Response To Broad Queries, Sumanta Kashyapi

Doctoral Dissertations

Information Retrieval (IR) refers to obtaining valuable and relevant information from various sources in response to a specific information need. For the textual domain, the most common form of information sources is a collection of textual documents or text corpus. Depending on the scope of the information need, also referred to as the query, the relevant information can span a wide range of topical themes. Hence, the relevant information may often be scattered through multiple documents in the corpus, and each satisfies the information need to varying degrees. Traditional IR systems present the relevant set of documents in the form …

Interventions Towards Sustainable Watershed Management As Demonstrated By Hydrologic Simulation, Shan Zuidema

Doctoral Dissertations

Increasing population, changing climate, and on-going legacies of environmental mismanagement motivate our need for deeper understanding of the process and limits of adaptation towards sustainable management of water resources. Movements towards open-science and transdisciplinary research have enabled deeper assessments of the co-evolution of human society and changing landscapes. Policies and decisions enabling environmental restoration or sustainable resource use have been actively pursued for decades. The social barriers that prevent adaptations to succeed are deep and entrenched, but equally important are the physical barriers. Successful adaptations in water resource management need to explicitly consider the joint interactions of intervention magnitude, or …

Evaluation Of Curing Effects On Cold In-Place Recycled (Cir) Materials, Chibuike Ogbo

Doctoral Dissertations

Most cold In-place recycled (CIR) construction use asphalt emulsion or foamed asphalt with or without active fillers as a stabilizing agent. To ensure the CIR layer gains appreciable stiffness and strength to support traffic, the stabilizing agents have to undergo curing (to gradually develop strength). If traffic is allowed on the CIR layer before sufficient strength and structural capacity is gained, premature damage will occur. Lack of a fast and reliable procedure to determine the extent of in-situ curing significantly increases the risk of such damage. Present construction specifications rely on empirically based time recommendations to ensure sufficient curing. Current …

The Efficacy Of Response To Intervention On Academic Outcomes At The Secondary School Level In A New England School District, Kimberly Mcglinchey

Doctoral Dissertations

Educational policies and practices have had a long-standing emphasis of conducting incoming literacy screenings to determine who is at risk for school failure. Response to intervention (RTI) is an intervention program designed to deliver educational resources to students who fall below what is deemed an acceptable level of proficiency as viewed through the early screening process. The goal of the program is to provide early mitigation in order to catch students up to their peers, and to limit misidentification into special education. Studies have evaluated the success of the program in grades K-3 and shown mixed success. However, there was …

Rational Design And Synthesis Of Antifreeze-Protein Inspired Polymers For Anti-Icing Coatings And Cryopreservation Applications, Mohamamd Mousazadehkasin

Doctoral Dissertations

Certain organisms living in cold regions have adapted different strategies to survive in harshly cold temperatures. Some of them use freeze-avoiding strategies in which they can prevent freezing by controlling the concentration of sugars (et. sucrose, trehalose) or polyols (glycerol), regulation of the ice nucleator, and dehydration. Other organisms have adapted to this extremely cold condition by producing antifreeze (gly)proteins (AF(G)Ps) which exhibit ice recrystallization inhibition (IRI), thermal hysteresis activity (THA), and dynamic ice crystal shaping. These proteins discovered in Antarctic fish in 1960 for the first time have been reported in bacteria, fungi, insects, and plants. AF(G)Ps and their …

The Active Tail In The Mms Era: An Ion Perspective, Anthony Jason Rogers

Doctoral Dissertations

The Earth's magnetic field has a complex and dynamic relationship with the greater solar system. The solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field extend the influence of the Sun's atmosphere to the orbit of Earth and well beyond, carrying charged particles in a constant stream of varying density and velocity. These solar influences carry energy which interacts with every object they encounter, including the Earth and its magnetic field.

The primary mechanism for the energetic interaction and exchange of energy between the Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind is called Magnetic Reconnection, a process by which two opposing magnetic fields …

Pretreatment Optimization For Ceramic Microfiltration With Ozonation And Coagulation For The Reuse Of Wastewater Effluent, Nicola Elardo

Master's Theses and Capstones

Ceramic microfiltration (CMF) is a promising alternative to traditional polymeric microfiltration and its chemical resistance makes it particularly attractive for sustainable water reuse applications. This research investigated the ability of ozonation and coagulation as pretreatments to improve the performance of ceramic microfiltration using HHNK’s WWTP in Wervershoof, The Netherlands. With a CMF pilot plant design flow of 200 L/h, critical flux tests were completed using ozonation individually and with coagulation sequentially to evaluate the ceramic membrane filtration performance. Results showed that with an ozone residual before the ceramic membrane, the performance increased significantly compared to no pretreatment and without an …

The Effect Of Harvest Maturity On 'Geneva 3' Kiwiberry Storability, Ripening Dynamics, And Fruit Quality, Aislinn Mumford

Master's Theses and Capstones

Maturity at harvest is an important determinant of fruit quality in kiwiberry [Actinidia arguta (Siebold & Zucc.) Planch. ex Miq.,], a climacteric fruit that is harvested after reaching physiological maturity but not yet ready-to-eat ripeness. Although the recommended cultivar for commercial kiwiberry producers in the northeast United States is ‘Geneva 3’, no published research exists regarding recommended harvest and postharvest practices for that variety. In this study, conducted across two seasons, ‘Geneva 3’ kiwiberries were harvested at a range of mean maturities (6.5, 8.0, and 10.0 °Brix), held in cold storage (CS, 0-1 °C, >90% relative humidity) for various durations …

Mobilization And The Power Of The English Crown During The Wars Of The Roses, Cory Daniel Szaro

Master's Theses and Capstones

Historians of the period of the Wars of the Roses have long debated about the power of the English Crown relative to that of the nobility in fifteenth-century England. These historians have often based their arguments on outdated notions of “bastard feudalism” and supported them using biased narrative sources. This study draws upon the patent rolls and close rolls produced by theroyal government to examine the different aspects of English military organization during the period from 1452 to 1477.The evidence contained within these sources demonstrates that military mobilization relied on the enduring authority of the Crown and its central administration. …

Analysis Of Turbulence In The Near-Shore Marine Atmospheric Surface Layer Using Sonic Anemometer Data, Alberto Javier Bodoque Garcia

Master's Theses and Capstones

This thesis investigates turbulence in the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL), above,the wave boundary layer (WBL). To conduct this research, wind velocity and temperature data was collected by a sonic anemometer located onWood, Island, NH, mounted to a tower 4 meters above the ground. To study turbulence in the MABL, variables such as Reynolds stress and friction velocity were calculated for different days in August 2019. Friction velocity was calculated following three different approaches: the first approach employs the eddy covariance method, the second employs a tilt correction to the eddy covariance method, and the third uses the Reynolds stress …

Whether They Return: Modeling Outdoor Recreation Behaviors, Decision-Making, And Intention-To-Return In Congressionally Designated Wilderness, Alexander Robert Caraynoff

Master's Theses and Capstones

Visitation to parks and protected areas (PPAs) has become increasingly widespread in the United States. This increased visitation is especially concerning within congressionally designated wilderness areas where federal agencies are dually tasked with preserving wilderness character while simultaneously providing high-quality outdoor recreation experiences. This study investigated the influence of social, situational, and ecological factors on outdoor recreation visitor behaviors and decision-making within the Lye Brook Wilderness (LBW) area in Vermont, USA. An on-site intercept survey (n=576) was employed to collect data from LBW visitors in the summer of 2021. Multi-variate statistics (e.g., binary logistic regression, structural equation modeling) indicate visitor …

Crystal Plasticity Modeling For Predicting Load Reversals In Dual Phase Steels And Aluminium Alloys: Applications To Predicting Springback Behavior, Sowmya Daroju

Master's Theses and Capstones

Numerical modeling of sheet metal forming is of growing interest for industry and academia. Metal forming operations often involve non-monotonic deformation paths with frequent unloading. This research explores the use of elasto-plastic self-consistent (EPSC) modeling in predicting the monotonic and load reversal deformation of aluminum alloys, and dual-phase steels. The EPSC model considers anisotropic elasticity, dislocation density-hardening, and intra granular slip system-level backstress fields in addition to accounting for inter granular stress fields; the detailed contribution of this helps in properly predicting the phenomena such as unloading non-linearity, the Bauschinger effect (BE), and changes in hardening rates during reversals. In …

The Grand Re-Opening Of The American Summer Camp: Determinants Of Camp Innovation During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Leslie Anne Doone

Master's Theses and Capstones

In 2020, COVID-19 shuttered 82% of summer camps in the United States leading to a loss of 16 billion dollars in revenue, 900,000 jobs within the camping industry, and left 19.5 million youth without a camp experience (ACA Research Team, 2021; Fernandez, 2020; Wycoff, 2021). Financial constraints, stakeholder interest, and increased knowledge of COVID-19 mitigation strategies led to 71% of residential and 56% of day camps re-opening nationally in 2021 (ACA Research Team, 2022). To open, camps had to employ a variety of innovations to mitigate risks and support amended programming and operations. This cross-sectional survey study, in partnership with …

Rna-Seq Analysis Of Transgenic Arabidopsis Thaliana With Conferred Overproduction Of Putrescene By A Mouse Ornithine Decarboxylase Gene, Eric English

Master's Theses and Capstones

Polyamines are a class of low molecular weight, nitrogenous bases that participate in many important functions in plants, from germination to senescence and many steps in between. These molecules have been shown to play key roles in various abiotic and biotic stress responses which makes their biosynthetic pathway a focal point for engineering plants to better adapt to rapidly changing local environments and global climate change. Previous work with plants capable of producing high polyamine titers shows that they have superior stress responses as compared to their wild type counterparts. This study investigated what broader impacts a genetic manipulations to …

Plasticity Characterization By Deriving Non-Linear Displacements For In-Plane Biaxial Cruciform Testing, Jordan Michaela Hoffman

Master's Theses and Capstones

In-plane biaxial testing using a cruciform type specimen is a useful experimental method to characterize the elasto-plastic material behavior under non-uniaxial conditions. Different stress states can be imposed to the specimen simply by varying loading ratios along two orthogonal axes. Experiments can be performed using one experimental setup and one specimen geometry. Among different control options for loading, the displacement control in each arm is a stable and consistent option to keep the static deformation rate. However, a non-linear relationship exists between the control parameter e.g., displacement, and derived quantities, e.g., stress and strain. Therefore, it is a challenge to …

Bridging The Gap Between Retrieval And Summarization, Connor Lennox

Master's Theses and Capstones

Information Retrieval is, at its core, a field focused on providing information to users to fulfill an information need. One of the most common use cases of Information Retrieval is document-level retrieval, which seeks to provide a collection of documents to the user that addresses their needs. In contrast to this, single document retrieval seeks to instead provide the user with a single document comprised of all required information. We seek to extend single document retrieval to single document generation, in which we use multiple source documents to create a new document which directly addresses the information need.

Methods For Determining The Refractive Index Structure Parameter In The Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer, Daniel Joseph Laughlin

Master's Theses and Capstones

An experimental study of the marine atmospheric boundary layer effects on the index of refraction was conducted off the coast of Portsmouth, NH between Battery Farnsworth and Wood Island. This study aimed to compare measured changes in the refractive index structure parameter (Cn2) to estimates using time series data of single point atmospheric variables, including temperature, pressure, and wind velocity. A scintillometer transmitter and receiver located at Battery Farnsworth and Wood Island, respectively, provided direct measurements of Cn2. Data from a weather tower containing a sonic anemometer was used to estimate Cn2.

Three methods of analysis to estimate Cn2 from …

Analysis Of Acoustic Scattering Layers In And Around Petermann Fjord, Northwest Greenland, Erin Heffron

Master's Theses and Capstones

In 2015 a major international collaborative expedition took place focused on understanding the processes associated with the recent rapid decline of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) and the impact that this decline could have on global sea-level rise. The Petermann Expedition collected a broad range of data designed to characterize the Petermann Glacier system, a marine-terminating glacier with a floating ice tongue that has undergone dramatic changes in the last decade. During the expedition, sonars were used to map the seafloor and the water column, generating a continuous dataset over 30 days. The water column mapping revealed extensive acoustic scattering …

Characterization And Knockdown Of Tata-Binding Protein 1 In Toxoplasma Gondii, Malorie R. Nitz

Master's Theses and Capstones

Toxoplasma gondii is a single celled eukaryotic parasite that causes the disease toxoplasmosis, which infects approximately thirty to fifty percent of the world’s population. Current treatments for toxoplasmosis are lacking and immunocompromised individuals are at risk of a reactivation of acute infection. Tight control of transcription initiation is critical for maintaining proper infection for the parasite. TATA-binding proteins (TBPs) are critical transcription factors for recognizing and binding to the TATA-box and other motifs in eukaryotes to recruit the transcription preinitiation complex. Toxoplasma contains two TBPs, TgTBP1 and TgTBP2, but TATA-boxes or other conserved motifs have not yet been identified in …

Error Detection And Correction During Object Naming In Individuals With Aphasia, Anne O'Donnell

Master's Theses and Capstones

Aphasia is a neurogenic communication disorder that occurs following a left hemisphere stroke and commonly co-occurs with apraxia of speech (AOS). Individuals with aphasia typically make errors in their lexical retrieval and have difficulties detecting and correcting them. While there is ample research in how errors occur, few researchers go as far as to look at error detection and subsequent correction in this population. Given this need for research, we took a pre-existing data set of 23 individuals with aphasia grouped for presence of AOS (nine with comorbid AOS) and coded their spoken responses on the Object Naming subtest of …

A President’S Best Friend: U.S. Presidents And Their Relationship With Ins V. Chadha (1983), John Mitchell Scacchi

Master's Theses and Capstones

The legislative veto – a device by which Congress approves or disapproves executive action on a particular matter – has been one of Congress’s favorite tools for keeping the executive branch, and all of its departments and agencies wielding increased regulatory and policymaking power, in check. Since 1983, when the Supreme Court ruled in INS v. Chadha that the legislative veto was unconstitutional, presidents have been warding off attempts by Congress to include the device in its legislation, relying principally on their signing statements to voice their objections. In doing so, presidents invoke Chadha extensively, with no other Court case …

Selective Grazing Of Indigenous Protists On Dechlorinating Bacteria In Groundwater, Jonathan Greenleaf Whaland

Master's Theses and Capstones

ABSTRACT

SELECTIVE GRAZING OF INDIGENOUS PROTISTS ON DECHLORINATING BACTERIA IN GROUNDWATER

ByJonathan G. Whaland University of New Hampshire, May 2022

Degradation of trichloroethylene (TCE) in contaminated groundwater can stall at cis-dichloroethylene (cDCE). One cause of the stall could be predation of indigenous protists on the bacteria responsible for cDCE degradation. This research evaluated the uptake and clearance rates of indigenous groundwater protists on KB-1, a bacterial consortium used for bioaugmentation at TCE contaminated sites. The experiments involved two wells, one contaminated with TCE located in Portsmouth, NH and one uncontaminated well located in Newington, NH, and the indigenous protists and …

Research Report: High Tunnel Tomato Fruit Cluster Pruning, Caterina Roman, Rebecca G. Sideman

Faculty Publications

Tomatoes are a high value crop grown worldwide. Indeterminate varieties are commonly grown in high tunnel structures throughout New England for the fresh market. Indeterminate tomato plants often suffer from a phenomenon called ‘June drop’ in which the plant’s first four to five cluster of fruit set perfectly but the subsequent two to three clusters have poor set and plant productivity drops suddenly. While cluster thinning (e.g., reducing the number of fruit allowed to mature per cluster) has been successfully shown to increase fruit size, it has generally not increased marketable yield. We hypothesized that reducing the fruit load by …