Digital Commons Network^™

Translating Global Nature: Territoriality, Environmental Discourses, And Ecocultural Identities, José R. Castro-Sotomayor

Communication ETDs

In this study, I explore environmental discourses circulating among Indigenous transboundary organizations working on environmental initiatives at the border between Ecuador and Colombia. I focus on three global environmental discourses –sustainability, development, and climate change– as they are at the core of the global environmental governance vernacular. La Gran Familia Awá Binacional (GFAB), one of the few transboundary Indigenous organizations working along the binational border, utilizes these global concepts to frame their environmental initiatives and projects. I use a critical and interpretive qualitative approach to investigate, deconstruct, and rearticulate global environmental discourses circulating among and translated by two of the …

2017 Annual Report, Christopher C. Witt

Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Surface-Water Groundwater Interactions In The Middle Rio Grande, Nm Implications For Bank Storage And Native Species, Tom Heller

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

Riparian zones are important for ecological purposes and ecosystem processes, and are valued for aesthetic, recreational, cultural, and historical reasons. The declining integrity of cottonwood-dominated riparian systems in the Middle Rio Grande (MRG) of central New Mexico has been evident for several decades, of which the largest cause has been the severe alterations riparian hydrology. While cottonwood germination responses to changing flood regimes have been well studied, the response to changing groundwater dynamics - and the suitability of groundwater regimes in the MRG - is less well understood. This study used pressure transducer groundwater datasets installed in the Rio Grande …

From Olfaction To Immunity: Characterization Of Nasal Immunity In Bony Fish, Ali Sepahi

Biology ETDs

The olfactory system is a common route pathogen entry in vertebrates. As a consequence, the nasopharynx-associated lymphoid tissue (NALT) needs to rapidly clear infections without compromising the sense of olfaction. NALT is present in teleost fish but its cellular and molecular mechanisms of action have not been investigated to this date. This dissertation focuses on three aims: 1. investigating the role of CCL19-like as a primordial chemokine in vertebrate nasal immunity, 2. determining the presence of tissue microenvironments within the olfactory organ (OO) of rainbow trout, and 3. understanding the immune contributions of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) in teleosts against …

Hand Movement Detection In Collaborative Learning Environment Videos, Callie J. Darsey

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Human activity detection in digital videos is currently attracting significant research interest. This problem is especially challenging for video datasets that have a lot of human activity, illumination noise, and structural noise. The video dataset associated with the Advancing Out of School Learning in Mathematics and Engineering (AOLME) project has these challenges. ALOME videos have been used in the study of human activities “in the wild”.

This thesis explores detection of hand movement using color and optical flow. Exploratory analysis considered the problem component wise on components created from thresholds applied to motion and color. The proposed approach uses patch …

Investigations On The Role Of The Immune System In Mammary Development And Maternal Immunity In The Marsupial, Monodelphis Domestica, Bethaney D. Fehrenkamp

Biology ETDs

All newborn mammals are highly dependent upon milk for nourishment and immune protection. This is especially true for marsupials, a lineage of mammals with a short gestation, limited placental development, and an increased reliance on an extended lactation period. Most newborn marsupials do not receive passive maternal immunity in utero and therefore are entirely dependent upon factors within the milk for immune protection until capable of mounting their own response. In this project we seek to characterize the complex lactation program utilized by marsupials, and seek greater understanding of the maternal role in the establishment of the developing immune system …

Genomic Signatures Of Adaptive Evolution, Jessica A. Weber

Biology ETDs

Comparative genomics has revolutionized virtually all fields of biology including the study of evolution. In this dissertation, I used next-generation sequencing to explore the evolutionary histories and adaptive evolution of a diverse set of taxa. Comparisons ranged across time scales, from population-level genetic diversity studies to questions spanning the deepest branches of the metazoan lineage. Whole genome sequencing of 50 unrelated Korean individuals revealed that Koreans have a distinct genetic history from the Chinese and Japanese populations. Our Korean-specific variome database was used to identify novel disease-causing variants in the Korean population, highlighting the value of high-quality ethnic variation databases …

The Variable Expression Of Transitive Subject And Possesor In Wayuunaiki (Guajiro), Andres M. Sabogal

Linguistics ETDs

In Wayuunaiki, verbal affixes cross-reference clausal arguments in various ways. Most notably, there are two ways to express transitive subjects, and two ways to express possessors. Much like voice alternatives, the variable expression of subject and possessor impart different perspectives on a situation type, but unlike traditional voice categories, syntactic valence remains equal. This dissertation characterizes these constructions with a specific question in mind: what do these two cross-referencing alternations communicate and what influences their usage? To answer these questions, I consider the linguistic properties observed in the usage of these constructions in narratives (Jusayú 1986, 1994), and informal conversations. …

Artworks From "Desert Divinity" Exhibit, Kevin J. Comerford

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

This 360-degree video tours the "Desert Divinity" art exhibit, held at the South Broadway Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from April 12 to May 31, 2018.

The exhibit was curated by Augustine Romero and featured works by Kevin Comerford, Associate Professor and Director of Digital Initiatives at University Libraries, University of New Mexico. Other artists included in the show are Julie Reichert, Gabriel Luis Powers, and Richard Hazel. "Each artist brings in a sense of transcendentalist ideals of self-reliance and idealism as they explore nonobjective art," Romero said. "The studio becomes an environment of independence. The collective sense …

Developing More Specific Mirna Biogenesis Inhibitors To Get Effective Regulation Of Mirnas, Umesh Bhattarai

Chemistry and Chemical Biology ETDs

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short (~ 22 nucleotides long) noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression post-transcriptionally. They control the expression of various genes that are crucial for cellular function, development and human diseases. Tools to regulate the level and function of miRNAs facilitate the studies of their functions and have therapeutic applications. In my thesis, I developed a newly customizable miRNA biogenesis inhibitor to regulate miRNAs.

Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) have been used to regulate miRNA through controlling their production or function. Although commonly used due to the fact that they are easy to design, several limitations exist for ASOs including serious …

A Path To Alignment, Gregory Richard Arnold

Linguistics ETDs

What is really needed to make a machine into a verisimilitude of a language using human? Clearly there are holes in human communication, missing linguistic forms, and yet we manage to convey meaning. The under-determinacy of language seems to play an integral part in the adaptive system that all humans possess for perceiving, processing and producing language with shared semantic value. We invent symbols that index the missing contextual elements, allowing partial production of linguistic units. A machine would require the same abilities of indexicality and inventiveness. In this pilot study, I attempt to understand how semantic values shift and …

Material Culture In The Religious Narratives Of The Old English Exeter Book, Justin J. Larsen

English Language and Literature ETDs

The term “material culture” represents many different approaches and schools of thought across multiple academic disciplines, but its place in the study of medieval literature is particularly difficult to ascertain. The long tradition of simply using the archaeological record to “fill in” gaps left in the textual historical record does little to expand our understanding of the place that these objects actually occupied in the users’ daily lives, nor does it allow us to make greater connections between the texts, their audiences, and their broader environment. Likewise, the role of the text and its reception has a great deal to …

Conceptual Structures Of Vietnamese Emotions, Hien T. Tran

Linguistics ETDs

ABSTRACT

This dissertation presents a comparative study of the metaphoric and metonymic systems underlying the conceptualizations of two emotions, anger and sadness, in Vietnamese, American English, and Chinese. The analytic and theoretical approach is based on previous studies by Lakoff and Kövecses (1987), Kövecses (1988), Barcelona (1986), King (1989) and Yu (1995). The research presented here on emotion concepts reveals cultural variation and potential universals in the conceptualization of emotions. These results support the “Cultural Embodied Prototype” view proposed by Kövecses (2004:14) which proposes that conceptualizations of human emotions is motivated by both physiological embodied experiences (physiological embodiment) and the …

Niemann-Pick C1, Its Connection To Obesity, And Its Impact On Human Evolution, Joseph Joshua Castillo

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Niemann-Pick type-C disease is a rare autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disease that classically presents in the first decade, leading to ataxia, vertical-gaze palsy, loss of communication skills, epileptic seizures, and eventually death. The stark reality about NPC disease underlines the important role the NPC1 protein plays in whole-body lipid homeostasis. It is no surprise, then, that the NPC1 gene has been associated with other diseases as well, such as obesity, diabetes, and Ebola virus infection. In this manuscript, a connection will be made that intertwines genetics, biochemical and molecular mechanisms, physiology, and evolutionary pressures, and will explain how a gene, discovered …

Characterizing Patterns In E. Coli Levels In Rio Grande River Water And Riverbed Sediments Near Albuquerque, Nm, James Fluke

Civil Engineering ETDs

In this work I examined how Fecal indicator Bacteria (FIB) behave in a large environmental system (Rio Grande near Albuquerque, ~60 km distance). I addressed the questions: How do FIB levels in river water and riverbed sediments of this reach change with distance along the river and throughout one year?

I conducted year-round river water and sediment sampling for concentration of E. coli bacteria, a persistent contaminant in the area. I found that over the year, E. coli loading in river water increased along the 60 km reach and E. coli in the sediments mainly increased near the Albuquerque urban …

Analyzing The Medical Definition Of Death In Criminal Homicide Prosecution, Mariah Wood

Nursing ETDs

I investigated the use of the medical definition of human death in the criminal justice system and the impact of this definition on the prosecution of criminal homicide. The units of design for this research were two violent crimes cases investigated by the Homicide Unit of the Albuquerque Police Department. Data was collected from officer interviews, case files, Office of the Medical Investigator reports, media and social media.

I identified the themes of pursuit of justice, frustration, and family from the collected data. Key findings include that the medical definition of human death causes confusion and delay in the criminal …

Intelligent Computational Transportation, Yuming Zhang

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Transportation is commonplace around our world. Numerous researchers dedicate great efforts to vast transportation research topics. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate and address a couple of transportation problems with respect to geographic discretization, pavement surface automatic examination, and traffic ow simulation, using advanced computational technologies. Many applications require a discretized 2D geographic map such that local information can be accessed efficiently. For example, map matching, which aligns a sequence of observed positions to a real-world road network, needs to find all the nearby road segments to the individual positions. To this end, the map is discretized by …

“Enough Of Thought, Philosopher!”: Emily Brontë’S Interrogations Of Death, Katherine Marie Alexander

English Language and Literature ETDs

The year 1847 marked the appearance of Wuthering Heights on the literary scene. Writing under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell, Emily Brontë soon became known as the “Sphynx (sic) of Literature” following the publication of the culminating masterpiece of her literary career. Although she was not a trained philosopher, her drawings, poems, letters, devoirs, and only novel offer an organic approach to philosophical matters, particularly in her engagements with the meanings of time and space and her interrogations of death.

Surrounded by the pervasive presence of death from her earliest years and beyond, Brontë moved to rigorous interrogations of the …

Bioengineering Of An In Vitro Microphysiological Human Alveolar Model, Ayesha Arefin

Nanoscience and Microsystems ETDs

Drugs tested on animal models do not always produce the same results in humans; a reliable in vitro lung model can bridge the divide between the two. Because the alveolus is a target for several drugs, an alveolar model can be a platform for both designing drugs and studying lung diseases. A model should allow for gas exchange, growth of primary alveolar epithelial cells, extracellular matrix production, and have similar mechanical properties to alveoli, creating an environment conducive to normal metabolic activity and cellular responses. Existing artificial alveolar models that use polymeric membranes to sustain lung cells are limited by …

Regulating Mirna Biogenesis By Small Molecules, Hao Yan

Chemistry and Chemical Biology ETDs

MiRNAs are key cellular regulators and their dysregulation is associated with many human diseases. The development of miRNA inhibitors has significant implications for the therapy of diseases associated with aberrant miRNA expression. It also provides chemical tools for studying miRNA function. This dissertation focuses on the development of small-molecule based miRNA inhibitors targeting miRNA biogenesis.

The dissertation consists of four chapters. In Chapter 1, the biogenesis of miRNA was first introduced, followed by the explanation of miRNA function in health and disease. Then the approaches used for regulating miRNA were reviewed. Finally, the difficulties with miRNA regulation were summarized.

One …

Developing Droplet Based 3d Cell Culture Methods To Enable Investigations Of The Chemical Tumor Microenvironment, Jacqueline Alexandria De Lora

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Adaptation of cancer cells to changes in the biochemical microenvironment in an expanding tumor mass is a crucial aspect of malignant progression, tumor metabolism, and drug efficacy. In vitro, it is challenging to mimic the evolution of biochemical gradients and the cellular heterogeneity that characterizes cancer tissues found in vivo. It is well accepted that more realistic and controllable in vitro 3D model systems are required to improve the overall cancer research paradigm and thus improve on the translation of results, but multidisciplinary approaches are needed for these advances. This work develops such approaches and demonstrates that new droplet-based cell-encapsulation …

Catalytic Functionalization Of Organoaluminum Reagents And Olefins By Cross-Coupling With Copper And Nickel, Bijay Shrestha

Chemistry and Chemical Biology ETDs

This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the Cu-catalyzed cross-coupling of organoaluminum reagents with organohalides. One of the most powerful tools for the construction of C-C bonds is cross-coupling. But, this reaction is predominantly catalyzed by Pd, a rare and expensive transition metal, which inevitably makes the process unsustainable in the long-term. Furthermore, Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling also shows low tolerance for alkyl and heteroaryl substrates because of β-hydride elimination and catalyst deactivation, respectively. Although these issues remain largely solved by using sterically hindered and electron-rich ligands, however making these types of ligands is synthetically challenging and …

Ramblin’ Round Raton, University Of New Mexico Prevention Research Center

Walking Guides and Reports

Ramblin’ Round Raton aims to promote healthy lifestyles through walking and hiking in Raton and on nearby public lands. Research shows walking and hiking can help us live longer and feel better. Ramblin’ Round Raton promotes use of walkways and trails on public land. We organize and support walking groups. We sponsor walking events. We advocate for walkable streets and highways. We promote development of trails, and support enhancing our walking places.

Mainland Southeast Asia In The Longue Durée: A Zooarchaeological Test Of The "Broad Spectrum Revolution" In Northern Thailand, Cyler Norman Conrad

Anthropology ETDs

In northern Thailand, previous zooarchaeological research suggests that hunter-gatherers consumed a broad diversity of animal resources during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and afterwards (Gorman 1971a). This is a pattern characteristic of Kent Flannery’s (1969) “broad spectrum revolution” hypothesis. Based primarily on presence and absence evidence, faunal assemblages in northern Thailand typically include species of mammals, reptiles, birds, fish and shellfish, suggesting that prehistoric foragers consumed a wide range of taxa within this mainland Southeast Asian tropical environment. Although zooarchaeological analyses commonly identify this pattern within prehistoric cave and rockshelter sites, past investigations have 1) not attempted to formally test Flannery’s hypothesis, …

Diné Epistemology: Sa’Ah Naaghái Bik’Eh Hózhóón Teachings, Vangee Nez

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Sa’ah Naaghái Bik’eh Hózhóón (SNBH) is Diné epistemology, a complex system of knowledge encompassing two paradigms: Beauty Way (Hózhóójii-female) and Protection Way (Naayée’ k’egho-male), with hózhó at its core. The study examines personal narratives of SNBH through lived experiences toward hózhó. The literature review looks at Diné worldview from the perspective of published Diné scholars on SNBH for Diné youth. This qualitative case study approach, using Indigenous epistemology and Indigenous research methodology framework, allowed for intensive descriptions and analysis of SNBH. The interviews explored participants’ lived experiences using narrative inquiry to understand SNBH. The findings …

Sonomechanical Enhanced Sparging Techniques For Advanced Reactor Applications, Floren V. Rubio

Nuclear Engineering ETDs

The fluoride salt cooled high temperature reactor (FHR) is a Generation IV advanced reactor design that has potential to produce efficient, low carbon, and safe energy. But, there are significant engineering challenges that need to be addressed before the deployment of this reactor. One of the key challenges is tritium release mitigation and sequestration. Because the FHR utilizes a eutectic LiF-BeF2 (flibe) salt as a coolant, the coolant is a significant source of tritium.

High-power ultrasonics have been used in many industrial process streams such as food processing, metal production, chemical production, and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Techniques and concepts from these …

Displaced In Place: Nuevomexicanos On The Northern Side Of The New Mexico–Colorado Boundary, Phillip B. Gonzales, Virginia Sánchez

New Mexico Historical Review

No abstract provided.

Compartmentalization Of Dna-Based Molecular Computing Elements Using Lipid Bilayers, Aurora Fabry-Wood

Biomedical Engineering ETDs

This dissertation will present a progression from the detection of double-stranded DNA using a combination of toehold-mediated strand displacement and DNAzyme reactions in dilute saline solutions, to the generation of separate compartments to allow standardization of DNA computing elements, by protecting from complementary strands. In well-mixed solutions complementary regions cause spurious interactions. Importantly, these compartments also provide protection from nucleases. Along the way we will also explore the use of silica microsphere supported lipid bilayers to run compartmentalized DNA reactions on a fluid surface and the design of a molecule capable of DNA-based transmembrane signal transduction.

A Real-Time Data Monitoring Prototype Protocol To Advance Environmental Management Through A Citizen Science Approach– A Case Study In Nepal, Corinne Fox

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

The lack of environmental monitoring data has restricted the efficiency of proper environmental management in the developing world. Although monitoring technologies have been touted for their potential to advance environmental understanding and management, there are very few examples of practical applications where this has been accomplished in the developing world. Due to the positive influx of urbanization and tourism in Siddharthanagar, South Nepal, the Nepal Study Center (NSC) from the University of New Mexico (UNM) teamed up with the poly-tech college Pratiman-Neema Health Institute (PNMHI) to address future environmental changes through a citizen science approach, known as the Danda River …

Providing Water For A Forgotten People: A Waterline Assessment Of The Former Bennett Freeze Area, Nikki Rae Tulley

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

The Bennett Freeze was established in 1966 and imposed for 40 years on 1.5 million acres of land within the boundaries of the Western Agency of the Navajo Nation. Bennett Freeze came as a result of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute. The “freeze” halted all construction, development, and improvements made to enhance the quality of life within the boundaries of the Bennett Freeze area. Public works were included in the restrictions created by the freeze, which effectively denied residents access to basic sanitation facilities. There are approximately 2,685+ homes (~20,000 residents) within the Former Bennett Freeze Area (FBFA) without access to …