Digital Commons Network^™

Low Site-Specific Genomic Variability Is Consistent With The History(S) Of Fragmentation Of The Riparian Biota Of The Arid Southwest, Manuela Londoño-Gaviria

Biology ETDs

Persistently low population sizes, when coupled with reduced interpopulation connectivity, can impede the long-term viability of species in fragmented landscapes. Riparian-associated species in the arid American Southwest now face a series of threats due to fragmented populations and changing environmental conditions. During the last century, riparian habitats have deteriorated due to the synergistic effects of livestock grazing, increasing incidence of fire, and other anthropogenic impacts potentially have made local populations smaller, less demographically stable, and susceptible to the negative impacts of genetic drift and stochastic events. We evaluated genomic variation within and across geographic areas (i.e., mountain ranges and river …

Cultural Melting Pots: Strategies To Mitigate Culture Shock For Immigrant Students, Luis A. Sanchez Martinez

Health, Exercise, and Sports Sciences ETDs

With the increase of immigration and diversity in the United States, challenges with integrating various student backgrounds in public education have risen over the last several years. While student success is the priority for teachers, it has been challenging to keep students engaged, motivated, and culturally respected. By offering strategies to school administrators, counselors, and teachers including physical educators, to integrate culture and school content with the purpose to create successful students and build a stronger community. Furthermore, present psychological effects when children move to a new country.

Experimental And Numerical Investigation Of 3d-Printed Viscoelastic Dampers, Mohammed Jaradat

Civil Engineering ETDs

Elastomeric materials are extensively used in energy dissipation applications to mitigate large lateral displacements and attenuate vibrations. One way of exploiting the capabilities of elastomeric materials is using shear-damping mechanisms such as viscoelastic damping devices (VEDs).

In this research the freedom of design offered by additive manufacturing technology is utilized to produce 3D printed elastomeric parts that act as the viscoelastic layer in an energy damping device. A mechanically interlocked viscoelastic damper (MIVED) with a jigsaw-like interlocking mechanism was designed and manufactured. MIVED is composed of a rigid and soft phase. It operates in two modes, modes I and II, …

Adverse Childhood Experiences And Resiliency In Adolescent Population, Vanessa Tahe

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Projects

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are common, potentially traumatic events that impact one's health and well-being. These harmful experiences increase the risk of chronic comorbidities, mental health problems, and substance use disorders; this risk exponentially increases in children and adolescents with four or more ACEs. They are associated with socially disadvantaged populations and structural violence in communities. ACEs are categorized into abuse, neglect, and household challenges, which are proven to contribute to the longevity of health, behavioral, social problems, and even premature death through an accretion of studies. A steady rise in ACEs in New Mexico ranked in the top five …

Student Voice And Choice: Factors Influencing Student Participation In Secondary Arts Classes In An Urban Public School District, Alan D. Lambert Ed. D.

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

The purpose of this study was to capture the student voice regarding the value, importance, and relevance of visual and performing arts education in public schools. The host institution for the study was an urban school district in the southern central United States serving 75,000 students, with 55% students identified as Hispanic, and 52% of students experiencing poverty. Graduating seniors responded via questionnaires with forced choice and open-ended items regarding several topics, including what they do in their free time, how they perceive the value of arts classes at school, access to arts classes and the match of their interests …

Sierra Nevada Mixed-Conifer Regeneration Response To Repeated Burning Varies By Species, Carolina J. May

Biology ETDs

Fire-exclusion has acted as a major perturbation on dry conifer forests, increasing tree density and, in mixed-conifer forests, the dominance of shade-tolerant species. Restoration efforts aim to reverse these effects by reducing stand density, restoring relative proportions of tree species, and reintroducing recurrent fire, but the long-term effects of repeated burning on tree regeneration have not been quantified. We analyzed two decades of seedling and overstory data from the Teakettle Experimental Forest in the southern Sierra Nevada to determine how thinning and repeated burning affect seedling establishment and overstory recruitment. Across treatments, pine seedling densities remained much lower than shade-tolerant …

High Altitude Exposures And Intestinal Barrier Dysfunction, Zachary J. Mckenna

Health, Exercise, and Sports Sciences ETDs

Gastrointestinal complaints are often reported during high altitude ascent (>2500m), though their etiology is unknown. One explanation is hypoxia-mediated intestinal barrier dysfunction. High altitude exposures can result in splanchnic hypoperfusion and hypoxemia causing hypoxic and oxidative stress. Exertion may worsen hypoxia-induced intestinal injury via greater splanchnic hypoperfusion and hypoxemia. We propose that these stressors injure the intestinal barrier leading to increased permeability, bacterial translocation, and local/systemic inflammation which may contribute to gastrointestinal complications or Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS). To test this, we investigated the effects of hypoxia on exercise-induced gastrointestinal symptoms and markers of intestinal injury. Next, we determined …

Women's Property Ownership And Empowerment In Latin America, Anna Calasanti

Political Science ETDs

One of the ways that women have been disadvantaged throughout much of the world is through unequal access to property. This includes both land and housing, the ownership of which has been linked to crucial human development outcomes. As a result, scholars have theorized the importance of women’s land ownership, yet empirical studies have been limited, leaving many relevant questions unanswered. Does property ownership improve women’s lives? If so, in what ways? When women own land, are they better able to make choices about their own health care? Does property ownership increase their ability to exit an abusive partnership? When …

Survival Percentage And Outgrowth Collection Kit (Spock) Development And Usage To Analyze Targets Of The Transcription Factor Gcn4 For Their Impact On Chronological Lifespan In The Model Organism S. Cerevisiae, Daniel Paul Felker

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Plate reader-based methods for high-throughput measurement of growth rate, cellular survival, and chronological lifespan are a compelling addition to the already powerful toolbox of budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae genetics. These methods have overcome many of the limits of traditional yeast biology techniques, but also present a new bottleneck at the point of data-analysis. Herein, we describe SPOCK (Survival Percentage and Outgrowth Collection Kit), an R-based package for the analysis of data created by high-throughput plate reader based methods. This package allows for the determination of chronological lifespan, cellular growth rate, and survival in an efficient, robust, and reproducible fashion. To …

Application Of Bismuth Oxychloride As A Colorimetric Uv Sensor Material, Kyle James Troche

Nanoscience and Microsystems ETDs

Sunlight contains about 9% UV radiation with roughly one-third of it penetrating the atmosphere and reaching the Earth’s surface. UV radiation from the sun is classified into three different types: UVA (315- 499 nm), UVB (280- 314nm), and UVC (100- 279 nm). Prolonged exposure to artificial UV radiation or direct sunlight can still induce many adverse effects such as sunburn, weakening of the immune system, and skin cancer. A wide variety of photoresistor, photodiode and colorimetric UV sensors are currently being researched to help monitor UV radiation. Our research is focused on developing a colorimetric UV sensor that is inherently …

Controlling The Emission Of Volatile Platinum Oxides To The Vapor Phase In Diesel Oxidation Catalysts, Arnab Ghosh

Nanoscience and Microsystems ETDs

Pt-based catalysts are used for the treatment of emissions from vehicles, particularly in Diesel oxidation catalysts (DOCs). Three-way catalysts are treated at temperatures ranging from 950℃-1050℃ while DOCs are aged at 800℃ for 50 hrs. At 800°C, Pt reacts with O₂ to form PtO₂ which has a high vapor pressure and can be transported through the vapor phase. These accelerated aging conditions lead to the formation of large Pt particles causing a loss of catalytic activity. In this thesis, we used model thin-film catalysts that made it possible to quantify the emission of Pt to the vapor phase …

Artificial Intelligence, Controls, And Sensor Fusion For Optimization And Modeling Of Space Missions And Particle Accelerators, Reza Pirayeshshirazinezhad

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

This PhD dissertation is devoted to developing artificial intelligence (AI) applications for space missions and particle accelerators considering constraints on the computational resources. The space mission studied in this research, the Virtual Telescope for X-ray Observations (VTXO), is the mission exploiting 2 6U-CubeSats operating in a precision formation. The goal of the VTXO project is to develop a space-based, X-ray imaging telescope with high angular resolution precision. VTXO space mission is designed and the mission is optimized to increase the performance of the mission. Trajectory optimization with AI, hybrid control, control algorithms, and high performance computing are all used to …

Fine-Mapping Of Human Antibody Specificity In Response To Natural Chlamydia Trachomatis Infection Utilized To Inform Vaccines Against Adhesion Factors, Amanda L. Collar

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Chlamydia trachomatis (Ct) is the causative pathogen for the most common bacterial sexually transmitted infection worldwide and can cause serious medical consequences in women, including pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, and infertility. For these reasons, a Ct vaccine is urgently needed, yet, its development remains a significant challenge. One barrier to producing a Ct vaccine is the gap in knowledge of protective immune responses for Ct infection, including the role that antibodies may play. Therefore, I aimed to characterize the human antibody response to natural urogenital Ct infection in women using Deep Sequence-Coupled Biopanning. Further, I leveraged these findings to …

An Interdisciplinary Approach To Understanding Volcanoes And Their Processes, Katherine Cosburn

Physics & Astronomy ETDs

To better understand volcanoes and their processes is important from both a fundamental science perspective and for hazard monitoring purposes. The complexity and limitations we face in pursuing such a science are numerous and this dissertation explores how an interdisciplinary approach combining physics, computer science, and volcanology can address this complexity in a straightforward and meaningful way. This is achieved through various modelling techniques across three studies: (1) a first-order analytic modelling of stratovolcano topographic shape, (2) the use of a Bayesian joint inversion on gravity and novel cosmic-ray muon measurements for imaging flat-lying subsurface density anomalies, and (3) the …

Application Of Machine Learning For Predicting Iemi Upset In Multi-Architecture Microcontrollers, Daniel S. Guillette

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Four microcontrollers were programmed to execute a simple counting program. Pulsed RF signals – also known as Intentional ElectroMagnetic Interference (IEMI) – were injected into the clock input of the microcontrollers. At the same time, the output lines were monitored to determine whether the IEMI signal altered the output of the counting program – referred to as an upset. A state-of-the-art automated testing apparatus was used to collect and process 120,960 samples of IEMI upset data. The data was used to perform a traditional upset trends study and train a series of machine learning (ML) techniques – k-Nearest Neighbors, Support …

Three Essays In Risky Health Behavior And Racial Discrimination, Aakrit Joshi

Economics ETDs

This dissertation consists of three applied essays that empirically explore questions related to understanding the implication of public policy, practices, and interventions for vulnerable populations. The first chapter outlines the scope of the dissertation.

The second chapter examines the contemporary effects of historical redlining, practices that restricted access to mortgage financing for racial minorities, on residential property values. Using “redlining” geographical boundaries created in 1930s for Seattle, WA and Richmond, VA, and detailed housing data, econometric analysis finds that properties just inside a redlined boundary continue to sell at significantly discounted price compared to similar houses in non-redlined areas. These …

Biodiversity And Global Change In Terrestrial Ecosystems, Timothy John Ohlert

Biology ETDs

Terrestrial ecosystems are critical to human and ecological processes but many gaps in our knowledge remain regarding how terrestrial plant communities assemble and respond to global change. I used field experiments distributed around the world, including long-term experiments from the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (SNWR) in New Mexico and deserts of the southwestern U.S., to evaluate the consequences of drought and other abiotic stressors on plant communities. Dominant grasses were particularly important for the productivity and structure of grasslands at SNWR. In general, the structure of desert plant communities had high resistance to extreme drought, though grasses and other perennial …

Does Nurses Confidence Improve After Attending A Training For Teaching Home Infusion Patients?, Carol Menorah Young Dnp

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Projects

Discharge can be a difficult step for patients and their families and a challenging task for nurses. Poor instructions have a negative impact on the patient population. In addition, improper and incomplete discharge information negatively affects the posthospital recovery period and may cause the patient to return to the hospital for the same episode of care. Returning to the hospital emergency room or readmission for the same episode of care will increase the dangers to the patient’s health and recovery plan and increase the cost of individual healthcare. The patient population ranks the quality of discharge information via their responses …

Multi-Scale Modeling Of Dislocation Motion And Interaction: Theory, Plastic Properties, And Boundary Conditions, Abu Bakar Siddique

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

Dislocation theory is the fundamental tool for explaining plasticity in the material. The elastic field of a material is always influenced by the presence of dislocations and other defects independent of the loading configurations. Scientists and researchers have minimal success in solving plasticity problems analytically. And for this reason, the capturing of dislocation dynamics is highly dependent on numerical modeling, which is always a challenge for its inherent multi-scale nature. Current research investigates and develops self-consistent numerical models for different plasticity problems based on the distributed-dislocation technique and the collocation-point method. Numerical methods are developed for different boundary conditions in …

“For All You Know, I Might Be A Black Panther”: How The News Media Cultivated White Anxiety In The United States And Became A Modern Panopticon For Black Power, Caitlin Grace Leishman

History ETDs

Building upon French philosopher Michel Foucault’s analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, I argue that throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the news media and resulting culture nurtured and reinforced the postcolonial narratives that associated Blackness with criminality. I analyze the national newspaper coverage for their narrative portrayal of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). The national media and U.S. government targeted the BPP and Black Power politics to discredit them and the overall movement for Black Liberation. I argue that this media-state project only intensified during the 1970s and into the 1980s with the country’s turn to …

Surface Acoustic Wave Characterization And Interdigitated Transducer Optimization For Studying Stress-Enhanced Phenomena, Brian D. Rummel

Nanoscience and Microsystems ETDs

Surface acoustic wave devices have not yet achieved their full potential as the effects of standing acoustic fields on stress-sensitive phenomena in semiconductor systems have been largely unexplored. From this perspective, it is necessary to develop novel methods to characterize surface acoustic wave devices quantitatively and prepare an experimental platform to probe stress-enhanced processes. In this dissertation, interdigitated transducer devices are fabricated on gallium arsenide to evaluate their potential impact on strain-enhanced phenomena. A novel Raman characterization technique characterizes the surface stress induced by a standing acoustic field, revealing stress values on the order of 10⁸ Pa. FEM software …

Enhancing Optical And Thermal Properties Of Nanofibrous Films Inspired By The White Beetle Scale, Bokyung Park

Nanoscience and Microsystems ETDs

The Cyphochilus white beetle has received significant attention recently for its exceptional visible-light-scattering properties, owing to the beetle scale's anisotropic nano-fibrillar network structure. Inspiration from the remarkable optical properties of these biological species has directed research efforts to fabricating biomimetic nano-fibrillar structures with polymer materials. In this work, electrospun silk fibroin polymer films reproduce the white beetle scale's anisotropic nature to draw on its optical scattering properties and further improve the radiative-cooling capabilities of silk fabrics. An anisotropically restructured silk film with a mean fiber diameter of a few hundred nanometers substantially increases optical scattering strength in the visible spectrum …

Examination Of Ionization In Cesium Diode Pumped Alkali Lasers With An Ion Chamber Diagnostic, Benjamin Oliker

Optical Science and Engineering ETDs

Diode pumped alkali lasers (DPALs) are leading candidates for future high power applications, with many potential utilities for the military, aerospace, communications, and scientific diagnostics. A critical step in their development is measurement and understanding of unwanted ionization processes that occur inside the laser, which decrease efficiency, reduce the usable alkali population, and increase heat load. In this dissertation, direct measurement of the ionization rate of a cesium DPAL gain medium are made for the first time, via application of an ion chamber diagnostic. Results will demonstrate that the rate of ionization is slow compared to pump absorption, with a …

Examining Parental Perceptions And Experiences Regarding Social Skills Interventions For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Mary Jimerson

Special Education ETDs

ABSTRACT

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their families often engage in various interventions to address social skills as this is a core area of development and often described as a challenge for individuals with ASD. Although interventions may vary in service delivery and the interventionists’ training and background, all encompass social skills interventions. The purpose of this study was to conduct a qualitative investigation to explore the experiences and perceptions family members had while their child participated in social skills interventions. Five family members participated in this study which included a questionnaire and an individual interview. Qualitative analyses …

The Value Of An Education - An Exploratory Study Of The Relationship Between Cultural And Institutional Values And First-Generation Native American Student Success, Michelle L. Lee

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

The purpose of this study was to explore the value and meaning that first-generation American Indian students place on higher education. Are these values different from those of the institution and how does that impact their educational journey? Finding purpose and meaning in your education encourages continued commitment to your educational goals. I conducted a single-site qualitative study at a Southwestern Non-Tribal Community University (SWNTCU), collecting data through an arts-based inquiry methodology employing photovoice narrative as a tool. To situate these narratives, I utilized an Indigenous paradigm interweaving Tribal Critical Race Theory, Relationality, and an Indigenous Wellness Model (Brayboy, 2006; …

Interreligious Intimacy In Medieval Spain, Hero L. Morrison

History ETDs

The field of Spanish historiography has overwhelmingly been shaped by theories of Convivencia or anti-Convivencia, of total harmony or complete violence. The interpersonal connections made between individuals of different faiths—Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—often contravene institutional regulation that prohibited sexual and familial connections and dissuaded casual camaraderie, complicating and disagreeing with histiorgraphic (anti-)Convivencia traditions. In place of an (anti-)Convivencia framework, modern theories of sexuality, as first championed by Michele Foucault, can explain discrepancies between individual action and institutional regulation through a matrix of power, identity, and interaction. Even as institutional rule prohibited interreligious sexuality—and to some extent, even casual interreligious interaction—intimacy …

Effects Of Neuronal Activation And Psychiatric Drug Treatment On Circhomer1 Biogenesis, Grigorios Papageorgiou

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

There are currently only very few efficacious drug treatments for SCZ and BD, none of which target and improve cognitive symptoms. Thus, there is an emerging need to develop novel therapeutics targeting molecular pathways linked to cognitive function and antipsychotic treatment. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are stable non-coding RNAs, derived from the covalent back-splicing of precursor mRNA molecules. CircHomer1is a neuronal-enriched, activity-dependent circRNA, derived from the precursor of the long HOMER1B mRNA isoform, which is abundantly expressed in the adult frontal cortex and significantly downregulated in the prefrontal cortex of subjects with psychosis. Even though its relevance to psychiatric disorders …

Nonequilibrium And Nonlinear Dynamics In Collective Spin Models And Implementations Using Quantum Feedback Control, Manuel H. Munoz Arias

Physics & Astronomy ETDs

Out-of-equilibrium dynamics generalizes the study of ground states of quantum Hamiltonians at zero temperature, to that of dynamical quasi-steady states of quantum systems far from equilibrium. In this dissertation I discuss dynamical quantum phase transitions and out-of-equilibrium phases of matter in models of collective spins with multi-body interactions. These models, based on collective degrees of freedom, allow an exact description of the thermodynamic limit via the mean-field description. In this limit, the nonequilibrium dynamics of properties of quantum states is mapped to the nonlinear dynamics of classical variables, and thus it can be analyzed using tools from the theory of …

Perceptions Of Current Secondary Mathematics Teachers About Their Teacher Preparation, Peterson Chiliromango Moyo

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

The purpose of this sequential explanatory mixed methods case study was to examine how current secondary mathematics (6-12) teachers (SMTs) perceived their teacher preparation. The population consisted of 27 current SMTs who taught mathematics in a southwestern state of the United States. The first research question asked how SMTs perceived that mathematics methods courses influenced mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT). The second research question examined ways in which content and instruction in mathematics methods courses contributed to the teaching of mathematics

. During quantitative phase, 27 SMTs completed the questionnaire. Chi-Square statistical analysis showed no significant relationship between participants’ mathematics …

The Nature Of Environmental Planning In The Carnué Land Grant, Desiree Loggins

Geography ETDs

In 1819, the Spanish Crown established Cañón de Carnué land grant as a buffer between the colonial settlement of Albuquerque and raids from Plains Apache and other nomadic tribal nations. Upon entering the U.S. period of Manifest Destiny, Carnué land grant heirs lost much of the land they stewarded as a collective to the Cibola National Forest. While the state generates laws and policies that complicate the prioritization of subsistence land uses by land grant communities, Carnué’s presence is felt as grantees reform relationships to their environment and assert their personal stake in stewardship and care. I argue that Carnué’s …