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Integration Of Machine Learning For Reactive Power Control For A Distribution Feeder Simulation With External Load, Ivonne D. Acosta Molina

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

It has been 32 years since the Brundtland Report was published. That was the first time that the term Sustainable Development (SD) was coined. In this context, renewable sources of energy play an important role on not to deplete our natural resources in order to meet our need without compromising future generations. Smart Grids are on the pathway to achieve the SD goals. This Thesis focuses on the integration of renewables, specifically Solar PV panels and inverters and its interactions with the distribution grid. Since the power injection caused by the PV inverter can alter the voltage range, Reinforcement Learning …

Flaws In My Father | Better Engaging With Trauma, Grief, Loss, And Pain Through Storytelling., Neil Fontano

Theatre & Dance ETDs

In this essay, I will review my playwriting methodology and growth as an artist during my time as a Dramatic Writing Candidate at the University of New Mexico. I will begin by examining my personal narrative and the initial impulse to apply for and accept a position in the Dramatic Writing Program. I will continue by dissecting my own writing methodology and its numerous influences: a sense of place, character, and time. Further, I will give an explanation of and demonstrate my own methods developed during my second year work on “Thelonius | My Brother’s Keeper.” In addition to academic …

El Duende: Folktale, Oral History, And The Construction Of Gendered And Racialized Discourses In Quito, Carolina Bucheli Penafiel

Latin American Studies ETDs

El Duende is a popular mythical character featured in written and oral traditions in Latin America and Spain, where it is often described as particularly dangerous for women. In this research project, I focus on this character to explore the cultural and social meanings of these narratives in the Ecuadorian context, specifically in the city of Quito. Applying oral history methodology, I collected nine participants’ narratives about El Duende and conducted a discourse analysis of these stories. In this thesis, I discuss ways in which the stories about El Duende reproduce narratives of traditional gender role expectations and violence against …

"Maa-Multh-Nii" People Who Came Floating In: Analogues Between Nuu-Chah-Nulth And Tlingit With Spanish Colonial Expeditions In The Eighteenth Century, Suzanne Rita Mcleod

Art & Art History ETDs

Spanish explorers first navigated the 2,400-kilometer stretch of the Pacific Northwest Coast in the latter part of the eighteenth-century, largely in response to rumors that Russian traders had established a presence in lands north of Alta California (then considered Spanish territory). Spain launched a series of expeditions to the region, the first in 1774 under Juan Josef Pérez Hernández, and the final, in 1792, under Alejandro Malaspina. The Spanish remained in the area until 1794 when political and territorial tensions with the incoming British forced a negotiation known historically as the Nootka Convention. By 1795, the empire abandoned its aspirations …

Resilience Engineering: Theory And Practice, Michaela Jones

Civil Engineering ETDs

Civil and environmental engineering works at the interface of humans and the natural environment, making the environment hospitable for people and limiting adverse anthropogenic impacts on the ecosystem. Such socioecological systems are often complex and highly interconnected, and traditional engineering interventions focused on optimizing system elements result in unanticipated consequences. Resilience engineering utilizes a holistic methodology grounded in systems analysis and adaptation. This work broadly explores the concept of resilience engineering and contextualizes the approach using the case study of the Rio Chama. The resilience of the watershed is characterized in terms of its response to both traditional and resilience …

Value-Based Purchasing: Does Educating Direct Care Nurses Result In Value-Based Care?, Ryan Levi

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Projects

The United States health care system is undergoing the greatest transformation in the country’s history. Health care is rapidly moving away from volume-based reimbursement towards value-based models. The Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP), a Center for Medicare and Medicaid pay-for-performance program, makes Medicare reimbursement contingent on performance in four quality categories. Clinical care, person and community engagement, safety, and efficiency determine an organization’s total performance score (TPS), which is used to impose positive, negative, or neutral payment adjustments. Nursing, more than any other health care profession, impacts hospitals’ TPS and subsequently Medicare reimbursement under VBP. While the literature indicates nurses should …

Target Control Of Networked Systems, Isaac S. Klickstein

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

The control of complex networks is an emerging field yet it has already garnered interest from across the scientific disciplines, from robotics to sociology. It has quickly been noticed that many of the classical techniques from controls engineering, while applicable, are not as illuminating as they were for single systems of relatively small dimension. Instead, properties borrowed from graph theory provide equivalent but more practical conditions to guarantee controllability, reachability, observability, and other typical properties of interest to the controls engineer when dealing with large networked systems. This manuscript covers three topics investigated in detail by the author: (i) the …

Four's A Crowd? Side-Taking And Strategic Intervention Decision-Making Among Networks Of Third-Party Actors, Colin Hannigan

Political Science ETDs

Why do states intervene in civil conflicts? I argue that a third-party actor's decision to intervene relies in part on the behavior of other potential interveners. Because other interveners have their own interests in the conflict outcome and resources to contribute, intervention decision-making is multi-actor game theoretic problem: external actors contemplate their roles in civil conflicts by weighing the projected impact of their own prospective contributions against their preferences for the internal combatants. However, the impact that a given third party can expect to have on the conflict outcome depends on the contributions of fighting effort that others make when …

Getting To Denver: Instructor Participation In The Design Of Writing Program Assessment Technologies, Soha Fransis Turfler

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation presents a framework for writing instructor participation in the design of writing program assessment technologies. I base this framework on a case study into the participation of 16 non-tenure track (NTT) and graduate teaching assistant (GTA) writing instructors in the design of a final portfolio assignment prompt for the first-year composition (FYC) program at the University of New Mexico (UNM). I specifically question how Writing Program Administrators (WPAs) and assessment designers can address the needs, interests, and values of writing instructors in the design of writing program assessment technologies, including the important need for agency and professional autonomy. …

El Pastor: The Life And Ministry Of José Ynéz Perea, 1837–1910, Benjamin Rankin Davis

History ETDs

Although numerically few, Presbyterian Hispanos constitute a persistent presence in the predominately Catholic religious landscape of New Mexico. Despite their resilience, they have been largely invisible in historical scholarship. This study foregrounds the Protestant Hispano identity through the experience of the first Hispano ordained as a Presbyterian pastor, José Ynéz Perea. Using Perea’s correspondence, U.S. government documents, contemporary newspapers, Presbyterian serials, and Catholic oppositional writings, this study locates Perea’s experience in the wider context of the Gilded Age, both in New Mexico and in the United States. Perea’s religious identity made tenuous his place in Hispano society. Although he found …

Remembering New Mexico's War: Service, Sacrifice, Suffering, And The Surrender Of Bataan In Wartime New Mexico, 1941-1946, Elena Marie Friot

History ETDs

New Mexicans positioned defeat, surrender, and captivity at the center of their narrative of World War II and incorporated the surrender of Bataan into New Mexico’s long history of service, sacrifice, and suffering as part of the United States. During and after the war, they created rituals, spaces, and texts that made the surrender a permanent and defining feature of the state’s social, cultural, and political landscape, which challenges the prevailing victory narrative that tends to dominate public commemorations of the war. Importantly, this dissertation shifts our gaze to investigate how defeat and surrender, and the corresponding experiences of surrendered …

The Ontogeny Of Sex-Typed Social Strategies Among East African Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodyes Schweinfurthii), Kristin H. Sabbi

Anthropology ETDs

Although many differences in the behavior of men and women resemble those of other mammals, their developmental roots remain hotly debated due to the strong force of culture, including gender socialization, on human behavior. However, we can examine alternative and complementary mechanisms by studying chimpanzees, a closely-related species with complex sociality but without gender socialization. This dissertation comprises a multi-year, observational study of wild chimpanzee development examining three potential drivers of sex-typed social behavior: social experience, underlying differences in attention, and hormonal physiology. Immature chimpanzees experienced differential aggressive exposure that was shaped by their own early-emerging behavioral patterns. Both sexes …

A Forward Analytic Model Of Neutron Time-Of-Flight Signals With Single Elastic Scattering And Beamline Attenuation For Inferring Ion Temperatures From Maglif Experiments, Colin A. Weaver

Nuclear Engineering ETDs

A forward analytic model is required to rapidly simulate the neutron time-of-flight (nToF) signals that result from magnetized liner inertial fusion (MagLIF) experiments at Sandia’s Z Pulsed Power Facility. Various experimental parameters, such as the burn-weighted fuel-ion temperature and liner areal density, determine the shape of the nToF signal and are important for characterizing any given MagLIF experiment. Extracting these parameters from measured nToF signals requires an appropriate analytic model that includes the primary DD neutron peak, once-scattered neutrons in the beryllium liner of the MagLIF target, and direct beamline attenuation. Mathematical expressions for this model were derived from the …

The Translator-Function: Translating Bande-Dessinée For The Anglophone Reader, Ryan C. Gomez

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis focuses on the question of translator roles in literary theory. I characterize these roles between positions that have traditionally been described by literary and philosophical theorists such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. By examining the products of translation (French-language bandes-dessinées and their English translations), and considering critical literary and translation theories, I demonstrate the unique position held by translators and their work through the proposal of what I call the translator-function (modeled after Foucault’s author-function). The principal aim of this thesis is to problematize preconceived ideas about translators and to examine the unique position of the …

Effects Of Anodal Tdcs On Neural Correlates Of Cognitive Control In Mild-To-Moderate Traumatic Brain Injury, Nickolas A. Mertens

Psychology ETDs

Traumatic brain injury is a worldwide epidemic and currently there is no successful treatment to combat the cognitive deficits sustained from a mmTBI. The goal of this analysis is to determine if active tDCS paired with cognitive training can aid in an individual’s recovery on one specific consequence of mmTBI: cognitive control. To examine this novel treatment on cognitive control, EEG was recorded, and FM-theta activity collected from electrode FCz was analyzed. Three analyses were run to address the hypotheses of the present study: 1. A cluster analysis; 2. A series of repeated-measures ANOVAs; and 3. A series of multiple …

“This Is How You Navigate The World”: Impacts Of Mormon Rhetoric On White Queer Members' Identity Performances, Ben Brandley

Communication ETDs

The Mormon Church is one of the fastest growing and most conservative religious organizations in the world. The Church’s conservatism has meant that its rhetorics, doctrines, and discourses have cultivated a culture of queerphobia and anti-queer sentiments. By interviewing 15 transgender, bisexual, and gay Mormons who are active in the Church, I conducted a critical thematic analysis that yields insights and critiques into how Mormon rhetoric impacts the identity performances and relationships of queer members. Using queer theory and Whiteness as conceptual and theoretical lenses, the analysis revealed four major themes: 1) queerness as non-identity, 2) the primacy of divine …

Emissivity Measurements Of Painted And Aerosol Deposited Thermographic Phosphors (Yag:Dy And Mfg:Mn), Wendy Flores-Brito

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

Combustion is one of the most difficult processes to model. Luminous flames are characteristically sooty, which creates a problem when modeling and calculating the combustion and heat transfer of the process; both of which are highly dependent on temperature and emissivity. Soot particle emissivity as well as gas contributions affect the heat transfer calculation and must be accounted for.

Thermographic phosphors (TP) are ceramic based phosphorescent materials that have a temperature dependent emission that can be exploited to obtain surface and gas temperature measurements, as well as 2D temperature maps. Emissivity knowledge is not needed to obtain temperature and is …

Science Under The Microscope And Legality On Trial: How Female Authors In Latin America Confront And Challenge The Patriarchal Control Of Science And Legality In The Representation Of Women, Anna Bellum

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

In this dissertation, I analyze a selection of works by eight Latin American female authors in order to explore how they represent the process of the social construction of women’s identities and roles in the male-dominated social, institutional, familial, and personal spaces that force women into particular positions of subordination. This analysis will focus, in particular, on how women writers represent the hegemonic systems of legality and science in order to highlight their role in the reproduction of values, practices, and institutions that maintain male control and female exploitation.

Each of the authors I analyze addresses the construction of women’s …

Food Insecurity Among Undergraduate Students In The College Of Education At The University Of New Mexico, Qamar Hadi

Individual, Family, and Community Education ETDs

The purpose of this study was to assess factors associated with food insecurity among undergraduate students at the University of New Mexico (UNM). New Mexico has a higher estimated prevalence of adult food insecurity compared to the United States. The study design was a cross-sectional survey that collected self-reported socio-demographic data (race/ethnicity, age, living conditions, etc.) and food security status using an adapted 10-item USDA Adult Food Security Survey Module (AFSSM) from 83 undergraduate students enrolled in the UNM College of Education (COE). Data analysis was performed using Fisher’s Exact test and logistic regression. The results showed that 43% of …

How Do Farmers Experience Agroecology In Rural Communities Of Northern Ecuador?, Neil Michael Ayala Ayala

Latin American Studies ETDs

Agroecology, a concept in continuous evolution embraces science, practice and sociopolitical aspects. Its meaning is gaining space of debate and global interest as an alternative for building sustainable food systems and resilient communities, not only from the environmental perspective, but from all the dimensions of sustainability. The Andes region is recognized for its agrodiversity and for its history of agricultural activity; nevertheless, the effects of unsustainable agricultural practices inspired in the principles of the so called “Green Revolution” are evident. Conventional agriculture has decreased the capacity of resilience of the agroecosystems and their associated communities. Agroecology is often perceived as …

Manipulation Of Human Behavior By Sexually Transmitted Organisms: Sto Infection Status As A Predictor Of Later Sexual Behavior, Ruth Sarafin

Psychology ETDs

Research into the epidemiology of sexually transmitted organisms has found a strong relationship between number of sexual partners and likelihood of infection; STO interventions have therefore focused on reducing number of sexual partners. However, this work assumes that multiple partnerships cause infection, when there is reason to believe that infection causes an increase in short-term mating behavior as a means of increasing transmission opportunities. This dissertation tests STO infection status as a predictor in follow-up sexual behavior on data from the National Longitudinal Study from Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Four dependent variables related to short-term mating were regressed …

Moving Away From The Alt-Right: How The Proud Boys Utilize Image Conscious Populist Media To Re-Brand White Nationalism, Christina Blankenship

Communication ETDs

Unite the Right, deemed a ‘failure’ by major media outlets, generated two important developments: One, it highlighted the increased public mobilization of the Far-Right, challenging the established notion that such groups existed only in online spheres and two, gave factions the motivation to disassociate from the Alt-Right’s message and carve out an identity for their own. This project examines the Proud Boys, a ‘men’s group’ formed in 2016 by Gavin McInnes. In studying the group’s online blog (The Proud Boys Magazine), this project demonstrates that while the group tried to distance themselves, much of their success in generating …

Study To Work, Or Work To Study? An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis Of International Students' Internship Experiences In The United States, Ivet S. Rosev

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

This is a phenomenological qualitative research study that explores the essence of the international student experience while studying at a Master’s or Ph.D. level in the U.S. This study examined two main concepts: work experience and cultural transformation. The work experience component explores the professional development and acculturation process for international graduate students and the cultural transformation element aims to understand the cultural differences, self-identity, and transformative aspect from the participants’ experiences abroad.

Using purposeful sampling and a transcendental research design, twelve international students (five pursuing a Master’s degree and seven pursuing a Ph.D.) were interviewed in a chronologically structured …

Modeling And Simulation Of Stochastic Neutron And Cumulative Deposited Fission Energy Distributions, Patrick O'Rourke

Nuclear Engineering ETDs

Methods of stochastic neutron transport are investigated and applied to novel formulations for the neutron number distribution and the cumulative fission energy deposition distribution. We utilize two Monte Carlo algorithms: the event-based Monte Carlo (EBMC) method and the Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (SSA) to benchmark and analyze systems. We show that the SSA outperforms the EBMC for the parameter space we are interested in. We then utilize the SSA to analyze systems composed of multiple spherical regions with fast and thermal neutrons with time-dependent reactivity insertions and determine whether group-dependent number distributions approach a gamma distribution. We develop two methods for …

Socioeconomic Status And Recognized Talent In Scholastic Art Awards, Steven E. Heil

Art & Art History ETDs

Recognition of their early artistic accomplishments starts many young people on a path leading to adult success in art, but art learning opportunities and talent recognition may be afforded inequitably. In this records-based quantitative study, the researcher looks for evidence of inequity as it may appear in the context of the 2020 New Mexico Scholastic Art Awards (NMSAA), a regional partner of a high-profile national art contest, with 1,016 entries from 394 students in Grades 7-12 in 50 schools. NMSAA stands as an aspirational art achievement measure providing information about the highest levels of art achievement. The results support the …

Stories We Carry Into Classrooms: The Literacy Narratives Of Teachers Of Students With Complex Support Needs, Sharon L. Head

Special Education ETDs

In this study, I used a case-based narrative inquiry to investigate the literacy narratives and the thinking about instructional practices of four teachers of students with complex support needs (CSN) from a small, rural school district in the Southwestern United States. I conducted initial and follow-up interviews and facilitated two focus groups across an eight-week period using a process designed to look at teacher narratives across time and after interactions with peers. My data were in the form of transcripts of all interviews and focus groups that I analyzed using two analytic processes: thematic and narrative (Polkinghorne, 1995). I described …

Applications Of The Negatively-Charged Silicon Vacancy Color Center In Diamond, Forrest A. Hubert

Optical Science and Engineering ETDs

The spatial resolution and fluorescence signal amplitude in stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy is limited by the photostability of available fluorophores. Here, we show that negatively-charged silicon vacancy (SiV) centers in diamond are promising fluorophores for STED microscopy, owing to their photostable, near-infrared emission and favorable photophysical properties. A home-built pulsed STED microscope was used to image shallow implanted SiV centers in bulk diamond at room temperature. We performed STED microscopy on isolated SiV centers and observed a lateral full-width-at-half-maximum spot size of 89 ± 2 nm, limited by the low available STED laser pulse energy (0.4 nJ). For a …

Good Bye, Socialist Paradise: Representations Of Postreunification Nostalgia In Sonnenallee And Good Bye, Lenin!, Hannah L. Garver

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis analyzes the experiences constituting the protagonists’ adolescence in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as portrayed in Thomas Brussig’s book Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee, Leander Haußmann’s film Sonnenallee, and Wolfgang Becker’s film Good Bye, Lenin!. These narratives challenge assumptions that the phenomenon Ostalgie indicates a desire to return to the actual conditions of life in the former East. Using Svetlana Boym’s work on post-communist nostalgia as a theoretical framework, I argue that the representations of life in the East as presented in these texts are the protagonists’ reinterpretations of the past. The protagonists develop nostalgia for their youth …

Characterization Of Uranium Foil Irradiations At The Wsu Triga Reactor Using A New Reactor Model In Scale, Kimberly A. Hinrichs

Nuclear Engineering ETDs

A new reactor model of the Washington State University TRIGA was developed in the SCALE neutron transport code, and its fidelity was verified by comparison to MCNP and available data for several reactor parameters. The model was used to characterize irradiations designed to produce the short-lived actinides ²³⁷U and ²³⁹U, two key isotopes for nuclear forensics. These short-lived actinides, their decay daughters ²³⁷Np and ²³⁹Pu, and total fissions (via ⁹⁹Mo) were measured in irradiated foils at Los Alamos National Laboratory and other labs with good agreement among parent/daughter pairs and among labs. The laboratory-measured isotope …

Placekeeping And Equitable Development In The Embudo Valley, Felicity Fonseca

Public Administration ETDs

Embudo Valley Library is planning to build a permanent stage and improve their grounds to become a public park. In what ways can this project stimulate a creative placemaking community development strategy for Dixon, NM? The research goals are to learn how this project can contribute to revitalization, equity, and creating a cohesive community that retains its historic and cultural essence. The research includes an overview of the community context, a literature review about creative placemaking and community development strategies, and three surveys, the results of which will inform the project. Conclusions are that human centered design and equitable development …