Digital Commons Network^™

Coaching Bilingual Speech-Language Student Clinicians And Spanish-Speaking Caregivers To Use Culturally Adapted Ndbi Techniques For Autistic Preschoolers, Richelle R. Mcguire

Speech and Hearing Sciences ETDs

This study used a cascading coaching model to train bilingual speech-language pathology graduate students and Spanish-speaking caregivers to implement naturalistic developmental behavioral intervention (NDBI) strategies with autistic preschoolers. Two triads, each including a student clinician, minimally vocal child with autism, and caregiver, participated. A monolingual instructor coached student clinicians in culturally adapted NDBI techniques, who then coached caregivers in Spanish. A mixed methods approach evaluated outcomes through single-case experimental design and qualitative interviews. All adult participants increased their use of targeted NDBI skills, with large to very large effect sizes. Qualitative findings suggested areas for improvement (e.g., need for more …

Challenging The Universality Of Poplack’S Syntactic Constraints: Insights From Arabic-English Code-Switching Among Saudi Arabian Women, Sharifa Bahri

Linguistics ETDs

This study investigates the applicability of Poplack's (1980) syntactic constraints, the free morpheme constraint and the equivalence constraint, to Arabic-English code-switching among Saudi Arabian women. Based on 886 intra-sentential code-switching utterances drawn from naturalistic podcast speech, the analysis reveals substantial violations of both constraints: 306 utterances (34.5%) violated the free morpheme constraint, and 601 utterances (67.8%) violated the equivalence constraint, occurring across a wide range of syntactic categories. While violations of the free morpheme constraint were exclusively unidirectional, involving Arabic bound morphemes attached to English free morphemes, equivalence constraint violations were bidirectional, though predominantly shaped by Arabic grammar. Crucially, many …

Emotional Metaphors In Mandarin And English: Fear And Surprise, Jing Yang

Linguistics ETDs

This paper explores the relationship between emotion and experience from a cognitive perspective to fulfill two purposes. First, it seeks to identify the commonalities and differences in emotional metaphors across vastly different languages and the reasons behind these variations. Second, it aims to contribute to typological research in emotion studies beyond established areas such as color, time, and space using innovative approaches. Specifically, this study focuses on fear and surprise to categorize their source domains using lexical and corpus-based methods. Examples were collected from constructions and the corpus, and patterns of FEAR and SURPRISE metaphors in Mandarin were compared with …

Hyperglycemia And Oral Health: A Review Of Dental Clinicians’ Perceptions And Practices Of Blood Glucose Monitoring In The Dental Office, Kathleen Wozniak

Dental Hygiene ETDs

This study aims to review the current practices and perceptions of dentists regarding the likelihood of dental professionals incorporating blood glucose monitoring into patient care protocol of patients with diabetes mellitus and prediabetes in dental offices. A survey link was shared by DentalOffices, a dental resource center. The survey included a series of questions which aimed to review dentists' current attitudes, practices, and considerations for implementation of in-office blood glucose testing as it relates to the treatment of patients with diabetes mellitus. Forty-seven dentists participated in the survey. This study determined blood glucose testing is not a common protocol or …

Citizen Science Helps Monitor Urban Biodiversity: An Interactive, Data-Driven, And Open-Source Perspective, Katie Slack

Geography ETDs

Story maps, a powerful tool for communicating environmental narratives, are often commercial and lack many interactive functions. We integrate a data-driven and interactive geovisualization within an open-source story map created from high-attribute citizen science datasets. This story map creates a backend programming infrastructure for accessible, open-source science communication tools. Our story map intuitively communicates the findings from our web map application (app) portion of the story map to the public and helps reveal findings from the iNaturalist datasets. Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States is a demonstrative case study, but our tools can be flexibly adapted to other cities. Geovisualizations revealed …

Optimization And Acceleration Of Puf Design Through Reduced Order Standard Cell Modeling, Ian Z. Wilcox

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) designs continue to scale with ever increasing complexity and device counts in the billions. Demand for scalable high-fidelity simulations of these systems drives the need for the development of novel modeling capabilities. This research formulates a non-intrusive model order reduc-tion (MOR) framework, called PUF-ROMS, to accelerate and optimize the design and analysis of physical unclonable functions (PUFs) on ASICs. The primary goals of PUF-ROMS are to estimate entropy and temperature-voltage noise (TV-noise) of circuit structures used in the design in an accelerated evaluation environment to enable designers to explore architecture options with the goal of …

Health Impacts, Air Pollution And Electric Vehicles In California, Pufan Qi

Economics ETDs

This research examines the impact of electric vehicles (EVs) on air quality in California over the period from 2010 to 2021, as well as the implications of air pollution for respiratory health, organized into five chapters. The initial chapter provides background information and outlines the objectives, findings, and contributions. The second chapter examines the relationship between air quality and electric vehicles by utilizing fixed effect panel regression models. The third chapter employs panel regressions with Poisson control models to assess the correlation between changes in air quality resulting from electric vehicles and the prevalence of respiratory diseases. The fourth chapter …

Essays On The Economics Of Education Policy, Stephen Owusu

Economics ETDs

The first chapter of this dissertation evaluates the impact of Ghana’s Capitation Grant Scheme, a government education policy that provides direct funding to public schools to eliminate primary school fees, on both the short- and long-term numeracy and literacy skills of children intended to be treated. The findings suggest that free primary education may exacerbate language competition in linguistically discordant societies. In the second chapter, we find that, even without complementary infrastructural expansion, an additional year of official secondary schooling positively affects secondary and post-secondary educational outcomes. The third chapter investigates the relationship between secondary education length reform and reproductive …

A Systematic Approach To The Characterization Of Liquid-Vapor Coexistence In Platinum, Meghan K. Lentz

Physics & Astronomy ETDs

Platinum is a material standard used in high pressure and shock compression experiments at Sandia National Laboratories. During experiments, materials are subjected to a very large range of thermodynamic conditions, during which materials regularly enter the liquid-vapor coexistence region. Despite its status as a standard, the region around the liquid-vapor critical point is poorly understood for platinum, with reported critical temperatures spanning approximately 7000 K. In this dissertation we conduct density functional theory based molecular dynamics (DFTMD) simulations for platinum for a range of temperatures and densities near liquid-vapor coexistence. The phase diagram for platinum is refined near the critical …

Minimal Error Functions On Irregular Subsets Of The Real Line, Robert Michael Dukes

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

Chebyshev Polynomials, those that minimize the maximal error on a compact set, are one of the most practical tools for approximating smooth functions. The classical results are on the set [-1, 1]; in this paper, we extend to more complicated subsets of the real line. We demonstrate some classical results and then take the result from [2] on regular Parreau-Widom Sets and extend it to semi-regular sets, defined as sets whose regular part is closed. We introduce the Regularity Coefficient as a series formed by evaluating the Green’s Function at irregular points. This new machinery is applied to the lower …

Derivation Of Adjoint Based Error Estimates For Nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equations With Application To Multistage Sir Models With Demographics, Daniel Alcala

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) are central to the mathematical modeling of various real-world phenomena, from mechanical systems governed by Newton’s laws to epidemic dynamics described by SIR-type ODEs. Since many ODEs do not admit closed-form analytic solutions, we approximate them numerically (e.g., with Euler’s, Runge–Kutta, or other such methods). This raises the key question: How accurate are these numerical solutions? In particular, reliably estimating the error in some quantity of interest (QoI) at time T without having an exact solution is of great scientific interest.

The first main contribution of this thesis is the development and analysis of adjoint-based error …

Toward Simulating 2d Cell Surfaces In A Disk, Myriam Allred

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

Certain evolution models of cell surfaces (treated in two-dimensions) involve the solution of the Helmholtz equation with jump conditions enforced on an immersed closed curve. This thesis presents a sparse, modal spectral method for solving such Helmholtz problems. The solution is required to be continuous across the curve, but with a jump discontinuity in the normal derivative proportional to the planar curvature. The method relies on classical Fourier-Chebyshev basis functions, with the application of modal Chebyshev integration matrices to achieve sparse, banded approximations of the Helmholtz equation. The method achieves spectral convergence, despite the inherent low regularity of the relevant …

Assessing The Ecological Drivers And Consequences Of Partial Migration In Hudson River Striped Bass Over Three Decades, Caitlin Egan Zimmer

Biology ETDs

Climate change and shifts in human land use have caused extensive impacts to the connectivity, structure, and resilience of aquatic populations. Partial migration (PM), where only some individuals from a population migrate while the rest remain resident, can mitigate population-level responses to environmental stressors. However, little is known of the underlying mechanisms promoting variation in migration and whether these shift over time. In the Hudson River Estuary, striped bass (Morone saxatilis) are known to exhibit anadromous PM behavior. Here, I measured carbon isotopes (δ¹³C) of essential amino acids in striped bass scales to determine variation in …

The Island Biogeography Of Mangrove-Dwelling Vertebrates: Isolation, Specialisation, And Extinction, Jian Xiong David Tan

Biology ETDs

Mangroves are highly dynamic ecosystems that are widely distributed across the coastlines of the tropics and subtropics. Despite their low plant diversity, mangroves host a disproportionately high number of terrestrial vertebrate taxa. However, mangrove specialists — taxa that only occur in mangrove habitats — exhibit a global distribution that is incongruous with the broader background distribution patterns of mangrove-associated fauna, exhibiting higher diversity in Australia and Southeast Asia. This dissertation therefore aims to assess how the diversity and distribution of mangrove specialist fauna may have been shaped by the historical biogeography of mangroves, and the effects of mangrove specialisation on …

Plant Reproductive Strategies Shift In Response To Restoration Using Beaver Dam Analogs, Laurel F. Martinez

Biology ETDs

As riparian communities become increasingly degraded, restoration treatments are being implemented in streams to recover ecosystem functions. In the Jemez Mountains, beaver dam analogs (BDAs) are used to restore degraded streams by connecting the floodplain and increasing the extent of anoxic soil conditions. These environmental disturbances are expected to alter how riparian plants recruit, particularly their allocation to seed-based and vegetative regeneration strategies. We investigated whether BDAs and associated changes in soil water filled pore space (WFPS) affected riparian plant recruitment. We investigated the number of flowering stems as a proxy for seed-based regeneration and rhizome length and mass as …

A Data-Driven Approach To Time Series Forecasting And Clustering Of U.S. Regional Drug Overdose Mortality, Koshali Hamy Muthunama Gonnage

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

The increasing rate of drug overdose deaths in the United States poses a critical public health challenge, particularly due to the surge in synthetic opioids and other high-risk substances. This study presents a data-driven framework that integrates time series forecasting and clustering techniques. Monthly mortality data for five key drug types: cocaine, fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, and oxycodone were analyzed using four time series forecasting models: ARIMA, ETS, TBATS, and NNAR. These models were evaluated using standard accuracy metrics RMSE, MAPE, and MAE to assess predictive performance. Signal decomposition approach based on Singular Value Decomposition and subspace modeling was employed to …

• Social Media Use Among Undergraduate Women: Associations With Body Image, Disordered Eating, And Well-Being, Kirsten P. Peterson

Psychology ETDs

Though prior research has identified a range of negative impacts associated with social networking site/app (SNS) use, these effects vary and are often attributed to specific aspects of SNSs rather than time spent on them. The current study examined relations between SNS use and various psychological outcomes (i.e., body appreciation, body dissatisfaction, eating pathology, depression, and self-esteem) and how these may differ by platform, proportion of image-based content, image subjects, and passive (relative to active) use. Worse outcomes were anticipated for individuals who primarily used appearance-focused platforms and those with greater exposure to image-based content, self or celebrity images, and …

Cultural Risk And Protective Factors Associated With Sexual Assault Among Hispanic And Non-Hispanic White Women, Daisy Ramos

Psychology ETDs

There is a paucity of research on sexual assault among Hispanic college women. Existing studies indicate that Hispanic college women report similar mental health sequelae as non-Hispanic White women following a sexual assault; thus, factors that protect or increase their risk is an area worthy of further investigation. Latino cultural values, such as familism, may serve as a protective factor for sexual assault among Hispanic college women, while acculturation with mainstream culture may function as a risk factor. This study examined whether ethnicity moderated the effects of cultural protective and risk factors on sexual assault experiences among Hispanic and non-Hispanic …

Modeling Mars Chaos Terrains As Fracture Mosaics, Aidan C. Buie

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

Chaos terrain exists on several planetary bodies but most notably on Mars. With 30 different named terrains and hundreds of chaotic or ”chaos-like” terrains, they are one of the most prominent and visible features on the planet. Chaos terrains have many visible similarities to each other: they all are comprised of polygonal blocks separated by fractures or channels. These blocks vary from angular to rounded and from flat plateaus to small hills, and the fractures vary from flat floored to ”v” shaped. Often, a single chaos will contain all of these morphologies. Most of the 30 named chaoses on Mars …

Interdependence And Place In Mescalero Homelands, 1660-1865, Joseph A. Ukockis

History ETDs

This dissertation examines strategic relationships that Mescalero Apaches made among themselves and with non-Mescalero communities from 1660 to 1865. It references Mescalero place names in piecing together pertinent stories across their vast ancestral homelands, demonstrating regional continuities in social, political, and economic dynamics over two centuries. It argues that bonds of interdependence, rather than armed resistance, were critical in maintaining autonomy and the ability to move freely, conduct effective diplomacy to protect claims to homelands, access resources in times of scarcity, and form key alliances that presented possibilities for resistance to colonial domination. Central to these dynamics were Mescalero and …

Lifestyle Factors Contributing To Occupational Heat-Related Acute Kidney Injury, Jonathan Specht, Fabiano Amorim, Flavio De Castro Magalhaes, Zachary Mckenna, Zachary Schlader

Health, Exercise, and Sports Sciences ETDs

Workers worldwide are at risk for acute kidney injury due to hyperthermia and dehydration as a consequence of exertional heat stress. Limited research has explored the impact which lifestyle agents such as beverages, recreational drugs, and medications have on core temperature, hydration, and risk of acute kidney injury during physical work in the heat. To address this research gap, we explored the impact of three agents frequently used by construction workers on thermoregulation and markers of risk of acute kidney injury. First, we investigated the effect which ibuprofen ingestion has prior to one hour of running in the heat on …

Addressing Head Injuries In High School Football: An Assessment Of Best Practices And Challenges In The Area Of Concussions As Held By New Mexico Activities Association High School Varsity Football Head Coaches And Athletic Directors, Alonzo Maestas

Health, Exercise, and Sports Sciences ETDs

Youth sports participation in the United States offers children and adolescents opportunities for physical activity, skill development, social interaction, and personal achievement. However, with sports comes the risk of injury, including concussions. Concussions can have serious long-term consequences such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). In response to the risks of concussions, New Mexico enacted a concussion law, NM Stat 22-13-31. In addition to this law, the New Mexico Activities Association (NMAA) and National Federation of High School Associations (NFHS) have also given guidance on how to manage concussions.

However, there is a gap in the literature concerning concussion education, best …

Deaf Black Youth's Narratives About Identity And Education, Dominic A. Harrison

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This study is significant in exploring the different ways in which Deaf Black youth construct their identities through the use of narrative inquiry. Educators of Deaf youth should acknowledge how the identity journeys of Deaf Black youth are often affected by the school and home communities. This research employed narrative inquiry to understand how Deaf Black youth construct their identities as Black Deaf individuals. Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a theoretical framework with the guidance of Intersectionality and Dis/ability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) lenses, the study specifically examined four Deaf Black youth’s narratives to highlight how they construct and …

Spanish Language Arts Guerreras Y Guerreros: Narratives Of Figured Worlds On Pedagogy, Lucha, E Identidad, Mishelle L. Jurado

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This dissertation explores how Spanish Language Arts (SpanLA) teachers in dual language high school programs construct and narrate their identities through pedagogical choices. Using critical narrative inquiry and the theoretical lens of figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998), the study centers the lived experiences of bilingual educators who resist deficit perspectives and reimagine their classrooms as spaces of cultural affirmation, linguistic justice, and transformative pedagogy. Data sources include semi-structured interviews, teacher-selected artifacts, and focus groups. Findings reveal that SpanLA educators enact linguistically and culturally nourishing pedagogies, rooted in ancestral memory, critical consciousness, and a commitment to student agency. These educators …

Making The Macc: Communities Of Practice And Cultural Citizenship In Austin, Texas, Cassie Lynn Smith

Anthropology ETDs

Meaningful community engagement is a challenge for local governments without a thorough understanding of constituents’ histories and their relationship with City government. This dissertation investigates the City of Austin’s (COA) Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) in Austin, Texas, to understand how this culture and arts institution engages with and is influenced by its patrons. This study analyzes the role of the MACC’s community of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991)—an evolving group of educators, activists, artists, and COA staff—in shaping public policy and educational programming as well as creating places of belonging for marginalized people in the city. …

“…Stay On It…”/A Theory///“Illumination Happens”//, Lara E. Goldmann

Art & Art History ETDs

“…stay on it…”/a theory///“illumination happens”// is a critical engagement with the work of contemporary Black artists Arthur Jafa and Adam Pendleton, explored through the lens of the Black radical tradition. Bridging aesthetics, politics, and history, the dissertation investigates how their visual, sonic, and conceptual practices articulate Black life, insurgency, and imagination.

Drawing on theorists such as Fred Moten, Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers, Frantz Fanon, and Cedric Robinson, the study constructs a framework that considers Blackness as an ontological, social, and aesthetic force. It examines how Jafa and Pendleton unsettle dominant epistemologies, staging acts of refusal and creation that resonate within …

Microneedle-Based Lc-Ms/Ms Profiling Of Dermal Interstitial Fluid Reveals Early Lipid Dysregulation Contributing To Painful Neuropathy In Prediabetic And Type 2 Diabetic Rats, Srinivasa Rao Gadam

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Painful diabetic neuropathy (PDN), a complication of type 1 and type 2 diabetes, also occurs in obesity and prediabetes, with dyslipidemia as a modifiable risk factor. The distal-to-proximal neuropathy pattern and length-dependent intraepidermal nerve fiber loss suggest peripheral contributions. We hypothesized that elevated neurotoxic lipid intermediates—diacylglycerols (DAG), free fatty acids (FFA), and acylcarnitines (CARs)—in the dermal interstitial fluid (ISF) drive metabolism-associated hyperalgesia in prediabetic and diabetic rats. Using a microneedle array (MIA) with LC-MS/MS, we profiled ISF and serum lipids from high-fat diet (HFD) and HFD + streptozotocin (STZ) rat models alongside Hargreaves testing. ISF lipid changes appeared earlier (weeks …

Exploration, Expansion, And Optimization Of Bacteriophage Virus-Like Particle Vaccines, Andzoa N. Jamus

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Bacteriophage virus-like particles are highly immunogenic, self-assembling platforms used for various vaccines. This work shows efforts to explore new vaccine candidates against Chlamydia trachomatis, targeting proteins that play critical roles in attachment and entry into the host cell, as well as in pathogenesis and bacteria proliferation. This work also shows the optimization of previously identified candidates, by investigating how altering routes of immunization can change the antibody profiles elicited, both systemically and locally. Finally, this work shows the establishment of various Chlamydia infection models in an effort to expand the ways in which vaccine efficacy can be investigated, particularly …

Immune Regulation In Fungal Airway Inflammation And Host Defense, Ruoning Wang

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the lungs characterized by complex pathophysiological mechanisms and diverse endotypes, primarily categorized as T helper type 2 cell (Th2)-high and Th2-low asthma. Despite significant advances in understanding asthma pathogenesis, the mechanisms governing the pulmonary immune system’s response to external challenges have not been fully understood. To address these gaps, this comprehensive project was designed to investigate the interplay between fungal infections and specific CD4⁺ T cell populations in asthma. Our findings suggest that fungal infections can contribute to neutrophilic asthma by promoting the migration of platelet-myeloid aggregates into the lungs. We also …

Localization Of Alpha Power Deficits In First Episode Psychosis, Crystal A. Garcia, Juan Bustillo

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

The purpose of this study was to determine where in the brain there may be a difference in brain activity in patients during their first episode of psychosis (FEP) compared to healthy controls (HCs) while performing an auditory oddball task. Time-frequency analysis allows for spectral decomposition where the signal measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG) is used to characterize changes in neural oscillations and their synchronization over time and region. Previous EEG studies report reduced alpha (8-12Hz, 70-160ms) power but most studies focused on patients with chronic schizophrenia and with limited source localization.