Digital Commons Network^™

Improving Criticality Safety Benchmark Coverage By Developing A Benchmark Evaluation Of The Unm Agn-201m Reactor, Rowdy Davis

Nuclear Engineering ETDs

This research aimed to improve the benchmark coverage of the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) handbook and the International Reactor Physics Experiment Evaluation Project (IRPhEP) with respect to High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium Fuel (HALEU). This was accomplished by creating a benchmark of the University of New Mexico’s Aerojet General Nucleonics model 201-M reactor and submitting it to the ICSBEP. This research then aimed to quantify to what extent this benchmark improves coverage of the benchmark suites for HALEU and TRISO fuel applications. This investigation utilized WHISPER, TSUNAMI-IP, and TSURFER with 36 application cases developed in SCALE and 2,929 experiments …

The Role Of Spreading Depolarizations In Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries, Natalie J. Pinkowski

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs) often lead to acute symptoms like disorientation and discoordination, but the underlying mechanisms are unknown. Although most patients recover quickly from a single mTBI, repeated injuries can be debilitating. After an mTBI, a neurometabolic cascade produces metabolic burden and vulnerability. Spreading depolarizations (SDs) have been observed after mTBIs. Here we investigated SDs’ role in short-term motor behavioral deficits post-mTBI. We hypothesized that SDs contribute to the deficits, and exacerbated symptoms after repeated mTBIs. To test this, we used acute motor behavioral tests and long-term behavioral and cognitive tests after initiating SDs by mTBI, chemical, or …

The Lying Woman: Avant-Garde Collaboration In Jo Harvey Allen's Alt-Country, Caitlin C. Grann

American Studies ETDs

Jo Harvey Allen is an artist, writer, and actress whose work is cited as transforming performance art in the 1980s. In this dissertation, I analyze the nature of Jo Harvey’s collaborative process, which spans over five decades, to better understand her positionality in avant-garde and alt-country genres. I argue that Jo Harvey’s collaboration is familial, gendered, and emplaced. My goal with this project is to intervene with literature on musicians and artists from West Texas, specifically Lubbock, through an expansion of the contributions of women. This dissertation is a product of my own collaborative efforts with Jo Harvey, as I …

Presidential Unilateralism In Contemporary U.S. Trade Policymaking: An Analysis Of The Section 232 Tariff Exclusion Process By The Trump Administration, Miao Wang

Political Science ETDs

On March 1, 2018, President Trump declared a 25% tariff on certain steel imports by invoking Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act. Despite the extraordinary tariff measure, my research with logit regression and negative binomial regression analysis finds that the Trump Administration in its tariff exclusion process favored constituencies with a higher share of the president’s supporters and allowed import products from China more likely to receive the exclusions. I argue that the Trump Administration took these contradictory trade actions to achieve multiple goals at the same time: to pressure foreign trade partners and to protect vulnerable domestic …

Positioning Disability In Wilderness Space, Rebecca Hobart

Geography ETDs

This thesis examines the social construction of the disabled body in recreational wilderness space. A political ecology framework guides the research questions: What are the actual or perceived barriers to participation for differently abled hikers in wilderness recreational spaces, and how do these challenges manifest in long-distance hiking spaces? In situating Foucault’s theories of the body as shaped by power relations, this thesis asserts wilderness spaces to be privileged based on power conceptualized in normative notions of ability. 44 participants who self-identified as wilderness recreationalists with a disability and/or chronic health illness completed this study’s mixed-method questionnaire. Themes around practices, …

Hsc Connects Newsletter - April 5, 2024, Unm Hsc Communications

HSC Connects Newsletters

Weekly newsletter of the UNM Health Sciences Center.

Building Queer Families: Supports And Barriers, Annie Bright

Individual, Family, and Community Education ETDs

A qualitative study was conducted with six participants who identify as Queer and/or Lesbian investigating supports and barriers to family building using Assisted Human Reproduction. Semi-structured interviews were conducted allowing participants to share their experiences and self-identify the significant supports and barriers in their process. Interviews were transcribed and coded using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis identifying three supports and four barriers. Results demonstrated that all participants identified their community and/or their Queer community and their partner and/or family as key supports and two-thirds of participants identified as a support their own background or knowledge. All participants described the high cost or …

Formulation, Characterization, And In Vivo Immunogenicity Evaluation Of Heat-Stabilized Dissolvable Polymeric Microneedles, Aidan Lane Leyba

Biomedical Engineering ETDs

Since its introduction, vaccination has improved health outcomes tremendously. However, modern vaccination efforts are still difficult to implement, particularly in developing countries with warm climates. This includes complex and expensive cold-chain management of vaccines to maintain stability, a lack of medical personnel to administer parental vaccines, and needle phobia. As an alternative, dissolvable microneedles have recently been studied for their simple and painless application. In this thesis, I present a novel manufacturing process for polymer-based dissolvable microneedles, loaded with virus-like particles vaccines conjugated to TRIO or Sialokinin peptides to target malaria and arboviruses, respectively. We have performed multiple characterization studies …

Narrative Research: You Did What With Technology? Exploring Student Narratives Of Technology At A Research-Based University In The Southwest, Alma M. Sanchez

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

This qualitative study examined the impact of high school instructional technology on college students' academic strategies. It examined the historical and modern advancements of technology in education, uncovering significant milestones in technology integration within classrooms in the United States. Using a narrative inquiry approach grounded in John Dewey's philosophy of experience, it centered on the narratives of students in their second and third semesters of college. The study highlighted the gap in understanding students’ personal experiences with technology and emphasized the role their narratives play in shaping future technology integration strategies.

The methodology involved utilizing digital surveys and online semi-structured …

Dialogue Journals In Assessment Of Student Writing, Brigid Elise Ovitt

Special Education ETDs

Because writing is complex and draws upon so many psychological and cognitive processes, learning to write is even more challenging for students with disabilities than it is for typically developing students. Nonetheless, writing research in the field of education and special education lags behind that of many other academic subjects. The body of research that does exist, indicates that affective factors (attitude toward writing, evaluation of self as writer, enjoyment of writing) impacts students’ writing achievement. This paper proposes a multiple baseline across settings study to determine whether including a response journal element as part of classroom writing assessment writing …

5.2.24 Hsc Committee Meeting Notice, Helen Maestas

HSC Committee (A subcommittee of the UNM Board of Regents)

5.2.24 HSC Committee Meeting Notice

Language, Literacy, & Sociocultural Studies, Unm Academic Program Review

UNM Academic Program Review

UNM Department of Language, Literacy & Sociocultural Studies self-study & review team report for Spring 2024, fulfilling requirements of Higher Learning Commission.

In Vivo Tissue Distribution Of Polystyrene Or Mixed Polymer Microspheres And Metabolomic Analysis After Oral Exposure In Mice, Marcus M. Garcia, Aaron S. Romero, Seth D. Merkley, Jewel L. Meyer-Hagen, Charles Forbes, Eliane El Hayek, David P. Sciezka, Rachel Templeton, Jorge Gonzalez-Estrella, Yan Jin, Haiwei Gu, Angelica Benavidez, Russell P. Hunter, Selita Lucas, Guy Herbert, Kyle Joohyung Kim, Julia Yue Cui, Rama R. Gullapalli, Julie G. In, Matthew J. Campen, Eliseo F. Castillo

Pathology Research and Scholarship

BACKGROUND: Global plastic use has consistently increased over the past century with several different types of plastics now being produced. Much of these plastics end up in oceans or landfills leading to a substantial accumulation of plastics in the environment. Plastic debris slowly degrades into microplastics (MPs) that can ultimately be inhaled or ingested by both animals and humans. A growing body of evidence indicates that MPs can cross the gut barrier and enter into the lymphatic and systemic circulation leading to accumulation in tissues such as the lungs, liver, kidney, and brain. The impacts of mixed MPs exposure on …

Unm Taos Massage Therapy Certificate Program Apr Document Spring 2024, Unm Academic Program Review

UNM Academic Program Review

UNM Taos Massage Therapy Certificate Program academic program review Self-Study Report Spring 2024

Linguistics Apr Spring 2024 Self-Study & Documents, Unm Academic Program Review

UNM Academic Program Review

UNM Department of Linguistics self-study & review team report for Spring 2024, fulfilling requirements of Higher Learning Commission.

Remote Sensing Techniques To Determine Volcanic Gas Components And Fluxes: Application For Lascar, Chile And Fagradalsfjall, Iceland Volcanos., Felipe S. Rojas Vilches

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

Volcanic plumes allow us to understand different aspects of a volcanic system including magma movements, dynamics, mass transfer, overall gas emissions to the atmosphere, and many processes that impact human life. However, the H₂O gas is poorly constrained due to the intrinsic difficulties of this gas, with high background values and easily dispersed/integrated into the background. In this work we study the gas emissions from Lascar volcano, and Fagradalsfjall volcano, in Chile and Iceland, respectively, using a combination of different ground-based remote sensing techniques and in situ plume measurements, we measure H₂O, SO₂, CO₂, CO, and H₂S from longer and …

Heat Mitigation Impacts Of Agriculture, Greenspace, And Riparian Forest In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Brennan Davis

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

Albuquerque, New Mexico, alongside the larger American desert Southwest, is already living the reality of climate change – temperatures have risen faster than the global average and, left unchecked, will continue to rise at an ever-increasing pace (NOAA 2022, Garfin et al. 2014). Alongside this disproportionate warming, the Southwest has experienced worsening drought which further stresses an already arid system (White et al. 2023, Dunbar et al. 2022). At the intersection of these changes lie a myriad of interrelated consequences for both ecosystems and communities. The urban heat island effect is one of many such consequences and is responsible for …

Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps For Clinical Decision Making In Mental Healthcare: A Federated Learning Approach, Jagan M. Obbineni, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, Madhumitha Ramesh, Florentin Smarandache, Vasantha Kandasamy

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

Due to data privacy concerns and a lack of broadly applicable modelling approaches, mental health prediction encounters substantial challenges. This research introduces a pioneering decentralized framework integrating federated learning with Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps (NCMs) to facilitate secure and accurate mental health predictions while preserving data privacy. This innovative approach allows collaborative NCMs training on sensitive patient data across diverse sites without centralizing or transferring the data. The NCMs incorporated into the framework effectively model relationships between various symptoms and mental health states, offering interpretable insights into the complex dynamics of mental health. To address the limitations of local data availability, …

Integration Between Bioinformatics Algorithms And Neutrosophic Theory, Romany M. Farag, Mahmoud Y. Shams, Dalia A. Aldawody, Huda E. Khalid, Hazem M. El-Bakry, Ahmed A. Salama

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

This paper presents a neutrosophic inference model for bioinformatics. The model is used to develop a system for accurate comparisons of human nucleic acids, where the new nucleic acid is compared to a database of old nucleic acids. The comparisons are analyzed in terms of accuracy, certainty, uncertainty, neutrality, and bias. The proposed system achieves good results and provides a reliable standard for future comparisons. It highlights the potential of neutrosophic inference models in bioinformatics applications. Data mining and bioinformatics play a crucial role in computational biology, with applications in scientific research and industrial development. Biological analysts rely on specialized …

Child Labor, Informality, And Poverty: Leveraging Logistic Regression, Indeterminate Likert Scales, And Similarity Measures For Insightful Analysis In Ecuador, Arnaldo Vergara-Romero, Guido Macas-Acosta, Fidel Márquez-Sánchez, Orlando Arencibia-Montero

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of child labor in Ecuador, employing advanced statistical tools like logistic regression, neutrosophic Likert scales, and similarity measures to deepen the understanding of this social issue. The integration of these methodologies allows for a nuanced assessment of the various socio-economic factors contributing to child labor. By capturing the uncertainty in human responses, the research highlights the complex interplay between poverty, household income, education levels, and labor types on the incidence of child labor. Key findings suggest that rural location, the age of the child, and the informal nature of the head of the household's …

Logarithmic Similarity Measure Of Neutrosophic Z-Number Sets For Undergraduate Teaching Quality Evaluation, Wen-Ping Chen, Yi-Ming Fang, Wen-Hua Cui

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

In practical decision-making problems, the different reliability levels of decision-makers in their evaluation information are usually ignored by most existing decision-making methods. Then, a neutrosophic Z-number (NZN) is a powerful model for simultaneously describing the restraint and associated reliability of evaluation information in view of truth, indeterminacy, and falsity Z-numbers. This paper first proposed a logarithmic similarity measure (LSM) of NZN sets, which is more flexible and can change its measure result by adjusting the exponential parameters of the restraint and reliability. Then, a multi-attribute decision-making approach is developed based on the presented LSM of NZN sets, and its applicability …

Analyzing The Income-Education Nexus In Ecuador: A Neutrosophic Statistical Approach, Guido Macas-Acosta, Juan-Antonio Jimber-Del-Río, Fidel Márquez-Sánchez, Arnaldo Vergara-Romero

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

This study examines the relationship between education and entrepreneur income in Ecuador, a prototypical small economy grappling with employment challenges. Utilizing quantile regression and neutrosophic statistical methods, the research uncovers varied impacts of education on earnings across different income levels. The findings reveal a decrease in indeterminacy as individuals ascend income quintiles, indicating that higher education levels yield more predictable and substantial economic returns at the upper end of the income spectrum. These insights are vital for policymakers to develop targeted educational interventions. The study’s methodological novelty lies in its adoption of neutrosophic statistics, which embraces the indeterminacy intrinsic to …

An Efficient Neutrosophic Type-2 Model For Selecting Optimal Internet Of Things (Iot) Service Provider: Analysis And Applications, Ibrahim Alrashdi

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

The Internet of Things, or IoT, is a rapidly expanding technology, and one of its most important application areas is sustainable transportation. Choosing the right IoT service provider is a complex process that is considered a multi-criteria decision issue. The multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methodology deals with massive criteria. This study proposed an MCDM methodology for selecting the best IoT service provider under different sustainable criteria. The Multi-Objective Optimization Ratio Analysis (MOORA) method is an MCDM methodology used to rank the alternatives. The MOORA method is integrated with a type 2 neutrosophic set to deal with uncertain information. The proposed MCDM …

Neutrosophic Sets And Systems, Vol. 66,2024, Florentin Smarandache, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Said Broumi

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

No abstract provided.

Holistic Health & Healing Arts 2024 Taos Self-Study, Academic Program Review

UNM Academic Program Review

UNM Taos Holistic Health & Healing Arts self-study report for Spring 2024.

Inhaled Microbiomics: Targeted Delivery Of Prebiotics And Antibiotics In Patients With Cystic Fibrosis, David Arran Mcchesney, Seth M. Daly, Patricia Marshik, Pavan Muttil

Pharmaceutical Sciences ETDs

Adults with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) are a unique and expanding patient population in the context of massive progress in disease screening and treatment. However, exacerbations remain a significant complication of the disease associated with its decline. CF pathophysiology promotes chronic respiratory bacterial infections, which are implicated in exacerbations. An important finding in research surrounding the respiratory microbiome has correlated the loss of diversity being with a worse prognosis in chronic lung diseases. We developed an aerosol formulation towards supporting the existing, diverse respiratory microbiome. Our formulation of prebiotics with and without antibiotics was designed to fit within the complex, multistep, …

Newark To Navajo: An Autoethnography Of A Cultural Outsider, Vincent Lloyd Mays

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

This study aims to explore the experiences of an African American Male leader in the Bureau of Indian Education. The focus of the study is to understand how I experienced inequitable workplace opportunities that may prohibit me from attaining and advancing into executive leadership roles. A qualitative Autoethnographic approach explores how my lived experiences may help the human resources division recruit and retain “Cultural Outsiders.” It denoted the career trajectory for an African American Male in the Bureau of Indian Education sector to capture the essence of their experiences navigating inequities along the leadership pipeline. To examine my experiences, adaptative …

The Physiological And Perceptual Responses To Continuous- And Interval-Based High-Intensity Functional Training, Jessica Smith

Health, Exercise, and Sports Sciences ETDs

The purpose of this study was to compare the acute physiological and perceptual responses to rest intervals during high-intensity functional training (HIFT) using a “rounds for time” (RFT) and an “every minute on the minute” (EMOM) design. Two studies were conducted in twelve trained and nine untrained individuals who performed two HIFT trials (EMOM and RFT). Blood lactate, oxygen consumption, heart rate, and rating of perceived exertion were significantly higher for the RFT compared to the EMOM. There was no difference between the EMOM and RFT for muscle damage responses. Lastly, there was no difference between the EMOM and RFT …

Hsc Connects Newsletter - March 28, 2024, Unm Hsc Communications

HSC Connects Newsletters

Weekly newsletter of the UNM Health Sciences Center.

Hsc Connects Newsletter - March 22, 2024, Unm Hsc Communications

HSC Connects Newsletters

Weekly newsletter of the UNM Health Sciences Center.