Digital Commons Network^™

Computational, Synthetic And Spectroscopic Studies On Donor Acceptor Transition Metal Complexes, Ranjana Dangi

Chemistry and Chemical Biology ETDs

Fundamental advances in our ability to design and construct electronic components at the nanoscale will require new design paradigms. One proposed nanoscale electronic component is the molecular rectifier. Molecular and molecule-based electronic components are advantageous due to their ease of synthetic manipulation, and the fact that the size dimensions of molecules are inherently at the nanoscale (0.5 - 3nm). Our group has shown how the Donor-Bridge-Acceptor biradical approach can be used to derive key structure-property relationships that allow insight into the choice of bridge fragments for molecular rectification by using constitutional isomers of the donor-bridge-acceptor biradical (NN-Th-Py-SQ) (S=1/2 ortho-semiquinonate, …

Un-Earthing Popular Climate Narratives: Maintenance And Prophecy In Settler World, Hannah Oxford

Communication ETDs

Climate change is fundamentally rooted in facts such as rising global temperatures, carbon emissions, losses in biodiversity, etc. However new information about our changing world is translated and incorporated within the narratives we live by and give form to our personal and collective worlds. While climate change is scientific, our mitigation efforts are entirely storied. This thesis looks at popular climate narratives that frames climate change as an issue of Earthly mechanics fixable through innovative technology. The goal of this thesis is to understand the ways in which settler colonialism, as a communicable mechanism of cultural production, organizes this particular …

Reimagining Rhetorical Ability: (Dis)Embodiments Of Disabled Speakers In The Stuttertalk Podcast And The 2020 Democratic National Convention, Katherine Mulle

Communication ETDs

While communication scholars have dedicated much research towards defining and furthering effective communication, explorations of speech disability, especially from a critical lens, are largely absent in these pursuits. I conducted a critical rhetorical analysis of the (dis)embodiments of disabled speakers through examining segments from the 2020 Democratic National Convention (DNC) program that cover Joe Biden’s story as a person who stutters, and episodes of StutterTalk, a podcast created by and featuring people who stutter. Moreover, I organize this thesis around two claims: (1) As a person who stutters with certain privilege and power, Joe Biden’s DNC story further secured …

Interfacial Interactions Of Uranium And Hdpe In Agricultural Soil And Their Bioacummulation In Mentha Arvensis, Casey Miller, Andrew Neidhart, Kendra Hess, Abdul-Mehdi S. Ali, Angelica Benavidez, Michael Spilde, Laura Green, José M. Cerrato, Jorge Gonzalez Estrella, Eliane El Hayek

Civil Engineering ETDs

We investigated the adsorption, precipitation, and phytoavailability of uranium after reactions with soil, high-density polyethylene particles, and Mentha arvensis through the integration of batch experiments, plant exposure, microscopy, and spectroscopy. Soluble U (initially 100 µM) decreased by 98.6% (1.09 µM) at pH 5 and 86.2% (13.81 µM) at pH 7.5 after 0.1 h of reaction with 10 g of soil in solution. Heterogenous U precipitates were observed in weathered HDPE surfaces for experiments without soil at both pH conditions. This suggests the weathering of the microplastic surfaces enhanced the nucleation of the U precipitates. Plants exposed to both U and …

Relating Plant Community Structure To Carbon Dynamics In Semiarid Grasslands, Theodore D. Roper

Biology ETDs

Understanding how fine-scale changes in soil characteristics and plant community composition affect ecosystem functioning is key to predicting how biome shifts will affect regional and global carbon cycling. This is crucial in the dryland biomes of the US Southwest, projected to be one of the regions most affected by climate change. We examined fine-scale drivers of ecosystem function within two biomes – a Chihuahuan Desert grassland and Plains/Chihuahuan Desert ecotone – via long-term vegetation data, micrometeorological data, eddy covariance carbon flux measurements, and soil water and texture, finding that the ecotone site had over 30% higher soil water content, over …

“Finding The Positive” In Recovery: Psychometric Properties Of A Measure Of Human Flourishing In An Alcohol Use Disorder Recovery Sample, Hannah A. Carlon

Psychology ETDs

The fields of alcohol use disorder (AUD) recovery and positive psychology have both rapidly grown in recent years, are paralleled in their philosophy and goals, but have scarcely overlapped. An important first step to applying positive psychology to addiction treatment and recovery is quantifying the extent that treatment-as-usual encourages human flourishing (i.e., holistic well-being and adequate functioning). The PERMA Profiler is a measure based on the PERMA model of flourishing, captured across five positive psychology domains (i.e., Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishments), and has been validated in a wide variety of samples. The …

Deformation Of Antigorite + Olivine Aggregates: Implications For Mantle Wedge Dynamics, Roselyn K. Hurlow

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

Aggregates with varying volume proportions of antigorite and olivine were deformed at mantle wedge conditions of high-pressure (P) (2.5-7.6 GPa), -temperature (T) (675 K), and strain rates from ~1.0*10^-5 to ~1.0*10^-4 s^-1 using the deformation-DIA (D-DIA) to investigate deformation mechanisms and stress/strain partitioning. Macroscopic strain, lattice strain, and texture were measured in situ using synchrotron x-ray diffraction and radiography and were modeled for olivine using Elasto-Viscoplastic Self-Consistent (EVPSC) simulations. These modeled results are coupled with microstructure images and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) measurements results to determine stress and deformation mechanisms. Previous to this study, investigations have been …

What’S (Race In) The Law Got To Do With It: Incorporating Race In Legal Curriculum, Sonia Gipson Rankin

Faculty Scholarship

Gen Z is defined as including persons born after 1996 and, in 2018, the first Gen Z would have been twenty-two years old, the historically traditional age that many complete undergraduate studies and enter law school. With Gen Z entering law schools, the legal academy has been wholeheartedly preparing for the arrival of the first truly digital native generation in a myriad of ways. However, law training has been slow to progress in addressing the unspoken complexities of context and unconscious bias in the classroom with this population. Today’s Gen Z students were predominately raised in de facto segregated schools …

The Political Urgency Of Black Manhood: Frederick Douglass On Constitutional Theory, John M. Kang

Faculty Scholarship

How did Frederick Douglass—one who was born a slave, one who had been denied all formal education, one who had been sundered from his family, one who had been starved, tortured, and, on occasion, nearly killed—manage to muster the courage to do something as bold as challenge the United States Supreme Court? This Article suggests that Douglass, in order to assert his right as an American citizen, first had to assert his right as a man in an explicitly gendered sense. That is, Douglass had to muster a powerful sense of manliness that could elevate him psychologically to assert his …

Gamma And Neutron Irradiation Effect On Ga-Polar And N-Polar Gan Based Diodes, Farnood Mirkhosravi

Optical Science and Engineering ETDs

III-nitride material (GaN) shows a lot of potential for next-generation power electronics. This material is advantageous due to its wide bandgap, high electron mobility, high thermal and mechanical stability, small form factor, and higher radiation tolerance. The higher radiation tolerance makes the GaN-based devices more attractive for harsh-environment applications, like aerospace, nuclear reactor, and fusion facilities, particle accelerators, and post-detonation environments applications.

GaN due to its unique crystal structure can be grown in different orientations and can provide specific advantages in electronic and optoelectronic devices. While the Ga-polar orientation of GaN has been widely investigated for its proprieties, there are …

The Bluff And Blanding Fights: Race, Religion, And Settler Colonialism In Progressive-Era America, Reilly Ben Hatch

History ETDs

This project uses the Bluff War of 1915 and the Posey War of 1923—both of which took place in southeastern Utah—to look at the complex relationship between race, religion, and culture in American Indian policy at the beginning of the twentieth century. It shows how White Mesa Utes, local Mormon settlers, the federal government, and Progressive activists used the conflicts to argue the place of Indians in a “frontier-less” America. It also examines the complex relationship between Mormons and Indians and draws conclusions on how that relationship was influenced by an American government which sought to assimilate “others” into the …

Relational Peace In Colombia: An Ethnography Of Multi-Scalar Affective Relations Among Peace Practitioners, María Del Pilar File-Muriel

Anthropology ETDs

Following the 2016 National Peace Accords in Colombia, violence targeting human rights activists and community leaders increased. Thus, it is essential to study peacemaking beyond the state’s implementation of the peace accords. I look at the process of relationship making among the assemblage of peace practitioners that constitute peace work in Colombia. The data comes from ethnographic fieldwork during 2016- 2018. I provide three chapter-length ethnographies of spatializations of peace: Humanitarian and biodiversity zones/spaces (Buenaventura), indigenous territorial practices of peace (Cauca), and a transnational alliance between the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó (Antioquia) and a group of Syrian …

Front Matter, New Mexico Law Review

New Mexico Law Review

No abstract provided.

Using Insurance To Regulate Food Safety: Field Notes From The Food Produce Sector, Timothy D. Lytton

New Mexico Law Review

Foodborne illness is a public health problem of pandemic proportions. In the United States alone, contaminated food sickens an estimated 48 million consumers annually, causing 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths. Nowhere is this crisis more acute than in the fresh produce sector, where microbial contamination in growing fields and packing houses has been responsible for many of the nation’s largest and deadliest outbreaks.

This Article examines emerging efforts by private insurance companies to regulate food safety on farms that grow fresh produce.

Previous studies of using insurance to regulate food safety rely on economic theories that yield competing conclusions. Optimists …

The Political Urgency Of Black Manhood: Frederick Douglass On Constitutional Theory, John M. Kang

New Mexico Law Review

How did Frederick Douglass—one who was born a slave, one who had been denied all formal education, one who had been sundered from his family, one who had been starved, tortured, and, on occasion, nearly killed—manage to muster the courage to do something as bold as challenge the United States Supreme Court? This Article suggests that Douglass, in order to assert his right as an American citizen, first had to assert his right as a man in an explicitly gendered sense. That is, Douglass had to muster a powerful sense of manliness that could elevate him psychologically to assert his …

Legal Benefits Of Homeownership, Nino C. Monea

New Mexico Law Review

The law prizes expensive, single-family homes above all other forms of housing. This Article details the many ways that the law benefits homeowners and distains renters, mobile-home owners, and the homeless. There are seven topics: (1) zoning laws mandate single-family homes and ban localities from requiring affordable housing, (2) the Tax Code allows homeowners to write off innumerable expenses but virtually nothing for renters, (3) lenders seeking to foreclose on a mortgage must surmount many hurdles, but landlords may act with nearly a free hand to evict, (4) federal, state, and local institutions all work to support the housing market …

A Model Of Collegial Judicial Decision-Making: The Ransom-Montgomery Years On The New Mexico Supreme Court, Michael B. Browde, Mario E. Occhialino

New Mexico Law Review

After first providing brief biographies of the justices and their personal relationship, the article examines two subject matter areas where their differing views were most fully developed and made a significant contribution to the development of the law:

• First, the restructuring of the law of negligence with an emphasis on the creation and nature of a duty of care; and
• Second, the legal principles governing the jurisdiction of the New Mexico appellate courts and the resulting tension between legislative and judicial authority over provisions governing access to the appellate courts.

The article concludes with our assessment that sound judicial development …

Oil’S Well That Ends Well—An Application For A New Mexico-Texas Transboundary Well And Its Implications, Molly Samsell

New Mexico Law Review

Oil and gas frequently cross jurisdictional lines—such as those between counties or states—creating a complex commingling of state, local, and private interests left to the states to resolve independently through statutes and regulations. Historically, the federal government’s regulation of oil and gas was limited to leasing operations on federal and Indian lands, interstate transmission related to commerce, natural gas rates, emergencies related to war, imports, oil pricing, regulation of antitrust issues, allocation of manufacturing, and federal taxation. States retain all other powers, such as policing and imposition of taxes. State administrative processes only address local issues, while multistate correlative rights …

More Than #Freebritney: Remedying Constitutional Violations In Guardianship For People With Disabilities, Hannah Shotwell

New Mexico Law Review

Adult guardianship is used as a method to restrict the decisionmaking rights of some individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities who have been deemed “incompetent.” However, the use of guardianship to remove someone’s decisionmaking rights violates the equal protection rights granted by the New Mexico Constitution. Discrimination against people with developmental disabilities must be substantially related to an important governmental interest, and the current state of guardianship fails to meet that bar. Further, guardianship violates the state constitutional guarantee of due process because it infringes on the fundamental right to the least restrictive means of care. New Mexico must adopt …

A Deliberate Difference?: The Rights Of Incarcerated Individuals Under The New Mexico State Constitution, Carson Thornton González

New Mexico Law Review

Historically, to bring claims against government officials for unconstitutional prison conditions, individuals incarcerated in New Mexico had one vehicle for redress: Section 1983 claims based on the protections of the Federal Constitution. If an individual seeks relief via Section 1983 for prison conditions that are in violation of the Eighth Amendments protections against cruel and unusual punishment, courts apply a “deliberate indifference” standard to determine the liability of prison officials. This defendant-friendly standard requires that incarcerated plaintiffs suffer an objective harm and—crucially—that the relevant officials have a culpable state-of-mind of deliberate indifference. In 2021, the New Mexico Legislature passed the …

Vulnerability, Invulnerability, And The Mechanism Of Disavowal, Mariah C. Partida

Philosophy ETDs

In this dissertation, I defend the view that, contrary to popular opinion, vulnerability is not merely susceptibility to harm but also openness to unanticipated change and transformation. Drawing on the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Erinn Gilson, Gilles Deleuze, and Benedict Spinoza, I also aim to show that vulnerability is not a static property of some individuals but rather a relational process that is both universal and differently distributed. My original contribution to vulnerability studies is to trace the mechanism of disavowal across 20^th and 21^st century figures in philosophy: from Heidegger’s account of disavowing our …

Bringing Technological Transparency To Tenebrous Markets: The Case For Using Blockchain To Validate Carbon Credit Trading Markets, Gary E. Marchant, Zachary Cooper, Philip Gough-Stone

Natural Resources Journal

Carbon reductions have become a priority as companies and other entities emitting greenhouse gases seek to comply with regulatory requirements and commit to voluntary goals that are consistent with their sustainability pledges. These carbon reductions are accounted for by carbon credits, which are tradeable units of carbon reduction that can be used to comply with regulatory or voluntary carbon reduction credits. Many companies are making such carbon reduction promises, and are frequently relying on credits generated by non-traditional mitigation sources such as agriculture or forestry to achieve those reductions and credits. However, the credibility and reliance on such carbon credit …

To Infinity And Beyond: Shifting The Space Regulatory Framework To Create Conservation-Minded Expansion, Brandon M.G. Dekema

Natural Resources Journal

The early days of American expansion were categorized by policies that emphasized resource extraction and utilization. In turn, these policies created major conflicts with overuse, ownership, and rehabilitation−, many of which continue to this day. Now, the United States has begun to shift its focus to the next untapped frontier: outer space. As resource extraction in space grows more feasible, the United States has begun to shape a regulatory framework. In doing so, the United States is copying early American resource policy, leaving open the same gaps for conflicts arising from overuse, ownership disputes, and restoration. This paper analyzes historical …

Book Review: The Development Of The Law Of The Sea Convention: The Role Of International Courts And Tribunals, Kalista Wilson

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Spirituality, Well-Being, And The Role Of Oneness, Kelly S. Erickson Albonico

Psychology ETDs

Spirituality is generally found to have a significant but small positive association with well-being; however, the associations between spirituality and well-being vary greatly. One organizing framework for understanding the varying associations may be the degree to which spirituality and well-being measures capture connection, the pinnacle of which may be conceptualized as Oneness. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to begin exploring this hypothesis by examining the associations between beliefs in Oneness and dimensions of subjective well-being and to test possible conflating and contributing factors in the associations between beliefs in Oneness and subjective well-being. Results indicated preliminary support for …

Technologies Of Territoriality: Indigeneity, Surveillance, And The State, Elspeth Iralu

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation examines the global spatial surveillance of Indigenous peoples, nations, and territories in the twenty-first century through a multi-site relational analysis of colonial surveillance and Indigenous cartography in the United States, India, and Palestine. Analyzing Indigenous graphic novels, video games, virtual reality, performance protests, and visual art, I demonstrate how air and the aerial perspective actively shape what happens on and below the ground. I argue that Indigenous experiences of and responses to colonial and counterinsurgent surveillance are not limited by the geographic and legal bounds of nation-states but are rather linked through global histories of militarization and colonialism. …

New Mexico Acequias In Valencia: A Documentary Report, José A. Rivera Ph.D.

Researchers

In 2014 and 2019 the New Mexico Acequia Association attended events organized by the Water Tribunal of Valencia in Spain commemorating the fifth and tenth anniversaries when the acequias of Valencia and Murcia were listed by UNESCO as examples of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The documentary report provides the context for and significance of the two visits along with a series of photographs that tell the story for the benefit of the citizens of New Mexico.

Petrographic And Geochemical Records Of Climate Perturbation In Carbonates From A Perennially Ice-Covered Antarctic Lake, Jared Clance

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

Carbonate precipitation in perennially ice-covered Lake Fryxell, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica produces a modern analog for Antarctic paleolake carbonates. Lake Fryxell contains a steep oxycline in the photic zone, where dissolved oxygen falls from supersaturation to zero. In the lake’s benthic microbial mats, oxygen concentrations are higher than in the water column due to microbial photosynthesis. These mats contain carbonate cements that precipitated in a discrete episode from mat pore waters. Precipitation continued through seasonal fluctuations in oxygenation, demonstrated by variable concentrations of oxidized and reduced manganese and iron within carbonates. Carbonates precipitated out of isotopic equilibrium with the lake …

Middle School Students Communicating Computational Thinking: A Systemic Functional Linguistics-Case Study Of Bilingual, Collaborative Teaching/Learning Of Computer Programming In Python, Jose Antonio Lecea Yanguas

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This dissertation presents the first Systemic Functional Linguistics-based analysis of the teaching/learning of computational thinking through computer programming and comprehensive analysis of discourse of a whole computer programming course at any educational level. The current educational research raises questions about the nature of authentic computational

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thinking teaching/learning environments and how they happen moment-to-moment. In one such environment, I examined the discourse of a facilitator, three students, and their Language Arts teacher in an introductory middle school after-school course (approximately 30 hours) in spring 2017 as students created a video in Python.

Methodologically, I show how a Systemic Functional Linguistics-based …

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, …