Digital Commons Network^™

Jet Flow Behavior Observed During Microgravity, Troy Munro, Heng Ban

Utah Space Grant Consortium

A thin wire, subcooled boiling experiment was performed onboard an aircraft flying a parabolic trajectory as a means to provide microgravity conditions. Microgravity allows for improved observation of jet flow phenomena and the ability to investigate their behavior in the absence of buoyant forces. A new mode of jet flows was observed in microgravity which accounts for the high heat fluxes measured on the wire heater. A relative bubble area analysis method was able to quantify vapor production and bubble behavior across multiple frames of video. A cross-correlation calculation similar to particle image velocimetry (PIV) provided velocities of the micro-bubbles …

Evaluation Of Pedestrian Risk On 700 N On Utah State University Campus, Kirk Jackson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

One of the biggest concerns that highway designers face when designing roadways is how to safely design the interface between highway users and pedestrians. This is never truer than on the Utah State University campus where pedestrian use is much higher than on an average road. Utah State University purchased 700 N, the main collector road which runs through the heart of USU’s campus, from the City of Logan in the summer of 2010. Since then, pedestrian safety on 700 N has become the first priority of USU Facilities in regards to their efforts to improve it. It has come …

2011 Annual Report, Various Authors

Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Utah State University Commencement, 2012 – Main Campus, Utah State University

Commencement Programs

125^th Annual Commencement of Utah State University.

Fostering Academic Proficiency In Esl In Elementary Education, Mary Elizabeth Sharp

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio was written for the Master of Second Language Teaching Program (MSLT). It consists of the author's personal teaching philosophy as it relates to teaching ESL (English as a Second Language). It includes papers that demonstrate the author's beliefs on teaching English as a Second Language especially academic language instruction. It includes the author's personal teaching philosophy as it relates to teaching ESL. This is followed by three artifacts: the value of children's literature in English as a second language instruction, navigating academic language, and asking clarifying questions. The portfolio also includes a research proposal, the impact of audio-book …

A Study Of The Spawning Ecology And Early Life History Survival Of Bonneville Cutthroat Trout, Phaedra E. Budy, Sarah Wood, Brett B. Roper

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

We completed a large-scale field experiment in four tributaries of the Logan River, Utah, where the largest metapopulation of imperiled Bonneville cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarkii utah persists. We documented the spatial and temporal distributions of spawners, quantified substrate use versus substrate availability, and evaluated differences in hatch and emergence fry success between and among sites in relation to habitat characteristics. We observed considerable variability in the timing, magnitude, and duration of spawning among study areas (streams), in part as a function of a variable, multipeaked hydrograph. Nevertheless, across study areas, >70% of redds were constructed on the final descending limb …

Information Flow In The Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Cellular Automata, Akshay Thakre

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Decision making in natural systems, such as the body's immune response to a potential pathogen or a bacterial colony's initiation of fruiting due to food scarcity, is distributed over many cells that posses only local information, and not determined globally. Understanding how accurate decisions can be made in such systems where no individual decisions maker has complete information has important implications in distributed software and can provide insights into the biological evolution of complexity. In this work, the process of distributed decision making is modeled using the majority problem in cellular automata, and information theoretic measures of Kolmogorov complexity are …

A Quantitative Analysis Of Response Elimination And Resurgence Using Rich, Lean, And Thinning Schedules Of Alternative Reinforcement, Mary M. Sweeney

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Mary M. Sweeney, graduate student in the Experimental and Applied Psychological Science graduate program, proposed and completed this thesis in partial fulfillment for the requirements of the degree of Master of Science of Psychology. This project was supported in part by the American Psychological Society of Graduate Students (APAGS) Basic Psychological Science Fall2010 Research Grant awarded by the members of the APAGS Science Committee.

Many problem behaviors, such as aggression or self-injury in persons with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) or drug abuse can be maintained by the consequences of those behaviors. For example, many instances of aggression in individuals …

Cattle Browsing Sagebrush Steppe During Fall: Effects On Plant Community Structure And Influence Of Experience On Cattle Foraging Behavior And Body Weights, Charles A. Petersen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Historic and repetitious spring grazing by livestock, combined with altered fire regimes, has increased the density and abundance of big sagebrush and reduced the frequency of perennial grasses and forbs on many western landscapes. Periodic disturbance is critical for maintaining and improving sagebrush ecosystems. Compared with traditional disturbances – chemical, mechanical, and fire – strategic grazing with livestock offers several benefits. They include creating locally adapted cattle that can rejuvenate sagebrush steppe, which reduces costs associated with mechanical and chemical rejuvenation treatments and feeding cattle during winter, the major cost of ranch operation.

I evaluated the practicality of strategically timed …

Behavioral Mechanisms Of Pramipexole-Induced Impulsivity: Discrimination Processes Underlying Decision-Making, Patrick S. Johnson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Impulsivity represents a substantial and devastating cost to our economic, cultural, and physical prosperity. Using quantitative models of choice behavior, researchers are able to identify environmental conditions likely to promote impulsive decision-making. Such an approach is especially valuable in experimental efforts to better understand how drugs negatively affect choice in humans and nonhumans alike. For instance, pramipexole, a dopamine agonist medication prescribed for Parkinson’s disease, has been associated with reports of increased rates of impulsive behavior. By which behavioral mechanisms pramipexole achieves these effects is unknown and requires further investigation.

The research reported herein sought to clarify pramipexole’s effects on …

Groundwater Flow Demonstration Model Activities Gr. 6-12, Usu Extension

All Current Publications

By watching a demonstration with a groundwater model, students learn what groundwater is, how it moves, and how contaminants may enter groundwater

Preparing Animals For Moving Day, Beth Burritt

All Current Publications

Think for a moment how you react when you visit or move to a new place. Are you disoriented and maybe even a little frightened? Do you prefer to go to new places alone or with friends? Where do you eat?

Latent Classes Of Self-Reported Adolescent Depression In A Clinical In-Patient Population, Jonathan F. Doti

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The depressive disorders are among the most common mental health problems with substantial financial and quality-of-life costs. Depression has generated considerable debate as to the underlying structure/taxonomy and continues to be frequently debated. Adolescents who meet diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder often experience anxiety (and vice versa). Therefore, understanding the underlying structure of depression as well as the co-occurrence of anxiety in a population of adolescents adds to our conceptual understanding of these disorders and facilitates treatment clarity.

This investigation sought to investigate the following research questions for adolescents’ self-reported symptoms of depression, and self-reported symptoms of depression and …

Cross Flow Filtration For Mixed-Culture Algae Harvesting For Municipal Wastewater Lagoons, Misheka Wilson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The City of Logan Environmental Department has a goal to remove chemicals from the municipal wastewater that can cause algae growth in Cutler Reservoir that will impair use for recreation. The proposed plan to accomplish the goal is to grow algae within the 460-acre Logan Lagoon wastewater system, and then remove the algae from the treated wastewater that enters Cutler Reservoir. The collected algae may be used to produce biodiesel to fuel the City solid waste vehicles. The City will coordinate the development and implementation of this project with the assistance of the Utah State University Biological Engineering Department. The …

Ensuring Microbial Safety In Food Product/Process Development: Alternative Processing Of Meat Products And Pathogen Survival In Low-Salt Cheddar Cheese, Subash Shrestha

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Most outbreaks of foodborne illness in the United States occur as a result of improper food-handling and preparation practices in homes or food establishments. The lack of food-safety knowledge is one of the several reasons for this. However, researchers also suggest that food-operators and consumers with adequate food-safety knowledge, attitudes, and intentions do not always follow the food-safety recommendations because not all recommendations are easy to put into practice. Therefore, the first part of this study sought to establish safe alternative processing of meat products that can be easily practiced by food-operators and consumers. In Chapter 3, a novel method …

Increasing Student Voice And Empowerment Through Technology: The Perceptions Of Communication Apprehensive Latter-Day Saint (Lds) Seminary Students, Doran H. Christensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Many students find themselves unwilling or unable to participate vocally in traditional classroom settings. This study examines a group of LDS (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) seminary students who were hesitant to participate vocally in the classroom, but were highly involved in peer-to-peer communication through technology. The objective of this research was to determine the perceived value of technological implementations as it provides a potential forum for increased student participation.

As educators find and utilize teaching methods and resources that engage students more fully in the educational process, the students themselves become the primary beneficiaries. …

Wheat-Gold Currency How To Make Large-Scale Grain Storage Possible, David L. Garrett

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The United States has a National Oil Reserve but no food reserve. Just as the oil reserve is designed to buffer unforeseen disruptions in the critical supply, the nation should also have a food reserve for at least the same purpose.

Biochemical Characterization Of Sac9, A Putative Phosphoinositide Phosphatase In Arabidopsis Thaliana, And Its Role In Cellular Abnormalities, Almut H. Vollmer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Since the early colonization of land by fungi and plants some 700 million years ago, plants have been continuously faced with changes in their environment. Unlike animals, plants are not free to move about, and can therefore not evade many stress factors. How plants sense and respond to their environment has been of interest not only to scientific research but also in more practical applications such as agriculture.

Signals (such as light or salinity) from the outside of plant cells trigger a flow of information to the inside of the cell. The final target for most of the information is …

Increasing The Retention Of Lipid-Soluble Components In A Curd Matrix, Megan Tippetts

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Megan Tippetts, under the direction of Dr. Silvana Martini at Utah State University, proposes to demonstrate that it is possible to increase the retention of lipid-soluble components (e.g. vitamin D) in a curd matrix (e.g. Cheddar cheese). This project was coordinated with the Western Dairy Center for the initial phase of the project.

The initial phase used vitamin D₃ fortified emulsions stabilized with a dairy-based emulsifier. The objective was to determine if vitamin D₃ delivered in an emulsion form to the milk before cheesemake would have higher retention in the cheese versus vitamin D₃ oil added directly …

Mapping Fire Fuels Through Detection Of Canopy Biomass Loading In Juniper, Sagebrush, And Gambel Oak Communities, Sean Laroy Hammond

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Fire fuel inventory processes are customarily labor intensive endeavors. There is a growing need for an increase in accuracy of these inventories at a landscape level, due in large part to the ever increasing development of Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). More accurate inventory and mapping of wildland fuels will facilitate a more accurate simulation of wildfire behavior and analysis of fire behavior given a myriad of fuels treatments. This paper examines one approach to inventorying fire fuels at a landscape level and developing fuel model maps to be utilized in landscape level fire behavior simulations for use by land managers …

Do Attitudes About Spoiling Children Affect Attitudes Regarding What Infants Need For Early Social-Emotional Development, Kathleen Westover

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Infants that are raised in a warm loving environment have an increased probability of growing into responsible loving adults. Infants have the ability to make their needs known through different cues such as crying. Many parents do not understand how to respond appropriately to their infant’s cues. For instance many parents believe that if you pick up an infant every time they cry they will become spoiled. Researchers have studied the effects of responding appropriately to an infant. Infants who have their needs met when they demonstrate signs of distress learn that the world is a safe place for exploration. …

Social Organization And Decision Making In North American Bison: Implications For Management, Ryan A. Shaw

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Social organization varies widely among herbivores, and the level of social organization in bison is widely debated. I hypothesized that when mother-daughter relationships are allowed to develop, bison form long-term associations. In my study, 25 treatment mothers were selected from a free-ranging herd and kept together with their calves, while 25 control females had their calves forcefully removed. Treatment mothers and offspring had by far the greatest number of associations with a greater percentage of individuals with a half weight index (HWI) > 0.50. The strongest associations (HWI > 0.31) were among treatment mothers and their offspring. Moreover, these associations persisted over …

Systematics Of Multillidae (Hymenoptera) With Special Emphasis On Dasymutilla And Their Allies, Kevin A. Williams

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Velvet ants are solitary wasps that are excellent candidates as model organisms for studying evolutionary phenomena like mimicry and biogeography. They can also be used in conservation studies because of their local abundance. Their abundance, coupled with parasitic lifestyle on native pollinators, suggests they will be economically important as native pollinators are implemented more widely. Velvet ants, however, are rarely studied and their research potential is drastically hindered by lack of phylogenetic and taxonomic data and lack of interest in the scientific community. In this dissertation, I sought to overcome the hindrances to mutillid research with a holistic systematic research …

The Role Of Fine-Scale Habitat Associations In Structuring Spider Assemblages: Determinants Of Spatial Patterns In Community Composition, Stephanie M. Cobbold

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Ecologists strive to identify the mechanisms that drive the identity and abundance of species in different locations, because a better understanding of such factors enables them to better predict the effects of habitat modification on organisms, and to identify landscapes in which species are likely to benefit from conservation interventions. However, there is still no consensus on the mechanisms behind geographical variation in species diversity. The primary objective of this dissertation was to focus on spider assemblages to investigate how the fine-scale habitat associations of organisms may drive the composition of their communities at larger scales. Research was conducted in …

Spider Community Composition And Structure In A Shrub-Steppe Ecosystem: The Effects Of Prey Availability And Shrub Architecture, Lori R. Spears

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Habitat structure is cited as an important factor influencing organisms, but few studies investigate whether habitat structure interacts with other environmental variables to affect community dynamics. The purpose of this study was to determine, using field experiments, the importance of prey availability and shrub architecture on a spider community in northern Utah, USA. We were also interested in determining whether surrounding shrub architectures influence spider and prey responses.

Our results suggest that spider distribution, abundance, and biodiversity are influenced by shrub architecture. Shrub architecture influenced spiders both directly and indirectly via associated changes in prey availability. Spiders were also directly …

Planning And Management Modeling For Treated Wastewater Usage, Leila Ahmadi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Population growth, urbanization and water scarcity in many parts of the world has resulted in transfer of agricultural water to municipal and industrial users on one hand and excessive production of wastewater on the other hand. Due to importance of agriculture in food production and in the economy of many regions around the world,
water resources management and considering new water resources (such as treated wastewater) is critical.This study focused on analyzing the effects of population and
urban growth on water demand for various users and municipal wastewater quantity changes; as well as investigating the feasibility of wastewater reuse projects. …

Integration Of Nutrition Education Classes Into English As Second Language Classes For Refugees, Sarah Gunnell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Each year approximately 73,000 refugees are resettled into the United States because it is unsafe for them to return to their country of origin. Resettlement agencies help refugees learn about their new environment and provide assistance with housing, food, English classes, and job skills training. The goal of resettlement programs is to help refugees become self-sufficient as quickly as possible.

Recently resettled refugees face many challenges that make it difficult to eat healthy food. Transportation, English skills, and conflicting work hours are some of the barriers to receiving nutrition education. This research evaluated the integration of nutrition lessons into English …

Duckweed Uptake Of Phosphorus And Five Pharmaceuticals: Microcosm And Wastewater Lagoon Studies, Jonathan Bay Farrell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Utah State University students under the direction of Dr. R. Ryan Dupont, Environmental Engineering, have been enthusiastically involved in researching ways to improve wastewater treatment at the nearby Wellsville Municipal Sewage Lagoons. Wellsville City, along with several other Cache Valley communities, has experienced some problems with their current wastewater facility, particularly with phosphorus removal, which will become more difficult to address as the population increases in the future. Excessive phosphorus causes unappealing algae blooms in ponds and reservoirs while also posing a threat to local fish. Brittany Wilkes, Brett Housley, and Naho Orita first looked into reducing phosphorus discharge by …

Livestock Foraging Behavior In Response To Sequence And Interactions Among Alkaloids, Tannins, And Saponins, Tiffanny L. Jensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

During the past several decades, people worldwide have expressed a growing interest in reconstructing ecosystems to enhance ecological, economic, and social values. Yet, to do so we must find ways to enhance biodiversity, environmental quality and the sustainability of grazing lands. In all these instances, plants are the glue that binds soils, water, herbivores, and people. However, monocultures or simple grass-legume mixtures are not always ideal for intensively managed pastures due to their seasonality, susceptibility to pests, and monotony of plant nutrients and toxins. All plants contain so-called “toxins,” more appropriately referred to as secondary compounds, which are crucial in …

Exploring The Reliability And Validity Of The Experiential Discounting Task, Rochelle R. Smits

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Delay discounting is the devaluation of rewards that are delayed in time. This phenomenon was first studied with animals in controlled laboratory environments and later translated to human procedures. Though the decrease in value of outcomes as the delay to receipt increases is the same across species (money for humans, food for animals), a number of methodological concerns have been raised about the procedures used to study delay discounting in humans.

The Experiential Discounting Task (EDT) was recently developed in order to study delay discounting in humans in a way that is more similar to that used with animals. That …