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Interpreting Covid-19 Deaths Among Nursing Home Residents In The Us: The Changing Role Of Facility Quality Over Time, Debasree Das Gupta, Uma Kelekar, Sidney C. Turner, Anupam A. Sule, Taya G. Jerman

Kinesiology and Health Science Faculty Publications

A report published last year by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) highlighted that COVID-19 case counts are more likely to be high in lower quality nursing homes than in higher quality ones. Since then, multiple studies have examined this association with a handful also exploring the role of facility quality in explaining resident deaths from the virus. Despite this wide interest, no previous study has investigated how the relation between quality and COVID-19 mortality among nursing home residents may have changed, if at all, over the progression of the pandemic. This understanding is indeed lacking given that …

Current Challenges In The Remote Sounding Of The Earth, Chris Barnet

The Characterization and Radiometric Calibration for Remote Sensing Annual Meeting (CALCON)

This workshop will focus on the topic of remote sounding of the Earth’s atmosphere using modern space-borne hyperspectral infrared (e.g., AIRS, IASI, CrIS) and microwave (e.g., AMSU, MHS, ATMS) instruments to extract information about the Earth’s atmosphere. This workshop will have three major sections. The first section will be a conceptual introduction to the mathematical methods of sounding, that is, radiative transfer and inversion (a.k.a. retrieval) of observations. The 2^nd section will highlight the NOAA-Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System (NUCAPS) and the Community Long-term Infrared Microwave Coupled Atmospheric Product System (CLIMCAPS) to illustrate the value and limitations of modern …

The Utah Statesman, August 30, 2021, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

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Human–Wildlife Interactions

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Strengthening Sisters: How Latter-Day Saint Missionary Service Prepares Women For Leadership, Sara Mcphee Lafkas, Wendy Fox-Kirk, Susan R. Madsen, Robbyn T. Scribner

Marketing and Strategy Faculty Publications

Women, especially those from highly religious societies, are underrepresented in professional and civic leadership positions. Considering how women's life experiences, especially from religious volunteer opportunities, can be reframed as training for broader leadership roles could help address this disparity. The potential for women to learn leadership skills from volunteer religious service is an overlooked, but possibly important, means of transferability to larger leadership roles. The current article describes a qualitative study of women's perceptions of leadership skills gained while serving as full-time volunteer missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during young adulthood. Respondents described perceptions of …

Data From: Yellow Air Day Advisory Study, Arthur J. Caplan

Browse all Datasets

Using a dataset consisting of daily vehicle trips, PM2.5 concentrations, along with a host of climactic control variables, we test the hypothesis that “yellow air day” advisories provided by the Utah Division of Air Quality resulted in subsequent reductions in vehicle trips taken during northern Utah’s winter-inversion seasons in the early 2000s. Winter inversions occur in northern Utah when climactic conditions are such that PM2.5 concentrations (derived mainly from vehicle emissions) become trapped in the lower atmosphere, leading to unhealthy air quality (concentrations of at least 35 µg/m3) over a span of what are called “red air days”. When concentrations …

The Impact Of Covid-19 On Utah Women And Work: Resilient Mindset And Wellbeing, Jared Hansen, Chris Hartwell, Susan R. Madsen

Marketing and Strategy Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2021 continues to impact all Utahns’ daily lives. Nationally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, the Federal Reserve Bank, and sources such as the Wall Street Journal continue to report that women’s employment and careers have been disproportionately impacted during this time. Utah has seen similar negative impacts on working women. For example, the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah reported that from 2019 to 2020, jobs held by women declined at a rate more than double that of men, and unemployment rose more for females than males.

The Intersection Of Cultural Context And Research Encounter: Focus On Interviewing In Qualitative Research, Rebecca Yvonne Bayeck

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

This article discusses the influence of the cultural context on the interview process. With literature demonstrating the role of spatial context on interviews, the article contends that similar consideration should be given to cultural contexts of research studies. Focusing on the cultural context where the interview takes place and the interactions during the interview can help researchers understand and analyze interview material. Interview forms such as conversation/interview bombing emerged from the interaction of cultural context with the interview process. This points to the need for qualitative researchers to explore how the cultural context shapes their research encounter. Such focus will …

Association Between Financial Education, Affective And Cognitive Financial Knowledge, And Financial Behaviors, Lucy M. Delgadillo, Yoon Lee

Applied Sciences, Technology and Education Faculty Publications

Using data from the 2018 National Financial Capability Study, this paper examined the relationship between financial education participation and affective and cognitive financial knowledge. Involvement in financial education yielded statistically significant associations between affective and cognitive domains. The results showed that participation in financial education was associated with both cognitive and affective financial knowledge as well as long-term financial behaviors. The findings supported the case for life-long learning of financial education for young adults, Blacks and Hispanics, and women. One important implication was the need to include both the affective and cognitive domains when teaching or researching financial education.

Machine Learning As A Tool For Wildlife Management And Research: The Case Of Wild Pig-Related Content On Twitter, Lauren M. Jaebker, Hailey E. Mclean, Stephanie A. Shwiff, Keith M. Carlisle, Tara L. Teel, Alan D. Bright, Aaron M. Anderson

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are a non-native, invasive species that cause considerable damage and transmit a variety of diseases to livestock, people, and wildlife. We explored Twitter, the most popular social media micro-blogging platform, to demonstrate how social media data can be leveraged to investigate social identity and sentiment toward wild pigs. In doing so, we employed a sophisticated machine learning approach to investigate: (1) the overall sentiment associated with the dataset, (2) online identities via user profile descriptions, and (3) the extent to which sentiment varied by online identity. Results indicated that the largest groups of online …

Rf Cables: The Overlooked Satellite Component, Andrew Kurzrok, Maria Calia

Small Satellite Conference

In comparison to the difficult work of payload design and system integration, specifying the correct RF cables seems all-too simple. A passive microwave component, the purpose of an RF cable is simply to transport an analog signal from one physical location on the satellite to another.

However, RF cabling design decisions can mean the difference between mission success and failure. RF cables can represent a potential weak link in overall system design because they are mechanically and electrically exposed. All too often, we find engineers have specified RF cables that either do not optimize for system performance or create mission …

A Look Into User's Privacy Perceptions And Data Practices Of Iot Devices, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen, Apoorva Chauhan, M.A. Manazir Ahsan, Huzeyfe Kocabas

Computer Science Student Research

Purpose: With the rapid deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, it has been essential to address the security and privacy issues through maintaining transparency in data practices. The prior research focused on identifying people’s privacy preferences in different contexts of IoT usage, and their mental models of security threats. However, there is a dearth in existing literature to understand the mismatch between user’s perceptions and the actual data practices of IoT devices. Such mismatches could lead users unknowingly sharing their private information, exposing themselves to unanticipated privacy risks. We aim to identify these mismatched privacy perceptions in our work. …

Satellite Constellations - 2021 Industry Survey And Trends, Erik Kulu

Small Satellite Conference

Large satellite constellations are becoming reality. Starlink has launched over 1600 spacecraft in 2 years since the launch of the first batch, Planet has launched over 450 in total, OneWeb over 200 and counting. Every month new constellation projects are announced, some for novel applications.

First part of the paper focuses on the industry survey of 251 commercial satellite constellations. Statistical overview of applications, form factors, statuses, manufacturers, founding years is presented including early stage and cancelled projects. Large number of commercial entities have launched at least one demonstrator satellite, but operational constellations have been much slower to follow than …

A Wave Physics Approach To Electronically Steerable Antennas, Jean-Baptiste Gros, Vladislav Popov, Mikhail Odit, Geoffroy Lerosey

Small Satellite Conference

Electronically steerable antennas, that are compact, thin, light and contain no mechanical parts, are being more and more used for satcom applications on the ground, notably owing to the fast development of mega constellations; yet their use is still very limited on board. Indeed, all designs up to date rely on the same old concept, phased arrays, namely, a large number of sources that are phased matched to point in various directions. These can be passive, in the sense that a common feed is used to radiate through many radiators, or active in which case each tiny emitter contains its …

In-Flight Reconfiguration With System-On-Module Based Architectures For Science Instruments On Nanosatellites, Tom Neubert, Heinz Rongen, Uwe Clemens, Egon Zimmermann, Stefan Van Waasen, Martin Kaufmann, Martin Riese, Friedhelm Olschewski

Small Satellite Conference

For science payloads on nanosatellite missions, there is a great interest in cost-effective, reliable and state-of-the-art computing performance. Highly integrated system architectures combine reconfigurable System-on-Chip (SoC) devices, memory and peripheral interfaces in a single System-on-Module (SoM) and offer low resource requirements regarding power and mass, but moderate to high processing power capabilities. The major advantages of these architectures are flexibility, (re)programmability, modularity and module reuse.

However, it is a challenge to use SoM with COTS based memories devices in a radiation sensitive environment. In order to achieve these requirements, mitigation measures, such as the use of redundant or alternative memory …

Return To Sender: Lessons Learned From Rocket Lab’S First Recovery Mission, Matt Darley, Peter Beck

Small Satellite Conference

On November 20th, 2020, Rocket Lab successfully re-entered the first stage of its Electron launch vehicle, successfully demonstrating a soft water landing under parachute. The ‘Return to Sender’ mission was a major milestone in Rocket Lab’s program to make the Electron rocket a reusable launch vehicle for small satellites. The mission followed a robust test program in early 2020 and late 2019 that spanned parachute testing, mid-air helicopter capture tests, and the guided re-entry of two Electron vehicles on prior commercial missions.

This paper discusses the lessons learned from the ground-breaking mission and explores the development of Electron’s reusability systems …

Small Launchers In A Pandemic World - 2021 Edition Of The Annual Industry Survey, Carlos Niederstrasser

Small Satellite Conference

Even with the challenges posed by the world-wide COVID pandemic, small vehicle "Launch Fever" has not abated. In 2015 we first presented this survey at the AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, and we identified twenty small launch vehicles under development. By mid-2021 five new vehicles in this class were operational, 41 were identified under development, and a staggering 58 more were potential new entrants. Some are spurred by renewed government investment in space, such as what we see in the U.K. Others are new commercial entries from unexpected markets such as China. All are inspired by the success of SpaceX …

Determining The Novel Pathogen Neodothiora Populina As The Causal Agent Of The Aspen Running Canker Disease In Alaska, Loretta M. Winton, Gerard C. Adams, Roger W. Ruess

Aspen Bibliography

Neodothiora populina Crous, G.C. Adams & Winton was determined to be a new pathogen of trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides) growing in Alaska, based on completion of Koch’s Postulates in replicated forest and growth chamber inoculation trials. The pathogen is responsible for severe damage and widespread rapid mortality of sapling to mature aspen (≥ 80 years) in the boreal forests of interior Alaska, due to large diffuse annual (1–2 years) cankers. Isolation of the pathogen was challenging, and identification based on cultural characters was difficult. Fruiting bodies were not found on wild diseased trees, but erumpent pycnidia were found …

Cu-Enhanced 3-D Printed Fuels For Green Smallsat Propulsion, Stephen A. Whitmore, Kurt C. Olsen, Victoria L. Coverstone, Cagri Y. Oztan

Small Satellite Conference

The Propulsion Research Laboratory at Utah State University (USU) has recently developed a promising High-Performance "Green" Hybrid Propulsion (HPGHP) technology that derives from the novel electrical breakdown property of certain 3-D printed like acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). This electrical breakdown property has been engineered into a proprietary, power-efficient system that can be cold-started and restarted with a high degree of reliability. One of the issues associated with ABS as a propellant is its low burn rate. It is well documented in technical literature that hybrid rocket systems generally have fuel regression rates that are typically 25-30% lower than solid fuel …

Ground Demonstration Of New Robotic Technologies For On Orbit Servicing To Enable Maneuver Without Regret For Small Sat Missions Beyond Geo, Atif M. Qureshi, Andy Mcevoy, Kodie Artner

Small Satellite Conference

In this paper we will discuss the demonstration of on-orbit servicing capabilities by a new robotic manipulator, designed from the bottom up to fit within the Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) constraints and budget expectations of smallsat missions. There is a recognized need for extreme mobility to meet the space domain awareness goals of the U.S. government in cis-lunar space, and on orbit servicing is the key to establishing this capability. In addition, a small spacecraft profile is critical, with transportation costs particularly high beyond earth orbit. In the past, robotic systems capable of on-orbit servicing have resulted from years …

Life Paths To Leading Systems-Level Change: Higher Education’S Pitfalls And Potential, Roslynn Brain Mccann, Kaitlyn Spangler, Andrew Millison

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Global protests calling for accelerated climate change action, social justice, and racial equity have been shifting long- standing conversations and policies from local to national scales. Yet many activists can become psychologically drained by the frustration and loss of hope in fighting against structural oppression. This study was comprised of semi-structured qualitative interviews spanning across the United States with 25 leaders and practitioners in permaculture design, a solutions-based ecological design framework to enact positive, systems-level environmental and social change. The objective was to better understand their life paths toward such work. The research showed that higher education is not adequately …

Mejore Su Salud, Celina Wille, Laura Licon, Laura Paola Johnson, Anny Galvin

All Current Publications

Create Better Health/Mejore su salud es una versión cultural adaptada de Create Better Health evaluada por expertos y escrita en español, Create Better Health es un currículo del programa Create Better Health Utah SNAP-Ed originalmente adaptado de Creates: Essentials in Creating Family Meals por Debra Christofferson, M.D.A., R.D., C.D. Los miembros del equipo de publicación de la versión en inglés son: Casey Coombs, M.S., R.D., C.D., subdirectora de Create Better Health Utah; Jaqueline Neid-Avila, M.D.A., R.D., C.D .; y editores / colaboradores Heidi LeBlanc, M.S., directora de Create Better Health Utah.

The World’S First Commercial Debris Removal Demonstration Mission, Gene Fujii, Seita Iizuka, Carolyn Belle, Mark Muktoyuk

Small Satellite Conference

Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the orbital environment has become increasingly congested. Of the 5,550 satellites currently orbiting the Earth, only 2,700 are operational, and they are joined in orbit by millions of objects of space debris. Astroscale has developed a robotic servicing spacecraft and suite of technology to address this challenge by removing debris and defunct satellites from orbit; the smallsat servicer mission End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) launched on March 22, 2021, will demonstrate these new and innovative space debris docking and removal technologies on orbit. The ELSA-d mission includes both a smallsat servicer …

Autonomous Planning System (Aps) For An Onboard Tcped Pipeline, Ken Center, Ella Herz, Evan Sneath, Sam Gagnard, Robert Glissmann, Rey Juarez, Neil Dhingra

Small Satellite Conference

As satellites and spacecraft grow in number and operate farther from Earth, there is an emerging need for increased autonomy via onboard decision making that is independent of ground stations but allows for collaboration between teams of assets. Such autonomy will relieve the burden on human operators, enable faster responses to dynamic events, and reduce communications between orbital assets and ground stations. Orbit Logic’s Autonomous Planning System (APS) is flexible and customizable onboard software that enables teamed autonomy through the use of Tasking, Collection, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (TCPED) pipelines onboard the satellites. Its small computational/memory footprint makes it especially …

Design And Testing Of Autonomous Distributed Space Systems, Nicholas Cramer, Daniel Cellucci, Caleb Adams, Adam Sweet, Mohammad Hejase, Jeremy Frank, Richard Levinson, Sergei Gridnev, Lara Brown

Small Satellite Conference

Distributed Space Systems (DSS) are an emerging class of mission designs that enable new scientific and commercial opportunities. In order to enable those new opportunities, these systems will need to have significantly expanded autonomous capabilities compared to their single-spacecraft predecessors. In this paper, we present Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy (DSA) project, a payload on NASA’s Starling spacecraft experiment. We first describe a step-by-step process for characterizing what features are needed in an autonomous DSS, and show how this process applied to DSA. We then describe the Starling mission, a four-spacecraft swarm hosting multiple DSS payloads. We then describe DSA, which will …

Coordinating Development Of The Swarm-Ex Cubesat Swarm Across Multiple Institutions, Rohil Agarwal, Braden Oh, David Fitzpatrick, Anton Buynovskiy, Shane Lowe, Celvi Lisy, Anargyros Kriezis, Berwin Lan, Zoe Lee, Austen Thomas, Brodie Wallace, Emanuele Costantino, Grant Miner, Jeffrey Thayer, Simone D'Amico, Kristina Lemmer, Whitney Lohmeyer, Scott Palo

Small Satellite Conference

The Space Weather Atmospheric Reconfigurable Multiscale Experiment (SWARM-EX) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored CubeSat mission distributed across six colleges and universities in the United States. The project has three primary goals: (1) contributing to aeronomy and space weather knowledge, (2) demonstrating novel engineering technology, and (3) advancing higher education. The scientific focus of SWARM-EX is to study the spatial and temporal variability of ion-neutral interactions in the equatorial Ionosphere-Thermosphere (I-T) region. Since the mission consists of three spacecraft operating in a swarm, SWARM-EX will take in-situ measurements of the neutral and ion composition on timescales of less than …

Oresat: A Student Team-Based Approach To An Inexpensive, Open, And Modular (1-3u) Cubesat Bus, Andrew Greenberg, David Lay, Glenn Lebrasseur, Emma Levy, Ryan Medick, Hayden Reinhold, Risto Rushford, Miles Simpson

Small Satellite Conference

Most educational CubeSat projects have the same dilemma: not enough money to buy capable COTS hardware, and not enough internal experience (even with teams of students) to build reliable, and inexpensive systems in-house. We present a middle road to the “COTS vs DIY” conundrum: the OreSat bus. OreSat is a fully open source 1U – 3U CubeSat system meant to be built, modified, and flown by student teams. It’s specifically designed to be put together by resource-constrained student teams with “gaps” in their interdisciplinary breadth, as most teams have. OreSat has everything you would expect from a CubeSat system: a …

The Cuava-1 Cubesat—A Pathfinder Satellite For Remote Sensing And Earth Observation, Xueliang Bai, Iver H. Cairns, Patrick Oppel, Youngho Eun, Anthony Monger, Christopher H. Betters, Sergio Leon-Saval, Joe Khachan, James Harpur, Xiaofeng Wu, Yijun Huang, Byung Hoon Cho, Chung Hang Chu, Alex Gaoshan Lian, David Byrne, Flynn Bryant, Daniel Roger Hussey, Mitchell William Galletly, Ada Jiexin Song, Andrew G. Dempster, Joon Wayn Cheong, Ediz Cetin, Tong Wu, Oliver Diessel, Jason Held, Andreas Antoniades, Alix Murdoch, James Unicomb, Paris Michaels, Paris Michaels, Paris Michaels

Small Satellite Conference

In this paper we report a 3U CubeSat named CUAVA-1 designed by the ARC Training Centre for CubeSats, UAVs, and Their Applications (CUAVA). CUAVA, funded by the Australian Research Council, aims to train students, develop new instruments and technology to solve crucial problems, and help develop a world-class Australian industry in CubeSats, UAVs, and related products. The CUAVA-1 project is the Centre’s first CubeSat mission, following on from the 2 Australian satellites INSPIRE-2 and UNSW-EC0 CubeSats that launched in 2017. The mission is designed to serve as a precursor for a series of Earth observations missions and to demonstrate new …

Design Simulation And Testing Of A Custom Coprocessor For Cubesatellites In Leo, Justin Heimerl, Allen Spain, Alexandria Lin, David Cotton

Small Satellite Conference

An arms race in the last decade between computing performance and power-reduction has led to accelerated progress in both hardware and software, provisioning fast, efficient algorithms and small, capable, low-power hardware devices. Meanwhile, small satellites have become increasingly important in defense and commercial missions, due to their low resource consumption in terms of power, space, and cost. Improvements in computer vision algorithms and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) edge computing introduce a means of addressing challenges posed for spacecraft in the realm of autonomy and perception. The University of Georgia’s Small Satellite Research Laboratory has been working to address these obstacles in …

Constellation Design Of Remote Sensing Small Satellite For Infrastructure Monitoring In India, Roshan Sah, Raunak Srivastava, Kaushik Das

Small Satellite Conference

A constellation of remote sensing small satellite system has been developed for infrastructure monitoring in India by using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Payload. The low earth orbit (LEO) constellation of the small satellites is designed in a way, which can cover the entire footprint of India. Since India lies a little above the equatorial region, the orbital parameters are adjusted in a way that inclination of 36 degrees and RAAN varies from 70-130 degrees at a height of 600 km has been considered. A total number of 4 orbital planes are designed in which each orbital plane consisting 3 small …