Digital Commons Network^™

User-Friendly Investing Apps Granting Novice Access To Stock Exchanges— Overvaluing Stocks, Sami Ahmed

Student Research Symposium

The internet and smartphones have decreased information asymmetry in the stock market. More and more 'regular' people can trade securities(stocks) at their fingertips. With their user-friendly trading platforms, apps like Robinhood let individuals buy and sell stocks with minor barriers. Increased market participation has been good for markets as prices continue to rise and more capital is available. However, most retail investors lack the proper knowledge and are far more susceptible to herding behavior fueled by internet speculators. Stocks experience artificial inflation in prices as retail investors' demand increases. Traditional investors use a wide variety of information available that most …

Faculty Senate Executive Committee Agenda, April 12, 2021, Utah State University

Faculty Senate & Faculty Senate Executive Committee

• EPC Monthly Report – April 1, 2021
• Committee on Committees on Annual Report
• Calendar Committee Annual Report
• Recruitment and Retention Annual Report
• Review Code Status | Faculty Code Rewrite
• Faculty Senate President Elect

Using Handmade Cloning To Reduce Oocyte Mitochondria In Reconstructed Embryos, Laura Adams

Student Research Symposium

Mitochondrial heteroplasmy, the presence of more than one population of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in one cell, can cause metabolic issues and reduced ATP synthesis, even at relatively low levels. The presence of this condition in somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) embryos likely contributes to reduced prenatal and postnatal viability: the majority of the oocyte’s mitochondria is still present at the time of nuclear transfer, as well as through any further embryonic development post-fusion and activation. Though the somatic cell also contributes its mitochondria (which can successfully communicate with its nucleus), the oocyte’s mitochondria compose a greater proportion of the total …

Ubiquitous Augmented Reality Could Hold Implications For Health, Data Privacy, Societal Norms, Madelyn Gardner

Student Research Symposium

Common use of augmented reality (AR) technologies is emerging on the tech horizon. AR is the virtualized mixture of real-world objects and locations with superimposed computer-generated imagery. Continuous developments have made AR technologies more accessible and will continue to do so in the coming years. There’s much to look forward to with the advent of sophisticated and accessible AR technologies, but the adverse health effects, heightened privacy issues, and increased social media consequences need to be addressed prior to ubiquitous AR application. This research paper looks at adverse health threats potentiated in the use of AR including epilepsy, adaptation phenomena, …

Isolation & Identification Of Bacteria From The Rhizosphere Of Native Plant, Ceanothus Velutinus, And Their Potential As Biofertilizers, Katherine Webb, Hayden Johns

Student Research Symposium

Due to the ever-changing climate, plants face stressors that limit their growth. Therefore it is vital to find new ways to protect plants from biotic and abiotic stressors such as pathogen infection, drought, heavy metal poisoning, and salinity. With an increasing population, limiting the effects of stress on plant growth and development for agriculture is vital. One approach to this is focusing on beneficial plant-microbe interaction, such as plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR). These bacteria are found in the rhizosphere- the soil that is attached to the roots of a plant. Various PGPRs share a symbiotic relationship with plants and help …

Anxiety's Relationship With Taking Conflict Personally And Fear Of Missing Out, Bryant Ellis, Alex Crandall, Reed Ericson

Student Research Symposium

The aim of this investigation was to test the links between two interpersonal communication factors (i.e., fear of missing out, and taking conflict personally) and generalized anxiety. Taking conflict personally (TCP), or an individual’s tendency to perceive conflict as a personal attack (Hample & Dallinger, 1995), leads to anxious thought surrounding conflict and one’s relationships with others. Similarly, having a Fear of Missing Out (FoMO), or apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent, can result in a person feeling anxiety or experiencing a sense of overall negative well-being (Przybylsk et al, 2013). Grounded in …

Study Of Photonic Crystals By Microwaves, Garron Brian

Student Research Symposium

Photonic crystals (PCs) are novel constructions that enable a wide range of electromagnetic phenomena and applications. Specifically, PCs are periodic dielectric structures that frequently exhibit extraordinary properties such as a photonic bandgap wherein the lattice prohibits the propagation of certain EM waves and negative index of refraction where the refracted wave bends in the same side as the incident wave. We constructed multiple photonic crystals consisting of aluminum and acetal rods arranged into 2D lattices in air. The lattice constant was be 1.25 in and we used microwaves of 10.5 GHz. By measuring the output intensity of microwaves passing through …

Microalgae Growth For Wastewater Remediation And Biofuel Production, Tallon Beckstrom, Jacob Watkins, Shaylynn Cannon

Student Research Symposium

Excess nutrient loading due to phosphorus and nitrates is a ubiquitous problem in water treatment facilities across the United States. While these compounds are valuable commodities in fertilizers, they can be harmful to humans when consumed in high concentrations and lead to toxic algae blooms and eutrophication when released into the environment. Established treatment methods include bacterial reduction, biomass uptake, and chemical processes like magnesium spiking to encourage struvite precipitation. Previous studies have noted that algae are a particularly promising tool for phosphorus and nitrate removal in wastewater through mechanisms such as struvite formation (Hillman, 2020). In addition, studies have …

Rising U.S. Media Distrust Presents Increased Cyber Threats To Mainstream News Media, Max Roberts

Student Research Symposium

Public trust in the mainstream news media is at record lows in the U.S. A number of trends — including highly targeted disinformation campaigns, the increased spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories online, and political polarization — have contributed to the disruption of the American information landscape and increased skepticism of the mainstream news media as credible sources for information. As these weaponized narratives continue to alter how Americans gather their information and deteriorate public trust in the established news media, the industry’s struggle to address the evolving threats in cyberspace may further weaken the trust of its audiences and …

Antimicrobial Activity Of Artemisia Tridentata, David Suisse, Kayla Suisse

Student Research Symposium

Many plants and fungi secrete substances to adjust their environment to be more favorable to their needs. These secondary metabolites include chemicals emitted to kill other plants or microbes that would otherwise endanger or compete with the original plant. One such example is that of penicillin—extracted from a mold by Alexander Fleming in the 1920s. Fleming found that the growth of staphylococci, a bacterium, which shared the plate with the mold was inhibited. Penicillin, a secondary metabolite created by the mold, quickly became a well-known and useful antimicrobial agent and an ingredient in many drugs. Aspirin has a similar, if …

Rising Popularity Of Fractional Share Trading Endangers Stability Of U.S. Exchange Markets, Yana Bogoev

Student Research Symposium

The democratization of investing, through brokerages that provide fractional share trading options may highlights growth trends in the stock market, however, exposes the market’s existing safety mechanisms to vulnerabilities. Fractional shares—a portion of an equity stocks of a company—cannot be traded on the open market and must be sold through major brokerages. As more people engage in trading on public stock markets, enhanced security measures in brokerages’ and within the exchanges’ systems will help ensure the stock exchanges’ security, as well as the stability of the U.S. economy. Insight on the existing regulation of fractional share trading on the market, …

Medicine And The Media, Baylee Dusenberry

Student Research Symposium

PROBLEM: The media has become a normalized part of American society. The use of media in reporting COVID-19 is a prime example of how media can impact a public's medical knowledge and opinion. The main concern: are people properly filtering the influx of information between evidence-based practices and medical opinion? With the accessibility of information comes a likelihood that the public isn't doing their part to fact-check what they're given. Inaccurate information can cause health issues among the public. STUDY DESIGN: The study design will be a representational online survey sent to American Adults ages 18 years and older. Univariate-ANOVA …

Isolation Of Halotolerant Bacteria From The Rhizosphere Of Ceanothus Velutinus May Lead To Contributions In Plant Health In Saline Conditions, Jacob Davis

Student Research Symposium

As global temperatures have been steadily rising in the past few decades, soil salinity has been steadily increasing in many parts of the world as well. This increase in salinity has proven detrimental and especially challenging for many plant species. The soil directly in contact with the roots of plants is known as the rhizosphere. The rhizosphere hosts plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR). PGPR plays a significant role in a plant's ability to deal with stressors such as drought, heavy metal contamination, and extreme cold temperatures. Native plants are known to show versatility to these stressors as well. One such native …

The Darknet And Financial Market Manipulation: Proliferating Cybercrime Tools Challenge Market Stability, Kaden Campbell

Student Research Symposium

Illegal resources accessed through the dark web can enable malicious actors an avenue to manipulate stock prices through the spread of disinformation, exploiting hacked accounts, and utilizing cyber-attacks. These illegal resources are surprisingly abundant on areas like the dark web, and if they are used in conjunction with the power of social media they posses the potential to drive significant change in stock prices. This could result in events similar to the Gamestop controversy in February – where the price of Gamestop was driven to unprecedented highs because of a Reddit forum. By leveraging these tools, actors can create similar …

Is Mitigation Of Drought Stress By Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles Driven By A Nano-Specific Mechanism Or Mitigation Of Micronutrient Deficiency?, Justin Deakin

Student Research Symposium

It has been reported that zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles (NPs) can promote drought tolerance in crops when used as soil amendments. However, many of these experiments were conducted in Zn-deficient growth media with no comparison to currently available Zn fertilization methods, making it unclear if the benefits from adding ZnO NPs were caused by a nano-specifc mechanism or simply by the mitigation of a micronutrient deficiency. A review of the literature shows that of 12 published experiments considering the effects of ZnO NPs on plant health, 5 out of 6 studies that did not include a comparison to currently available …

Nutrient Management: Heterotrophic Nitrification, Zac Mcclellan, Jaden Storrer, Anna Scribner, Jayce Bradley

Biological Engineering

The removal of nitrogen in the form of ammonia from wastewater is an important yet expensive step in treatment often done in two stages, typically by different autotrophic nitrifiers:

- Nitrification: Ammonia is converted to Nitrite and Nitrate.

- Denitrification: Nitrate is converted to nitrogen gas (N2)

Heterotrophic nitrifiers like Alcaligenes faecalis are able to perform both processes and reduce the two step treatment process to one.

Previously, experiments were performed on Alcaligenes faecalis in a synthetic wastewater environment to determine the kinetic constants for a substrate-dependent ammonia removal rate (Michaelis Mentin Kinetics).

Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending As An Elegy For Environmental Loss, Kirsten Barker

Student Research Symposium

The idea that music embodies meaning is largely accepted and uncontroversial. However, how this relationship is articulated is complicated and contributes to music’s ability to project different meanings, especially according to time and place. Such is the case with the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’s romance for violin and orchestra, The Lark Ascending (1920). This work contains both musical and extra musical traits that can be interpreted as pastoral and nostalgic. Understanding how these meanings interact through time provides the opportunity for reinterpretation the work in the present through an environmentally-oriented framework. Previous research regarding The Lark has specifically focused …

Anion–Anion Interactions In Aerogen-Bonded Complexes. Influence Of Solvent Environment, Anna Grabarz, Mariusz Michalczyk, Wiktor Zierkiewicz, Steve Scheiner

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Ab initio calculations are applied to the question as to whether a AeX₅− anion (Ae = Kr, Xe) can engage in a stable complex with another anion: F−, Cl−, or CN−. The latter approaches the central Ae atom from above the molecular plane, along its C₅ axis. While the electrostatic repulsion between the two anions prevents their association in the gas phase, immersion of the system in a polar medium allows dimerization to proceed. The aerogen bond is a weak one, with binding energies less than 2 kcal/mol, even in highly polar aqueous solvent. The complexes are …

The Impact Of Covid-19 On Utah Women And Work: Changes, Burnout, & Hope, Jared Hansen, Chris Hartwell, Susan R. Madsen

Marketing and Strategy Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2021 has impacted all Utahns in profound ways. Yet, a host of national and global reports have argued that women’s employment and careers have been disproportionately impacted during this time. For example, a McKinsey & Company and Lean In report stated that women are more likely to have been laid off or furloughed, leading to greater financial instability and stalled careers. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research reported that women, and particularly women of color, have unduly experienced job losses and have had greater struggles with managing paid work, caregiving responsibilities, and other types of unpaid …

Canadian Families’ Decisions Of Communication Options* For Children Who Are Deaf Or Hard Of Hearing: An Initial Exploration, Holly F. Pedersen, Suzanne Nichol, Nicole Swartwout, Daniel R. Conn

Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention

Communication is an essential aspect of human interaction and helps connect us to the people around us. The majority of children who are deaf or hard of hearing are born to hearing parents who are likely unfamiliar with hearing loss. These parents are then asked to make critical decisions about communication options for their children. It can be a challenging process but one that needs to be done quickly in order to capture the critical language development period. Little research has explored the factors associated with parents’ decisions about communication options for their children who are deaf or hard of …

Visual Reinforcers Designed For Children With Developmental Disabilities, Angela Yarnell Bonino, Amanda Hemann, Deborah Mood, Emily Kay, Elizabeth S. Pancoast, Kristin K. Sommerfeldt

Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention

A library of visual reinforcers has been created to facilitate visual reinforcement audiometry (VRA) testing in children with developmental disabilities. The library includes 45 reinforcer sets – photos or videos grouped by a common theme – that were created based on commonly reported interests of children with developmental disabilities. Each reinforcer set contains a minimum of 20 unique photo or video files that can be download in two formats: one for commercially available VRA reinforcement systems and another for a custom setup. The library is freely available for download online under a Creative Commons License (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International …

Diagnostic Infant Abr Testing Via Telehealth: A Survey Of Professional Opinions And Current Barriers, Haley B. Prins, Kimberly A. Peters, Douglas P. Sladen

Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention

Purpose: To examine the barriers to Washington State audiologists adopting telehealth as a means of improving accessibility to diagnostic audiology for infants.

Methods: A Qualtrics survey was distributed via e-mail and social media. Survey participants were required to be audiologists practicing in Washington State. The sixteen-question survey consisted of topics related to participant demographics, previous telehealth experience, and barriers to the use of telehealth for diagnostic infant auditory brainstem response (ABR) testing. A total of 17 participants completed the survey.

Results: Survey responses indicated that Washington State audiologists are largely neutral or disagree with telehealth being an effective means of …

Evaluation Of A Group Music Intervention To Support School-Readiness Skills In Preschool Children With Hearing Loss, Glynnis Dubois, Joanne Deluzio, Michael Thaut, Stephanie Nixon

Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention

Although children with hearing loss are now often integrated into mainstream classrooms, many do not begin school with age-appropriate school-readiness skills. Traditional therapies in early listening and spoken language programs rarely focus on developing the social skills, executive functions, and motor abilities needed for the typical classroom environment of friends, academics, and play. The question, then, is how to incorporate group activities into traditional therapies in order to build skills in these areas, and whether or not the use of music and its social aspects could support this. A quasi randomized, group, facilitated, music intervention was conducted to help support …

Preventing Teen Dating Violence And Promoting Healthy Dating Relationships Among Adolescents Ages 12-18: An Evidence-Based Practice Guide For School Social Workers, Rachel N. Waddell

Evidence-Based Social Work Practice Guide Series

This EBP guide is to help school social workers become familiar with the prevalence of teen dating violence, and learn some of the elements of unhealthy teen relationships. It also provides some guidance in promoting healthy relationship skills for adolescents ages 12-18, while promoting bystander intervention in teen dating violence. It can also be used as a resource for community members, families, and teens.

The Utah Statesman, April 5, 2021, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Past Perceptions, Present Usage: Latinx Students And Academic Libraries, Niki S. Fullmer, Brittany Paloma Fiedler

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Over the last two decades, the population of Latinx students enrolled in higher education has increased by 142%, but they are still underrepresented overall. According to 2015 United States census data, only 16% of Hispanic adults have a Bachelor’s degree or higher compared to 54% of Asian Americans, 36% of (non-Hispanic) white people, and 23% of Black people. The needs of Latinx students in higher education are obviously not being met. Academic libraries have long seen themselves as integral to student success, but there is little research about how they are (or are not) serving Latinx students specifically. The IFLA/UNESCO …

Rethinking Behavior - Spring 2021, Midwest Symposium For Leadership In Behavior Disorders

ReThinking Behavior Magazine

A magazine for professionals serving children and youth with behavioral needs.

Spring 2022, Volume 4, Issue 3

The Value Of Instructor Interactivity In The Online Classroom, Greg Lucas, Gary Cao, Shaunna Waltemeyer, B. Jean Mandernach, Helen G. Hammond

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

As the number of faculty teaching online continues to grow, so has the interest in and understanding of the role of instructor interaction in the online classroom. Online education provides a unique platform in which course design and teaching are independent factors. Understanding faculty and student perceptions about the shifting role of instructor interaction in the online classroom can provide insight on policies and procedures that can support student learning through student-instructor interaction. Participants included faculty and students responding to an anonymous online survey who indicated “online” as their primary mode of teaching. Three key “value” themes emerged as significantly …

Full Issue: Journal On Empowering Teaching Excellence, Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The full Spring 2021 issue (Volume 5, Issue 1) of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The Utah Statesman, March 29, 2021, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.