Digital Commons Network^™

Hemp Research Underway At Utah State University, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

Scientists at Utah State University are studying cultivation practices to optimize the yield and quality of hemp for botanical medicines.

Review Of Records And Information Management, 2nd Edition, Joshua J. Zimmerman

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Records and Information Management, 2^nd Edition.

Building Community, Fostering Collaboration, And Engaging Bridge Program Students With A College’S Historical Archives, Russell Michalak, Monica D. T. Rysavy, Gregory C. Thompson

Journal of Western Archives

Similar to smaller archives, this college’s archives have not been traditionally accessible online. Two instructors sought to teach summer bridge program (Boot Camp) students basic archival practices and quantitatively measure their information literacy skills through using the Information Literacy Skills (ILA) and Students’ Perceptions of their Information Skills-Questionnaire (SPIL-Q) instruments (cite). Boot Camp students’ average perceived confidence with IL skills as assessed by the SPIL-Q instrument increased from 4.00 to 4.77 (+19.2%) on the post-training SPIL-Q. By adding the ILA and SPIL-Q instruments to the course curriculum, combined with end of course reflection questions, the instructors were able to quantitatively …

Poets, Pioneers, Sci Fi Authors And Arctic Explorers: Deaccessioning Audiovisual Materials In The Archives, Lisa E. Duncan, Trent Purdy

Journal of Western Archives

In 2017 the University of Arizona Libraries Special Collections (UALSC) conducted a survey of audiovisual materials in its collections. The Multimedia Archivist collected data on the content, quantity, format and condition of these materials. Deaccessioning collections was not a practice UALSC had routinely implemented in the past. However with the additional information collected during this survey obvious candidates for deaccessioning arose. The Multimedia Archivist was concerned about the long term preservation of these collections so it was imperative that UALSC take action. The backlog for the reformatting of audiovisual materials was large and the budget limited. The collections identified for …

Documenting Disasters: A Focus On Floods, Patricia J. Rettig

Journal of Western Archives

A more thorough understanding of disasters can help archivists assemble and acquire collections of depth that will be of wide use to scholars, survivors, and others. To investigate the broader context of disasters, the focus of this article is on natural disasters, looking at floods in particular, with the hope that the information can be applied to other tragedies. The article includes an in-depth examination of disaster studies literature of assistance to archivists, along with accounts of experiences working with flood collections.

Use Of Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (Sers) Probes To Detect Fatty Acid Receptor Activity In A Microfluidic Device, Han Zhang, Wei Zhang, Lifu Xiao, Yan Liu, Timothy A. Gilbertson, Anhong Zhou

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

In this study, 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (MBA)-Au nanorods conjugated with a GPR120 antibody were developed as a highly sensitive surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) probe, and were applied to detect the interaction of fatty acids (FA) and their cognate receptor, GPR120, on the surface of human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293-GPRR120) cultured in a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic device. Importantly, the two dominant characteristic SERS peaks of the Raman reporter molecule MBA, 1078 cm⁻¹ and 1581 cm⁻¹, do not overlap with the main Raman peaks from the PDMS substrate when the appropriate spectral scanning range is selected, which effectively avoided the …

Improved Production Of Antifungal Angucycline Sch47554 By Manipulating Three Regulatory Genes In Streptomyces Sp. Scc-2136, Ozkan Fidan, Riming Yan, Du Zhu, Jixun Zhan

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

Sch47554 and Sch47555 are two angucyclines with antifungal activities against various yeasts and dermatophytes from Streptomyces sp. SCC‐2136. The schgene cluster contains several putative regulatory genes. Both schA4 and schA21were predicted as the TetR family transcriptional regulators, whereas schA16shared significant similarity to the AraC family transcriptional regulators. Although Sch47554 is the major product of Streptomyces sp. SCC‐2136, its titer is only 6.72 mg/L. This work aimed to increase the production of this promising antifungal compound by investigating and manipulating the regulatory genes in the Sch47554 biosynthetic pathway. Disruption of schA4and schA16 led to a significant increase …

Harnessing Writing In The Wild: Practical Applications Of Affinity Spaces For English Language Instruction, Marta Dominika Halaczkiewicz

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In this article the author explores ways in which affinity spaces (Gee, 2004) can be adapted for English language instruction. Affinity spaces attract participants who enthusiastically share their passions, such as popular culture, video games, or literature. Researchers have found that affinity spaces contribute to improvements in reading (Steinkuehler, Compton‐Lilly, & King, 2010) and writing (Black, 2007) literacy of both native English speakers and English language learners. Previous research has explored applications of these spaces in language instruction, including incorporating topics from popular culture in courses and engaging students in online writing (Sauro & Sundmark, 2016). Other adaptations have used …

Analytical Models For 3-D Diffusion Of Ions From Salt-Contaminated Aggregates, Robert J. Thomas, Andrew D. Sorensen, Marc Maguire

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This article presents an analytical investigation of the mobility of salts from contaminated aggregates in concrete. Salt-contaminated aggregates may have varied effects on the mechanical properties and durability of concrete. These depend primarily on the mobility of salts within the concrete matrix. Existing diffusion-based models for the mobility of salts in concrete focus on their intrusion from external sources (e.g., chloride penetration from deicing salts and brines). Such problems are well described by the closed-form solution of Fick’s law for diffusion in one dimension from a continuous source. Salt-contaminated aggregates represent a case of diffusion from a finite internal source …

Curriculum Subcommittee Minutes, April 4, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Program Proposals

• Offering a Bachelor of Science in Human Experience Design and Interaction
• Discontinuing all K-6 degree programs leading to licensure
• Changing the specialization name in Literature and Writing to Creative Writing
• Restructuring Climate Adaptation Science
• Changing the department name from Geology to Geosciences

Semester Course Approval Reviews

Other

• Appoint committee chair for 2019-2020 academic year

Curriculum Subcommittee Agenda, April 4, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Program Proposals

• Offering a Bachelor of Science in Human Experience Design and Interaction
• Discontinuing all K-6 degree programs leading to licensure
• Changing the specialization name in Literature and Writing to Creative Writing
• Restructuring Climate Adaptation Science
• Changing the department name from Geology to Geosciences

Semester Course Approval Reviews

Other

• Appoint committee chair for 2019-2020 academic year

Educational Policies Committee Agenda, April 4, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Curriculum Subcommittee
• Academic Standards committee
• General Education Subcommittee
• Appoint committee chair for 2019-2020 academic year.

Educational Policies Committee Minutes, April 4, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Curriculum Subcommittee report
• Academic Standards Subcommittee report
• General Education Subcommittee report
• Appoint committee chair for 2019-2020 academic year

Navigating Award-Winning Nonfiction Children's Literature, Jennifer M. Smith, Marla K. Robertson

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

Nonfiction children's literature has changed in recent years, including an increase in organizational, design, and text features. The authors conducted a content analysis of 112 nonfiction award-winning and honor books from 2000 to 2018 to examine how the books have changed over time. The authors discuss the patterns, changes, and complexities found in nonfiction children's literature and provide text sets and guiding questions for classroom instruction and exploration of three features that appear in books in a variety of ways and may be challenging for students: atypical text, graphics with information, and supplemental expository information.

What Utah Fathers Can Do To Strengthen The Impact Of Their Daughters, Susan R. Madsen

Marketing and Strategy Faculty Publications

This idea sheet is based on a 2019 gathering of 25 fathers who are raising school-aged daughters in Utah. Knowing that fathers profoundly affect their daughters’ growth and development throughout the years, their discussion focused on culture, family dynamics, personal development, confidence and resilience, and education and career preparation.

Low-Cost, Open-Source, And Low-Power: But What To Do With The Data?, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Juan Caraballo, Maurier Ramírez, Anthony K. Aufdenkampe, David B. Arscott, Sara Geleskie Damiano

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

There are now many ongoing efforts to develop low-cost, open-source, low-power sensors and datalogging solutions for environmental monitoring applications. Many of these have advanced to the point that high quality scientific measurements can be made using relatively inexpensive and increasingly off-the-shelf components. With the development of these innovative systems, however, comes the ability to generate large volumes of high-frequency monitoring data and the challenge of how to log, transmit, store, and share the resulting data. This paper describes a new web application that was designed to enable citizen scientists to stream sensor data from a network of Arduino-based dataloggers to …

Relative Salt Tolerance Of Seven Japanese Spirea Cultivars, Yuxiang Wang, Liqin Li, Youping Sun, Xin Dai

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Spirea (Spiraea sp.) plants are commonly used in landscapes in Utah and the intermountain western United States. The relative salt tolerance of seven japanese spirea (Spiraea japonica) cultivars (Galen, Minspi, NCSX1, NCSX2, SMNSJMFP, Tracy, and Yan) were evaluated in a greenhouse. Plants were irrigated with a nutrient solution with an electrical conductivity (EC) of 1.2 dSmL1 (control) or saline solutions with an EC of 3.0 or 6.0 dSmL1 once per week for 8 weeks. At 8 weeks after the initiation of treatment, all japanese spirea cultivars irrigated with saline solution with an EC of 3.0 dSmL1 still exhibited good or …

Climate And Lawn Management Interact To Control C4 Plant Distribution In Residential Lawns Across Seven U.S. Cities, Tara L. E. Trammell, Diane E. Pataki, Christopher J. Still, James R. Ehleringer, Meghan L. Avolio, Neil Bettez, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Peter M. Groffman, Morgan Grove, Sharon J. Hall, James Heffernan, Sarah E. Hobbie, Kelli L. Larson, Jennifer L. Morse, Christopher Neill, Kristen C. Nelson, Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne, William D. Pearse, Et Al.

Ecology Center Publications

In natural grasslands, C₄ plant dominance increases with growing season temperatures and reflects distinct differences in plant growth rates and water use efficiencies of C₃ vs. C₄ photosynthetic pathways. However, in lawns, management decisions influence interactions between planted turfgrass and weed species, leading to some uncertainty about the degree of human vs. climatic controls on lawn species distributions. We measured herbaceous plant carbon isotope ratios (δ¹³C, index of C₃/C₄ relative abundance) and C₄ cover in residential lawns across seven U.S. cities to determine how climate, lawn plant management, or interactions between …

What We Talk About When We Talk About Digital Libraries: Ux Approaches To Labeling Online Special Collections, Dylan Burns, Alex J. Sundt, Darcy Pumphrey, Becky Thoms

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

Digital libraries, digital collections, digital archives—just a few of the common terms used to describe the output of large scale digitization efforts. While the term digital library is commonly used by librarians, the term itself reflects the specific disciplinary and technical environments in which the concept for a “digital library” was first imagined. Terminology has been well explored in academic libraries, but questions remain regarding how meaningful digital library and related terms are to the users of digitized archival collections. In 2016, a reverse category test was conducted with target users of Utah State University Libraries’ digital collections to determine …

Mathematica Program To Compute Klein Gordon Equation For Generic Black Holes, Brant Smith

Physics Capstone Projects

The goal of this project is to develop a program that will compute the Klein Gordon equation for generic Black Holes through the program Mathematica. This program will be available on Utah State websites for public usage. This project focuses on an understanding of General Relativity and more concretely on theoretical aspects of Black Holes. Developing the program begins with computing the Laplace equation in flat space to understand what it means to have empty space without a Black Hole. The Klein Gordon equation for a Schwarzschild Black Hole is then solved to show what happens once a static, non-rotating …

Rethinking Behavior - Spring 2019, Midwest Symposium For Leadership In Behavior Disorders

ReThinking Behavior Magazine

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

Spring 2018, Volume 2, Issue 3

Aesthetic Characteristics Of The Front Range: An Analysis Of Viewsheds Provided By Boulder Osmp Lands, Monica A. Dorning, Derek Van Berkel, Scott M. Beck, Emily J. Wilkins, Hongchao Zhang, Jordan W. Smith

All Current Publications

The city of Boulder’s Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) lands offer residents and visitors a variety of unique recreational, scenic, and cultural experiences that are often captured and shared publicly via social media. Given the diversity of OSMP lands, visitor experiences likely differ based on the aesthetic and biophysical features that can be viewed from these landscapes. For instance, the peaks of the iconic Flatirons provide visitors with different scenic views than the low-lying grasslands in the southeastern area of the city. Furthermore, visitor use and enjoyment of OSMP lands could be directly related to the landscape features that …

Whose Responsibility Is It? A Statewide Survey Of School Librarians On Responsibilities And Resources For Teaching Digital Citizenship, Abigail L. Phillips, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

In 2015 the Utah State Legislature passed H.B. 213, “Safe Technology Utilization and Digital Citizenship in Public Schools,” mandating that K–12 schools provide digital citizenship instruction. This study presents an exploratory endeavor to understand how school librarians in a state that adopted digital citizenship legislation engage with digital citizenship instruction and their perceptions of a school librarian’s role in providing this instruction. We conducted a statewide survey of Utah school librarians, including questions focusing on digital citizenship resources used, current instruction within the school, and inquiries about improvements to current instruction. School librarians expressed a desire to be more involved …

Self-Report Qris: Challenges With Validation, Jacob Esplin, Brionne Neilson, Ann Berhout Austin, Alexander T. Fronk

Human Development and Family Studies Faculty Publications

Research Findings. The current study looks at the validity of a voluntary self-report Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) and the characteristics of participating childcare centers. The self-reported quality indicators are compared to external ratings of quality (ECERSR) and correlated with variables such as size of center and number of state subsidy clients. ECERS-R scores were unrelated to capacity but significantly lower for centers with a large percentage of state supported clients. Regarding self-reported quality, centers frequently underreported their quality and what was claimed was not always externally validated, suggesting a self-report QRIS may not be an accurate assessment of …

The Utah Statesman, March 26, 2019, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Expression Of The High-Affinity K+ Transporter 1 (Pphkt1) Gene From Almond Rootstock ‘Nemaguard’ Improved Salt Tolerance Of Transgenic Arabidopsis, Amita Kaundal, Devinder Sandhu, Marco Duenas, Jorge F. S. Ferreira

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Soil salinity affects plant growth and development, which directly impact yield. Plants deploy many mechanisms to cope with, or mitigate, salt stress. One of such mechanism is to control movement of ions from root to shoot by regulating the loading of Na+ in the transpiration stream. The high-affinity K+ transporter 1 (HKT1) is known to play a role in the removal of Na+from the xylem and bring it back to the root. As almond is a salt-sensitive crop, the rootstock plays an important role in successful almond cultivation in salt-affected regions. We currently lack knowledge on the molecular mechanisms involved …

The Invisible Crime Of Disability Hate, Storee Powell

Blog Posts

The blog post is about disability hate.

Expression Of The High-Affinity K+ Transporter 1 (Pphkt1) Gene From Almond Rootstock ‘Nemaguard’ Improved Salt Tolerance Of Transgenic Arabidopsis, Amita Kaundal, Devinder Sandhu, Marco Duenas, Jorge F. S. Ferreira

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Soil salinity affects plant growth and development, which directly impact yield. Plants deploy many mechanisms to cope with, or mitigate, salt stress. One of such mechanism is to control movement of ions from root to shoot by regulating the loading of Na+ in the transpiration stream. The high-affinity K+ transporter 1 (HKT1) is known to play a role in the removal of Na+ from the xylem and bring it back to the root. As almond is a salt-sensitive crop, the rootstock plays an important role in successful almond cultivation in salt-affected regions. We currently lack knowledge on the molecular mechanisms …

Profile Of An E-Commerce Seller, Paul Hill, Laurel Farrer

All Current Publications

This fact sheet provides a profile of an E-commerce seller for a remote location, including job description, average salary skills and tools needed, and career path.

A New Method For Microsimulation Model Calibration: A Case Study Of I-710, Hossein Nasr Esfahani, Ziqi Song

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

As a part of the feasibility analysis of electric truck roadways for some of the major corridors near Los Angles, California, this paper aims to introduce and investigate a new method for microsimulation model calibration. The model of I-710 southbound was developed in VISSIM software and calibrated through two sets of data: O-D demand from planning models and field data which was consist of traffic flow and speed. Due to the lack of proper count data for on-ramps/off-ramps, the O-D demand was estimated via path flow estimator. After determining the calibration parameters, in an attempt to avoid unnecessary VISSIM’s time-consuming …