Digital Commons Network^™

The Utah Statesman, March 13, 2018, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Electrolyzer Design For Flexible Decoupled Water Splitting And Organic Upgrading With Electron Reservoirs, Wei Li, Nan Jiang, Bo Hu, Xuan Liu, Fuzhan Song, Guanqun Han, Taylor J. Jordan, Tanner B. Hanson, T. Leo Liu, Yujie Sun

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

The Bigger Picture

Electrocatalytic water splitting is a green approach to producing clean H₂ fuel, especially when it is driven by renewable energy sources. Conventional water electrolysis always produces H₂ and O₂ simultaneously under corrosive acidic or alkaline conditions with large voltage inputs, posing safety concerns of H₂/O₂ mixing. Therefore, it is desirable to develop a new electrolyzer design for decoupled water splitting in an eco-friendly neutral solution with small voltage inputs to enable separated H₂ and O₂ evolution. Herein, we report (ferrocenylmethyl)trimethylammonium chloride and Na₄[Fe(CN)₆] as proton-independent …

Evaluating Strategies For Sustainable Intensification Of Us Agriculture Through The Long-Term Agroecosystem Research Network, Sheri Spiegal, Brandon T. Bestelmeyer, David W. Archer, David J. Augustine, Elizabeth H. Boughton, Raoul Keith Boughton, Michel A. Cavigelli, Patrick E. Clark, Justin D. Derner, Emily W. Duncan, Cathleen J. Hapeman, R. Daren Harmel, Philip Heilman, Michael A. Holly, David R. Huggins, Kevin W. King, Peter A. Kleinman, Mark A. Liebig, Martin A. Locke, Gregory W. Mccarty, Neville Millar, Steven B. Mirsky, Thomas B. Moorman, Frederick B. Pierson, James R. Rigby, G. Philip Robertson, Jean L. Steiner, Timothy C. Strickland, Hilary M. Swain, Brian J. Wienhold, J.D. Wulfhorst, Matt A. Yost, Charles L. Walthall

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Sustainable intensification is an emerging model for agriculture designed to reconcile accelerating global demand for agricultural products with long-term environmental stewardship. Defined here as increasing agricultural production while maintaining or improving environmental quality, sustainable intensification hinges upon decision-making by agricultural producers, consumers, and policy-makers. The Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network was established to inform these decisions. Here we introduce the LTAR Common Experiment, through which scientists and partnering producers in US croplands, rangelands, and pasturelands are conducting 21 independent but coordinated experiments. Each local effort compares the outcomes of a predominant, conventional production system in the region ('business as usual') …

Effects Of Acoustic Coupling Layer Electrical Conductivity On Pulsed Electroacoustic Measurements, Zachary Gibson, Jr Dennison, Lee Pearson, Erick Griffiths, Anthony Pearson

Posters

The spatial resolution of Pulsed Electroacoustic (PEA) measurements can be limited by the acoustic thickness of the coupling material coupling the sample to the detector assembly. Our investigations studied the effect of adhesive material and thickness to optimize the quality of the PEA signal.

Sexual Harassment: What Utahns Need To Know, Robbyn T. Scribner, Susan R. Madsen, Amber Thackeray

Marketing and Strategy Faculty Publications

Although workplace sexual harassment has likely been around since the conception of workplaces, and sexual harassment has been illegal in the U.S. for decades, it is safe to say that the issue has never received as much attention as it has since the autumn of 2017. High-profile instances of sexual harassment in visible industries such as entertainment, politics, the media, and the nation’s largest businesses have put this issue at the forefront of our national conversations surrounding gender and the workplace. The #metoo stories, shared by millions of women worldwide indicating that they had also experienced sexual harassment or sexual …

Enhancing Citizenship Learning With International Comparative Research: Analyses Of Iea Civic Education Datasets, Ryan T. Knowles, Judith Torney-Purta, Carolyn Barber

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

Large-scale international databases provide valuable resources for scholars, educators and policy-makers interested in civic engagement and education in nations that are democracies or striving towards democracy. However, the multidisciplinary nature of secondary analysis of these data has created a fragmentary picture that limits educators’ awareness of relevant findings. We present a summary of research conducted across disciplines using datasets from two large-scale cross-national studies of civic education conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (CIVED:99 and ICCS:09). The IEA studies were conducted in more than 40 countries with nationally representative samples of 14–15 year olds. In …

The Utah Statesman, February 27, 2018, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Usu Engineering Faculty Partners With National Federation Of The Blind To Develop Non-Visual Teaching Methods | College Of Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

A researcher at Utah State University is developing non-visual techniques to teach the fundamentals of engineering to students who are blind or low vision.

Upending Assumptions In Engineering Education | College Of Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

It doesn’t make Idalis Villanueva uncomfortable to confront assumptions.

Experimental Study Of Gravitational Mixing Of Supercritical Co2, Dennis L. Newell, J. William Carey, Scott N. Backhaus, Peter Lichtner

Geosciences Faculty Publications

CO₂ injection into saline aquifers for sequestration will initially result in buoyant supercritical (sc)CO₂ trapped beneath the caprock seal. During this period, there is risk of CO₂ migration out of the reservoir along wellbore defects or fracture zones. Dissolution of the scCO₂ plume into brine results in solubility trapping and reduces this risk, but based on diffusion alone, this mechanism could take thousands of years. Gravitational (density-induced) mixing of CO₂-saturated brine is shown to significantly accelerate this process in computational studies, but few experimental efforts have confirmed the phenomenon. Here, constant-pressure, 3-dimensional bench-scale experiments …

The Gamer Is A Lie: #Gamergate And The Loss Of Gamer Identity, Victoria Braegger

The 3rd Utah Symposium on Digital Humanities

In the mid-1990s, the video game industry created a representative consumer for their product: a nameless young, white, heterosexual male who became the mold for the gamer identity. It persisted. The video game industry used the identity to sell games, favoring their constructed gamer with determined hailing, calling them to play the latest release and buy the newest console. The hailed demographic wore their gamer identity like a badge of honor – and protected it if they felt it was threatened. Ultimately, a community was constructed by the industry that privileged the young, white, heterosexual male as the target demographic. …

Reaching (For) Wider Audiences With Your Dh Project, Nathan Waite

The 3rd Utah Symposium on Digital Humanities

When starting a DH project, the questions are seemingly endless—What is the scope? What tools will I use? How do I organize the data? Where will the funding come from? Sometimes missing from these conversations is the question of audience. Who am I trying to reach, what do I hope they take away from my project, and how will they find it? The actual audience too often ends up being smaller and more specialized than hoped, largely made up of professional associates and other digital humanists. How can DH reach a wider public audience? Whether the goal is education, advocacy, …

What We Teach When We Teach "Intro To Dh", Brian Croxall, Julia Panko, David Roh, Lisa Swanstrom

The 3rd Utah Symposium on Digital Humanities

Over the last decade, digital humanities has become less of an upstart and more integrated into curricula. As this happens, one of the first classes that is sure to be offered is “Introduction to Digital Humanities.” Depending on circumstances, such a class can be taught at either the undergraduate or graduate level and may be taught by faculty from departments as varied as English, history, comparative literature, the library, or even a stand-alone digital humanities department. All of these local differences—to say nothing of the decisions made by individual faculty members—logically result in significant differences in what students learn as …

Startup Logic In Dh: Performativity And Sustainability, David Roh

The 3rd Utah Symposium on Digital Humanities

This paper argues that the logic of startup companies has penetrated the digital humanities, which has led the field to prioritize glossy veneer over sound construction (“skinning”), pursue grants for survival (“venture capitalists”), and conspicuously broadcast through social media to self-promote (“branding”). The result is a field centered on the performativity of a digital artifact, with little consideration of sustainability, contributing to the existing scholarly discourse, and a graveyard of abandoned projects once they have outlived their usefulness.

It is a pattern with which I am well-familiar. In 2001, I left what would become a lucrative and successful Internet startup …

Stormwater Management And Ecosystem Services: A Review, Liana Prudencio, Sarah E. Null

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Researchers and water managers have turned to green stormwater infrastructure, such as bioswales, retention basins, wetlands, rain gardens, and urban green spaces to reduce flooding, augment surface water supplies, recharge groundwater, and improve water quality. It is increasingly clear that green stormwater infrastructure not only controls stormwater volume and timing, but also promotes ecosystem services, which are the benefits that ecosystems provide to humans. Yet there has been little synthesis focused on understanding how green stormwater management affects ecosystem services. The objectives of this paper are to review and synthesize published literature on ecosystem services and green stormwater infrastructure and …

Increased Soil Frost Versus Summer Drought As Drivers Of Plant Biomass Responses To Reduced Precipitation: Results From A Globally-Coordinated Field Experiment, Hugh A.L. Henry, Mehdi Abedi, Concepcion L. Alados, Karen H. Beard, Lauchlan H. Fraser, Anke Jentsch, Juergen Kreyling, Andrew Kulmatiski, Eric G. Lamb, Wei Sun, Mathew R. Vankoughnett, Susanna Venn, Christiane Werner, Ilka Beil, Irmgard Blindow, Sven Dahlke, Maren Dubbert, Alexandra Effinger, Heath W. Garris, Maite Gartzia, Tobias Gebauer, Mohammed A.S. Arfin Khan, Andrey V. Malyshev, Charles Nock, Janelle P. Paulson, Yolanda Pueyo, Holly J. Stover, Xuechen Yang

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Reduced precipitation treatments often are used in field experiments to explore the effects of drought on plant productivity and species composition. However, in seasonally snow-covered regions reduced precipitation also reduces snow cover, which can increase soil frost depth, decrease minimum soil temperatures and increase soil freeze-thaw cycles. Therefore, in addition to the effects of reduced precipitation on plants via drought, freezing damage to overwintering plant tissues at or below the soil surface could further affect plant productivity and relative species abundances during the growing season. We examined the effects of both reduced rainfall (via rain-out shelters) and reduced snow cover …

Revisiting Who, When And Why Stakeholders Matter: Trust And Stakeholder Connectedness, Bret Crane

Management Faculty Publications

With limited resources and attention, managers have sought ways to categorize and prioritize stakeholders. The underlying assumption is that some stakeholders matter more than others. However, in the information age, stakeholders are increasingly interconnected, where a firm’s actions toward one stakeholder are visible to others and can impact members of the stakeholder ecosystem. Actions by a firm toward any of its stakeholders can signal its trustworthiness and determine to what degree other stakeholders will assume vulnerability and engage in future exchange relationships. In this conceptual article, I present a model of stakeholder connectedness and describe the conditions in which a …

The Utah Statesman, February 20, 2018, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Evidence For Cyclical Fractional Crystallization, Recharge, And Assimilation In Basalts Of The Kimama Drill Core, Central Snake River Plain, Idaho: 5.5-Million-Years Of Petrogenesis In A Mid-Crustal Sill Complex, Katherine E. Potter, John W. Shervais, Eric H. Christiansen, Scott K. Vetter

Geosciences Faculty Publications

Basalts erupted in the Snake River Plain of central Idaho and sampled in the Kimama drill core link eruptive processes to the construction of mafic intrusions over 5.5 Ma. Cyclic variations in basalt composition reveal temporal chemical heterogeneity related to fractional crystallization and the assimilation of previously-intruded mafic sills. A range of compositional types are identified within 1,912 m of continuous drill core: Snake River olivine tholeiite (SROT), low K SROT, high Fe-Ti, and evolved and high K-Fe lavas similar to those erupted at Craters of the Moon National Monument. Detailed lithologic and geophysical logs document 432 flow units comprising …

In Memoriam: Gordon Richins, Jolynne Lyon

Blog Posts

Blog post is remembering a CPD colleague.

The Utah Statesman, February 13, 2018, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Aerial Imagery Gives Insight Into Water Trends | College Of Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

With an ever-growing human population and its inherent demand for water, there is a critical need to monitor water resources.

Battle Of The Blooms | Sustainable Waste-To-Bioproducts Engineering Center, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

Harmful algal blooms or HABs for short are a growing problem in the United States and many parts of the world.

Lighting The Beacon: Presidential Discourse, American Exceptionalism, And Public Diplomacy In Global Contexts, Jason A. Gilmore, Charles Rowling

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The idea of American exceptionalism has shaped American politics and captivated audiences for centuries. This study examines the global contexts in which U.S. presidents have invoked the idea of American exceptionalism when addressing foreign audiences since the end of World War II. Our results reveal: (a) differences in how U.S. presidents invoke American exceptionalism when speaking to a global audience (e.g., the United Nations) versus more localized, foreign audiences within individual states; (b) significant variation regarding which countries are more likely to be targets of American exceptionalism in U.S. presidential discourse; and (c) the profound impact that the end of …

The Development Of A Learning Dashboard For Lecturers: A Case Study On A Student-Centered E-Learning Environment, Harry B. Santoso, Alivia Khaira Batuparan, R. Yugo K. Isal, Wade H. Goodridge

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

Student Centered e-Learning Environment (SCELE) is a Moodle-based learning management system (LMS) that has been modified to enhance learning within a computer science department curriculum offered by the Faculty of Computer Science of large public university in Indonesia. This Moodle provided a mechanism to record students’ activities when engaged in learning with e-Learning software. However, while the software captured the data and presented it adequately, there is room for enhancement and further refinement. The purpose of this research is to investigate and understand lecturer needs as they monitor student activities in SCELE and then develop a learning monitoring tool capable …

Students' And Instructor's Perspective On The Use Of Blackboard Platform For Delivering An Engineering Course, Jacek Uziak, M. Tunde Oladiran, Edmund Lorencowicz, Kurt Becker

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

The use of Information Technology (IT) has been growing over the years in various human endeavours. It has also been adopted in education sector for teaching and learning. Various studies have been conducted to assess the effectiveness and acceptance of e-learning strategy by students. In particular, the current research is an attempt to obtain students’ and instructor’s perspective on the use of Blackboard software. The technology is a course management system used in a blended learning mode to deliver a third year mechanical engineering course at the University of Botswana (UB). In terms of students’ views, the study covered a …

Tremblings, February 2018, Western Aspen Alliance

Tremblings

Ten Years of Aspen Science Outreach

Paul C. Rogers

Like any 10-year-old, we still have a lot of growing up to do. We’re full of energy, regularly enduring bruises and bumps. What parent doesn’t look at their child after a decade and see great potential with a dash of trepidation? Still, 10 years is a significant landmark even after the candles are blown out. Let’s take a brief look at where the Western Aspen Alliance (WAA) has been and where we’re heading.

How To Nourish Mom And Baby Alike: Nutrition During Pregnancy, Marianne Olsen, Mateja R. Savoie-Roskos, Carrie Durward

All Current Publications

This fact sheet offers weight gain and nutrition suggestions that can improve the health of you and your baby during and after pregnancy.

Condition-Dependence Of Blue Plumage Coverage In Indigo Buntings Passerina Cyanea, Spencer B. Hudson, Travis E. Wilcoxen

Biology Faculty Publications

Nuptial plumage colouration is seemingly favoured by females of avian species with regards to sexual selection. This particular secondary sexual characteristic has been previously shown to be a condition-dependent signal of individual quality among passerines with pigment-based colouration (i.e. yellows and reds). In contrast, relationships between structural plumage colouration (i.e. blues) and aspects of both physical quality and physiological function have been understudied. Using free-living Indigo Buntings (Passerina cyanea) as a study species, we compared the percentage of blue feather coverage to body condition, innate immune responses, antioxidant capacity, stress physiology, reproductive physiology, and …

Good People, Bad Job Situations: A Middle Manager's Dilemma, Scott P. Muir, Jeanne R. Davidson

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

Middle managers play a critical role in successful library operations in both public and academic settings. Their alignment with and their ability to carry out the vision of upper management is critical to moving the organization forward at all levels. The authors offer practical strategies for any middle manager who finds herself in a position where she is not in accord with her boss, situations that can range from uncomfortable to disastrous. They examine a variety of issues and circumstances such as misunderstandings, unanticipated changes in the organization, lack of fit with the organizational culture, different work expectations, and incompatible …