Digital Commons Network^™

Sediment Supply Versus Local Hydraulic Controls On Sediment Transport And Storage In A River With Large Sediment Loads, David J. Dean, David J. Topping, John C. Schmidt, Ronald E. Griffiths, Thomas A. Sabol

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

The Rio Grande in the Big Bend region of Texas, USA, and Chihuahua and Coahuila, Mexico, undergoes rapid geomorphic changes as a result of its large sediment supply and variable hydrology; thus, it is a useful natural laboratory to investigate the relative importance of flow strength and sediment supply in controlling alluvial channel change. We analyzed a suite of sediment transport and geomorphic data to determine the cumulative influence of different flood types on changing channel form. In this study, physically based analyses suggest that channel change in the Rio Grande is controlled by both changes in flow strength and …

Curriculum Subcommittee Minutes, January 14, 2016, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Semester Course Approval Reviews

Program Proposals

• Restructuring the current specialization within the Psychology PhD program in Professional Scientific Psychology to two separate specializations 1) combined Clinical/Counseling Psychology and 2) School Psychology
• Utilizing the existing MEd degree in Psychology but with a specialization as an en route degree for students in the School Psychology EdS program
• Suspending admissions in the Master of Science in Bioregional Planning
• Renaming the Master of Science and PhD in Human Dimensions of Ecosystem Science and Management to Environment and Society
• Discontinuing the Bachelor of Science degree in Geography Teaching

Other

• Syllabus task force update
• Curriculog reflections

Curriculum Subcommittee Agenda, January 14, 2016, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Semester Course Approval Reviews

Program Proposals

• Restructuring the current specialization within the Psychology PhD program in Professional Scientific Psychology to two separate specializations 1) combined Clinical/Counseling Psychology and 2) School Psychology
• Utilizing the existing MEd degree in Psychology but with a specialization as an en route degree for students in the School Psychology EdS program
• Suspending admissions in the Master of Science in Bioregional Planning
• Renaming the Master of Science and PhD in Human Dimensions of Ecosystem Science and Management to Environment and Society
• Discontinuing the Bachelor of Science degree in Geography Teaching

Other

• Syllabus task force update
• Curriculog reflections

Educational Policies Committee Agenda, January 14, 2016, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Subcommittee Reports
• Curriculum Subcommittee
• Course Approvals
• Program Proposals
• Academic Standards Subcommittee
• General Educations Subcommittee

Educational Policies Committee Minutes, January 14, 2016, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Subcommittee Reports
• Curriculum Subcommittee
• Course Approvals
• Program Proposals
• Academic Standards Subcommittee
• General Education Subcommittee

Faculty Senate Agenda, January 11, 2016, Utah State University

Faculty Senate & Faculty Senate Executive Committee

• EPC Items December 2015
• Council on Teacher Education
• Scholarship Advisory Board
• 405.12.1 Annual Review of Faculty (First Reading)

The Utah Statesman, January 11, 2016, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Stream Water Nitrogen Inputs Reflects Groundwater Across A Snowmelt-Dominated Montane-To-Urban Watershed, Steven J. Hall, Samantha R. Weintraub, David Eiriksson, Paul D. Brooks, Michelle A. Baker, Gabriel J. Bowen, David R. Bowling

Biology Faculty Publications

Snowmelt dominates the hydrograph of many temperate montane streams, yet little work has characterized how streamwater sources and nitrogen (N) dynamics vary across wildland to urban land use gradients in these watersheds. Across a third-order catchment in Salt Lake City, Utah, we asked where and when groundwater vs shallow surface water inputs controlled stream discharge and N dynamics. Stream water isotopes (δ2H and δ18O) reflected a consistent snowmelt water source during baseflow. Near-chemostatic relationships between conservative ions and discharge implied that groundwater dominated discharge year-round across the montane and urban sites, challenging the conceptual emphasis on direct stormwater inputs to …

Predictive Formula For Electron Range Over A Large Span Of Energy, Anne C. Starley

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Predictive Formula For Electron Range Over A Large Span Of Energy, Anne Starley

Physics Capstone Projects

A model developed by the Materials Research Group that calculates electron penetration range of some common materials, has been greatly expanded with the hope that such extensions will predict the range in other, perhaps, more interesting materials. Developments in this extended model aid in predicting the approximate penetration depth into diverse classes of materials for a broad range of energetic incident electrons (<10 eV to >10 MeV, with better than 20% accuracy). The penetration depth—or range—of a material describes the maximum distance electrons can travel through a material, before losing all of its incident kinetic energy. This model has started to predict …

Blacksmith Fork - Little Bear Watershed Alternative Futures Study, Scott Mccomb, Emmet Pruss, Thomas Terry, Conner White

Bioregional Planning Studio Reports

The following project was carried out in conjunction with the Logan River Task Force, under the chairmanship of Dr. Frank Howe. The Logan River Task Force was formed to develop an overall approach for managing the Logan River that balances ecology with people's social values for the river including public safety and property protection. Although the work of the Task Force has focused primarily on the Logan river, the Bioregional Planning graduate students have provided the Task Force with contextual information about the watershed, by exploring alternative futures for the Blacksmith Fork and Little Bear watersheds. This work expands on …

The Space Survivability Test Chamber, Alex Souvall, Benjamin Russon, Brian Wood, Gregory Wilson, Jr Dennison

Posters

No abstract provided.

Evidence For Bombus Occidentalis (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Populations In The Olympic Peninsula, The Palouse Prairie, And Forests Of Northern Idaho, Paul R. Rhoades, Jonathan B. Koch, Lisette P. Waits, James P. Strange, Sanford D. Eigenbrode

All PIRU Publications

Since the mid-1990s, Bombus occidentalis (Green) has declined from being one of the most common to one of the rarest bumble bee species in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Although its conservation status is unresolved, a petition to list this species as endangered or threatened was recently submitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. To shed light on the conservation situation and inform the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision, we report on the detection and abundance of B. occidentalis following bumble bee collection between 2012 and 2014 across the Pacific Northwest. Collection occurred from the San …

Development Of Elisa Assay For D1327 Adenovirus, Christopher Peterson, Yohichi Kumaki, Dale L. Barnard

Biology Posters

Adenoviruses are a common cause of upper respiratory tract infections in children and the source of acute respiratory disease outbreaks among military recruits. Named after the human adenoid tissue it was first isolated in, the adenoviridae are non-enveloped, double-stranded DNA viruses with over 50 serotypes1. Yet to date vaccines have been developed for only two serotypes, and no adenovirus antiviral drugs have been approved by the FDA, highlighting the need for more research. In virus research, detection the presence of a particular virus is of especial interest when developing animal or cell models. As human pathogens often do not infect …

The Identification And Characterization Of Bacterial Endosymbionts In The Planthopper Family, Caliscelidae (Sternorrhyncha: Fulgoroidea, Ghazal Abu-Salim, Kathryn Weglarz

Biology Posters

Plant-sap sucking insects with deficient nutritional diets contain symbiotic microorganisms in a specific organ in the abdomen (bacteriome). Such symbionts were discovered to belong to various bacterial lineages. Ongoing genomic research concluded that these symbiotic organisms provide the essential nutrients that are absent in the insect’s diets such as amino acids and vitamins. While the identities and functions of several sap-sucking lineages have been studied, some lineages such as Fulgoroidea are not understood because recent results failed to confirm the presence of the symbiotic microbes even though older microscopy studies identified microbes in the bacteriomes. The objective of this research …

Analysis Of Rocky Mountain Snail (Oreohelix Sp.) Dietary Preference, Michael R. Bernard, Joseph S. Wilson

Biology Posters

Rocky Mountain snails in the genus Oreohelix go mostly unnoticed beneath layers of leaf litter in the western Mountain ranges. These snails are most common in rocky foothill habitat that consists of high-density deciduous groves of maple and oak. It is in this habitat where a great number of unobserved feeding behaviors occur. While some research indicates that terrestrial snails may prefer to feed on living plants, it is thought that Oreohelix are detritivores, feeding primarily on decomposing plant matter. In this study we investigated Oreohelix diet by designing a food preference experiment. We provided two food sources (Boxelder maple …

Use Of A Mouse Model To Evaluate The Effect Of Statins On The Immune Response To An Influenza Virus Vaccine, Calvin Olsen, Bart Tarbet

Biology Posters

Statins are cholesterol lowering drugs that have shown a profound effect on human health by reducing cardiovascular disease. However, two recent publications in the Journal of Infectious Diseases showed that statin use had a negative impact on the influenza vaccine response in elderly individuals [1, 2]. We propose to evaluate the immune response following vaccination in mice undergoing statin treatment. An initial study will determine the therapeutic window for statin treatment of mice fed a lipid-enriched diet. From the literature this window is expected to be between 21-28 days. That therapeutic window will be used for evaluation of the immune …

Alternate Method Of Phycocyanin Extraction, Will Higham, Matthew Agiro, Jon Y. Takemoto

Biology Posters

Phycocyanin is an abundant protein-pigment complex in many photosynthetic microbes and the feedstock for several emerging products in the food and pharmaceutical industries. The purpose of this project was to research the effectiveness of sonication technology to improve the efficiency and yields of phycocyanin production from the cyanobacterium Spirulina platensis. Sonication is the application of sound energy to agitate and break particles or cells. When used to augment the current methods of phycocyanin production, it has the potential benefit of reducing cell extraction volumes and increasing the yield of phycocyanin. Experiments were conducted to determine the effects of sonication time …

Wolbachia And Sex, Ian J. Aper, Katie Weglarz, Carol Von Dohlen

Biology Posters

Insects with complex life cycles provide an ideal system for investigating the relationship between sex-skewing bacterial symbionts and the secondary loss of sexual reproduction. This research utilized the insect family Adelgidae, a group notorious for having peculiar and complex life cycles. In this family, some species have lost their sexual generation entirely, trapping them in asexual reproduction. Additionally, these insects are known to harbor multiple symbionts, both obligate and facultative. The array of facultative symbionts that have been detected includes the infamous sex-skewing symbiont Wolbachia. This symbiont is known to induce male killing, cytoplasmic incompatibility, and parthenogenesis in insects. Additionally, …

The Identification And Characterization Of Bacterial Endosymbionts In The Planthopper Family, Issidae (Sternorrhyncha:Fulgoroidea), Lina Ghabayen

Biology Posters

Many insects live on nutrient-poor diets; to compensate, they have evolved obligate associations with microorganisms that are transmitted directly between generations. The bacterial associates of some Hemiptera insects have been identified and understood, but several remain unknown. Our objective is to identify the diversity of bacterial endosymbionts in Issidae using modern microscopy and molecular methods, and compare their identities to known symbionts from related insects. To do so, we will extract DNA from insect samples, amplify bacterial symbiont 16S genes, sub-clone PCR products, sequence the products, and determine their phylogenetic relationships to other insect symbionts and free-living bacteria. Our study …

2016 Native American Stem Mentorship Program, Shaniah Dickson

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Effectiveness Of Seed Treatments In Reducing Tmv Infection, Tanner A. Robison

Biology Posters

Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), named for the plant it was first discovered in, can infect hundreds of different species. It has no known invertebrate vectors, but TMV is spread mechanically through contact with other plants, clothes, tools, contaminated soil and seed borne. While TMV is known to be exceptionally stable, it has been reported that treatment of tools with powdered milk can significantly reduce the infection rate of the virus. While there is a seed treatment available for conventional agriculture, there is no seed treatment available for organic production. Organic growers, who grow heirloom tomatoes experience the highest rates of …

Arenavirus Glycoprotein-Host Cell Receptor Interactions, Brayden L. Stembridge, Jonna B. Westover, Brady T. Hickerson, Brian B. Gowen

Biology Posters

Pichinde virus (PICV) is an enveloped single-stranded RNA New World arenavirus. The new world arenaviruses are divided into three separate clades designated as A, B, and C. The clade B arenaviruses are known to cause severe viral hemorrhagic fever. The clade A PICV is prevalent in the rodent population of Colombia. PICV is currently designated as a biosafety level-2 (BSL 2) pathogen due to its low pathogenicity in humans. Efforts have been made to identify the cellular receptors utilized by the virus glycoproteins to enter the host cell. Clade B arenaviruses utilize various species-specific forms of Transferrin Receptor 1 to …

Development Of Archaeal And Algalytic Bacteria Detection Systems, Andrew Walters, Anna Doloman, Charles Miller

Biology Posters

Natural gas (methane) is emerging as a viable power source for many industrial, commercial, and domestic applications. Bio-methane provides a promising replacement for mined natural gas. Methanogenic bacteria produce this bio-methane. These anaerobic bacteria pertain to the Domain Archaea, and are found in extreme environments where few other bacteria survive. They are employed by Up-Flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactors in the digestion of wastes to a marketable product (methane). The genome of methanogenic bacteria can be amplified using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a synthetic DNA replication system. This system employs specific sequences of DNA called primers. The primers employed …

Floral Developmental Stages And Stress-Induced Reversions From Asexual To Sexual Seed Formation In Boechera (Brassiccaceae), Devin Wright

Biology Posters

In the apomictic process, plants produce a genetic copy of themselves by forming genetically-unreduced eggs (2n instead of 1n) that produce embryos parthenogenically, i.e., without fusion of egg and sperm nuclei.

• In some plants such as the Boechera species studies have shown that stressing the apomictic plants caused a reversion from apomeiosis to meiosis1.

• The object of my study is to more fully understand the stage of floral development at which an apomictic plant must be exposed to a stress signal in order to revert from apomictic to sexual reproduction or vice versa.

• Apomixis could be used …

Resistive Behaviors Of Spider Silk Nanofibers In Humidity Controlled Environments, Jesse Steadman, Nader Shehata, Ishac Kandas, Ibrahim Hassounah, Randolph V. Lewis

Biology Posters

Spider silk is becoming more useful for its desired properties as more information about the nanostructure is discovered. Due to the fact that this protein is nearly impossible to mass produce directly from the spider, the protein coding gene has been duplicated from the spider genome and inserted into the E. coli, goat, alfalfa, and silkworm genomes. This has allowed us to extract the produced protein from the transgenic hosts at a larger scale than the spiders offer. Spider silk is one of the strongest and most elastic fibers found in nature and these two characteristics, along with others others, …

Ojb's Experiences, Onri J. Benally

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

2016 Stem Experiences, Mitchell Howe

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Stem Mentorship 2016, Elway Francis

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Origin And Dynamics Of Adaption In Schizosaccharomyces Pombe: Standing Genetic Cariation Vs. De Novo Mutation, Alexandre Rego

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.