Digital Commons Network^™

Collaborative Research: Evolution Of The Tristan-Gough-Walvis Ridge Hotspot System: Age And Composition Of Expedition 391/397t Volcanic Basement, Katherine Elizabeth Potter

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Collaborative Research: Rapid: Fault Rupture And Spring Sampling Of The 2023 Kahramanmaras, Turkey, Earthquake Sequence Ruptures, Alexis Ault, Dennis Lowell Newell

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Representation Theory In Unoriented And Non-Semisimple Physics, Matthew Bruce Young

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Uv-A Light Activated Biodegradable Antimicrobial Packaging: A Sustainable Hurdle Technology For Food Preservation, Luis J. Bastarrachea

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Dryland Soil Carbon Inventory, Brooke Osborne

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

How Novices Write Code: Discovering Best Practices And How They Can Be Adopted, John Martin Edwards

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Exceptional Holography, Oscar Varela

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Investigating The Role Of Mitochondria In Postmortem Metabolism And Shelf Stability Of Fresh Meat, Sulaiman K. Matarneh, Kara J. Thornton-Kurth, Stephan Van Vliet

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Performance Of The Iupod Intrauterine Device For Long-Term Fertility Control In Free-Roaming Mares, Chris Davies

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Curriculum Subcommittee Agenda December 4, 2025, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Approval of Minutes - November 6, 2025
• R401 - Program Proposals
• Other Business
• Catalog Updates
• CIP Codes
• Adjourn 3:00 pm

Educational Policies Committee Agenda December 4, 2025, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Approval of Minutes - November 6, 2025
• Subcommittee Reports
• Other Business
• Adjourn: 4:00 pm

General Education Subcommittee Agenda December 4, 2025, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Call to Order
• Approval of Minutes - November 6, 2025
• Course Approvals/Removals/Syllabi Approvals
• New Business
• Depth Discussion
• Additional Items
• Adjourn: 9:30 am

General Education Subcommittee Minutes December 4, 2025, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Call to Order
• Approval of Minutes - November 6, 2025
• Course Approvals/Removals/Syllabi Approvals
• New Business
• Additional Items
• Adjourn: 9:30 am

Single Compost Application Benefits For Organic Dryland Wheat Production, Shikha Sharma, Matt Yost, Earl Creech, Jennifer R. Reeve, Astrid R. Jacobson, Idowu Ademola Atoloye

All Current Publications

This research highlights the long-term value of compost in dryland wheat systems, where water scarcity and declining soil fertility limit productivity. A single, high-rate compost application (22 tons per acre) can improve soil moisture content, organic carbon content, aggregate stability, and microbial activity. All these benefits contributed to higher and more stable wheat yields, even more than two decades after application. These changes help to make the compost-treated wheat more resilient during dry years. While composting incurs a high upfront cost, its long-term benefits can significantly reduce the need for repeated fertilizer or soil amendments, offering cost and labor savings …

Water Rights Accounting And Distribution In Utah, Sarah Null, Bethany Neilson, Eileen Lukens, Eryn Turney, Utah Division Of Water Rights

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

This white paper summarizes how the Utah Division of Water Rights (WRi) administers water rights through the coordinated processes of water distribution and accounting. Water distribution involves apportioning divertible flow in river systems by adjusting diversions and reservoir storage. To account for and distribute water effectively, WRi must first determine the amount of water available for diversion each day, then prioritize water rights when water supply is insufficient to satisfy all demands. WRi has developed specialized tools and models to support this process.

This paper was developed through a collaboration between WRi and Utah State University to produce a report …

Crime Statistics And Taxi Transportation In New York City: An Exploratory Data Analysis, Adelyn J. Fleming

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

In a heavily populated city as busy and vibrant as New York City, people are constantly on the move. Some of that movement might be connected to the occurrence of certain crimes. This study explores how movement, especially from yellow taxicabs, relates to crime occurrences within different parts of the city. By looking at the 2018 taxi trip and crime data, alongside population data from the 2020 U.S. Census, this project aims to explore how individuals travel within the city and whether there is any relationship with the types of crime that occur within those areas. Visual tools and maps …

Privacy Rights: Their Evolution, Expansion, And Narrowing, Rebecca Nichole Ivans

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Privacy rights in the United States have evolved significantly through judicial interpretation, with reproductive rights playing a central role in their expansion and contraction. This paper examines how the Supreme Court's treatment of reproductive rights has shaped the broader understanding of constitutional privacy rights, focusing on landmark cases from Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) to Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022).

The analysis begins by exploring how the Court first established privacy rights through "penumbras" found within various constitutional amendments, particularly in Griswold's protection of contraceptive access for married couples. The paper traces the expansion of these rights through subsequent …

Bundled For The Beyond: Material Analysis Of A Canine Mummy Bundle For Contextualizing And Conserving Legacy Objects, Sascha Anna-Rose Baldauf

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Legacy collections¹ and objects with little context are often untapped opportunities for both museums and museum studies students. The purpose of this study is to display how students can utilize object research to engage in experiential learning and develop their skillset in scientific methodologies and disseminating findings, while also offering museums the opportunity to develop relationships with research facilities and benefit from student research findings. This study demonstrates the utility of student research by investigating an Egyptian canid mummy bundle, dating to the Late Period² or early Ptolemaic Period³, received by the Museum of Anthropology at …

Bundled For The Beyond: Material Analysis Of A Canine Mummy Bundle For Contextualizing And Conserving Legacy Objects, Sascha Anna-Rose Baldauf

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Legacy collections¹ and objects with little context are often untapped opportunities for both museums and museum studies students. The purpose of this study is to display how students can utilize object research to engage in experiential learning and develop their skillset in scientific methodologies and disseminating findings, while also offering museums the opportunity to develop relationships with research facilities and benefit from student research findings. This study demonstrates the utility of student research by investigating an Egyptian canid mummy bundle, dating to the Late Period² or early Ptolemaic Period³, received by the Museum of Anthropology at …

Assessing Response Diversity Of Spawning Conditions For Native Trout Among Streams To Interannual Changes In Snowpack, Autumn Kaye Zierenberg

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Stream habitat suitability for fish is controlled by physical, chemical and biological conditions impacted by interannual changes in climate. Intermittent streams are particularly sensitive to climatic variation and have long been overlooked as potential spawning habitats for fish and other riverine species. Spawning suitability in stream habitats is strongly influenced by connectivity to perennial habitats, the duration of surface flows and water temperatures, each of which are driven by annual snowpack and discharge conditions. Here, we examine how the spawning habitat suitability in different tributaries within a single river basin respond to changes in annual snowpack conditions. Specifically, we examined …

Rewarding Disruptions In Tamsyn Muir's The Locked Tomb, Elijah Moss

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Tamsyn Muir, author of The Locked Tomb, says she thinks of Biblical allusions in the same way she thinks of alluding to digital folklore. This research paper investigates the veracity of this claim, using the dual lenses of literary analysis and digital folklore studies to ultimately conclude that the broad range of intertextual references in The Locked Tomb exemplifies a broader strategy of ambivalence (e.g., in her tone) that disrupts the readerly experience. With these ruptures, Muir creates space away from the typical expectations that may limit the range of themes historically found in genre fiction. Therefore, her tonal …

Error Reduction Methodology And Data Simulation For Interval Data, Ranik Christopher Jelinek

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a progressive condition affecting hundreds of millions of individuals worldwide. However, clinical datasets often record continuous laboratory measurements as categorical intervals rather than precise numerical values. This interval-censored structure presents methodological challenges for standard regression-based classifiers. This study compares three strategies for handling interval-valued predictors prior to fitting a logistic LASSO model: (1) midpoint imputation, which replaces each interval with its arithmetic center; (2) ordinal encoding, which maps intervals to integer ranks; and (3) a Monte Carlo simulation approach, which repeatedly samples uniformly from each observed interval and averages predictions across replications. Using a 10-fold …

Role Of Competition In Avoiding Social Collapse, Gabriel M. Tonks

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

Historical examples suggest that isolated, resource-scarce societies are prone to increased hostility and social disasters. The research in this report explores the role of intrasocietal competition in avoiding resource collapse. Two resource-consumer models are proposed with competition which depends on the level of available resources. One of these models is selected for in-depth analysis, and the region in the parameter space where saddle-node bifurcations emerge is computed numerically. The effects of environmental noise on resource growth are simulated, showing that the increased noise usually has negative long-term effects which might be mitigated via increased consumer competition.

Modeling And Analysis Of Electric Signal In Neurons, Kevin J. Roberts

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

Neurons in humans and other species transmit information by sending electric signals via axons. This process relies on the generation and propagation of action potentials—rapid changes in the membrane potential of the axon. Understanding the mechanisms of action potentials, including how they are generated and influenced by the axon geometry and material parameters, is crucial for gaining insight into neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Multiple Sclerosis (diseases highly correlated to demyelination). In this work, we review and summarize mathematical models for signal transmission–including the classical Hodgkin-Huxley model, the Single Cable (SC) model, and the Double Cable (DC) model. We …

White Horse Village: A Northern Utah Ufo Narrative, Melissa Petersen

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

In the early 1960's a group of UFO believers, called Christ Brotherhood Inc., established themselves in Smithfield Canyon, UT and called their commune White Horse Village. A main house was built where the leader of the group lived and two or three smaller cabins were erected for the believers. Without running water they used an outhouse among them and built a small church where they would meet for lectures. Their beliefs centered around the popular movement of New Age spirituality of the time, which included scientific explanations for Christian beliefs including a belief in benevolent aliens as modern angels. Their …

The Depositional Environment Of The Triassic Cow Branch Formation, Dan River Basin Of Virginia And North Carolina Through Petrographic Study And Geochemical Analysis, And In Relation To Taphonomic Processes And Vertebrate Morphology, Gina M. Workman

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

The Upper Triassic Cow Branch Formation of the Dan River Basin, located in southern Virginia and northern North Carolina, has long captivated generations of geoscientists. Since the 1970s, researchers have sought to unravel the mystery surrounding the depositional environment of this ancient lake system. This world-class lagerstätte hosts a diverse assemblage of fossil fauna and flora, with a notable preservation bias toward fossil vertebrates, most prominently the archosauromorph, Tanytrachelos ahynis. The geology of the Cow Branch strata continues to evoke a persistent question: Are these sediments representative of a shallow or deep lake?

I undertook a petrographic and geochemical study …

Acceptance And Commitment Therapy As A Transdiagnostic Approach To Improve Quality Of Life Among Adults Living With A Physical Chronic Health Condition, Marissa L. Donahue

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The research contained in this dissertation presents rationale and empirical support for the application of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) as a transdiagnostic approach in improving quality of life for adults living with chronic health conditions (CHCs). The first study consists of a systematic review that aims to examine (1) the current state of evidence of ACT for adults living with a CHC, (2) how outcomes are being characterized within this population, (3) the methodological quality of the included trials, as well as (4) summarizing the health conditions in which ACT has been evaluated for. The second study examines the …

Summary Of Pine Valley Area Groundwater Studies, Melissa Stamp, Bethany Neilson, Anna Mcentire, Burdette Barker, Lisa Welsh, Joanna Endter-Wada, Brian Steed

Reports

The Utah Division of Water Resources contracted with Utah State University to document key scientific and policy information related to the current water conflict between Iron and Beaver Counties over the development of the Pine Valley Water Supply Project (PVWSP). The proposed PVWSP would pump groundwater from Pine Valley in Beaver County and pipe it southeast to the Cedar City region of Iron County served by the Central Iron County Water Conservancy District (CICWCD). Numerous concerns about the project have been raised by Beaver County and other interested parties. A number of these concerns are related to different understandings or …

Impact Of Thermodynamic Factors And Intrinsic Properties On Crystallization Behavior And Physical Properties Of Edible Fats, Nabila Anjum

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Crystallization behavior of three edible fats: interesterified soybean oil (IESBO), interesterified palm olein (IEPO), and fully hydrogenated palm kernel oil (FHPKO) were explored to understand how this process is affected by different factors. The study focused on how the chemical composition of these fats affects their behavior like how much time they require to be crystallized at a certain temperature. By using different scientific methods, how quickly each fat began to crystallize and how much energy it took to start the process was measured. Among the methods used, Gompertz equation, a mathematical model, gave the most consistent and reliable results …

Spatial Strategies For Restoring Native Biodiversity And Connectivity In Managed Landscapes Of The Upper Clutha Basin, New Zealand, Jessica Zuban

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Across New Zealand and around the world, biodiversity is declining due to the widespread loss and fragmentation of native habitat. This is especially true in agricultural landscapes, where native habitats have been replaced by intensive land use. This research focuses on the Upper Clutha Basin in Central Otago, New Zealand that has been significantly altered over time by farming, development, and other human activities. As a result, only a small amount of native vegetation remains, and the region is well below the critical threshold needed to support healthy ecological systems.

This study investigates how native vegetation can be strategically restored …