Digital Commons Network^™

Robust Computational Tools For Multiple Testing With Genetic Association Studies, William L. Welbourn Jr.

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The mapping of the human genome and the completion of the Human HapMap project over the past decade have significantly altered how research is conducted with respect to the genetic epidemiology of human disease. Study designs and analytic approaches have evolved rapidly from investigations involving relatively few targeted candidate genes to hypothesis-free genome-wide association studies, where thousands – and now even millions – of single molecular mutations are simultaneously analyzed to identify regions of the genome that may influence disease. As laboratory techniques continue to improve and costs decrease, the volume of genetic data will inexorably rise, and robust tools …

Explicit Instruction Elements In Core Reading Programs, Angela R. Child

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Angela R. Child at Utah State University conducted a content analysis study aimed at describing the inclusion of seven explicit instruction elements, namely, direct explanation, modeling, guided practice, independent practice, feedback, discussion, and monitoring, found within five widely published core reading programs (CRPs). These seven elements of explicit instruction will be sought in essential reading component lessons which include: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension only.

The study sought to describe the instructional recommendations found within the CRPs lessons to benefit society by; aiding educators in the selection of a CRP for their school or district; assisting classroom teachers …

Evaluation Of Turbulence Variable Distributions For Incompressible Fully Rough Pipe Flows, Emilie B. Fowler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The specific turbulent kinetic energy, root-mean-square fluctuating vorticity, and mean-vortexwavelength distributions are presented for fully rough pipe flow. The distributions of these turbulence variables are obtained from a proposed turbulence model. Many of the turbulence models commonly used for computational fluid dynamics are based on an analogy between molecular and turbulent transport. However, traditional k-ε and k-ω models fail to exhibit proper dependence on the molecular viscosity. Based on a rigorous application of the Boussinesq’s hypothesis, Phillips proposed a vorticity-based transport equation for the turbulent kinetic energy. The foundation for this vorticity-based transport equation is presented. In future development of …

A Study Of Mothers’ Perceptions And Practices Of Kindergarten Readiness, Kirsten Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study was conducted to understand what mothers with children enrolled in a developmentally appropriate preschool program believe and are actually doing to help prepare their children for kindergarten, something of key importance, as kindergarten success is a foundation for later school success. There is very little research on the topic of parental perceptions and practices in kindergarten readiness and the transition into kindergarten.

A survey was sent home to 60 families who had their child enrolled in the Adele and Dale Young Child Development Laboratory at Utah State University during the 2010-2011 school year. In the survey, parents were …

The Development And Implementation Of A Hierarchical Model To Measure The Effects Of Instructional Coaching On Student Achievement, Logan Thomas Toone

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A large suburban school district in northern Utah implemented an elementary school instructional coaching program intended to increase student achievement in reading and mathematics. Program administrators wished to determine the degree to which certain elements of instructional coaching affected student achievement. This no-cost study began with the collection of student achievement data (from state reading and math assessments), coaching data (from time logs), and demographic data (from the district database). Data were analyzed within a three-level hierarchical linear model to determine the predicted effect of coaching on student achievement outcomes.

Coaching factors included the length of time coaches spent with …

Mapping Fire Fuels Through Detection Of Canopy Biomass Loading In Juniper, Sagebrush, And Gambel Oak Communities, Sean Laroy Hammond

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Fire fuel inventory processes are customarily labor intensive endeavors. There is a growing need for an increase in accuracy of these inventories at a landscape level, due in large part to the ever increasing development of Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). More accurate inventory and mapping of wildland fuels will facilitate a more accurate simulation of wildfire behavior and analysis of fire behavior given a myriad of fuels treatments. This paper examines one approach to inventorying fire fuels at a landscape level and developing fuel model maps to be utilized in landscape level fire behavior simulations for use by land managers …

Java Api-Aware Code Generation Engine: A Prototype, Chandra Sekhar Vijyapurpu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Software reuse enhances a programmer's productivity and reduces programming errors. Improving software reuse through libraries and frameworks is a vast problem area. This thesis offers an approach to solve two sub-problems within the problem area - to identify the right library components, and to offer code snippets that use the components correctly. The Java API-Aware Code Generation Engine, or JAGE for short, is a prototype system that demonstrates the feasibility of generating semantically valid code snippets consisting of method calls to classes in the J2SDK library.

Developers often search for sample code snippets that describe how to use the …

Combinatorial-Based Prioritization For User-Session-Based Test Suites, Schuyler Manchester

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Software defects caused by inadequate software testing can cost billions of dollars. Further, web application defects can be costly due to the fact that most web applications handle constant user interaction. However, software testing is often under time and budget constraints. By improving the time efficiency of software testing, many of the costs associated with defects can be saved.

Current methods for web application testing can take too long to generate test suites. In addition, studies have shown that user-session-based test suites often find faults missed by other testing techniques. This project addresses this problem by utilizing existing user sessions …

The Reliability And Diagnostic Accuracy Of The Yes/No Scapular Dyskinesis Test When Used By Graduate Assistant Athletic Trainers, Adam Raikes

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The ability to accurately assess the motion of the scapulae is an important skill when evaluating injuries to the upper extremity. To date, several tests have been proposed and described as suitable methods for categorizing this motion. Scapular evaluations are challenging given the overlying musculature as well as the need to determine the relative timing of events. Previous tests’ diagnostic accuracy has suffered as a result of these challenges.

Recently the Yes/No dyskinesis test has been proposed. This test eliminates much of the struggle with earlier evaluative methods by reducing the assessment to simply a yes or a no response …

Social Organization And Decision Making In North American Bison: Implications For Management, Ryan A. Shaw

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Social organization varies widely among herbivores, and the level of social organization in bison is widely debated. I hypothesized that when mother-daughter relationships are allowed to develop, bison form long-term associations. In my study, 25 treatment mothers were selected from a free-ranging herd and kept together with their calves, while 25 control females had their calves forcefully removed. Treatment mothers and offspring had by far the greatest number of associations with a greater percentage of individuals with a half weight index (HWI) > 0.50. The strongest associations (HWI > 0.31) were among treatment mothers and their offspring. Moreover, these associations persisted over …

Planning And Management Modeling For Treated Wastewater Usage, Leila Ahmadi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Population growth, urbanization and water scarcity in many parts of the world has resulted in transfer of agricultural water to municipal and industrial users on one hand and excessive production of wastewater on the other hand. Due to importance of agriculture in food production and in the economy of many regions around the world,
water resources management and considering new water resources (such as treated wastewater) is critical.This study focused on analyzing the effects of population and
urban growth on water demand for various users and municipal wastewater quantity changes; as well as investigating the feasibility of wastewater reuse projects. …

Web Usage Mining: Application To An Online Educational Digital Library Service, Bart C. Palmer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation examined how users of the Instructional Architect (IA; http://ia.usu.edu) utilized the system in order to find online learning resources, place them in a new online instructional activities, and share and use them with students. The online learning resources can be found in educational digital libraries such as the National Science Digital Library (NSLD; http://nsdl.org) or the wider Web. Usage data from 22 months of IA use were processed to form usage features that were analyzed in order to find clusters of user behavior using latent class analysis (LCA).

The users were segmented into two samples with 5–90 and …

Exploring The Reliability And Validity Of The Experiential Discounting Task, Rochelle R. Smits

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Delay discounting is the devaluation of rewards that are delayed in time. This phenomenon was first studied with animals in controlled laboratory environments and later translated to human procedures. Though the decrease in value of outcomes as the delay to receipt increases is the same across species (money for humans, food for animals), a number of methodological concerns have been raised about the procedures used to study delay discounting in humans.

The Experiential Discounting Task (EDT) was recently developed in order to study delay discounting in humans in a way that is more similar to that used with animals. That …

Dynamic Testing And Finite Element Modeling Of A Steel Girder Bridge For The Long-Term Bridge Performance Program, Lourdes Alina Taveras Moronta

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) Program, under the direction of the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA’s) Office of Infrastructure Research and Development, is monitoring nation’s pilot highway bridges to promote the safety, durability, and reliability on the bridges of the nation. Researchers at Utah State University directed dynamic testing on the New Jersey Pilot Bridge, structure number 1618-150 the summer of 2011 to analyze and understand the dynamic behavior of the structure.

In order to perform the monitoring of the bridge, ambient vibration analysis was selected for this structure, which was instrumented with an array of velocity transducers to record the …

The Mechanisms Of Hydride Exchange, Organic Combination And Displacement Reactions, Weifang Hao

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The primary aim of this dissertation was to seek the answer to the question: “Is the single transition-state model appropriate for the fundamental reactions in organic chemistry?” The goal was accomplished by performing enormous kinetic data collection and detailed mechanistic analysis on several typical fundamental organic chemical reactions. Three new methodologies for differentiating between a simple one-step and complex multi-step mechanism were developed and extensively confirmed during the application in the kinetic studies of all of the reaction discussed in this dissertation. The three methods consist of (1) half-life dependence of kapp, (2) sequential linear pseudo-first-order correlation, and (3) revised …

Rationalizing Structure, Stability, And Chemical Bonding Of Pure And Doped Clusters Isolated And Solvated Multiply Charged Anions, And Solid State Materials, Alina P. Sergeeva

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Chemistry is the study of materials and the changes that materials undergo. One can tune the properties of the known materials and design the novel materials with desired properties knowing what is responsible for the chemical reactivity, structure, and stability of those materials. The unified chemical bonding theory could address all these questions, but we do not have one available yet. The most accepted general theory of chemical bonding was proposed by Lewis in 1916, though Lewis’s theory fails to explain the bonding in materials with delocalized electron density such as sub-nano and nanoclusters, as well as aromatic organic and …

Simulation Of Counterintuitive Pressure Drop In A Parallel Flow Design For A Specimen Basket For Use In The Advanced Test Reactor, Adam X. Zabriskie

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

To continue improving nuclear energy, new materials must be tested in testing reactors such as the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory. A new test cap section allowed coolant to contact specimens tested in the ATR. A parallel channel test cap section should reduce the pressure drop across this section compared to a single channel. A fluid experiment conducted by Idaho State University showed the pressure drop was actually greater. A Computation Fluid Dynamics simulation using STAR-CCM+ was conducted of the fluid experiment to explain the abnormal pressure drop. The simulation provided evidence of ow through the test …

1. Improving The Yield Of Biodiesel From Microalgae And Other Lipids. 2. Studies Of The Wax Ester Biosynthetic Pathway And Potential Biotechnological Application, Bradley D. Wahlen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The production of biofuels and oleochemicals from renewable sources offers an opportunity to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. The work contained in this dissertation has focused on developing and improving methods for the production of biodiesel from non-traditional feedstocks and understanding biosynthetic pathways that result in the production of oleochemicals and fuels.

Pure vegetable oil can account for 70-80% of the total cost of biodiesel production. Many low-cost oils contain high amounts of free fatty acids, which are unsuitable for base-catalyzed transesterification. Herein an approach is described that efficiently accomplishes the simultaneous esterification and transesterification of both free fatty …

Structural And Mechanistic Investigations Of Phosphothreonine Lyase Class Of Enzymes, Alok Gopalkrishna Shenoy

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Phosphorylation and dephosphorylation are a highly pervasive mechanism in biology that is used by the cell to modulate enzymes and proteins. The presence of a phosphate group can activate or deactivate an enzyme. The phosphate group is linked to a protein by a phosphoester bond that is known to be highly stable in cytoplasmic pH range. Thus the breaking and formation of these bonds need to be effected by enzymes.

Recent discovery of the activity carried out by certain virulence related proteins (OspF released by Shigella and SpvC released by Salmonella) have resulted in a necessity to create a new …

The Survival And Growth Of Adult Bonneville Cutthroat Trout (Oncorhynchus Clarkii Utah) In Response To Different Movement Patterns In A Tributary Of The Logan River, Utah, Jared W. Randall

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the past many inland trout species were believed to be sedentary, only occupying small stream segments (20 meters) during their life span. Recently it has been found that cutthroat trout do move and many populations do contain both mobile and non-mobile strategies. Most organisms move to attain greater growth rates, but movement also leads to higher detection by predators. Both mobile and non-mobile strategies have been observed in Spawn creek, a tributary of the Logan River in Northern Utah. My research evaluated the movement patterns, survival, and growth of adult Bonneville cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarkii Utah. My objectives …

Test Case Generation Using Combinatorial Based Coverage For Rich Web Applications, Chad Maughan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Web applications are increasingly moving business and processing logic from the server to the browser. Traditional, multiple-page request/response applications are quickly being replaced by single-page applications where complex application logic is downloaded on the initial page load and data is then subsequently fetched asynchronously via the browser's native XMLHttpRequest (XHR) object.

These new generation web applications are called Rich Web Applications (RWA). Frameworks such as the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), and JavaScript model-view-controller (MVC) frameworks such as Backbone.js are facilitating this move. With this migration, testing frameworks need to follow the logic by moving analysis and test generation from the …

The Kinetics And Mechanisms Of Some Fundamental Organic Reactions Of Nitro Compounds, Zhao Li

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In chemistry, kinetics is the study of the rates of chemical reactions. A reaction mechanism describes in detail exactly what takes place at each stage of an overall chemical reaction from reactants to products. The work outlined in this dissertation was carried out in order to find out the true mechanisms of some fundamental organic reactions of nitro compounds by means of a series of novel kinetic techniques and analysis methods.

The target reactions include (1) the proton transfer reactions of nitroalkanes and (2) the aromatic nucleophilic reactions of trinitroarenes, both of which are undeniably among the most elementary and …

Rock Properties And Structure Within The San Andreas Fault Observatory At Depth (Safod) Borehold, Northwest Of Parkfield, California: In Situ Observations Of Rock Deformation Processes And Fluid-Rock Interactions Of The San Andreas Fault Zone At ~ 3 Km Depth, Kelly Keighley Bradbury

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) is a scientific drilling experiment situated along the central creeping segment of the San Andreas Fault, near Parkfield, California, and north of a segment of the fault that has experienced large historical earthquakes. Drilling into active fault zones allows scientist’s to examine in situ rock samples and to record real-time data.

The main goal of this study is to characterize the geologic setting and rock properties of the San Andreas fault at ~ 3 km depth in the SAFOD borehole. In this region, the fault deforms nearly continuously through aseismic creep and …

Dystopian Literature And The Novella Form As Illustrated Through Side Effects, An Original Novella, Bryan W. Johnson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This master’s degree thesis exists in two parts: a critical introduction and an original novella entitled Side Effects. The critical introduction introduces and explains the theories on, literature surrounding, and literary uses of dystopian fiction, the novella format, and drug-based psychotherapy. Current opinion on dystopian fiction sees it characterized by a seemingly perfect societal setting that ultimately contains hidden or suppressed moral flaws. The ultimate purpose of dystopian fiction is commentary on contemporary society through a defamiliarized setting. The novella format is shown to exist in a middle-ground state between the short story and the novel, yet the format …

Structural And Functional Characterization Of The Essential Rna Helicase Mtr4, Ryan N. Jackson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

To insure the integrity of nuclear RNA, the eukaryotic cell employs surveillance systems that identify and degrade RNAs that are detrimental or unneeded. The failure of RNA surveillance systems can lead to neurodegenerative disease states and cancer. The essential RNA helicase Mtr4 is required for the degradation and processing of several nuclear RNAs. To further the understanding of RNA surveillance and processing in eukaryotes, Ryan Jackson of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Utah State University has determined the molecular structure of Mtr4 and has used this structure to interrogate Mtr4 function biochemically. The structure revealed that Mtr4 contains …

A Multicase Study Of The Impact Of Perceived Gender Roles On The Career Decisions Of Women In Science-Related Careers, Stephen Frank Hren

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study was done to determine how the perception of gender roles developed throughout childhood and early adulthood affected the career decisions of women who showed early promise in science. In addition, this study was done to determine if my experiences as a researcher would have any impact on me personally. Four women were chosen as case study participants, providing for comparison within and across cases.

Gender roles were found to relate to the career decisions made by the four cases in three ways: (a) support from family members, teachers, mentors, and collaborators; (b) opportunities within the family, school and …

Traffic Operations Analysis Of Merging Strategies For Vehicles In An Automated Electric Transportation System, Derek Rulon Freckleton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Automated electric transportation has the potential to revolutionize the way people move by providing unparalleled benefits to human health and safety, economic independence, and quality of life. It is a system where vehicles with no emissions control themselves as they cooperatively move people from point “A” to point “B.” Vehicle automation aims to eliminate human error from the task of driving, making the roads safer and leaving drivers able to perform other tasks as they desire while they travel. Also, through wireless in-motion electric power transfer, the gas tank may finally be completely excluded from vehicles without sacrificing freedoms in …

Carrier Frequency Offset Estimation For Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, Nagaravind Challakere

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The objective of the research for this thesis is to improve the performance of the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system by minimising the impact of frequency offset at the receive end. OFDM is a popular standard used in wireless communication systems such as cellphone networks and broadband internet. In an OFDM system, the data symbols modulate the carrier signal at the transmitter. Usually, the receiver function generator performs the demodulation task. In the absence of frequency offset compensation, the transmitted symbols can not be effectively recovered upon reception. This leads to packet loss and a degradation of the Quality …

Planning In Incomplete Domains, Jared William Robertson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Automated planning in computer science consists of finding a sequence of actions leading from an initial state to a goal state. People who have expert knowledge of the specific problem domain work with experts in automated planning to define the domain states and actions. This knowledge engineering required to create complete and correct domain descriptions for planning problems is often very costly and difficult. Our goal with incomplete planning is to allow people to program domains without the need for planning experts.

Throughout the process of instruction of intelligent systems, teachers can often leave out whole procedures and aspects of …

Instances Of Conflict And Cooperation: An Exploration Into The Role Of Competition Between Usda-Wildlife Services And Wildlife Control Operators, Gary J. Bezzant Jr.

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In early 1994 the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal Damage Control agency implemented a directive providing guidance to help avoid competition between themselves and private businesses, known as Wildlife Control Operators (WCOs) engaging in similar work. Nearly two decades later some WCOs still complain about having to compete with the Animal Damage Control agency, now named Wildlife Services. Other businesses report enjoying a cooperative relationship with the agency.

I analyzed four policies that regulate competition between Wildlife Services and WCOs and found that there is a good amount of guidance given to Wildlife Services in regards to their competitive …