Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Geometric And Stoichometric Change In Nanoparticles And Materials On Lattice Thermal Conductivity, W. Tanner Yorgason

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Thermal transport properties are critical for applications ranging from thermal management to energy conversion. Passive thermal management has been an area of study for over a century and has only grown as technology has advanced because it requires no additional energy to remove heat. Changing the nanostructure of the materials involved in passive heat transfer methods, either by geometric changes or stoichiometric changes, can greatly improve the effectiveness of this heat transfer method. In order to explore this further, this work employs LAMMPS molecular dynamics (MD) simulation software to calculate the lattice thermal conductivity (λ_p) of a …

Using Anthropogenic Risks To Inform Salmonid Conservation At The Landscape Scale, Andrew W. Witt

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The expansion and industrialization of humanity has caused many unforeseen consequences to the natural world. Due to the importance of freshwater for people, rivers have been particularly altered to meet human needs, often at the expense of the natural world. Supplying water for farms, industries, and cities has reshaped the natural state of rivers by altering river paths, chemistry, and species compositions. These changes have harmed many species that prospered before widespread human alterations, including the native trout and salmon of western North America. As human populations continue to grow, new threats will surface for rivers, and the trout and …

Gps Denied Localization Using Ultra-Wideband Radios, Joshua P. Vanfleet

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

GPS denied environments cause each unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) in an autonomous convoy to lose positional accuracy which can lead to inoperability, or even damage. In order for autonomous convoy systems to fill the needs of any particular field, a well-performing system must be designed such that a convoy can operate in any environment. Ultra-wideband (UWB) radios are a proposed solution to GPS denied localization. The main objective of this research is to use UWB radios to localize a leader vehicle within a convoy situation while in a GPS denied environment.

Humans As Sensors: The Influence Of Extreme Heat Vulnerability Factors On Risk Perceptions Across The Contiguous United States, Forrest Scott Schoessow

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Extreme heat events are the deadliest natural hazard in the United States and will continue to get worse in the coming years due to the effects of climate change. As a result, more people will experience deadly heat conditions. This highlights the need for decision-makers to develop better strategies for preventing future losses. How badly individuals are affected by extreme heat depends on many circumstances, such as how high temperatures actually are, weather conditions, and location. For example, a dry 90 °F day in Phoenix is probably more tolerable than a humid 90 °F day in New Orleans for most …

Word Recognition In Nutrition Labels With Convolutional Neural Network, Anuj Khasgiwala

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Nowadays, everyone is very busy and running around trying to maintain a balance between their work life and family, as the working hours are increasing day by day. In such hassled life people either ignore or do not give enough attention to a healthy diet. An imperative part of a healthy eating routine is the cognizance and maintenance of nourishing data and comprehension of how extraordinary sustenance and nutritious constituents influence our bodies. Besides in the USA, in many other countries, nutritional information is fundamentally passed on to consumers through nutrition labels (NLs) which can be found in all packaged …

Implementing The Use Of Personal Activity Data In An Introductory Statistics Course, Lacy Christensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Integrating real data into a classroom is one of the recommendations in the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) college report which lays out guidelines for an introductory statistics course (Committee, GAISE College Report ASA Revision, 2016). In order to assess the effect of using real data in a classroom, the students received physical activity trackers to wear during an undergraduate introductory statistics course taught in the summer. This tracker, a Fitbit, enabled students to monitor and record their steps, calories, and active time throughout the class. Collecting personal activity data (PAD) creates a large database which …

Teaching Landscape Construction Using Augmented Reality, Arshdeep Singh

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis describes the design, development, and evaluation of an interactive Microsoft HoloLens application that projects landscape models in Augmented Reality. The application was developed using the Unity framework and 3D models created in Sketchup. Using the application, students can not only visualize the models in real space but can also interact with the models using gestures. The students can interact with the models using gaze and air-tap gestures.

Application testing was conducted with 21 students from the Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning department at Utah State University. To evaluate the application, students completed a usability survey after using the …

The Integration Of Reading, Writing, Speaking, And Listening Skills In The Middle School Social Studies Classroom, Marianne Bristow Evans

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this feasibility study is to provide evidence of how integrating reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills into eighth-grade social studies instruction facilitates student understanding of content material and ability to write about social studies content. In this within-subjects paired-samples research study, 197 eighth-grade participants received instruction in a social studies content area and in argumentative writing. Data from a criterion-referenced social studies pre and posttest and data from pre and post instruction writing samples were analyzed to evaluate the influence of the integration of literacy tasks in middle school social studies classrooms on content area knowledge acquisition …

Investing In Agribusiness Stocks And Farmland: A Boom Or Bust Analysis, Asif Rasool

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As intelligent investors, we should always consider holding assets of different classes. Investing in assets from various classes allows us to minimize portfolio risks. In this paper, we recommend a better way of devoting money, especially for the investors who are interested in the agricultural sector. Historically fund managers use Markowitz framework to create financial portfolios. However, that framework has some fundamental limitations. A copula is a modern approach that counters the disadvantages of the Markowitz framework, to deal with portfolio construction. Copula also identifies the downside risk (the maximum amount of money you can lose) of a portfolio.

We …

An Experimental Comparison Of Student Motivation Between Two Computational Thinking-Based Stem Activities: Vex-Based Automation And Robotics And A Quadcopter Activity, Cory J. Ortiz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to compare student motivation between two junior high level computational thinking based STEM curricular activities. These two activities were a newly developed quadcopter based curriculum and a VEX based curricular activity developed for Project Lead the Way’s Gateway to Technology – Automation and Robotics course. Student motivation was assessed using an assessment called My Class Activities which broke motivation into four constructs: interest, challenge, choice, and enjoyment.

This study assessed students in three schools in a northern Utah school district. Students were assessed after receiving each curriculum. Assessment responses were then coded and analyzed. …

A Comparison Of The Effects Of Enhanced Hands-On Intervention Versus Textbook Interventions To Understand Student Misconceptions In Particle Dynamics, Gang Liu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The present dissertation research examined the effects of applying the enhanced hands-on intervention to reveal and correct student misunderstandings of the concepts in engineering dynamics, especially particle dynamics. We involved 36 student volunteers for three different research topics. The student participants were divided into two groups in each research topic: enhanced hands-on intervention and pure textbook groups. An interview and intervention was conducted with each participant individually.

The author introduced the “Think-Aloud” method with two kinds of interventions mentioned above. The participants were required to speak out their thought process loud as they worked on the two sets of assessment …

Senior Computer Science Students’ Task And Revised Task Interpretation While Engaged In Programming Endeavor, Andreas Febrian

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Developing a computer program is not an easy task. Studies reported that a large number of computer science students decided to change their major due to the extreme challenge in learning programming. Fortunately, studies also reported that learning various self-regulation strategies may help students to continue studying computer science. This study is interested in assessing students’ self-regulation, in specific their task understanding and its revision during programming endeavors. Task understanding is specifically selected because it affects the entire programming endeavor.

In this qualitative case study, two female and two male senior computer science students were voluntarily recruited as research participants. …

Feature Screening Of Ultrahigh Dimensional Feature Spaces With Applications In Interaction Screening, Randall D. Reese

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Data for which the number of predictors exponentially exceeds the number of observations is becoming increasingly prevalent in fields such as bioinformatics, medical imaging, computer vision, And social network analysis. One of the leading questions statisticians must answer when confronted with such “big data” is how to reduce a set of exponentially many predictors down to a set of a mere few predictors which have a truly causative effect on the response being modelled. This process is often referred to as feature screening. In this work we propose three new methods for feature screening. The first method we propose (TC-SIS) …

Canonical Coordinates On Lie Groups And The Baker Campbell Hausdorff Formula, Nicholas Graner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Lie Groups occur in math and physics as representations of continuous symmetries and are often described in terms of their Lie Algebra. This thesis is concerned with finding a concrete description of a Lie group given its associated Lie algebra. Several calculations toward this end are developed and then implemented in the Maple Differential Geometry package. Examples of the calculations are given.

Influence Of Global Atmospheric Circulation Variations On Weather And Climate Extremes, Yen-Heng Lin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Global warming and climate change deeply influence weather and climate extremes, causing substantial property damage and loss every year around the world. Given the importance of heating differences between low-latitude and Arctic regions, which produce heat sources and cold sources that each influence global circulations, we investigate three extreme weather events in different regions in order to better understand the possible connections between extreme events and global circulation changes.

This study begins with climate variations in the low-latitude western North Pacific. In early summer, the timing of the wet season has shifted from late May to early June since 1979. …

Development And Fitness Consequences Of Onshore Behavior Among Polar Bears In The Southern Beaufort Sea Subpopulation, Kate M. Lillie

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are experiencing rapid and substantial changes to their environment due to global climate change. Polar bears of the southern Beaufort Sea (SB) have historically spent most of the year on the sea ice. However, recent reports from Alaska indicate that the proportion of the SB subpopulation observed onshore during late summer and early fall has increased considerably. Previous research suggests that the number of polar bears onshore is linked to sea ice conditions and the availability of subsistence-harvested whale carcasses, which are referred to as bone piles. My objectives were to determine the development …

Towards The Prediction Of Climate Extremes With Attribution Analysis Through Climate Diagnostics And Modeling: Cases From Asia To North America, Boniface Opoku Fosu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This project summarizes the findings of research organized in two parts. The first involved the characterization of changes in the variability of climate that lead to extreme events. The second focused on the predictability of extreme climate on time-scales ranging from short forecast lead-times to long-lead climate predictions exceeding a year.

Initial studies focused on three interrelated, yet regionally unique extreme climate phenomena. First, the relationship between increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and particulate matter (PM) concentration in basin terrain was investigated. Next, we evaluated changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation associated with two climate phenomena at either extreme side of …

Enhancing Spider-Silk Protein Materials Through Continuous Electrospinning And Photo-Initiated Cross-Linking, Dan Gil

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Spider-silk is known as one of the stronger natural materials, unfortunately it is impossible to farm spiders due to their territorial and cannibalistic nature. To address this issue, researchers have studied spider-silk to discover how it is produced in nature. From their results, spider-silk is composed of large sized proteins produced in two different cell types. Using this knowledge, researchers created transgenic organisms capable of producing spider-silk proteins in large quantities. Using these proteins, several groups have created fibers, films, hydrogels, and adhesives with robust and versatile properties.

Wet-spinning is a technique commonly used to create fibers from spider-silk proteins. …

Uncertainty Quantification And Sensitivity Analysis Of Multiphysics Environments For Application In Pressurized Water Reactor Design, Cole David Blakely

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The most common design among U.S. nuclear power plants is the pressurized water reactor (PWR). The three primary design disciplines of these plants are system analysis (which includes thermal hydraulics), neutronics, and fuel performance. The nuclear industry has developed a variety of codes over the course of forty years, each with an emphasis within a specific discipline. Perhaps the greatest difficulty in mathematically modeling a nuclear reactor, is choosing which specific phenomena need to be modeled, and to what detail.

A multiphysics computational environment provides a means of advancing simulations of nuclear plants. Put simply, users are able to combine …

Attracting Secondary Students To Stem Using A Summer Engineering Camp, Murad Mahmoud

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this research was to study the benefits of having middle school students attend a summer camp focused on the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). A lot of research funding is being used in such camps to help get more students into STEM fields as there is a lack of graduates in those fields. Therefore, it is important to understand the benefits and effectiveness of such camps.

Students, teachers and parents were involved in this research. Students and teachers attended a one-week engineering camp at Utah State University while parents were involved via a blog …

Three Essays On The Economics Of Controlling Mobile-Source Episodic Air Pollution, Ramjee Acharya

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Cache County and the Wasatch Front, Utah have persistently experienced some of the nation’s worst air quality over the past decade. Elevated PM2.5 concentrations during wintertime “red air day” episodes frequently exceed the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). We investigate the possible effects of two different economic policies in controlling these regional problems. Adapting a model originally developed to calculate the social investment necessary to control nationwide disease outbreaks, we estimate an optimal preventative capital stock (for example, investment in public transportation) of between $4.1 million and $14.1 million to control red air day episodes in Cache County, and …

Contextual Factors In The Identity Development Of Native American And Latinx Undergraduates In Stem Fields, Angela Marie Enno

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study includes two papers that aimed to provide insights into the experiences of high-achieving Latinx and Native American college students studying science. We wanted to better understand factors that influence these students’ ability to develop a sense of identity that weaves together their hoped-for careers as scientists as well as their cultural identities. We looked at how they feel about working with mentors in science fields who were like them in a variety of ways. We found that many students (especially those with a stronger sense of cultural identity) valued working with mentors who were similar to them in …

Evaluation Of 'Structure-From-Motion' From A Pole-Mounted Camera For Monitoring Geomorphic Change, Rebecca K. Rossi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Emerging "Structure-from-Motion" (SfM) photogrammetry techniques encourage faster, cheaper, and more accessible field methods for accurately reconstructing 3D topography. The SfM method consists of collecting sets of overlapping images of the ground surface with a point and shoot camera, and reconstructing surface topography from the images with developed software programs. This research develops and implements a SfM image acquisition method and post-processing workflow as a supplemental technique to the traditional total-station method to aid in monitoring sandbar change in Marble and Grand Canyons along the Colorado River in Arizona. Due to permitting in Grand Canyon National Park, a 4.9 m pole-mounted …

Advancement To The Highest Faculty Ranks In Academic Stem: Explaining The Gender Gap At Usu, Helga Van Miegroet

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Science and technology (S&T) disciplines at universities are still largely dominated by men, and few women are found in the highest employment ranks. Using the faculty data from Utah State University, this thesis explores the factors that help explain the difference in career trajectory between men and women in the S&T colleges. While there were few women in S&T colleges prior to the 1990s, more women have been hired since then, and the lower ranks of the faculty corps are starting to reflect the gender composition of the doctoral degree holders in the different fields. This is not the case …

Understanding The Late Mesoproterozoic Earth System From The Oldest Strata In Grand Canyon: C-Isotope Stratigraphy And Facies Analysis Of The 1254 Ma Bass Formation, Grand Canyon Supergroup, Az., Usa, Erin C. Lathrop

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Rocks provide insight into ancient times before complex animals existed. The oldest sedimentary rocks in Grand Canyon (the Bass Formation) allow us to glimpse into what things might have been like over a billion years ago. These rocks record the time known as the Mesoproterozoic Era (1.6 to 1.0 billion years ago), otherwise known as the ‘boring billion’. These rocks are thought to be the right age to indicate the end of an oddly stable world when continents were quiet and life was calm, yet they predate younger rocks that record extreme events. The Bass Formation, some of the only …

Standard Machine Learning Techniques In Audio Beehive Monitoring: Classification Of Audio Samples With Logistic Regression, K-Nearest Neighbor, Random Forest And Support Vector Machine, Prakhar Amlathe

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Honeybees are one of the most important pollinating species in agriculture. Every three out of four crops have honeybee as their sole pollinator. Since 2006 there has been a drastic decrease in the bee population which is attributed to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The bee colonies fail/ die without giving any traditional health symptoms which otherwise could help in alerting the Beekeepers in advance about their situation.

Electronic Beehive Monitoring System has various sensors embedded in it to extract video, audio and temperature data that could provide critical information on colony behavior and health without invasive beehive inspections. Previously, significant …

Methods For The Aerostructural Design And Optimization Of Wings With Arbitrary Planform And Payload Distribution, Jeffrey D. Taylor

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The design of an aircraft wing often involves the use of mathematical methods for simultaneous aerodynamic and structural design. The goal of many of these methods is to minimize the drag on the wing. A variety of computer models exist for this purpose, but some require the use of expensive time and computational resources to give meaningful results. As an alternative, some mathematical methods have been developed that give reason ably accurate results without the need for a computer. However, most of these methods can only be used for wings with specific shapes and payload distributions. In this thesis, a …

Evaluating The Impact Of External Carbon Source In Laboratory-Based Denitrification Rate Experiments, Jared Richens

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Limitations in the quality of transformation rates used with water quality models such as QUAL2K have led to the need to identify methods that can effectively and accurately determine these rates. During the early stages of method development of a Utah Department of Environmental Quality (Utah DEQ) funded project seeking to identify such methods, it was determined that under certain situations external carbon amendment may be required to successfully determine denitrification rates.

The focus of this study was to evaluate the potential impacts that introducing external carbon sources may have on estimating the laboratory denitrification rates resulting from these methods. …

Three Environmental Fluid Dynamics Papers, Eden Furtak-Cole

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Three papers are presented, applying computational fluid dynamics methods to fluid flows in the geosciences. In the first paper, a numerical method is developed for single phase potential flow in the subsurface. For a class of monotonically advancing flows, the method provides a computational savings as compared to classical methods and can be applied to problems such as forced groundwater recharge. The second paper investigates the shear stress reducing action of an erosion control roughness array. Incompressible Naiver-Stokes simulations are performed for multiple wind angles to understand the changing aerodynamics of individual and grouped roughness elements. In the third paper, …

Content Analysis Of Affordances For Social And Emotional Competency Development In Third-Grade Core Reading Programs, Lisa Trottier Brown

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this content analysis study was to identify opportunities embedded in selected reading programs that facilitate the development of social and emotional competencies in the context of literacy instruction. These competencies have been shown to strengthen academic performance and help children learn skills that accelerate success inside and outside of the classroom. The content analysis examined three commonly used third-grade core reading programs to identify content that focuses on social and emotional competencies and instructional processes important in teaching social and emotional skills to children. The study also sought to identify content and instructional processes that might be …