Digital Commons Network^™

Spatial And Behavioral Patterns Of Captive Coyotes, Jeffrey T. Schultz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Environmental enrichment is a technique used at many captive animal facilities that can improve the well-being of their animals. It seeks to enhance habitat features and promote natural behavior by providing a variety of practical ways for captive animals to control their environmental settings, especially during stressful circumstances. Enclosure features, such as shelter structures, are one tool that promotes wild behavior by adding complexity to an enclosure’s physical environment. Enrichment efforts for captive wildlife are most effective when they are specialized to the biological needs of the animals. Human activity may alter captive animal behavior and utility of enclosure features, …

Characterization Of The Thermal Resistance Of Grain Boundaries Of Cerium Oxide, Jesse Spackman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Many materials are made up of small crystals, or grains. Grain boundaries are the interfaces between two grains and affect the flow of heat through the material. These interfaces serve to interfere with the energy carriers by scattering or disrupting them. Because of the negative effect these interfaces have on these energy carriers, they inhibit heat flow and act as thermal resistors. The thermal boundary resistance between two grains of the same material is sometimes referred to as the Kapitza resistance, although this term is also used to describe the thermal resistance between solid/solid interfaces of different materials or solid/liquid …

Interactions Between Plant Water-Stress And Neonicotinoid Insecticides On Spider Mite Infestations In Corn, Alice Ruckert

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Spider mites (Acari: Tetranychidae) are an important agricultural pest of many crops and landscape plants. They can reproduce rapidly and quickly develop resistance to many pesticides, making them difficult to manage. Plant water-stress and high temperatures promote spider mite infestations, while spider mite outbreaks can also result from neonicotinoid insecticide applications. Drought is predicted to increase in the Intermountain West due to increases in temperature and reduced frequency of precipitation events in the region, and neonicotinoids are currently one of the most widely used classes of insecticides in field crops. I studied the interactive effect of these two simultaneously occurring …

Platform Development And Path Following Controller Design For Full-Sized Vehicle Automation, Austin D. Costley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the design and development of a platform used to automate a stock 2013 Ford Focus EV. The platform is low-cost and open-source to encourage collaboration and provide a starting point for fellow researchers to advance the work in the field of automated vehicle control. This thesis starts by discussing the process of obtaining control of the vehicle by taking advantage of internal communication protocols. The controller design process is detailed and a description of the components and software used to control the vehicle is provided. The automated system is tested and the …

Water Entry Impact Dynamics Of Diving Birds, Saberul Islam Sharker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Plunge diving and surface diving are two main techniques used by seabirds for foraging purposes. While some plunge divers can dive into the water at very high speeds (24 m/s), surface divers do not. This study analyzes the free-surface impact of 3D printed bird head models with embedded accelerometers to determine why surface divers cannot dive safely at high speeds. The problem is investigated in the context of impact jerk where surface divers, unlike plunge divers, are found to experience non-dimensional jerk (J^∗) values exceeding a safe limit. This approach portrays itself as an unconventional yet effective method …

Development Of A Student-Perspective Based Scale On Instructor Approachability, Xin Zhao

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Students respond to instructor characteristics. Instructor approachability is one such characteristic that is often discussed yet inconsistently defined in the literature. The purpose of this study was to construct and validate a new measure, the Instructor Approachability Scale. The present study used a rationally derived process to generate a list of items that are representative of instructor approachability. Factor analysis was conducted to establish psychometrics for the scale. Regression analyses were then conducted to examine the impact of instructor approachability on several outcomes, including students’ help-seeking attitudes, satisfaction with the course, and mastery of course content. Several significant main …

Suicide And Disability: Three Different Analyses Of A Nation-Wide Sample Of American Adults, Emily M. Lund

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Suicide is a major public health issue and the 10^th leading cause of death in the U.S. People with disabilities are one group that may be at high risk for suicide. This dissertation presents three studies that examined suicidal thoughts and behaviors in a national sample of individuals with and without disabilities. They also examined the ways in which depression scores and sociodemographic factors such as gender, religion, race, and employment, interact with disability status to influence suicidality. I found that people with disabilities reported more suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts and were more likely to believe that they …

Design For Manufacturability And Assembly Of An Assistive Technician Creeper, Including Single Drive Control Of A Multi-Degree Of Freedom Kinematic Mechanism, Larry T. Wilde Jr.

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In 2011, a team of engineering students at Utah State University designed and built an assistive technician creeper to assist persons with lower-extremity physical disabilities to work in low-clearance areas. In order to put this technology on the market, a complete product redesign was needed to address safety and functionality concerns. This thesis outlines the specific design needs, presents the detailed design approach, and summarizes the final creeper solution. The mechanisms of the initial prototype were modified to independently incline or recline the upper body, and raise or lower the seat surface with a single motor. This will be especially …

An Evaluation Of Fading Procedures On The Effects Of Children Using Activity Schedules To Play On The Playground Appropriately, Kylee Lewis

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Children with autism often have difficulty playing appropriately and independently. Activity schedules have been shown to be effective at teaching children with autism to play. Some individuals with autism engage in repetitive behaviors, especially on the playground. A previous study showed that activity schedules were effective at reducing repetitive or patterned behavior on the playground by teaching three students with autism to play appropriately and independently. This study investigated the effects of fading procedures on teaching independent and varied play skills to young children with autism during free play on the playground.

Investigating And Improving Bridge Management System Methodologies Under Uncertainty, Minwoo Chang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation presents a novel procedure to select explanatory variables, without the influence of human bias, for deterioration model development using National Bridge Inventory (NBI) data. Using NBI information, including geometric data and climate information, candidate explanatory variables can be converted into normalized numeric values and analyzed prior to the development of deterministic or stochastic deterioration models. The prevailing approach for explanatory variable selection is to use expert opinion solicited from experienced engineers. This may introduce human influenced biases into the deterioration modeling process. A framework using Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) penalized regression and covariance analysis are …

Characterization Of The Substrate Interactions And Regulation Of Protein Arginine Methyltransferase, Yalemi Morales

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Protein arginine methylation is a posttranslational modification catalyzed by the family of proteins known as the protein arginine methyltransferases (PRMTs). Thousands of methylated arginines have been found in mammalian cells. Many targets of arginine regulation are involved in important cellular processes like transcription, RNA transport and processing, translation, cellular signaling, and DNA repair. Since PRMT dysregulation has been linked to a variety of disease states, understanding how the activity of the PRMTs is regulated is of paramount importance. PRMT1 is the predominant PRMT, responsible for about 85% of all arginine methylation in cells, but very little is known about how …

The Effects Of Rootstock, Scion, Grafting Method And Plant Growth Regulators On Flexural Strength And Hydraulic Resistance Of Apple, Stuart W. Adams

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The apple rootstock ‘Geneva^® 41’ (‘G.41’), is desirable for its resistance to fire blight, Erwinia amylovora, while producing high yields. However, ‘G.41’ and other Geneva^® selections tend to form weak graft unions in the nursery that are susceptible to breaking in the wind, at harvest, or during shipment. In order to understand and remedy this graft union weakness, six scions (‘Fuji’, ‘Gala’, ‘Honeycrisp’, ‘McIntosh’, ‘Pink Lady’, and ‘Scilate’) by seven rootstocks (‘G.41’, ‘G.935’, ‘G.214’, ‘G.11’, ‘M.9-NIC 29’, ‘B.9’ and ‘EMLA 26’), by two grafting methods (chip bud and saddle graft) in a factorial design were tested for graft …

Best Practices For Volume Flow Rate Measurements Using Piv At The Exit Of A Turbulent Planar Jet, Rick Cressall

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Particle image velocimetry (PIV) is used to make volume-flow-rate measurements at the exit of a turbulent, planar nozzle. The objective of this report is to assess a range of data acquisition and processing parameters. Data is acquired for volume flow rates of Reynolds numbers between 10,000 and 100,000 for both two-component (2C) and stereo PIV. The parameters are systematically changed one at a time and evaluated using differences in uncertainty, calculation time, and volume- flow-rate deviation. Data acquisition parameters follow the trends of previous work. A multitude of processing parameters were varied for several PIV processing methods. Recommendations for each …

Laboratory Experiences In Mathematical Biology For Post-Secondary Mathematics Students, Matthew Lewis

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In addition to the memorization, algorithmic skills and vocabulary which is the default focus in many mathematics classrooms, professional mathematicians are expected to creatively apply known techniques, construct new mathematical approaches and communicate with and about mathematics. We propose that students can learn these professional, higher level skills through Laboratory Experiences in Mathematical Biology (LEMBs) which put students in the role of mathematics researcher creating mathematics to describe and understand biological data. LEMBs are constructed so they require no specialized equipment and can easily be run in the context of a college math class. Students collect data and develop mathematical …

Parenting Styles And Child Outcomes In Puerto Rican Families, Jeisianne Rosario Colón

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to evaluate observed parenting dimensions and styles among Puerto Rican parents living in Puerto Rico and its relationship to internalizing and externalizing child problems. Participants included 51 families with a child between the ages of 6 and 11. Families engaged in different behavioral observational tasks such as: making puzzles, recess, or solving a problem. The Parenting Styles Observation Rating Scale was used to code the observations and the Child Behavior Checklist was used to assess for behavioral problems. Overall, parents received high ratings on warmth, demandingness, and autonomy granting. Supportive demandingness was negatively associated …

The Effect Of Prosody On Preschool Children’S Emotional, Cognitive, And Behavioral-Eye And Behavioral-Body Engagement During Story Time, Trevor Rowe

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Many children have insufficient early literacy experiences and fail to obtain proficient emergent literacy before they enter kindergarten. Reading to young children has been positively linked to improving their emergent literacy. Numerous factors influence how engaged children are while being read to including the adult’s prosody, receptive vocabulary, and the home literacy environment. Using a quantitative quasi-experimental design, this study sought to understand the association among prosody, child engagement (emotional, cognitive, behavioral-eye, and behavioral-body), receptive vocabulary, and the home literacy environment. The sample included 76 3- to 5-year-old children from local child care centers and their parents. To understand the …

Statistical Techniques To Model And Optimize Performance Of Scientific, Numerically Intensive Workloads, Steena Dominica Steven Monteiro

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Projecting performance of applications and hardware is important to several market segments—hardware designers, software developers, supercomputing centers, and end users. Hardware designers estimate performance of current applications on future systems when designing new hardware. Software developers make performance estimates to evaluate performance of their code on different architectures and input datasets. Supercomputing centers try to optimize the process of matching computing resources to computing needs. End users requesting time on supercomputers must provide estimates of their application’s run time, and incorrect estimates can lead to wasted supercomputing resources and time. However, application performance is challenging to predict because it is …

Adaptive Background Modeling With Temporal Feature Update For Dynamic Foreground Object Removal, Li Yin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis explores several approaches in order to develop an effective algorithm for separating the moving objects from the background so that the background alone may be displayed in a video sequence. In particular, this thesis seeks to develop an algorithm that can successfully remove a moving teacher from the whiteboard, so that the writing on the whiteboard may be fully visible to the audience.

In this thesis, some prior works related to this problem are studied to understand the basic principles of adaptive background modeling, or removing the foreground from a background with occasional changes in a video sequence. …

Evaluation Of The Shelf-Stability Of A High-Carotenoid Breakfast Food And Its Impact On Skin Carotenoid Levels, Dawn L. Reed

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Carotenoids are pigments found throughout nature in a large variety of plants including fruits and vegetables (F/V). Carotenoids provide much of the color we see in nature but are perhaps most noticeable in plants with yellow, orange, or red flesh. Carotenoids are antioxidants that serve as a protection against harmful ultraviolet radiation and other free radical producing processes in the body and in plant tissues. Once consumed, carotenoids are deposited in the skin, particularly in fatty tissue. Raman resonance spectroscopy (RRS) can be used to quantify skin carotenoid levels and has been proven a good indicator of F/V consumption. A …

Oocyte Quality: Molecular Constituents Altered In The Oocyte Due To Various Environmental Factors, Lindsay Cox

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

An estimated 1.6 million American couples struggle with infertility. Some causes for poor fertility can be clearly defined but in many instances, subfertility is unexplained. Poor oocyte quality is now considered to be a main contributing factor for many causes of infertility. Good oocyte quality is crucial for many processes including embryo development and maintaining pregnancy. There is a possibility that any alterations to the oocyte can have long lasting effects on embryo development and the health of the offspring. The oocyte is very sensitive to any perturbations to its surrounding environment. Transcripts for apoptosis inhibitors and epigenetic modifiers were …

Simple Soil Quality Tests And Organic Management Practices For Orchards In The Intermountain West, Esther Oline Thomsen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Soil health is often overlooked as a long-term management strategy as growers face an increasing number of short-term management challenges in the Intermountain West. The costs of inputs are rising and water resources are becoming more limited. Soil with poor health typically requires more amendments and fertlizers to meet crop needs. Soil health tests can help reveal management practices that reduce soil health, as well as those that improve soil health. Practices known to improve soil health are reduced to no tillage, cover crop use- especially legumes, and addition of mulch and other organic materials. Soil health testing is not …

Geologists And The British Raj, 1870-1910, Aja B. Tolman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The British Raj (1858-1947) hired geologists from both India and Great Britain to find valuable resources in India, such as coal. The geologists worked to convince the government to enact policy changes regarding museum ownership, conservation, railway construction, education, and industrialization. But the geologists had different goals based on whether they were Indian or European. The Indian geologists wanted India’s independence from Britain, so their education and industrial policy proposals were geared towards making India self-sufficient and globally competitive. The British geologists’ goal was to enrich the empire. The British were able to convince the government to accept most of …

Investigating The Effect Of Capping Layers On Final Thin Film Morphology After A Dewetting Process, Benjamin C. White

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Nanoparticles on a substrate have numerous applications in nanotechnology, from enhancements to solar cell efficiency to improvements in carbon nanotube growth. Producing nanoparticles in a cheap fashion with some control over size and spacing is difficult to do, but desired. This work presents a novel method for altering the size and spacing of nickel and gold nanoparticles. Dewetting is a methodology to reduce thin films to an ensemble of discrete droplets. The introduction of alumina capping layers to thin nickel films during a pulsed laser-induced dewetting process has yielded reductions in the mean and standard deviation of radii and pitch …

Analysis And Modeling Of Pedestrian Walking Behaviors Involving Individuals With Disabilities, Mohammad Sadra Sharifi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Walking facilities like walkways and stairs are important infrastructures which must be designed to effectively accommodate the behavior of pedestrians. Heterogeneity in pedestrian composition is one important factor generally overlooked in walking facility design guidelines and handbooks. While individuals with disabilities constitute a significant portion of the population in the United States, they are often overlooked due to lack of available data. To remedy this, large scale controlled walking experiments were performed at Utah State University (USU) to study the walking behavior of various types of individuals with disabilities (including vision and mobility impairments) in different walking environments. These environments …

Investigating Biosynthetic Steps Of An Angucycline Antifungal, S. Gabrielle Gladstone

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The species of bacterium Streptomyces sp. SCC-2136 which has the American Type Culture Collection index 55186 naturally produces two chemical compounds, labeled Sch 47554 and Sch 47555. These compounds were previously reported to posess antifungal activity. This thesis sets out to confirm the mechanism by which the bacterium produces these compounds; specifically which genes are responsible for producing the enzymes that make and shape the molecules.

The genes and enzymes that were characterized are the minimal polyketide synthase, the ketoreductase that specifically acts on the ninth carbon, the first-ring aromatase, the subsequent ring cyclase, and two oxygenases. Also elucidated …

Understanding The Characteristics Of Successful Projects And Post-Campaign Activities In A Crowdfunding Platform, Madhavi Reddy Dontham

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Online crowdfunding platforms provide project creators with new opportunities for seeking funds from people in the world. But reaching a fund-raising goal or making a project successful is always a challenge. Besides, little is known about post-campaign activities of project creators and backers. To fill the gap, in this research, we are interested in understanding (i) the characteristics of successful projects, (ii) how project creators reacted when their projects failed, and (iii) what post-campaign activities creators and backers made. To achieve our research objectives, first, we analyzed successful projects and failed projects on Kickstarter, the most popular crowdfunding platform. Then …

Laboratory Modeling Of Piping Initiation Behavior Through Constricted Outlet, Ibrahim Ahmed Abdelmotelb Ibrahim

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Backward erosion piping is a type of internal erosion. It occurs beneath water structures as a result of seepage force. It needs two conditions to take place; 1) sufficient hydraulic head to drive the seepage force, and 2) cohesive layer overlies the sand layer and this will lead to concentration of flow. Many researches were done in the past in an attempt to predict the critical gradient. But it was just taking into account the buoyant unit weight which found in recent research that piping can occur at much lower values than was predicted. And other researches were too conservative …

Socialization Of Respeto In Immigrant Mexican Families, Marsha Tafoya

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Respeto is a cultural value considered to be essential in Latina/o families. Latina/o parents endorse respeto as being an important to teaching to their children. Mental health professionals argue that it is important to understand cultural values in delivering appropriate and relevant services to ethnic and culturally diverse clients. Some experts argue that such focus on cultural context also improves the effectiveness of interventions. The current study examined the cultural value of respeto in immigrant Mexican parents with a child between 4 and 9 years of age. Two scales were developed to examine the behavioral displays of respeto in boys …

Translating Temporal Sql To Nested Sql, Venkata Rani

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Sequenced and nonsequenced semantics are the two previously researched semantics for the evaluation of an operation in a temporal database such as a query or data modification. Sequenced semantics evaluates an operation in each time instant using only the data alive at that time. Nonsequenced semantics, in contrast, means that an operation explicitly references and manipulates the timestamps in the data.

In this thesis we propose a new framework that shows both semantics are variants of a general temporal semantics. We present the general semantics and show how additional semantics, such as preceding semantics can be realized. The semantics are …

Effects Of A Flavonoid-Rich Diet On Gut Microbiota Composition And Production Of Trimethylamine In Human Subjects, Justin S. Bell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The prevalence of cardiovascular disease is a major public health concern worldwide. It has been theorized that diets rich in fruits and vegetables may be protective against the development of cardiovascular disease mainly through their high content of flavonoids. Flavonoids were thought to influence traditional risk factors of cardiovascular disease such as blood pressure, lipid profile, and systemic inflammation. Recent clinical studies have shown that this may not be the case. The production of trimethylamine oxide (TMAO) by the gut microbiota from dietary sources of choline has been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events. The objectives of this …