Digital Commons Network^™

Building Engagement In Facebook: A Case Study With Utah State University Extension Sustainability, Kenna Kesler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to explore how Utah State University (USU) Extension Sustainability uses Facebook to engage followers. The researcher conducted a quantitative content analysis of 504 messages posted to the USU Extension Sustainability Facebook page. Graphics and links were the most common post characteristics used. Text-only posts and posts containing videos were used the least. Food was the most common area of sustainability discussed on the page. Posts containing videos, shared content, or that tagged other pages in Facebook messages experienced statistically significantly higher user engagement than posts without those characteristics. Posts containing hashtags experienced statistically significantly …

Ranchers Adapting To Climate Variability In The Upper Colorado River Basin, Utah, Hadia Akbar

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Changes in climate influence agricultural production. This study looks at the impacts of climate variability in the Utah regions of the Upper Colorado River Basin by combining regression techniques with interview data to explore how climate variability affects agricultural production and how the farmers are adapting their practices to these changes. The results show that climate does not have any significant impact on cattle and hay production in the study area on a decadal scale. However, on an annual basis temperature seems to have more impact than precipitation. Among non-climatic variables, commodity prices and their regulations by the government are …

Disease Ecology And Adaptive Management Of Brucellosis In Greater Yellowstone Elk, Gavin G. Cotterill

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Brucellosis is a bacterial infection that primarily affects livestock and can also be transmitted to humans. In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), elk (Cervus canadensis) and bison (Bison bison) are habitual carriers of Brucella abortus, which arrived to the region with cattle over a century ago. The disease was eliminated from cattle in the United States through widespread control efforts, but is now periodically transmitted back to cattle on open rangelands where they can come into contact with fetal tissues and fluids from disease-induced abortions that occur among elk during the late winter and spring. …

A Case Study Comparing The Life Skills Development And Knowledge In Youth Participants Of Horseless And Traditional Horse Programs In Utah, Haley M. Johnson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Traditional horse 4-H programs develop life skills and knowledge in youth. Horseless horse programs lack evaluation for the same benefits. This study evaluated and compared four horseless and seven traditional horse participants from Washington County 4-H in Utah for gains in horse knowledge and development of 10 life skills that are commonly found in 4-H curriculum today: leadership, teamwork, self-responsibility, personal safety, problem solving, decision making, critical thinking, goal setting, communication, and concern for others.

The researcher conducted interviews to learn about life skill experiences of the horse program participants and discover what barriers prevented horseless youth from participating in …

Semisimple Subalgebras Of Semisimple Lie Algebras, Mychelle Parker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Let g be a Lie algebra. The subalgebra classification problem is to create a list of all subalgebras of g up to equivalence. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a software toolkit within the Differential Geometry package of Maple for classifying subalgebras of In particular the thesis will focus on classifying those subalgebras which are isomorphic to the Lie algebra sl(2) and those subalgebras of which have a basis aligned with the root space decomposition (regular subalgebras).

Micro-Biosensor Devices For Biochemical Analysis Applications, Han Zhang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A biosensor is an analytical device integrating a biological element and a physicochemical transducer that convert a biological response into a measurable signal. The advantages of biosensors include low cost, small size, quick, sensitivity and selectivity greater than the conventional instruments. Biosensors have a wide range of applications ranging from clinical diagnostics through to environmental monitoring, agriculture industry, et al.

The different types of biosensors are classified based on the sensor device as well as the biological material. Biosensors can be broadly classified into (piezoelectric, etc.), electrochemical biosensors (potentiometric, amperometric, etc.), and optical types of biosensors (fiber optics, etc.).

Here, …

Pollution Prevention And Water Reuse At Utah Department Of Transportation Facilities, Amanda Stoudt

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As stormwater flows over roads, sidewalks, and other impervious surfaces, it picks up pollutants that are deposited on these surfaces. One common pollutant transported by stormwater is road salt. While the application of road salt is crucial for wintertime public safety, road salt has a host of negative environmental impacts. Road salt has been linked to increasing levels of dissolved solids in groundwater, vegetation damage, and behavioral changes in aquatic organisms. Studies have shown that these impacts are concentrated around salt storage facilities. As a result, the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued many state departments of transportation municipal separate …

An Evaluation Of Management Options For The Clover Root Curculio (Sitona Hispidulus), A Pest Of Alfalfa (Medicago Sativa) In The Intermountain West, Kaitlin A. Rim

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The clover root curculio (CRC) is an important forage pest throughout North America. Extensive larval feeding on host roots has been associated with reduced stand establishment, disruption of nutrient and water uptake, increased secondary plant pathogen infection, decreased winter plant survival, and reductions in forage quality and yield. Due to the hidden nature of larvae in the soil, CRC is often overlooked and integrated pest management programs are limited as there is a lack of management options. First, I surveyed northern Utah alfalfa for CRC natural enemies, particularly insect-attacking nematodes and fungi (entomopathogens) that could be used in biological control …

Working Memory And Syntactic Processing In Bilingual And Monolingual Children, Carla I. Orellana

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between complex auditory working memory, syntactic knowledge, and complex sentence comprehension in bilingual and monolingual children using both offline (behavioral) and online (eye-tracking) measures. There were 19 children in the monolingual group and 19 children in the bilingual group with an average age of 11 years. The children listened to sentences, while looking at a screen with three images of the three nouns in the sentence. They were instructed to select the doer of the action (agent). Their eye movements were recorded as they completed this task. The four sentence …

A Study Of Potential Security And Safety Vulnerabilities In Cyber-Physical Systems, Ali Al-Hashimi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The work in this dissertation focuses on two examples of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), integrations of communication and monitoring capabilities to control a physical system, that operate in adversarial environments. That is to say, it is possible for individuals with malicious intent to gain access to various components of the CPS, disrupt normal operation, and induce harmful impacts. Such a deliberate action will be referred to as an attack. Therefore, some possible attacks against two CPSs will be studied in this dissertation and, when possible, solutions to handle such attacks will also be suggested.

The first CPS of interest is vehicular …

Characteristics Of Family And Consumer Sciences Teachers Adopting Instructional Technologies In The State Of Utah, Nicole J. B. Manwaring

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Effective instructional technology use increases student learning outcomes. There has been an increase in the number and variety of new instructional technologies, but previous research has not focused on the demographic of Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) teachers. More research was needed to identify correlations among technology adopters and how they perceived student learning.

The researcher developed an online survey adapted from previous research to identify technologies being used in FCS classrooms, teacher attitudes on technology integration and perceptions on student learning, and demographic information. A comparison of high school and middle school settings was conducted. It was found that …

Abstention And Costly Information Acquisition In Elections, Jacob Meyer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Voter turnout rates are low in the United States. Even among citizens who show up to the polls, many do not vote in every race on the ballot. This is especially true for low-profile elections, and races where political party is not on the ballot. Both low turn out and incomplete ballots could be caused by high costs of information. Voters and non-voters have time constraints that can prevent them from researching every candidate or proposition on the ballot. One proposed solution to increase citizen informedness is to make voting mandatory. Mandatory voting imposes a penalty (usually a fine) if …

Determination Of Gas Emission Characteristics From Animal Wastes Using A Multiplexed Portable Ftir-Surface Chamber System, Pakorn Sutitarnnontr

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Livestock production is a growing source of air pollution at regional, national, and global scales. Improved livestock manure management has the potential to reduce environmental impacts; however, there is an urgent need for cost-efficient, reliable, and easy to maintain measurement and monitoring capabilities to precisely quantify emissions from livestock manure. This research describes and evaluates a novel measurement method based on the multiplexed portable Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy analyzer - surface chamber techniques for continuous measurements and monitoring gas emissions from manure sources. The multiplexing system was designed and developed to automate the chamber network, controlling the movement of …

Design Of Road Embedded Dynamic Charging Systems For Electrified Transportation, Reza Tavakoli

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The U.S. transportation sector represented about 28% of all energy consumption in 2018. Petroleum products accounted for 92% of this total energy. Light-duty vehicles are the largest energy consumers in the transportation sector. The high amount of petroleum used by light-duty vehicles creates significant economic and environmental challenges.

Electric Vehicles (EVs) have a higher fuel economy and can be emission-free; they are therefore an alternative solution for minimizing the negative environmental impact of internal combustion engine vehicles. However, the adoption of EVs has been limited by their limited driving range, long recharging time, and comparatively higher price.

Dynamic wireless charging …

Decoding Ldpc Codes With Probabilistic Local Maximum Likelihood Bit Flipping, Rejoy Roy Mathews

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Communication channels are inherently noisy making error correction coding a major topic of research for modern communication systems. Error correction coding is the addition of redundancy to information transmitted over communication channels to enable detection and recovery of erroneous information. Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are a class of error correcting codes that have been effective in maintaining reliability of information transmitted over communication channels. Multiple algorithms have been developed to benefit from the LDPC coding scheme to improve recovery of erroneous information. This work develops a matrix construction that stores the information error probability statistics for a communication channel. This …

Do Didymosphenia Geminata Blooms Affect Fishes In The Kootenai River Basin?, Niall G. Clancy

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Didymosphenia geminata (Didymo) is a nuisance algae that can cover entire streambeds under certain environmental conditions. Numerous studies have shown that it changes the composition of stream invertebrates. Fishes in many headwaters are known to feed almost exclusively on invertebrates. Thus, there is concern changes to the amount or type of invertebrates caused by Didymo blooms will impact fishes such as trout, charr, and sculpin. In the Kootenai River basin of Montana and British Columbia, we examined stream invertebrates and fish diets, condition, and growth across 25 streams during the summers of 2018 and 2019. The severity of Didymo blooms …

Biological Sex As A Moderator Of The Association Of Military Sexual Trauma And Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Total And Symptom Cluster Severity, Hallie S. Tannahill

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a multifaceted disorder comprised of distinct symptom clusters and is commonly diagnosed in military service members/veterans (SM/Vs), particularly in those with history of military sexual trauma (MST). Evidence and theory suggest that females and males may have different traumatic responses following MST, though research investigating this association has limitations, such as modeling the sexes separately or not covarying for MST severity. The current study examined the moderating role of sex on the association of MST severity and PTSD total and symptom cluster severity. Participants were 1,161 SM/Vs (female: n = 782, 67.36%) who completed online …

The Influence Of Protein Concentration And Homogenization On Moisture Content, Curd Yield, And Fat Retention Of Model Cheese Made From Microfiltered Skim Milk Recombined With Cream, Richard Byron Geslison

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This project was funded by the Western Dairy Center at Utah State University as part of a multi-pronged approach to improve the current understanding of using concentrated milks in cheese making. Concentrated milk for this study was provided by South Dakota State University.

This study compared the effect of different concentration factors of milk on curd moisture levels, fat content, and cheese curd yields. To see if these results could be improved (i.e. remove more moisture and retain more fat) milk samples were also subjected to limited pressure homogenization (microfluidization) treatments.

It was found in the course of this study …

Artisan: On Bread And A Meaningful Life, Emerson James

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In 1944, three decades before the start of the artisanal bread movement, H. E. Jacob published Six Thousand Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History capturing bread’s cultural, political, religious, and technological impacts over time. In the introduction of the 2007 edition of the text, prominent American baker Peter Reinhart wrote that bread is “inextricably woven into our cultural and personal histories.” Reinhart notes that while bread does have its own story, “it is also the medium through which so many other stories are told: stories of escape from bondage; of historical and political battles ...; of the intermingling …

Strategic Infrastructure Planning For Autonomous Vehicles, Zhaocai Liu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Compared with conventional human-driven vehicles (HVs), AVs have various potential benefits, such as increasing road capacity and lowering vehicular fuel consumption and emissions. Road infrastructure management, adaptation, and upgrade plays a key role in promoting the adoption and benefit realization of AVs. This dissertation investigated several strategic infrastructure planning problems for AVs. First, it studied the potential impact of AVs on the congestion patterns of transportation networks. Second, it investigated the strategic planning problem for a new form of managed lanes for autonomous vehicles, designated as autonomous-vehicle/toll lanes, which are freely accessible to autonomous vehicles while allowing human-driven vehicles to …

Relationship Quality Before, During, And After Stepfamily Education: A Latent Trajectory Analysis, Bryan K. Spuhler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to explore the trajectories of relationship quality for a sample of 777 adult participants attending the Smart Steps: Embrace the Journey stepfamily relationship education course. Rather than assume that all program participants had similar relationship quality trajectories by averaging their scores together in a growth curve analysis, growth mixture modeling was used to allow for a variety of sub-groups (classes), each with a unique trajectory. A prevention science approach was then taken to address possible predictors of each trajectory class in order to identify the risk and protective factors that influence participants’ trajectories.

It …

Crispr/Cas9-Mediated Gene Editing In Herda Equine, Joseph R. Hawkes

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

HERDA (Heritable Equine Regional Dermal Asthenia) is a genetic skin disease mainly found in Quarter Horses, but also in Appaloosa and American Paint breeds. HERDA is similar to Ehlers-Danlos syndrome in humans, with symptoms including stretchy skin, hyperflexible joints, and, unique to HERDA equine, spontaneous skin sloughing. Horses affected by HERDA are not suitable for performing and are oftentimes euthanized. Some carriers for the HERDA-mutation are very competitive in the American Quarter Horse industry, especially in cutting events where it is believed, yet unproven, to give them an advantage with increased flexibility. It is also possible that the genomic locus …

Improving Identification Of Pediatric Feeding Dysfunction Among Registered Dietitian Nutritionists, April Litchford

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

All Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RDN) undergo extensive training to develop the ability to improve dietary intake among individuals of all ages. Treating children (0-18 years of age) is often challenging and requires specialized training. One area that is particularly challenging is identifying children that may not be able to eat appropriately to sustain rapid growth and development. An online survey of RDNs that work specifically with children was conducted to better understand how RDNs are identifying and treating children with feeding problems. From the survey we learned that the methods and procedures used by RDNs for identifying and treating children …

A Grounded Theory To Explain Parent Prioritization Of Hearing Care When Children Have Down Syndrome, John J. Whicker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to describe the decision-making process parents experience when prioritizing hearing care while caring for children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing with Down Syndrome. To achieve this, parents of children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing with Down Syndrome were recruited, and in-depth interviews were conducted to develop a grounded theory that may explain the decision-making process for how parents prioritize effective hearing care and management. The resulting theory indicated that the higher the extent of professional engagement, parent perception of benefit, parent activation, and engagement of family support, the higher the priority for hearing care …

Impact Of Parasitic Drag On A Family Of Optimal Lift Distributions, Austin J. Stewart

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Minimizing drag is a variational problem, and several minimum induced drag solutions have been found using different design constraints. The elliptic lift distribution is commonly used to minimize induced drag, but is only the optimal solution under one set of design constraints. Non-elliptic lift distributions are able to reduce induced drag, when compared to the elliptic lift distribution, by increasing the wingspan while maintaining a consistent wing–structure weight. However, these non-elliptic lift distributions are only optimal if the effects of viscous drag are neglected. In this study, numerical tools are used to estimate the total drag on rectangular wings that …

Big Data Management For Secured Smart Healthcare System: A Machine Learning Framework, Abrar Zahin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Human action recognition and monitoring are a significant part of a smart healthcare system, which allows us to remotely monitor the behavior of patients or elderly persons to record their daily activities and to ensure safety. Ubiquitous smart wearable sensors are becoming convenient for generating and transmitting those healthcare data for further processing. Interpretation of such huge amount of data requires advanced learning systems where most important information can be extracted and analyzed. For example, current classification algorithms are not robust enough to differentiate among numerous variations of human actions due to the lack of sufficient processed samples. Thus, one …

Nanotextural And Nanochemical Constraints On The Role Of Heat In The Development Of Crystalline-Hosted, Silica-Rich Fault Mirrors In The Wasatch Fault Damage Zone, Utah, Usa, Leah M. Houser

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Earthquakes occur on faults, or rock that has experienced displacement at depth. Experimental work on a range of rock types reveals that >90% of earthquake energy on fault surfaces is given off as heat. Heat weakens rock and promotes earthquake rupture propagation. Thin (<0.5mm), high-gloss, "polished", light-reflective exposed fault surfaces are called fault mirrors (FMs). Fault mirrors may record rapid thermal, textural, and chemical changes that occur during an earthquake event.

The Wasatch Mountains are a N-S trending mountain range in Northern Utah that are the backdrop for Salt Lake City, Provo, Ogden, and Brigham City. This mountain range is currently built by the active Wasatch fault, and includes the exposed Wasatch fault damage zone. Many segments of the Wasatch fault are overdue for a potentially catastrophic …

Salinity Tolerance In Kentucky Bluegrass Hybrids, Paul G. Harris

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Diminishing water sources in the Intermountain West have led to increased use of alternative sources of water. These sources, such as reclaimed water, generally have elevated salinity levels that may slow growth, and cause a decline in turfgrass quality. Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) is sensitive to salt stress, but is otherwise very well adapted to many turfgrass areas because of its dark color, durability, ability to recover from wear, and soft texture. Because of these positive traits, it has been the subject of selection for salt tolerance. This study was designed to evaluate the salt tolerance of hybrids …

Predicting The Impact Of Weather On Rural Travel Times Using Now-Cast Weather Forecast Data, Manish Meshram

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the states which record extreme weather conditions and high snow in winters, the travel time to drive between cities can get highly affected due to these bad weather conditions. The present solutions to tackle this problem are largely flow or time related and do not take weather conditions into account while making the predictions about travel time. Also these solutions can mostly be used for real time travel and not the future travel. In addition to that, the studies that have been done in this space are mostly for urban travel times but most parts of the interstate highways …

Persistence Impacts On Student Subgroups That Participate In The High Impact Practice Of Service Learning, John Louviere

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The university focuses on student-centered learning experiences and encourages student success through engagement and discovery. Departments and programs within universities are organized to support this mission. A major part of encouraging engagement is retaining students and helping them persist towards earning their academic degrees. Likewise, campus initiatives, resources, and activities are intended to support these same goals.

This research investigated the impacts of service learning courses on student persistence to the next term. The research methods used for this study were intended to provide leaders of higher education with valid and reliable information about activities that contribute to or inhibit …