Digital Commons Network^™

The Backfiring Effects Of Forced Political Allegiance In The Online World: The Case Of Preferred Pronouns On Twitter, Yin Lok Linus Chan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Political divisions in the United States have led to conflating political issues with political parties. People who possess a set of intercorrelated beliefs (e.g. pro-immigration, prochoice) are assumed to be liberal, while those who hold opposing intercorrelated beliefs are assumed to be conservative. Impression management research suggests that in the online world, minor cues on one’s social media profile that display political beliefs serve as indicators of people’s political ideology. While people are free to declare their political views on personal social media accounts, what happens when people perceive that they are forced to appear aligned with one political group …

School Leadership Under Apartheid South Africa As Portrayed In The Apartheid Archive Projectand Interpreted Through Freirean Education, Kevin Bruce Deitle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This qualitative study employed a phenomenological approach to examine how teachers, school leaders, and students rationalize their roles in the educational process when their institution is bounded by an educational system that openly strives against them. For a context, this study examined apartheid-era South Africa, from 1948 to 1994, which established social and administrative policies that deliberately curtailed the education of Indigenous and other South Africans, as a means of oppressing non-European ethnic groups.

In lieu of face-to-face interviews, stories and interviews submitted to The Apartheid Archive Project, curated by the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa, portrayed …

Gozen In The Kindergarten Co-Teach Classroom, Suzanne Johnstone

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study analyzes the relationship between social emotional regulation and the program entitled GoZen!, for ten Kindergarteners in a Montana School over the course of a consistent nineteen weeks. To do this, a group of ten Kindergarten students’ behaviors were observed to compare the baseline number of visible self-regulation strategies to that following the initial modules, as well as following the entire GoZen! program. The data showed great promise with a 75% reduction in physical disruptions, an 85% reduction in harmful disruptions and a 18% reduction in verbal disruptions. The program used consisted of watching two-hundred and four short cartoon …

The Road To Self-Support: Vocational Rehabilitation And The Associational State, 1917-1945, William Jared Norwood

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

“The Road to Self-Support: Vocational Rehabilitation and the Associational State, 1917-1945” traces the origins and development of the Civilian Vocational Rehabilitation (CVR) program from its inception in 1920 until the conclusion of the Second World War. Rapid industrialization and the fallout of the First World War handed the nation a large amount of people with disabilities, which drew on already strained state and local welfare relief. The project examines the interwar period and finds it to be a battleground of differing governing strategies over how best to solve America’s growing level of disabled workers. The project argues that policymakers settled …

Teacher’S Use Of Reflective Thinking, Kathleen M. Hill

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This qualitative case study examined how teachers use reflective thinking. Teachers participating in a professional development course designed to increase knowledge and understanding of reflective thinking were investigated. Two of those teachers were looked at in depth. Data was collected and organized on four teacher practices: planning, implementation, questioning, and professional reflection. Based on the findings, teachers use reflective thinking for lesson planning, interacting with students, and for personal and professional growth. Lasting impacts on professional reflection were evident for one participant after ten months. This study tells the story of two teacher’s understanding and use of reflective thinking.

Controls On No3-N Dynamics In The Upper Clark Fork River, Montana, Jacob Anthony Prater

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Studies relating ecosystem energetics to nutrient uptake in streams have generally found respiration to be a more dominant control on nutrient dynamics relative to primary production due to light limitation in most low-order systems. In this study, I measured biomass, hydrology, metabolism, and dissolved solutes in an open-canopy mid-order river located in western MT. Daily stream metabolism was modeled using a modified single-station, open-channel method, and measures of dissolved solutes were evaluated at both local and reach scales to examine how point-measures and those integrated through space represent biogeochemical behavior. Metabolic rates and standing stocks of benthic organic matter were …

A Hand-Held Structure From Motion Photogrammetric Approach To Riparian And Stream Asseessment And Monitoring, Joseph M. Dehnert, Joseph Dehnert

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Two of the biggest weaknesses in stream restoration and monitoring are: 1) subjective estimation and subsequent comparison of changes in channel form, vegetative cover, and in-stream habitat; and 2) the high costs in terms of financing, human resources, and time necessary to make these estimates. Remote sensing can be used to remedy these weaknesses and save organizations focused on restoration both money and time. However, implementing traditional remote sensing approaches via autonomous aerial systems or light detection and ranging systems is either prohibitively expensive or impossible along small streams with dense vegetation. Hand-held Structure from Motion Multi-view Stereo (SfM-MVS) photogrammetric …

Protecting Life And Lung: Protected Areas Affect Fine Particulate Matter And Respiratory Hospitalizations In The Brazilian Amazon Biome., Derek Michael Sheehan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

I assessed the impacts of upwind protected area coverage on local respiratory health within the Brazilian Amazon. A hypothesized mechanism is the legal prohibition of human ignited fires within protected areas, reducing particulate matter pollution, impacting respiratory health downwind. The connection between fires and respiratory diseases in the Amazon is well established (Smith et al. 2014; Rangel and Vogl 2019; Rocha and Sant’anna 2020). What is not well understood is the potential that government policies aimed at preventing ecosystem loss may also promote health and wellbeing, combining the UN sustainable development goals 3 and 15. Protected areas currently dominate government …

Size Matters: Nanoparticles, Biological Sex, And Lung Disease, Jessica Lynn Ray

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The majority of lung diseases occur with a sex-bias is prevalence and/or severity. However, due to the historical disregard for sex as a biological variable in basic and clinical research, there is a fundamental lack of understanding on when and why respiratory inflammation preferentially affects males or females. The inhalation of engineered nanomaterials (ENM; intentionally produced by anthropogenic means and defined as having one dimension as < 100 nm) are of particular concern when considering emerging threats to lung health. Due to their extremely small size, these respirable particles are capable of reaching the functional gas exchange region of the lungs, where they cannot be easily cleared and subsequently lead to persistent inflammation, decreased lung function, and susceptibility to the development of other respiratory diseases. Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) are an ENM of interest due to their widespread use in industrial, consumer, and medical applications, making them a potential hazard in both occupational and environmental settings. Alveolar macrophages (AMs) are the resident immune cells within the lungs that are responsible for phagocytosing and clearing inhaled xenobiotics, including ENM. However, typical AM clearance mechanisms are ineffective at removing persistent and pathogenic ENM such as MWCNTs, leading to the production of inflammatory mediators and the recruitment of other inflammatory immune cells. AMs have the ability to adopt a wide spectrum of functional phenotypes dependent upon endogenous and exogenous signals; these phenotypes ensure that the appropriate immune response is initiated in response to a given xenobiotic. However, when dysregulated, these phenotypes are also associated with different disease states. Interestingly, there is emerging data that sex steroid hormones (estrogen, specifically) impact AM phenotype development and inflammatory signaling, which may be, in part, responsible for the reported sex-biases observed in human lung diseases. The present research identifies sex-differences in MWCNT-induced lung inflammation, AM phenotype development, and one mechanism by which sex hormones impact AM function and subsequent inflammation.

A Review And Evaluation Of Techniques For Improved Feature Detection In Mass Spectrometry Data, Annika R. Tostengard, Rob Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Mass spectrometry (MS) is used in analysis of chemical samples to identify the molecules present and their quantities. This analytical technique has applications in many fields, from pharmacology to space exploration. Its impacts on medicine are particularly significant, since MS aids in the identification of molecules associated with disease; for instance, in proteomics, MS allows researchers to identify proteins that are associated with autoimmune disorders, cancers, and other conditions. Since the applications are so wide-ranging and the tool is ubiquitous across so many fields, it is critical that the analytical methods used to collect data are sound.

Data analysis in …

Investigating The Spatial Behavior And Habitat Use Of The Matschie’S Tree-Kangaroo (Dendrolagus Matschiei) Using Gps Collars And Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Uas), Jonathan B. Byers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Understanding the movement patterns and habitat needs of the endangered Matschie’s tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus matschiei) is important for their conservation and management. Endemic to the montane cloud forests of the Huon Peninsula in northeastern Papua New Guinea, these elusive arboreal marsupials are tremendously challenging to study using traditional observational methods.

This study is an assessment of novel techniques to overcome the significant challenges to in-situ data collection in remote and rugged tropical cloud forests. Animal locations are remotely tracked using purpose built altitude and motion logging GPS collars and habitat structure data is measured using photogrammetry from small Unmanned Aircraft …

Admissions & Bitterroot, Jesse Thomas Nee-Vogelman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Mary Of The Yellow Sea, Nicole Rose Gomez

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Maria del Mar is the third of five children born to a poor seventh-generation Hispanic-Indigenous family in rural southern Colorado. Maria’s grandmother is a highly regarded midwife, and she herself is born with the healing gift. When she is twelve years old a gypsy reads her palm and predicts that she will soon receive a letter from the man that she will marry. Soon after the prophecy is made, Maria’s beloved father, Don Antonio suffers a heart attack and is left unable to work the family ranch, part of a land grant by the Spanish crown to their ancestors. Responsibility …

Aquatic Locomotion In Birds – Biomechanics, Morphometrics, And Evolution, Anthony Barrett Lapansky

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The entire diversity of life on earth exists in air or water. Whether an organism lives in air or water provides the most fundamental description of its physical world and establishes an organism’s ecological niche on the most essential level. Because these two fluids are vastly different from one another, they also dictate, via the process of natural selection, the morphology and physiology of the organisms which call them home. By studying how organisms interact with these fluids – to locomote or obtain food, for example – we have the ability to not only link organism form and function, but …

Large Carnivore Recolonization Reshapes Population And Community Dynamics In The Rocky Mountains: Implications For Harvest Management, Tyler James Clark

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Large carnivores are re-colonizing their historical range globally, following decades of systematic eradication. The subsequent expansion of large carnivore populations is creating complex predator-prey interactions by trophically upgrading previously simpler food webs. Overlap between large carnivore and human range expansion is increasing human-carnivore conflicts, with many calling for large carnivore management to mitigate predation on harvested ungulates. However, the complexity of food web interactions in trophically upgraded systems coupled with independent management strategies for each species makes it difficult to determine what are optimal management strategies in these systems. These issues are further complicated by expectations of harvested ungulate densities …

Hiding The Authentic Self: Concealment Of Gender And Sexual Identity And Its Consequences For Authenticity And Psychological Well-Being, James Michael Brennan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Background: Concealment of gender and sexual identity is a reaction to societal stigma against gender and sexual minority (GSM) identities. Despite initially protecting against stigma, concealment has longterm psychological consequences. These consequences are potentially attributable to the psychological damage incurred from a reduced sense of authenticity among those who conceal their gender and sexual identity. Authenticity is compromised by concealment, serving to disrupt a person’s self-concept, as external behavior and an innate sense of self diverge. On top of that, an individual’s mental and emotional states may be impacted by these discrepancies. Additionally, concealment undermines the pursuit of intrinsically-motivated, goal-directed …

The Efficacy Of Art And Movement Treatment Modalities On An Individual With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Tristen Valentino

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Current statistics report 1 in 54 children have been identified with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), many of whom have co-occurring mental health disorders. However, minimal research has been conducted on adults with autism with co-occurring mental health disorders and the efficacy of art and movement therapy techniques. This is the case study by Tristen Valentino, clinical therapist, of a client, David Smith (who was given the pseudonym to maintain confidentiality), a 35-year-old, obese, single, cisgender, heterosexual, Caucasian, male. The implications of this case study are discussed relative to the diagnosis and treatment of adults with ASD who possess comorbid clinical …

Sparse Forward-Backward Alignment For Sensitive Database Search With Small Memory And Time Requirements, David H. Rich

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sequence annotation is typically performed by aligning an unlabeled sequence to a collection of known sequences, with the aim of identifying non-random similarities. Given the broad diversity of new sequences and the considerable scale of modern sequence databases, there is significant tension between the competing needs for sensitivity and speed, with multiple tools displacing the venerable BLAST software suite on one axis or another. In recent years, alignment based on profile hidden Markov models (pHMMs) and associated probabilistic inference methods have demonstrated increased sensitivity due in part to consideration of the ensemble of all possible alignments between a query and …

Sharing The “Magic”: Exploring The Phenomenon Of Community And Nature Connectedness In Ancestral Skills Education, Anne Barksdale Graham

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

An ancestral skill is a “first” skill that may have originally been used for survival purposes but is no longer considered by Western culture to be required knowledge for human survival. Ancestral Skills Education is a method of sharing this ancestral knowledge through participatory, informal learning practices, in non-competitive environments, and from a non-commercial perspective. Ancestral Skills Education has the potential to create an eco-centric feeling of connectedness for practitioners. After experiencing these feelings of connectedness, ancestral skills practitioners may increase their pro-environment and pro-community thinking and behavior. The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to create a description …

Nitrogen Dynamics And Transport Along Flowpaths In A Rural Wetland-Stream Complex, Colton Kyro

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Human activities have doubled the rate of nitrogen inputs onto the landscape resulting in elevated nitrogen concentrations in our streams. Anthropogenically applied nitrogen is largely transported to stream networks via groundwater movement. Groundwater discharge occurs in distinct points along a stream but whose influences can often persist far beyond that area due to insufficient biogeochemical removal of imported nitrogen potentially causing alterations in community structure and precipitating large algae blooms. To understand the factors governing nitrogen abundance in a historical polluted stream, I used a mass-balance approach to quantify groundwater-surface water interaction and the magnitude of groundwater nitrogen input and …

Theories On The Pedagogy Of Asla (Accelerated Second Language Acquisition): A Piikuni Student Approach, Robert Patrick Hall

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis is an exploration in the pedagogy of ASLA to understand how and why it is successful at being a methodology that enables an instructor to teach endangered languages effectively. The paper explores the current deficits within language revitalization programs and argues that ASLA can improve endangered language programs

The Influence Of Ancestry, Sex, And Age On The Morphology Of The Frontal Sinus In Black And White Individuals, Hope Annelise Vance

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The frontal sinus is a cavity located in the frontal bone and is completely unique to every individual. The morphology is influenced by a number of factors, such as environment, genetics, and perimortem injury. This study focuses on the role that ancestry, sex, and age play in the appearance of this feature; the morphology and shape of an individual’s frontal sinus is influenced by their sex and ancestry to some degree. The following analysis observes the relationship between the maximum width (MW), maximum depth (MD), degree of asymmetry (DOA), and maximum height (MH) of the frontal sinus and the individual’s …

"Its Own Little City": Service Work In Truck Stops, Michelle Elizabeth Williams

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Montana truck stops act as a meeting place for long-haul truckers, vacationers, local commuters, and the workers simply trying to earn a living. The employees at such truck stops must navigate working-class customer service norms while interacting with a unique and diverse set of customers. The ethnographic and interview data that I collected during the 2020 offers a unique view of how customer service employees fared during political unrest, global health concerns, and financial struggle. Additionally, this study highlights the power dynamics that exist in the service industry by examining how such dynamics manifest in the interactions surrounding face masks, …

Leadership: Supporting Students With Asd And The School Wide Community, Chelsae Joy Larson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Leaders work collaboratively with all stakeholders to help understand what systems and supports need to be put into place to meet individual needs. School leaders must create continuous learning opportunities and reinforcement systems for educators in the areas of evidence-based practices, individualized teaching strategies, and student transition plans. Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) require consistent and structured programming starting in preschool and carrying through to post-secondary education. It is imperative that school leaders provide the appropriate training and supports to educators and specialists in relation to executive functioning skills and evidence-based practices to best support students with ASD. This …

Ungulates Search For The Ideal Home: How Predation And Forage Differentially Affect Males And Females In A Partially Migratory Population, Hans William Martin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Migration is a strategy used across taxa to access resources in temporally heterogenous landscapes. Migratory species can attain higher abundances because access to higher quality resources, and/or reduction in predation risk. However, most migratory species occur in partially migratory populations, a mix of migratory and non-migratory, resident individuals. I first investigate the potential mechanisms maintaining partial migration in a partially migratory elk (Cervus canadensis) population. I test whether the theory of Ideal Free Distribution (IFD) can explain the coexistence of different migratory tactics in a partially migratory population. IFD predicts that individuals exhibit density-dependent vital rates and should select different …

Linking Seismicity And Time-Variant Loading Of The Solid Earth, Mason Perry

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Earth’s surface is constantly being stressed and deformed by countless dynamic processes that operate across a vast number of time and spatial scales. In this dissertation, I use geodetic observations in combination with time series analysis, basic numerical modeling, and a number of statistical tools to investigate the sources loading and observable deformation of earth’s surface and their relation to seismic activity.

In Central Asia, compressive stresses resulting from the collision of the Indian subcontinent and Eurasia have created a tectonically complex region that includes the best present-day example of ongoing subduction of continental lithosphere. Here, continental Eurasia is actively …

Effects Of Weather, Parental Behavioral Plasticity, And Life History Traits On Offspring Growth, Development, And Energy Expenditure In Songbirds, Adam Elliot Mitchell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Weather creates energetic and survival challenges for organisms that can influence demography. Harsh weather often causes increased energy expenditure in adults, but how weather affects other life stages is less well understood. Juveniles are especially vulnerable because they must use energy to survive weather effects and maintain growth and development while having poorly developed thermoregulatory capabilities. Juveniles that spend energy overcoming harsh weather can have delayed growth and maturation, which can negatively affect competitive abilities, survival, and lifetime fitness. Understanding weather effects on offspring is particularly challenging in altricial species because parents have evolved strategies to ameliorate such effects. However, …

Investigating Surface Temperature From First Principles: Seedling Survival, Microclimate Buffering, And Implications For Forest Regeneration, Robin Rank

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Forests are extremely important ecosystems with large impacts on global water, energy, and biogeochemical cycling, and they provide numerous ecosystems services to human populations. Even though these systems consist of long-lived vegetation, forests are constantly experiencing changes to their extent and composition through the interacting forces of disturbance dynamics and climate change. In semi-arid landscapes like the western United States, patterns of recurring wildfire and subsequent seedling recruitment and forest regeneration are important in establishing the distribution of forests on the landscape. In this context, climate, hydrology, and existing vegetation all act together to limit the current and potential range …

Inference Of Surface Velocities From Oblique Time Lapse Photos And Terrestrial Based Lidar At The Helheim Glacier, Franklyn T. Dunbar Ii

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Using time dependent observations derived from terrestrial LiDAR and oblique
time-lapse imagery, we demonstrate that a Bayesian approach to glacial motion es-
timation provides a concise way to incorporate multiple data products into a single
motion estimation procedure effectively producing surface velocity estimates with
an associated uncertainty. This approach brings both improved computational effi-
ciency, and greater scalability across observational time-frames when compared to
existing methods. To gauge efficacy, we apply these methods to a set of observa-
tions from the Helheim Glacier, a critical actor in contemporary mass loss trends
observed in the Greenland Ice Sheet. We find that …

Estimating Wolf Predation Metrics, Patterns, And Dynamics Across Time And Space In The Multi-Prey System Of Yellowstone National Park, Matthew Caldwell Metz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Predation is a fundamental driver in ecology, structuring ecosystems across the globe. However, understanding the effects of large carnivore predation is limited by both the observation process and the shorter duration of many studies. I used data from 23 years in Yellowstone National Park to disentangle both the importance of wolf predation on prey, and the imperfect observation process of studying predation. I first used field observations to test whether a sexually-selected trait, antlers in male elk, deterred wolf predation. I found that antlers reduced predation risk, emphasizing the selective nature of predation. Next, I used GPS data and ground-based …