Digital Commons Network^™

Navigating The Closet: A Mixed Methods Approach To Assessing The Impact Of Concealment On Psychological Outcomes For Sexual And Gender Minorities, James Michael M. Brennan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Background: Sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals suffer at disproportionate rates of depression, anxiety, and substance use, among other mental and physical health outcomes, compared to heterosexual individuals. Concealment of non-heterosexual sexual identity and/or non-cisgender gender identity may be a key contributor to these disparities. Many SGM individuals engage in concealment as a means to avoid victimization, or because of negative perceptions of their own identity. Concealment as a construct has been conceptualized as comprising cognitive, affective, and behavioral components, each of which individually has been demonstrated to have negative health impacts. Additionally, concealment occurs over time between the intrapersonal …

3d Printing Of The Proximal Right Femur: It’S Implications In The Field Of Forensic Anthropology And Bioarchaeology, Myriah Adonia Jo Allen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

3D scanning and Printing have become useful in many scientific fields over the last few years, and Physical Anthropology/ Archaeology is not an exception. With skeletal collections decreasing all over the globe and the question of preservation on the rise, it has become necessary to look towards different methods in which one can obtain important information. 3D scanning has become useful over the last few decades and therefore it is important to establish where this new technology can be of use. This paper will bring 3D scanning and printing into question and determine whether this technology should be used in …

Avoiding Adverse Effects: New Ideas In Drug Discovery For Targeting Pparγ, Trey M. Patton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) has been a drug target to treat type 2 diabetes for the last 20 years when rosiglitazone and pioglitazone were approved by the FDA in 1999. While effective at increasing insulin sensitivity, these drugs cause serious adverse effects due to their full agonist characteristics. For that reason, drug discovery efforts have attempted to reduce or prevent the amount of agonist character of new PPARγ targeting ligands. Unfortunately, there have been no new FDA approved drugs for the receptor. There is a need for new ideas to produce better quality pharmaceuticals that lessen the impact of …

Managing Just World Beliefs In An Unjust World For Victims Of Sexual Violence, Lindsey Chatfield Grove

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The foundational expectations for good things to happen to good people, while bad things happen to bad people, is referred to as the belief in a just world (BJW) hypothesis (Lerner, 1980; 1966). The understanding is that BJW is a deep-rooted belief that when challenged with injustice, an individual implements strategies in order to protect this core belief from shattering (Lerner, 1980). BJW has long explained victim blaming (Hayes, Lorenz, & Bell, 2013; Jones & Aronson, 1973) and a positive relationship with psychological protection for injustice to self (L Bègue & Bastounis, 2003; Lerner & Simmons, 1966; Sutton & Douglas, …

The Alphaback: A Novel Processing Speed Test, Meredith Kathleen Reynolds

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Processing speed is a sensitive indicator of normal aging, as well as neurological impairment. Despite the importance of assessing this cognitive domain in neuropsychological assessments, few tests of processing speed are available. The purpose of the current study was to establish the operating characteristics, as well as the convergent and divergent validity of a novel processing speed test, the Alphaback, on a healthy college student population (N = 91). The Alphaback is a 2 min computerized task in which examinees must orally state the alphabetical letter that precedes the letter presented on a screen as fast as possible. Cognitive tests …

Examining Injury Trends In Wildland Firefighters To Develop An Injury Screening Assessment Pilot Project, Isabella Grace Callis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Fire suppression is an arduous profession that poses many work hazards and risks for wildland firefighters (WLFF) on a daily basis. One of the major threats to WLFF health on the line is musculoskeletal injury. Injury on the fire line and during personal training inhibits WLFF from performing their job to their full capacity. Currently there are no prevention strategies utilized to reduce the number of injuries this tactical population is experiencing. By accurately tracking injuries in WLFF, development of prevention strategies could assist in reducing the cost of injuries, maintain overall health in WLFF, and decrease work-related disability.

A …

The Impact Of Salient Naming Targets During Aphasia Therapy, Kathy Kay Molesh, Catherine Off Ph.D., Craig Mcfarland Ph.D., Jenna Griffin M.S.

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Translational research has led to aphasia therapies that incorporate principles of experience dependent neuroplasticity. The neuroplasticity principle of salience has received less attention from speech language pathologists than other principles, such as dose and treatment intensity. Incorporating salience in aphasia therapies has the potential to increase functional outcomes by addressing multiple aspects of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. This study explored the impact of salient stimuli targets on picture naming acquisition and maintenance for two individuals with chronic aphasia, following cerebrovascular accident. Participants were enrolled in a five-week Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Program (ICAP) at …

Dna Analysis On Ceramic Cooking Vessels, Britney J. Radford

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ceramic vessels are a durable material found in abundance throughout the archaeological record. Organic residue analysis has been used to study ceramic vessels utilizing lipid analysis and protein analysis. Lipids and proteins analysis provide limited information at the genus level, leaving out valuable information that species-specific results can tell us such as unique genetic and environmental information. Lipids and proteins analysis provide limited information at the genus and taxonomic levels leading to issues of misclassification of species. If only certain animals or plants of a genus are being used, then unique genetic and environmental information found only at the species …

Unconfined Wilderness Experiences: What Is Important To Feeling Unconfined While Visiting The Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness?, Jonathan Daniel Dorman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The principal aim of this study was to increase our understanding of an “unconfined type of recreation”. This management objective is mandated by the Wilderness Act of 1964 and has received little empirical focus within visitor experience research. A 20-item survey research scale was developed and found to be valid and reliable when considering what is important to feeling unconfined in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and Montana. The scale included four components or factors that were labeled, “Free Choice”, “Untethering from Responsibility”, “Making Own Plans”, and “Exploring”. In addition, the Perceived Freedom in Leisure Scale was administered and showed …

"How About The Tariff And Homestead?" Homestead, Tariff Rhetoric, And Wage Insecurity In 1892, Paul T. Thompson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Members of Congress appropriated the 1892 labor conflict at Homestead, Pennsylvania as a point of partisan rhetorical debate over the ills or benefits of the 1890 McKinley Tariff. This appropriation demonstrated how congress found the tariff in general useful not only for engaging public concerns over industrial era woes like wage insecurity, but also for deflecting public discussion away from an underlying federal helplessness to mitigate those same detrimental effects of industrial capitalism.

New, Multi-Scale Approaches To Characterize Patterns In Vegetation, Fuels, And Wildfire, Christopher Jacob Moran

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Pattern and scale are key to understanding ecological processes. My dissertation research aims for novel quantification of vegetation, fuel, and wildfire patterns at multiple scales and to leverage these data for insights into fire processes. Core to this motivation is the 3-dimensional (3-D) characterization of forest properties from light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry. Analytical methods for extracting useable information currently lag the ability to collect such 3-D data. The chapters that follow focus on this limitation blending interests in machine learning and data science, remote sensing, wildland fuels (vegetation), and wildfire. In Chapter 2, forest canopy …

Ice Flow Impacts The Firn Structure Of Greenland's Percolation Zone, Rosemary C. Leone

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

One dimensional simulations of firn evolution neglect horizontal transport as the firn column moves down slope during burial. This approach is justifiable near Greenland's ice divide, where ice flow is near vertical, but fidelity is lost in the percolation zone where horizontal ice flow advects the firn column through climate gradients. We simulate firn evolution processes under advection conditions using a transient, thermo-mechanically coupled model for firn densification and heat transfer with various schemes for meltwater penetration and refreezing. The simulations isolate processes in synthetic runs and investigate an ice core site and four transects of Greenland’s percolation zone. The …

Decisions Leading To Inequalities In The Juvenile Justice System: Using Data To Predict Delinquent Outcomes, Inform Decisions, And Reduce Disparities For Justice-Involved Youth, Patrick David Mckay

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation focuses on how decisions are made in the juvenile justice system and what strategies can be used to make more informed decisions in the future, in three separate investigations. (1) To begin, eight years of initial detention decisions (N=26,128) were collected to determine what factors affect the arresting officers’ decision to detain youth at arrest. Findings reveal that the severity of current offense and prior offending history are the greatest predictors of initial detention. However, results demonstrate that race and the distance from a detention facility also influence these decisions. Non-white youth are more likely detained than their …

Zero-Knowledge De Novo Algorithms For Analyzing Small Molecules Using Mass Spectrometry, Patrick Anthony Kreitzberg

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the analysis of mass spectra, if a superset of the molecules thought to be in a sample is known a priori, then there are well established techniques for the identification of the molecules such as database search and spectral libraries. Linear molecules are chains of subunits. For example, a peptide is a linear molecule with an “alphabet” of 20 possible amino acid subunits. A peptide of length six will have 20⁶ = 64, 000, 000 different possible outcomes. Small molecules, such as sugars and metabolites, are not constrained to linear structures and may branch. These molecules are …

Adaptation To A Geothermal Soil Mosaic Shapes Genome-Wide Patterns Of Diversity And Differentiation In Yellowstone Monkeyflowers (M. Guttatus), Kory M. Kolis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Local adaptation across habitat mosaics can generate phenotypic divergence in the face of gene flow; however, adaptive divergence in reproductive traits may also create barriers to genetic exchange within and among distinct habitats. In plants, life-history, phenology, and mating system traits may lead to divergent selection over short (microgeographic) spatial scales. Changes to these traits are likely to directly affect patterns of gene flow and genomic diversity. In this study, we combined field, common garden, and population genomic approaches to investigate phenotypic and genetic variation in Mimulus guttatus (yellow monkeyflowers) adapted to a complex geothermal soil mosaic in Yellowstone National …

Characterization Of Novel Cyp26b1-Inhibitor, Dx314, For The Treatment Of Keratinization Disorders, Joachim Gwenn-Stephan Veit

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Our skin, particularly the barrier provided by the epidermis, functions as our primary protection from the harsh environment. It protects us from dangerous pathogens, allergens, ultraviolet radiation, and mechanical injury, as well as playing a major role in fluid and thermal regulation. Disruption of skin functions can lead to life-threatening consequences due to increased risk of infection, trans-epidermal water loss, and allergen sensitization. Many common skin disorders often result in a disrupted skin barrier placing patients at risk of complications.

Retinoic acid (RA) is a major component of the vitamin A pathway, which critically controls multiple skin functions including cell …

Bone Stress Injuries In Collegiate Distance Runners: Review Of Incidence, Distribution, And Risk Factors, Maryn E. Lowry

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This literature review investigates the risk factors for bone stress injuries that apply to collegiate distance runners. Collegiate distance runners demonstrate high incidence rates of this type of injury and can suffer from a loss of training time. It is important to review the risk factors that apply to these athletes in order to mitigate the time lost to injury and optimize training. PubMed and Google Scholar were searched for original articles pertaining to risk factors associated with bone stress injuries and/or stress fractures. Results from these original articles demonstrate that this injury has many risk factors including biomechanical, biological, …

Probing Denatured State Conformational Bias In 3-Helix Bundles With Foldable Or Intrinsically Disordered Domains, Moses Joseph Leavens

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Protein misfolding is associated with several life threatening diseases – Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Cystic fibrosis, Sickle cell anemia, and the Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, to include Chronic Wasting disease, Scrapie, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. To provide insight into protein misfolding, it is beneficial to understand how an amino acid sequence encodes structure. Once thought to behave as random coil polymers under denaturing conditions, an abundance of recent evidence suggests denatured proteins retain ‘non-random’ or residual structure, which may bias a protein chain to fold efficiently to its native conformer. Probing energetics of residual structure in denatured proteins is challenging, given the shortage of …

Modulation Of Cytochrome C’S Peroxidase Activity By Ω-Loops C And D In Monomers And Dimers, Haotian Lei

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Mitochondrial cytochrome c is a heme containing protein with flexible heme ligation. Cytochrome c in its native state with Met80 bound to the heme is an electron shuttle in the electron transport chain. Under apoptotic stimuli, cytochrome c oxidizes the mitochondrial lipid cardiolipin, leading to the release of pro-apoptotic factors into the cytoplasm. To oxidize cardiolipin, Met80 in Ω-loop D must be dissociated from the heme iron, which allows cytochrome c to obtain access to alternative conformers. Two segments of cytochrome c, namely Ω-loops C and D, have been suggested to be important in regulating the dissociation of Met80. Unlike …

Development Of An Open-Source, Custom Environmental Data Logger For Spatially Scalable Data Collection, Tim Anderson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Characterizing the processes that lead to differences in ecosystem productivity and watershed hydrology across complex terrain remains a challenge. This difficulty can be partially attributed to the cost of installing networks of proprietary data loggers that monitor differences in the biophysical factors contributing to vegetation growth or hydrological processes. Studies that aim to compare concurrent time-series data sets across multiple locations must therefore balance the high cost of these data logger systems with the need for spatial resolution in their data. Here, we present the design, implementation, and case study for an open-source “Pinecone” data logger system, released under the …

Effect Of Potato-Based And Prepackaged Sports Supplement Products On Muscle Glycogen Recovery And Exercise Performance In Trained Males And Females, Shannon Kelly Flynn

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Purpose

Research has elucidated the impact of post exercise carbohydrate nutrition and environmental conditions on muscle glycogen re-synthesis. However, research has minimally considered the implications of glycogen recovery in females and has focused on commercial sport nutrition products. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of varied mixed macronutrient feedings on glycogen recovery and subsequent exercise performance in both sexes.

Methods

8 males and 8 females participated in a crossover study. Subjects completed a 90-minute cycling glycogen depletion trial then rested for 4 hours. Two carbohydrate feedings (1.6 g . kg-1) of either sport supplements or potato-based …

Threats Of Economic Sanctions And The Duration Of Civil War, Jared August Halvorson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Economic sanctions have been criticized as a tool of political expediency. Detractors argue that international leaders use sanctions to give the appearance of action, rather than as a true agent for change. Previous studies largely confirm this characterization, showing that sanctions are not effective. However, previous studies have ignored a major component of the economic coercion process and powerful tactic of negotiation: the threat of sanctions. Using survival analysis and data on civil wars and sanctions from 1960-2005, I find evidence that import restrictions and asset freezes are valuable types of sanctions in shortening the duration of civil war, and …

Measuring Recidivism Risk Outcomes: A Pilot Project In Collaboration With The Flathead Reservation Reentry Program, Desiree Lacy Fox

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Background: Native Americans have suffered from vast losses of land, traditional ways and practices, language, and ability to pass on traditional knowledge; and those losses have led to current day health and wellness disparities, as well as small but tangibly different tribal populations. While Native Americans make up a disproportionate number of those involved in the criminal justice system, creating an overrepresentation of Native Americans incarcerated in jails and prisons relative to their overall population size, they still tend to be underrepresented in the creation of validated recidivism measures. Risk assessment tools, such as the Level of Service Index-Revised (LSI-R), …

Silicone Wristbands As Passive Samplers For Quantitative Measurement Of Wood Smoke Exposure, Hannah J. Wright

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Human exposure to biomass smoke is a health concern worldwide. Although many studies have measured particulate matter in wood smoke as a health concern, exposure to mutagenic and carcinogenic volatile and semivolatile compounds remains understudied. This research introduces a novel method of quantitative measurement of exposure to these compounds using silicone wristbands. The study developed a method to extract analytes of interest from the wristbands and quantify a few volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with known ill health effects, and then performed linear regressions between extracted levels and exposure to those analytes using controlled exposure studies. Results indicate …

The Genetic Mechanisms Underlying Pigmentation And Their Evolutionary Importance In Birds, Nicholas David Sly

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Integumentary pigmentation is a phenotype of fundamental importance to animals, with major impacts on survival and fitness. Thus, understanding the mechanisms underlying pigmentation can help illuminate general principles about how adaptive variation is generated and maintained in populations. Here, I present a dissertation that is aimed at understanding the developmental, regulatory, and genetic mechanisms that underlie variation in avian plumage color, and their evolutionary importance.

In my first chapter, I addressed how the modular organization of plumage traits may impact their evolution. The production of color in developing feathers is a modular process, with several mechanisms combining to produce the …

Constructing Distance, Responsibility, And Memory Management Theories: An Anthropological Approach To Death Notification Interactions, Teresa Ann 'Lilly' White

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Following a sudden or unexpected death, coroners often communicate the death to the next-of-kin. Death notifications may occur in hospitals, assisted living or dying facilities, homes, offices or workplaces, correctional facilities, schools, or other locations. A death notification has been perceived by outsiders and many researchers as a one-time, unilateral death-telling event. I argue, instead, death notifications are a series of social interactions and processes necessitating multiple actors and mechanisms. The death notification processes begin for the coroner when they are dispatched to a death scene, while the processes begin for the next-of-kin upon the death-telling event. The end is …

Extremal Problems For Forests In Graphs And Hypergraphs, Omid Khormali

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Turan number, ex_r(n; F), of an r-uniform hypergraph F is the maximum number of hyperedges in an n-vertex r-uniform hypergraph which does not contain F as a subhypergraph. Note that when r = 2, ex_r(n; F) = ex(n; F) which is the Turan number of graph F. We study.

Turan numbers in the degenerate case for graphs and hypergraphs; we focus on the case when F is a forest in graphs and hypergraph. In the first chapter we discuss the history of Turan numbers and give several classical results. In the second chapter, we examine the Turan number for …

A Multifactorial Cytochrome P450 2d6 Genotype-Phenotype Prediction Model To Improve Precision Of Clinical Pharmacogenomic Tests, Rachel Dalton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

BACKGROUND: CYP2D6 is difficult to accurately genotype due to a large number of single nucleotide variants (SNVs), indels, and structural variation such as deletions, duplications, and CYP2D6/CYP2D7 hybrid genes. CYP2D6 targeted genotyping panels are of limited utility; clinically relevant variants that are not genotyped will be missed. Sequencing solves this problem but requires additional tools to address structural variation. The goal of our study was to determine the predictive power of Stargazer, a novel allele-calling program, which combines SNV/indel calls with structural variation identification.

METHODS: In a panel of 309 human livers, CYP2D6 diplotypes and activity scores were initially assigned …

Examining The Impact Of Adding Gluteal Strengthening Exercises To The Fifa 11+ Warm-Up Program On High School Girls' Basketball Reported Injuries., Heather Bartz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

A Risk/Benefit Analysis And Prescription Optimization For Integrating High-Intesity Interval Training Into Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation Programs, Matt C. Chapman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Aerobic exercise is an effective solution for improving mortality rates and physical outcomes in patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD). There is a controversy, however, in the research literature over what type of training modality produces the best results. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) has emerged as a promising alternative to moderate-intensity continuous training (MCT), which is typically used to treat cardiovascular ailments. Currently, there is no consensus on the ideal HIIT prescription that would produce optimal benefits for patients, however. The goal of this review is to clarify whether HIIT provides either superior or equivalent outcomes in mortality, cardiac autonomic control, …