Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Theses and Dissertations

Discipline
Institution
Keyword
Publication Year
File Type

Articles 3961 - 3990 of 19641

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Orienting Pacha: Value As Action In The Late Horizon Xauxa-Pachacamac Axis, Ridge C. Anderson Apr 2022

Orienting Pacha: Value As Action In The Late Horizon Xauxa-Pachacamac Axis, Ridge C. Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

The Andean Late Horizon (ca. AD 1438–1532) was a period of exceptionally rapid and far-reaching cultural change. Over this short span of only a few generations, the Inka ethnic group established an empire that was greater in size than any other pre-colonial American polity. The Inka accomplished their expansion without the use of certain institutions (i.e., a standing army, formal writing system, monetary system, or price-setting markets) that the received anthropological wisdom has long held as being necessary preconditions to imperial expansion. Standard explanations of Late Horizon culture change tend to overemphasize the roles of environmental constraints, social evolution, and …

Go to article

Accurate Band Energies Of Metals With Quadratic Integration, Jeremy John Jorgensen Apr 2022

Accurate Band Energies Of Metals With Quadratic Integration, Jeremy John Jorgensen

Theses and Dissertations

Materials play an important role in society. Historically, and even at present, materials have been discovered by trial and error, and many of the most useful materials have been discovered by chance. The high-throughput approach aims to remove (as much as possible) chance and guesswork at the experimental level by filtering out materials candidates that are not predicted to exist. Many successes have been recorded. In the high-throughput approach to materials discovery, machined-learned models of materials are created from databases of theoretical materials. These databases are the result of millions of density-functional-theory (DFT) simulations. The size and accuracy of the …

Go to article

Parental Incarceration As A Predictor Of Legal Cynicism, Mackenzie Joy Heim Apr 2022

Parental Incarceration As A Predictor Of Legal Cynicism, Mackenzie Joy Heim

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have established that legal cynicism is linked to violence, deviant behavior, and crime. In response to the potentially dangerous implications of a legally cynical society, research in recent years has attempted to identify experiences and conditions that play a role in the development of legal attitudes. Given that youths' familial and social conditions appear to be influential predictors, this study tests the relationship between parental incarceration and legal cynicism. Data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study were used for this analysis. Results from three OLS regression models indicate that parental incarceration is not a significant predictor of …

Go to article

The Role Of Bacterial Genotype In The Persistence Of The Microbiota Of Drosophila Melanogaster, Sarah J. Gottfredson Apr 2022

The Role Of Bacterial Genotype In The Persistence Of The Microbiota Of Drosophila Melanogaster, Sarah J. Gottfredson

Theses and Dissertations

In this work we use the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model to identify bacterial genes that help bacteria to persist in their animal hosts. Early work on this model system established that dietary replenishment drives the composition of the D. melanogaster gut microbiota, and subsequent research has shown that some bacterial strains can colonize the fly for much longer than the flow of bulk diet through the gut. In this work we reveal that bacterial genes influence bacterial persistence by studying the correlation between bacterial genotype and persistence in the D. melanogaster gut microbiota. We performed an initial …

Go to article

Biophysical Factors Control Invasive Grass Hot Spots In The Mojave Desert, Tanner Corless Smith Apr 2022

Biophysical Factors Control Invasive Grass Hot Spots In The Mojave Desert, Tanner Corless Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The social, economic, and ecological costs of plant invasions are vast, through their ability to alter ecosystem structure and function. Invasive annual grasses are a nuisance in the American Southwest through promotion of the grass-fire cycle. Annual grasses such as Bromus rubens, Bromus tectorum, Schismus barbatus, and Schismus arabicus have invaded the Mojave Desert and increased fire occurrence, thus it is important to identify and characterize the areas where persistent invasion has occurred and subsequently fire risk is increased by understanding the distribution of these invasive grasses. Previous plot and landscape-scale research has revealed anthropogenic and biophysical correlates with the …

Go to article

Inhibition Of Cell Adhesion And Actin Localization During Migration Upon Protective Antigen Mutant Ligand Binding To The Capillary Morphogenesis Gene 2, Sai Lun Lee Apr 2022

Inhibition Of Cell Adhesion And Actin Localization During Migration Upon Protective Antigen Mutant Ligand Binding To The Capillary Morphogenesis Gene 2, Sai Lun Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Capillary Morphogenesis Gene 2 protein (CMG2) is a type 1 transmembrane receptor known as the anthrax toxin receptor 2 (ANTXR2). While it is documented that the cell surface receptor CMG2 mediates anthrax toxin entry into the cell via endocytosis, the physiological role of CMG2 is not well understood. Others have suggested that CMG2 may have a role in mediating ECM homeostasis and angiogenesis. Additionally, both anthrax protective antigen (PA) and a furin protease-resistant mutant, PASSSR, inhibit corneal neovascularization in a mouse model, and interestingly PASSSR has a greater affinity to CMG2 receptor. PASSSRalso has a more potent antiangiogenic effect than …

Go to article

Settler-Author Allyship In Centering Indigenous Ecologies: Communal Will Through Collective Environmental Guilt In This Tender Land And Caleb's Crossing, Elena Marie Arana Apr 2022

Settler-Author Allyship In Centering Indigenous Ecologies: Communal Will Through Collective Environmental Guilt In This Tender Land And Caleb's Crossing, Elena Marie Arana

Theses and Dissertations

The January 2021 edition of PMLA housed an entire cluster on "Indigenous Literatures and the Anthropocene," in which at least four of the eight non-Indigenous contributors directly addressed and supported a call for learning from and collaborating with Indigenous voices. The unanimity of the discussion dissolves somewhat drastically when considering exactly how this should be done, leading Melanie Taylor to voice one of the framing questions of the cluster: "If it is increasingly clear that not all members of Anthropos are equal drivers of the Anthropocene, and that not all are uniformly compromised by its havoc, how can we begin …

Go to article

Image Processing Algorithms For Detection Of Anomalies In Orthopedic Surgery Implants, Alexander William Wiese Apr 2022

Image Processing Algorithms For Detection Of Anomalies In Orthopedic Surgery Implants, Alexander William Wiese

Theses and Dissertations

Orthopedic implant procedures for hip implants are performed on 300,000 patients annually in the United States, with 22.3 million procedures worldwide. While most such operations are successfully performed to relieve pain and restore joint function for the duration of the patient's life, advances in medicine have enabled patients to outlive the life of their implant, increasing the likelihood of implant failure. There is significant advantage to the patient, the surgeon, and the medical community in early detection of implant failures.The research work presented in this thesis demonstrates a non-invasive digital image processing technique for the automated detection of specific arthroplasty …

Go to article

Physics-Guided Machine Learning In Ocean Acoustics Using Fisher Information, Michael Craig Mortenson Apr 2022

Physics-Guided Machine Learning In Ocean Acoustics Using Fisher Information, Michael Craig Mortenson

Theses and Dissertations

Waterborne acoustic signals carry information about the ocean environment. Ocean geoacoustic inversion is the task of estimating environmental parameters from received acoustic signals by matching the measured sound with the predictions of a physics-based model. A lower bound on the uncertainty associated with environmental parameter estimates, the Cramér-Rao bound, can be calculated from the Fisher information, which is dependent on derivatives of a physics-based model. Physics-based preconditioners circumvent the need for variable step sizes when computing numerical derivatives. This work explores the feasibility of using a neural network to perform geoacoustic inversion for environmental parameters and their associated uncertainties from …

Go to article

Mutants, Sentinels, And Cerebro: Messages About Technology And Society In Science Fiction Films, Paige Marie Lee Apr 2022

Mutants, Sentinels, And Cerebro: Messages About Technology And Society In Science Fiction Films, Paige Marie Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Technology plays a significant role in society and in entertainment. People hold an ambivalent attitude about technology that is often illustrated in science fiction films. Much like myth telling stories to teach a lesson, science fiction films caution viewers of the effects of powerful technology usage in culture today. This thesis examines X-Men to show how relevant principles found in myth continue to be relevant to media consumption. Using media ecology to inform the reader about the technological environment (Mumford, 1944), this analysis of technology portrayed in X-Men shows the implications real world technology, such as radiation, weapons, and artificial …

Go to article

Monitoring Of Foraging Sites For Ungulates Within Alpine Plant Communities And Establishment Of Long-Term Monitoring Plots For Rare Castilleja Parvula Var. Parvula In The Tushar Mountains, Utah, Heather Shipp Apr 2022

Monitoring Of Foraging Sites For Ungulates Within Alpine Plant Communities And Establishment Of Long-Term Monitoring Plots For Rare Castilleja Parvula Var. Parvula In The Tushar Mountains, Utah, Heather Shipp

Theses and Dissertations

The Tushar Mountains of Utah provide essential alpine habitat to a variety of flora and fauna, including 27 endemic plant species and several ungulates (mountain goats, deer, elk, cattle). These ungulates were observed throughout two growing seasons and field analyses were conducted to assess foraging selection. Overall, most ungulates, especially large nursery herds, tended to prefer foraging amongst alpine regions within the Bullion volcanic of the Tushars, which is characterized by denser vegetation than the Belknap volcanic region. Mountain goats and deer were most frequently observed foraging within the Tushar alpine habitat; however, elk and domestic cattle were also observed. …

Go to article

Using Connections To Make Predictions On Dynamic Networks, Rebecca Dorff Jones Apr 2022

Using Connections To Make Predictions On Dynamic Networks, Rebecca Dorff Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Networks are sets of objects that are connected in some way and appear abundantly in nature, sociology, and technology. For many centuries, network theory focused on static networks, which are networks that do not change. However, since all networks transform over time, static networks have limited applications. By comparison, dynamic networks model how connections between objects change over time. In this work, we will explore how connections in dynamic networks change and how we can leverage these changes to make predictions about future iterations of networks. We will do this by first considering the link prediction problem, using either Katz …

Go to article

Implementation Of A Genome-Wide Survey Of Induced Mutations To Identify Agronomically Valuable Variants In Chenopodium Quinoa, Andrew Alarcon Parker Apr 2022

Implementation Of A Genome-Wide Survey Of Induced Mutations To Identify Agronomically Valuable Variants In Chenopodium Quinoa, Andrew Alarcon Parker

Theses and Dissertations

Quinoa has been utilized for millennia in the Andes region of South America as a nutritious and hardy food crop. In recent years interest in quinoa has grown as need increases for an alternative to traditional cereal crops that can tolerate marginal environments while offering superior nutrition. Growers outside the Andes have experienced several complications adopting quinoa, including undesirable secondary metabolites, poor yield, lodging, and height inconsistency. Unfortunately, access to native ecotypes for crop improvement is limited, and desirable traits are difficult to introduce into available quinoa cultivars because of its allotetraploid genome and tendency to self-pollinate. A genome-wide survey …

Go to article

Thermal Controls On Hyporheic Flux And Streambed Flow Dynamics, Jake William Riedel Apr 2022

Thermal Controls On Hyporheic Flux And Streambed Flow Dynamics, Jake William Riedel

Theses and Dissertations

Heat is a naturally occurring and cost-effective tracer to study groundwater flow to, from, and throughout the subsurface. Often used for the quantification of groundwater discharge, heat has been used to identify gaining and losing portions of streams and in determining flow parameters such as hydraulic conductivity (K) or velocity. Connecting ground and surface reservoirs is an area known as the hyporheic zone (HZ) where waters from both reservoirs interact. The flux of water throughout the HZ is controlled by stream bedforms, sinuosity, surface water velocity, local water table, seasonality, and sediment K. K is dependent on both the viscosity …

Go to article

Aiding Semantic Memory Creation With Navigational Context, Thomas Benjamin Lyle Wasden Apr 2022

Aiding Semantic Memory Creation With Navigational Context, Thomas Benjamin Lyle Wasden

Theses and Dissertations

While we have traditionally understood the hippocampus to be involved in memory and navigation, it also appears that it has a role in language processing, creation and prediction. An obvious explanation for this is that language is impossible if linguistic signs cannot be remembered and retrieved. Because linguistic signs are definitionally biologically neutral or arbitrary, we must use the brain's apparatus for learning and storing information from the external world to store and retrieve them. Although plausible, this explanation fails to take into account the hippocampus' role in navigation as a contributing element in the processing, storage and retrieval of …

Go to article

Families In The Sky: Investigating The Population Structure Of Pinus Longaeva, Samuel Arnold Decker Apr 2022

Families In The Sky: Investigating The Population Structure Of Pinus Longaeva, Samuel Arnold Decker

Theses and Dissertations

In the Western United States, the Great Basin is a geographic feature that is home to a variety of unique species, including Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva, PILO). P. longaeva is well known for the age of some of the trees, some of which are over 4000 years old. In this study 17 microsatellite markers (simple sequence repeat, SSR) are identified and used to genotype a selection of 480 individuals spread across 24 PILO populations and 60 individuals divided equally between 2 outgroup species, Pinus aristata and Pinus flexilis. One population of PILO, HMW, shows more genetic similarity with …

Go to article

Comparative Sequence Analysis Elucidates The Evolutionary Patterns Of Yersinia Pestis In New Mexico Over Thirty-Two Years, M. Elizabeth Warren Apr 2022

Comparative Sequence Analysis Elucidates The Evolutionary Patterns Of Yersinia Pestis In New Mexico Over Thirty-Two Years, M. Elizabeth Warren

Theses and Dissertations

Yersinia pestis, a gram-negative bacterium, is the causative agent of plague. Y. pestis is a zoonotic pathogen that occasionally infects humans, and is endemic in the western United States. History gives evidence of three main plague pandemics. The first, originating in Egypt in 541AD, is known as the Justinian plague. The second, perhaps most well-known, is thought to have emerged in 1347AD in China, and is called the Black Death. The third, and current plague pandemic, also emerged in China in 1855. In 1899, Y. pestis was established in California, and the plague in other parts of America evolved from …

Go to article

How She Sleeps At Night, Alexandra Malouf Apr 2022

How She Sleeps At Night, Alexandra Malouf

Theses and Dissertations

How She Sleeps at Night is a collection of lyric poetry constellated around experiences of disability, trauma, and womanhood. A critical essay introduces the collection by elucidating the experiences and theoretical underpinnings that shaped the body of these poems. The introductory essay distills the principles that informed my cardinal poetic goals as I wrote: to create poems that can be read again and again over a lifetime, which connect with readers' common humanity, and which acknowledge the nuances and complexities of being alive.

Go to article

The Influence Of Thc, Opioids, And Age On The Plasticity Of Excitatory Inputs To Ventral Tegmental Area Gaba Neurons, Isaac Brent Ostlund Apr 2022

The Influence Of Thc, Opioids, And Age On The Plasticity Of Excitatory Inputs To Ventral Tegmental Area Gaba Neurons, Isaac Brent Ostlund

Theses and Dissertations

Adults exhibit significant differences in drug vulnerability, learning ability, and emotive processing than adolescents. Long-lasting synaptic changes, including long-term depression (LTD), can endure many hours and are believed to be key to encoding memories and persistent cognitive changes such as addiction. The ventral tegmental area (VTA) is the primary source of midbrain dopamine (DA) and is regulated by local inhibitory GABA neurons. GABA regulation can decrease, resulting in dis-inhibition of DA neurons and increased feelings of reward, learning, or salience attachment to memories. Endocannabinoids (eCBs) are signaling molecules that often result in synaptic plasticity changes, and the eCB system has …

Go to article

Gas Phase Structure Characterization Of Host-Guest Systems Using Ion Mobility Spectrometry, Jamir Shrestha Apr 2022

Gas Phase Structure Characterization Of Host-Guest Systems Using Ion Mobility Spectrometry, Jamir Shrestha

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the investigation of gas-phase characteristics of cucurbituril host-guest systems using ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) and related techniques. Collision cross-sections (CCS) of alkylammonium complexes of cucurbit[n]uril (CB[n]) are measured to understand the allosteric interactions that induce conformational changes in the complex in the presence of metal cations on one of the portals of the cucurbit[6]uril (CB[6]) host. Cationic species on one CB[6] rim sterically force longer linear alkylammonium guests out of the cucurbituril cavity during complex formation. Similarly, rigid cucurbituril-metal complexes were studied using IMS to demonstrate the effect of long-range ion-neutral interactions on the gas phase …

Go to article

Always Running At Sunset, Amelia O'Neill Apr 2022

Always Running At Sunset, Amelia O'Neill

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis show includes paintings that depict scenes of the trails that my dog and I frequent in Utah. These paintings are a response to experiences I have in nature and explore my relationship with my dog and the surrounding flora and fauna along the local trails. The paintings include images of rocks, sticks, dirt, trails, dogs, clouds, and dried sunflowers in the wind. In addition to realistic depictions of nature, my paintings reflect on the psychological and emotional state of being in nature. The title of the show is Always Running at Sunset, which is meant to be taken …

Go to article

Using The Community Of Practice Framework To Examine Informal Science Educators' Epistemological And Pedagogical Beliefs In Informal Science, Monique Andrea Lester Apr 2022

Using The Community Of Practice Framework To Examine Informal Science Educators' Epistemological And Pedagogical Beliefs In Informal Science, Monique Andrea Lester

Theses and Dissertations

When ranked and compared to students in other countries, students in the United States of America consistently rank below their peers in science knowledge. Among the many recommendations for increasing the science knowledge of students is a merge of informal science education (ISE) and public and private science classrooms. There is limited research focused on (1) the historical trends of research conducted in informal science education including the methodologies employed and pedagogical practices revealed and (2) the epistemological and pedagogical beliefs of formal science educators, who hold dual positions in the classroom and in an informal science setting. This dissertation …

Go to article

Physical Aspects Of Sexuality, Attachment, And Sexual Satisfaction, Chelsea Zollinger Allen Apr 2022

Physical Aspects Of Sexuality, Attachment, And Sexual Satisfaction, Chelsea Zollinger Allen

Theses and Dissertations

Healthy sexuality includes relational, emotional, and physical elements (Busby et al., 2021). However, there are gaps in what is known about the physical aspects of sexual relationships. Genital acceptance and physical sexual knowledge are two areas of physical relationships that may have an effect on the satisfaction of sexual relationships. Attachment, namely levels of anxious and avoidant attachment, is another factor that has been related to sexual relationships (Allsop et al., 2021; Bennett et al., 2019; Busby et al., 2020). Results from a dyadic sample of 515 couples who had been in a relationship for at least two years were …

Go to article

Understanding How African American And Latino Males Choose A Major, And Its Influence On Retention And Persistence, Yosayra F. Solano Apr 2022

Understanding How African American And Latino Males Choose A Major, And Its Influence On Retention And Persistence, Yosayra F. Solano

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the process of selecting a college major for African American and Latino male students and whether these decisions influenced their sense of belonging and development of self-efficacy, as it relates to persistence and retention at a four-year public institution in the northeast region of the United States. Utilizing Harper's (2012) Anti-deficit Achievement Framework, this study used a Narrative Inquiry design to highlight the stories of six African American and Latino male students and their experiences with selecting a major. I collected data/field texts from two individual virtual interviews for this narrative …

Go to article

A Vaccine Education Module For University Students: Vaccine Concerns And Knowledge Gained, Joslyn D. Wilson Apr 2022

A Vaccine Education Module For University Students: Vaccine Concerns And Knowledge Gained, Joslyn D. Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: The purposes of this research are to evaluate the effectiveness of a vaccine education module (VEM) in 1) contributing to new vaccine knowledge of university freshmen; and 2) identifying common vaccine concerns of university freshmen before and after completing the VEM. Methods: A VEM, including information about vaccine-preventable diseases, benefits of vaccines, principles of community or herd immunity, and where to go to get vaccinated, was created for freshman students. Student vaccine concerns were identified using a pretest/posttest quasi-experimental design using an online questionnaire before and after completing the VEM. After the VEM, participants were also asked to identify …

Go to article

Cherry Red Greenwashing: The Rhetoric Behind Corporate Recycling Narratives, Jessica Wallace Haws Apr 2022

Cherry Red Greenwashing: The Rhetoric Behind Corporate Recycling Narratives, Jessica Wallace Haws

Theses and Dissertations

As the public becomes more aware of environmental issues, corporations are pressed to consider and address the sustainability of their practices. Unwilling to drastically change business models, many corporations turn to greenwashing in an attempt to construct an environmentally friendly image while doing little to nothing to address sustainability issues. Using Kenneth Burke's work on identification and terministic screens, I analyze The Coca-Cola Company's "2020 World Without Waste Report" to illuminate how consumers come to believe in and identify with corporate greenwashing tactics. In line with Burke's theories related to identification, I argue that Coca-Cola's greenwashing strategies can be categorized …

Go to article

Technology Use In Schizotypy Utilizing The Domains Of Technology Use Survey (Dotus), Devin Massaro Apr 2022

Technology Use In Schizotypy Utilizing The Domains Of Technology Use Survey (Dotus), Devin Massaro

Theses and Dissertations

The diathesis stress model for schizophrenia posits that genetics and prenatal factors confer vulnerability (diathesis) for mental illness which then may be activated through exposure to environmental stressors during life. One component of our contemporary environment involves technology use which has demonstrated risk and beneficial capabilities in regards to the schizophrenia spectrum. Using an online and in-person survey, this study aimed to elucidate the manner in which time spent on technology related to schizotypy, problematic technology use (PTU), and health behaviors in 227 undergraduate students (aged 18-30). We hypothesized that levels of schizotypy, as well as time spent on social …

Go to article

Atg9a And Atg13 Cooperate To Drive Basal Autophagy, Daniel Morgan Poole Apr 2022

Atg9a And Atg13 Cooperate To Drive Basal Autophagy, Daniel Morgan Poole

Theses and Dissertations

Autophagy, as the name suggests, is a cellular process of self-eating in which cytoplasmic debris is engulfed by a double membrane vesicle dubbed the autophagosome and is ultimately degraded and recycled by proteases in the lysosome. The process is initiated by a group of core ATG proteins, including a multi-pass transmembrane protein called ATG9A. Although ATG9A has been shown to be essential for both stress induced and basal autophagy, its mechanism and interaction network remain largely illusive. Our current study employs BioID proteomics to identify a network of interactors, including regulators of membrane fusion and vesicle trafficking, such as TRAPP, …

Go to article

How Lucretius Uses Epic, J. Dean Murphy Apr 2022

How Lucretius Uses Epic, J. Dean Murphy

Theses and Dissertations

I argue that Lucretius uses conventions of epic poetry and changes them to support his philosophical teachings. The proem of De rerum natura can be used to show how this occurs. The key moments within the proem include the invocation to Venus, how Venus is described as maternal and creative, the usage of socia to ask Venus for aid, the episode between Venus and Mars, and the establishment of Epicurean physics. I argue that the purpose of changing the expected conventions of epic is to better frame Lucretius' key idea of the purpose of life, namely reproduction.

Go to article

Local Adaptation Of Blue Penstemon: Molecular And Morphological Characterizations Of A Potential Restoration Species For The Northern Basin And Range And Snake River Plain, Jason Mark Stettler Apr 2022

Local Adaptation Of Blue Penstemon: Molecular And Morphological Characterizations Of A Potential Restoration Species For The Northern Basin And Range And Snake River Plain, Jason Mark Stettler

Theses and Dissertations

Penstemon is one of North America's largest endemic genera with over 280 described species. These species are distributed throughout most of North America from the Arctic northern latitudes to tropics of Central America. The genus has historically been divided into six subgenera, but has recently been reorganized into two subgenera following some recent phylogenetic studies. I made a comprehensive assessment of the Penstemon genus' geographic distribution utilizing herbaria databases by ecoregion to discuss the general ecologic adaptations of each historic subgenera. I also assessed the Penstemon genus' bee pollinator diversity utilizing online databases of bee specimen collections associated with Penstemon …

Go to article

First Prev Next Last