Digital Commons Network^™

Food-Form Delivery Of Spore-Forming Probiotics As An Alternative To Gavage In Animal Models, Aubreyona Faith Migliori Skalka

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Western dietary patterns are characterized by nutrient-poor, calorie-rich diets and have been linked to poor health outcomes and gut inflammation phenotypes. Probiotics are often taken to support gut health, but many beneficial bacteria do not survive transport through the digestive system to produce any effect. Spore-forming bacteria, such as Bacillus coagulans, are more resilient due to their hardy outer coat which aids in survival through many obstacles encountered in the gastrointestinal tract, including acidic stomach conditions. In research studies, probiotics are usually given to mice through a procedure called oral gavage, where a tube is used to deliver the …

Comparison Of Consumptive Use Of Furrow And Drip Irrigated Onions, Chad C. Withers

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The State of Utah funded agricultural water optimization studies to determine how agricultural water depletion can be decreased while maintaining or improving yields. Conversion from surface irrigation to drip irrigation is investigated as a method to decrease consumptive use.

Some Utah onion producers are converting from furrow irrigation to drip irrigation to decrease water and fertilizer use and improve profits. This study compares the consumptive use and yield of three drip irrigated onion fields against the consumptive use and yield of three furrow irrigated onion fields.

Arrays of soil moisture sensors at various depths were placed in drip and furrow …

Honorata Memoria Prosequar: The Lives Of Republican And Augustan Women As Antecedents For Later Deifications, Megan Fairbanks

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Emperors and some notable societal figures in the early Roman Empire are known to have practiced apotheosis, a state-sponsored process which confirmed that deceased men, women, and sometimes children had achieved the status of godhood. This process became official during the lifetime of Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, who deified Julius Caesar. As the process developed, it came to involve several formalized elements, including senatorial voting, a public ceremony (consecratio), and the production of commemorative images published through various media such as coins, paintings, and honorific statues. The purpose of this thesis is to determine the possibility of existing precursors for …

Production Of Hydrolyzed Lactose Syrup From The Acid Whey, Aubrey Jean Arbon

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Acid whey has gained significant attention within the dairy industry due to its complex matrix and the processing challenges. This by-product contains lactose that can be isolated, hydrolyzed, and further processed to produce hydrolyzed syrup. To optimize lactose utilization, it is essential to fine-tune the kinetics of the β-galactosidase enzymes used for lactose hydrolysis. To analyze sugars in acid whey, and LC-MS-based chromatographic method was developed. Once the method was developed, the kinetics of β-galactosidase were optimized with respect to enzyme concentration, pH, and temperature. The goal was to achieve the highest possible lactose hydrolysis. The hydrolyzed acid whey was …

Domestic Cow Of Plenty: Gender And Womanhood In The Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Harshika Ajay Gupta

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

This thesis examines gender and womanhood in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (Bhāgavata), a Sanskrit text from the 10th century CE that holds an important theological and cultural position in contemporary Hindu traditions. It decodes the Bhāgavata’s unique perspectives on the following: (1) gender, sex, sexuality, and reproduction, (2) women’s social normativity, and (3) women’s personhood and agency. This thesis argues that the Bhāgavata contains a unique theorization of gender and sex as well as a positive valuation of femininity, and that it imbues its narratives with practical resources and actions to recognize and expand the agentive capacity of women.

For scholars …

Decreasing Inappropriate Student Behavior Using Interdependent Group Contingency: Students With Intellectual Disabilities, Shelby Craig

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Students with intellectual disabilities have the right to participate in the same educational activities as their peers while receiving appropriate supports. Many schools implement Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) to promote appropriate behavior through structured reinforcement systems, including group contingencies. This study examined the effectiveness of a group contingency intervention, the Caterpillar Game, in reducing inappropriate behaviors among six students with intellectual disabilities. Results indicated a consistent decrease in inappropriate behaviors following implementation of the intervention.

How Novices Write Code: Discovering Best Practices, Matt Rau

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Learning to program is a difficult endeavor, leading to chronically high failure rates in introductory programming courses. One thing that makes teaching programming difficult is that we don’t fully understand what problem solving habits and writing strategies separate successful programmers from struggling ones. Knowing how to teach these habits to a new programmer is an equally difficult challenge,

Studying the way people write code has proved difficult. Until recently, there was very little relevant publicly available data, and no good ways to analyze student programming behavior at a large scale. In this thesis, I address both issues. I publish a …

Mechanisms Of Life History Trade-Offs In The Evolution Of Eusociality, Frances Katherine Hunter

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

When faced with stressors such as pathogen infection, organisms must invest energy in defense or risk death. Because resources are limited, mounting an immune response often comes at the expense of other costly activities such as reproduction. The costs of immunity are shaped by factors including behavior, nutrition, age, and evolutionary history.

Social insects (e.g., ants, bees, and wasps) offer a powerful system for studying these trade-offs because queens in these colonies appear to escape them—living long lives while reproducing prolifically. Bees, which include species that range from those which nest solitarily to those with complex social systems and many …

Student Programming Behavior With And Without Phone Notification Suppression, Gavin T. Eddington

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Many students work on programming assignments while receiving notifications from their phones, such as text messages or social media alerts. These notifications can interrupt focus and make it harder to stay engaged with a task. This study examines whether silencing phone notifications helps students stay more focused while programming. 

We collected data from students in an introductory computer science course while they worked on programming assignments. Students completed some assignments with notifications silenced and others without. We measured their activity using software that records typing behavior and identifies when students take long pauses, which can indicate interruptions or loss of …

Numerical Investigation On Lightning Survivability And Residual Strength Of Scarf-Patched And Z-Pinned Cfrp Composites, Logan Hales

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites are critical in aerospace applications yet remain vulnerable to lightning strikes due to orthotropic electrical conductivity and poor thermal resistance. Over the past decades, lightning-strike damage in pristine CFRP has been extensively investigated. However, the response of damaged and subsequently repaired laminates remains poorly understood, raising concerns about the structural integrity of repaired aircraft. This study aims to develop a sequentially coupled thermo-structural modeling framework to quantify how two common composite repair strategies (scarf patching and z-pinning), along with patch size, pin material, and configuration, influence lightning-induced damage and the residual flexural strength of …

Large Language Models For Introductory Computer Science Education: Content Generation, Intelligent Tutoring, And Learner Modeling, Muhammad Fawad Akbar Khan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

This dissertation studies how artificial intelligence, especially large language models such as GPT, can help students learn introductory computer programming when the models are used inside a carefully designed learning system. Instead of focusing on AI as a standalone tool, the dissertation follows a connected story: generating learning resources, building a tutoring platform, running a user study, and then analyzing how students behave while they program.

The work first uses prompt engineering to create a large collection of 11,700 Python exercises aligned with introductory computer science topics. Students and instructors then evaluate these exercises to check whether they are clear, …

Specimen, Basil Payne

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

“Specimen” is a collection of my original poetry drawn from my thesis that explores identity and experience through the lens of nature. Specimens are dead, preserved individuals of nature who are used for scientific study. They help us humans understand the world better, help us make scientific advancements, but can they do more than that? In my poetry, I see myself and all the other individuals as specimens, singularities with lessons to teach and things to learn. Listening to the more-than-human world, acknowledging their differences can help us understand the aspects of ourselves that feel out of place, be those …

Assessing Geomorphic Change From Large Wood Additions In An Intensively Monitored Watershed, Alexander Walt

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Rivers across the American West are under stress. Over time, human activities have decreased riparian vegetation and removed naturally occurring large wood from fallen trees and beaver dams. Overgrazing, wetland drainage, and artificial barriers like levees and berms have further changed these ecosystems, leaving behind simple channels that lack varied habitat for aquatic species.

Efforts to restore rivers have made some progress, but many projects are small in scale and focus more on reshaping the river rather than restoring the natural processes that keep it healthy. This study evaluates a different approach—Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration (LTPBR)—which works with nature to rebuild …

St-Fmformer: An Autoregressive Generation Framework For Scientific Ensemble Data Predictions, Md Robiul Islam

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Understanding how physical systems change over time is important in areas such as weather prediction, fluid dynamics, and environmental science. However, accurately predicting future behavior is difficult because these systems are complex and constantly evolving. 

This research develops a deep learning approach to predict how such systems evolve over time. The model learns patterns from past observations and uses them to generate future states step by step. This provides a faster alternative to traditional simulation methods while maintaining strong predictive performance. 

The proposed method focuses on improving the consistency of predictions over time and is designed to work across different …

Cannabis: A Model Plant To Study Light-Mediated Reproductive Development, Madigan J.H. Eckels

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Cannabis (Cannabis sativa) is a plant of increasing importance for research, medical, recreational, industrial, and agricultural purposes, but a strict legal landscape means that it was chronically understudied. Now that research institutions can utilize this plant for study, we require updated terminology to describe various cannabis flowering types that occur under ideal and non-ideal growing conditions. We introduce new flowering terminology and describe them in text and with photographs.

Plants use light as a resource to power photosynthesis, and a greater total sum of photons generally increases yield. In controlled environment agriculture where growers utilize light fixtures instead …

Examination Of The Association Among Family Communication Patterns, Attitudes Toward Sex, And Sexual Communication Self-Efficacy, Brooklynn Edelmayer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the role that family communication plays in the development of sexual attitudes and sexual communication self-efficacy. Essentially, each family has a unique communication environment, which consists of how open communication is, the variety of topics a family might discuss, and expectations of conformity that parents have for their children. Attitudes toward sex can be conservative–reflecting traditional views toward sex–or progressive–reflecting tolerance and flexibility toward various sexual lifestyles. Sexual communication self-efficacy is the degree to which an individual feels comfortable communicating about sex with a sexual partner. Participants in …

It's Okay, I'M Fine: A Communication Approach To Masculinity, Vulnerability, And Emotional Intimacy In Male Friendships, Nathan M. Spencer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Vulnerability is a key part of any relationship, as it allows people to feel more connected and closer to one another. However, toxic masculine norms are inhibiting men from being vulnerable in their relationships, especially in their friendships with other men. This study seeks to explore how vulnerable communication can lead to increased feelings of emotional intimacy and partner responsiveness within male friendships, even when it goes against the person’s expectations. Findings suggest that when a man is exposed to a vulnerable message, he will perceive an increase in both emotional intimacy and partner responsiveness. Another factor was that when …

From Stuckness To Sustainability: Tailoring A Conflict Management Framework To Support Emotional Processing In English Teaching, Isabelle Scott

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Nationally, teachers are struggling to simply stay in the career, let alone thrive in it, and many education researchers are recognizing that teaching has become a largely unsustainable career for an increasing number of educators. There are many complex challenges that English Language Arts (ELA) teachers face that contribute to this dissatisfaction and the unsustainability of the career, including the demanding human and relationship-focus of the work, the emotional intensity in this type of caring, intense debates and controversies occurring in national politics that then play into the classroom, and an overarching disillusionment with teaching. This thesis explores such problems …

A Survey On Digital Reading Materials And Personal Study Of Christian Religious Texts, Teancum Price

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Religion, including reading from religious texts such as scriptures, are a part of the daily lives of many people. Modern technology has influenced the way that this religious reading takes place, but its effects have not yet been studied. Existing research of the effects of technology on reading focus on topics such as reading comprehension, but the study of religious texts is often focused on achieving a religious experience, so the existing research does not capture the whole scope of these changes. In our study, we surveyed two universities (Utah State University and Abilene Christian University) to ask individuals how …

The Practice Of Inclusion: Indigenous Knowledge And Ethical Design, Kate E. Van Der Zalm

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Indigenous Knowledge is a cumulative body of practices and beliefs developed by Indigenous communities through generations of interaction with the natural environment. This knowledge offers valuable insights for caring for the land in sustainable and respectful ways but is not fully considered in modern planning and design practices. This research examines how Indigenous Knowledge is currently understood and used within landscape planning and design firms in British Columbia, Canada. Using a combination of existing research and interviews with design professionals and Indigenous participants, the study explores where Indigenous Knowledge is being applied, where challenges exist, and what opportunities remain for …

Effect Of Agroecological Feeding Systems Of Dairy Cattle On The Nutritional Composition Of Milk, Sree Bhavya Immadi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

How food is produced can influence both its nutritional quality and its impact on the environment. In recent years, regenerative (agroecological) farming practices have gained attention for their potential to improve soil health, biodiversity, and the nutritional value of foods. In dairy production, these practices often involve growing more diverse forage crops, reducing soil disturbance, and relying less on monoculture-grown feed rations. However, there is still limited real-world evidence showing how these practices affect the nutritional composition of milk produced on commercial dairy farms.

This dissertation explores how regenerative feeding and feed production practices influence the nutritional quality of milk, …

Effects Of Serum And Commercial Serum-Free Media On Development Of In Vitro Produced (Ivp) Embryos In Cattle, Kyla Miller

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Serum-containing media has been shown to increase incidence of large offspring syndrome and to alter gene expression, protein synthesis, and cell signaling. These factors together can result in increased pregnancy loss when combined with assisted reproduction technologies. However, there are very few direct comparisons of commercial serum-free media (IVF Bioscience™) and serum-containing media on both IVF and cloned embryo development in cattle. The aim of this study was to determine the role of serum in oocyte maturation and subsequent embryo development. Three culture systems, including in vitro maturation (IVM) and in vitro culture (IVC), were used in this study. Both …

Reading Cache Valley Rhetorics: Towards A Composition Pedagogy Of Place, Dax Gove

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

“Reading Cache Valley Rhetorics: Towards a Composition Pedagogy of Place” proposes that place—one’s immediate locale—is an essential element of ecocritical writing pedagogy. There are constant interacting rhetorical constructions of meaning within any given place across texts from the different groups who have lived there. In these local texts, the evidence of a rhetorically mediated reality is evident in the stark differences between natures and cultures—meaning is rhetorically constructed, down to the meaning of place and people. This project reads texts local to the author’s immediate locale, Cache Valley, Utah, from white LDS settler and Indigenous Shoshone rhetors in order to …

Projected Land-Use Change In Northern Utah: Its Implication On Above- And Below-Ground Biomass Carbon, Md Khan Shajidul Kabir

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Land can broadly be classified based on human use and natural characteristics into categories such as cropland, pastureland, urban areas, forests, shrubland, and wetlands. Each type of land has a different capacity to store carbon, and forests play a dominant role. In Utah, economic incentives, urban growth, and population increase are driving shifts in these land-use categories. Using data on agricultural revenue, land values, environmental characteristics, and satellite-based carbon information from the past decade, this study examines how land use may change over the next two decades. The findings suggest a substantial expansion of urban areas, accompanied by declines in …

An Alternative Representation For Temporal Json, Bishal Sarkar

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a common format for representing and exchanging data on the web. Most systems only keep the current version of a JSON document, even though, in many situations, it is also important to know how that document changed over time. For example, an application might need to answer questions such as “What did this record look like last week?” or “How has this list grown over the past year?” A simple way to keep this history is to store a full copy of the document every time it changes, but this quickly becomes wasteful, most of …

Scalable Roof Polygon Extraction And Geometric Characterization From Remotely-Sensed Data For Snow Load Assessment, Jashon Newlun

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Heavy snow accumulation on rooftops is a serious structural risk in cold climates, and understanding how much snow builds up on different types of roofs is essential for safe building design. Currently, most data on roof snow loads comes from small, labor-intensive field surveys that cover only a handful of buildings at a time. This results in far too few measurements of buildings to draw confident conclusions about how snow behaves across communities. This thesis develops and demonstrates a new automated approach for measuring roof snow accumulation and extracting key building characteristics across thousands of buildings at once using airborne …

Gradient Based Optimization Methods For Robust Learning And Biomedical Signal Modeling, Jarrod Mau

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

This dissertation explores how modern artificial intelligence techniques can be used to better understand complex biological data. Specifically, it develops new machine learning based methods and applies them to two important biomedical problems: analyzing brain signals and studying protein behavior.

The first part of the work introduces a new machine learning approach designed to improve how computers classify structured data. Traditional neural networks are powerful but can sometimes generalize poorly. This research proposes a method that combines the flexibility of neural networks with the reliability of ensemble techniques, leading to more robust and accurate predictions across different types of datasets. …

Exploring The Correlation Between Malnutrition And Food And Nutrition Insecurity In Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Heather Burr

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) may increase the risk of malnutrition because of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and restrictive eating. In addition, patients with IBD may experience food and nutrition insecurity. Therefore, we conducted an online survey to assess risk of malnutrition and food and nutrition insecurity among adult patients with IBD in outpatient and community settings. Patients were recruited between July and December 2025, aiming to reach adults in the Rocky Mountain Region diagnosed with IBD. Data collected included demographics, health-related factors, risk of nutrition insecurity, risk of food insecurity, and barriers and facilitators to dietary management of IBD.

Fifty-seven patients …

Developing Fragility Curves For Steel Special Moment-Resisting Frames In Utah, Olivia P. Murphy

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Major seismic events along the Wasatch Fault represent a serious threat to Utah's residents and built environment. Engineers currently rely on a statistical approach that calculates earthquake ground shaking based on probabilities of various events occurring over extended time periods. This method informs how strong new buildings must be constructed. However, many structural engineering professionals in Utah worry that this probability-based approach may significantly underestimate the actual ground shaking compared to an alternative method that examines the largest possible earthquake a fault can generate. The substantial differences between the two analytical approaches raise fundamental concerns about whether existing construction standards …

Exploring The Training Experiences Of Adult Taekwondo Practitioners: A Case Study Of A Martial Arts Program In The Southern United States, Nicholas Daniel Ryburn

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Taekwondo has gained increasing prominence among adult practitioners in the United States, offering both physical and psychological benefits. However, despite its popularity, research on Taekwondo has predominantly emphasized youth populations, competitive contexts, or injury epidemiology, with limited attention to the lived experiences of adult practitioners. Adults present distinct needs and challenges in martial arts training, including variability in physical conditioning, age-related health considerations, and constraints associated with family and professional responsibilities. A deeper understanding of these factors is crucial for developing training programs that are both effective and sustainable for adult populations. This dissertation employs a qualitative case study design …