Digital Commons Network^™

Back To The Basics: What Does The Market Tell Us About Harvest Grain Basis, Matthew Fischer

All Theses

Grain marketing in the United States is a complex system; therefore producers require information on grain markets to effectively manage risk. Futures markets provide the mechanism for price risk management based on the national supply and demand signals. However price risk is managed on the local level, therefore the relationship between local cash price and futures price, basis, must be understood.
The market forces which explain grain basis are the cost of storage and the transportation cost. The current body of research in grain basis uses the storage component of basis as the driving force. This approach is applicable to …

Assessment Of Conceptual Understanding Of Atomic Structure, Covalent Bonding, And Bond Energy, Alma Gonzales

All Theses

This research work relied upon the importance of conceptual understanding to meaningful learning. Conceptual understanding is strongly influenced by students' prior knowledge (1). Many of these ideas pose strong barriers to deeper understanding and are called misconceptions since they are inconsistent or in conflict with generally accepted scientific facts (2). Thus, it is beneficial for instructors to initially elicit students' conceptual understanding in order to properly address student's misconceptions during the learning process. However, results are very dependent on the instrument used to elicit conceptual understanding (3). The most commonly used tools are summative assessments or achievement tests (4). They …

Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells In Response To Gold Nanoparticles, William Mcallister

All Theses

In this master's thesis we look at elucidating the interactions between nanoparticles and cells. Specifically, we looked at how the cell mechanics are affected, cytotoxicity of the nanoparticles, and shifts in cell phenotypes. There has been much research looking into whether nanoparticles are cytotoxic, but limited amounts looking at their effect on mechanics especially with vascular smooth muscle cells. This cell type has two distinct phenotypes of synthetic and contractile that each serve different purposes physiologically.
The first experiments we did were cytotoxicity assays to see if the cells could survive the treatment with nanoparticles. If the cells died within …

Controlled Substance, Ron Hollingshead

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

My MFA thesis and supporting exhibition will highlight sculptural work I have created that deals directly or indirectly with circumstances surrounding personal health problems. A recent L4-5 micro-discectomy and the following complications have given much inspiration for my art making. I use this personal narrative as a jumping-off point to create object-based artwork that brings up larger, more universal themes, such as body, disability, pain, and pharmaceutical use. I will explain how the creation of artwork about the process of healing brought with it its own catharsis.

Understanding Cliff Use At The New River Gorge National River: Combining Visitor Observations And Resource Impact Assessments, D. Kyle Olcott

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The New River Gorge National River (NERI) is managed by the National Park Service (NPS). In addition to being an extremely popular destination for whitewater rafting, it is also home to world class rock climbing and an extensive array of cliffs offering over 2400 routes. This thesis is part of a larger study of the cliffs at NERI, funded by the NPS and encompassing botanic and geologic components in addition to the recreation management component. By combining unobtrusive visitor observation methods with GPS mapping and rapid assessment of nearly 450 areas of impact, a few key management recommendations are made …

Climate Change And Community Dynamics: A Hierarchical Bayesian Model Of Resource-Driven Changes In A Desert Rodent Community, Glenda M. Yenni

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Predicting effects of climate change on species persistence often assumes that those species are responding to abiotic effects alone. However, biotic interactions between community members may affect species’ ability to respond to abiotic changes. Latent Gaussian models of resource availability using precipitation and NDVI and accounting for spatial autocorrelation and rodent group-level uncertainty in the process are developed to detect differences in seasons, groups, and the experimental removal of one group. Precipitation and NDVI have overall positive effects on rodent energy use as expected, but meaningful differences were detected. Differences in the importance of seasonality when the dominant group was …

Alternative Futures For The Upper Colorado River Ecosystem: Phase Two, Temis G. Taylor

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (2001) reports that habitat destruction is the main factor responsible for species endangerment. Trends in land use and expansion of urban areas into adjacent open space will continue to consume land and fragment or destroy habitat (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency , 2001). Studies have shown that habitat loss negatively impacts overall species abundance and reduces biodiversity (Andren, 1997; Fischer & Lindenmayer, 2007; Hansen et al., 2005; McKinney, 2002; Pimm & Raven, 2000; Sole, Alonso, & Saldafia, 2004, and others). Habitat destruction and fragmentation are believed to be core causes for biodiversity decline, although species' …

Selected Projects In Costume Design, Lindsay Anne Beardall

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

I started my collegiate career as an art major in 2-D design with the intent that I would be an art director for an advertising agency. I took a costume construction class two years into my major and I promptly left 2-D design for costume design. Costume design is a wonderful combination of my love of art, history, sewing, drawing, design and creating. I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to design four different shows during my time at Utah State University. During my time as a costume designer at Utah State University I designed costumes for four …

Tinged, Sarah Sherrill

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Authors use connotation to create subtext and depth; often, words fail me. Instead, I use color, lines, and texture, and once I’ve labored to bring them into being, I’m surprised by the truths they reveal about my subjects and me. That which I find difficult to articulate, I am able to convey through canvas, wood, metal, any material that speaks to me. Most of my art is a reflection of my internal exploration. In my search to find myself, I reflect on my childhood memories of traveling through Mexico with my family. Tinged is my visual diary; it gave me …

Improvement In Nutrition Knowledge And Retention About Gestational Diabetes Mellitus Among Hispanic Pregnant Women, Debra M. Waldron

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Objective: The objectives of this study were to evaluate the demographic data of the study population, compare nutrition knowledge and retention in Hispanic pregnant women who were newly diagnosed with gestational diabetes (GDM) or with a history of GDM at time of GDM diagnosis and prior to delivery, and determine if the Sweet Success education program’s curriculum was effective in improving overall knowledge in pregnant women with GDM.

Design: A quasi-experimental design was used with a convenience sample.

Subjects/Setting: Ninety women between the ages of 18 and 45 years and of Hispanic or Hispanic American descent were recruited for this …

Contests Over Pastoralism In The Southern Sahara And Northern Sahel, Franklin Charles Graham Iv

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

West African pastoral groups (Arab, Tuareg, Toubou, and Fulani) experience contests both within their society, and, with outside agents regarding state integration, land use and development. Pastoral leadership, neighboring sedentary groups, national governments, multinational corporations, aid organizations, and academia all influence the paths pastoralists take in their relationship with the environment, the markets they return to, the animals the shepherd, and the non-pastoral opportunities they pursue, to name a few. The social relations that exist between pastoralists and outsiders can essentially coalesce or break apart pastoral society, depending on the actions taken by the various actors mentioned. The outcomes of …

Replacement Alternatives For Beef Cow Herds: An Analysis Of Retaining Non-Pregnant Cows, Trenton T. Bohling

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A non-pregnant cow is a liability to a producer. Over the last four years, cow-calf producers have had an increased number of non-pregnant cows due to factors like environmental conditions and diseases like trichomoniasis. While most research has indicated that culling a non-pregnant female and replacing the cow with retained heifers, purchased heifers, or purchased cows are the only economic alternatives, recent trends in the cattle market have suggested that keeping a non-pregnant cow may also be an alternative.

Annual beef cow budgets were created based on typical Nebraska Sandhills conditions. Revenues and costs in these budgets vary according to …

Functional Classification Of Divergent Protein Sequences And Molecular Evolution Of Multi-Domain Proteins, Pooja K. Strope

School of Biological Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Transmembrane proteins and multi-domain proteins together make up more than 80% of the total proteins in any eukaryotic proteome. Therefore accurately classifying such proteins into functional classes is an important task. Furthermore, understanding the molecular evolution of multi-domain proteins is important because it shows how various domains fuse to form more complex proteins, and acquire new functions possibly affecting the organismal level of evolution. In this thesis, I first investigated the performance of several protein classifiers using one of the most divergent transmembrane protein families, the G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) superfamily, as an example. Alignment-free classifiers based on support vector machines …

Investigation Of Bovine Herpesvirus 1 (Bhv-1) Encoded Infected Cell Protein 0 (Bicp0), Natasha N. Gaudreault

School of Biological Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Bovine herpesvirus 1 (BHV-1) is a significant pathogen of cattle.  Following acute infection, BHV-1 establishes a latent infection that persists for the life of the infected host.  Stress induced factors cause the virus to reactivate from latency, resulting in virus transmission and transient immune suppression.  BHV-1 encoded bICP0 is expressed early and constitutively throughout productive infection.  bICP0 is critical for efficient viral replication, virulence, and reactivation in cattle because it stimulates viral transcription and interferes with innate immune responses.  bICP0 potentially interacts with a variety of proteins to activate viral gene expression and inhibit innate antiviral defenses.  bICP0 localizes to …

The Diffusion Of Environmental Literacy In An American Urban Community Through Children, Kelley Phillips

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Environmental literacy is a contentious issue in the United States of America because citizens feel it is forced upon them and interferes with our materialistic culture. Also, many Americans have limited access to green space and little time to devote to increasing their environmental mindset. This project documents a technique to introduce environmental literacy to American citizens by working with single communities in a common subset of American culture. Based on a model used by anthropologists in third world countries, the goal was to diffuse environmental literacy into a community by only instructing the children of that community in environmental …

Educating Young Adults About Sustainable Development, Meghan Lewis

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

This qualitative study on the types of environmental education on different age groups was conducted in Lincoln, Nebraska. The purpose of this thesis is to identify what age group and educational methods would be most effective to educate Lincoln citizens on the importance and benefits of sustainable development. Environmental education is an important aspect in implementation of new, environmentally friendly ideas.

Lincoln environmentalists are working to improve the city’s sustainability. Finding a way to consistently educate Lincoln residents on the importance and benefits of sustainable development will increase the public’s awareness of their efforts, leading to a greater interest in …

Creating An Environmental Placed Based Education At Norris Elementary, Ben Kittrell

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

This study is focused on creating a place based education program. Place based education programs provide many benefits at the personal level with the students (PBEEC). The study was completed at Norris Elementary School where the students have access to the “Norris Forest” which is a planted forest with a walk way through the trees. Some of the trees are labeled for the students to identify and others are not. A graph of the unlabelled trees has been included for the students or the teachers to use.

This project incorporates activities that will engage the students in order to teach …

Parks And Obesity In Rural And Urban Nebraska, Michaela S. Wolf

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

In order to better understand the role community design plays in obesity rates, this project studies a potential relationship between distance of parks from homes and obesity rates in four Nebraska counties. Park use may contribute to important health benefits, such as reducing risk of obesity by increasing physical activity levels. There are limitations to park use, such as crime rates and facility upkeep that are important to understand so that they might be managed and communities can reap greater benefits from their parks, including better fitness. This study examines park distance from homes as a potential limiting factor to …

Designing A School Garden Space That Emphasizes Children's Wants And Uses Permaculture Design Methods, Mikhaela Mullins

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

A case study was organized at Saratoga Elementary school in Lincoln, Nebraska to obtain data on what children desire in a garden space. To collect this data a school garden space was constructed and an after school garden club was implemented. Students who participated in the after school garden club partook in the study by drawing their ideal garden. Elements that the subjects drew were identified and categorized into ‘highly desired’ and ‘somewhat desired’.

These elements were then incorporated into a proposed garden design plan for Saratoga. The proposal plan uses Permaculture design methods to emphasize sustainability.

Extraction Of Bioactive Compounds From Whole Red Cabbage And Beetroot Using Pulsed Electric Fields And Evaluation Of Their Functionality, Valli Kannan

Department of Food Science and Technology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Application of high voltage pulsed electric fields (PEF) to plant tissues increases porosity of the plant cells, enhancing juice extraction from fruits and vegetables. Red cabbage and beetroot are rich sources of bioactive compounds anthocyanins and betalains, respectively. Pulsed electric field (red cabbage: 1 kV/cm electric field strength, 0.66 µF and 20 pulses; red beets: 1.5 kV/cm electric field strength, 0.66 µF and 20 pulses) was applied to whole red cabbage and beetroot to enhance juice extraction. Total polyphenols, anthocyanins (red cabbage), betalains (beetroot) and total antioxidant activity (ABTS and DPPH) of the extracted juice was determined. The bioactivity of …

Towards A Theory Of Comic Book Adaptation, Colin Beineke

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Contemporary adaptation studies/theories have tended to focus singularly on the movement from the novel/short story to film – largely ignoring mediums such as the theater, music, visual art, video games, and the comic book.  Such a limited view of adaptation has led to an underdeveloped and misplaced understanding of the adaptation process, which has in turn culminated in a convoluted perception of the products of artistic adaptation.  The necessity of combating the consequences of these limited outlooks – particularly in the field of comics studies – is as vital as the difficulties are manifold. In opposition to this current stream …

Epistemic Contextualism: A Defense And Analysis, Sruthi R. Rothenfluch

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Epistemic contextualists maintain that the truth conditions of knowledge ascriptions and denials change according to the context of utterance.  In this dissertation, I defend this view against one of its main rivals, classic invariantism, which holds that the contents of such statements remain fixed across contexts.  While epistemic contextualists provide a straightforward semantic account of the variability in our knowledge-ascribing behavior, classic invariantists cannot, and therefore must offer some explanation as to why it seems as though the standards for ‘knowing that p’ shift from one context to the next.  To this end, classic invariantists draw a distinction between what …

Host And Distribution Lists Of Chiggers (Trombiculidae And Leeuwenhoekiidae), Of North American Wild Vertebrates North Of Mexico, Brianne L. Walters, John O. Whitaker Jr., Nicholas S. Gikas, William J. Wrenn

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty Publications

Information concerning chiggers found on wild vertebrates of North America north of Mexico is summarized. Included are lists a) of the chiggers organized taxonomically, b) hosts from which each species has been reported, and c) states and provinces with references for each separate record

Agency Threats, Tim Wu

Duke Law Journal

Most legal writers are implicitly or explicitly critical of the use of threats as an alternative to rulemaking or adjudication. The general presumption is that the use of threats is a kind of symptom of an underlying malady - a broken rulemaking or adjudication process. For example, Professor Lars Noah describes the use of threats as an “intractable problem,” given the difficulty of “controlling the exercise of such wide-ranging discretionary power.” In this brief Essay, I write in defense of regulatory threats in particular contexts.

The use of threats instead of law can be a useful choice - not simply …

Towards A Human Centered Economy, Joseph Featherall

Theses

Not included

Multiple Scale Landscape Pattern Index Interpretation For The Persistent Monitoring Of Land-Cover And Land-Use, Alvin Spivey

Theses

Mapping land-cover land-use change (LCLUC) over regional and continental scales, and long time scales (years and decades), can be accomplished using thematically identified classification maps of a landscape--a LCLU class map. Observations of a landscape's LCLU class map pattern can indicate the most relevant process, like hydrologic or ecologic function, causing landscape scale environmental change. Quantified as Landscape Pattern Metrics (LPM), emergent landscape pat- terns act as Landscape Indicators (LI) when physically interpreted. The common mathematical approach to quantifying observed landscape scale pattern is to have LPM measure how connected a class exists within the landscape, through nonlinear local kernel …

Beauty Of Taiwan, Yu-Chung Chang

Theses

The term "Multimedia" refers to not only the materials used in creating art, but also the devices used for presenting the content. In the present time, artists can practice computer softwares as the media. They use audio and video tracks to display artwork. Various formats of technological or digital multimedia enhance the user's experience in entertainment or art, and transcend everyday experience. "Beauty of Taiwan", my MFA Thesis, is a Flash-based program which offers users interactivity to control the way to view art piece as used in video games. This program allows the presented film, made from my pencil drawings …

The Twelve Animals: An Interactive Guide To The Chinese Zodiac Signs, Yanzi Chen

Theses

The Chinese Zodiac signs are determined by the lunar year in which you were born. The Chinese believe the animal ruling one's birth year has a profound influence on personality, and destiny. Unlike Western astrology, which is based on the months of the year, the Chinese Zodiac,traditionally referred to as the Sheng Xiao, is based on a twelve-year cycle with each year represented by an animal. The twelve animals are: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. The Chinese Zodiac is found in several East Asian countries besides China. My thesis is an exploration …

The Name Of The Sandwich Itself., Amanda Lee Phillips

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The poems in this collection seek to explore and highlight connections between the familiar domestic realm (often seen in depictions of food preparation and consumption, social events, or material possessions) and shifting, sometimes ambiguous relationships between people. Gender, in particular, is examined, exaggerated, and/or de constructed to underscore the author's ongoing interest in the ways in which expected male and female roles are constructed and performed within personal interactions. The poems here exhibit a variety of different tones, ranging from darkly comic to contemplative, from joyous to solemn. The author believes it possible for poems to possess both comedic and …

Cfd Modeling Of Entrance And Exit Geometries Of A Wind Speed Accelerator., David Russ

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Current wind power technology is not economically feasible throughout most of the United States due to low average wind speeds. A design for a small-scale wind concentrator device suitable for use in areas of low wind velocity was tested using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Using a novel approach, the device seeks to accelerate incoming air above minimum velocities required for economical power generation. The novel approach employs a funnel shaped inlet with relief vents along the circumference, so as to alleviate backpressure. Both inlet and outlet sections utilize funnel shapes with both parabolic and hyperbolic regions. All geometry and mesh …