Digital Commons Network^™

Temporal Bisection And Effects Of D-Amphetamine Administration In Lewis And Fischer 344 Rats, Marissa Turturici

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Temporal control concerns the discrimination of intervals of time. Individuals with various psychological disorders have shown differences in temporal control when compared to control populations. It is unknown whether and how temporal control might be linked with impulsivity, another measure that predicts problem behavior such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Because Lewis (LEW) rats reliably show greater impulsive choice relative to Fischer 344 (F344) rats, the present study examined responding in these two strains under a temporal-bisection procedure that assesses temporal control. In the temporal-bisection procedure, rats are trained to discriminate between two durations. Intermediate durations are subsequently presented to determine the …

Regulator Of G Protein Signaling-21 (Rgs21) In Peripheral Taste Physiology., Adam Bryant Schroer

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The gustatory system subjects ingested food to ‘quality control’ that prevents consumption of harmful compounds while also regulating nutrient intake. A better understanding of the physiological regulation of taste will enhance our ability to facilitate the appropriate consumption of nutrients and improve overall health. Bitter, sweet, and umami tastes are detected by a family of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that associate with heterotrimeric G proteins and initiate intracellular signaling cascades after activation by tastant binding. ‘Regulators of G protein Signaling’ (RGS proteins) act as Ga-directed GTPase-accelerating proteins (GAPs) and thereby accelerate inactivation of GPCR-mediated signaling. Rgs21 is selectively expressed in …

Antibacterial Activity Of Current Endodontic Repair Materials Against Enterococcus Faecalis., Michael A. Tran

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Introduction: Root canal perforations caused by pathologic or iatrogenic means have been shown to cause serious complications leading to overall tooth loss. Bacterial infection of the affected site results in failure of the root canal as well as an inflammatory response leading to the destruction of supporting tissues. Although a multitude of endodontic repair materials have been tested over the past several decades, recent introduction of bioceramic materials have shown favorable outcomes to repairs. Bioceramics not only exhibit excellent biocompatibility, but also may possess antibacterial properties due to their strong alkaline pH. The aim of this in vitro study was …

Carbon Nanotube-Reinforced Smart Composites For Sensing Freezing Temperature And Deicing By Self-Heating, S Jang, Y-L Park

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Carbon nanotube-reinforced polymer composites were fabricated by high shear mixing. The microstructure and the electrical properties of the carbon nanotube–polymer composites were investigated by scanning electron microscopy and electrical resistance measurement. We found that the carbon nanotube composites showed high electrical conductivity (1.5 S m-1) at 7.0 wt% of carbon nanotubes, and the increase in thickness enhanced the electrical conductivity of the composites. The multifunctional properties of the carbon nanotube composites were also investigated for use in sensing the freezing temperature and also in deicing by self-heating. The results showed that the carbon nanotube–polymer composites had high temperature sensitivity in …

Development Of Enhanced Emission Factor Through The Identification Of An Optimal Combination Of Input Variables Using Artificial Neural Network, Tse-Huai Liu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

A great deal of attention is being paid worldwide to particulate matter (PM), which is now considered a significant component of air pollution. Specifically, in this thesis, road dust is a primary source of PM that is having a significant impact on human health and air quality. For example, impaired visibility due to road dust can cause more vehicle accidents. Hence, in order to efficiently develop PM control strategies, it is critical to improve the estimation of PM concentration levels generating from paved and unpaved roads. Since 1979, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed emission factor equations to …

Personality And Functional Limitations: Investigating The Mediating Effect Of Positive Social Exchanges, Priyanka S. Mehta

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Research suggests a link between personality traits and various health outcomes. There is now a need to understand why this association exists by investigating potential underlying mechanisms. The current study investigated a potential mechanism that has not received much attention, positive social exchanges (PSS). PSS have been linked to health in various studies, but more research is needed to understand its association with health. The current study utilized data from 6,095 community-dwelling adults from the National Study of Midlife in the United States (MIDUS Wave 1; ages 20--75; Mage = 46.83, SD = 12.90). Using the Hayes PROCESS macro, we …

Democratizing University Foodscapes? Student Food Cooperatives And The Neoliberal University, Amanda Marple

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

According to a report published in 2015, the National Center for Education estimated that over 20 million students were forecasted to enroll in higher education in the 2016--17 school year, situating American universities as major institutional food retailers. Over the past two decades, corporate food providers have increasingly sought long-term public and private university contracts as a means to expand their reach into lucrative campus food landscapes (foodscapes), replacing in-house services with cheaper, more "efficient, and "productive" dining strategies. Companies such as Sodexo, Aramark, and Bon Appetit control the foodscapes of many university campuses across the United States, creating food …

Preference And User Experience With Powered Air- Purifying Respirators In Healthcare Workers In A Simulated Work Environment: A Pilot Study, Lauren Macdowell

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Powered air-purifying respirators (PAPRs) are protective devices commonly utilized by healthcare workers in environments with infectious airborne diseases. A review of the current PAPR literature indicated a shortage of studies that focus on user experience of PAPRs and the types of PAPRs that healthcare workers prefer. This study focused on three different PAPR models: the MAXAIR CAPR RTM 710, the 3M(TM) Versaflo (TM) TR-600-ECK and the 3M(TM) Air-Mate(TM). A typical hospital patient work environment was simulated at the West Virginia Simulation Training and Education for Patient Safety on West Virginia University's Health Sciences Campus. Eight subjects total were recruited and …

Can Rationing Through Inconvenience Be Ethical?, Nir Eyal, Paul Romain, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, we provide a comprehensive analysis and a normative assessment of rationing through inconvenience as a form of rationing. By “rationing through inconvenience” in the health sphere, we refer to a non-financial burden (the inconvenience) that is either intended to cause or has the effect of causing patients or clinicians to choose an option for health‐related consumption that is preferred by the health system for its fairness, efficiency, or other distributive desiderata beyond assisting the immediate patient. We argue that under certain conditions, rationing through inconvenience may turn out to serve as a legitimate and, compared to direct …

Nonlinear Stiffness And Viscoelasticity Of Inhibitor-Treated Blood Clots By Tensile Testing, Wilson S. Eng

Master's Theses

Although blood clots are vital to wound healing, little is known about what factors influence clot stiffness and dynamic response. This work investigates the mechanics of inhibitor-treated clots by direct tensile testing using a custom designed system for forces below 1 N. Inhibitors that affect clot formation include blebbistatin, which affects myosin II movement on actin, and cytochalasin D, which affects actin polymerization. The hypothesis of this investigation is that blebbistatin will have a greater effect on mechanical behavior than cytochalasin D, because the inhibition of myosin II will weaken the overall clot more than actin. This hypothesis was investigated …

A Modular Multi-Level Converter For Energy Management Of Hybrid Energy-Storage Systems In Electric Vehicles, Sharon Sanjeev George

Master's Theses

Electric vehicles (EVs) are substantial applications of clean energy. Their effectiveness for mainstream transportation is predicated on the efficient use of stored energy within the vehicles’ power pack. Among rechargeable storage solutions, lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery cells have high energy density making them suitable to supply the EVs’ average power. However, the peak power requirements of the vehicles exert stress on the Li-ion cells due to their low pulsating power capabilities. Ultracapacitors can be used instead as the power-pulsating storage elements given their superior power density. Incorporating the two cell types for energy storage signifies a hybrid configuration that leads to …

The Diablo Winds Of Northern California: Climatology And Numerical Simulations, Carrie Lynn Bowers

Master's Theses

Extreme fire behavior in the San Francisco Bay Area (SFBA) has historically been associated with strong offshore wind events referred to locally as Diablo winds. A 17 year surface-based climatological analysis was performed to establish a definition of Diablo winds and to identify their frequency and spatial distribution. Synoptic composites of events were constructed using North American Regional Reanalysis, and high resolution Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulations were used to investigate the mesoscale dynamics of three significant Diablo wind events. Diablo winds were defined as dry northeasterly, downslope winds that occur in the SFBA with minimum sustained wind …

Vehicle Tracking Based On Historical Intersection Over Union, Shuai Hua

Master's Theses

Multi-object tracking (MOT) could be applied to many video analysis scenarios, such as vehicle speed estimation, vehicle re-identification, and vehicle abnormal behavior detection. A tracking task can be formulated as a data association problem, for which there exist many different types of solutions. Track-by-detection is one of the most common approaches for the MOT task. In this paradigm, the tracking algorithm relies on the detection results to decide whether detected vehicles in sequential frames belong to the same track. In our work, we developed a reliable vehicle tracker following this paradigm, while considering the balance between tracking efficiency and tracking …

Change And Transformation: The Harp As A Symbol Of Liminality In Tchaikovsky’S The Nutcracker (1892), Jeanna Kim

Master's Theses

The harp is a musical instrument with a uniquely resonating timbre, and a highly specialized expressive niche within the orchestral repertoire. A deeper study of the harp’s metaphorical use is conducted in this report by evaluating the historical context in which the harp emerged, analyzing the timbre of the modern double-action pedal harp, and reviewing the historically significant ensemble works to reveal why composers elected to feature the harp in the orchestra, in lieu of and in conjunction with other instruments. Each of these elements points squarely towards the use of the harp to represent liminal themes and the universal …

Lenstra-Hurwitz Cliques In Real Quadratic Fields, Daniel S. Lopez

Master's Theses

Let $K$ be a number field and let $\OO_K$ denote its ring of integers. We can define a graph whose vertices are the elements of $\OO_K$ such that an edge exists between two algebraic integers if their difference is in the units $\OO_K^{\times}$. Lenstra showed that the existence of a sufficiently large clique (complete subgraph) will imply that the ring $\OO_K$ is Euclidean with respect to the field norm. A recent generalization of this work tells us that if we draw more edges in the graph, then a sufficiently large clique will imply the weaker (but still very interesting) conclusion …

Airborne Doppler Radar Observations Of Pyrocu/Cb Plume Kinematics And Thermodynamics During The 2016 Pioneer Fire, Bruno Rodriguez

Master's Theses

During a period of explosive growth of the Pioneer Fire (Idaho, August 2016), deep pyroconvective plumes were sampled by aircraft. The research aircraft was equipped with both remote sensing and in situ instrumentation, including a W-Band Doppler radar which provided high-resolution vertical velocity retrievals from within the developing pyrocumulus. Being the first direct observations of vertical velocity within a pyrocumulus cloud, they have provided unique insights into the dynamical processes governing pyroconvective environments, with important implications for the fire modeling community. The observations were quality-controlled and corrected for issues such as Doppler velocity aliasing, and the plume’s kinematic structure was …

Application Of Model Predictive Control In Modular Multilevel Converter For Mtpa Operation And Soc Balancing, Mohit Sharma

Master's Theses

In this thesis, a one-step horizon model predictive control strategy (MPC) is implemented in a multilevel modular converter (MMC) to control the speed of an electric vehicle (EV) motor. Maximum torque per ampere (MTPA) and field weakening (FW) control strategies are used to generate reference signals for maximum torque output. The proposed control scheme aims to track the reference signal by independently regulating voltages from the MMC modules. To achieve this, the switches of the MMCs are directly controlled, eliminating the need for a pulse width modulator. A one-step horizon implementation of MPC ensures the robustness of the control system …

Separation Events In Modern Greek, Vasiliki Lydia Rounti

Master's Theses

The semantic domain of separation events has been studied for a number of languages. In this thesis, a study on how Modern Greek expresses separation events and how semantically distinct they are from other languages is presented. This is the first study on the semantic features of separation events for Modern Greek. Furthermore, it is the only study so far on separation events for which data have been gathered from a large number of native speakers. Thus, this thesis not only offers a great insight on the language’s semantic structures, but it also presents more concrete observations and conclusions compared …

Local Extinction Of A Rare Plant Pollinator In Southern Utah (Usa) Associated With Invasion By Africanized Honey Bees, Allen Szalanski

Entomology and Plant Pathology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Twenty-five years ago, Arctomecon humilis, a pollinator-dependent, endangered poppy globally restricted to the extreme northeastern Mojave Desert in southwestern Utah, was pollinated by native bee species and the European honey bee. Follow-up studies beginning in 2012 failed to find the two most important native bee pollinator species, one of which, Perdita meconis, is a strict poppy specialist. We had four objectives: (1) confirm the status of formerly important native bee pollinators; (2) determine the role of the Africanized honey bee which reportedly invaded southern Utah in 2008; (3) examine the effect of the ostensible change in pollinator fauna on fruit …

Mitochondrial Dna Variation Of Feral Honey Bees (Apis Mellifera L.) From Utah (Usa), Allen Szalanski

Entomology and Plant Pathology Faculty Publications and Presentations

A study was conducted on the mitochondrial DNA genetic diversity of feral colonies and swarms of Apis mellifera from ten counties in Utah by sequencing the intergenic region of the cytochrome oxidase (COI-COII) gene region. A total of 20 haplotypes were found from 174 honey bee colony samples collected from 2008 to 2017. Samples belonged to the A (African) (48%); C (Eastern Europe) (43%); M (Western Europe) (4%); and O (Oriental) lineages (5%). Ten African A lineage haplotypes were observed with two unique to Utah among A lineage haplotypes recorded in the US. Haplotypes belonging to the A lineage were …

Poultry Industry, Allen Szalanski

Entomology and Plant Pathology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cimicids, and particularly the Common bed bug, Cimex lectularius L., can infest poultry houses and cause severe cutaneous reactions in the birds as wellas other clinical effects. This chapter discusses some cimicids that have been documented as pests of poultry, including: the Mexican chicken bug, Haematosiphon inodorus (Duges); the Brazilian chicken bug, Ornithocoris toledoi Pinto; the related species, Ornithcorus pallidus Usinger; and and the Tropical bed bug, Cimex hemipterus (F.).

Who Conducts Oversight? Bill-Writers, Lifers, And Nail-Biters, Brian D. Feinstein

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

The landmark Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 charges Congress, through its standing committees, to “exercise continuous watchfulness” over the executive branch. Yet, committees differ markedly in their performance of this responsibility; the modal House committee does not convene oversight hearings in the typical year, while other committees holds dozens of hearings. This Article compares the characteristics of committee chairs that pursue oversight vigorously with those that do not. Surprisingly, I find that chairs’ previous prosecutorial or other legal experience has no discernable connection with oversight activity. Instead, committees that engage in frequent oversight tend to be chaired by productive lawmakers …

Collective Bargaining Rights And Police Misconduct: Evidence From Florida, Dhammika Dharmapala, Richard H. Mcadams, John Rappaport

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The Bankruptcy Partition, Douglas G. Baird, Anthony Casey, Randal C. Picker

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

Many current bankruptcy debates—from critical vendor orders to the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corporation—begin with bankruptcy’s distributional rules and questions about how much discretion a judge should have in applying them. It is a mistake, however, to focus on distributional questions without first identifying the bankruptcy partition and ensuring it is properly policed. What appear to be distributional disputes are more often debates about the demarcation of the bankruptcy partition and the best way to police it.

Once the dynamics of establishing and policing the bankruptcy partition are taken into account, there is little …

Limited Inalienability Rules, Ariel Porat, Stephen D. Sugarman

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

Most people’s entitlements are protected by a property rule, which means that their holders can sell them for a price. But some important entitlements are protected by an inalienability rule, and hence cannot be sold under any circumstances. For example, people cannot sell their organs. In most jurisdictions, women cannot be surrogate mothers for a fee (only for reimbursement of costs). People cannot sell their right not to be exposed to highly life-threatening conditions. Most constitutional rights are not transferrable. People cannot reassign their legal entitlements to social benefits provided by the government. Tort victims in many jurisdictions cannot sell …

Innovation Policy Pluralism, Daniel Hemel, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

When lawyers and scholars speak of “intellectual property,” they are generally referring to a combination of two distinct elements: an innovation incentive that promises a market based reward to producers of knowledge goods, and an allocation mechanism that makes access to knowledge goods conditional upon payment of a proprietary price. Distinguishing these two elements clarifies ongoing debates about intellectual property and opens up new possibilities for innovation policy. Once intellectual property is disaggregated into its core components, each element can be combined synergistically with non-IP innovation incentives such as prizes, tax preferences, and direct spending on grants and government research, …

Judging Judicial Foreclosure, Brian D. Feinstein

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

For the third time in the last several decades, policymakers are contemplating an overhaul of mortgage-finance regulations. Despite the considerable attention paid to how ex ante regulations affect the availability of credit and the appropriateness of the mortgage products that lenders offer, however, our understanding of how the legal framework governing foreclosures---a form of ex post borrower protection---affects mortgage lending is incomplete. Leveraging data on loan applicants that are geographically proximate and subject to the same federal mortgage-finance regulations and nearly identical state foreclosure regimes---but for the presence or absence of a judicial foreclosure requirement---this analysis enables the identification of …

Patents, Property, And Prospectivity, Jonathan Masur, Adam Mortara

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

When judges change the legal rules governing patents, those changes are always retroactive. That is, they apply equally to patents that have already been granted and patents that do not yet exist. There are benefits to making a change in the law retroactive, particularly if the new legal rule is an improvement over what preceded it. But there are costs as well. Retroactive changes in the law upset reliance interests. This can be particularly harmful when those reliance interests involve rights or entitlements that form the basis for substantial financial investment, as is often the case with patents. What is …

Appendix To 'The Marginal Revenue Rule In Cost-Benefit Analysis', Daniel Hemel, Jennifer Nou, David A. Weisbach

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Data Pollution, Omri Ben-Shahar

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

Digital information is the fuel of the new economy.But like the old economy’s carbon fuel, it also pollutes. Harmful “data emissions” are leaked into the digital ecosystem, disrupting social institutions and public interests. This article develops a novel framework—data pollution— to rethink the harms the data economy creates and the way they have to be regulated. It argues that social intervention should focus on the external harms from collection and misuse of personal data. The article challenges the hegemony of the prevailing view—that the injuries from digital data enterprise are exclusively private. That view has led lawmakers to focus solely …