Digital Commons Network^™

Quantifying The Extent Of Wildfire Impacted Streams In The Western United States, Grady Ball

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

Beginning in the mid-1980s, the number of fires and acres burned by wildfire in the United States has grown at an explosive rate. Several factors, anthropogenic and natural, have converged to create a new era of high frequency, high intensity fires, which is predicted to continue until at least mid-century. Investigations into wildfire impacts have largely focused on post-fire impacts on terrestrial systems, while effects on aquatic ecosystems have been underrepresented. The growing threat of fire to streams has accelerated the need for germane information regarding the spatial extent of fire impacts on watersheds and post-fire impacts to aquatic systems. …

Arcadia Magazine, 2019-10

Alumni Magazine

No abstract provided.

Note-Taking Mode And Academic Performance In Two Law School Courses, Colleen P. Murphy, Christopher J. Ryan Jr., Yajni Warnapala

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

David Lee Keith Obituary, Robert J. Wright

Department of Entomology: Faculty Publications

David Lee Keith, Retired professor and extension entomologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (UNL), dedicated husband, father, and friend, passed away at age 78 in Lincoln, Nebraska, on 4 February 2019 due to complications from diabetes.

Phld 9231 – Health Informatics & Decision Making, Gulzar H. Shah, Kristie Cason Waterfield

College of Public Health: Faculty Syllabi (2014-2021)

This course focuses on the fundamental concepts of managing information as an asset in public health and healthcare delivery contexts. Emphasis will be placed on converting data into information and converting information into decision support models.

Epid 7135-A – Epidemiology Of Infectious Disease, (Isaac) Chun Hai Fung

College of Public Health: Faculty Syllabi (2014-2021)

This course is designed to provide students with an overview of the principles and practices of infectious diseases epidemiology with focus on how the presence and control of communicable diseases affects public health locally, nationally and internationally. Topics to be covered include: 1) general principles of infectious diseases epidemiology, including outbreak investigation, surveillance, analysis of infectious diseases data, and laboratory testing of specimens; 2) major modes of infectious disease transmission, including airborne, food and water, zoonotic, insect vector, blood, and sexual transmission; 3) different control strategies for infectious diseases, including infection control, antimicrobial management, immunization, risk factor modification, and screening; …

Pubh 3130- Substance Use And Abuse (Net), Jamie S. Cromley

College of Public Health: Faculty Syllabi (2014-2021)

This course will explore legal and illegal drug use in modern society. Issues related to the social, cultural, political, economic impact of drug use will be addressed. The recurrent theme throughout the course will be on prevention. This will include discussions on the best ways to postpone the initiation of substance use and abuse among school aged persons as well as the cessation of use and treatment for abuse among adult populations. Substance use and its abuse effects ALL of us and does NOT discriminate on the basis of age, gender, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity or income.

Electronic Resources Updates – 2019 Q3, Sean Kennedy, Frank Bove, Gregg Harris

Electronic Resources Quarterly Updates

No abstract provided.

Quantification Of Mitochondrial Membrane Potential In The Isloated Rat Lung Using R6g, Anthony Cammarata

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Mitochondrial membrane potential (Δm) plays a key role in vital mitochondrial functions, and its dissipation is a hallmark of mitochondrial dysfunction in various cell types. The objective of this study was to develop an experimental and computational approach for estimating Δm in intact rat lungs using the lipophilic fluorescent cationic dye rhodamine 6G (R6G). Rat lungs were isolated and connected to a ventilation-perfusion system. The experimental Protocol consisted of three single-pass phases: loading, wash, and uncoupling, in which the lungs were perfused with R6G-containing perfusate, fresh R6G-free perfusate, or R6G-free perfusate containing the mitochondrial uncoupler FCCP, respectively. This Protocol was …

Biomethane Production From Biodegradable Plastics, Nicholas John Norio Benn

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Organic polymer plastics are often short-lived commodities for single-use that result in landfill buildup and persistence in the environment. Plastic waste accumulation can cause ecological damage. Plastic production continues to outpace plastic waste management and perpetuates the growing epidemic of plastic pollution. More efficient handling of plastics would be beneficial. One improvement involves biodegradable plastics (i.e., bioplastics), particularly polylactic acid (PLA) and polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), which can alleviate environmental concerns stemming from mismanagement. Yet, there are currently no bioplastic waste management strategies scalable to handle the millions of pounds of bioplastics that enter the waste stream. Therefore, new bioplastic resource recovery …

Development Of A Fall Risk Assessment Tool Using Gait Analysis, Imran Reza Ananta

Master's Theses (2009 -)

In the United States, falls are one of the leading causes of fatal and non-fatal injuries for people of all ages. Current clinical methods to assess fall risk are impractical, and often do not use individuals’ actual performance. With current technological advances, and the Internet of Things (IoT), the tools are available to create a digital system that can take into account an individual’s actual performance in making a fall risk assessment. A digital insole based sensory computing system can collect and analyze human gait patterns to develop a fall risk assessment platform with great accuracy.The presented research considers current …

Registration Of Total Hip Replacement Implants From Subjects Imaged With 1.5 And 3 Tesla Mri Scanners Using Mavric, Theodore Lawrence Degroot

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Introduction: Total hip arthroplasty (THA) is a common treatment to correct arthritis and necrosis ailing the hip joint. An array of diseases can occur in response to the presence and wear of the implant. MRI is an imaging modality that can assess and diagnosis the diseases ailing the periprosthetic tissues, however images of a metal implants are susceptible to artifacts. Aim 1 of this study was to register the THAs imaged at 3T to 1.5T images; Aim 2 was to validate that metal susceptibility artifacts increase with field strength.Methods: 21 subjects with a total of 29 hip prosthetics that …

Chemical Pretreatment And Dewaterability Of Aanaerobically Digested Bio-P Biosolids, Eileen Margaret Kennedy

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Phosphorous (P) effluent regulations from water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) have become more stringent to reduce the damage of eutrophication caused by excess amounts of P. Enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) is a popular method to help comply with these regulations combined with other practices such as filtration. However, the sludges from facilities that employ EBPR (bio-P sludges) are difficult to dewater and require more polymer than conventional sludge, thereby increasing the cost of solids handling at these facilities. The monovalent to divalent (M/D) cation ratio, which is important in dewatering, is reportedly altered during the EBPR process. P speciation …

Columns Fall 2019, Southern Adventist University

Alumni Newsletter

Features the article "The Little Things". Kindness manifests itself in a wide variety of actions, both big and small. But while big expressions of kindness may blow us away, sometimes it is the little gestures that add up and leave the biggest impressions.

Lvad Occlusion Condition Monitoring Using Boost Classification Trees, Steven Paul Reuter

Theses

Cardiac related diseases are a serious health risk for adults. Consequently, therapies exist to treat these aliments such as heart transplant and medication. Heart transplant remains the gold standard for treating severe heart failure, however left ventricular assistive devices, a cardiac blood pump, are become a viable long term treatment. Unfortunately, with the benefits of these devices come risks of clot formation. These occlusions can cause strokes, further cardiac damage, or even death. Therefore, it is critical that these occlusions be detected as early as possible. This work presents an expanded method to non-invasively monitor the condition of a Thoratec …

Geographic And Habitat-Based Variation In Lingcod (Ophiodon Elongatus) Demography And Life-History Along The U.S. West Coast, Laurel Szeche Lam

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Fish populations exhibit variation in life-history and demography based on a variety of biological, environmental, and anthropogenic factors. Understanding the spatial patterns in life-history variability for commercially exploited fish stocks is important when making management decisions and designating stock boundaries. Between 2015 and 2017, 2,189 Lingcod were collected from seven geographically distinct regions along the West Coast to investigate latitudinal patterns in population distribution, growth, timing of maturity, condition, and natural and fishing mortality. Life history parameters of growth, maturity, longevity, condition, and natural and total mortality were calculated and compared for Lingcod in each region and by sex. A …

Dynamic Evolution In The Key Honey Bee Pathogen Deformed Wing Virus: Novel Insights Into Virulence And Competition Using Reverse Genetics, Eugene V. Ryabov, Anna K. Childers, Dawn Lopez, Kyle Grubbs, Francisco Posada-Florez, Daniel Weaver, William Girten, Dennis Vanengelsdorp, Yanping Chen, Jay D. Evans

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The impacts of invertebrate RNA virus population dynamics on virulence and infection out- comes are poorly understood. Deformed wing virus (DWV), the main viral pathogen of honey bees, negatively impacts bee health, which can lead to colony death. Despite previ- ous reports on the reduction of DWV diversity following the arrival of the parasitic mite Var- roa destructor, the key DWV vector, we found high genetic diversity of DWV in infested United States honey bee colonies. Phylogenetic analysis showed that divergent US DWV genotypes are of monophyletic origin and were likely generated as a result of diversification after a genetic …

Effectiveness Of Snap And A24-Automated Traps And Broadcast Anticoagulant Bait In Suppressing Commensal Rodents In Hawaii, Aaron B. Shiels, Tyler Bogardus, Jobriath Rohrer, Kapua Kawelo

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Commensal rodents (invasive rats, Rattus spp.; house mice, Mus musculus) are well established globally. They threaten human health by disease transfer and impact economies by causing agricultural damage. On island landscapes, they are frequent predators of native species and affect biodiversity. To provide managers with better information regarding methods to suppress commensal rodent populations in remote island forests, in 2016 we evaluated the effectiveness of continuous rat trapping using snap-traps, Goodnature® A24 self-resetting rat traps, and a 1-time (2-application) hand-broadcast of anticoagulant rodenticide bait pellets (Diphacinone-50) applied at 13.8 kg/ha per application in a 5-ha forest on Oahu, Hawaii, USA. …

American Stem Education In Its Global, National, And Linguistic Contexts, Sezai Kocabas, Burhan Ozfidan, Lynn M. Burlbaw

Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund

STEM education was a systematic teaching and/or learning process in the STEM fields and a positive correlation existed between STEM education, and the economic prosperity and power of a nation in the globalized world. In recent years, rising concerns have emerged about American STEM education. Many stakeholders wondered that whether the nation has enough well-qualified STEM students, teachers and workforce to maintain its current competitive edge. This study sought to answer those questions, presenting a unique view about the concerns. This study, besides, summarized selected major legislation which affected STEM Education in the United States. The results of the study …

Demonstration Of Visible And Near Infrared Raman Spectrometers And Improved Matched Filter Model For Analysis Of Combined Raman Signals, Alexander Matthew Atkinson

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Raman spectroscopy is a powerful analysis technique that has found applications in fields such as analytical chemistry, planetary sciences, and medical diagnostics. Recent studies have shown that analysis of Raman spectral profiles can be greatly assisted by use of computational models with achievements including high accuracy pure sample classification with imbalanced data sets and detection of ideal sample deviations for pharmaceutical quality control. The adoption of automated methods is a necessary step in streamlining the analysis process as Raman hardware becomes more advanced. Due to limits in the architectures of current machine learning based Raman classification models, transfer from pure …

Modeling Social Learning: An Agent-Based Approach, Erika G. Ardiles Cruz

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Learning is the process of acquiring or modifying knowledge, behavior, or skills. The ability to learn is inherent to humans, animals, and plants, and even machines are provided with algorithms that could mimic in a restricted way the processes of learning. Humans learn from the time they are born until they die because of a continuous process of interaction between them and their environment. Behavioral Psychology Theories and Social Learning Theories study behavior learned from the environment and social interactions through stimulus-response. Some computer approaches to modeling human behavior attempted to represent the learning and decision-making processes using agent-based models. …

Global Conservation Status And Threat Patterns Of The World’S Most Prominent Forage Fishes (Teleostei, Clupeiformes), Tiffany L. Birge

Biological Sciences Theses & Dissertations

Conserving biodiversity is one of the greatest ethical responsibilities and challenges humans face. Understanding the conservation status of taxonomic groups provides a systematic way to prioritize efforts to combat biodiversity loss. The 405 species within the order Clupeiformes are the herrings, shads, sardines, anchovies, menhadens and relatives that include many of the most important marine forage fishes. These small, schooling fishes are economically, ecologically and culturally significant globally. Despite their contribution to global fisheries and our increasing reliance on these fishes for food and industrial commodities, they are generally poorly known with limited information regarding basic biology and population trends. …

Molecular Systematics Of Isoëtes (Isoëtaceae) In Eastern North America, Peter William Schafran

Biological Sciences Theses & Dissertations

Isoëtes (Isoëtaceae, Isoetales, Lycopodiophyta) is a cosmopolitan genus of aquatic lycophytes, occurring on every continent except Antarctica. Of approximately 200 total taxa, about half are in a clade of species mostly occurring in North and South America. Eastern North America accounts for 22% of global taxonomic diversity, containing 32 fertile taxa and 16 named hybrids. This taxonomic diversity is built upon relatively little morphological difference, and even combined with phylogenetic analysis using several nuclear and chloroplast DNA markers, no well-resolved systematic treatment within this clade exists.

This study aims to clarify the relationships between all species and subspecies of Isoëtes …

Numerical Modeling And Field Investigation Of Nearshore Nonlinear Wave Propagation, Elham Sharifineyestani

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

First, a phase-resolving frequency-domain wave model that solves nonlinear wave-wave interactions is improved to account for wave dissipation and modulations over viscoelastic mud layer. Model results show satisfactory agreement with laboratory measurements. The model is then used to investigate the combined effect of mud viscoelasticity and nonlinear wave-wave interactions on surface wave evolution using cnoidal and random wave simulations. In general, qualitative measures such as shape of cnoidal waves or pattern of variation in H_rms of random waves are dictated by direct mud-induced damping which, due to resonance effects, has a substantially different structure over viscoelastic mud compared to …

Circum-Arctic Mineralogy & Pan-Arctic Chronostratigraphy Of Late Pleistocene Sediments: Developing A Comprehensive Age Model For The Western Arctic Ocean Using Unique Ice-Rafted Signals, Wesley Blake Myers

OES Theses and Dissertations

To improve understanding of geographic mineral distribution from the circum-Arctic Ocean, samples from the Arctic periphery were collected and analyzed for (semi-) quantitative mineral composition. Most samples were collected from the North American region of the Arctic Ocean, a region which has had limited mineral investigation. In addition, more than 1000 published clay mineral data points were gathered to provide the most comprehensive clay mineral distribution map to date. The identification of a smectite source within the Canadian Arctic may reduce the usefulness of this mineral as a unique provenance signal for the Eurasian region. Smectite speciation may be useful …

The Weight Of Words: A Content Analysis Of Rhetoric In Online News Articles Reporting On Sex Crimes, Julie Snell

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the rhetoric that is used in online news articles about sexual assault to see if discriminatory language is prevalent when reporting on different races. A content analysis of 100 online news articles was conducted to answer two research questions: 1) In what ways, if any, does the media use discriminatory rhetoric in online news articles when reporting on sexual assault offenders who are, or appear to be, racial minorities? 2) In what ways, if any, does the media use discriminatory rhetoric in online news articles when reporting on sexual assault victims who …

Examine Predictors Of Bmi Classification And Perception Of Overweght Status Of Caregivers Of Preschool Children, Beth H. Chopp

Health Services Research Dissertations

Since the 1970’s the rate of childhood obesity in the United States has tripled and now one in five school-aged children is obese (Ogden et al., 2016). The childhood obesity epidemic will have medical, social, economic implications for future generations. Risk factors for childhood obesity include genetics, food intake, and physical activity, maternal health during pregnancy, parental weight, maternal employment and sociodemographic influences. This study examined the relationship between caregiver misperception of their preschoolers’ overweight/obese weight status and possible predictors that may assist in future interventions. The study evaluated NHANES data of 1245 caregivers with a child under age five …

Electrohydrodynamic Simulations Of The Deformation Of Liquid-Filled Capsules, Pai Song

Mathematics & Statistics Theses & Dissertations

A comprehensive two- and three-dimensional framework for the electrohydrodynamic simulation of deformable capsules is provided. The role of a direct current (DC) electric field on the deformation and orientation of a liquid-filled capsule is thoroughly considered numerically. This framework is based on lattice Boltzmann method for the fluid, finite element method for the membrane structure of the capsule, fast immersed interface method for the electric field and immersed boundary method being used to consider the fluid-structure-electric interaction. Under the effect of electric field, two different types of equilibrium states, prolate or oblate are obtained. The numerical algorithm is also applied …

Effect Of The Physical Micro-Environment On Cell Adhesion And Force Exertion, Mohamad Eftekharjoo

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Physical characteristics of the microenvironment, such as geometry and stiffness, influence cell adhesion and contractile forces. Here, we determined how these physical factors influenced cell force exertion and adhesion in two specific contexts that have broad relevance.

Fibroblasts are cells in connective tissues that interact with a fibrous extracellular matrix (ECM) that have a predominantly one-dimensional (1D) (fibrillar) geometry. However, it has been unclear as to how the 1D nature of the fibrillar ECM influences the forces exerted by fibroblasts. Here, we used fibroblast cells adherent on fibronectin lines on polyacrylamide (PAA) gels of stiffness 13 and 45 kPa to …

A Delphi Study: Retention Of Women In Leadership Positions In Stem Disciplines, Kimberly T. Luthi

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

This Delphi study explores barriers and support systems that impact women’s professional advancement in STEM disciplines. There were 20 expert panelists who committed to participate in the study and 15 panelists completed the four rounds of the study after attrition. The panelists were selected based on specific criteria including educational background, diversity within STEM disciplines, experience as a former or current female administrator who served at two-year degree offering institutions, leadership and membership within women’s advocacy organizations in STEM and related workforce education fields, and depth of knowledge and understanding of the research questions. Through the four rounds of the …