Digital Commons Network^™

Use Of Landsat Satellite Imagery To Identify The Salinization Of Soil Due To Brine Spills In Northwestern North Dakota, Neha Patel

Theses and Dissertations

Oil and gas development in northwestern North Dakota, has resulted in the drilling of more than 32,000 wells and produced large volumes of salt water (brine). Brine spills can have negative impacts on plant and water resources. This research evaluated the detection of brine spills in Bottineau County, North Dakota using Landsat imagery and the Canopy Response Salinity Index (CRSI). The CRSI uses ratios of near-infrared and infrared bands from Landsat imagery. Spill data for Bottineau County from 1975 to 2017 were collected from the North Dakota Department of Health for analysis of spill volume, number of spills, and timing …

Monte Carlo Methods And Inductor-Capacitor Network Models In Two Dimensional Superconducting And Magnetic Systems, Pragalv Karki

Theses and Dissertations

The first chapter of this book provides a brief history of the important developments in superconductivity. After a general introduction, the superconductor-insulator transition is discussed in regards to open questions in the field and some of the questions tackled in this dissertation. Also, a brief introduction to ferromagnetism and phase transition in ferromagnetic systems is presented.

In the second chapter, the results of simulations of three types of random inductor-capacitor (LC) networks on square lattices are presented [1,2]. The dynamical conductivity was calculated using an equation-of-motion method. The critical exponent was extracted at low frequencies. The results suggest that there …

The Relationship Between Trauma History, Ptsd Symptomology, And Intimate Partner Abuse Threat Perception, Alexandra Rehovsky

Theses and Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a prevalent issue for women worldwide. Commonly, women who experience IPV will develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Given the high rates of reabuse experienced by the population of women who develop PTSD, this study aimed to explore how PTSD symptomology may contribute to women’s vulnerability to reabuse. The current study investigated whether PTSD and IPV history predicted threat perception hindrance—theorizing that dampened threat perception may contribute to reabuse vulnerability. Participants each read five vignettes representing five levels of threat severity within a relationship interaction to create a within-subjects design to test their threat …

Innovation Of Petrophysical And Geomechanical Experiment Methodologies: The Application Of 3d Printing Technology, Lingyun Kong

Theses and Dissertations

The petrophysical and geomechanical properties of rocks link the geology origin with engineering practice, which serves as the fundamental of various disciplinaries associated with subsurface porous media, including civil engineering, underground water, geological exploration, and petroleum engineering. The research methodologies can be mainly divided into three aspects: theoretical modelling, numerical simulation, and experiments, in which the last approach plays a critical role that can support, validate, calibrate, or even refute a hypothesis. Only replying on repeatable trials and consolidate analysis of precise results can the experiments be successful and convincing, though uncertainties, due to multiple factors, need to be scrutinized …

Precipitation Evaluation Of The North Dakota Cloud Modification Project (Ndcmp) Using Rain Gauge Observations, Matthew Erik Tuftedal

Theses and Dissertations

North Dakota farmers’ interest in using weather modification to increase precipitation and reduce hail damage resulted in a managed cost-sharing program, the North Dakota Cloud Modification Project (NDCMP), being started in 1976. The goal of this research is to determine the effectiveness of NDCMP at increasing precipitation by using the rain gauge observations of National Weather Service (NWS) Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) and North Dakota Atmospheric Resource Board Cooperative Observer Network (NDARBCON). The rain gauge analysis uses target and control regions. Target regions are selected from counties in District I and II that have participated in all 41 years of …

Software Design Considerations For Mathematics In Mobile Games, Katherine Smith, Yuzhong Shen, Anthony Dean

VMASC Publications

A software system has been designed and developed to allow for the display, symbolic manipulation, and player entry of mathematics expressions in mobile games. Display, manipulation, and entry of mathematical expressions are traditionally difficult tasks. Increased limitations on screen space and user input when developing for mobile devices only exacerbate these difficulties. The developed software system balances considerations for ease of use and user interaction with the desire for players to be able to enter answers in a way that is more flexible and interactive than multiple choice, which is the dominant method of interactions in serious games. The software …

Law Enforcement In The American Security State, Wadie E. Said

Publications

This Article documents the evolution of the modem American police state and the symbiotic nature of the relationship between government actors across the three sectors of national security, domestic policing, and immigration enforcement. Policies from one area make their way into the other two, with the net result being that the powers of government actors are increased in all three areas. Critical to this dynamic is the construction of the target in each arena-the terrorist, the criminal, the illegal immigrant-as foreign, whether literally or figuratively. Although these targets are ostensibly limited to those deemed outside the mainstream, the result is …

The Privilege Against Cellphone Incrimination, Bryan H. Choi

Publications

No abstract provided.

Crashworthy Code, Bryan H. Choi

Publications

Code crashes. Yet for decades, software failures have escaped scrutiny for tort liability. Those halcyon days are numbered: self-driving cars, delivery drones, networked medical devices, and other cyber-physical systems have rekindled interest in understanding how tort law will apply when software errors lead to loss of life or limb.

Even after all this time, however, no consensus has emerged. Many feel strongly that victims should not bear financial responsibility for decisions that are entirely automated, while others fear that cyber-physical manufacturers must be shielded from crushing legal costs if we want such companies to exist at all. Some insist the …

Sanctuary Networks, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Rose Cuison Villazor

Publications

No abstract provided.

Alumni Oral Histories: A Collaboration Between The Libraries And Development And Alumni Relations At Grinnell College, Rebecca Ciota

Publications

This article describes a collaboration between Grinnell College’s libraries and its Office of Development and Alumni Relations on an oral history project in which college alumni are interviewed about their experiences at the college. Such close collaborations between development offices and libraries are rare. This collaboration was successful due to the equal participation of all parties.

Powerful Speakers And Their Listeners, Helen Norton

Publications

In certain settings, law sometimes puts listeners first when their First Amendment interests collide with speakers’. And collide they often do. Sometimes speakers prefer to tell lies when their listeners thirst for the truth. Sometimes listeners hope that speakers will reveal their secrets, while those speakers resist disclosure. And at still other times, speakers seek to address certain listeners when those listeners long to be left alone. When speakers’ and listeners’ First Amendment interests collide, whose interests should prevail? Law sometimes – but not always – puts listeners’ interests first in settings outside of public discourse where those listeners have …

Pregnancy And The First Amendment, Helen Norton

Publications

Suppose that you are pregnant and seated in the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood clinic, or maybe in a facility that advertises “Pregnant? We Can Help You.” This Essay discusses the First Amendment rules that apply to the government’s control of what you are about to hear.

If the government funds your clinic’s program, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that it does not violate the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause when it forbids your health-care provider from offering you information about available abortion services. Nor does the government violate the Free Speech Clause, the Court has held, when …

Rethinking Public Land Use Planning, Mark Squillace

Publications

The public land use planning process is broken. The land use plans of the principal multiple-use agencies—the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”)—are unnecessarily complex, take too long to complete, monopolize the time and resources of public land management agency staffs, and fail to engage the general public in any meaningful way. Moreover, the end result is too often a plan that is not sufficiently nimble to respond to changing conditions on the ground, a problem that appears to be accelerating due to climate change.

It might seem easy to chalk up these problems to …

Silence And The Second Wall, Ming H. Chen, Zachary New

Publications

The Trump administration has made its clarion call “build the wall.” From the start of the presidential campaign to the government shutdown to the declaration of a national emergency, he has made the wall the centerpiece of his immigration enforcement strategy. While the public attention has been riveted on these dramatic episodes at the southern border of the U.S., many more subtle challenges to legal migration have been introduced and implemented. Collectively, these constitute a second wall – one that is invisible to all but the few who have noticed it. This essay explores the distinctive challenges being posed to …

Privatizing The Reservation?, Kristen A. Carpenter, Angela R. Riley

Publications

The problems of American Indian poverty and reservation living conditions have inspired various explanations. One response advanced by some economists and commentators, which may be gaining traction within the Trump Administration, calls for the “privatization” of Indian lands. Proponents of this view contend that reservation poverty is rooted in the federal Indian trust arrangement, which preserves the tribal land base by limiting the marketability of lands within reservations. In order to maximize wealth on reservations, policymakers are advocating for measures that would promote the individuation and alienability of tribal lands, while diminishing federal and tribal oversight.

Taking a different view, …

Recording As Heckling, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

A growing body of authority recognizes that citizen recording of police officers and public space is protected by the First Amendment. But the judicial and scholarly momentum behind the emerging “right to record” fails to fully incorporate recording’s cost to another important right that also furthers First Amendment principles: the right to privacy.

This Article helps fill that gap by comprehensively analyzing the First Amendment interests of both the right to record and the right to privacy in public while highlighting the role of technology in altering the First Amendment landscape. Recording information can be critical to future speech and, …

Drugs' Other Side Effects, Craig J. Konnoth

Publications

Drugs often induce unintended, adverse physiological reactions in those that take them—what we commonly refer to as “side-effects.” However, drugs can produce other, broader, unintended, even non-physiological harms. For example, some argue that taking Truvada, a drug that prevents HIV transmission, increases promiscuity and decreases condom use. Expensive Hepatitis C treatments threaten to bankrupt state Medicaid programs. BiDil, which purported to treat heart conditions for self-identified African-Americans, has been criticized for reifying racial categories. Although the Food & Drug Administration (“FDA”) has broad discretion under the Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics Act (“FDCA”) to regulate drugs, it generally considers only traditional …

Love, Anger, And Social Change, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

Emotions matter to social movement activists—including social movement lawyers. Emotions motivate activism and emotions sustain the long hard work of social change. Movement activists and lawyers know that from their own lived experiences. Further, when we listen to movement activists talk about their work, we hear them speak commonly about two emotions in particular—love and anger. To be a social movement activist (whether lawyer or non-lawyer) means to have passion about one’s cause, and to have a fire in the belly to keep going despite setbacks and slow progress. We hear activists and movement lawyers talk about how the love …

Mindfulness In Legal Ethics And Professionalism, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Mindfulness involves paying attention with curiosity in an intentional, open, and compassionate way to life as it unfolds moment to moment. Law students, lawyers, law professors, legal clients, and indeed all people can improve their lives through mindfulness. Mindfulness can lead to individual benefits and personal transformation. Mindfulness can also lead to societal benefits and social change. This invited symposium contribution exemplifies how mindfulness can facilitate the positive personal and professional development of law students by presenting excerpts of law students' answers discussing mindfulness to questions from the final examination of the course: Legal Ethics and Professionalism. Notably, none of …

A Constitution For The Age Of Demagogues: Using The Twenty-Fifth Amendment To Remove An Unfit President, Paul F. Campos

Publications

This Article argues that, properly understood, the 25th Amendment is designed to allow the executive and legislative branches, working together, to remove a president from office when it becomes evident that the person elevated to that office by the electoral process is manifestly unsuited for what can, without exaggeration, be described as the most important job in the world.

It argues further that the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency have provided a great deal of evidence for the proposition that President Trump has in fact demonstrated the requisite level of fundamental unfitness for the office that would justify …

Paleoecology Of Northern Great Plains Bison: Inferences From Stable Isotopes And Dental Calculus, Gaimi Lynn Davies

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to infer Northern Great Plains bison (Bison bison) paleoecology through the analysis of stable isotopes and dental calculus from bison skeletal remains. Bison used to roam in the millions throughout most of North America but today they are primarily kept in confined and isolated populations. Little is known about their ancestral ecology. The abundance of bison in the archeological record provides a unique opportunity to study their remains on a broad temporal and spatial scale. This research uses the archeological record of bison in North Dakota to study bison diet and environment from the …

Welcome To The Neighborhood: Communities Of Practice And Identity Development Of Athletic Training Students, Alicia Dionne Champagne

Theses and Dissertations

Clinical education is a large component of athletic training education and is centered on social learning. Students learn how an athletic trainer functions through exposure to a community of practice. As students transition towards full participants in the clinical environment, they get to practice their skills and begin developing their professional identity. As the profession prepares to transition to solely entry-level master’s degrees in 2022, many athletic training programs will need to alter and re-evaluate the clinical experiences available for students. This phenomenological study explored social learning within the clinical environment with an emphasis on how interactions within these communities …

Physiological Approach To Characterize Drowsiness In Simulated Flight Operations During Window Of Circadian Low, Bijay Guragain

Theses and Dissertations

Drowsiness is a psycho-physiological transition from awake towards falling sleep and its detection is crucial in aviation industries. It is a common cause for pilot’s error due to unpredictable work hours, longer flight periods, circadian disruption, and insufficient sleep. The pilots’ are prone towards higher level of drowsiness during window of circadian low (2:00 am- 6:00 am). Airplanes require complex operations and lack of alertness increases accidents. Aviation accidents are much disastrous and early drowsiness detection helps to reduce such accidents. This thesis studied physiological signals during drowsiness from 18 commercially-rated pilots in flight simulator. The major aim of the …

Ethnic Bias Within The Nesarc Personality Disorders Using Item Response Theory, Susan Tara Scoullar

Theses and Dissertations

Racial bias within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5th Edition, or DSM5, has been recognized in studies of personality disorder diagnoses. Item Response Theory Differential Functioning of Items and Tests (IRT DIF and DTF) was used to examine the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s (NIAAA) National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) Wave 1 and 2 data. A review of prevalence information by gender and ethnicity was undertaken. Hypotheses included that bias would be present in the items and total scores of personality diagnostic scales. In particular, items and scales which rely on cultural comparisons, and …

The Impact Of Historical Trauma On Alcohol Use And Academic Outcomes In American Indian College Students, Elizabeth Luger

Theses and Dissertations

Issues regarding substance use, particularly alcohol use, and academic outcomes are two factors that are vital to examine when researching the quality of life and academic success of American Indian (AI) college students. Because AI college students comprise a relatively small percentage of the general college population, the majority of research conducted using college student samples tends to focus on Caucasian (CA) subjects or all ethnicities combined – neither of which directly pertain to furthering understanding surrounding issues specific to AI college students. One factor that has been shown to predict alcohol use among AIs is historical trauma, which is …

On Satyrs: Brutes, Monsters, And Demons: Of Their Nature And Worship: François Hédelin's Des Satyres As A Defense Of God And Humankind, Danielle Skjelver

Theses and Dissertations

Best known for his 1657 La Pratique du Theatre, François Hédelin was a cleric with a keen interest in the stage. As the abbé d’Aubignac, he wrangled in debate with the most respected scholars of his day, and Hédelin’s contacts extended to the crown itself. His Des Satyres, brutes, monstres et démons is an attempt to do with a species what he did with the stage - to bring disorder and immorality to heel.

This dissertation provides historical context, analysis, and translation of François Hédelin’s 1627 Des Satyres, brutes, monstres et démons. De leur nature et adoration Contre l'opinion de …

Effects Of Locomotion Methods Under Simulated Reduced Gravity Conditions On Muscles And Joints Of The Leg, Sophie Orr

Theses and Dissertations

Past research efforts have focused on the energy difference between altered locomotion methods in fractional gravity at different speeds, suggesting that skipping is energetically more efficient than walking and running in these environments. While skipping may be more beneficial from an energy standpoint, the full range of reasons behind the gait transition and locomotion selection have not been researched. This includes damage to the muscles of the leg, which is partially prevented by a transition from walking to running. In a space environment, these factors will play a role in astronaut health and injury prevention. For this study, participants walked, …

Risk-Taking Behaviors As Predicted By (Mal)Adaptive Functioning In College Students: A Look Into Emotional Adjustment, Hillary Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Risk-taking behaviors emerge, increase, and peak during adolescence and have shown to continue into late adolescence. Research has begun to explore how some forms of risk-taking may be normative and adaptive. The aim of this study is to look at how social, academic, and occupational functioning are related to risk-behaviors, as measured by risk-favorability and reported risk-taking history, and emotional adjustment in a college sample (N=314). Risk was assessed using self-report and an implicit task, both of which were moderately correlated. Both risk measures were negatively correlated with self-report measures of adaptive functioning and emotional adjustment.A series of mediation analyses …

Comparison Of Backscatter Coefficients For Airborne Cloud Probes, Shawn Wendell Wagner

Theses and Dissertations

A major aviation hazard is power loss caused by ice particle accumulation within jet engines. High-altitude cirrus clouds are especially dangerous since pilots are often unaware when the aircraft is flying in high ice particle conditions. The commercial aerospace industry is currently investigating several approaches to mitigate the risks posed by high-concentration ice crystal conditions. One such approach uses specially-designed airborne lidar systems to quantify high concentrations of ice crystals, which enables pilots, or engine control systems, to enact appropriate counter-measures. A key component in developing a high ice crystal concentration mitigation system is reference measurements of ice crystal size …