Digital Commons Network^™

Does Attending A More Elite School Lead To Better Labor Market Outcomes?: Evidence From The College Football Labor Market Using Screening Information, Kyle Brookman

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

College football prospects in the market for an athletic scholarship face similar career-altering choices as traditional academic students when selecting a college, however, the market they operate in is very different. They are actively recruited by university coaches and closely observed by a college sports scouting industry. Their choice of school is highly anticipated and publicized within college sport culture. College football is no doubt a lucrative industry, particularly for the elite university football programs, but one may want to know if the athletic scholars themselves gain in any career measurable way by attending a more elite university football program. …

Analytic Solutions For Diffusion On Path Graphs And Its Application To The Modeling Of The Evolution Of Electrically Indiscernible Conformational States Of Lysenin, K. Summer Ware

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Memory is traditionally thought of as a biological function of the brain. In recent years, however, researchers have found that some stimuli-responsive molecules exhibit memory-like behavior manifested as history-dependent hysteresis in response to external excitations. One example is lysenin, a pore-forming toxin found naturally in the coelomic fluid of the common earthworm Eisenia fetida. When reconstituted into a bilayer lipid membrane, this unassuming toxin undergoes conformational changes in response to applied voltages. However, lysenin is able to "remember" past history by adjusting its conformational state based not only on the amplitude of the stimulus but also on its previous …

Optimizing Raman Spectral Collection For Quartz And Zircon Crystals For Elastic Geothermobarometry, Mayara F. Cizina

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Raman microspectroscopy is widely used to identify and characterize organic and inorganic compounds. In the geosciences, Raman microspectroscopy has been used to identify mineral and fluid inclusions in host crystals, as well as to calculate pressure-temperature (P-T) conditions using mineral inclusions in host crystals, such as quartz-in-garnet barometry (QuiG). For thermobarometric applications, the reproducibility of Raman peak position measurements is crucial to obtain accurate P-T estimates. In this study, we explored how to optimize Raman spectral collection of quartz and zircon inclusions and reference crystals by monitoring machine stability and by varying spectral parameters. We also monitored a reference Hg …

Getting Online With Generation Z: Learning Approaches, Letha Marie Mellman

Dissertations

This e-Delphi study explored learning approaches, as defined by Generation Z (Gen Z) learners, in online academic settings and nonacademic settings. It also considered differences between the two panels (38 participants in each panel, representing 39 states) of learners (Academic and Nonacademic) and compared current literature-supported best practices to the learning approaches generated by participants in this study. The Academic panel participants reached consensus on six of the 56 learning approaches: (a) completing course material; (b) rely on self; (c) projects that I can choose what to do and learn material by myself; (d) search Internet; (e) ask expert; and …

An Intensive Longitudinal Functional Lineary Model With Multiple Time Scales, Mostafa Zahed

Dissertations

In this study an intensive longitudinal functional model with multiple time-varying scales with scalar outcome, multiple functional predictors, one or more scalar covariates and subject-specific random intercepts through mixed model equivalence was proposed. The framework consists of estimating a time-varying coefficient function that is modeled as a linear combination of time-invariant functions with time-varying coefficients. The model uses information structure of the penalty, while the estimation procedure exploits the equivalence between penalized least squares estimation and a linear mixed model representation. The process is empirically evaluated with several simulations. The simulation suggested that as the sample size and level of …

Delivering Extinction, Tatum Cordy

Honors College Theses

Living during a human extinction is something no one is prepared for. No one thought humans would last this long. Even the sun dies eventually. A child’s drawing with a dripping smile. Sun rays heating soil into dust, melting metals, and large pine trees would light like matches. Smoke would rise into the air blocking out everything but the fires taking over the once livable landscape of Earth. Then, it would be over. The sun would explode. Simple and quick, painless for the few who wouldn’t try to resist their demise. Too bad humans were a few million years early. …

Intellectual Property In The Digital Streaming Age: How Music Becomes A Lawsuit, Alexandra Tasev

Honors College Theses

A mix of both entertainment business and law, the purpose of this review is to address the question of “are current copyright laws and procedures too restrictive of new and smaller-name artists from entering the market?” Through a law review and analysis of the history of copyright law, this thesis outlines the issues new, smaller music artists face as a result of rapid digital evolution paired with a slow-moving legal system. Failing to amend the current standards for dealing with old copyright cases will cause further issues with the growing popularity of digital platforms like YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify, and TikTok. …

Annual Report - 2020, Fundo Garantidor De Crèditos

Documents

No abstract provided.

Author Correction: Past Continental Shelf Evolution Increased Antarctic Ice Sheet Sensitivity To Climatic Conditions (Scientific Reports, (2018), 8, 1, (11323), 10.1038/S41598-018-29718-7), Florence Colleoni, Laura De Santis, Enea Montoli, Elisabetta Olivo, Christopher C. Sorlien, Philip J. Bart, Edward G.W. Gasson, Andrea Bergamasco, Chiara Sauli, Nigel Wardell, Stefano Prato

Faculty Publications

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Using A Species Distribution Approach To Model Historic Camas (Camassia Quamash) In Southern Idaho And Implications For Foraging In The Late Archaic, Royce Johnson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Camas (Camassia quamash) is well documented as a traditional native food source throughout the Northwestern United States and Canada. A better understanding of the historic distribution of camas in Idaho would help to distinguish root foraging in this region from the Pacific Northwest. Modern grazing, development, climate change, and other factors have decimated native camas in this region. This study uses a species distribution model (MaxEnt) to provide a well-informed geospatial projection of the historic distribution and habitat characteristics of camas in Southern Idaho. Understanding the most significant landscape and climate characteristics for camas allows us to estimate …

Diplomatic Intervention And The Effects Of Third-Party State Power On Intrastate War Outcome, Alexann Sandberg

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to examine the role third-party states may play as diplomatic intervenors in intrastate wars. Because diplomatic interventions seek settlement outcomes over military victory, understanding the efficacy of these interventions may provide support for their usage over non-diplomatic options. I hypothesize that third-party state power, in the form of military, economic, and political capabilities, will impact the likelihood of diplomatic intervention outcome; more powerful third-party states will have a greater likelihood of producing preferred outcomes. I use 12 multinomial regression models to examine this relationship. I find that economic capabilities are the only factor of state power that …

Exploring Cooperative Behaviors Among The Sena Of Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique And The Dolgan/Nganasan Of Ust'-Avam, Siberia, Victoria Silva

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Why do humans cooperate? Mechanisms including inclusive fitness, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, and costly signaling provide explanations for human cooperation and partner choice. Using data from the Sena people of Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique and the Dolgan/Nganasan of Ust’-Avam Siberia, I examine several questions relating to cooperation. During a preliminary study, interview and observational data was collected that provide insight on the day-to-day activities of 33 households in Gorongosa National Park. Cooperative activities include cooperative socializing, play, cooperative breeding, and household labor. It was found that most daily activities observed were done solitarily and men were most likely to be …

Soil Response To Fire Frequency In The Northern Columbia Basin Sagebrush Steppe, Leslie C. Nichols

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Fire is one of the most significant disturbances in an ecosystem, as it is capable of altering the physical, chemical, and biological properties of soil, and the fire frequency in semi-arid ecosystems is increasing. These changes can potentially alter plant-soil feedbacks that may affect post-fire recovery of the native plant and soil communities and lead to an ecosystem state change. However, there is much uncertainty about the magnitude of change as soils are exposed to more fires, because soil recovery and changes in fire severity following a first fire mediate the impact of successive fires on soil properties. To improve …

An Experiential Analysis Of Job Site Safety: Delineating Between Positive Safety Culture And Excessive Safety, Steven Tighe

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In general industry and in construction many safety requirements are mandated on job sites and in facilities. Many requirements move past simple compliance and enter the realm of cultural safety. This high level of cultural safety is what is typically the level most safety professionals strive for in any company. The balance is tipped to excessive when we move past the cultural safety into redundant or multi layers of requirements that affect production rates and have no actual value to safety but have the appearance of safety. This research looked into a large construction project that had multiple layers of …

Leveraging Machine Learning To Identify Quality Issues In The Medicaid Claim Adjudication Process, Cyrus Hoseini

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Medicaid is the largest health insurance in the U.S. It provides health coverage to over 68 million individuals, costs the nation over $600 billion a year, and subject to improper payments (fraud, waste, and abuse) or inaccurate payments (claim processed erroneously). Medicaid programs partially use Fee-For-Services (FFS) to provide coverage to beneficiaries by adjudicating claims and leveraging traditional inferential statistics to verify the quality of adjudicated claims. These quality methods only provide an interval estimate of the quality errors and are incapable of detecting most claim adjudication errors, potentially millions of dollar opportunity costs. This dissertation studied a method of …

The Relationship Between Automation Threat And Employee Related Outcomes Using Support As A Buffer And Moderated By Transformational And Transactional Leadership, Monica Garcia

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The introduction of automation in the workforce has negative effects that go beyond technological job displacement. The process of introducing automated systems creates stress in employees, which may relate to lower performance. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between automation threat and employee-related outcomes such as self-efficacy, means efficacy, and employability and how social support, organizational support, and instrumental support can help buffer against this type of threat. Furthermore, transformational and transactional leadership styles of the manager/supervisor were examined, as they related to the various types of support. Two hundred sixty-nine working adults completed the study …

A Multiple Case Study Investigating Principles Of Design And Implementation Of Operational Safety Plans For Crises At Colleges, Universities, And Affiliated Institutions, Antonio Passaro, Jr.

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

In the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech tragedy, the Virginia state legislature mandated that all college-affiliated institutions create an operational safety plan for natural and manmade crises. Previous empirical research has mostly focused on documenting faculty and students’ perceptions of campus safety, preparations for manmade crises over natural disasters, and enhancing specific aspects of emergency responses for future incidents. Thus, design and implementation “best practices” for higher education operational safety plan protocols is an understudied, yet burgeoning area of inquiry. To address this literature gap, a comparative case study of five institutions was conducted using a novel document analysis …

Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering At Hall A, Jefferson Lab, Mohamed Nuhman Hashir Rashad

Physics Theses & Dissertations

The Standard Model of particle physics defines quarks and leptons as the basic building blocks of all matter. The interaction between them are mediated by force carrying gauge bosons. Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD), the theory that explains the strong interaction is still not complete enough to derive the physical observables of a Quark-Gluon system from the fundamental degrees of freedom of it’s constituents. Experimentally observable single particle densities provide important insights into our understanding of the quark-gluon system and hence help fill in the gaps of QCD. Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) provide simultaneous information of both spacial and longitudinal momentum distributions …

Demographics, Accuracy, And Impact Of Feed Laboratories In The United States, Jerald H. Severe

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Feed analysis is very important to modern society. In the United States feed analysis is used to optimize production of food animals. Feed analysis is also used as a tool to place value on crops. As important as feed analysis is to society, little research has been done that describes which feed laboratories are the most popular and why people use them. It has been thought by some patrons that different results from the same feed sample are obtained by different laboratories. Is this true? If so, what is the effect on those that use feed laboratories to produce animals, …

Identification Of Bovine T-Cell Populations Involved In Placental Growth And Development, Kelsy A. Leppo

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Today, the dairy industry is comprised of cows that can produce around 20,000 pounds of milk in a year, yet producers often see only 30% to 50% of animals produce a live calf after each breeding. While many factors may be at play, there is evidence that the immune system plays a large role in regulating pregnancy and in preventing immune mediated abortions. Maternal immune system changes during pregnancy have been shown to occur both locally in the uterus, which is in direct contact with the placenta, and systemically in the blood. Research in humans and mice has shown that …

Exact Generalized Voronoi Diagram Computation Using A Sweepline Algorithm, Daniel Marsden

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Voronoi Diagrams can provide useful spatial information. Little work has been done on computing exact Voronoi Diagrams when the sites are more complex than a point. We introduce a technique that measures the exact Generalized Voronoi Diagram from points, line segments and, connected lines including lines that connect to form simple polygons. Our technique is an extension of Fortune’s method. Our approach treats connected lines (or polygons) as a single site.

Comparison Of Public Mental Health Stigma In Youth, Desiree A. Clarke

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The present study looked at mental health stigma in youth. Mental health stigma is devaluing, disgracing and disfavoring individuals with mental illness. Participants aged 11-14 completed a measure to rate their stigmatizing beliefs toward peers with either ADHD, depression, or asthma. Their ratings were compared for significance between genders and for the three different conditions: ADHD, depression, and asthma. Significant differences were found between the stigma ratings for asthma, depression and ADHD. ADHD had significantly higher stigma ratings than asthma, and depression had significantly higher stigma ratings than ADHD (on some, but not all, areas rated) and had consistently higher …

Negotiating Identities In Middle School Science: Impacts On Students’ Perceived Expertise And Small Group Participation, Taylor Dexter

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis investigates how students in a linguistically diverse 7^th grade science lab group interact and position each other’s capabilities within a STEM context. These capabilities are discussed in terms of how the identities local to a particular 7^th grade science lab group of “good student” and “scientist” are assigned, challenged, and strengthened. These interactions are instances of identities and patterns (pathways) of identities being negotiated. This thesis’ analysis focuses particularly on how the identities of being Latinx and multilingual affect these negotiations in the terms of the local identities (“good student” and “scientist”). This analysis sheds light …

System Level Characterization Of The Gridded Retarding Ion Drift Sensor (Grids) For The Petitsat Mission, Benjamin B. Oborn

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Weather prediction, wherever people live, serves as a beneficial part of everyday life. Weather in the upper portions of Earth’s atmosphere also impacts life on Earth but it is not able to be predicted as well as its terrestrial counterpart. PetitSat is a cube satellite (CubeSat) mission proposed to help remedy this issue. It will collect measurements of charged particles in the upper atmosphere called a plasma. The measurements taken by PetitSat will facilitate better prediction of upper-atmospheric weather. Prediction of when and where weather phenomenon will occur will allow avoidance of negative consequences that can result. Once such negative …

The Effect Of Weather On Pedestrian Activity At Signalized Intersections In Utah, Ferdousy Runa

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The weather has a significant influence on pedestrian activity. Profound knowledge and research can identify how weather variables impact and why people change their travel patterns. This study aims to assess the relationship of weather (snowfalls, snow depth, precipitation, maximum and minimum temperature) with pedestrian activity at 49 signalized intersections in Cache County, Utah. This study uses pedestrian actuation (push-button) data as a proxy for pedestrian activity and collects weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA).

Using 15 months of daily time-series data, this study applied log-linear time series models in the analysis. To account for non-linear …

A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis Of Acceptance And Commitment Therapy In South Korea, Woolee An

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Although psychologists have emphasized the importance of considering clients’ various cultural backgrounds and researching various populations, research is still overly focused on participants from English-speaking countries like the United States and Western countries. Numerous studies evaluating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) have been published in South Korea. However, most of the studies are still unknown to English-speaking research communities because of language differences. In order to promote cross-cultural communication of study findings, the current study reviewed treatment research from South Korea.

After searching for Korean ACT studies using Korean electronic databases, 62 studies were selected, and each study’s treatment outcome …

Characterizing Water And Water-Related Energy Use In Multi-Unit Residential Structures With High Resolution Smart Metering Data, Joseph C. Brewer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As urban populations continue to grow and expand, localized demands on water supplies continue to increase as well. These water supplies, which have been historically stable, are also threatened by an increasingly erratic climate. Together, these two factors have significantly increased the likelihood of long-term drought conditions in the American West. In response, water suppliers are investigating new ways to record water use in urban areas to better understand how water is used. One of these methods is smart meters; advanced devices that can record and transmit water use information directly to the water supplier. However, these devices can produce …

Deep Q Learning Applied To Stock Trading, Agnibh Dasgupta

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Developing a strategy for stock trading is a vital task for investors. However, it is challenging to obtain an optimal strategy, given the complex and dynamic nature of the stock market. This thesis aims to explore the applications of Reinforcement Learning with the goal of maximizing returns from market investment, keeping in mind the human aspect of trading by utilizing stock prices represented as candlestick graphs. Furthermore, the algorithm studies public interest patterns in form of graphs extracted from Google Trends to make predictions. Deep Q learning has been used to train an agent based on fused images of stock …

Self-Describing Fiducials For Gps-Denied Navigation Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Amanda J. Strate

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Accurate estimation of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’s (UAV’s) location is critical for the operation of the UAV when it is controlled completely by its onboard processor. This can be particularly challenging in environments in which GPS is not available (GPS-denied). Many of the options previously explored for estimation of a UAV’s location without the use of GPS require more sophisticated processors than can feasibly be mounted on a UAV because of weight, size, and power restrictions. Many options are also aimed at indoor operation without the range capabilities to scale to outdoor operations. This research explores an alternative method of …

Fruit Tree Responses To Water Stress: Automated Physiological Measurements And Rootstock Responses, William D. Wheeler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

New orchard plantings utilize trees grafted to dwarfing rootstocks planted close together to facilitate larger harvests. These dwarfing rootstocks have not been comprehensively studied for their ability to withstand drought. This is of special importance in the Intermountain West which has limited rainfall. Additionally, orchard growers face competition for water from a growing population and increased uncertainty in rainfall from climate change. My research examined the use of dendrometers, which measure changes in trunk diameter, and sap flow sensors, which measure how quickly sap moves, as methods to inform growers about tree water status. I also used a weighing lysimeter …