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The University Of Texas Of The Permian Basin Graduate Studies Catalog 2020-2021, The University Of Texas Of The Permian Basin

Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Climate Risk In The Electricity Sector: Legal Obligations To Advance Climate Resilience Planning By Electric Utilities, Romany M. Webb, Michael Panfil, Sarah Ladin

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Electricity generation, transmission and distribution, and load are all impacted by weather patterns. Electric system assets have been designed for historic weather conditions, with the goal of ensuring reliability and quick recovery following extreme events. However, climate change is causing major shifts in historic weather patterns and more frequent and severe extremes, which are creating new risk profiles for the electric system. Proactive climate resilience planning by electric utilities to identify, respond, and rationally allocate these climate risks is thus increasingly salient. This paper argues that it is also legally required.

Recently published industry studies demonstrate that accurate, specific, and …

N Y State Dent J January 2020

The New York State Dental Journal

The New York State Dental Journal (NYSDJ) is produced by the New York State Dental Association (NYSDA) six times a year, in January, March, April, July, September and November. Each issue features clinical and scientific articles written by researchers and practitioners from around the globe and is subject to review by a panel of specialists convened by the Editor.

Issues include cover and feature articles alongside regular columns with regional news impacting the New York membership including editorial and perspectives columns, legal, association activities, component news, continuing education opportunities, and classifieds.

An Implementation Of Embedded Software For Real Time Monitoring Of Bioimpedance, Amirahmad Ramezani

Theses

Bioimpedance analysis (BIA) is a convenient and highly accurate method for assessment of the internal composition of the body. It can be particularly used for evaluating the hydration level of an individual based on the amount of intracellular water (ICW) and extracellular water (ECW) in total body water (TBW). Complex impedance of the body is a function of frequency and amount of ICW and ECW. By injecting small currents at different frequency and measurement of complex impedance, we can assess the amount of ICW, ECW, and TBW. This method can be applied to Internet of Things (IoT), fitness, and clinical …

Positive And Negative Affect And Their Influences On Pain Belief, Coping, And Quality Of Life In Chronic Pain Patients Undergoing Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Savannah Michelle Kaye

Theses

The current study aimed to evaluate the influences of affectivity on pain belief, coping and quality of life in chronic pain patients. These relationships were tested using six separate Structural Equation Models. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to determine positive and negative affect from the Personality Assessment Inventory and the Millon Behavioral Diagnostic. EFA was also used to identify adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies from the Chronic Pain Coping Inventory. Pain attitudes were measured using the Survey of Pain Attitudes measure, and quality of life was measured using the World Health Organization Quality of Life – BREF instrument. Results …

Toward Effective Molecular Catalysts For The Biomimetic Remediation Of Methane And Carbon Dioxide, Thomas Michael Jones

Theses

Interest in the development of new technologies for the remediation of greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide has increased in response to concerns of a changing climate. However, methane and carbon dioxide are not only greenhouse gasses but also play interesting roles in biology, being used as sources of both energy and carbon. The study of enzymes that utilize these small molecules for biological function may provide valuable insight into developing practical solutions for carbon sequestration and utilizing them as alternative sources of energy. Learning from these enzymes, synthetic systems may be developed to address this challenging issue. …

It’S The Little Things: An Exploration Of Small Rnas And Selfish Genetic Elements Of The Human Bacterial Pathogens Coxiella Burnetii And Bartonella Bacilliformis, Shaun Gregory Wachter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Coxiella burnetii is a Gram-negative gammaproteobacterium and zoonotic agent of Q fever in humans. Previous work in our lab has demonstrated that C. burnetii codes for several small RNAs (sRNAs) that are differentially expressed between in vivo and in vitro growth conditions. sRNAs serve as post-transcriptional regulatory effectors involved in the control of nearly all biological processes. We demonstrated that several of the identified sRNAs, namely Coxiella burnetii small RNA 3 (CbsR3), Cbsr13, and CbsR16, represent members of two novel families of miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements (MITEs), termed QMITE1 and QMITE2. Furthermore, we have characterized a highly expressed, infection-specific sRNA, …

Evaluations Concerning The Halogen Bond And Hydrogen Bond Relationship, Daniel Adam Decato

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The chemical advances of this century are likely to be driven by the ability to predict and control noncovalent interactions. While the hydrogen bond continues to captivate the interests of scientists, the development of non-traditional noncovalent interactions offers unique solutions to tackle chemical problems. Understanding the interplay between the ubiquitous hydrogen bond and other noncovalent forces will further fundamental knowledge thereby accelerating novel functional designs. This dissertation examines the nature of the hydrogen bond and halogen bond relationship.

With a renaissance in the early 2000’s, the halogen bond has become a functional alternative to the hydrogen bond. The halogen bond, …

Change Is The Only Constant: A Snowpack Retention Analysis And Climate Vulnerability Road Map For The Skalkaho Creek Sub-Basin, Zachary Freeman Goodwin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Climate change is impacting the whole of North America, although the impacts differ depending on regional geography. In the Intermountain West, climate change is contributing to lower overall snowpack totals and diminished late season streamflows. These changes will likely contribute to vulnerabilities in how much water is available to irrigators, municipalities, and fisheries dependent upon a consistent yearly flow of meltwater. This paper explores how snowpack retention has changed via the NASA dataset Daymet, which provides gridded estimates of weather parameters including Snow Water Equivalent in the Bitterroot River Basin of western Montana. This analysis showed that snowpack retention from …

The Nmda Receptor Coagonists L-Glutamate And D-Serine, Denis Mikhailovich Shchepakin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Glutamate is the predominant excitatory neurotransmitter in the mammalian central nervous system. Glutamate release and reuptake control both tonic activation of glutamate receptors and phasic signaling during synaptic transmission. Here we study different aspects of the system. The first three chapters focus on the most abundant glutamate transporters found in the brain, excitatory amino acid transporters 1-3 (EAAT1- 3/SLC1A3,2,1). The last chapter is devoted to a paralogous neutral amino acid transporter (ASCT1/SLC1A4) and its role in transport of D-serine, a coagonist of the N-methyl-Daspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptor.

In the first chapter, we discuss the existing discrepancy in estimates of EAAT1-3 …

Impacts Of Environmental Variables On Deer Mouse Survival In The Southwestern United States, Emily C. Weidner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

North American deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) are the primary reservoir for Sin Nombre orthohantavirus, and they play a significant role in the maintenance and transmission of disease across the landscape. Vital rates, such as survival, are a key component to understanding how disease spreads in a population. Understanding environmental factors that influence survival may allow for development of a predictive model that can assess disease risk in deer mice and, thus, a corresponding increased disease risk for humans. Our work explored the relationship between deer mouse survival and environmental variables at three long-term small mammal trapping sites in …

Family Environment And Attachment In Relation To Complex Trauma And C-Ptsd, Susan Elizabeth Ocean

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Childhood traumatic experiences occurring during critical developmental stages are strongly linked to poor mental health outcomes during adulthood, including PTSD. Yet, individuals who have experienced multiple traumas (and across developmental stages) report a profile of symptoms that is not well-represented by traditional PTSD diagnostic criteria. Recent research suggests that resulting post-traumatic stress after the experience of complex trauma should be considered a separate, yet related, disorder from the well-established PTSD. Since traumatic experiences are commonplace and often detrimental, establishing which factors contribute to risk and resilience is of great importance. Having secure attachment to a primary caregiver and family cohesion …

Developing Tools To Understand Stress And Nest Abandonment In Birds, Hannah Elena Beyl

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

An Exploration Of The Adaptive Capacity Of Community-Based Organizations In Northern Botswana In Response To A Hunting Ban, Katherine Kellam Coe

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Trophy hunting serves as a large economic sector in several African countries and has been considered important for wildlife conservation and local rural development. In many parts of Africa, local communities’ attitudes and decisions can affect the fate of conservation efforts outside of protected areas and it is thought that benefits from trophy hunting tourism can influence pro-conservation behavior at local scales. In Botswana, recent mandates, such as a 2014 nation-wide hunting ban and a 2019 lifting of the ban, have disrupted the relationships between wildlife conservation and rural livelihoods, resulting in adverse economic, social, and ecological impacts at various …

Binegative Minority Stress, Psychological Processes, And Disordered Alcohol Use: Disparities Among Sexual Minority Womxn, Kinsie Jean Dunham

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sexual minority womxn (i.e., woman-identified persons) tend to report more harmful alcohol use and more negative alcohol use outcomes than heterosexual women—a pattern not consistently observed in man-identified populations. Further, bisexually-oriented, hereafter called nonexclusively-oriented, womxn (NOW) report more negative alcohol use outcomes and meet criteria for alcohol use disorder at higher rates than both lesbians and heterosexual women (or exclusively-oriented womxn; EOW). These disparities require further investigation to explicate the antecedents and mechanisms impacting alcohol use for this at-risk population. This project examines the incremental negative effects of binegativity as a specific minority stressor and antecedent of disordered alcohol use. …

The Built Environment At Plaza H, Cahal Pech: A Study In Resiliency, Rachel A. Steffen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis seeks to understand the human response to extreme environmental, social, and political change during the Terminal Classic (750-1050 CE) at Cahal Pech. Across the Maya lowlands, this period is distinguished by the end of divine kingships, the cessation of new monumental architecture, rapid changes in prestige goods and trade networks, and population decline at many major centers. Cahal Pech, a medium-sized ceremonial center, experienced great shifts in political power and access to resources during the Terminal Classic. This thesis attempts to understand the last occupation of the site, prior to abandonment. Field data for this study is derived …

A Conservation Marketing Toolkit: Systematic Literature Mapping, Microtargeting Conservation Easements, And Conservation Corridor Prioritization, Hannah Josie Leonard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In a changing world with limited resources for conservation efforts, conservationists, wildlife managers, and land managers must look for creative ways to realize conservation goals. A new wave of conservationists is investigating how other disciplines, namely psychology and marketing, might improve our ability to understand and change conservation-related human behavior. In this thesis, I review existing applications of “conservation marketing” and apply a subset to advance two specific conservation challenges. In Chapter 1, I present a systematic mapping of the conservation marketing literature to understand the lay of the land in how conservationists have already applied marketing techniques to conservation, …

Modeling Twitter Sentiment As A Function Of Particulate Matter 2.5 For Communities Impacted By Wildfire Across Montana And Idaho, Matthew Kelly

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a known pollutant with clinically detrimental physiological and behavioral effects. We consider Twitter sentiment as a potential indicator for well-being in communities impacted by wildfire-associated PM2.5 across Montana and Idaho spanning 5 years (2014-2018). From these geospatial air quality data and geo-tagged tweets, we trained county level models to examine the power of Twitter sentiment as a function of PM2.5. For all 24 counties sampled, we found between 1 and 8 affective dimensions where a positive �� 2 was detected with a significant F-statistic (�� < 0.05). Specifically, we show that sentiment for anticipation in the wildfire-prone county of Missoula, MT yielded respective training/test set �� 2 of 0.0958 and 0.0686 with a p-value for the F-statistic of 3.09E-07. These analyses support social media sentiment as a potential public health metric by showing one of the first observations of a relationship between PM2.5 and Twitter sentiment.

A Snapshot Of Care: Creating Models Of Care For Individuals Included In The Terry Collection, Felicia Robyn Sparozic

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Utilizing the bioarchaeology of care model, this research formulates a model of care based on ethnohistorical and skeletal markers of pathologic conditions. The index of care is the method used to create models of care, and this requires social, cultural, economic, environmental, and mortuary contexts to determine the resources required to aid a person through injury or disability. This paper investigates the impact of known medical, occupational, and morgue records that accompanied each selected individual in the skeletal collection. This additional information, beyond what is gained from skeletal analysis, generates a complex model of care. A more complex model of …

"Black Colorism And White Racism: Discourse On The Politics Of White Supremacy, Black Equality, And Racial Identity, 1915-1930", Hannah Paige Mcdonald

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The following study unravels how Garveyite black nationalists, black integrationists, and Virginian white supremacists understood the race problem and its solution between 1915 and 1930. The racial identity and experiences of these three distinct groups, each informed how they understood the race problem and its solution. The divergent notions about the source of and solution to the race problem coalesced with colorism, sowing seeds of intraracial and interracial conflict and cooperation between the Garveyite black nationalists, black integrationists, and Virginian white supremacists as they navigated how to redress white supremacy and black equality. According to black integrationists and Garveyite black …

"A Pressure Not To Be Resisted Or Evaded": Military Occupation, Reform, And The Incorporation Of Northern Montana, 1879-1916, Hayden Nelson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis explores Fort Assinniboine’s role as an extension of the federal government’s military arm in the Northern Plains. It argues that the military occupation of northern Montana served to incorporate the northern borderland region and peoples into the American mainstream as a part of the national reconstruction processes following the Civil War into the twentieth century. In a period of half a century, north-central Montana transformed from a Native American common hunting ground lacking any major white settlement to a rapidly developing agricultural region. Fort Assinniboine played a central role in this transformation, hastening the economic collapse of the …

Characterization Of The Influences Of Human Cytomegalovirus Glycoprotein O (Go) Expression On Gh/Gl Complexes Assembly And Its Polymorphisms On Cell-Free And Cell-To-Cell Spread, And Antibody Neutralization., Le Z. Day

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is widely spread throughout the world and immunocompromised individuals can suffer severe diseases from HCMV infection. Once the infection is established, HCMV can spread through the body and infect many major somatic cell types. The glycoproteins H and L (gH/gL) on HCMV envelope can be bound by either gO or the UL128-131 proteins to form complexes gH/gL/gO and gH/gL/UL128-131 that are critical for viral entry and spread, and these two complexes are important targets of neutralizing antibodies. Strains of HCMV vary considerably in the levels of gH/gL/gO and gH/gL/UL128-131. gO is one of the most diverse loci …

Investigating The Coordinate Regulation Of Stem Cell Proliferation And Differentiation By Fbf Proteins, Xiaobo Wang

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Balance of stem cell proliferation and differentiation is important for maintaining tissue homeostasis, and uncovering the mechanisms regulating the balance of proliferation and differentiation of stem cells helps us understand the causative factors for ageing, cancer and various degenerative disorders. Pumilio and FBF (PUF) family RNA-binding proteins are conserved mRNA regulators controlling stem cell development in eukaryotes. FBF-1 and FBF-2, two PUF family proteins in C. elegans, are expressed in the mitotic region of the germline and are important for maintaining germline stem cells. FBF-1 and FBF-2 are very similar in primary sequence and share most of the target mRNAs, …

A Policy Analysis Of Lead Paint Disclosure Implementation In Residential Homes In Missoula Montana, Marissa Lein Lehner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Using Weimer and Vining’s (2017) framework and interviews with key actors, this policy analysis evaluates the implementation of federal lead paint disclosure requirements in Missoula Montana. Lead based paint was commonly used in homes built prior to 1978. Disclosure requires landlords and any persons selling a home to disclose known lead-based paint hazards to buyers and renters. The policy was enacted to promote informed decisions to avoid or reduce the risk of lead paint exposure. Lead paint disclosure serves a critical purpose to inform citizens of risk of lead paint in older housing, because any lead exposure is particularly detrimental …

The Space Between Points And Their Navigational Reference, Darla Pienciak

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

“The path of self-fulfillment means “pushing oneself beyond oneself”, in a relationship with the community where generosity, giving and the search for the common good are included and cultivated in everyday life.” (Menditto, 2014)

The Space Between Points and Their Navigational Reference represents specific points in time as well as all the moments that take place between those points. Each point is a person or a specific moment in time; they are individual people or noteworthy memories which, for one reason or another, have left a significant imprint in the memory of the individual or of society. The space between …

Metabolic And Cardiovascular Marker Alterations During Critical Training In Wildland Firefighters, Shae Gurney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Introduction: Wildland firefighters (WLFFs) are confronted with numerous physical and mental stressors. Pre-fire season includes an intense 2-week critical training (CT) period; a preparatory phase of multiple activities that can result in injury, illness, and rhabdomyolysis. The purpose of this study was to identify physiologic changes in metabolic, inflammatory, and oxidative stress biomarkers during 2 weeks of CT in WLFFs.

Methods: Eighteen male (29.4 ± 1.1 yr, 182.1 ± 1.6 cm) and three female (26.7  2.6 yr, 169.5  4.2 cm) participants were recruited from a Type I interagency hotshot crew and monitored over their 2-week CT. Fitness was …

Learning From Wilderness Fire: Restoring Landscape Scale Patterns And Processes, Julia Kittleson Berkey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wilderness areas, because they are managed to be “untrammeled by man,” often offer the best approximation of intact, undisturbed ecological patterns and processes. In the case of wildland fire, this means that wilderness areas often provide the only landscapes where fire has been managed to play an active, ecosystem role. As a result, these wilderness areas offer unique lessons both in terms of wildland fire management as well as the ecological consequences that result from this management approach. For these reasons, an in-depth history of fire management in the wilderness areas of the Northern Rocky Mountains is provided to highlight …

Electrospun Fibers With Smart Delivery Of Therapeutic Agents, Zahra Mahdieh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Electrospinning is the most widely studied technique of producing fibers. Delivery of nanoparticles and therapeutic agents from electrospun fibers have potential uses in various fields including drug delivery, filtration, and cosmetics. However, controlling the delivery rate remains the main challenge. In the current study, core-shell structure fibers were developed with zinc oxide nanoparticles applied in the shell composition to improve the pore structure (release pathway) and mechanical stability. Fine-tuned delivery rates were achieved via loading different sizes of silver nanoparticles (Ag NP) inside the fiber core. In vitro drug release assays showed fast, slow, and intermediate delivery rates of 20 …

Collaborative Conservation: A Philosophical Analysis Of The Efficacy And Commensurability Of Tek And Western Science, Anne M. Belldina

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis seeks to explore the similarities and differences between traditional ecological knowledge and Western science as a way to address long-held misconceptions about the efficacy of traditional ecological knowledge, or TEK. The motivation for this project arose from a deep desire to investigate the historical injustices toward Indigenous peoples in the name of conservation. The goal of this analysis is to illustrate that effective collaboration between Indigenous knowledge holders and Western scientists is not only possible, but desirable. I outline three major barriers from which I draw out three minimum criteria which much be met if collaborative conservation efforts …

The Role Of Experiential Learning In Developing Multicultural Competence, Kaoru Allison Powell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Although much importance has been placed on training programs to develop multiculturally competent service providers, the question remains as to when and where clinicians acquire their multicultural competence (MCC). Currently, most training programs appear to focus on the development of multicultural awareness and knowledge, without adequate focus on skills. However, experientially based learning exercises are associated with skills development in many areas, including general clinical skills development. Thus, students who engage in higher levels of experiential learning in their multicultural training may rate themselves as more competent with multicultural skills than students with less frequent experiential learning. I hypothesize that …