Digital Commons Network^™

How The Media Frames Mental Health And Social Media: A Case Study Of The Facebook Whistleblower, Megan Switzgable

Honors Theses and Capstones

In September 2021, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, leaked confidential documents surrounding internal research performed at the company, revealing that Facebook knew the negative impact Instagram had on the mental health of teenagers. In this paper, I study how the media frames the relationship between mental health, teenagers, and social media when discussing the leaked documents. In order to do this, I perform a critical discourse analysis of thirty print media articles written about the Facebook Whistleblower, focusing on how the
articles present gender, mental health, and the positive and negative uses of social media. I also look at …

The Liberatory Potential Of Fashion, David Billie Suoth

Honors Theses and Capstones

Fashion has the potential to be liberatory and this can be seen in the ways fashion has been targeted by systems of oppression. Fashion is the use of clothes as a vessel to create a greater social meaning. According to Edward Sapir, the meaning of fashion “while it is primarily applied to dress and the exhibition of the human body is not essentially concerned with the fact of dress or ornament, but with its symbolism” (Barnard, 2007, p. 65). Fashion with the symbolism behind it is able to show the sentiments and attitudes of civilization at different points in history …

Telehealth Delivery Of Acceptance And Commitment Therapy And Recreational Therapy: Supporting People With Chronic Pain During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Grace L. Roy

Honors Theses and Capstones

Chronic pain is a significant public health problem that requires person-centered and comprehensive care to address the many socioecological factors that contribute to pain. Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth options for chronic pain management can help more people access the care that they need. The purpose of the current pilot study was to investigate the efficacy and feasibility of delivering a 6-week Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and recreational therapy intervention via telehealth for a group of seven participants with chronic pain. It was found that TeleACT-RT was associated with positive behavioral outcomes including increased psychological flexibility, …

An Examination Of Effective Length In Moment Frames, Connor Stephen Schott

Honors Theses and Capstones

The honors thesis project I have been working on is called An Examination of Effective Length in Moment Frame. When loaded axially in compression columns experience a failure mode in compression that axially loaded members don’t experience in tension. This failure mode, elastic column buckling, doesn’t involve yielding or rupture; the column changes shape and deforms to the side. In order to come up with a solution to this failure mode, Leonhard Euler developed the critical buckling load equation. However, this equation uses an effective length of columns, which is the distance between two points of zero moment, or …

Finding The Best Predictors For Foot Traffic In Us Seafood Restaurants, Isabel Paige Beaulieu

Honors Theses and Capstones

COVID-19 caused state and nation-wide lockdowns, which altered human foot traffic, especially in restaurants. The seafood sector in particular suffered greatly as there was an increase in illegal fishing, it is made up of perishable goods, it is seasonal in some places, and imports and exports were slowed. Foot traffic data is useful for business owners to have to know how much to order, how many employees to schedule, etc. One issue is that the data is very expensive, hard to get, and not available until months after it is recorded. Our goal is to not only find covariates that …

Removing Physical Presence Requirements For A Remote And Automated World - Api Controlled Patch Panel For Conformance Testing, Hunter George Wells

Honors Theses and Capstones

Quality assurance test engineers at the UNH-InterOperability Lab must run tests that require driving and monitoring a selection of DC signals. While the number of signals is numerous, there are limited ports on the test equipment, and only a few signals need patching for any given test. The selection of signals may vary between the 209 different tests and must be re-routed frequently. Currently, testers must leave their desk to manually modify the test setup in another room. This posed a considerable issue at the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic when physical access was not possible. In order to enable …

Variables That Affect Parental Goals For Visiting A Children’S Museum, Isabella M. Livingston

Honors Theses and Capstones

Children’s museums are informal educational environments that foster creativity, support sensory exploration, and provide places for both free play and learning (Gong et al., 2020). This study aimed to more fully understand parental goals for taking their children to a children’s museum, and how those goals varied based on characteristics known to play a role in how parents and children interact together. Subjects included 70 child-parent dyads. Each parent completed a demographic questionnaire, the Child Behavior Questionnaire-Very Short Form (Putnam & Rothbart, 2006) to assess temperament, and responded to an open-ended prompt related to visit intent. Dyads were then recorded …

Review Of Age-Related Trends Of Infection Among People Hospitalized Hospitalized For Infection With Concurrent Substance Use, Julia Catherine Lucia Gregorio

Honors Theses and Capstones

Background: Opioids and related injections are the most common drug associated with infection (Capizzi et al., 2020). Overall, data overwhelmingly shows infection and overdose rates on the rise in recent years (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2019).

Methods: The aim of this study was to identify trends between age and concurrent infection rates related to substance use from 2012 to 2019. This quantitative study utilized data from the NH Hospital Discharge Summaries (Office of Health Statistics, 2021). Specifically, trends among three age groups (young adults (18-34), middle-aged (35-54), and older adults (55+)) who were admitted to an inpatient unit or the emergency …

Robot Guided Exercise Training: The Role Of The Human Model, Selena R. Richards

Honors Theses and Capstones

Physical therapy after an injury can be difficult for patients to access, whether it be due to location, finances, or other factors. To make physical therapy more accessible, robot-guided exercise training can be used. Commercial anthropomorphic robots have been created and have human-like movement, but may still lack qualities that make it easy for a human to understand its intentions intuitively. A human model that mimics the movement of a robot performing human exercises can be used to complement the robot and increase human understanding. The ideal model would be viewable from different angles and could visibly show the difference …

Knowledge Gaps: Addressing The Need For Palliative Care Education For University Nursing Students, Odin Todd Bickford

Honors Theses and Capstones

This study aimed to analyze undergraduate nursing students’ primary palliative care knowledge to determine if there is a need for further palliative care education in undergraduate, pre-licensure curriculums. To make this determination, this study utilized the Undergraduate Nursing Palliative Care Knowledge Survey (UNPCKS), created by Dr. Andra Davis and Dr. Megan Lippe, a 27-question survey that addresses the 6 domains of holistic palliative care; i) holistic, patient-centered care (Whole person care), ii) collaborative (Interprofessional), iii) understanding of primary palliative care as a resource and how to support patients/families (Advocacy and Knowledge of Primary Palliative Care), iv) the importance of understanding …

Implementing Daily Schedules To Prevent Episodes Of Agitation In Pediatric Patients Boarding In The Emergency Department With Behavioral Health Diagnoses., Alex W. Carbone, Kathleen Kiley Bsn, Rn, Cpen, Anne Meginniss Msn, Fnp-Bc, Kerry Nolte Phd, Fnp-C, Debra Lajoie Jd, Phd, Msn, Rn, Esq.

Honors Theses and Capstones

Abstract

Background: Pediatric psychiatric emergencies have been recognized as a national crisis in the United States (Roman et al., 2018). Emergency department (ED) visits for pediatric behavioral health (BH) conditions rose 31% from April 2020 to October 2020 (Bartek et al., 2021). This increase in ED visits for BH concerns, matched with overwhelmed inpatient psychiatric treatment centers and lacking community support programs, has resulted in an increase in BH ED boarders (Bartek et al., 2021). This population of patients who remain in the ED while awaiting placement at a psychiatric care program are at risk for prolonged boarding durations in …

A Review Of Monte Carlo Methods And Their Application In Medical Physics For Simulating Radiation Transport, Joe Shields

Honors Theses and Capstones

Monte Carlo methods are used to calculate statistical behavior through the use of random number generators and probability density functions. They have been used extensively in medical physics for research in radiotherapy, designing technology, dosimetry, and advanced clinical applications. This paper provides a background on Monte Carlo methods and a review of radiation therapy physics and dosimetry. Additionally, there is a discussion of the different ways Monte Carlo methods are used in medical physics as well as a review of current research related to Monte Carlo methods. The final portion of this paper contains my own Monte Carlo simulation using …

Reinforcement Learning Applied To The Shoals Marine Laboratory Smart Grid, Daniel C. Mattson

Honors Theses and Capstones

Reinforcement learning (RL) techniques have been applied to smart grids with a variety of applications. The most common objective is to optimize profit for one actor in the system. The goal of this work is to apply different RL models to the smart grid at the Shoals Marine Laboratory (SML) located on Appledore Island, Maine in an effort to reduce costs and minimize the amount of nonrenewable energy consumed on the island. The RL models implemented resulted in more sustainable practices in simulations, with a linear spline model outperforming the naive policy the SML currently uses. Future work includes extending …

Predicting Covid-19 Vaccination Status And Rule Following And Violating: Psychosocial Measures, Coping Styles, And Vaccine Myth Beliefs, Paxton Morley

Honors Theses and Capstones

Since the beginning of 2020, the whole world has been significantly impacted by COVID-19. People have been asked to be vaccinated, wear masks and maintain social distance. The purpose of this research is to predict COVID-19 rule-following, rule-violating, and vaccination status behaviors (yes, no) from the following variables: psychosocial factors, coping styles, and belief in COVID-19 vaccine myths. It was predicted that Psychosocial factors will negatively impact vaccination status, but these effects will be mediated by belief in vaccine myths. Psychosocial factors will negatively impact the COVID-19 rule following, but these effects will be mediated by coping strategies. Lastly, psychosocial …

Generally Covariant Theory Of Multipole Moment Conserving Quasiparticles, Gavin Eric Riley

Honors Theses and Capstones

This report represents the creation of a field theory which is capable of describing quasiparticle excitations that preserve 2^k -pole moments. These quasiparticles exhibit certain ’semidynamic’ properties such as individual particle immobility but free movement of bound 2^L-tuples. We provide a review of work done on dipole conserving fractons and their dynamics [1] and expand upon it to describe higher moment conserving systems with global quadratic (and higher) phase symmetry. This requires the selection of the temporal and spatial directions. The selection of a temporal direction is done with a foliation defined by an anisotropic scaling of space and time, …

The State Of Our Community Social Capital In Kensington, New Hampshire, Sawyer B. Rogers

Honors Theses and Capstones

This study investigates the transformation of social capital over time, using the example of a small New England town: Kensington, New Hampshire. National social capital assessments indicate a substantial decline in social capital since the post-WW2 era. Kensington does not follow this extreme decline in social capital, with a significant rise during the 90s and into the early 2000s. Additionally, Kensington has high levels of social capital when compared to New Hampshire residents overall. Survey findings point to strong trust, yet weak social infrastructure in Kensington. Therefore, the most consistent way to maintain social capital between shifts is to create …

Review Of Gender Related Trends Among People Hospitalized For Infections With Concurrent Substance Use, Meghan Lotti

Honors Theses and Capstones

Abstract

Background: The opioid epidemic has been on the rise in the past decades, and with the rise of opioid use, infections related to substance use has also been on the rise. Infection trends in relation to gender currently have little evidence on how they affect each other.

Methods: Data was gathered from the New Hampshire Discharge Dataset on patients aged 18 to 85 who were admitted to any hospital with an infection diagnosis and concurrent substance use, from the years 2012 to 2019. This data was then graphed to analyze the trends.

Results: Infection rates had a consistent rise …

Crime And The Effects It Has On Business Development, Alexis Pimental

Honors Theses and Capstones

This reading highlights the topic of crime through exploring what crime is as well as the different types of crimes in our everyday lives. Specifically, this research paper wants to highlight the crimes that may affect businesses, as well as the relationships between crime and business development. By using facts and statistics, we will dive into the relationship between the two and see why certain businesses may find success while other businesses struggle. We will also be looking at different pieces of literature, reviewing them, and drawing conclusions from the literature being discussed. The literature review as well as assessments …

Development Of A Fluxgate Magnetometer Model, Eleonora Olsmats

Honors Theses and Capstones

As a part of the UNH SWFO-L1 mission to monitor space weather and the sun’s behavior, the fluxgate magnetometer is an important component to measure external magnetic fields. The basic principle of a fluxgate magnetometer is to detect changes in the ambient magnetic field by inducing a magnetic field in a ferromagnetic material via a drive winding. Each magnetometer is unique due to the ferromagnetic properties of the core material which can be seen in the hysteresis loop which is a relationship between the magnetic field strength (H) and the induced magnetic field (B). Measuring the hysteresis of a fluxgate …

Multidisciplinary Engagement For Fencing Research Informs Efficacy And Rancher-To-Researcher Knowledge Exchange, Matthew Hyde, Stewart W. Breck, Alex Few, Jared Beaver, Joshua Schrecengost, Jim Stone, Cameron Krebs, Russell Talmo, Kari Eneas, Rae Nickerson, Kyran E. Kunkel, Julie K. Young

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Across much of the Western United States, recovery of large carnivore populations is creating new challenges for livestock producers. Reducing the risks of sharing the landscape with recovering wildlife populations is critical to private working lands, which play an vital role in securing future energy, water, food, and fiber for an ever-expanding human population. Fencing is an important mitigation practice that many ranchers, land managers, and conservationists implement to reduce carnivore-livestock conflict. While fencing strategies have been reviewed in the literature, research seldom incorporates knowledge from the people who utilize fencing the most (i.e., livestock producers). Incorporating producers and practitioners …

Conserving Endangered Black-Footed Ferrets: Biological Threats, Political Challenges, And Lessons Learned, Travis M. Livieri, Steven C. Forrest, Marc R. Matchett, Stewart Breck

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

There may be few stories in the annals of wildlife management that are as dramatic as the near demise and comeback of the black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes). Endemic only to North America, this charming little carnivore found only in the continent’s central grasslands was hardly known to science until the mid-20th century. By then, vast colonies of the prey it depended on for food and shelter, the prairie dog (Cynomys spp.), had been wiped out through disease (sylvatic plague) and an agricultural industry with little tolerance for burrowing and grazing rodents. At its low point, the species’ …

Exertional Heat Illness: A Yearly Preventable Cause Of Illness And Death In Athletes, Troy B. Puga, Joshua Schafer, Nicholas Scigliano, Grace Thiel, Kevin Treffer

Student Publications

Every summer, exertional heat illness in athletes becomes the center of attention among coaches, athletic trainers, and physicians across the United States. This topic has recently received increased attention as seven football players died from exertional heat illness between July 2020 and August 2021[1]. Health professionals believe that sport-related heat illnesses can be prevented through following published sports guidelines, protocols for weather monitoring and water breaks, and using appropriate conditioning during practice sessions. This topic has become such an issue that several states and local governing bodies have enacted legislation and policy for exertional heat illness education and training for …

The Impact Of A Year-Long Professional Development On Teacher Self-Efficacy In Personal Writing And The Teaching Of Writing, Guang-Lea Lee, Terri Brodeur, Cherng-Jyh Yen, Tian Luo, Pauline Salim Muljana

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Long-term professional development (PD) initiatives are scant in the extant literature. This study examines the impact of a year-long, face-to-face teacher PD provided for teachers from a high-need elementary school to improve their personal writing and writing instruction. A mixed-methods approach was used to collect and analyze data primarily from pre- and post-surveys and interviews. Statistical analyses suggest that teachers’ self-efficacy toward writing instruction was improved, but not self-efficacy toward their personal writing. Various means of how the year-long teacher PD influenced their self-efficacy were demonstrated through qualitative analysis. Implications of conducting teacher PD on writing instruction were discussed.

Humans And The Core Partition: An Agent-Based Modeling Experiment, Andrew J. Collins, Sheida Etemadidavan

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Although strategic coalition formation is traditionally modeled using cooperative game theory, behavioral game theorists have repeatedly shown that outcomes predicted by game theory are different from those generated by actual human behavior. To further explore these differences, in a cooperative game theory context, we experiment to compare the outcomes resulting from human participants’ behavior to those generated by a cooperative game theory solution mechanism called the core partition. Our experiment uses an interactive simulation of a glove game, a particular type of cooperative game, to collect the participant’s decision choices and their resultant outcomes. Two different glove games are considered, …

A Simulation-Based Disaster Management Framework To Analyze Housing Recovery: The Case Of Hampton Roads, Usa, Rafael Diaz, Joshua Behr, Beatriz Acero, Bridget D. Giles, Juita-Elena Wie Yusuf

VMASC Publications

In the aftermath of a catastrophic weather event, housing recovery and reconstruction activities are highly complex. Coordinating housing recovery activities is generally challenging because complex supply chains converge simultaneously in a highly uncertain environment. In this environment, anticipating and quantifying the extent of potential damage and determining the actions that must be taken to rebuild the housing stock may assist regions in allocating resources for reconstruction. This paper presents the development of a comprehensive disaster management framework to assist decision-makers in predicting the impact of projected natural disasters on housing. This framework uses a simulation-based approach to quantify likely regional …

Prosecutorial Nonenforcement And Residual Criminalization, Justin Murray

Publications

In recent years a small but influential group of locally elected prosecutors committed to criminal justice reform have openly refused to enforce various criminal laws—laws prohibiting marijuana possession, sentencing enhancements, laws authorizing the death penalty, and much more—because they see those laws as unjust and incompatible with core reform objectives. Condemned by many on the political right for allegedly usurping the legislature’s lawmaking role and praised by many on the left for bypassing dysfunctional state legislatures in favor of local solutions, these prosecutorial nonenforcement policies are commonly said to have the same effect as nullifying, or even repealing, the laws …

Quantum Technology And Human Rights: An Agenda For Collaboration, Vivek Krishnamurthy

Publications

Quantum technologies have the potential to transform many aspects of our lives as they come into wider use, but how do we ensure that these technologies promote human rights instead of harming them? This article will draw lessons from our collective experience in managing the human rights impacts of internet technologies to help the quantum science and technology community build and develop technologies that respect and promote the fundamental rights of all people.

Future Climate Streamflow Estimation In The Donnelly River Catchment, Justin Hughes, Bill Wang

Natural resources commissioned reports

The Donnelly River is located in the south-west of Western Australia. An irrigation development has been proposed in the catchment that would extract water from the Donnelly River and store this in an off stream reservoir for irrigation use. Given the known issues related to non-stationarity and hydrological prediction, the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) contracted CSIRO to review the hydrological model that was used to estimate future climate streamflow in the Donnelly River. This model was owned and operated by the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER). The CSIRO review of the model, which also …

Performance Degradation Based On Importance Change And Application In Dissimilar Redundancy Actuation System, Yadong Zhang, Chao Zhang, Shaoping Wang, Rentong Chen, Mileta M. Tomovic

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

The importance measure is a crucial method to identify and evaluate the system weak link. It is widely used in the optimization design and maintenance decision of aviation, aerospace, nuclear energy and other systems. The dissimilar redundancy actuation system (DRAS) is a key aircraft control subsystem which performs aircraft attitude and flight trajectory control. Its performance and reliability directly affect the aircraft flight quality and flight safety. This paper considers the influence of the Birnbaum importance measure (BIM) and integrated importance measure (IIM) on the reliability changes of key components in DRAS. The differences of physical fault characteristics of different …

Digital Educational Modules Development For The Career And Technical Cybersecurity Pathways During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Vukica Jovanović, Murat Kuzlu, Otilia Popescu, Petros Katsioloudis, Linda Vahala, Michael Wu, Deborah Marshall, Michael Crespo, Mary Addison

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Virtual learning has been used now for several decades, but it has never had a bigger impact on student learning than in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Universities and schools faced shutdowns all around the world, and teachers had to adapt rapidly to online mode of instruction. Many educators were faced with a triage approach with no previous experience in distance learning, a lack of resources for professional development, and already existing shortages of current educational modules that could assist them in their day-to-day jobs. This gap was especially evident in areas such as career and technical education (CTE) …