Digital Commons Network^™

A New Telecommunications Act: Prioritizing Consumer Protection And Equality, Olivier Sylvain

Faculty Scholarship

Through the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress imposed long overdue duties and structural limits on the telephone, broadcasting, and cable industries. Though the 1934 law was bold and important, legislators unwittingly enabled a handful of companies to concentrate power in those markets.

As needed as it was, the Telecommunications Act also had flaws. Congress’s structureof- the-market approach in 1996 did not protect against disparities in consumers’ access. Nor did it (or could it) anticipate the informational harms that the internet would facilitate or enable.

These concerns ought to be the primary focus of reform today. To be sure, the Federal …

Housing The Decarcerated: Covid-19, Abolition & The Right To Housing, Norrinda Brown

Faculty Scholarship

The coronavirus pandemic revealed the need to advance the right to housing and abolition movements. The need for advancements in both spaces was no more painfully apparent than among the recently decarcerated population. Securing housing for the recently decarcerated is particularly difficult due to the “culture of exclusion” that has long pervaded subsidized housing policy, enabled by a patchwork of federal laws, including the Anti-Drug Abuse Act (ADA) of 1988 and the Supreme Court’s ruling in HUD v. Rucker. The culture of exclusion is arbitrated by local housing authorities and works on three levels: eligibility, enforcement, and set asides. As …

Teacher Perceptions On The Impact Of Changes In Educational Practices And Student Learning For A Covid-19 Post-Pandemic Classroom: A Mixed Methods Study, Laine Smith

Doctor of Education Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted educational practices around the world, changed the instructional interface of the classroom and impacted student learning. The purpose of this research study was to identify teacher perceptions of this change, understand how teachers addressed those changes in the classroom, and determine what teachers saw as the next best steps to address student learning disparities going forward.

A mixed methods approach was used to conduct this research. Participants who completed the survey and/or mini focus groups were teachers in County X during the 2019-2022 school years. A thematic analysis was conducted for each mini focus group, quantitative …

Medicinal And Aromatic Plants In The Omics Era: Application Of Plant Breeding Andbiotechnology For Plant Secondary Metabolite Production, Muzaffer Barut, Muhammad Azhar Nadeem, Özlem Akgür, Leyla Sezen Tansi, Muhammad Aasim, Muhammad Tanveer Altaf, Faheem Shahzad Baloch

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

Human being has strong and historic connections with plants to fulfill food, feed, and shelter. Moreover, human uses plants as medicine for the treatment of various diseases. Plants are chemical factories for the biosynthesis of the huge number of secondary metabolites (SMs) that are directly used as a medicine or indirectly used in the development of commercial pharmaceutical drugs. Their improvement through classical breeding remains a difficult struggle for plant breeders. Hence, rapidly advancing research on the plant omics era has accelerated our understanding of the complex structure of SMs synthesis in medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs). In addition, sequencing …

Identification Of Snp Markers Linked To Rf Locus In Carrot Using Gbs, Sevi̇n Teoman Duran, Ahmet İpek

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

Commercial carrot production is based on the use of hybrid seed varieties worldwide. Cytoplasmic genetic male sterility (CGMS) mechanism has been widely used as the main method for hybrid carrot seed production. There is a significant demand for a rapid method for identification of fertility restorer gene (Rf) carrying individual plants in a carrot breeding population. The objective of this research was to identify SNP markers linked to Rf locus and develop a genetic map of Rf gene in carrot. For this purpose, a carrot F2 population segregating for male sterility was produced and segregating 10,425 SNP markers were discovered …

Morphological And Agronomic Characterization Of Turkish Vaccaria Hispanica (Mill.) Rauschert Populations, Esi̇n Ari, Nedi̇m Mutlu, İnanç Soylu, Hi̇lal Bedi̇r, İlker Genç, İsmai̇l Gökhan Deni̇z

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

Vaccaria hispanica (Mill) Rauschert, also known as cow cockle, is an important candidate for industrial crop species that has yet to be fully domesticated. Therefore, characterization of germplasms is crucial to initiate and select for economic use. The study reports cultivation, characterization, and seed production of 66 wild V. hispanica genotypes, collected throughout Turkey that represent the available genetic pool. The study was carried out in an unheated greenhouse in Antalya, under Mediterranean climate from December to early June. The populations were evaluated for 21 morphological and 6 agronomic traits. The highest coefficient of variation (CV) for morphological traits was …

Sacrificing The Salmon: A Legal History Of The Decline Of Columbia Basin Salmon (Full Text Part 2 Of 2), Michael Blumm

Books & Contributions to Books

Salmon remain the cultural and economic soul of the Pacific Northwest, a species whose very life cycle largely defines the region. At the center of the salmon region lies the Columbia River, which once supported the world's largest salmon runs and which now is home to the world's largest interconnected hydroelectric system. These massive federal and non-federal dams have devastated Columbia Basin salmon runs, some of which are now extinct, others are on life-support.

This book tells the story of the decline of the Columbia Basin salmon in the 20th century. But it begins earlier, with the signing of mid-19th …

Invasive Earthworms In The Crown Of The Continent System And Implications For Land Management, Meghan Elizabeth Scott

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The United States contains invasive earthworms originating from Europe and Asia; the majority are European lumbricids. Direct introduction occurs primarily through human activity and, once established, earthworm populations are difficult to address. When exotic earthworms engage in bioturbation, they negatively alter subterranean food webs and nutrient cycling by disrupting soil layering systems. The most prominent form of physical alteration is the change and removal of the topmost organic layer. This disruption is associated with altered nitrogen and carbon cycling, as well as altered forest floor plant communities.

The Crown of the Continent ecosystem is located in southwestern Alberta, southeastern British …

Current(S), Austin Raye Navrkal

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Current(s) addresses my perspective of the subtle changes that happen as the seasons slowly transition to act as a metaphor for the subtle changes that have happened to me over the course of my time in graduate school.

The Introduction Of Veteran Service Organizations To The State Of Montana’S Department Of Corrections, Zachary C. Rehm

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Veteran Service Organizations (VSO) exist throughout the United States and serve veterans, service members, dependents, and survivors. Some VSOs provide programming for veterans in their communities, such as job fairs, organizing fundraising events, raising awareness around the issues affecting veterans, assisting in the application process, and assisting in rehabilitation efforts. The American Legion specifically was chartered by Congress in 1919 as a 'patriotic veterans organization'. Since its conception, the Legion stands at nearly 2 million in membership, scattered throughout 13,000 posts worldwide. Most recent studies from the Justice of Bureau Statistics indicate that 8% of all incarcerated inmates are United …

Functional And Pharmacological Characterization Of Glun3-Containing Nmda Receptors, Nirvan Rouzbeh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors are a member of ionotropic glutamate receptors that mediate excitatory neurotransmission across the mammalian central nervous system. NMDA receptors are organized into heterotetrameric assemblies containing two obligatory GluN1 subunits and two GluN2A-D, or GluN3A-B subunits. GluN1 and GluN3A-B bind glycine or D-serine, whereas GluN2A-D bind glutamate. The structural, functional, and pharmacological investigation of GluN1/3 NMDA receptors has been greatly hindered by their unconventional properties such as impermeability to Ca2+, insensitivity to the voltage-dependent block by Mg2+, and robust desensitization upon binding their endogenous agonist glycine. Another major barrier in GluN3 research has been the lack of selective …

Lidar-Landsat Covariance For Predicting Canopy Fuels, Margaret D. Epstein

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Managing wildfires in the western United States is becoming increasingly complex. Visualizing and quantifying canopy structures allows fire managers to both plan for fire and track recovery. Light detecting and ranging, or LiDAR can measure forests in three dimensions, but has limited spatial and temporal coverage. LiDAR-Landsat covariance uses machine learning to fill in the spatial and temporal gaps of LiDAR coverage with supplemental Landsat imagery. However, in order to capture real forest dynamics, a model needs to be stable enough to detect long term trends, sensitive to episodic disturbance, and general enough to work on multiple landcovers. The purpose …

Hydrogeomorphic Response Of Steep Streams Following Severe Wildfire In The Western Cascades, Oregon, David Matthew Busby

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Severe wildfire may alter the morphologic resilience of steep mountain streams by increasing peak discharges, elevating inputs of sediment and wood into channels, and increasing susceptibility to landslides and debris flows. In the Pacific Northwest, where mean annual precipitation is high and mean fire return intervals range from decades to centuries, understanding of steep stream response to fire is limited. In 2020, the Western Cascade Range, Oregon, experienced wildfire of historic magnitude and severity. The objective of this study was to evaluate the hydrologic and geomorphic response of steep streams to the 2020 fires. I assessed streamflow, instream wood, and …

A Non-Deterministic Deep Learning Based Surrogate For Ice Sheet Modeling, Hannah Jordan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Surrogate modeling is a new and expanding field in the world of deep learning, providing a computationally inexpensive way to approximate results from computationally demanding high-fidelity simulations. Ice sheet modeling is one of these computationally expensive models, the model used in this study currently requires between 10 and 20 minutes to complete one simulation. While this process is adequate for certain applications, the ability to use sampling approaches to perform statistical inference becomes infeasible. This issue can be overcome by using a surrogate model to approximate the ice sheet model, bringing the time to produce output down to a tenth …

My Partner Didn’T Hit Me, So It’S Not Abuse: Exploring Factors That Contribute To Labeling Psychological Abuse Experiences & Help-Seeking, Jessica Jean Peatee

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite the prevalence and detrimental impacts of psychological abuse, research has consistently demonstrated that many survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) do not recognize or label these experiences as forms of relationship violence (e.g., Goldsmith & Freyd, 2005; Pipes & LeBov-Keeler, 1997; Raymond & Bruschi, 1989). Several help-seeking models suggest that abuse recognition may be a critical factor for survivors in the help-seeking process (e.g., Burke et al., 2004; Liang et al., 2005). Thus, the present study took a mixed-methods approach to explore what factors survivors identified as important for labeling experiences of psychological abuse and seeking help. As rates …

The Molly Hootch Schools After 40 Years: Successes, Failures, And Opportunities, Jody Lynne Drew

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This quantitative study was designed to understand the relationship between the variables of student attendance, educator experience and turnover, and student achievement at the Molly Hootch schools in rural Alaska in an effort to understand the current state of achievement according to data from 2002–2019 collected from the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (AKDEED) database. Data revealed that Molly Hootch school attendance was at 90% and that proficiency among student dropped from 40% to 15% during the years under review. The researcher was not granted access to review further data that could provide more concrete answers to the …

The Role Of Acculturation On The Relationship Between Selfcompassion And Depression Within Native Americans, Kristen Kaylie Pyke-Pierce

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Research examining the relationship between depression and self-compassion in a Native American (NA) sample is limited (Tielke, 2016). Previous research has found a negative relationship between depression and self-compassion in the general population (Johnson & O’Brien, 2013; Macbeth & Gumley, 2012; Neff, 2003b). Additionally, culture has been found to be beneficial in decreasing depression symptoms in NA persons (Whitbeck et al., 2002). Furthermore, as far as this researcher knows, there is no research examining the relationship between depression, self-compassion and acculturation in a NA sample. This study explored the relationship between depression and self-compassion while utilizing acculturation as a moderator …

Conservation In Ecuador's Sangay-Podocarpus Connectivity Corridor: A Study Of Coproductive Capacities, Gabriel Isaac Oppler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Connectivity conservation, a growing topic across science, policy, and management, is considered an important supplement to protected areas. A diversity of ecological corridors is emerging to restore fragmented landscapes, preserve intact habitats, protect biodiversity, and improve resilience to climate change. Despite increasing expertise and resources for planning corridors, many initiatives face challenges mobilizing science and governance to implement corridors on the ground. In many cases, biophysical science is supplemented with social science to better understand the human elements of connectivity. Similarly, collaboration and partnership are heralded as essential for effective governance of corridors. However, less is known about how these …

“Making A Science Of Cooperation”: Labor, Business, Government, And The Defense Council System In The Wartime American West, 1916-1921, Robert Michael Joseph Lambeth

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

“Making a Science of Cooperation”: Labor, Business, Government, and the Defense Council System in the Wartime American West, 1916-1921” examines the socioeconomic and political transformations that occurred in the American West as a result of homefront mobilization for World War I. While those transformations happened at the national level as well, they were the most impactful in and inherently informed by the political and socioeconomic developments occurring in the western states at the time.

The vehicle in which those transformations were delivered was the Defense Council System (DCS), a unique federal mobilization program that enlisted the help of the nation’s …

Understanding And Improving Barriers To Treatment And Care Of Postpartum Depression, Marcy N. Hanson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Background: Postpartum depression (PPD) is a multifaceted and complex issue that impacts not only the mother, but also the infant and social system and may influence how healthcare is accessed. Compounding the effects of PPD are comorbidities such as perinatal substance use. Utilization of substances during pregnancy can increase feelings of anxiety and depression, result in cognitive and physiological consequences for the infant and impair relationships with healthcare providers.

Purpose: The studies completed for this dissertation revealed current concerns regarding PPD within the context of screening practices, perinatal substance use and rural practice implications.

Methods: Three studies were conducted. Study …

The Effects Humidity & Temperature Has On Dna Contamination During Storage, Samantha L. Ramey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Studies have been conducted on DNA cross-contamination throughout the criminal investigation process in order to evaluation the possibility that DNA from one sample could potentially influence the outcome of another. However, no published studies have examined the potential for contamination during the storage of genetic evidence after samples have been taken from crime scenes or suspects. This study is a continuation of a preliminary project, which examined storage drying time in relation to cross-contamination. The current study tested temperature and humidity for the potential of cross-contamination during storage prior to extraction. Prior to storage, 50 μl of male saliva was …

Toward A Dialectical Account Of Nature, Georgia Rae Grimm

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The protection of nature has been a central aim of environmentalism for well over a century. However, the concept of nature has been subjected to abundant critiques in recent literature, threatening the conceptual tenability of this goal. In this paper, I discuss why I find the concept of nature too valuable to dismiss and offer an account of nature that I believe remedies existent critiques. In Chapter 1, I recount arguments for the protection of nature and illustrate their dualistic underpinnings. In Chapter 2, I discuss issues with dualistic accounts of nature and demonstrate why Steven Vogel’s monistic alternative is …

Traumatic Brain Injury: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Healthcare Oversight, Charles Robert Brown Gatlin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Introduction: State licensing boards (SLBs) serve as overseers to protect the interests of the public by ensuring that individuals who operate under a license to practice in a state uphold the standards of their profession. However, resolving complaints regarding unprofessional conduct for conditions that necessitate interdisciplinary care, such as traumatic brain injury (TBI), may necessitate involvement from SLBs of other disciplines who are most qualified to evaluate the appropriateness of care. To date, there is no single pathway to address complaints regarding the interdisciplinary management of TBI as the mechanisms of the injury are complex, often do not address the …

Characterizing Riverine Carbon: A Spatiotemporal Study Of Organic And Inorganic Carbon Variability And Evaluation Of Methods For Quantifying Pco2, Fischer Larson Young

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Carbon is a critical component of aquatic ecosystems. For inland waters, carbon is a basal resource for biological communities and is a key component of trophic transfer through ingestion and respiration processes. Additionally, carbon acts as a key biogeochemical tracer that can track chemical, physical, and biological processes from the terrestrial landscape to inland waters to the ocean. Riverine carbon, however, can be challenging to characterize and interpret due to the complexity of its sources and sinks along a riverine continuum. Included in this work are the biogeochemically relevant forms of carbon such as dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), the partial …

Genetic Monitoring And Rescue In Mid-Atlantic Brook Trout (Salvelinus Fontinalis) Poulations, Zachary Lorn Robinson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) populations have experienced dramatic declines throughout their native range, in part, due to anthropogenic land use and habitat fragmentation. In the mid-Atlantic region, brook trout populations often occupy small, headwater habitat fragments in demographic and genetic isolation, making them vulnerable to inbreeding and genetic drift. My dissertation evaluates different methods for genetic assessment, monitoring, and management of small, isolated brook trout populations. First, I examined the potential value of effective number of breeders (N_b) estimates for genetic monitoring by determining whether N_b estimates were sensitive to habitat characteristics known to affect …

The Effect Of Attentional Manipulation On Cough Reflex Sensitivity In Patients With Cough Hypersensitivity Syndrome, Jane Elizabeth Reynolds

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The cough reflex is complex and requires integration of sensorimotor information from the central and peripheral nervous system. Cough motor output can be volitionally modified even when a strong urge-to-cough (UTC) is felt which reinforces the idea of cortical involvement in cough and opens the door to consider how manipulating attention or changing cognitive load may impact cough reflex sensitivity. Two prior studies have shown healthy individuals have reduced cough reflex sensitivity to inhaled tussigenic stimulants when completing a distracting task, presumably due to influence from increased cognitive load. In this prospective case series study, 13 patients with cough hypersensitivity …

Quantitative Social Science Methods, Social Networks, And Scalar Mismatches: Advancing Social-Ecological Systems Science Towards Adaptation And Transformation, Holly Kathleen Nesbitt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The adaptive capacity of social-ecological systems to maintain resilience or undergo transformation is increasingly important for navigating global change. Although social interactions and ecological disturbances are often cited as an essential element of social-ecological systems, social interactions are often undertheorized and simplistic, and the relative effects of both social and ecological processes are rarely considered in tandem. In this dissertation, I work towards advancing social-ecological systems research by highlighting opportunities for improved quantitative social science methods, using structurally explicit methods to evaluate the mechanisms underpinning social interactions, and characterizing scalar mismatches in a social-ecological system experiencing a regime shift. In …

Traversing Paradigms: An Environmental Journey To Body And Mind, Martin Ceja Mejia

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Traumatic life experiences altered the way I perceive the world. As a result, I embark on a journey to reshape my relationship to self, the built and natural world; to environment. In this thesis I ask: How do I want to relate to the environment? Considering I am a doubly colonized agent, I also aim to decolonize my relationship to environment along the process. Therefore, this work aims to formulate a new, personal, relationship to environment through academic literature, history, psychology, Indigenous knowledge and science, and literary studies, among other fields of knowledge. This work is interdisciplinary in nature; life …

Development Of Nanodisc Affinity Capillary Electrophoresis To Study The Interaction Of Giα Protein With Cell Membranes, Bethany R. Emeigh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Guanine nucleotide-binding proteins, or G-proteins, are crucial to cell signaling by acting as molecular switches through interactions with membrane-bound receptors. G-proteins have become of greater interest due to the possibility of novel drug targets. The G-protein alpha subunit, Gα, binds GTP before localizing to the membrane to interact with other G-protein subunits and G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Gi lacks a hydrophobic region to promote localization to the membrane, but a co-translational lipidation of the N-terminal residue stabilizes this interaction.

Protein interactions with biological membranes are challenging to study due to the complex structure of membranes and the often-limited quantities of the …

Emission And Chemistry Of Volatile Organic Compounds In Western U.S. Wildifre Smoke, Wade Jeremy Permar

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wildfires are a significant source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the western U.S., emitting hundreds to thousands of different species that play key roles in tropospheric oxidation, ozone production, and secondary organic aerosol formation. Many of these VOCs have only recently been identified and quantified in laboratory burning experiments. Consequently, little is known about their emissions from wildfires, which species are most important for plume OH oxidation chemistry, and how they evolve as smoke plumes age. This dissertation aims to improve our understanding of the emissions and chemistry of VOCs in wildfire smoke using detailed in situ measurements made …