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2023-2024 Annual Student Assessment Report, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Assessment Center Reports

Annual Student Assessment Report produced by the SWOSU Assessment Center.

Landscape-Scale Epidemiological Dynamics Of Sars-Cov-2 In White-Tailed Deer, Joshua Hewitt, Grete Wilson-Henjum, Derek T. Collins, Timothy J. Linder, Julianna B. Lenoch, Jonathan D. Heale, Christopher A. Quintanal, Robert Pleszewski, Dillon S. Mcbride, Andrew S. Bowman, Jeffrey C. Chandler, Susan A. Shriner, Sarah N. Bevins, Dennis J. Kohler, Richard B. Chipman, Allen L. Gosser, David L. Bergman, Thomas J. Deliberto, Kim M. Pepin

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Understanding pathogen emergence in new host species is fundamental for developing prevention and response plans for human and animal health. We leveraged a large-scale surveillance dataset coordinated by United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and State Natural Resources Agencies to quantify the outbreak dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in North American white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus; WTD) throughout its range in the United States. Local epidemics in WTD were well approximated by a single-outbreak peak followed by fade out. Outbreaks peaked early in the northeast and mid- Atlantic. Local effective reproduction ratios of SARS-CoV-2 were between …

What Is Known, Unknown, And Needed To Be Known About Damage Caused By Wild Pigs, Kurt C. Vercauteren, Kim M. Pepin, Seth M. Cook, Sophie Mckee, Abigail Pagels, Keely J. Kohen, Ingrid A. Messner, Michael P. Glow, Nathan P. Snow

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Damage assessments provide evidence for initiating and evaluating management programs that protect natural resources and human livelihoods against invasive species. Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) cause extensive damage in their native and non-native ranges, but the extent of current damage and efficacy of management of the damage (i.e., population control of wild pigs, exclusion fencing, etc.) remains poorly described. We conducted a systematic review of physical damage caused by wild pigs to summarize what is known and identify knowledge gaps for damage assessment. Wild pig damage assessments have been overwhelmingly qualitative (84% of studies) and measured differently across studies, …

Tracking Sero-Molecular Trends Of Swine Brucellosis In Hawai'i And The Central Pacific, Thi Hai Au La, Ian A. Mcmillan, Prashant Dahal, Andrew H. Burger, Mahdi Belcaid, Darrin M. Phelps, Samuel M. Goldstein, Vienna R. Brown, Michael H. Norris

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Introduction

Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease of mammals caused by bacterial species of the Brucella genus. The reservoir for disease is typically mammals, with species of Brucella found infecting amphibians, bats, and marine mammals. Brucella spp. can pass directly to humans through contact with infected animals or their products. Brucella spp. can cause chronic debilitating infections in mammals, including humans, and is associated with spontaneous abortions in infected animals, causing reduced fecundity. In Hawai‘i, terrestrial species that could harbor Brucella spp. include swine, cattle, horses, and axis deer among others. The numerous feral swine in Hawai‘i are known to carry …

Gender Regrets: Banning Abortion And Gender-Affirming Care, Margot J. Pollans, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article analyzes the use of “regret” in the campaigns to ban GAC and abortion. It identifies two overlapping threads. First, both campaigns against medical care point to protection of patients from future regret as a legitimate state interest justifying restrictions on providing medical care. Second, both rely on concerns about regret to redefine the legal meaning of “informed consent” and make it easier for potential future plaintiffs to prevail in civil suits against providers of medical care. In doing so, both treat the emotion of regret as a distinct injury that may give rise to a range of legal …

Uab Magazine - Fall/Winter 2024, University Of Alabama At Birmingham

UAB Magazine

No abstract provided.

99th Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition: Final Round, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

Henry Munroe Campbell was a distinguished lawyer who served as legal counsel to the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents for several years.

He was born in 1854, the son of famed Michigan Supreme Court Justice James V. Campbell. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1876 and later from the University of Michigan Law School. In 1878, he established a law partnership in Detroit with Henry Russell. Over the years, the firm prospered and continues today as the Detroit-based firm Dickinson Wright PLLC.

Campbell became an attorney of considerable eminence in Michigan and was widely regarded as a …

Geological And Environmental Sciences - 2024, Dept. Of Geological And Environmental Sciences

Geological and Environmental Sciences News

• Greetings from the Department Chair
• Thank You to our Donors
• Faculty Updates
• Emeritus Faculty Updates
• MGRRE Updates
• MGS Updates
• Geosciences Advisory Council
• Student Clubs
• Awards and Honors, 2024
• Department Graduates
• Publications 2023–24

The Effects Of Early Developmental Co-Exposure To Alcohol And Nicotine Via E-Cigarettes On Anxiety- And Motor-Related Behaviors In Mice, Carley Cirafesi

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Thirty percent of people who report consumption of alcohol while pregnant simultaneously report consuming nicotine. Prenatal co-exposure to alcohol and nicotine has increased with the popularity of electronic cigarettes due to their presumed safety, yet e-cigarette use may have a greater impact on fetal development than traditional cigarettes. Prenatal exposure to alcohol or nicotine is associated with increased anxiety-related behaviors and impaired motor coordination later in life, yet it is unknown whether prenatal co-exposure to alcohol and nicotine exacerbates these effects, particularly via e-cigarettes. This project examined the effects of co-exposure to alcohol and nicotine via e-cigarettes during early development …

The Party’S Missionaries: The Experiences Of African Students In China During The Twentieth And Twenty-First Centuries

The Graduate Review

No abstract provided.

International Virtual Exchange During And Beyond The Pandemic, Ian Mcintosh

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The first goal of this chapter is to describe the virtual class. The second is to demonstrate just how easy such exchanges are when using technology such as the CN (Course Networking), which is like Facebook for academia. This software, plus the use of What’s App for free mobile calling, allowed students from both countries to get to know one another and explore course topics well beyond what can be delivered in a classroom setting. Finally, I will share information on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and some of the impressive discoveries made by the students in their respective …

Online Education, Honors, And The Engaged University: Modeling Experiential Learning For Fully Online Students At Fort Hays State University, Kevin S. Amidon, Gregory Atkins

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This essay outlines the principles upon which the Fort Hays State University Honors Online initiative will be based and proposes ways of achieving successful honors outcomes in student-centered ways that are appropriate and meaningful to both on-campus and online cohorts. We propose a structure guided by a Community of Inquiry (COI) framework that respects and reflects the social, cognitive, and academic needs of diverse students as individuals and groups. This results in a concentric curricular model in which the student’s academic major field provides a broad, encompassing space for inner fields of co-curricular experiential learning and service. Honors staff work …

Honors Online: Teaching, Learning, And Building Community Virtually In Honors Education: Front And Back Matter, Victoria M. Bryan, Cat Stanfield

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Front and back matter from Honors Online: Teaching, Learning, and Building Community Virtually in Honors Education (NCHC, 2024), edited by Victoria M. Bryan and Cat Stanfield.

Rhizophora Mangle (Red Mangrove) Seedling Success In Different Habitats In Mosquito Lagoon, Florida, Usa, Mekail N. Negash

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Mangroves provide many ecosystem services in coastal environments around the world. These include water quality improvement, creating habitats for terrestrial and aquatic species, and stabilizing shorelines. In central Florida, the red mangrove Rhizophora mangle is a common species in coastal wetlands, and recently the number of individuals successfully recruiting to intertidal oyster reefs has greatly increased, possibly because biogeochemical hot spots are present on oyster reefs due to nutrient-rich biodeposits from the live oysters. To understand how well R. mangle responds in terms of survival and growth to the suite of variables associated within these two unique habitats, I tracked …

Film As Ritual: Healing From Complex Trauma And Transmuting Pain Through Film, Lorraine I. Sovern

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Forward Fast, Always/Never (Together Forever) and Shotgun Baby are three short experimental documentary films as part of the requirements for earning a Master of Fine Arts in Feature Film Production from the University of Central Florida. These films focus on the unique power of cinema and its ability to assist in healing from complex trauma. Three films were produced on an artisanal, micro-budget scale.

This body of work confronts and examines the significant traumas from an abusive childhood upbringing (Shotgun Baby), the effects of misogyny in Western media on my developing filmic sensibilities (Forward Fast), and …

Is This The Real Life, Or Is This Just Fantasy? Assessing Species Distribution Model Realism And Applicability With Virtual And Empirical Species, Hannah R. Bevan

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Species distribution models (SDMs) can be important tools for proactive conservation management if they are realistic. Unfortunately, achieving and assessing SDM realism is challenging given the general limitations of scientific models and empirical species data. We addressed the issue of achieving realism with high model quality and reproducibility by reviewing 200 SDMs and cataloguing methods for data availability, response and predictor variables, model fitting, and model performance. We addressed the issue of assessing SDM realism by comparing known and predicted distributions of habitat suitability with simulated data for various model fitting choices. Finally, we applied and compared subsequent lessons to …

Colectivo Güeña. El Colectivo Lgtbiq+ En El Ámbito Rural Español, Cristina Marqués Martínez

Grado en Diseño Multimedia y Gráfico

El Colectivo Güeña es un colectivo editorial creado en torno al concepto de pertenecer al colectivo LGTBIQ+ en el entorno rural español. Su propósito principal es la representación y visibilización clara de dicho concepto, todo ello desde un prisma de respeto y empatía. Para la consecución de este objetivo, el colectivo publicará de manera mensual un fanzine en el que se recoja un reportaje a una persona del colectivo LGTBIQ+ que viva o haya vivido en el mundo rural. El fanzine es además elegido como formato editorial ya que tras una profunda investigación, la libertad temática que ofrece y la …

Classification Of Sow Postures Using Convolutional Neural Network And Depth Images, Md Towfiqur Rahman, Tami M. Brown-Brandl, Gary A. Rohrer, Sudhendu R. Sharma, Yeyin Shi

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

The United States swine industry reports an average preweaning mortality of approximately 16% where approximately 6% of them are attributed to piglets overlayed by sows. Detecting postural transitions and estimating sows’ time budgets for different postures are valuable information for breeders and engineering design of farrowing facilities to eventually reduce piglet death. Computer vision tools can help monitor changes in animal posture accurately and efficiently. To create a more robust system and eliminate varying lighting issues within a day including daytime/ nighttime differences, there is an advantage to using depth cameras over digital cameras. In this study, a computer vision …

Biom 3710: Physiological Systems And Modeling (Syllabus), Stephen Strain

Biomedical Engineering Syllabi Archive

Course Description: Fundamentals of control theory and mathematical modeling and analysis as applied to physiological systems.

Historical Reappearance: Tracing The Impacts Of Argentina's Los Desaparecidos To The Rise Of President Javier Milei, Analise Sofia Chain

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In 1976 the Argentine government was taken over by a right wing military junta, attempting to “save” their country from communism. Military officials kidnapped, tortured and killed between 10,000 and 30,000 Argentine citizens, who were thought of as “guerrillas” supporting the leftist government and the late president Juan Perón. These victims are regarded as the disappeared, or Los Desaparecidos; due to the fact their families had no knowledge of where their loved ones were taken, or what was happening to them. Many of these young, liberal advocates were never seen or heard from again, their remains lost to history, and …

Thematic Mapping Of Apidae Holdings Within The University Of Arkansas Arthropod Museum, Baylie L. Day, Ashley P.G. Dowling, Austin Jones

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Museum biological collections store species data that can be utilized in research on biodiversity, environmental change, invasive species, public health, and disease. The University of Arkansas Arthropod Museum, which began in 1905, houses over 750,000 specimens and has not yet been digitized. Making data publicly accessible via the internet makes the data available to the entire scientific community. The goal of this project was to create a digital resource to allow greater access to the University of Arkansas Arthropod Museum holdings. To do so, data from Bombus (bumble bee) and Xylocopa (carpenter bee) specimens were entered into a database in …

Stream Restoration Effectiveness In Mullins Creek In Fayetteville, Arkansas, Amadeo Scott, Shannon Speir

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Lotic waterways are vital for habitat, food, water, and flood protection, but urbanization poses a major threat to their integrity. Runoff from urban surfaces leads to pollution, flashiness, loss of biodiversity, and other symptoms, also known as Urban Stream Syndrome (USS). Streams can be restored in order to combat USS, but most restorations are not monitored, so their long-term effectiveness is unknown. This study quantitatively evaluated a decade-old stream restoration in Fayetteville, Arkansas, to assess its effectiveness in combating USS and achieving set restoration goals, and to gain insights for future restoration projects. Restoration goals included decreasing erosion and sedimentation, …

Encouraging Students To “Think Like A Scientist” Through Picture Books Designed To Support Research-Based Science Education, Emily Mae Starr

Children's Literature (MA) Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to develop a series of nonfiction picture books, Think Like a Scientist, to help children see themselves as scientists by stepping into the shoes of real-life scientists. Each book in the series focuses on a crosscutting concept (one of the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards) and how three scientists used the concept when making revolutionary discoveries. Novel to the series are strategically spaced questions that encourage readers to interact with the text by engaging in the same thought processes as real scientists. The series is intended support research-based elementary science …

Changes In Streamflow Statistics And Catchment Land Uses Across Select Usgs Gages In Northwest And West-Central Arkansas, Timothy Mcmullen, Erin Grantz, Graham Thompson, Brian E. Haggard

Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education

Since 1901, heavy rainfall events have increased in the United States in both intensity and frequency, and human population in the United States has increased, resulting in significant land use changes. Both trends contribute to an increase in observed flood magnitude and frequency. To determine if a relationship exists between land use/land cover and changing stream flows in northwest Arkansas, this study analyzed temporal changes in various flow statistics for 14 stream gages and compared the rates of change in flow statistics from gages on streams with watersheds that have varying land uses, i.e., urban, agricultural, and undeveloped. Mann-Kendall analysis …

A Vascular Flora Of The Southern Inyo Mountains, Inyo County, California, Maria J. Jesus

Aliso: A Journal of Systematic and Floristic Botany

The Inyo Mountains in Inyo County, California, are an arid mountain range located between the eastern Sierra Nevada and Death Valley National Park. The study site is ca. 433 km² (167 sq mi), ranging in elevation from 549 to 2955 m (1800 to 9694 ft), and comprises the southern extent of the Inyo Mountains where the Great Basin Desert and Mojave Desert bioregions meet. This area had been poorly represented by botanical collections despite an abundance of distinctive biogeographic features and high diversity in rare and endemic plant species. The objectives of this study were to complete a specimen-based, …

A Proposed International Legal Instrument To Combat Future Zoonotic Outbreaks, Mikiela Vazquez

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Rise Of Counter-Terrorism And The Demise Of Human Rights, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

Emory International Law Review

This lecture addressed the consolidation and expansion of counter-terrorism norms and institutions since 9/11. The rise of counterterrorism has enabled the consolidation of autocracy, sustained democratic backsliding and undermined the capacity of civil society to function across the globe. The impact on human rights has been extensive and highly detrimental to the most vulnerable individuals and groups across the world. Drawing on my work as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights since my 2017 appointment, the lecture shows the hard choices that must be made nationally and globally to reverse these trends.

Decoding The Exposome: Data Science Methodologies And Implications In Exposome-Wide Association Studies (Exwass), Ming Kei Chung, John S. House, Farida S. Akhtari, Konstantinos C. Makris, Michael A. Langston, Khandaker Talat Islam, Philip Holmes, Marc Chadeau-Hyam, Alex I. Smirnov, Xiuxia Du, Anne E. Thessen, Yuxia Cui, Kai Zhang, Arjun K. Manrai, Alison Motsinger-Reif, Chirag J. Patel

Pathology Research and Scholarship

This paper explores the exposome concept and its role in elucidating the interplay between environmental exposures and human health. We introduce two key concepts critical for exposomics research. Firstly, we discuss the joint impact of genetics and environment on phenotypes, emphasizing the variance attributable to shared and nonshared environmental factors, underscoring the complexity of quantifying the exposome's influence on health outcomes. Secondly, we introduce the importance of advanced data-driven methods in large cohort studies for exposomic measurements. Here, we introduce the exposome-wide association study (ExWAS), an approach designed for systematic discovery of relationships between phenotypes and various exposures, identifying significant …

Synthesis, Characterization, And Performance Assessment Of Reusable And Biodegradable Antimicrobial Polymeric Membranes For Aerosolized Pathogen Inactivation And Filtration, Ebuka Ogbuoji

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

Air filtration technology has proven effective in purifying air by trapping particulates which can cause adverse health effects. High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, capable of capturing over 99.99% of PM_0.3, are recommended for critical applications. However, conventional non-woven HEPA filters rely on electrostatic interactions to trap smaller particles, which can deplete over time or after cleaning, reducing filtration efficiency and posing health risks. Additionally, these filters contribute to plastic waste.

This dissertation investigated the feasibility of using flat sheet polymeric membranes fabricated via nonsolvent-induced phase separation (NIPS) as reusable and biodegradable alternatives to commercially available non-biodegradable air …

Fda Modernization Act 2.0: The Beginning Of The End For Animal Testing In Drug Development, Julia Williams

Animal Law Review

Historical drug testing protocols utilized animal testing to determine whether drugs were safe and effective for use in humans. However, recognizing that testing drugs on other species is potentially dangerous for humans, troubled by failures, unnecessarily expensive, and time consuming, the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, passed in December 2022, removed animal testing as a requirement for new drug applications. While this was an important step forward, a notable failure of that Act is that it did not go far enough to end animal testing. Accordingly, this Article proposes an FDA Modernization Act 3.0.

The FDA Modernization Act 3.0 would ensure …