Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Cerebellar Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation On Anxiety, Shivangi Bhardwaj

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anxiety is one of the most prevalent mental health disorders in the U.S. Individuals of all ages are affected by anxiety. Therefore, research into anxiety and its potential treatment has constantly been an area of interest. Newer approaches to managing anxiety include non-invasive stimulation techniques, such as Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), because of its accessibility and effectiveness. Past tDCS work typically focused on regions in the frontal lobe. However, tDCS over the cerebellum has not received as much attention compared to the cerebrum, despite recent work demonstrating cerebellar involvement in emotion processing. Thus, a better understanding of how cerebellar …

Flames And Fluids: Design Motivations For Painterly Stylization Of Effects, Nathaniel R. Edmonds

All Theses

Visual effects are widely used in animated media to immerse the audience, direct attention, and guide the perceptions and emotional responses to the world and characters therein. In these uses, effects act as narrative elements in a film. Visual effects can include weather (e.g., fog), visually distinct materials(e.g., water), and other visually interesting physical phenomena (e.g., fire or the fracturing of an object). Contemporary animations and, by extension, their animated effects are increasingly being produced in carefully crafted styles, ranging from the comic-book posterization seen in the Spiderverse franchise of animated films, to the painterly stylization of Puss in Boots: …

What Makes A Cozy Game Cozy? Looking Through The Lens Of Feminism And 4e Cognition, Mary Catherine M. Wilcox

All Theses

Why do some games feel cozy, and others miss the mark, even if they are tricked out in bright colors and festooned with bows? This thesis examines the emerging genre of “cozy games” to better understand why some titles successfully evoke comfort and relaxation while others fail, despite relying on conventionally cute aesthetics or farming-sim mechanics. Although cozy games have grown rapidly in popularity over the past decade, the genre remains under-studied and is often dismissed as frivolous, reflecting the broader historical devaluation of media associated with women. Accordingly, this study argues that understanding cozy games requires examining women’s relationship …

Trace Element Concentrations In Tissues And Otoliths Of Fishes From Artificial Reefs In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico: The Role Of Size, Age, And Trophic Position, Blaine Savoie

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Nearshore artificial reefs and fishes relying on them to forage and refuge can be susceptible to trace element (TE) pollutants from anthropogenic sources. Although some TE are essential, higher concentrations can cause detrimental effects and concern regarding consumption. This study assesses TE accumulation in nearshore reef fishes in the northern Gulf of Mexico, a region influenced by coastal riverine discharge, where fishing has socioeconomic importance. Five fish species from six eco-reefs were collected and analyzed for TE. An inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer was used to analyze the TE concentrations of muscle, liver, and otoliths. TE concentrations of tissues and …

Comparative Analysis Of Rigging Implementations, John E. Thomas

Master of Fine Arts in Digital Media Culminating Experience

Rigging acts as a bottleneck between modeling and animation, yet core rigging principles and procedures have largely stagnated over the past two decades. However, cutting-edge rigging systems have begun appearing recently in software not typically used for animation. These tools are proposed to mitigate the need for rigging artists. These novel systems now force teams to evaluate what system is best for their projects. Artists have focused their analysis of rigging tools on how they interact with, or compare to, existing pipeline structures, concepts, and deadlines. This research centers on the implementation and development of tools and systems ranging from …

Surgeon Health And Well-Being Initiative: A Survey Of General And Orthopedic Surgery Residents' Reports Of Musculoskeletal Pain., Maryam Mohamed, Grace J Kim, Kristen Conrad-Schnetz, Zhan Yang, Mary Carneval

Ambulatory and Primary Care Articles

Background Musculoskeletal (MSK) pain is a well-known risk among surgeons, resulting from the multifactorial physical demands of the occupation. Because of the demands faced by resident surgeons, many individuals find themselves with sometimes debilitating MSK pain. Although these risks are well documented and there have been proposed solutions, there is little discussion on the role that osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) can play in relief of MSK pain over time in this population. Objective The purpose of this study is to determine the prevalence and distribution of MSK pain among general and orthopedic surgery residents at Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF). Based …

Carroll County Extension Update August 2026, Mikayla Cerney

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

2026 Deerfield Fair 4-H Exhibit Building Premium Book, Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

2026 Deerfield Fair 4-H Animal Premium Book, Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

The Economics And Viability Of Organic Forage And Grain Production In Utah, Mackenzie Lee

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

Utah farmers face significant financial and agronomic challenges when transitioning into organic forage and grain production. The state’s high-desert climate, alkaline soils, and limited irrigation water make organic production more expensive and riskier than in many other regions.

This study evaluates a ten-year rotation built around alfalfa, which acts as a natural nitrogen engine for the system. Because alfalfa fixes large amounts of nitrogen, it reduces fertilizer costs for later crops such as organic corn. However, farmers must first survive the three-year transition period, during which they must follow organic rules but cannot sell their crops at organic prices.

Using …

Flexible Grazing: Evaluating Stocker Cattle As A Drought Management Tool For Utah Livestock Producers?, Ross Israelsen

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

Drought is a persistent concern in the western United States, often leading to reduced forage production, overgrazing, and economic challenges for livestock producers. This study evaluates the economic feasibility of incorporating stocker cattle as a flexible drought management strategy under varying forage conditions across four Utah grazing locations: Park Valley, Nephi, Vernal, and Beaver. The Rangeland Analysis Platform (RAP) was used to estimate annual forage production and stocking rates from 2001 through 2025. Four stocking-rate scenarios (100%, 75%, 60%, and 50% cow–calf stocking rates) were evaluated using a Net Present Value (NPV) framework to compare the economic performance of traditional …

The Legend Of The Bear Lake Monster, Melissa Anderson Asay

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

The Bear Lake Monster is a legend that has persisted for centuries. This monster is rooted in Shoshone oral traditions and hold the potential to be based off of fossils found in the Shoshone territory. This living legend was later amplified by Mormon settlers. One settler in particular, Joseph C. Rich, played a significant role in shaping its narrative. Though he eventually admitted to fabricating sightings to encourage settlement, belief in the creature remains alive today. The serpent’s presence in local lore has undeniably influenced the Bear Lake region, shaping both its identity and tourism industry. This legend serves as …

Tales, Traditions, And Tides: The Little Logan River And Its Role In Cache Valley's History, Culture, And Conservation, Emily A. Kovacic

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

The Little Logan River (LLR) plays a vital role in the cultural, historical, and ecological landscape of Cache Valley, Utah. Amid growing concerns raised by the Logan River Watershed Project (LRWP), which threatens to alter the river’s environment, this project seeks to understand the significance of the LLR as a cultural and recreational asset through collected oral histories. Building on folkloric perspectives of place-based storytelling, this thesis introduces the idea of vivus locum, or “that place which is alive,” through the example of the LLR to the study of folkloristics. The concept of vivus locum emphasizes the importance of …

The Development Of A Plant Database For Waterwise Plants Along The Intermountain West, Tyler G. Peterson

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

This thesis presents the rationale behind the importance of accurate 3D plant models. The research conducted provides logical explanations for why we should accurately represent plants in our 3D models, not only as landscape architects but as designers in general. In addition to this research, a database of waterwise plants was produced to provide designers with a resource to better represent landscapes. During the creation of this database, detailed process records were maintained to enable others to continue to add to and build on the work done within this thesis. It is hoped that this database, begun in this thesis, …

Isolation, Identification, And Enzymatic Screening Of Fungi From Utah Dryland Soils For Industrial And Waste Valorization Applications, Jessica Lorena Silva Cuero

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

Agricultural waste accumulation presents environmental challenges but also opportunities for biological valorization into value-added products. Fungi are particularly well-suited for this purpose due to their capacity to produce extracellular enzymes involved in the degradation of complex organic substrates. Dryland ecosystems represent a promising source for bioprospecting microbes capable of producing such enzymes. Drylands harbor a high diversity of extremophilic microorganisms that can withstand harsh conditions, extreme heat, UV, and low nutrients using unique adaptations. This suggests that these microbes are resilient and capable of surviving under varying conditions and still produce enzymes for biotransformation. The objective of this study was …

Parametric Assessment Of Nicotine Vapor Self-Administration In Rats, Tiffany Alexandra Gonzalez-Gutierrez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The increasing prevalence of electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use among adolescents highlights the need to identify factors that promote nicotine vapor use in populations most susceptible to its long-term consequences. This requires translationally relevant animal models of nicotine vapor self-administration (VSA). Accordingly, the goal of this dissertation was to evaluate 2 key factors hypothesized to influence nicotine VSA in rats, including age and e-liquid vehicle composition. Given recent mandates on studying sex as a biological variable, the present work included both female and male rats. Aim 1 compared VSA behavior during adolescence (adolescent-onset) or adulthood (adult-onset) in groups that received vapor …

The Augmented Matching Law, Matias A. Avellaneda

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Every living organism, including humans, has a finite amount of time available: 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year, and a certain number of years in its life. At every moment, such an organism will be engaging in one of a multitude of possible activities, such as eating, sleeping, or reading this dissertation. We use the term choice to denote the way in which the organism distributes its time among all these activities, and some of these choice patterns are more beneficial to the organism than others, showcasing the importance of understanding the mechanisms underlying choice. A …

Fibrous Protein Biomaterials: Characterization Of Solitary Bee Silk And Cocoons, And Development Of Recombinant Hagfish And Bee Silk Materials, Oran Wasserman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

This dissertation explores two complementary aspects of fibrous protein biomaterials: the characterization of understudied naturally occurring solitary bee silk and cocoons; and recombinant expression and biomaterial formation of recombinant hagfish intermediate filaments (rHIF) and a single Osmia lignaria Say (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) silk protein. Some solitary bee species, which make up about 75% of all bee species, spin silk to construct protective cocoons during development. Despite the importance of silk and cocoons to the solitary bees' life history, their properties remain largely unexplored. This dissertation presents a novel method for isolating and testing individual silk fibers without interfering with the development …

Viability Assessment Of Bovine Embryos: A Public Dataset And Deep Learning Baselines, Erfan Khayyati

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Improving the success rates of cattle breeding is essential for sustainable agriculture, global food security, and high-quality livestock production. Currently, determining whether a lab-grown bovine embryo is healthy enough for a successful pregnancy requires highly trained experts to manually evaluate days of continuous time-lapse video footage. This process is not only incredibly time-consuming but also highly subjective; human reviewers often suffer from visual fatigue when tracking subtle, microscopic cellular changes over a seven-day period, leading to significant disagreement among even top experts on an embryo’s true potential. Furthermore, assessing bovine embryos is notoriously difficult due to their dark, lipid-dense cellular …

Secure Agricultural Futures: Re-Defining And -Imagining Agricultural Water Landscapes In The Us West, Britta L. Schumacher

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Aridity is swiftly becoming the US West’s new normal. As agricultural communities adjust to persistent growing-season scarcity, they find their livelihoods under increasing threat. This points to the urgency of finding paths toward more secure water futures. A piece of this future puzzle includes water (re-)distribution – taking excess from one place and delivering it to another in need. To begin thinking about (re-)distribution, this dissertation engages with three mixed-methods and multiscale studies. The first study pairs county-level data across the 11 westernmost US states with survey data collected from individual producers in Utah to assess past and current trends …

Nicotine Aerosol Self-Administration And Reward Potentiation: Using A Preclinical Model Of Vaping To Investigate The Stimulus-Enhancing Properties Of Nicotine, Kiernan T. Callister

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States and worldwide. Nicotine, the primary component of tobacco, is responsible for the addiction to tobacco and nicotine products, such as Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS). The widespread consumption of these products is motivated by several complex properties of nicotine, such as its ability to increase the rewarding value of stimuli in the environment. Although reward enhancement has been demonstrated via smoking and other forms of nicotine intake, it is unclear if these effects extend to electronic cigarettes. The present study used an animal model of …

Bridging Animal Production And Human Nutrition: How Production Ecology Shapes The Nutritional Quality Of Terrestrial Animal Foods And Human Omega-3 Status, Joseph Vinod Varre

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The question at the center of this dissertation is simple: does the way food is produced change the quality of the food itself in ways that matter for human health? Across a series of studies on bison meat, eggs, and human dietary intervention, the answer was yes. This work began with a broad look at the modern food system and the nutritional consequences of industrialized diets. In particular, it focused on the growing imbalance between omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids in the Western diet. This balance matters because omega-3 fats support heart, brain, and immune health, and diets high in …

Bees In The Trap: Leveraging Bumble Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Bombus) Bycatch For Ecological And Genetic Insights, Tori L. Strausser

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Managers rely on insect monitoring traps to detect insect pests that harm crops and protect food and other agricultural production. However, these traps also capture non-target insects, including bumble bees, raising concerns about whether repeated trapping could harm pollinator populations. This thesis explores whether bees caught as non-targets, also called bycatch, in routine pest monitoring traps can be used to better understand bumble bee populations, and whether traps pose risks to their long-term persistence. Using bumble bees collected from pest surveillance traps placed in crop fields across Utah, this research examined seasonal patterns in body size, timing of capture, and …

Youth Agricultural Engagement And Its Association With Dietary Diversity, Household Food Insecurity, And Nutritional Status In Southwest Nigeria, Sherif Olasoji

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Youth remain underserved in nutrition research, policy, and programming despite being an integral part of the food systems. While the nutrition-sensitive agriculture framework has been established, there is limited evidence demonstrating how youth engagement in agriculture can serve as a pathway to improve nutritional outcomes. The study assessed youth agricultural engagement and its association with household dietary diversity, household food insecurity, and nutritional status in southwest Nigeria.

Using a cross-sectional design, data on socio-demographic characteristics, agricultural engagement, dietary diversity, household food insecurity, body mass index, and skin carotenoids were collected from 143 youth aged 15 to 35 from Ekiti, Osun, …

Reciprocal Teaching With Emergent Bilingual Students: Promoting Academic Reading Strategies And Fostering Hope, Lorissa K. Nelson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Many students struggle with reading comprehension, and research shows that low literacy skills in a student’s first language can unfortunately lead to lower rates of university program completion, regardless of the language of instruction. When students feel empowered and confident in their ability to achieve their academic goals, they are much more likely to take ownership of their learning. In fact, students who actively demonstrate hopeful thinking and behaviors are consistently more successful in their academic journeys.

My research explores how we can better support these high school students— specifically concurrent enrollment (CE) students—by examining the impact of Reciprocal Teaching. …

Advancing Management Strategies For Two Promising Mason Bee Species (Osmia Ribifloris And Osmia Bruneri) For Berry Pollination, Miranda L. Jones

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Bee management can broadly refer to human manipulation of one or multiple parts of a bee’s lifecycle. Managing honey bees, commonly referred to as beekeeping, is responsible for providing most pollination for global food crops. However, using more than one bee species for crop pollination can have many benefits. Benefits include better crop pollination and insurance in case one bee species underperforms or its population collapses. Some bees within the genus Osmia are already widely managed for crop pollination because their developmental lifecycle allows bee managers to readily deploy pollinating bees in sync with varying crop blooms, and for certain …

Three Essays In Discrete Choice Analysis: Valuation, Attention Level, And Spatial Heterogeneity, Marcelo Pignatari

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Understanding how people value food labels and environmental goods is essential for designing policies, incentives, and market mechanisms that improve the well-being of the population. In this study, we found that a local label indicating that fruit was produced in Utah makes Utahns value strawberries, gala apples, and dried tart cherries more. An organic label has a similar effect, which is especially strong for dried tart cherries. In contrast, a freshness label only increases value for fruits with a shorter shelf life, such as strawberries. We also found that people who chose to access clarifying information about what these labels …

Using A Prerequisite Skills Assessment To Identify Effective Communication Modalities For Mand Training, Christine White

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Many children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) need support to learn how to communicate their wants and needs. This study examined three different ways to teach children to request preferred items or activities: using sign language, exchanging pictures, and speaking. We compared how three children learned each communication method to determine whether their existing skills influenced which method was most effective. No clear relationship was found between children's existing abilities and how well they learned each communication method. These findings suggest that selecting the most effective communication approach may require considering each child's individual strengths and learning history rather than …

Asynchronous Intervention For Students With Disabilities On Career Awareness, Erica Rood

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Historically, students with disabilities have fewer opportunities to prepare for post-high school life, and this is especially true when it comes to getting a job. This is also true for those students with complex support needs (i.e., autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, other health impairment). One way to help individuals with disabilities have greater success after high school is to teach them about different careers.

This study was for high school students with disabilities who have complex support needs. It focused on helping them learn about different careers through online modules. The study looked at whether this type of learning …

Pavlovian Conditioning And Self-Control: From Laboratory To Classroom Application, Saba Mahmoudi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Impulsive choice, the preference for a smaller-sooner reward (SSR) over a larger-later reward (LLR), is associated with various challenging behaviors (e.g., gambling and substance-used disorders). Many interventions can reduce impulsive choice but those that produce long-lasting effects typically require long training durations or are difficult to implement in applied settings. This dissertation evaluated a novel Pavlovian training approach designed to promote self-control. In Experiment 1, procedures from Mahmoudi and Madden (2024) were replicated in the laboratory with the addition of a truly random control group. The study also assessed whether presenting the conditioned stimulus (CS) before a choice would increase …