Digital Commons Network^™

Age-Related Variations Of The Hemodynamic Response Function Spatially Resolved Across Human Cerebral Cortex, Nooshin J Fesharaki, Amanda Taylor, David Ress

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Normal aging leads to regional vascular and neural alterations. Age-related impairments in neurovascular coupling (NVC) affect the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) hemodynamic response function (HRF) measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging, causing changes in both amplitude and temporal dynamics. Previously, global, systematic age-related changes in HRF characteristics were demonstrated, consistent with known microvascular aging effects. In this follow-up study, a standard space was used to compare spatially resolved cortical HRF dynamics between sex-balanced groups of young and older adults. The results showed substantial age-related differences in both HRF amplitude and timing across distinct cortical regions. Nearly twice as much cortical area exhibited …

2025 Oregon Statewide Homelessness Estimates, Minji Cho, Jacen Greene, Marisa Zapata, Franklin H. Spurbeck

Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative Publications and Presentations

The Point-in-Time (PIT) Count is a census of people experiencing both sheltered and unsheltered homelessness on a single night in January. The federal government requires this at least every other year as a condition of funding it distributes to Continuums of Care (CoCs), networks of government agencies and service providers that manage homelessness services and funding in specific regions. In 2025, all Oregon CoCs conducted an unsheltered count and submitted both unsheltered and sheltered PIT Counts data.

This report provides county-level unsheltered and sheltered totals for all Oregon counties and across the state, as well as the Housing Inventory Count …

Subjective Glib Dynamics: Using An Alien Society To Investigate Reactions To Leader And Member Norm Deviance, Catie Burtch

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Social groups are built by members and leaders who form consensus on the defining attributes of their groups. Individual group members look to senior members and leaders to learn what it means to be a member of that group. Thus, norm maintenance is an important aspect of group health. The subjective group dynamics model details the specific group contexts under which people derogate ingroup members for transgressing norms. However, ingroup leaders are treated differently from regular group members and are given leniency for their transgressions. The current research extends these two bodies of work by directly comparing the consequences of …

Geographic Variation In Proteomic Responses To Ocean Acidification In A Cold-Water Coral (Balanophyllia Elegans), Keana A. Richmond

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In the face of a rapidly changing climate, assessing organismal responses to future stressors in the context of current, natural exposure to stress could provide key insights to understanding marine ecosystem resilience. I used Balanophyllia elegans, a cold-water, solitary, azooxanthellate coral as a model to better understand how varying oceanographic conditions across its geographic range have shaped its ability to tolerate and potentially adapt to current and future ocean acidification conditions. I collected B. elegans individuals from four sites across 2,500km of their range and subjected them to two pH treatments to investigate site-specific protein expression in response to …

Early Successional Response To Stream Daylighting In Redwood National And State Parks, Orick, California, Rylee Rawson

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In-channel stream restoration projects can act as both disturbance and recovery mechanisms, disrupting existing conditions to reestablish the hydrologic and ecological processes that sustain stream ecosystems. These interventions initiate successional trajectories in which channel form and biological communities reorganize over time. In Redwood National and State Parks (California, USA), the Redwoods Rising initiative restores buried headwater channels by recontouring legacy logging roads and daylighting streams buried by Humboldt crossings. Using the National Park Service Klamath Network wadable stream monitoring protocol, I evaluated nine restored reaches spanning one to five years post-restoration, alongside old-growth reference reaches and available pre-treatment data. I …

Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus Kisutch) Response To Habitat Restoration Through Space And Time: Monitoring Growth, Survival, And Movement In A Restored Habitat Network, Carter Perez Adamson

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Despite the decline of coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), Prairie Creek, a tributary of Redwood Creek in northern California, remains a coho salmon stronghold. The restoration of juvenile coho rearing habitat was identified as a recovery objective in this watershed by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Among the restoration projects addressing this objective are an ongoing project on Prairie Creek and its tributary Skunk Cabbage Creek, and a prior effort on Strawberry Creek (a tributary of Redwood Creek’s estuary). Standard monitoring methods for assessing project success have limitations and may be improved by measuring salmon use of restored habitats …

Navigating Liminality: Building Resources For And With Undocumented Students, Yaneyry Delfin Martinez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Rooted in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and Liberation Sociology, this project outlines an institutional blueprint for the resources and support systems needed to address the lived realities of undocumented students at Cal Poly Humboldt (CPH). Conducted during the second Trump Administration amidst escalating hostility towards immigrants and attacks on DEI initiatives, this work documents both the structural conditions shaping undocumented students’ lives and the collective resistance that emerged in response. Furthermore, it examines how immigration policy, access to and restrictions on federal and state aid, geographic conditions, and on-campus barriers reproduce and maintain legal liminality within higher education. Grounded in …

Repairing Estranged Death: Care, Politics And Ecology In The Us Funeral Industry, Cecilia Catherine Rodriguez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The industrialization of death practices in the US has separated humanity from natural cycles while centering white settler colonial norms that marginalize other cultural ways of caring for the dead. Through necropolitics, the contemporary death industry embodies capitalist values of commodification and a monopolization of care, separating death from community and its ecological cycles. Black and Indigenous feminist knowledges understand death as not a discrete event but instead as an ongoing process that shapes our relationships with both the human and more-than-human worlds. Engaging with feminist political ecologies, I extend a conversation about care and repair to contemporary death practices …

Examining The Physiological Stress-Reducing Effects Of Virtual Nature Exposure And Slow Breathing, Jesse Benefiel

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In a time of excess stress, it is essential to examine accessible stress-reduction methods. Research has demonstrated that virtual nature exposure and slow breathing can independently reduce stress, but the literature is lacking with regard to their combined effects. The present study aimed to replicate independent effects of breathing and nature on stress and to test for potential effects, including whether their combination would produce an interaction effect. Using a 2 Environment (Natural v. Control) by 2 Breathing (Slow v. Normal) between-subjects design, 63 participants completed a modified color-word Stroop task to induce stress and were then exposed to either …

Neoliberalism And The Crimes Of The Powerful: Transforming The State During The First Trump Era (2017-2021), Charles Brandon Lonon

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This thesis examines the way the American capitalist state transformed during Donald Trump’s first presidential term (2017-2021), especially focusing on neoliberal policy and the framework of the crimes of the powerful. This thesis aims to answer the question of how neoliberalism transformed the state under Donald Trump. Drawing on Nicos Poulantzas’ theory of authoritarian statism and Frank Pearce’s conception of crimes of the powerful, this thesis examines how the state becomes more authoritarian to protect capital accumulation and the capitalist class. The research shows that Trump weaponized authoritarian populist rhetoric that targeted women, immigrants, and vulnerable populations to build support …

Assessing A Half-Century Of Change In Understory Plant Range And Frequency In The Klamath Mountains Of California, Emily Jean Jackson

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The effects of climate change have and will continue to impact plant communities, including by potentially shifting species’ ranges towards topographically sheltered, cooler locations or higher elevations. In 2024, I resampled 140 vegetation plots established in 1969 in the Klamath Mountains of Northern California to assess range shifts of 46 understory species over a 55-year period. During this time, the elevational distribution of all species has increased significantly by an average of 26.9 m, but this increase was slower than necessary to track historic temperature niches given regional warming (215-311 m). Despite this overall increase, only four species exhibited significant …

Taking A Seat In The Circle: Decolonizing Gender Roles That Argue Against The Participation Of Feminine Bodies At The Big Drum, Juli Suzukawa

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The origins of the Big Drum can be traced back to the 1860s when Tail Feather Woman, a Dakota woman, had a vision of its creation as a tool of resistance. The Big Drum has since expanded and can now be seen at various Indigenous ceremonies and social events. However, there has been controversy regarding the participation of feminine and queer bodies. While reasons for this vary, it has also contributed to harm amongst Indigenous youths that have a more fluid stand on gender identity and may not conform to colonial “gender norms”. In this paper, I will explore how …

Supporting Risky Outdoor Play Through Professional Development: A Quasi-Experimental Study Of Tk–6 Educators’ Attitudes, Justin Ross Burrill

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Children’s opportunities for active outdoor risky play have declined in many educational settings, despite evidence that manageable risk supports physical activity, self-regulation, confidence, resilience, and social participation. Educator attitudes and school culture may play an important role in determining whether children are offered developmentally appropriate opportunities for challenge, exploration, and autonomy. This quasi-experimental, single-group pretest-posttest study examined whether participation in a single-session professional development workshop was associated with changes in educators’ tolerance of risk in children’s play. Thirty educators attended a workshop focused on risky play, hazard-risk differentiation, inclusion of children with disabilities, loose-parts play, environmental affordances, and practitioner-informed implementation …

Reclaiming Presence: An Anthropological Study Of Digital Disconnection And Meaning-Making, Leslie De Paz

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Human attention is increasingly at risk in an unregulated digital ecosystem where overconsumption shapes neurological function, social interaction, and the ways people make meaning of everyday life. Dominant discourse around digital overuse tends to medicalize the problem, framing it as individual addiction or clinical dysfunction. In this thesis, I argue that such framing obscures what a cultural phenomenon is fundamentally, one in which people are actively questioning their relationship with technology, building awareness, and developing practices that help them slow down and reclaim agency within algorithmically mediated environments. This study draws on 22 semi-structured interviews with Gen Z and millennial …

Endocranial Lesions: A Paleopathological Study Of Late Medieval Skeletal Remains From Żelewo Poland, Francesca Aleen Meyer

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The site of Żelewo is located in a rural area of northwestern Poland, a region historically known as Pomerania. Skeletal remains from the cemetery associated with the archaeological site Żelewo 1-3, dating mostly to the 13th-15th centuries, are likely associated with a nearby Cistercian monastery. Numerous individuals from this site show evidence of endocranial lesions. To evaluate potential factors associated with the lesions, a differential diagnosis was performed based on macroscopic observations of endocranial lesion morphology and distribution. This study takes into account estimated age at death, biological sex, and other signs of pathology in the body. Potential confounding factors, …

Living With Water In Fields Landing & King Salmon: Community Knowledge Of Flooding And Adaptation Strategies In Coastal California, Kailin Sepp

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Known as “ground zero,” Humboldt Bay is among the most vulnerable areas to sea-level rise (SLR) due to geological and tectonic factors on the West Coast. While the land subsides, oceans rise, resulting in an area with one of the highest recorded rates of relative SLR on the West Coast. The residential communities of Fields Landing and King Salmon in South Humboldt Bay already experience regular coastal flooding. There is a need for better information and planning to understand the vulnerability to flooding/SLR and plan for adaptation. Typically, studies addressing flooding, such as vulnerability assessments and adaptation plans, are developed …

Pathos, Winter 2026, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Adriana Stanzione