Digital Commons Network^™

City Farm Slo: A Case Study Of Nonprofit Regenerative Agriculture, Carver Tunnell

Master's Theses

The focus of this thesis is to create a case study on City Farm SLO, a nonprofit based in San Luis Obispo, California, that has engaged in education and regenerative agriculture on City owned land since 2013. This case study is intended for use in undergraduate agribusiness and natural resource management courses, to encourage thoughtful discussion surrounding nonprofit and regenerative agricultural systems. The case presents the nonprofit at a time of relative success, having recently secured a lease renewal, extending stewardship 40 years into the future. However, the reliance on grants and donations threatens the security of the operation going …

How Lesson Type Shapes First-Grade Scienceengagement And Enjoyment, Stella Cybulski, Brooke Towner, Joy James

Journal of Youth Development

Although traditional classroom instruction often emphasizes passive forms of learning, growing evidence highlights the value of active play in promoting curiosity and conceptual development. Grounded in guided play theory, this study investigated how young learners experience science lessons across three instructional contexts: indoor inactive, indoor active, and outdoor active. Thirty-two first-grade students in a Title I laboratory school completed an enjoyment survey and drawing task following each lesson type. Results demonstrated that active play, particularly in outdoor contexts, was associated with higher enjoyment and more dynamic depictions of science learning. Thematic analysis of drawings indicated that students connected more deeply …

White Matter Microstructure Of Sensorimotor Projection Fibers In Chronic Low Back Pain, John R. White, Jennifer M.C. Vendemia, Zachary Baty, Sheri Silfies, Stephen A. Coombes

Faculty Publications

Introduction: 

Chronic low back pain (cLBP) is linked to altered cortical sensorimotor structure and function, yet white matter microstructure in sensorimotor projection fibers remains poorly characterized. Objective: To address this gap, we used diffusion MRI to comprehensively characterize sensorimotor projection fibers in 44 patients with cLBP and 41 matched healthy controls.

Methods: 

We estimated an array of microstructural measures, including fractional anisotropy (FA), extracellular free water fraction (FW), free water–corrected FA (fwcFA), and neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) metrics.

Results: 

General linear models identified significantly higher FA and fwcFA and lower orientation dispersion index (ODI) in cLBP vs …

Land Without Legacy: The Case For Market-Based Appraisals On Hawaiian Home Lands, Alexis C. Owens

Seattle University Law Review

The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 (HHCA) was enacted to restore Native Hawaiians to ancestral lands and promote long term economic self-sufficiency. More than a century later, that promise remains unfulfilled. This Note argues that a central but overlooked barrier lies in the HHCA’s mandated use of the replacement cost appraisal method, which systematically undervalues homestead properties by excluding market forces. In one of the most expensive housing markets in the United States, this approach suppresses home equity, the primary means of intergenerational wealth building, and restricts beneficiaries’ access to credit and financial stability. By severing the connection between …

Real-Time Simulation Of Bio-Luminescent Light Propagation Using Compute Shaders Within Unreal Engine, Jaden D. Halevi

Computer Science Senior Theses

Presented in this paper is a GPU-native approach to interactive fluid simulation within Unreal Engine 5. The system, BioFluidSim, implements an incompressible Navier-Stokes solver using Unreal’s Niagara Grid2D compute shader pipeline, with a modular biological emission output stage parameterized from experimentally measured Lingulodinium polyedrum bioluminescence behavior. The system is evaluated against FluidNinja Live, a commercially available fragment shader fluid implementation, as a performance baseline. Beyond performance, BioFluidSim offers greater physical fidelity than the fragment shader baseline. Helmholtz–Hodge pressure projection enforces a divergence-free velocity field at runtime, a physical constraint approximated but not enforced by fragment shader approaches. The biological emission …

A Near-Field Communication (Nfc) Multi-Sensor Node With Optimized Read Range And Adaptive Power Management For Remote Monitoring, Rishin Patra, Hilary Scott Nkimbeng Cho, Jin W. Choi

Michigan Tech Publications

This paper presents the design of a batteryless near-field communication (NFC) multi-sensor node with an integrated adaptive power-management system for sensing applications. The work focuses on harvesting energy from a 13.56 MHz NFC field to power an ultra-low power sensing platform. The design consists of the TI RF430FRL152H, an integrated NFC transponder with an embedded MSP430 microcontroller core and ferroelectric random-access memory (FRAM) non-volatile memory. The system combines an ISO/IEC 15693 NFC front end, a tuned loop antenna for optimized power harvesting, and multiple analog and digital sensor interfaces, and a firmware architecture for intermittent harvested energy operation. The aforementioned …

Mainely Gay 50th Anniversary Tribute, Susan Henderson, Peter Prizer, Stan Fortuna

Mainely Gay (1978-1980)

A special 50th Anniversary Edition of Mainely Gay

Fetal Personhood And Inheritance By Unborn Children, Alyssa A. Dirusso, Emily Price

ACTEC Law Journal

This article will first discuss the status of the law with respect to inheritance rights of the unborn, including both posthumous children and posthumously-conceived children. This paper next describes the fetal personhood movement and its recognition of not only life but also death before birth. The article explains the current law on survivorship and inheritance rights. Then this article discusses the implications of death before birth on intestate distributions. These implications lead the authors to recommend a default rule barring unintentional nevernatal inheritance. The authors support, however, practical provisions for the unborn for those who choose to do so.

"Health" In Hems Means Complete Well-Being, Claudia E. Tordini, Richard S. Franklin

ACTEC Law Journal

This article focuses on the definition of “health” as used in the ascertainable standard exception of Internal Revenue Code § 2041(b)(1)(A), most frequently articulated in trusts as “health, education, maintenance and support” (HEMS). It is clear that a discretionary power to distribute for one’s own health is permitted without causing a taxable general power of appointment, but there is a dearth of authority indicating the meaning of health for this purpose. This article provides the research and foundation for understanding that health as used in HEMS is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the …

The Canons Fell Silent: An Analysis Of The Supreme Court's Failure To Use Statutory Interpretation Tools In Sackett V. Epa, Lauren Carlsen

Washington Law Review

In 2023, the United States Supreme Court denied decades of precedent, agency action, and the proper use of canons of interpretation in its decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (Sackett). This case adopted the “continuous surface connection” test, which requires an indistinguishable surface water connection between a wetland and a navigable water to assert Clean Water Act jurisdiction over the wetland. This limitation on agency authority under the Clean Water Act was created through a statutory analysis that failed to apply the “Plain Meaning” and “Whole Act” canons of statutory interpretation. The Court narrowly applied the meaning of …

"Speech Swept Up"—The Constitutionality Of State Prohibitions Of Conversion Therapy For Lgbtq+ Youth, Lauren A. Chivers

Washington Law Review

Since 2012, individual states have passed laws prohibiting state-licensed mental health professionals from engaging in conversion therapy with minor clients. Despite the breadth of research undermining its efficacy and documenting harms, the practice of conversion therapy persists. State regulation of conversion therapy—and thereby licensed professionals’ conduct with their clients—has emerged as a contentious issue for the judiciary. Most significantly, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the matter for the first time in 2026. In Chiles v. Salazar, the Court addressed a challenge to Colorado’s conversion therapy ban, confronting fundamental questions about this unsettled area of First Amendment law. …

The Mayfly Newsletter, Donna Giberson

The Mayfly Newsletter

The Mayfly Newsletter is the official newsletter of the Permanent Committee of the International Conferences on Ephemeroptera.

Submittal Of Mixed Waste Landfill Annual Long-Term Monitoring & Maintenance Report, April 2025-March 2026 For Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico, Epa Id Number Nm5890110518, June 2026, Sandia National Laboratories/Nm

Facilities-Units

The Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) and Sandia National Laboratories /New Mexico (SNL/NM) personnel submitted the Mixed Waste Landfill (MWL) Annual Long-Term Monitoring and Maintenance Report for the April 2025 through March 2026 reporting period to the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) in accordance with the MWL Long-Term Monitoring and Maintenance Plan (LTMMP) Section 4.8.1. The LTMMP became effective on January 8, 2014.

The MWL is a 2.6-acre Solid Waste Management Unit (SWMU 76) located in the north-central part of Technical Area III at SNL/NM that has undergone corrective action. As of March 13, 2016, the NMED February …

Hydroxamate Formation In The Lipopeptide Containing Siderophore Taiwachelin, Aaron J. Gringer, Kernen P. Agwaza, Isabel Da Fonseca, Pablo Sobrado

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Cupriavidus taiwanensis is a nitrogen-fixing bacterium found in root nodules of the invasive tropical weed Mimosa pudica . C. taiwanensis has been shown to grow in environments contaminated with heavy metals such as Pb, Cu, and Cd. Taiwachelin, a recently identified siderophore produced by C. taiwanensis , is an iron chelator that contains a hydroxamate functional group for metal binding. In its biosynthesis, a flavin-dependent N-monooxygenase (NMO) was predicted to hydroxylate l -ornithine, leading to formation of the metal binding hydroxamate moiety. Here, we report the cloning, expression, and biochemical characterization of this enzyme, herein referred to as CtNMO. CtNMO …

Exploring Regenerative Vegetable Systems On The Central Coast Of California, Una S. O'Connell

Master's Theses

As climate change and current agricultural practices place pressure on the long term sustainability and resilience of food production systems, there is growing interest in whether existing agricultural systems can adapt to maintain productivity while improving environmental outcomes.

This study evaluated the effects of regenerative versus standard organic vegetable production systems on yield, insect communities, and weed suppression across three field trials conducted on California's Central Coast. In addition, I collected baseline soil health data for all trials. Trials 1 and 2 were carried out at the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Organic Farm using cabbage and broccoli as cash …

Discovering Differentially Correlated Sets Across Multiple Treatments, Tyler J. Stoen

Master's Theses

When comparing data sampled under several different conditions, we often want to study not only the overall treatment effect but also how treatments influence the relationships among variables. Differential Correlation Mining (DCM) is an existing method for identifying groups of variables whose average pairwise correlation differs significantly between exactly two sampling conditions. We extend this framework to the setting of three or more treatments, where the goal is to identify variable sets whose pairwise correlation structure varies across all conditions simultaneously. Our proposed method, VSAT for three or more treatments, generalizes the DCM search procedure using a multi-treatment hypothesis test …

The Effects Of Maceration And Enzymes On The Chemical Characteristics Of Hard Apple Cider, Manou De Pelsmaeker

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of maceration and pectinase enzymes on the base chemical, polyphenolic, and volatile characteristics of cider. The apples (Fuji) were milled and macerated for 0, 4, 12, 24, or 36 hours, both with and without an enzymatic pectinase addition. While base chemical characteristics such as sugar content and ABV were unaffected, the acidity of cider was influenced maceration and enzymes. Extended maceration time resulted in lower concentrations of malic acid, and enzymes resulted in a lower pH compared to the control. Polyphenols were extracted during maceration time, resulting in higher concentrations …

Deep Learning For Affect Recognition: A Comparative Study Of Physiological Sensor-Based And Facial Image-Based Approaches, Ravi Panchal, Ravi Panchal

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates deep learning approaches for affect recognition using wearable physiological signals and facial image data. The sensor-based component evaluates stress and affect recognition on the WESAD dataset using wrist-based physiological windows and examines multiple temporal modeling strategies, including convolutional, recurrent, hybrid CNN-LSTM, attention-based, ensemble, and time-frequency approaches.

The image-based component evaluates hard-label facial expression recognition on AffectNet+ using pre-trained ResNet-50, EfficientNet-B3, and ConvNeXt-Tiny architectures across Easy, Challenging, and Difficult subsets representing different levels of expression ambiguity.

Experimental results show that the proposed Multi-Branch Attention CNN-BiLSTM (MBA-CNN-BiLSTM) model achieves the strongest wearable stress- and affect-recognition performance among the evaluated …

Movement And Space Use Of Weaned Northern Elephant Seal (Mirounga Angustirostris) Pups During Their First At-Sea Foraging Migration, Katie Saenger

Master's Theses

The northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) is a marine mammal known for engaging in long foraging migrations at sea. Adult male northern elephant seals follow pathways along the western coast of North America towards Alaska and adult female northern elephant seals follow pathways to open ocean in the North Pacific. However, there is little information on weaned northern elephant seal pup foraging behavior during their first foraging migration. This lack of knowledge is significant because northern elephant seals have a mortality rate of >50% in the first year. This project aimed to better understand the at-sea migratory movement …

An Evaluation Of Road Network Structure As A Predictor Of Traffic Volume, Colin M. Mcdonald

Master's Theses

This thesis evaluates the relationships between various graph theory metrics and taxi traffic volume for the cities of San Francisco, California and Porto, Portugal. We also evaluate a modified betweenness centrality metric which incorporates the count of distinct origin-destination pairs from the taxi data as the weight function. This thesis extends a paper by Pengyao Ye, Bo Wu, and Wenbo Fan by reducing circularity through a temporal train-test split and by comparing both line-graph and primal-graph formulations of betweenness centrality.

We found that past traffic volume is almost perfectly correlated with future traffic volume and that the modified betweenness centrality …

Sustainable Management Of Soilborne Pathogens In Strawberry Production Through Host Resistance And Sanitation Practices, Maria G. Alvarez Arredondo

Master's Theses

Strawberry production in California is significantly impacted by soilborne pathogens that reduce plant productivity and increase management costs. This research addressed management of these pathogens through two independent approaches: evaluation of host resistance in strawberry cultivars and assessment of sanitation practices for reducing pathogen movement between fields.

Macrophomina root rot, caused by Macrophomina phaseolina, was evaluated over two growing seasons (2024–2025 and 2025–2026) using field trials at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. In Year 1, disease incidence varied widely among genotypes, with mortality ranging from 1.3% to 88.8% and an average mortality of 26.4%. Area under the …

Improving The Clinical Trial Landscape For Patients With Atypical Variants Of Alzheimer's Disease, Nick Corriveau-Lecavalier, Neus Falgàs, Deepti Putcha, Jonathan Graff-Radford, Keir X.X. Yong, Baayla D.C. Boon, Rosaleena Mohanty, Eric Westman, Colin Groot, David T. Jones, Lea T. Grinberg, Gil D. Rabinovici, Jennifer L. Whitwell, Liana G. Apostolova, Melissa E. Murray, Dustin B. Hammers, Suzanne E. Schindler, Inga Atonsdottir, Elizabeth K. Rhodus, Jonathan M. Schott, Ignacio Illán-Gala, Ogbuagu Chukwuanugo, Jorge J.Llibre Guerra, Ruth Peters, Erin L. Abner, Carla Abdelnour, Albert Lladó, Renaud La Joie

Epidemiology and Environmental Health Faculty Publications

Patients with atypical variants of Alzheimer's disease (AD) often present at a younger age with predominantly non-amnestic impairments and a more aggressive disease course. Historically, individuals with atypical presentations have not been included in large-scale clinical trials, which typically focus on late-onset, sporadic amnestic-predominant AD. Consequently, treatment options and research efforts specific to atypical AD remain limited. The emergence of amyloid-targeting therapies that slow disease progression underscores these challenges, as evidence supporting their efficacy in early-onset amnestic and non-amnestic AD variants is scarce. This perspective article argues that atypical AD represents an excellent disease model for clinical trials and proposes …

Recreational Fishing Location Guide, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Fisheries Occasional Publications

Please note: this version (6th edition) published in 2026 replaces the version published in 2023.

This guide has been developed to help you identify the fishing locations that you may visit. The purpose of this guide is to enhance consistent and accurate identification of fishing locations and block numbers within each Bioregion. If you are unsure about a particular location, please discuss it with a representative of the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Western Australia.

2026 June, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for June of 2026.

Joining Forces: Enhancing Website Usability Through Ux And Assessment At An Academic Library, Josie Cotton, Liz Bober

Researchers, Instructors, & Staff Scholarship

In this chapter, we show how we used assessment and user experience (UX) methods to improve our library’s website. We conducted usability testing, during which we observed participants complete tasks on our website. To help support our testing, we used our library’s biennial user satisfaction survey, where we included several targeted questions that assessed user engagement with the website. We used the results of both assessments to inform updates to the website. Together, the results of our usability testing and survey provide a full picture of website use and lead to a more user-centered website. While the survey was quantitative …

Beyond The Mortality Paradox: Redesigning Uti Care For People Living With Dementia Through Diagnostic Stewardship, Rob E. Carpenter

Human Resource Development Faculty Publications and Presentations

Managing urinary tract infections (UTI) in people living with dementia presents a mortality paradox: clinicians must balance the risks of antibiotic overuse against the dangers of delayed treatment in high-risk phenotypes. Standard diagnostic criteria often rely on classic, localizing markers like fever and dysuria. However, these gatekeeper signs are frequently absent or blunted in dementia care due to age-associated immune dysregulation and immunosenescence. Consequently, infections often manifest as nonspecific neurobehavioral changes, leading to predictable misclassification and harmful diagnostic delays. This paper reframes UTI management in dementia as a clinical pathway and measurement architecture problem. We propose a verification-first service pathway …

The Polysubstance Assessment Tool, Amanda M. Bunting, Charles M. Cleland, S. Michaela Barratt, Brittany Griffin, Jaimee Williams, Carrie B. Oser, Joshua D. Lee, Jennifer Mcneely

Sociology Faculty Publications

Background and aims: There are currently no brief quantitative assessments that capture the drug patterns of people who engage in use of more than one drug on the same day or simultaneously. The current study examined the retest reliability, acceptability and feasibility of a new quantitative assessment to measure polysubstance use. Design: A tool for assessing simultaneous and same-day polysubstance behaviors, the polysubstance assessment tool (PAT) was developed in interviewer-administered and electronic self-administered formats. Participants were allocated 1:1 to receive either version of the PAT and returned one to three days later to repeat the assessment. Setting: New York City, …

Regulating Wellness: Reimagining Legal Frameworks In The Age Of Preventative And Aspirational Health, Barbara Zabawa

UMKC Law Review

The 2025 Wellness Law Symposium was held October 3, 2025 at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.

Wellness Disputes, Maria Cudowska

UMKC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Visual Arts Are The Only Arts With Morals: Generative Ai And Aural Arts, Megan Pilege

UMKC Law Review

No abstract provided.