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College Of Natural Sciences Newsletter, July & August 2022, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Volume 3, Issue 5

Page 1 Dean's Message
Page 2 Awards & Recognition
Page 3 Resources for Student Success
Page 4 Welcome to New Faculty & Staff
Page 5 Summer Activities in CNS
Page 9 Celebrating the lives of those who touched the College
Page 10 Media Coverage of CNS
Page 12 Open PRAIRIE Data
Page 13 Snaps from he start of the semester
Page 14 Science as Art Competition

Vol 67 #4, Melanie Argo

MPLA Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Digital Pastoral, Rebecca Holifield

Master's Theses

Digital Pastoral is a collection of original poems and a creative nonfiction essay, accompanied by a critical introduction.

Emergent Landscapes Of Renewable Energy Storage: Considering Just Transitions In The Western United States, Bethani Turley, Alida Cantor, Kate Berry, Sarah Knuth, Dustin Mulvaney, Noel Vineyard

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Governments, utilities, and energy companies are increasingly looking towards energy storage technologies to extend the availability of variable renewable power sources such as solar and wind. In this Perspective, we examine these fast-shifting developments by mapping and analyzing landscapes of renewable energy storage emerging across the Western United States. We focus on the rollout of several interrelated leading technologies: utility-scale lithium-ion batteries, supported by increasing regional lithium mining, and proposals for new pumped storage hydropower. Drawing on critical resource geography, we examine energy storage as both a component of renewable transition and as its own driver of landscape transformation, resource …

Projected Changes In Atmospheric Ridges Over The Pacific-North American Region Using Cmip6 Models, Paul C. Loikith, Deepti Singh, Graham P. Taylor

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Projected changes in atmospheric ridges and associated temperature and precipitation anomalies are assessed for the end of the twenty-first century in a suite of 27 models contributing to phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) under a high-end emissions scenario over the Pacific–North American region. Ridges are defined as spatially coherent regions of positive zonal anomalies in 500-hPa geopotential height. The frequency of ridge days in the historical period varies by geography and season; however, ridge days are broadly more common over the region in winter and least common in summer. The CMIP6 models are credible in reproducing …

The Right To The University: The Experiences Of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students At A Predominantly White University In Upstate New York, Martín Alberto Gonzalez

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Having the right to a space is not only the right to be present without being harassed or bothered, but it also includes the right to have a say in how that space should be experienced. Yet, spaces have long been contested and not everyone has equal access to shared spaces. This paper examines the experiences of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) undergraduate students at a predominantly white university in the Northeast. Drawing on indepth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, and document analyses, I argue that MMAX students do not have the right to their respective university because their university does not address …

Corrigendum: Interactions Between Fire Refugia And Climate-Environment Conditions Determine Mesic Subalpine Forest Recovery After Large And Severe Wildfires, Sebastian Upton Busby, Andres Holz

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the published article, there was an error in the Funding statement.

One of the funding numbers provided was incorrect. The correct Funding statement appears below.

Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF awards EAR-1738104 and GSS-1832483).

The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.

Choral Music Teacher Educators' Practices: Preparing Undergraduates To Teach World Choral Music, Stellah Mbugua

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how undergraduate choral music teacher educators (MTEs) are including world choral music pedagogy (WCMP) in choral music education courses. Participants of this study were faculty of colleges and universities in the Southern Region of the United States of America (USA), as defined by the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). Participants either held a choral music education position or teach choral music education courses. A survey design was used to collect data for this descriptive study. The research questions that informed this study focused on the extent of the inclusion of WCMP in …

Bland Treacherous Water: Diluvial Epistemologies In Flood Narratives Of The Us South Since 1927, Sara Stephens Loomis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between southern flood narratives and the epistemological changes wrought by the Anthropocene epoch in the past hundred years. It participates in the turns toward ecocriticism and environmental justice within 21st-century southern studies, situating the US South as a testing ground for ecosystem epistemologies shaped by overabundant water. An expansion of Steve Mentz’s call for a blue humanities that shifts focus from land to sea, Bland Treacherous Water explores what happens to Anthropocene subjects’ ways of knowing their environments when waterways inundate the land itself. By investigating works by William Faulkner, James Dickey, Cormac McCarthy, Marilou …

Regional Variation In Gravel-Based Lithic Economies: Archaeological Investigations At Stark Farm (22ok778) And Grand Village (22ad501), Matthew H. Perry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The lithic economies of the Late Mississippian and Early Contact periods have in the past been characterized as simple and lacking complexities, however this is a flawed assumption (Binford 1980:10). This thesis aims to highlight the variations and complexities that existed in gravel-based lithic economies exploring how these variations present themselves in the archaeological record. These variations will be examined through several quantitative methods including mass, cortex, flake and biface analysis. I will also use historical accounts and archaeological reports to place these assemblages in the Late Mississippian and Early Contact periods. This research compares the gravel-based lithic assemblages from …

The Hollidays In Mississippi: A Documentary Project About Queer Family, Legacy, And Community Struggle, Christina Alison Huff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This MFA thesis accompanies a short documentary film encompassing a “passing of the torch” story between Eric White (GoDiva Holliday) and his drag daughter, Justin Tyler (DeePression Holliday.) After twenty years of performing and directing drag shows in Tupelo, MS, White makes the decision to let go of his passion and focus on himself. He ensures that his drag daughter, Holbrook, carries on the legacy of creating LGTBQ spaces in the conservative South. This story will also touch on the familial relationship between the two drag performers who both grew up in small-town Mississippi but in different eras. The work …

Scientific Collaboration And The Cold War: 1945-1970, Autumn Wyland

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis is an examination of scientific collaboration between 1945 and 1970, covering the end of World War II and through the early stages of the Cold War. Prior to the Second World War, scientific collaboration was frequent and necessary to development and research. World War II created a new atmosphere of secrecy, preventing scientists from collaborating as they once had. This paper examines what that collaboration looked like, how it was derailed and why, how some scientists sought to return to collaboration, sometimes at personal expense, and finally what those effects looked like throughout the Nuclear Age and Space …

University Of Central Florida Graduate Catalog, 2022 - 2023, University Of Central Florida

UCF Catalogs

No abstract provided.

The Influences Of Disperser Behavior, Host Availability, And Environmental Conditions On The Distribution Of Oak Mistletoe [Phoradendron Leucarpum (Raf.) Reveal & M. C. Johnst.] In Eastern Virginia And North Carolina, Nicholas Pearce Flanders

Biological Sciences Theses & Dissertations

Mistletoes are shrubs that typically parasitize the branches of host trees and rely on avian frugivores for seed dispersal. Because mistletoes are restricted to a narrow range of suitable recruitment sites and avian frugivores are more visible than other guilds of seed dispersers, mistletoe-frugivore systems afford opportunities for assessing the roles of dispersal limitation and local environment in determining plant distribution. These mechanisms have been proposed as determinants of the observed association of oak mistletoe [Phoradendron leucarpum (Raf.) Reveal & M. C. Johnst.] with forested wetlands in eastern Virginia and North Carolina, USA. I tested the alternative hypothesis that …

A Faunal Composition Of The Late Cretaceous Blue Springs Site In Northeastern Mississippi And Evidence For Potential Paleoenvironmental Differences Between Beds, Ginger Trochesset

Honors Theses

The Maastrichtian-age Blue Springs locality of the Coon Creek Member of the Ripley Formation is known for abundant, well-preserved marine fossils, including many genera of microfossils, bivalves, gastropods, decapods, cephalopods, actinopterygians, and other vertebrate organisms. This research contributes to the understanding of the paleontology of the site, as well as the changing paleoenvironmental conditions of the beds throughout deposition.

This project analyzed bulk material collected in 2021 from three fossiliferous beds at Blue Springs: the Lower Corbula Bed (Bed C), the Pebble Bed (Bed G), and the Exogyra-Pycnodonte Bed (Bed J). Unconsolidated material from Beds C and J was processed …

Do Rational Agents Steal, Randy Hill

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Do Rational Agents Steal?

Modern economists from Adam Smith to the present have broadly assumed that rational agents respect property rights. This respect for property rights has been a feature of nearly all economic models from the beginning. This paper examines a simple two person, production and trade model where the agents are allowed to choose to steal. Even within this simple model, there are a broad range of parameters that affect the agents' choices. In most parameter sets, the agents choose to steal as the reward for conflict outweighs the opportunity cost of not engaging in conflict. The parameter …

Cancer In Louisiana: 2015-2019, Volume 37, Louisiana Tumor Registry, Lauren Maniscalco, Mei-Chin Hsieh, Christina Lefante, Yong Yi, Lisa Pareti, Brent Mumphrey, Mary Anne Lynch, Xiao-Cheng Wu, Tingting Li, Chika Eni-Ikeh

Policy & Position Papers

Mission:

To collect and report complete, high-quality, and timely population-based cancer data in Louisiana to support cancer research, control, and prevention.

Vision:

To reduce suffering and death from cancer using information collected by the Louisiana Tumor Registry.

History:

Cancer registration in Louisiana began in 1947 at the Charity Hospital Tumor Registry in New Orleans. In 1974, as part of its Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program, the National Cancer Institute provided funds for a population-based cancer incidence and survival registry covering Jefferson, Orleans, and St. Bernard parishes. Five years later, the Louisiana Tumor Registry (LTR) was transferred to the …

An Intergenerational Study Of The Entrepreneurial Nature Of Agritourism Operators, Will Culler

All Dissertations

Economic and non-economic trends have left farm operators of all ages contemplating enterprise diversification strategies to create advantages and to ensure their farms' sustainability for future generations. One such strategy is agritourism, in which a visitor to a working farm or other agricultural setting interacts with the farm landscape or participates in an agricultural process for tourism or leisure purposes. This study aims to contribute to academics, researchers, extension educators, practitioners, and farm service providers who offer training and resources to better equip current and future agritourism operators. The study tested the general hypothesis that agritourism operators' entrepreneurial goals and …

Inventing Network Composition: Mobilizing Rhetorical Invention And Social Media For Digital Pedagogy, Jacob Richter

All Dissertations

Inventing Network Composition: Mobilizing Rhetorical Invention and Social Media for Digital Pedagogy investigates how students learn through writing and invention in digital social networks. Pursuing a primary research question of How do student composers invent within networked social media environments?, the dissertation examines how social media and digital writing tools can help students to learn, connect, and share generatively. The core theoretical contribution that this dissertation offers is a theory of network composition, which is a mode of invention that composers engage in social media environments that is intensely social, that is structured by a digital interface, that …

"Building The Plane As We Fly It": Tesmonios Of First-Time Mexican American Studies High School Teachers During The 2021-2022 School Year In Southwest Texas., Jesse Soledad Arrieta

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Mexican American Studies, as a course, was approved by the Texas State Board of Education in 2019. However, there were no provisions on how the course would be implemented or supported by school districts in Texas. Further, in 2021, Texas House Bill 3797 and Senate Bill 3 were passed into law, aiming at the heart of Ethnic Studies - Critical Race Theory (CRT). Utilizing testimonio as methodology and method, I sought to understand the experiences of first-time Mexican American Studies high school teachers implementing Mexican American Studies during the 2021-2022 school year in Southwest Texas. Testimonio interviews with six teachers …

Reflections On The Adaptation Of A Postgraduate Degree In Water Management From In-Person To Remote Delivery, Murray Clamen, Emma Anderson, Johanna Dipple, Jan Adamowski

Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education

In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic spurred the rapid adaptation of university course delivery to an online format. Though in-person delivery partially resumed in the Fall of 2021, future conditions may favor a return to, or addition of, remote delivery. It is therefore important for instructors, program directors, and institutions to capitalize on this learning opportunity and reflect on adaptation measures’ successes (and failures) to inform future online course design. The reworking of McGill University's Master of Science Program in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) provides a case study to evaluate the adaptation of remote teaching of water resource management. …

Deep Learning For Detecting Trees In The Urban Environment From Lidar, Julian R. Rice

Master's Theses

Cataloguing and classifying trees in the urban environment is a crucial step in urban and environmental planning. However, manual collection and maintenance of this data is expensive and time-consuming. Algorithmic approaches that rely on remote sensing data have been developed for tree detection in forests, though they generally struggle in the more varied urban environment. This work proposes a novel method for the detection of trees in the urban environment that applies deep learning to remote sensing data. Specifically, we train a PointNet-based neural network to predict tree locations directly from LIDAR data augmented with multi-spectral imaging. We compare this …

A Climate Of Confessionalization: Famine And Difference In The Late Ottoman Empire, Matthew Ghazarian

Environmental Science and Policy: Faculty Publications

After the 1877–78 Russo-Ottoman War, the Ottoman Empire saw the rise of ethnic and sectarian clashes in Anatolia, the Balkans, and elsewhere, and the task of explaining that rise remains unfinished. Many have examined the intellectual formations of ethnic and sectarian solidarities after 1878, but the availability of new ideas cannot alone account for their widespread uptake. Why after 1878 did ordinary people respond more to calls upon ethnic and sectarian solidarity? Drawing on sources surrounding the 1879 famine in the Ottoman East, this article steps away from imperial metropoles to examine overlapping environmental, financial, and technological disjunctures. Adopting the …

Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Non-Refugees And Refugees In Kenya, Ryan Rego, Anthony Ngugi, Antonia Johanna Sophie Delius, Stanley Luchters, Joseph C. Kolars, Furqan B. Irfan, Eileen Weinheimer-Haus, Amina Abubakar, Reena Shah, Ji Zhu

Population Health, East Africa

Factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy (which we define as refusal to be vaccinated when asked, resulting in delayed or non- vaccination) are poorly studied in sub-Saharan Africa and among refugees, particularly in Kenya. Using survey data from wave five (March to June 2021) of the Kenya Rapid Response Phone Survey (RRPS), a household survey representative of the population of Kenya, we estimated the self-reported rates and factors associated with vaccine hesitancy among non-refugees and refugees in Kenya. Non-refugee households were recruited through sampling of the 2015/16 Kenya Household Budget Survey and random digit dialing. Refugee households were recruited through …

Parental Pains Of Imprisonment: A Critical Qualitative Examination Of Reentry Into Family Life, Mitchel B. Michael

Dissertations (2016-Present)

The purpose of this study is to grasp and become better informed about the experiences of formerly incarcerated mothers and fathers transitioning from correctional facilities (i.e., local jails, state & federal prisons) back into family life. Lacking in criminological literature on prisoner reentry is the intersection of parenthood and post-incarceration reintegration. Since available research often focuses on maternal and paternal reentry separately, this study encapsulates both to provide an in-depth analysis of experiences across race and gender. To gauge perspectives and experiences in-depth, this study is grounded in qualitative/triangulated methodologies. The data and findings from this study aim to assist …

Three Chapters On Investments And Financial Institutions, Cao Fang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Only the stock selection (“alpha”) decisions of fund managers who trade on firm-specific information should have predictive return content. Faced with the same information, skilled fund managers make similar stock selection decisions. In Chapter one, we introduce a new measure - stock investment quality - which uses fund quality to weight asymmetries in private information reflected in deviations of fund from peer group ownership on stocks in a style segment. We show stocks ranked high on investment quality generate significantly higher excess returns that persist through the ensuing year. The positive investment quality–future return relationship is robust to alternative fund …

The Mangrove Walks: An Econometric Analysis Of Climate Migration Drivers From Coastal Bangladesh And Their Geopolitical Impacts, Kendall Scott Byers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coastal Bangladesh is subject to extreme climate change forces upon poor, rural populations. The aim of this thesis is to determine the strength of environmental drivers of migration and discern whether planned or catastrophic migration predominates in the polder areas of Bangladesh. I use regression analysis on a 1,025 household, 2016 IRRI/IWMI analysis of Polder 28/1, 28/2, and 30 within Satkhira district to determine factor correlations with migration. Progressive salinization is the strongest environmental driver, while flooding decreases migration through trapping household capital investment. Religion has the greatest correlation with migration. Hindus migrate less frequently, but do so with more …

Reconciling Conflicting Institutional Logics: Community Reinvestment Officers At The Intersection Of Public Policy And Market Forces, Meredith Mckee Adkins

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although the public policy literature has traditionally focused on public sector agencies’ roles in the policy implementation process, private sector managers who oversee regulatory mandates for their organizations are also policy actors. These actors operate between multiple conflicting field-level institutional logics that create demands that they must reconcile through their work. In the banking sector, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), enacted in 1977, and its associated policies are monitored by the banking regulatory agencies and implemented by the senior managers responsible for these mandates at regulated financial institutions. Simultaneously with their responsibility for the policy mission of the CRA, CRA …

Physiognomic Artificial Intelligence, Luke Stark, Jevan Hutson

Articles

The reanimation of the pseudosciences of physiognomy and phrenology at scale through computer vision and machine learning is a matter of urgent concern. This Article—which contributes to critical data studies, consumer protection law, biometric privacy law, and antidiscrimination law—endeavors to conceptualize and problematize physiognomic artificial intelligence (“AI”) and offer policy recommendations for state and federal lawmakers to forestall its proliferation.

Physiognomic AI, as this Article contends, is the practice of using computer software and related systems to infer or create hierarchies of an individual’s body composition, protected class status, perceived character, capabilities, and future social outcomes based on their physical …

Lanthorn, Vol. 57, No. 01, August 1, 2022, Grand Valley State University

Volume 57, August 1, 2022 - April 10, 2023

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.