Digital Commons Network^™

Life Cycle Assessment Of New Jersey Offshore Wind, Meghann Smith, Nawal Shoaib, Pankaj Lal

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

As offshore wind gains momentum within US (United States) renewable energy goals, New Jersey's ambitious targets for offshore wind development represent a significant opportunity to reduce emissions and transition towards cleaner energy sources. This study presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a planned offshore wind farm off of New Jersey's coast, emphasizing the implications of a domestic supply chain. Key findings suggest that the offshore wind farm is projected to produce 0.013 kg CO2 kWh−1 of electricity generated, reflecting a 98 % decrease in carbon emissions compared to natural-gas-derived electricity. Further, when compared to carbon emissions from other renewable …

The Art Of Memory: The Medieval Peutinger Map, Amber Shrewsbury

Dissertations and Theses

The Peutinger map is an enigma: a twelfth-century map of the Roman Empire, it is secular and oddly shaped, its dimensions distorted to show Rome at the center of the world. Its creator, purpose, and provenance currently remain lost to history. Long considered by classicists to be a copy of a lost Roman original, the map has not been seriously examined by medievalists, possibly because it does not adhere to the Christian "T-O" style of medieval mappaemundi.

While other scholars have focused on what the Peutinger map reflects about ancient Rome, I have chosen to explore how the Peutinger …

Big Ugly Lumps? (Counter)Terrorism And The Everyday Atmospheres Of Hostile Vehicle Mitigation, Carrie Benjamin, Sam Berlin, Sara Fregonese, Paul Simpson

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Adopting an atmospheric lens on the everyday and open-ended crisis of contemporary terror threats in cities in Western Europe, this article unpicks the contemporary logics, desires, and effects of the State in matters of urban counterterrorism by exploring the felt qualities and dispositions of the public around Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (HVM) measures in Birmingham (UK). It argues that the atmospheres around counterterrorism that security officials and business representatives aim to produce, which seeks to reassure the public rather than cause alarm, has led to ambivalent acceptance of HVM by city centre users. The paper shifts away from discursive and socio-technical …

Limited Soil Water Recharge In Summer Affects Seasonal Isotopic Signatures Of Tree Xylem Water, Marius G. Floriancic, Gregory R. Goldsmith, Harsh Beria, Scott T. Allen, James W. Kirchner

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Recent studies have reported that xylem waters in forest trees during the summer growing season are often isotopically similar to winter, rather than summer, precipitation. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this observation, which can be viewed as a form of ecohydrological separation, but empirical tests spanning space and time remain limited. We hypothesise that variations in the seasonal origin of precipitation found in tree xylem waters can be explained by seasonal differences in soil water recharge. We test this hypothesis by evaluating to what extent climatic aridity can explain seasonal signals in extensive surveys of the isotope ratios …

Breaking The Odds: A Gendered Analysis Of Women And Gambling Behaviors, Rowland Edet

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Gambling is increasingly recognized as a complex public health issue with wide-ranging implications for individuals, families, and communities. While traditionally male-dominated, recent shifts reveal a growing participation among women, facilitated by gender-specific gambling products, targeted marketing, and evolving societal norms. This paper critically examines the prevalence, motivations, and harms associated with gambling among women, drawing on theoretical perspectives such as social capital theory, cultural geography, and gender role theory. By synthesizing existing literature, this review highlights distinct gendered patterns in gambling behaviors, including the use of gambling as a coping mechanism for stress, isolation, and caregiving burdens, and the role …

I, As In We, Cj Maruyama

Dissertations and Theses

I, as in We is a hybrid collection of poems, essays, fictional letters, documents, and photographs through which the author revisits ancestors and explores their multiracial roots. Drawing on stories, interviews and research grounded in the Japanese American experience, the collection develops a call-and-response polyvocality that spans generations and geographies. In its use of white space, form experimentation, and tonal shifts, the work confronts the fluid, often ambiguous boundaries that shape identity. The compiled written and visual materials evolve into an original document--one that reaches toward heritage, belonging, and truth.

High Achievers Awards 2014

University anniversary celebration materials

No abstract provided.

Intentional Innovation: Strategies To Increase Engagement For A Hybrid Faculty Group, Sheri Pickover, Allison Arnekrans, Pamela Sickinger, Mary Katherine Wright

Journal of Technology in Counselor Education and Supervision

The proliferation of online education has increased the need to examine how to foster an ongoing culture of community, support, and engagement for faculty, specifically remote faculty. This article describes a single case study example of how one Midwestern counselor education program leveraged online platforms and intentional community building strategies to successfully integrate remote core faculty into all aspects of departmental processes. This article describes specific strategies and provides recommendations for other remote programs to consider.

Reviews: Conservation Of Marine Birds (Young, L. & Vanderwerf, E.); Science, Secrecy And The Smithsonian: The Strange History Of The Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program (Regis, E.); New(Ish) And Noteworthy: Seabirds Count: A Census Of Breeding Seabirds In Britain And Ireland (Burnell, D., Perkins, A.J., Newton, S.F., Bolton, M., Tierney, T.D., Dunn, T.E.); Sea Change: An Atlas Of Islands In A Rising Ocean (Gerhardt, C.); Bird Day: A Story Of 24 Hours And 24 Avian Lives (Hauber, M.E.); Journeys With Emperors: Tracking The World’S Most Extreme Penguin (Kooyman, G.L. & Mastro, J.), Mark J. Rauzon, Eric Wagner

Marine Ornithology

No abstract provided.

Rapid Increase In Size Of Wedge-Tailed Shearwater Ardenna Pacifica Colony Following Rat Eradication, Danielle Z. Keys, Robert W. Bullock, Clare Keating, Pierre A. Pistorius

Marine Ornithology

Invasive mammalian predators have devastating effects on seabird nesting colonies. A census was conducted on breeding Wedge-tailed Shearwaters Ardenna pacifica in 2016 and 2021 on D’Arros Island, Seychelles, which has been rat-free since 2003. Results were compared with an earlier population estimate to assess population growth following the rat eradication. Compared to counts in 2009, we estimated a 10-fold increase in breeding population size, with 2768 (95% confidence interval (CI) 2424–3112) and 2406 (95% CI 2143–2667) breeding pairs in 2016 and 2021, respectively. While the estimated increase is partly attributable to differences in the timing of the conducted census between …

Oiling Threats To Marine Birds On Southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, Douglas F. Bertram, Patrick D. O’Hara, Alexandra M. King, Clifford L.K. Robinson, Mark Maftei, Kerry J. Woo

Marine Ornithology

Information on the distribution and abundance of marine birds is needed to evaluate current status in relation to threats from potential increases in vessel traffic off southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia (BC), Canada, in the Salish Sea. We conducted year-round boat based surveys in waters between Sidney, BC and Victoria, BC from November 2015 to August 2019 and examined seasonal variation in bird distribution and abundance. Our study area included parts of the Sidney Channel Important Bird Area, the Shoal Harbour and Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuaries, and the Chain Islets Ecological Reserve, adjacent to major shipping lanes, as well …

Lesser Noddy Anous Tenuirostris Migration From A Non-Breeding Area In The Northern Maldives To A Breeding Site In The Seychelles, A. Farhath Ali, Richard A. Phillips, R. Charles Anderson

Marine Ornithology

The Lesser Noddy Anous tenuirostris occurs in large numbers in the northern Maldives during the northeast monsoon season (December to April). These birds do not breed in the Maldives, but their breeding site(s) are unknown. We attached GPS Argos satellite transmitters to seven Lesser Noddies roosting on Gallandhoo Island (Haa Alifu Atoll, northern Maldives) on 25 March 2022. Only one transmitter provided data, but it tracked the migration of one Lesser Noddy to the Seychelles, where the bird first roosted on the island of Poivre before moving to the large nesting colony on Cousine. The tracked bird departed the Maldives …

Nesting Distribution Of Masked Booby Sula Dactylatra At Trindade Island, Western South Atlantic Ocean, Victória R.F. Benemann, Leonardo D. Araújo, Arthur Z. Fabbris, Rosalinda C. Montone, Maria V. Petry

Marine Ornithology

The Masked Booby Sula dactylatra is a surface-nesting seabird that breeds on offshore islands across the tropical and subtropical oceans. On inaccessible rocky areas on Trindade Island, located about 1200 km from Espírito Santo, Brazil, the nesting of this species has been poorly studied. To model the species’ nesting habitat suitability at Trindade Island, we mapped active nests during the breeding seasons of 2017 and 2019, from October to November, using a hand-held Global Positioning System receiver and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. In order to identify key areas, we created nesting habitat suitability maps using seven different algorithms (Random Forest, …

Studies Of The Time Budget And Daily Activity Of Common Eider Somateria Mollissima During Incubation, Grigori M. Tertitski, Evgeny V. Semashko, Alexander E. Cherenkov, Vladimir Y. Semashko

Marine Ornithology

In the Common Eider Somateria mollissima, only females incubate the clutch over a period of 25–28 days. Determining their schedule of nest absence, how long they are away, how often, and where they go can be problematic. They must also avoid nest predation while tending to their own needs. We used geolocators to investigate the behavior of incubating females on forested islands in Dolgaya Guba Bay (65°03′N, 035°47′E), White Sea, Russia. Data were obtained for 12 females: three in 2015 and 2016, four in 2017, and two in 2018. During the entire incubation period, females left their nests for the …

Nightly Colony Attendance Patterns Of Provisioning Cassin's Auklet Ptychoramphus Aleuticus Are Consistent And Synchronous, Laura Mcfarlane Tranquilla, John L. Ryder, Louise K. Blight, Patrick D. O’Hara, Douglas F. Bertram

Marine Ornithology

We conducted a multi-year (1999–2001) radio telemetry study to determine patterns of colony attendance among breeding Cassin’s Auklets Ptychoramphus aleuticus during the chick-rearing period on Triangle Island in British Columbia, Canada. A total of 1 625 detections were obtained for 80 individual birds (24–28 birds per year), each detected 20.3 times on average. We found that colony attendance (arrival times, departure times, in-burrow shift duration) and foraging trip duration (i.e., time away from the colony) were remarkably synchronous among individuals and years. On average, birds arrived in a pulse after darkness, with 67% of returns between 23h15 and 00h15 and …

Urban Tree Committees Of New England, Usa: Describing Past, Present, And Future Regional Trends, Alicia F. Coleman, Danica Doroski, Richard W. Harper, Alexander J. Elton, Eli Grigorian, Eric E. Griffith

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

In the United States, grassroots responses have emerged to supplement urban forest management efforts traditionally led by local, county, and federal governments. Urban tree committees are one such grassroots response, whose service exists between a formalized organization and ad-hoc task force. While past research has described the roles and responsibilities of various urban forest management actors, no studies have previously established a baseline understanding of regional urban tree committees, including the membership of paid and volunteer committees, their programming and educational initiatives, and key audiences. In this study, we distributed a participant survey to all known urban tree committees of …

Green Infrastructure Features And Benefits Communicated By Programs Targeting Residents In The Greater Toronto Area, Nya Lazarus-Munnick, Tenley M. Conway

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Municipalities are increasingly adopting green infrastructure (GI) as a nature-based solution to address stormwater management, climate adaptation, and other urban environmental challenges. One of the strengths of GI is its multifunctionality, which can provide a range of social, economic and environmental benefits. For GI to reach its full potential, widespread implementation throughout a landscape is needed. As a result, GI strategies often rely on various actors, including residents, who can implement GI on their own properties and contribute to the scaling up of GI across a landscape. GI implementation that depends on residents, however, has many challenges pertaining to their …

Loving Legalists? How Adventists Simultaneously Embrace God’S Love And Adhere To Legalistic Beliefs, Petr Činčala, Duane C. Mcbride, René D. Drumm

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

Based on analysis of the data from the 2017–2018 Global Church Member Survey (GCMS), this article investigates the unique combination of legalistic and loving beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of Seventh-day Adventists. It shows how widespread and culturally variant their beliefs are in relation to legalism while they generally believe in and serve a God with loving characteristics. This article highlights the degree to which cultural influences correlate with legalistic beliefs and how legalistic beliefs relate to the experience of negative emotions and a lack of self-worth/unhappiness.

Re-Assessment Of The Urban History Of Azerbaijan From Ancient Times To The Present In The Context Of General Turkic Culture, Telman Nusretoglu Quliyev, Nurlan Pashaoglu Nasirov

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

While the Turks have often been depicted as a nomadic people in Western and former Soviet historiographies, recent archaeological evidence and research reveals that they were instrumental in the development of settled urban civilizations, particularly during ancient and medieval times. This is particularly evident in Azerbaijan, a region historically inhabited by Turks, where they significantly contributed to the establishment of urban centers. These cities, along with their infrastructure and architectural features, have been well-documented in Greco-Roman, Arabic, Persian, and other primary sources from the period. Azerbaijan, located at the crossroads of East-West trade routes, has a long history of urbanization, …

The Development And Psychometric Properties Of Climate Change Awareness Scale Among Higher Education Students, Şuay Nilhan Açikalin, Şefika Şule Erçeti̇n, Nihan Potas, Mehmet Sabir Çevik

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Higher education has a pragmatic and educational approach to mitigating climate change and solving environmental challenges by enhancing awareness. Therefore, the study aims to develop a scale in a survey model to measure higher education students' awareness of climate change. The study group comprises higher education students enrolled at Public Universities in Ankara during the 2023-2024 academic year. For data analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, convergent and divergent (discriminant) validity, item analysis, and reliability analysis were employed. The scale was rigorously validated through exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and other measures. As a result of the exploratory …

Screening For Bullying In A Middle School Setting, Paige Bernau

Dissertations

Problem: Bullied youth are two and a half times more likely to experience depression and three times more likely to experience anxiety and suicidal ideation than their peers (Li et al., 2024). Schools represent a key access point for mental health support and treatment for youth (Duong et al., 2020). Despite this, schools typically do not have formal bullying screening integrated into student support services.

Methods: This program evaluation used a descriptive, observational design to evaluate a bullying screening program in a suburban middle-school. This program used the California Bullying Victimization Scale (CBVS) to assess for bullying victimization (BV) followed …

Habsburg Ruthenian/Rusyn Identities Part Ii: Where Are The Michigan Ruthenians?, Robert Goodrich

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

Ruthenians overwhelmingly came to Michigan between 1900 and 1914 as citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, where their ethnic (national) status was officially recognized and protected (at least formally). Their distinct identity was built around their Rusyn language, Ruthenian Rite Catholicism, connection to a cultural territorial homeland along the Carpathians (Ruthenia), and an overwhelmingly peasant-based village life generally led by sacerdotal families. However, the lack of a single administrative focus within the Monarchy’s multi-ethnicity meant that Ruthenians always showed a high degree of regional variation. With the collapse of the Monarchy in 1918, the polyvalent centrifugal tendencies rapidly accelerated so that …

Broken Rituals: Contending Gods And Sacred Cows In Religious Racial Reconciliation And Race Relations, Ewart E. Forde

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Race remains one of the most important determinants of a host of sociological outcomes despite claims that social characteristics such as class matter more. For example, racial inequalities are apparent in educational outcomes and regarding to asset-ownership. Perhaps the most troubling evidence of persistent racial inequities is the killing of Black people by law enforcement officials or civilians while they are engaged in such mundane activities, such as jogging in a neighborhood or selling compact discs (CDs). In the aftermath of these unnatural killings, there are often calls for racial reconciliation, faith based racial reconciliation. In times where it appears …

False Starts & Finish Lines: Youth Sports, Coaching, & The Crisis Of The American Dream, John S. Lammert Jr

Master's Theses

False Starts & Finish Lines: Youth Sports, Coaching, & the Crisis of the American Dream examines how the American youth sports system reflects, reproduces, and at times resists the evolving contradictions of the American Dream. Drawing on a comparative analysis of institutional documents from public high schools, travel clubs, and recreational leagues, this thesis interrogates how youth sports have shifted from inclusive spaces of play and character-building to stratified marketplaces governed by the Athletic Industrial Complex (AIC). It argues that rising costs, performance pressures, and privatized structures have transformed access to sport—and, by extension, to the Dream itself—into a function …

China Maritime Report #48: Great Inspectations: Prc Maritime Law Enforcement Operations In The Taiwan Strait, Julia Famularo

CMSI China Maritime Reports

Main Findings

• People’s Republic of China (PRC) law enforcement operations function as forms of cognitive and legal warfare. They represent a clear effort to undermine international maritime law as well as Taiwan’s sovereignty.
• The PRC asserts that the Taiwan Strait comprises multiple “zones,” to include “internal waters, territorial sea, [the] contiguous zone, and the Exclusive Economic Zone.” While China does not explicitly claim that the waters of the Taiwan Strait wholly constitute PRC sovereign territory, it clearly implies that it has the self-defined right to exercise distinct forms of control over different zones of the Strait.
• While stressing that China …

Hyperspectral Band Selection Via Heterogeneous Graph Convolutional Self-Representation Network, Junde Chen, Wenzhao Li, Surendra Maharjan, Hesham El-Askary

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Hyperspectral image (HSI) band selection (BS) plays a crucial role in HSI dimensionality reduction, aiming to identify a representative subset of bands with minimal redundancy. However, conventional BS approaches primarily operate in the Euclidean domain, often overlooking the structural characteristics of pixels and spectral bands, such as spatial continuity and spectral dependencies. In addition, they handle each HSI as an integrated unit to harness implicit spatial information, disregarding spatial distribution variations across different homogeneous regions. To fully leverage structural information, this study introduces a novel BS method, termed the dual heterogeneous graph convolutional network with enhanced self-representation (ESR-HGCN), for HSI …

Impacts Of Artificial Habitat Structures On Overwinter Fish Survival And Fish Presence In South-Central Nebraska, Logan Dietrich

Biology Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

Artificial lentic systems, such as borrow pits, often lack structural complexity due to construction practices and steep bathymetry, limiting features like vegetation and woody debris essential for fish communities. To address this, artificial structures made of materials such as polyvinyl chloride are increasingly used by state and federal agencies to supplement habitat. However, little information is known about the impact these structures have on fish communities. Thus, the objectives of this study were to examine the influence of Georgia cubes in borrow pit impoundments on overwinter survival of sub-stock and ≥ stock Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus) and Largemouth Bass …

Wither, Religious Liberty, Amanda Harmon Cooley

BYU Law Review

During the oft-deemed Constitutional Revolution of 1937, the U.S. Supreme Court effected a significant sea-change in its substantive due process liberty analysis. In West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, the Court held that the Due Process Clause’s liberty provision does not protect absolute freedom of contract, signaling the demise of the Lochner era. Almost a century later, the current Supreme Court’s supermajority bloc is now infamous for its own seismic shift in liberty analysis. This Court’s incontrovertible Constitutional Revolution of 2022 was not limited to only substantive due process, which the Court shifted with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s …

Low Heat Flow In The Anhydros Basin, Aegean Sea, Recorded By Deep Subsurface Temperatures, Michael Manga, Masako Tominaga, Jonas Preine, Thomas A. Ronge, Sarah Beethe, Christian Hübscher, Iona Mcintosh, Paraskevi Nomikou, Steffen Kutterolf, Tim Druitt, Alexis Bernard, Carole Berthod, Hehe Chen, Acacia Clark, Susan Debari, Tatiana I. Fernandez-Perez, Ralf Gertisser, Raymond M. Johnston, Christopher K. Jones, K. Batuk Joshi, Günther Kletetschka, Olga Koukousioura, Molly Mccanta, Antony Morris, Katharina Pank, Ally Peccia, Paraskevi N. Polymenakou, Adam Woodhouse, Yuzuru Yamamoto

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Subseafloor in situ temperatures in a drilled hole in the Anhydros Basin, Aegean Sea, measured during International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 398, yielded a low heat flow (<0.023 W/m²) despite active magmatism and rifting in the region. The coldest and highest temperatures were 13.9°C at 52.5 m below seafloor (mbsf) and 15.5°C for the deepest measurement at 360.4 mbsf, respectively. Comparison of a heat transfer model with measurements suggests that sea bottom temperatures during the last glacial period were up to 10°C cooler than Holocene temperatures. The magnitude of Holocene warming co-varies with the geothermal heat flow: if …

Understanding The Chemical And Electronic Properties Of Sub-Monolayer Tio₂ On High Surface Area Silica For Jet Fuel Synthesis Applications, Mark A. Isaacs, Charalampos Drivas, Arthur Graf, Sasha Kroon, Santosh Kumar, Junxi Liu, Antonio Torres‐Lopez, Cameron Price, Edward Garland, Ines Lezcano‐Gonzalez, Christopher M. A. Parlett, Vannia C. Dos Santos‐Durndell, Lee J. Durndell

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

2.5% of global carbon emissions result from air travel, underscoring the need for sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) derived from second-generation lignocellulosic biomass to enhance the green credentials of the aviation sector. This study demonstrates the first solvent-free photocatalytic conversion of furfural (FAL) and cyclopentanone (CPO) to produce 2,5-bis(2-furylmethylidene)cyclopentanone (F2Cp), a jet fuel precursor, using Ti-SBA-15 catalysts, synthesized via alkoxide grafting and controlled titanium surface coverage. Sub-monolayer titania films on SBA-15 supports are achieved with tuneable Ti content, confirmed by XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy), UPS (ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy), REELS (reflectance electron energy loss spectroscopy), ISS (ion scattering spectroscopy), and Raman analysis. …