Digital Commons Network^™

Social And Environmental Disparities In Physical Activity And Childhood Obesity In 2-5-Year-Old Children, Alexis Jones

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Social and environmental factors are important determinants of physical activity (PA) and childhood obesity. The purposes of this study were to 1) explore associations of social-demographics (i.e., ethnicity, social-economic status [SES], gender), PA, sedentary behavior (SB), and BMI percentile with social/built environment and 2) explore SES disparities in environmental determinants of health. This cross-sectional study recruited 40 preschoolers (Mage=3.55 years; 75% girls; 17.5% low SES; 30% Hispanic; 10% overweight/obese). Parent-report surveys measured social-demographics, PA outcomes, and social/built environment. Results indicated higher SES children engaged in more PA and less SB than low-SES peers. SES significantly associated with PA, obesity, crime …

Study Of Neutrino Background For The Low-Mass Dark Matter Search In Future Neutrino Experiments, Aayush Bhattarai

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

With high-intensity neutrino beams and large mass detectors, neutrino physics has entered the high precision measurement era. Accelerator experiments that use high-intensity proton beams impinging on a fixed target could produce dark matter along with neutrinos. DUNE, one of the most extensive neutrino experiments under construction, has similar prospects of looking for low-mass dark matter (LDM) produced in the proton interactions with the target. With the possibility of charge-neutral LDM production in the target, numerous neutrinos will be generated alongside it, which will be the primary background to the LDM signal. To understand these neutrino backgrounds, we studied two “modified …

A Proposed Approach For Testing An Educational Virtual Reality Simulation For End-Of-Life Care, Jasmine Hyder

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming more popular with the continuous introduction of newer and more capable technology. Specifically, VR educational simulations can provide training on complex situations that may be difficult to carry out in real life. In an attempt to improve the quality of end-of-life care knowledge among nursing students, a VR simulation is in development that presents related scenarios nurses may face. Rigorous testing of this simulation is essential to produce effective results that separates itself from 2D simulations or other educational methods. A testing framework and plan is proposed here that can be extended to future VR …

Proposal For Uta-Downtown Arlington Bike Network, Anna Laura Harmjanz

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Bicycling offers great benefits for cities including sustainable, efficient, and affordable transportation, improved health and wellness, and creating vibrant communities. Universities offer a good starting point for young adults to form sustainable transportation habits. This study explores how the University of Texas at Arlington’s community perceives existing bike infrastructure, services, and amenities on campus and off-campus to create a well-connected and safe bike network. An online survey was used to collect feedback from students and employees on commuting patterns, cycling experience and barriers, perceived safety on various bike facilities, and suggestions. Based on survey responses, a bike network analysis was …

United Nations Peacekeepers, The Use Of Sexual Exploitation And Abuse, And Feminist Theory, Corrina Marie Sullivan

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Why do United Nations peacekeepers enact sexual harm against the very populations they are meant to protect? Given that the purpose of United Nations peacekeepers is to promote peace in a country following a period of unrest and/or violence, acts of sexual exploitation and abuse are antithetical to their purpose. These acts also inflict trauma on populations meant to be protected. Finally, this behavior undermines the general trust in the United Nations. Therefore, when peacekeepers engage in acts of sexual exploitation and abuse, these acts have larger implications for not only the peacekeeping force but the United Nations as a …

The Effect Of Depression, Anxiety, And Length Of Stay In Neonatal Intensive Care Upon Maternal-Infant Bonding, Tori Shavon Young

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Bonding is important to establish an early relationship but a challenge to mothers with infants in NICU. The aim of this study was to determine if a longer length of time an infant requires NICU admission is associated with impaired maternal-infant bonding. A secondary goal explored associations and effects of maternal depression and anxiety upon bonding via the Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire (PBQ), Edinburg Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), and a subscale of the EPDS for anxiety. A descriptive design was used to explore mental health and bonding among 45 NICU mothers who were at least 18 years old and could speak, …

Increasing The Efficiency Of Universal Robot 5–By The Introductionof Fiducial Markers, Resha Adhikari

2022 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Even though the UR5 robot was developed for industrial purposes, it has not been efficient enough to replace human workers in warehouses and factories. The main theme of this project is to increase the change the working practice of robot by detecting the fiducial markers and using it as a source to pick up the envelopes. Once the robot is able to detect the fiducial markers placed on the envelope, the robot will locate it and then move towards it, use suction to pick up the envelope and move it to another location as desired (a box in our case). …

Agricultural Carbon: The Land, Landowner, And Farmer, Barclay Rogers

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Carbon is certainly a hot topic in agriculture. Across the countryside, farmers, landowners, agricultural service providers, and many others are trying to understand what carbon is about and what it may mean to them. One of the more interesting topics around agricultural carbon concerns the relationship between the landowner and tenant farmers on absentee-owned land (i.e., land that is farmed by someone other than the person who owns it). This article provides a brief background on the agricultural carbon opportunity and explores some ideas about how to pursue the opportunity on absentee-owned farmland.

Small Spacecraft Thermal Control Louvers, James Anthony Mullen

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Small satellites missions are becoming increasingly complex and are requiring more power. These demands lead to temperature fluctuations on the satellite due to spacecraft layout, sunlight and shadow in orbit, and high-powered instrumentation. Products which provide necessary thermal stability for components on the satellite are desirable to small satellite manufacturers.

In September of 2015, Dr. Allison Evans of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center filed a patent for an innovative louver system configured for small satellite applications. The design was sized for satellites with a 1U form factor and utilized bimetallic springs to lift the louver flaps. The design was …

Estimating Cattle Density Using Wildlife Cameras, Emily Bonebrake

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Quantifying the abundance and distribution of animal populations is critical for effective wildlife research and management. Due to their cost-effectiveness, wildlife cameras have become an increasingly popular tool for estimating population densities. Previously, this technique relied on ‘capture-recapture’ models that utilized re-sightings of individually marked animals, but in recent years methods have been developed to estimate the population densities of unmarked animals. One such method is the random encounter and staying time (REST) technique, which does this by assuming that the cumulative time animals stay within the view of the camera scales linearly with the number of individuals. This allows …

Bridging The Divide Between Upper And Lower Classmen: Resources For Mentors And Freshmen In The Choral Education Program, Tanner Hancock Pruett

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The recent decline in student retention in the choral education program at Utah State University should be cause for concern. Students who are excited and passionate about choir are leaving choral education and/or dropping out of college entirely. However, research into college retention rates and the experiences of choral education students at USU has helped explain this decline in student retention.

My review of research about college retention rates indicates that some of the biggest reasons that students drop out of college are academic difficulty, interpersonal difficulties, and mental health. It also indicates students with a strong sense of support …

Anticipatory Intelligence Resilience Modeling Evaluation Of Aspire Research Center, Madeleine Alder

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The analysis of threats and vulnerabilities in a system is essential in developing resilience strategies to strengthen the system’s ability to adapt and succeed. This report delivers a threat analysis of ASPIRE, a research organization centered on engineering solutions for promoting electric vehicle (EV) adoption. ASPIRE, which is an international network of university research partners and comprised primarily of engineering teams, is focused on developing technology that can be used by industry or governmental partners. The threat of low public buy-in for ASPIRE technology is one of the most significant concerns facing the system. Low adoption rates or public resistance …

A Study On The Impact Of Diet On Unified Fire Authority Firefighter Performance, Marin Easton

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Objective: This project aimed to examine the impact of nutrition knowledge, dietary intake, and physical activity on firefighters’ performance on their routine physical assessment (RPA).

Methodology: Members of the Unified Fire Authority, the largest fire agency in Utah with more than 400 sworn firefighters serving 15 communities representing 440,000 residents, were invited via email to participate in this cross-sectional study. Participants (N=92) completed a 40- question survey that assessed specialized diet adherence, dietary intake, nutrition knowledge (using questions from the General Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire;1 point for each correct answer [26 points possible]), regular physical activity (International Physical Activity Questionnaire), and …

A Music Composition Through The Use Of Animal Sounds, Andy Nguy

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The knowledge on animals has been studied over many years by researching and understanding animal behavior and creativity with music. Bioacoustics shows a great deal when it comes to collecting sounds through many principles for sound data collection. With saved recording of animals, music, speeches, and so much more, it has impacted the way music is created through technology. Music production has been advancing in many creative ways. The foundation of sound manipulation is musique concrète. The project uses these concepts of audio recording and digital sounds to produce a composition that includes animal sounds.

Utah Tick Surveillance An Animated Public Service Announcement, Keith Wilson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

As the United States’ population grows, we develop more land into housing and recreate farther into wilderness areas, consequentially encountering ticks with increasing frequency. As the climate continues to change, tick population distributions are also changing, influencing our population’s exposure to tick-borne diseases. Lyme disease, a tick-borne disease named after Lyme, Connecticut, is one of the fastest growing emerging diseases in North America, and the most prevalent vector-borne infection in the United States. There are two species of tick in North America, Ixodes scapularis and Ixodes pacificus, known to be carriers of the causative agent of Lyme disease, a …

Margin Of Error, Aubrey Felty

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

According to Utah State University’s Office of Analysis, Assessment, and Accreditation during the Fall semester of 2020, about 18% of students enrolled were students of color. About 2.5% of students enrolled identified as two or more races. Margin of Error is a docudrama that elevates the voices of multiracial college students and promotes a better understanding of multiracial individuals. The project involves actor portrayals of interviews with multiracial college students who discuss navigating their multiple racial identities at often predominantly white universities. It also features reactions and commentary on the students’ experiences from faculty and students at Utah State University. …

The Effects Of Strength And Conditioning Training On The Health Of College Students, Brynli Bleak

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Does participation in Strength and Conditioning (S&C) classes have a positive effect on the physical, emotional, mental, and social health of college students? This study was designed to measure and explore different markers of physical, mental, emotional, and social health from participants in Strength and Conditioning classes. Class participants were asked to complete a survey to self report the effects of the training on various aspects of their life. Data were analyzed and compared to national averages for college students, and correlation tests were conducted to identify relationships in the reported effects. The study found that no significant correlations existed …

The Evolution And Unraveling Of The American Eugenics Movement, Anneka Walton

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

While the evolution of American eugenics surrounding the time of Nazi Germany has been well-documented, the periods before the explosion of American eugenics and the result of the movement in the wake of the Holocaust are not so well known. Many historically-based works have described the path and growth of eugenics from the time the term was coined to the public acknowledgement of World War II and the point where Americans ended eugenic euthanasia and slowed eugenic sterilizations. There are also many works within the realm of disability history that document these events from the more common social viewpoint. This …

Modeling And Debiasing Feedback Loops In Collaborative Filtering Recommender Systems., Sami Khenissi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven recommender systems have been gaining increasing ubiquity and influence in our daily lives, especially during time spent online on the World Wide Web or smart devices. The influence of recommender systems on who and what we can find and discover, our choices, and our behavior, has thus never been more concrete. AI can now predict and anticipate, with varying degrees of accuracy, the news article we will read, the music we will listen to, the movies we will watch, the transactions we will make, the restaurants we will eat in, the online courses we will be interested …

Western Christianity And The Origins Of Antiblackness, Eurocentrism, And White Supremacist Ideology., John Chenault

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study investigates the cult(ural) and intellectual history of Western Christianity to address a significant gap in the literature pertaining to the origins of whiteness/antiblackness in the West and its subsequent socialization worldwide. Western Christianity’s seminal role in the social construction of the whiteness/antiblackness dichotomy has been undertheorized, neglected, and ignored. This study finds early Christian theologians categorically imposed conceptual metaphors about Blackness on African people that depicted them as the exemplars of evil to teach Christian doctrine about sin and salvation. It connects these original antiblack discourses directly to the theo-political arguments Western European Christians used centuries later …

Ashley: A Chamber Opera In Four Scenes., Rron Karahoda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an intimate chamber opera which explores an original story of a young woman finding her place in the world at the same time she is dealing with unresolved feelings of regret, jealousy, and confusion over her sister’s death. This journey is complicated by people on all sides seeking to benefit by exploiting her and her sister’s legacy. As these two threads collide, the opera reveals itself to be about introducing and synthesizing dualities (in the dialectical sense of thesis→antithesis→synthesis), both musically and dramatically. Octatonic and whole tone pitch sets learn to intermingle, as do whole families of …

The Gambler's Edge - A Theoretical Framework To Trading Securities, Matthew Haines

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Like gamblers, retail investors seeking excess returns in financial markets are prone to miscalculation and their models are often misspeciffied. Forecasting asset prices is extremely difficult in the long run and nearly infeasible in the short run. Additionally, retail investors are likely to be at a disadvantage both technologically and informationally—rarely will they be ahead of the curve. With these disadvantages and the difficulty of predicting future outcomes, retail investors may come to view prices as unpredictable and random in nature, like a roll of the dice. This theoretical research explores a possible investing methodology (derived from gambling principles) should …

Calibration Procedure For Dic Strain Measurements During Vibration-Based Fatigue Testing, Benjamin D. Hill

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Vibration-based fatigue testing is fast and effective method for determining failure characteristics of a material. Often, a small electrical device called a strain gage is bonded to a rectangular plate specimen to measure the deformation of the plate during a test. However, these strain gages break before the plate does, so an alternative method would improve the results obtained from the test. As an alternative to strain gages, Digital Image Correlation (DIC) is a non-contacting, camera-based technique that measures the deformation of an object by comparing digital images taken before and after the object is deformed. During a vibration-based fatigue …

Thermodynamic Analysis Of A Novel Cycle For Nuclear Smr And Heat Transfer Performance Validation Of The Related Supercritical Working Fluids, Benjamin M. Pepper

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Currently, all operating nuclear power facilities in the U.S. follow the same general design and process: light-water reactors boil water into steam using bundles of nuclear fuel rods as a heat source, pumping that steam through a turbine which powers a generator to produce clean year-round electricity. Water is an effective coolant, but other facilities around the world have demonstrated the ability to use non-water-based coolants in nuclear reactor designs, which consequently have their own trade-offs. Some positive consequences of using different reactor designs include enhanced safety, better economics, and cheaper clean consumer energy. The work described in this paper …

Evaluating Plant Uptake Of 4,4'-Methylenedianiline, Jeff Wight

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

4,4’-Methylenedianiline (MDA) is an important industrial chemical used primarily in the production of polyurethane. It is toxic and a suspected human carcinogen. Polyurethane is used in a wide variety of applications such as furniture cushioning, coatings, adhesives, sealants, and elastomers. Polyurethane in soil may degrade and release MDA. This is concerning due to some models predicting a high potential for MDA to be taken up by plants and stored in edible tissue, creating a possible route of exposure for humans and animals. In this project, the potential for MDA to be take up by plants was investigated in order to …

Automated Quality Control For In-Situ Water Temperature Sensors, Leah S. Richardson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The identification of data not representative of the target subject for outdoor (in-situ) environmental sensors (bad data) is a topic that has been explored in the past. Many tools (such as data filters and computer models) have succeeded in providing an end user with properly identified incorrect data over 95% of the time. However, with the continuous increase in the use of automated data collection, a simple indication of the bad data may no longer provide the end user with enough information to reduce the amount of time that must be spent for manual quality control. The purpose of this …

Investigating Tourists' Decision Making And Intentions For Outdoor Recreation Participation During Early Covid-19, Prasanna Humagain

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation aims at discerning tourists’ behaviors and decision making processes for outdoor recreation participation, during the early COVID-19 pandemic. An outdoor recreation trip is defined in this study as “a journey involving at least one overnight stay away from home, and where the purpose is to engage in recreational activities in an outdoor or natural environment.” This dissertation first explores the factors that inhibit tourists’ desires for participating in outdoor recreation trips, the strategies they apply to avoid COVID-19 transmission, and the motivational factors that induce their desires for outdoor recreation participation in the COVID-19 context. The impact of …

Children's Mathematical Engagement Based On Their Awareness Of Different Coding Toys' Design Features, Joseph S. Kozlowski

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Tangible coding toys have been promulgated as useful learning tools for young children to learn computer science and mathematics concepts and skills. Although research shows coding toys can support mathematics for early childhood aged children, little is known about the specific design features of coding toys that afford mathematical thinking concepts and skills to young children. The purpose of this study was to examine kindergarten-aged children’s awareness of the design features in coding toys and to understand how those design features afford children’s engagement with mathematics. The dataset used for this study was collected as part of design-based research NSF …

The Impact Of Covid-19 And Telehealth Services On Attrition Rates In Psychotherapy, Rylan B. Hellstern

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Clinicians in psychotherapy are constantly looking at their outcomes in order to identify and remove barriers that may inhibit effective treatment. Defined generally as the ending of a treatment prior to proper optimal benefit, attrition has been found to both hinder treatment efficacy and cost-effectiveness in therapy. While most attrition literature focuses on the contributing factors to such premature termination, little to no research is available that discusses potential resources for attrition rates. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the use of telehealth services which may serve as a resource to combat attrition. The current study aims to identify how …

Applications Of Affinity Spaces In English Language Instruction: Writing And Peer Review Of Fanfiction Based On Video Games In An Academic English As A Second Language Writing Course, Marta Halaczkiewicz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This classroom-based research study explored applications of informal online spaces in formal language instruction. Using sociocultural theory as a lens, the present study examined how using creative writing genres and online feedback practices, may assist with alleviating the three pedagogical issues of academic writing instruction: rigidity of academic topics and forms, superficiality of in-class feedback process, and slow language development. Students in an intermediate English language course wrote weekly fiction inspired by their favorite video games. They also engaged in a scaffolded feedback process facilitated in an online space. At the end of the semester, they wrote a reflection on …