Digital Commons Network^™

Sulfur Cycling In The Gabbroic Section Of The Oman Ophiolite, Ana P. Jesus, Harald Strauss, Mário A. Gonçalves, Michelle Harris, Diogo Silva, Martin J. Whitehouse, Damon A.H. Teagle

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

We present sulfur mineralogy and isotope geochemistry from the gabbro transect of the Oman Drilling Project to unravel the sulfur cycle during hydrothermal alteration of the plutonic oceanic crust. The sheeted dike–gabbro transition (Hole GT3A) shows low sulfide‑sulfur concentrations (GT3A_median = 178 ppm, σ = 4873 ppm) but with great sulfur isotope variability (δ³⁴S = −12.8 to 14.4 ‰ V-CDT, weighted average + 5.8 ‰) and unusually heavy compositions relative to in-situ or ophiolitic crust. These features are consistent with abiogenic thermochemical sulfate reduction during intense hydrothermal alteration under greenschist facies conditions which formed a low-variance and …

Numerical Modelling Of Gravel Transportation By A Tsunami With The Extended Xbeach-G, Masashi Watanabe, Gerd Masselink, Daisuke Ishimura, Masaki Yamada, Adam D. Switzer

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Estimating coastal erosion by a tsunami is essential for land use planning, assessing hazards for current structures (e.g., coastal nuclear power plants), and for paleotsunami reconstruction. Such estimations are currently available only for sandy beaches, using sand sediment transport models, which are not applicable to gravel beaches, which are the most common beach type in high-latitude settings. This study extended the one-dimensional cross-shore XBeach-G model to account for two-dimensional gravel transport by a tsunami. First, this study confirmed that the extended XBeach-G model can simulate a time series of waveforms of solitary waves during laboratory experiments. The proposed model was …

Comparative Evaluation Of Swabbing Sites For Omicron Variant Detection In Pcr Testing, Tom Fowler, Edward Blandford, David Chapman, Matthias E Futschik, Raghavendran Kulasegaran-Shylini, Sarah Tunkel, Carolyn Lewis, Alasdair Fellows, Ellie Sheppard, Leanne Mccabe, Peter Marks, Paul E Klapper, Andrew Dodgson, Malur Sudhanva, Mike Kidd, Andy Vail, Susan Hopkins, Tim Peto

School of Biomedical Sciences

PURPOSE: The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 raised concerns about the best sampling sites for PCR testing, with early indications suggesting throat swab samples were better than nasal swab samples. Our study evaluated the sensitivity of detecting SARS-CoV-2 across different swabbing sites.

METHODS: Participants undergoing testing at NHS Test and Trace sites in England provided self-collected samples using nose only, throat only, and combined nose and throat swabs, which were analysed by realtime PCR.

RESULTS: Among 815 participants, combined swabs had higher viral concentrations than nose only or throat only swabs. Sensitivity for detecting SARS-CoV-2 by PCR was 91 % for …

The Next Frontier In Computer Science, Trends And Research Opportunities, Mostafa Abdulghafoor Mohammed, Z. T. Al-Qaysi, Tahsien Al-Quraishi

Mesopotamian Journal of Computer Science

No abstract provided.

Anila: Adaptive Neuro-Inspired Learning Algorithm For Efficient Machine Learning, Ai Optimization, And Healthcare Enhancement, Ismael Khaleel, Wijdan Noaman Marzoog, Ghada Al-Kateb

Mesopotamian Journal of Computer Science

The Adaptive Neuro-Inspired Learning Algorithm (ANILA) offers a breakthrough in the realm of machine learning by drawing inspiration from the biological processes of the human brain. Developed to address limitations in conventional models such as CNNs and RNNs, ANILA enhances real-time responsiveness, energy efficiency, and system adaptability. By emulating neurobiological behaviors particularly sparse coding and synaptic plasticity ANILA allows systems to process data dynamically, adjust to novel inputs without retraining, and scale effectively across environments like IoT and healthcare diagnostics. Performance evaluations highlight significant reductions in latency, increases in energy efficiency (up to 92%), and exceptional adaptability to changing data …

Woa-Covid-19: Whale Optimization Algorithm For Selection Of Multi-Examination Features Based On Covid-19 Infections, Karrar Hameed Abdulkareem, Mazin Abed Mohammed, Zaid Abdi Alkareem Alyasseri, Dawood Zahi Khutar, Osama Ahmad Alomari

Mesopotamian Journal of Computer Science

Since its emergence in late 2019, COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) has become one of the most critical global health threats, claiming millions of lives and placing many more at serious risk. The complexity of diagnosing COVID-19 lies in the wide range of clinical and examination features involved, prompting researchers to explore various advanced diagnostic methods. However, one of the main challenges is identifying the most relevant features that can streamline and improve diagnostic accuracy. In this study, we propose a feature selection approach based on the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) to identify key examination indicators associated with COVID-19. We used …

Agentic Ai-Enhanced Virtual Reality For Adaptive Immersive Learning Environments, Indra Kishor, Udit Mamodiya, Mohammed Almaayah, Amer Alqutaish, Rami Shehab, Theyazn H. H. Aldhyani

Mesopotamian Journal of Computer Science

Immersive learning using Virtual Reality (VR) has gained prominence for delivering experiential, engaging education. However, most VR learning environments lack real-time adaptability, personalization, and cognitive responsiveness. This study presents an Agentic AI-enabled VR framework that autonomously adjusts pedagogical content, interaction style, and challenge level based on learner behavior, emotions, and performance feedback. The proposed system integrates a reinforcement learning-based agent with a virtual reality module to form an intelligent tutor capable of independent decision-making. A neuro-symbolic model processes multi-modal feedback (gesture, speech, gaze, performance) to determine context-aware pedagogical strategies. The system employs a self-evolving curriculum logic that adapts in real …

A Review Of Image Steganography Based On Metaheuristic Optimization Algorithms, Fatima Abdulhussain Khalil, Ammar Ali Neamah, Hasanen Alyasiri

Mesopotamian Journal of Computer Science

Due to the widespread popularity of digital images on the Internet, image-based steganography has become a widely adopted technique for embedding secret information into everyday visual content. In parallel, steganalysis plays a vital role in digital forensics and information security by seeking to uncover hidden content within these images. Although steganographic techniques—particularly those employing adaptive embedding strategies—have made significant progress, many steganalysis approaches still struggle to generalize effectively across different image types and embedding methods. This contrast highlights the need for more intelligent, flexible, and robust analysis frameworks. This review examines steganographic techniques for digital images and the application of …

Good Forestry In The Granite State: Introduction - Setting The Stage, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

*Message from the State Forester
Using this Manual
*Introduction to New Hampshire’s Forests

Good Forestry In The Granite State: Timber Harvesting, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Good Forestry In The Granite State: Sensitive Areas, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Good Forestry In The Granite State: Wildlife Habitat, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Good Forestry In The Granite State: Climate And Forests, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Good Forestry In The Granite State: Forest Health, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Good Forestry In The Granite State: Glossary, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Good Forestry In The Granite State: Appendices & References, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Good Forestry In The Granite State: Public Review Draft Third Edition - May 2025, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Predicting Dune Evolution On A Regional Scale For Coastal Management, Liane M. Brodie, C. Stokes, G. Masselink, A. Konstantinou, T. Scott, T. Poate

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Dunes provide a range of ecosystem services, including natural resilience against coastal flooding, and it is essential for proactive coastal zone management to forecast future dune behaviour as sea levels rise. However, dunes exhibit dynamic behaviours over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, posing challenges for predicting their evolution. Here we demonstrate a high degree of variability in contemporary dune behaviour along a single coastal region, across 31 sites in Cornwall, southwest England. Rates of change varied widely, with sediment loss ranging from −12.4 m³/m/yr to a gain of +5.1 m³/m/yr, and dune retreat/advancement ranging from −3.7 m/yr …

Voices Of The Sound: Reflections On Transforming Ocean Governance: Stakeholder Reflections On The Plymouth Sound National Marine Park, Kizzy Beaumont

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Executive summaryThis stakeholder reflections report explores the perspectives of those engaged with the Plymouth Sound National Marine Park (NMP), the UK’s first National Marine Park. It draws on interviews and focus groups conducted between June and December 2024. Drawing on 24 semi-structured interviews and two focus groups, the report examines the aspirations, challenges, and governance of the NMP using the lens of Transformative Ocean Governance.Participants celebrated the NMP’s role in connecting people to the sea, fostering marine citizenship, and reimagining governance beyond traditional protected area models. Emotional ties to place, strong local champions, and inclusive education programmes were highlighted as …

Geopolitical Changes And Futures Of Ccamlr, Nengye Liu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CAMLR Convention) was negotiated in the late 1970s in the shadow of the Soviet Union’s expanding interest in Antarctic krill fisheries. The development of a management regime for the krill fishery in the remote Southern Ocean vividly reflects geopolitical changes of the world at that time. The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) is similarly being affected by geopolitical forces from the wider international system today. This chapter therefore first reviews the historical background for the establishment of the CCAMLR. It then provides an overview of …

Dyscluded': Women's Experiences Of Mothering Autistic Children As Described In Their Stories', Juliet Hall

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences Theses

My research, grounded in feminist research practices, uses an auto/biographical approach to explore the experiential knowledge of women mothering autistic children. It arose from a yearning for discovery. I use women’s stories to increase understanding of this experience to disrupt deeply embedded discourses and to benefit others with shared experiences.

There is a substantial body of knowledge on the experience of parent’s raising autistic children, however this tends to focus on a specific aspect of their autism journey. It is often presented in a gender-blind way. Much of it fails to acknowledge the implications of sociocultural expectations on mothers and …

Examining The Role Of Prompt Engineering In Utilizing Generative Ai Tools For Lesson Planning: Insights From Teachers’ Experiences And Perceptions, Areej Elsayary, Mohammad Amin Kuhail, Zeina Hojeij

All Works

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of prompt engineering in utilizing GenAI tools like EduAid, Magic School, and ChatGPT to enhance lesson planning efficiency and content relevance. Additionally, it highlights the need for AI literacy and continuous professional development to align AI outputs with diverse student needs. A qualitative case study was used to collect data from 17 high school teachers from private and governmental schools. Document analysis, written reflections, and focus group talks were used as data sources to get detailed information about how the teachers used and thought about GenAI tools. The results show …

A Social-Ecological Justice Approach To Ecotourism: Examples From Cockpit Country, Jamaica, Laurel Ann C. Curry

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ecotourism aims to support local social, ecological, and economic systems sustainably, but its implementation often perpetuates social and environmental injustices. This work applies a new social-ecological justice (SEJ) framework to ecotourism, combining Pope et al.’s holistic approach with principles like ecological stewardship, economic repositioning, and collaboration tailored to specific contexts. Importantly, basic capabilities for full functioning of humans and other species were used in this research to measure areas of justice and injustice. Using a case study approach with the Southern Trelawny Environmental Agency (STEA) in Jamaica's Cockpit Country, co-created interview data were analyzed to evaluate its ecotourism program’s alignment …

Feminine Felons: Violent Offenders' Intersectional Experiences In Twentieth-Century Montana, Cassidy Ann Vander Voort

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper explores the treatment of violent female offenders in Montana in both the media and prison system from 1900-1960. Women of all races faced gender discrimination from both the carceral system and popular media. Local newspapers sensationalized crimes committed by female offenders, portraying them as women who lived outside of the expectations of womanhood in the twentieth century. Newspapers and courts placed women into two categories: “mad/sad” female offenders, who received forgiveness for their crimes; or unforgivable, “bad” offenders. Crime did not determine these categorizations; instead, gender expectations of the white middle class shaped female criminals’ treatment. If these …

Aspen Stands Enrich Bird Communities Following A Wildfire In A Montane, Mixed Conifer Forest, Cody Q. Lane

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Fire is a major ecological force in most terrestrial systems, but the responses of animal communities to fire vary markedly across ecosystems due to variability in fire regimes and vegetation communities. Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) is unique within coniferous forests of western North America for its ability to regenerate following wildfire via vegetative resprouting. As managers employ techniques to restore fire regimes and conserve declining aspen forests, it becomes important to understand how aspen alters postfire communities. Our objectives were to (1) assess how aspen interacted with fire severity and years since fire to influence avian species and …

Unravelling The Physiological Impacts Of Fire On Western U.S. Conifers, Charlotte Chiara Reed

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wildfires are inherently spatially heterogenous, with many trees within larger burned areas not immediately killed by fire. These surviving trees often sustain some level of fire injury, yet we lack a mechanistic understanding of how these injuries affect post-fire tree physiological function, thus affecting whether trees go on to recover or die. Current hypotheses differentiate effects of fire on tree carbon balance and hydraulic function, yet critical uncertainties remain about the relative importance of each, how they interact, and whether these impacts make trees more vulnerable to post-fire disturbances like drought. Via field experiments utilizing prescribed fires and two widespread …

Structural Optimization And Stability Enhancement Of Uba(2) And Ntl9 Using The Computational Tool: Emcast, Bahar Ghazi Esfahani

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study enhances protein stability prediction by refining EmCAST (Empirical C-Alpha Stability Tool), a computational tool used to identify stabilizing mutations in protein domains. We applied EmCAST to two model proteins: the α-helical ubiquitin-associated domain 2 (UBA(2)) and the α/β N-terminal domain of ribosomal protein L9 (NTL9). Protein stability is critical for proper function, and mutations can lead to misfolding and disease. To validate EmCAST’s predictions, guanidine hydrochloride-induced denaturation was monitored using circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy for both wild-type and mutant variants. Results guided refinements to EmCAST’s algorithm, incorporating new experimental datasets to improve accuracy. Additionally, we examined the assumption …

Exploring The Potential For Cynophagy, Working Dogs, And Village Dogs At Housepit 54, Daniel O. Nohren

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Several field seasons at the Bridge River Archaeological Site have recovered a vast faunal assemblage subject of numerous archaeological and genetic investigations, several of which have focused on potential roles of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). In order to examine the highly fractured nature of the Housepit 54 canid assemblage, the calculation of a fracture freshness index was performed which created quantitative units of measure useful in the comparison of bone fracture taphonomy over time and across taxonomic groups. This method has been employed specifically to investigate the potential for exploitation of within-bone nutrients among both a sample of …

The Relationship Between Principals’ Transformational Leadership And Teachers’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior Within Public Primary And Middle Schools In Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China, Chuxuan Yin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This non-experimental causal-comparative study was designed to explore the relationship between principals’ transformational leadership and teachers’ organizational citizenship behavior within public primary and middle schools in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China, as well as the differences in principals’ transformational leadership and teachers’ organizational citizenship behavior based on demographic characteristics. A sample of 142 principals and 675 teachers was recruited. Data collection utilized two validated instruments: the Transformational Leadership Questionnaire for evaluating principals’ transformational leadership level, and the Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale for Primary and Middle School Teachers for measuring teachers’ organizational citizenship behavior level. Both descriptive statistics (frequency distribution, mean, standard …

As Above, So Below: Environmental Justice Stories Of Seeds, Mining And Migration, Cassidy M. Motahari

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Environmental justice issues directly impact the health, cultural heritage and livelihoods of communities. This multimedia master’s project examines how federal policies, legal frameworks and the prioritization of corporate interests perpetuate environmental justice issues in the western United States. Three distinct stories provide a more nuanced understanding of the impact of systemic inequities on seed saving, mineral extraction and humanitarian aid on public lands.

With four companies controlling over 60 percent of the global seed market, declining genetic diversity in seeds limits the potential to cultivate and develop crops that meet the regional and cultural needs of diverse growers. In a …