Digital Commons Network^™

Avian Communities Monitored Along A Successional Chronosequence In Bottomland Hardwood Forests In The Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, Eamonn Alasdair Thurmond

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bottomland hardwood forests in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley have been extensively reduced due to agriculture conversion and altered hydrology. Remnant forests have undergone further degradation from sources such as a lack of forest management, invasive species, and reduced regeneration of oaks (Quercus spp.). Recent restoration efforts of bottomland hardwood forests have focused on implementing wildlife forestry practices that prioritize restoring wildlife habitat while retaining profitable timber harvests. In this study I surveyed bird communities in bottomland hardwood forests in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley along a successional chronosequence. Birds were sampled using automated recording units over 10 days …

Organizational Reliability And Resilience As A Dynamic System: Knowledge Modeling With Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, Antonie J. Jetter, Ahmed A. Alibage, Nan Peter Liang

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Safety research in complex environments recommends that high-hazard industries improve reliability and increase their capacity for resilience by enacting principles for high-reliability organizing (HRO). This view has been highly influential in many industries, ranging from aviation to hospitals, and is at the core of many safety culture programs. However, even though HRO principles originated in business practice and were observed in diverse organizations, practitioners frequently struggle to enact them in the contexts of their work. This is likely caused by two limitations of current research: principles are insufficiently specified and the interdependencies between them, such as mutually reinforcing vs. tradeoff …

Smart Grid Cybersecurity In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence, Chip Corbett, Charles M. Weber, Timothy R. Anderson

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The security of the power grid is essential for the proper function of a democratic society, yet it is constantly under threat. The internet of things (loT) will make a bad situation much worse. Misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (MDM) have been identified as serious threats to our democratic institutions, and that same acronym applies to mobile device management (MDM), and these devices have become ubiquitous. People are notoriously bad at doing basic cybersecurity. With trillions of devices and remote access everywhere, what could possibly go wrong? Now add in the engaging opportunity of distributed energy resources (DERs) and life gets …

Power Resilience Planning Under The Threat Of Artificial Intelligence, Chip Corbett, Cuong Nguyen, Dahm M. Hongchai, Prajakta Thorat, Pavithra Prasad, Sarah Von Schimmelmann, Charles M. Weber, Timothy R. Anderson

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The earth is an unstable planet. Change is constant and frequently chaotic. It is very important to plan carefully to manage changes that can be anticipated now, and to cover potential issues that might not yet have been discovered. The dawn of artificial intelligence (AI) presents a host of new concerns and opportunities. The criteria for evaluation are diverse and complex. Cybersecurity is absolutely essential, yet advances in technology have created an internet of things (IoT) where threat vectors might gain access to critical command and control elements through trillions of connected IoT devices. Whereas elegant zero trust cybersecurity models …

Five Pivotal Practices For Leaders To Cultivate Empathy Within Virtual Scrum Teams, Dahm Mongkol Hongchai, Charles M. Weber

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the digital and global economy, business leaders need more than just business and technology competencies; they also require empathy. However, there is a notable scarcity of research on empathy in Scrum for product development. This study aims to uncover critical insights into how leaders can foster empathy within virtual Scrum teams. Accordingly, this paper proposes five pivotal themes leaders can employ: Scrum fundamentals, meditation, self- and other-analysis, healthy interactions, and informal connections. These vital strategies offer actionable methods for leaders seeking to enhance empathy within their virtual Scrum teams.

Improving Attendance To Achieve Organizational Goals: A Case Study Of Human-Centered Design In A Small Us Plant-Based Food Manufacturer, Angel Contreras-Cruz, Eduardo Ahumada-Tello

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Plant-based food manufacturing companies face high staff turnover rates and attendance problems. It is challenging for those companies to maintain an acceptance level of employee retention and attendance to achieve their objectives. Companies rely on front-line employees to meet production plans, but employees who do not show up at work jeopardize companies' operations. Additional challenges, such as retaining and attracting talent after the COVID-19 pandemic, are present daily for several U.S. organizations. This study analyzes attendance data from the case study company to design an attendance policy. Attendance data suggested that nearly 60 percent of the operational workforce had attendance …

Mental Models Of Translational Scientists, Rasnia Tabpla, Antonie J. Jetter

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Translational science aims to bridge the gap between scientific discoveries and practical application yet faces challenges in achieving high success rates. This study examines the effective engagement of translational scientists, who play a key role in the translation process. It uses Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) to analyze the scientists' mental models and identify common concepts related to success factors, such as ability, resources, opportunity, and entrepreneurial competencies. It then compares the mental models of the scientists and finds that mental models exhibit similarities, yet variations exist such as density and connectedness. Scenario analysis with FCM is then used to identify …

Technology Convergence And Its Influence On Innovation Networks: An Assessment Of Emerging Trends, Shuying Li, Wudan Ma, Xiaoyu Wang, Xian Zhang, Haiyun Xu, Edwin Garces, Tugrul U. Daim

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

AI-age technologies will evolve at an accelerated pace, driven by long-term mutually beneficial symbiosis. Technology convergence will disrupt existing industrial technology fields in general. Assessing and predicting technology convergence will become an important technology management issue in the AI era, providing new clues for distinguishing key technologies in innovation. Existing analytical models prefer to detect retrospective convergence. The role of emerging converging technologies in developing new technologies, generating new applications, and facilitating collaboration and commercialization across different phases is not well understood. In this paper, we build a technology co-occurrence network from the perspective of technology evolution and community detection, …

Strengthening Capacity In Industrial Revolution 4.0 (Ir 4.0): A Case Study On Training Product-Service Systems Between The Us And Vietnam, Man Hang Yip, Ana Sofia Castellanos Santarnaria, Julia J. Babcock

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This case study analyzes how value is created in the development process of a collaborative training product-service system (PSS) designed for provincial government officials in Vietnam. This initiative, part of the USAID Strengthening Provincial Capacity (USAID SPC) project, encapsulates a series of training solutions designed to empower officials with key skills in engineering and technology management, including the knowledge to improve global value chains, upgrade technology infrastructure and sustainable production models. A primary driver for the “four-day course delivery”, the PSS analyzed in this study, was to bolster economic competitiveness at the provincial level in the context of Industrial Revolution …

Neuroscience-Based Harm Reduction Education For College Students In Portland, Or, Catriona Swallow

University Honors Theses

Harm reduction (HR) is a movement focused on reducing the harms of the opioid overdose crisis through education, advocacy, and community engagement. A key component of HR is naloxone, a medication which reverses opioid overdoses when administered. Due to increased fentanyl contamination, opioid overdose deaths have been on the rise among adolescents in the U.S and HR practices are crucially important at this point in time. In recent years, alternative curricula of HR education have included a neuroscience-based approach to the topic of substance use. While both traditional and alternative programs have had success increasing substance use literacy among adolescents, …

Masthead

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Math Meets The Clinic: Modeling Patient Specific Hnscc Radiation Response Dynamics, Rohan Vijayvikram, Pirmin Schlicke, Mohammad U. Zahid, Dina M. El-Habashy, Cem Dede, Clifton D. Fuller, Heiko Enderling

Radiation Oncology Medical Student Program 2024

Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) originate from the mucosal lining of the upper aerodigestive tract and radiation therapy has become a fundamental component in the standard care for these patients. However, the treatment's unique dynamics can lead to disparities in outcomes and biological responses in both tumor and normal tissues. A significant challenge remains in predicting individual patient responses to radiation, with variability often resulting in under or over-treatment and potentially adverse effects. The absence of reliable biomarkers highlights the need for predictive measures to guide clinical decisions in real-time. The integration of mathematical models in radiation therapy …

"Proton Vs. Photon Chemoradiation For Locally Advanced Nsclc: Comparing Dose To Immune Cells And Organs-At-Risk, Lizette Villanueva, David Qian

Radiation Oncology Medical Student Program 2024

Dosimetric analysis of a phase III randomized trial comparing proton and photon therapy for locally advanced lung cancer.

Modeling Study Of Si3N4 Waveguides On A Sapphire Platform For Photonic Integration Applications, Diandian Zhang, Shui-Qing Yu, Gregory J. Salamo, Richard A. Soref, Wei Du

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Sapphire has various applications in photonics due to its broadband transparency, high-contrast index, and chemical and physical stability. Photonics integration on the sapphire platform has been proposed, along with potentially high-performance lasers made of group III–V materials. In parallel with developing active devices for photonics integration applications, in this work, silicon nitride optical waveguides on a sapphire substrate were analyzed using the commercial software Comsol Multiphysics in a spectral window of 800~2400 nm, covering the operating wavelengths of III–V lasers, which could be monolithically or hybridly integrated on the same substrate. A high confinement factor of ~90% near the single-mode …

Using Short-Form Videos To Get Clinical Trial Newcomers To Sign Up: Message-Testing Experiment, Sisi Hu, Ciera E. Kirkpatrick, Namyeon Lee, Yoorim Hong, Sungkyoung Lee, Amanda Hinnant

Journalism Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Recruiting participants for clinical trials poses challenges. Major barriers to participation include psychological factors (eg, fear and mistrust) and logistical constraints (eg, transportation, cost, and scheduling). The strategic design of clinical trial messaging can help overcome these barriers. While strategic communication can be done through various channels (eg, recruitment advertisements), health care providers on the internet have been found to be key sources for communicating clinical trial information to US adults in the social media era.

Objective: This study aims to examine how communication source (ie, medical doctors and peers) and message framing of TikTok videos (ie, psychological and …

Engineered Nucleic-Acid Binding Intrinsically Disordered Proteins For Biomedical Applications, Telmo Diez Perez

Biomedical Engineering ETDs

This dissertation explores the use of intrinsically disorder proteins (IDPs) in biomedical applications related to the detection and biosensing of nucleic-acid species. We engineer several low critical solution temperature (LCST) nucleic-acid binding elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) as model IDPs and study their potential in biomedical application via interactions with short single-stranded (ss) DNA, tRNA and viral RNAs. First, we engineer a simple polycationic ELP capable of recruiting DNA on demand in a DNA-protein-rich condensate via LLPS. Moreover, we develop a modified Flory-Huggins theory to quantify the partitioning of DNA and protein upon coacervate formation with and without salts. We then design …

Applications Of Artificial Intelligence On Drought Impact Monitoring And Assessment, Beichen Zhang

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Drought, a prevalent and consequential natural disaster, poses widespread, indirect challenges across environmental and societal dimensions. Despite considerable focus on monitoring meteorological and hydrological drought and studying their characteristics, there is a gap in assessing its multifaceted impacts, especially on societal sectors. The dissertation comprises three research essays utilizing artificial intelligence to quantitatively study multi-dimensional drought impacts. The first essay leveraged deep learning and natural language processing to predict multi-dimensional drought impacts from textual datasets, including social media, news media, and citizen scientist reports. The findings demonstrate superior performance over traditional methods and unveil the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of …

From Simple Requests To Complex Conversations: How User Goals Shape Interactions With Chatbots And Switching Intentions, Ehsan Ghasemi, Youngsoo Kim

Information Systems Faculty Publications

Studies on complex chatbots (defined as chatbots that involve users in long interactions resulting in making users process many pieces of information and taking many actions) show inconsistencies in the relationship between the perceptions of the complexity of these systems and adoption-related constructs. This paper reports on an ongoing research study that proposes a shift to attend to user goal frameworks and goal magnitudes to study this relationship. In this study, we synthesize the concepts of goal systems theory and goal framing theory to systematically develop a scale for measuring goal magnitudes within different goal frameworks during interactions with chatbots. …

Towards A Privacy-Preserving Healthcare Analytics For Neurological Diseases Management, Gabriel Owusu, Qinyu Liao, Bright Frimpong

Information Systems Faculty Publications

This study explores the integration of Differential Privacy (DP) in healthcare analytics, particularly focusing on enhancing data privacy in Machine Learning (ML) applications. We examine the effectiveness of differential private ML in managing sensitive medical data and the trade-offs between privacy and model performance. We use data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) to develop a predictive ML model that classify patients into different stages in the progression of Alzheimer’s disease whilst maintaining privacy in patient data. We contribute to growing literature of healthcare analytics and privacy by demonstrating the feasibility of implementing privacy preserving models on healthcare data …

Peer Victimization In College Student Mental Health And Well-Being: Moderating Effects Of Perceived Social Support, Erica Van Overloop

Dissertations

Peer victimization is associated with several short- and long-term psychosocial consequences for both children and adults. Although there is evidence that peer victimization negatively impacts college students, the degree to which it may affect students’ mental health and well-being remains unclear. Most studies of peer victimization among college students focus only on retrospective accounts of childhood victimization, leaving many unknowns about how recent or ongoing victimization may impact students. The present study examined both retrospective and recent experiences of peer victimization in a college student sample (N = 366, 18-29 years old) while considering the moderating role of perceived …

Birds, Bees, And The Babies: Study Of The Influence Of Self-Efficacy On Parent-Child Sex Communication, Cassandra M. Craig

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Previous studies show that parents tend to be uncomfortable discussing sexual topics with their children, such as menstruation, masturbation, and/or condom use. This study offers a look at the part confidence plays in a parent's intentions to talk to their kids about such topics. The results indicated that the confidence parents feel about discussing sexual topics is not related to how much their own parents talked with them about sex. However, the confidence they feel that could be coming from other models, like social media or peers, is related to how much parents intend to talk with their own children …

Creating A Virtual Hierarchy From A Relational Database, Yucong Mo

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

In data management and modeling, the value of the hierarchical model is that it does not require expensive JOIN operations at runtime; once the hierarchy is built, the relationships among data are embedded in the tree-like hierarchical structure, and thus querying data could be much faster than using a relational database. Today most data is stored in relational databases, but if the data were stored in hierarchies, what would these hierarchies look like? And more importantly, would this transition lead to a more efficient database? This thesis explores these questions by introducing a set of algorithms to convert a relational …

The Interactions Between Drought Tolerant Corn Hybrids And Plant Water-Stress On Weeds And Their Host Capability For Spider Mites, Mercy Adhiambo Odemba

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

With climate change, it is predicted that more frequent high temperatures and drought severity will lead to an increase in damage caused by pests that thrive under these conditions. Spider mite outbreaks, for example, are associated with plant waterstress and there is evidence that some weeds are more resilient and adapted to drought than some crops, leading to major concerns for the management of these two pest types. Weeds directly compete with crops for limited resources, but what is unclear is which weeds harbor spider mites and whether they exacerbate the impact of spider mites on corn crops under water-stressed …

Ensemble Machine Learning At The Edge Using The Codec Classifier Structure And Weak Learners Guided By Mutual Information, Aj Beckwith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The Codec Classifier is a low-computation, low-memory tree ensemble method that dramatically improves feasibility of image classification on resource-constrained edge devices. It achieves advantages over other tree ensemble methods due the separation of encoder and decoder tasks in the classifier. The encoder partitions feature space, and the decoder labels the regions in the partition. This functional separation of tasks enables the encoder design (partitioning) to be guided by maximizing the mutual information (MI) between class labels and the features (i.e. the encoded representation of the data) without regard to the error performance of the classifier. Experiments show maximizing MI leads …

An Evaluation Of Authenticity: A Content Analysis Of K-6 Mandarin Matrix Textbooks For Chinese Dual Language Immersion Programs, Hsiaomei Tsai

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Authentic texts are suggested for building practical language skills that go beyond the classroom, helping language learners to communicate with native speakers. This study used content analysis and a teacher survey to examine how the Utah Chinese Dual Language Immersion (DLI) literacy curriculum, featuring the Grades K-6 Mandarin Matrix textbooks, reflects realistic Chinese language and culture. Additionally, this study explored the pedagogical value of these textbooks in Utah’s Chinese DLI programs via a teacher survey. The results showed high linguistic authenticity in word usage, order, and situations, consistently above 99% across Grades K to 6 books. Cultural authenticity, particularly in …

The Drivers And Ecological Importance Of Streamflow Permanence For Native Salmonids: Evaluated At Multiple Spatio-Temporal Scales, Skylar Rousseau

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

In freshwater ecosystems, aquatic resources are distributed patchily across both space and time. Non-permanent streams, which go through periodic episodes of drying and rewetting, account for more than half of all streams in North America and help create much of the diversity that defines aquatic ecosystem form and function. While non-permanent streams have become increasingly common under climate change, we have a poor understanding of both their distribution across the landscape as well as how native stream fishes make use of them when they are flowing. I analyzed a large data set that spanned multiple decades across the northern Rocky …

Citizen Science Project On Urban Canids Provides Different Results From Camera Traps But Generates Interest And Revenue, Neville F. Taraporevala

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

As more people live in cities, wildlife increasingly encounters people. Coyotes (Canis latrans) and red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are two carnivores that have easily adapted to urban environments causing them to come into conflict with people and their pets. Citizen science, where members of the community aid scientists in the collection of data, has emerged as a low-cost method of studying these species that can provide benefits to management agencies but may provide different results than traditional methods. We analyzed data collected by citizen scientists and data collected via motion-triggered camera traps to see how each …

Shedding Light On Past Ice-Free Intervals In Northwest Greenland: Luminescence Dating Of The Base Of The Camp Century Ice Core, Hawke Woznick

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The goal of this thesis is to provide greater resolution on the age and character of the subglacial sediment recovered from the base of the Camp Century ice core, northwestern Greenland. Geochemical analysis indicated that the upper sub-ice sediments were geochemically different and experienced greater weathering than the basal unit underlying a one-meter silty ice lens. Analysis of feldspars within the very fine sand fraction indicates they are dominated by potassium feldspar. Sediment was dated using luminescence, which provides an age for the last time sediment was exposed to light. Luminescence analysis returned ages around 420 thousand years old, which …

Evaluating Bluebunch Wheatgrass Plant Materials For The Central Great Basin And Range, Mckenna Delton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Bluebunch wheatgrass is a perennial grass from North America’s Intermountain West. This area has faced many ecological disturbances, including dryland farming, wildfire, and grazing. These have led to a decline in the populations of native perennial grasses. While bluebunch used to be widespread throughout the region, it often cannot compete with some non-native grasses that are better adapted to these disturbances. Therefore, there is a demand for bluebunch wheatgrass plant materials that have undergone selection for overall better performance in restoration.

Most existing plant materials for bluebunch wheatgrass come from the Columbia Plateau region, but interest is growing in new …

Teachers' Descriptions Of Their Professional Learning Networks And Spaces, Nathan Justis

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The purpose of this study is to understand teacher professional learning through the eyes of teachers to assist them in improving their teaching and better support student learning. Teachers learn to improve their practice in many different ways and from many different sources. Researchers have studied teachers' descriptions of learning resources they value and have labeled this personal collection of resources a teacher's professional learning network (PLN). This study explored teachers' descriptions of their PLNs and closely examined what teachers do in professional learning spaces of their choosing. This study also provided teachers with an opportunity to voice what they …