Digital Commons Network^™

Microplastic Trends In Estuarine Surface Waters, Hanna Mogensen

Master's Theses and Capstones

With an estimated 8.75 million metric tons of plastic entering the world’s oceans each year, marine plastic litter has become a fast-growing concern. Plastics have been found to have severe impacts on aquatic environments and marine organisms in which both physical and chemical effects have been described. Once plastics enter the oceans, the qualities that make them so desirable- their persistent and durable nature- also make them a substantial and persistent threat. Through natural processes (solar degradation, mixing, and biofouling) larger plastic pieces break apart, but never fully degrade, existing as smaller and smaller pieces called microplastics.

Microplastics, defined as …

Investigating The Role Of Bias In Sustained Attention And Inhibition In Individuals With Concussion, Kaitlyn Lane O'Connor

Master's Theses and Capstones

It is estimated that approximately 15% of individuals who suffer a concussion experience cognitive impairments that can persist and cause long-term consequences (Post-Concussion Syndrome, 2023). This study builds on previous research on concussion, sustained attention, and inhibitory control to further characterize the mechanisms at work in post-concussion cognitive dysfunction (Moore et al., 2014; Ramage & Robin, 2019; Robin et al., 1999). Sustained attention was measured with a psychomotor vigilance task (Starry Night); inhibitory control was measured with the Flanker and Dimensional Change Card Sort tasks. The current study aims were developed to fill a gap in understanding regarding the potential …

The Microbial Diversity In The Spruce Hole Aquifer Associated With Artificial Recharge Practices, Rafaela Paes De Souza Barbosa

Master's Theses and Capstones

Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) Systems are utilized globally for underground water storage and subsequent retrieval, serving as a key water management strategy. In Durham, NH, an ASR system was established in the Spruce Hole formation to address various water supply needs, including meeting future demand, reducing treatment costs, and providing backup supply options. This system replenishes the aquifer using water from the Lamprey River. Given the importance of microbial communities in groundwater quality, understanding their composition is crucial. This study explores the microbial diversity in the Spruce Hole aquifer, comparing it to the surface water used for recharge and …

Assessing The Resistance And Resilience Of Recreationally Important Fish Species To Extreme Events In Coastal Texas, Ana Cecilia Silverio

Master's Theses and Capstones

Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. In turn, these extreme events may affect coastal resources such as fisheries. Extreme events not only have ecological effects but also economic and cultural impacts as human communities throughout the world depend on coastal resources for their livelihoods. In this thesis, I used long-term fisheries independent data to discern how different coastal Texas recreational fish species (Red Drum, Spotted Seatrout, Black Drum, and Southern Flounder) were affected by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and a freeze event in 2021. I found variation in the post-storm response (percent …

Influence Of Bottom Substrates On Sunken No. 6 Heavy Fuel Oil And Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil Transport, Tori Sweet

Master's Theses and Capstones

Oil spilled into marine or freshwater environments can become submerged in the water column or sink to the bottom if its density is greater than that of water. Meso-scale experiments were conducted in the Coastal Response Research Center’s (CRRC) MacFarlane Flume at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) to better understand sunken oil transport in a river environment. Flume water temperatures reflected the annual range of the Mississippi River’s temperatures near Baton Rouge, LA (41 °F to 86 °F), a location where a spill is likely to occur because of shipping traffic. Flat and scaled sand dune substrates were secured …

The Influence Of Lake Productivity On Methane Production And Ebullition From Temperate And Arctic Lake Sediments, Megan Wimsatt

Master's Theses and Capstones

Northern freshwater lakes (> 40°N) are an increasingly recognized major contributor of methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere. Climate warming and eutrophication acceleration threaten to increase CH4 emissions from these lake ecosystems, particularly in littoral (shallow lake edge) zones where ebullition (bubbling) is often a dominant flux pathway. Few studies have investigated the impacts of lake productivity on limnological CH4 cycling for a range of trophic classes and provided a comparison between different latitudes. Here, we analyzed chlorophyll α (chlα; proxy for lake productivity), other water quality parameters, sediment CH4 production rates, and ebullition rates at nine …

Numerical Solutions Of Linear Abel Integral Equations Via Boubaker Polynomials Method, Jalil Talab Abdullah, Haleema Swaidan Ali, Waleeda Swaidan Ali

Baghdad Science Journal

In this article, a numerical method based on Boubaker polynomials (BPs) was presented to solve the Linear Abel integral (LAI) Eqs of first and second types. The matrices were used to form the (LAI) Eq into a system of linear Eqs. To get Boubaker parameters, solve this system of Eqs using the Guess elimination method. To explain the results of this method, four examples have been provided and compared with the results of many methods mentioned in previous research. MATLAB R2018b program was used to perform all calculations and graphs.

Studying Myostatin As A Diagnostic Indicator In Sera Of Iraqi Women With Metabolic Syndrome, Riyam Hussein Assaf, Layla Othman Farhan

Baghdad Science Journal

Obesity in the abdominal area, insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia, and hypertension are all included as part of metabolic syndrome. Myocytes manufacture and release the myokine known as myostatin, which acts on muscle cells inhibiting cellular growth. This study aimed to compare Myostatin along with other biochemical parameters (Fasting blood sugar (FBS), cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), triglycerides (T.G), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and very Low-density lipoprotein (VLDL)) in sera of Iraqi with metabolic syndrome patients and healthy subjects. Eighty women were separated into two groups: group I, 40 metabolic disorders patients, and group II, 40 healthy people, which served as the control …

On Partition Dimension And Domination Of Abid-Waheed 〖(Aw)〗_R^4 Graph, Jalal Hatem Hussein Bayati, Abid Mahboob, Muhammad Waheed Rasheed, Dur E Najaf

Baghdad Science Journal

A graph denoted by H, which has a simple link between its vertices, possesses the set of vertices V(H) . Given a graph, a set that is dominant, is a subset of vertex set such that any vertex outside of is close to at least one vertex inside of . The smallest size of for the dominating set is known as the graph’s domination number. When a linked graph H has a vertex x and a subset of the vertex set, the separation between x and S is given by. Pertaining to an ordered k-partition of , the illustration of …

Unh Nursing Students Bridge Healthcare And Entrepreneurship, Aaron Sanborn

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

Cannibals, Chemicals, And A Trip Down Memory Lane: Unraveling Our Understanding Of Memory, Yana Honcharuk

Scientific Kenyon: The Neuroscience Edition

Have you ever wished to preserve a memory forever? Or perhaps share a treasured memory with someone? Instead of having to look for words that could describe how you felt at the concert of your favorite band or at that first date with a person you’ve been pining for, wouldn’t it be nice to have the ability to transmit those experiences to your friends? To make them feel how you felt? While this sounds like a plot for another rendition of Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, or a chapter from Harry Potter, the scientific idea of memory transfer has …

Plastic Pollutants To The Brain: Wrong Kind Of Plastic For The Nervous System, Caleigh Wukitch

Scientific Kenyon: The Neuroscience Edition

The plastic revolution is here: we store our food in plastic containers, walk around with our coffee in plastic cups, and sit all day in our plastic chairs. We also know that our plastic waste floats around poisoning waters, cluttering streets, and choking wildlife. But it may be doing so much more than we realize - what if it is rewiring our nervous system?

Woop-Woop! That's The Sound Of Da Immune System: A Story Of Tricky Trypanosomes That Evade The Immune System To Get Into The Brain, Sophia Knaysi

Scientific Kenyon: The Neuroscience Edition

No abstract provided.

Brains Vs. Brawn- Why Not Have Both? The Cognitive Effects Of Creatine Supplementation, Riley Orth

Scientific Kenyon: The Neuroscience Edition

In books, movies, and TV shows, there is a common trope that associates large, muscular people with an impressive, and often comedic lack of brain power. Of course, we know that this is not exactly the case in the real world, but are the two somehow related? What if there was some magical substance that had the potential to not only increase muscular size and strength but also the potential to improve brain function? Fortunately for us, this supplement exists and it is known as creatine.

All You Need Is... Netflix And Chill? The Neuroscience Of Sexual Behavior And Hookup Culture, Megan Quinn

Scientific Kenyon: The Neuroscience Edition

No abstract provided.

Novel Roles Of Microtubule-Associated Tau In Radiation-Induced Brain Injury, Riya Thomas, Riya Thomas

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Injury responses in cells lacking proliferation capacity such as terminally differentiated neurons consists of complex mechanisms to ensure cellular homeostasis. Brain tumor patients undergoing radiation therapy experience cognitive impairments similar to those seen in patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases. Despite the plethora of research into radiation effects on proliferating brain cells, the impact of radiation on differentiated, post-mitotic neurons, including their structural and functional alterations, remain largely elusive. However, microtubule-associated tau, an important partner of cytoskeletal structural stability emerges as a pivotal player in the radiation-induced neuronal injury response, demonstrating compartmentalized functions such as repair-centric mechanisms and synaptic homeostasis. This …

Legislative Recommendations On Biometric Security And Privacy Jurisprudence, Joshua M. Morrow

All Student Scholarship

This project focuses on the prevalence of biometrics today, their various applications, and the biometric laws and legislations in place in the United States (U.S.) and Maine. Due to various threats and vulnerabilities imposing risk on collecting and using peoples’ biometric data, sufficient cyber protections related to citizens’ privacy rights, ethical control, and security of personally identifiable information (PII) must become necessary components of contemporary biometric laws and legislation. Without such explicit cyber protections, citizens participate in and comply with various technical domains and entities, such as private companies and governmental agencies, with minimal awareness or comprehension that their sensitive …

Conversations About Telehealth Eating Disorder Treatment: Participants Share Their Experiences, Rachel Allen Msw

All Student Scholarship

This phenomenological study explores the use of telehealth as a modality in the treatment of eating disorders through the lenses of feminist, standpoint, and social constructionist theories. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth was utilized to offer continuity of service at a local, urban eating disorder treatment program in the Northeast. Post pandemic, this modality continued for staffing and accessibility reasons. However, little is known about this treatment from the perspective of service recipients. Intensive semi-structured interviews were conducted via Zoom with six adults who had completed the telehealth program to learn about individuals’ experiences with this modality. …

A Study Of Diet Culture In Lgbtqia+ Women’S Communities, Cait Rush Msw

All Student Scholarship

Diet culture is a pervasive aspect of the sociocultural environment characterized by contradictory messages about food and health, and a moral imperative to attain thinness (Jovanovski & Jaeger, 2022). Hallmarks of diet culture include body dissatisfaction, lowered self-esteem, and adverse mental and physical health outcomes (Calogero et al., 2018; Kinavey & Cool, 2019; Puhl et al., 2021). While research suggests that LGBTQIA+ community involvement may play a role in safeguarding positive body image (Dahlenburg et al., 2021; Hanley & McLaren, 2015), studies on body dissatisfaction among queer women have yielded mixed, often contradictory results. The purpose of this study was …

The Brahmagupta Equation And Record Numbers, Christine Patterson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Diophantine equation x² - Dy² = k has been explored since antiquity and has found significant applications in diverse contexts in mathematics. This thesis focuses on two aspects of solutions of this equation:

1. For fixed k, the sizes of the D values for which there is a solution, and the corresponding sizes of the x and y constituting solutions. This topic is previously uninvestigated and our contribution is data-based.
2. For fixed k and D for which the equation is solvable, statistical properties of the x and y occurring in these solutions. We prove that Benford's Law applies …

A Survey Of The Classification Of 1-Dimensional Shift Systems, Jacob Miller

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The one-dimensional full shift over a finite set A is the collection of bi-infinite sequences of symbols in A together with the left-shift map which shifts the indexing of the sequence. A shift space is a subset of a full shift defined by a collection of forbidden blocks, i.e., finite words which are not allowed to appear. Many shift spaces arise as the set of bi-infinite walks on a labeled graph, and many dynamical systems can be encoded as shift spaces where the dynamics are replaced by the left-shift map.

We introduce shift spaces and their basic properties, then …

The Influence Of Environmental Conditions On Gordonia Terrae -Specific Bacteriophage Distribution And Diversity, Gt M. Moore

Biology Theses

Bacteriophages are viruses that infect a diverse range of bacteria, with certain strains serving medical and industrial significance. Actinobacteriophages are viruses that specifically infect Phylum Actinobacteria hosts including the environmentally abundant Gordonia terrae. Some species of Gordonia, including G. terrae, have also been isolated from human infections. The isolation and characterization of novel phages that can infect Gordonia can therefore be significant to both genomics and potential phage therapy. Actinobacteriophages that infect these bacteria have been isolated from soil environments, but optimal environmental parameters for isolation have not been fully evaluated. This study examined the relationships between environmental …

On-Demand Fabrication Of Piezoelectric Sensors For In-Space Structural Health Monitoring, Amanda White, Isaac Little, Anastasiya Artyuk, Nicholas Mckibben, Fereshteh Rajabi Kouchi, Claire Chen, David Estrada, Zhangxian Deng

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Inflatable structures, promising for future deep space exploration missions, are vulnerable to damage from micrometeoroid and orbital debris impacts. Polyvinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene (PVDF-trFE) is a flexible, biocompatible, and chemical-resistant material capable of detecting impact forces due to its piezoelectric properties. This study used a state-of-the-art material extrusion system that has been validated for in-space manufacturing, to facilitate fast-prototyping of consistent and uniform PVDF-trFE films. By systematically investigating ink synthesis, printer settings, and post-processing conditions, this research established a comprehensive understanding of the process-structure-property relationship of printed PVDF-trFE. Consequently, this study consistently achieved the printing of PVDF-trFE films with a thickness of …

Travel-Time Disparities In Access To Proton Beam Therapy For Cancer Treatment, Todd Burus, Alexander Vanhelene, Michael Rooney, Krystle Lang Kuhs, W. Jay Christian, Christopher Mcnair, Sanjay Mishra, Arnold Paulino, Grace Smith, Steven Frank, Jeremy Warner

Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Cancer Biology Faculty Papers

IMPORTANCE: Proton beam therapy is an emerging radiotherapy treatment for patients with cancer that may produce similar outcomes as traditional photon-based therapy for many cancers while delivering lower amounts of toxic radiation to surrounding tissue. Geographic proximity to a proton facility is a critical component of ensuring equitable access both for indicated diagnoses and ongoing clinical trials.

OBJECTIVE: To characterize the distribution of proton facilities in the US, quantify drive-time access for the population, and investigate the likelihood of long commutes for certain population subgroups.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This population-based cross-sectional study analyzed travel times to proton facilities in …

Interview With Noemi Garcia, Noemi Garcia, Ashley Mariscal

ANTH 4306/6306 Anthropology of Borders

Interview with Noemi Garcia, a Latina attorney from Harlingen, Texas, discussing her upbringing, career path, cultural identity, and views on the border area's future. Garcia reflects on her close-knit family upbringing, her journey into law school, and her current role as a general attorney with Customs and Border Protection. She shares insights on the influence of her Hispanic heritage and the challenges of being a minority in predominantly male environments. Garcia emphasizes the importance of cultural appreciation and the supportive community atmosphere in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). She envisions continued growth and unity in the RGV's future, foreseeing a …

May 2024 News Releases, University Of Montana--Missoula. Office Of University Relations

University of Montana News Releases, 1928, 1956-present

No abstract provided.

Application Of Microphytes For Soil Reclamation, Lalit Saini, Hina Upadhyay, Arindam Chakraborty

Research Publications (2021 to 2025)

Microphytes incorporate several characteristics that are becoming increasingly important in a complex farming setting and the process of land reclamation. Microalgae/microphytes boost soil productivity and structure by adding minerals and improving microbial soil quality metrics and nutrient cycling. Protecting plants from disease, producing phytohormones and other bioactive compounds, and associating with plant roots are the ways through which microalgae contribute to plant development. These results are significant as they could lead to further advancements in the discovery of substances that can boost growth or the development of crops that do not need nitrogen. Microalgae have massive untapped capabilities as natural …

Arkib Universiti Sebagai Repositori Memori Institusi / Siti Mawarni Salim, Noorsuzila Mohamad, Nor Edzan Che Nasir, Salim Siti Mawarni, Mohamad Noorsuzila, Che Nasir Nor Edzan

Research Publications (2021 to 2025)

Arkib universiti merupakan repositori untuk rekod, penerbitan dan artifak sesebuah universiti. Tanggungjawab untuk membangun dan mengurus arkib universiti lazimnya diserahkan kepada perpustakaan universiti berkenaan. Buat masa kini, kebanyakan universiti tertua mempunyai arkib universiti tersendiri seperti Harvard University Archives, Archives at Yale, University of Cambridge University Archives, Oxford University Archives, Kyoto University Archives, Osaka University Archive Repository, Museum of Peking University History, Tsinghua University History Museum dan banyak lagi. Di Malaysia, terdapat 20 buah universiti awam dan pelbagai jumlah universiti swasta, kampus universiti luar negara, kolej, politeknik, kolej komuniti dan kolej swasta. Sehingga kini, tiada rekod rasmi bilangan institusi pengajian tinggi …

Perceptions Of Secondary Trauma And Memory Accuracy In Criminal Justice Professionals, Kimberley D. Williams

Student Theses

Previous research has examined the association between memory and frequent and accumulated exposure to traumatic events with conflicting results (Artwohl, 2002; Conway, 2012; Honig & Sultan, 2004; Oulton et al., 2018; Strange & Takarangi, 2015). The present study aims to build on previous research by examining public perceptions of memory accuracy and secondary trauma in off-duty criminal justice professionals (CJP) and laypeople. Survey data from n = 208 participants was examined. Participants read two mock trial testimonies describing a fatal hit and run bicycle accident, one from an off-duty CJP witness and one from an off-duty non-CJP witness. Participants completed …

Suicidal Ideation Among Survivors Of Childhood Sexual Abuse: The Role Of Shame And Sexual Grooming, Aysegul Yucel

Student Theses

Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) is a global public health issue, with 25% of girls and 5% of boys in the U.S. reporting abuse before the age of 18. While CSA is known to increase the risk of suicidal ideation in later life, the additional psychosocial factors involved are understudied. This study investigates the impact of abuse-related shame and sexual grooming on suicidal ideation in adults with CSA histories. Data from 118 undergraduate students were analyzed using binomial logistic regression and the PROCESS macro to explore direct and indirect effects. Results show that abuse-related shame significantly predicts suicidal ideation and mediates …