2026 Report On The State Of Great Salt Lake Social Science, Creed Jones, Avyrlie Smith, Shae Barber, Stacia Ryder, Mufti Nadimul Quamar Ahmed, Georgie Corkery, Jennifer Givens, Anna Mcentire, Carla Trentelman, Jessica Ulrich-Schad, Kirsten Vinyeta, Bryn Watkins

Publications

Great Salt Lake (GSL) faces rapid decline that presents more than just a hydrological risk; it poses an existential social hazard. As water levels decline, ecosystems, economies, cultures, and societies face irreversible harm. Since the lake reached its lowest levels in 2022, this issue has specifically gained increased attention in Utah and beyond. Given both the degree to which human consumption contributes to the problem, and the potential risks that the drying of the lake poses for community health, social science research is a crucial for informing successful water management policies and mitigating impacts. The purpose of this report is …

Readme Template For Geospatial Data, Alyssa Renteria

Library Faculty Research

A readme file provides descriptive information about a dataset, file(s), or software. The goal is to ensure that the files and data can be correctly interpreted by your future self or others when sharing or publishing data, code, or software.

Movement Patterns, Habitat Usage, And Apparent Survival Of Alewife And Blueback Herring In The Bellamy River And Great Bay Estuary, Nh, Usa, Ryan Christopher Adams

Master's Theses and Capstones

Anadromous river herring, including alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and blueback herring (Alosa aestivalis) provide critical ecosystem services across freshwater, estuarine, and marine habitats on the Atlantic coast. Population declines in recent decades have led to research and management efforts to improve adult survival and increase access to spawning habitats, primarily focusing on the freshwater phase of migration via barrier removal or remediation projects. Comparatively less research and management effort have investigated post-spawning movement behaviors and habitat usage, which may provide insight into developing successful management strategies. We used telemetry methods to assess barrier passage and track movements of adult river herring …

Transcriptomic Profiling Of The Actinorhizal Symbiosis: A Dual-Species Approach, Javier Arambula Rascon

Master's Theses and Capstones

The actinorhizal symbiosis, formed between the nitrogen-fixing actinobacterium Frankia and its host plant, depends on a highly coordinated molecular dialogue that governs the transition from initial bacterial perception to the development of functional nitrogen-fixing nodules. Despite decades of progress in characterizing the legume- rhizobia association, the molecular underpinnings of actinorhizal symbiosis establishment remain poorly resolved, particularly the nature of the Frankia signaling molecule and the transcriptional programs that guide both partners toward nodule formation. This thesis narrows this gap through three complementary transcriptomic studies in the model actinorhizal plant Casuarina glauca and its symbiont Frankia casuarinae strain Ccl3. The first …

Childbearing In The Anthropocene: Gendered Fertility Intention In The Context Of Climate Change, Ila Bartenstein

Master's Theses and Capstones

As anthropogenic climate change intensifies, recent studies have observed the extent to which individuals choose to remain “environmentally childfree,” or voluntarily childfree due to the impact the child may have on the environment, and their worry about the child’s wellbeing under climate change. Additional lines of research have noted that pro-environmental behaviors (PEB) – actions taken to reduce environmental harm – follow gendered patterns, with women being more likely than men to engage in PEB. Further, when presented with personal dilemmas that involve refraining from harmful actions, women have been found to express stronger moral reasoning than men. By connecting …

Integrating Unpiloted Aircraft System (Uas)-Based Thermal, Lidar, And True-Color (Rgb) Imagery With Random Forest For Land Cover Classification At A Northern Peatland, Darlyn Chavez

Master's Theses and Capstones

Background: Understanding the impacts of climate change on the Arctic is critical given the sensitivity of its ecosystems. As global temperatures rise and permafrost collapse, significant changes in land cover, hydrology, and carbon dynamics will occur across these vulnerable regions. Because methane emissions are directly influenced by vegetation communities in permafrost peatlands, accurate land cover classification is important for understanding greenhouse-gas (GHG) dynamics. However, these landscapes are highly heterogeneous at fine spatial scales, requiring high-resolution imagery capable of distinguishing simple and complex vegetation and land cover classes relevant to GHG dynamics. Technological advancements in remote sensing offer modern tools for …

Survival And Behavior Of Intertidal Eastern Oysters In Great Bay, New Hampshire, Selina Luo Cheng

Master's Theses and Capstones

Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) are ecologically and economically important reef-building bivalves that support estuarine habitats as well as United States fisheries and aquaculture farms. While eastern oysters occur subtidally throughout their range, intertidal oysters are uncommon north of the Chesapeake Bay. Recent research has shown that rockweed Ascophyllum nodosum may facilitate eastern oyster expansion into the intertidal zone at northern latitudes, but mechanisms underlying this interaction are poorly understood. Characterizing intertidal oyster survival and behavior is key to better understanding their distributions in the northeastern United States. In Chapter 1, we conducted a full-factorial field experiment across seasons in Great …

High Spatiotemporal Snow Cover Mapping With Multiscale Observations In A Transitional Montane Forest, Rashik Raj Koirala

Master's Theses and Capstones

Accurate estimation of fractional snow-covered area (fSCA) in forested areas is critical for understanding snowmelt dynamics and meltwater inputs to streams, yet snow cover mapping in forested areas is still challenging using ground-based and satellite-based snow observations. This thesis develops and evaluates multi-scale approaches for monitoring fSCA using field cameras, upscales it to watershed scale using unoccupied aerial systems (UAS), and develops a framework to extract snow cover in forests using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery in mixed deciduous and coniferous forests of New Hampshire, USA.

In the first study, machine learning classifiers’ ability to extract fSCA from field camera RGB imagery …

Progressive Growth Decline Following Beech Leaf Disease Detection In American Beech, Patrick Lemis

Master's Theses and Capstones

Beech leaf disease (BLD) is an emerging forest disease affecting American beech (Fagus grandifolia), yet its effects on tree growth remain incompletely quantified. This study used dendrochronological methods to evaluate patterns of growth decline associated with BLD across multiple sites in the northeastern United States. Basal area increment (BAI) and relative BAI (relBAI) were used to quantify growth, with relBAI standardizing beech growth to co-occurring non-beech species to account for site-level environmental variation. Mixed-effects models were used to assess growth decline as a function of time since county-level BLD detection, disease severity, and hierarchical variation among trees and sites. The …

Linking Vegetation Phenology To Dissolved Organic Matter Wet Deposition, Paola Miramontes Gonzalez

Master's Theses and Capstones

Atmospheric wet deposition delivers important inputs of organic and inorganic compounds to ecosystems, yet the drivers of dissolved organic matter variability in wet deposition remain poorly understood. Dissolved organic matter (DOM), composed of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and dissolved organic nitrogen (DON), can make up a substantial fraction of total carbon and nitrogen delivered through wet deposition and may play a role in shaping ecosystem nutrient inputs. Although vegetation emissions have been hypothesized as drivers of DOM wet deposition due to increased concentrations of DOC and DON during the growing season, no study has directly evaluated whether metrics of vegetative …

Cfd Simulations Of A Gas Turbine Combustor For Automotive Applications Using Openfoam, Philip Mather

Master's Theses and Capstones

A 9-burner annular micro gas turbine combustor designed by Brayton Energy for use as a range extender in a hybrid vehicle is modeled in OpenFOAM (V2412). The primary goal of this work is to obtain a reliable and computationally efficient OpenFOAM model for future analysis by Brayton Energy. Two primary simplifications are considered: a single-burner model and an artificial heat addition model.

The single-burner (40°) sector utilized cyclic (periodic) boundary conditions and the inherent symmetry of the combustor to reduce the simulation domain and hence decrease simulation time. The single sector was compared against a three-burner (120°) sector to assess …

Using Remote Sensing And Field Observations To Assess The Stability Of A Restored Cobble-Bedded River, Ryan Omslaer

Master's Theses and Capstones

Flooding is one of the most dangerous natural disasters in the United States, posing serious risks to human lives, damaging infrastructure, and necessitating costly repairs. Human modifications to rivers have led to channel incision and disconnection from floodplains, increasing fluvial erosive power and driving channel instability. The incised cobble-bedded Zealand River, located in northern New Hampshire, was recently reconnected to its historic floodplain via a diversion in hopes of restoring form and function. This study combines high-resolution remote sensing data and field observations to assess the stability of the restoration during the first year after project completion. UAS-based LiDAR and …

Dipy-Acenes: A New Family Of Air-Stable, Water-Soluble Organic Semiconductors, Linda Phan

Master's Theses and Capstones

ABSTRACTDiPy-Acenes: A New Family of Air-Stable, Water-Soluble, Small Molecule Organic Semiconductors

By Linda N. Phan University of New Hampshire, July 2026 This thesis describes a new class of acene derivative called DiPy-Acenes, short for dipyridinium acenes. DiPy-Acenes are air stable, water soluble dications composed of an acene core that is covalently attached to two separate pyridinium ions. A series of DiPy-Acenes containing naphthalene, anthracene, tetracene, and pentacene cores were studied both computationally (density functional theory calculations) and experimentally. Synthesized compounds were characterized using NMR spectroscopy, high-resolution mass spectrometry, UV-visible spectroscopy, and fluorescence spectroscopy. The electron-deficient pyridinium groups reduce the HOMO …

The Pickleball Opportunity: A Case Study To Evaluate The Market Demand And Feasibility Of Opening A Private Pickleball Facility, Dene Williamson, Janet Jones

Global Sport Business Journal

This case study explores the market demand and financial feasibility of opening a privately owned, indoor pickleball facility in Warrensburg, Missouri. The central character, Mr. Dink, returns to his rural hometown with the goal of building a community-centric recreational space centered around America’s fastest-growing sport—pickleball. Students are asked to evaluate the business opportunity through comprehensive market research, financial forecasting, and risk assessment. Drawing from comparative data provided by an established facility in Florida, the case challenges students to adapt proven strategies to a smaller, lower-cost market. The case provides a platform to practice feasibility analysis, pricing strategy, break-even modeling, marketing, …

September 2026 Library & Learning Newsletter, Minnesota State University, Mankato. Library & Learning Dean's Office Communication Team

Library & Learning Newsletters

PDF version of the September 2026 (Volume 5, Issue 1) Library & Learning Newsletter.

Castor Canadensis Summer/Fall 2026, Smith

Castor Canadensis - Jedediah Smith Society

Newsletter of the Jedediah Smith Society

Toward Ludic-Aware Narrative Generation: A Neuro-Symbolic Framework For Evaluating Playability In Llm-Generated Backstories, Luis Peña Sánchez, J.M. Peña, Rubén Cantos Leal

Artículos científicos

Although Large Language Models (LLMs) produce fluent prose, they routinely tend to generate narratively sterile content for interactive media—backstories in which every conflict has been resolved before play begins, giving rise to what we call the Closure Paradox. Moreover, current evaluation metrics—from n-gram overlap to retrieval-augmented faithfulness scores—inadvertently reward this exact type of closure in cases in which it is undesired, leaving game designers without tools to measure whether a generated character is actually useful as a foundation for play. We propose a dual-axis evaluation framework that separates Temporal Consistency from Ludic Potential. Two new metrics anchor the framework: the …

Resource-Efficient Sustainable Farming Systems: A Comparative Study Of Natural And Chemical Farming Practices In Western Himalayas, Rohit Kumar Vashishat, Divyanshu Divyanshu, Subhash Sharma, Inder Dev, Rajeshwar Singh Chandel, Ashu Chandel, Shraddha Shraddha, Xiao-Mei Yang, Kovács András, Rohit Khargotra

Artículos científicos

A revolutionary transformation is underway in agricultural systems, with Natural Farming (NF) being promoted as an agrochemical-free, agroecological alternative to conventional Chemical Farming (CF) in several states of India. To assess the successful adoption of NF among smallholder farming systems in the Himalayan region, this study was conducted in Himachal Pradesh, India. Primary data were collected from 360 randomly selected farmers across six districts using a simple random sampling technique. The study mainly focused on the marginal and small farmers, because 80% of farmers in state are marginal and small. The study evaluated the comparative economics NF and CF, corelation …

September 2026, Denise Landrum-Geyer

aCAdemicS: The Newsletter of the SWOSU College of Arts & Sciences

The more things change...

We’ve seen a lot of changes on campus over the last year. As the dust settles after all kinds of moves and transitions, now seems as good a time as any to reintroduce the aCAdemicS newsletter. This newsletter, the brainchild of Dr. Peter Grant, originally ran from 2015-2019 (check out older issues in SWOSU’s Digital Commons).

As a writer and writing teacher at heart, I cannot help but try to revive this newsletter to celebrate all things CAS and document the amazing things happening in our college. In between newsletters, you can also find SWOSU …

The Revival Of Honor Killing In Iranian Kurdistan: A Sociological Analysis Of Gender, Land, And Identity, Parviz Sobhani

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Honor is a foundational yet restrictive sociocultural construct in Kurdish society of western Iran. Transgressions of its boundaries, particularly by women, are historically met with violent sanction. Despite processes of modernization, honor killings have re-emerged as a conspicuous phenomenon in Iranian Kurdistan, suggesting an active revival rather than a passive residue of tradition. This study employed a qualitative, interpretive phenomenological approach. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 21 social scientists and researchers from January 2022 to February 2024 in Iranian Kurdistan.  A grounded theory framework guided the thematic analysis. Findings reveal a dual symbolic encoding of honor: it …

Pornography And Men's Violence Against Women And Children: From Production To Consumption, Gail Dines Phd., Mandy Sanchez Phd

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The average age of first viewing mainstream pornography for boys is around ten to twelve years old. The pornography they encounter is largely from “tube sites,” named after YouTube, which are popular because they require no registration, no payment, and no subscription. For the most part, an adolescent only needs access to a digital device to view hundreds of thousands of free videos. As we discuss in this article, the weight of the scientific evidence shows that viewing pornography is associated with multiple social, emotional, sexual, and cognitive harms. However, none of these studies provide a detailed analysis of …

Shadowless In A World Of Shadows: Diminishing The Refraction Of Light Via Nanoconfinement, Vuk Uskoković

Administration and Staff Articles and Research

This paper presents a physicochemical study that merges science and art in the context of exploring the refractive index of water under nanoconfinement. Using a simple and economical experimental approach, it is shown that confinement within the micropores of a zeolitic structure, characterized using electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, paradoxically reduces the refractive index of water, bringing confined water droplets closer to a shadowless state. Counterintuitively, water under confinement, as indicated by vibrational spectroscopic analyses performed in the transmittance mode in the IR range and reflectance mode in the near-IR range, exhibits greater structural freedom than in its bulk or …

Agentic Ai For Autonomous Marketing: Taxonomy, Benchmark, And An Open-Source Agent, Prashidda Thapa, Shraddha Khadka, Pragyan Sharma, Ana Rai

Student Publications

Marketing automation is moving beyond rule-based systems and prompt-driven generative tools toward agentic AI: large language model (LLM) based agents that plan, act, and adapt under high-level objectives. Existing analyses are largely conceptual and commercial platforms are proprietary, leaving the community without reproducible baselines. We contribute three artifacts. First, a compact taxonomy organized around an augmentation–automation-autonomization continuum and a Perceive–Reason–Act(PRA)cycle that distinguishes autonomous agents from rule-based automation. Second, MarketingAgent, an open-source ReAct agent with six tools spanning SQL access, RFM segmentation, XGBoost churn prediction, campaign and email generation, and budget allocation. Third, the Marketing Agent Benchmark (MAB), a 15-task suite …

Do Ensemble Models Always Win? A Comparative Machine Learning Evaluation For Financial Time-Series Prediction, Shraddha Khadka, Prashidda Thapa, Pragyan Sharma, Shreya Silwal

Student Publications

Equal-weighted ensembling is often treated as a default upgrade over individual machine learning models. We test this assumption on one-day-ahead stock-price prediction across five sector diversified U.S. assets (2015–2024) by comparing Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Regression (SVR), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), and their equal-weighted average under identical features, preprocessing, and chronological splits. Pooled across assets, LSTM attains the lowest test-set RMSE (17.70), SVR is statistically tied with LSTM under the Diebold and Mariano test (𝑝 = 0.494), the equal-weighted ensemble is third (18.13), and RF is last (20.33); SVR beats the ensemble at 𝑝 = 0.001 (Bonferroni-significant) while LSTMbeats …

Towards Human-Centered Digital Health Interventions, Kristin M Kostick-Quenet, Eric A Storch

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

This article discusses the potential of digital health interventions (DHIs) in mental health care, emphasizing the importance of designing them to foster genuine humanistic care. It highlights current challenges in measuring engagement and outcomes, advocating for integrating human-centered endpoints such as dignity, autonomy, and therapeutic alliance into evaluation frameworks. The authors call for mechanistic research to identify effective engagement strategies and context-specific implementation approaches. Ultimately, successful DHIs should demonstrate both clinical efficacy and the preservation of humane, person-centered care, ensuring ethical and meaningful mental health support through technology.

Litigating Birthright Citizenship In The Shadow Of World War Ii: The Continuing Relevance Of A Forgotten Case, Rachel E. Rosenbloom

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

With the question of birthright citizenship before the Supreme Court this term in Trump v. Barbara, this Article explores the last time that federal courts confronted an attempt to restrict birthright citizenship. It tells the story of two lawsuits, Regan v. King and Fisk v. Wade, filed in 1942 by organizations seeking to overturn United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 Supreme Court decision that affirmed the broad scope of birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. While the cases left little mark doctrinally, their history sheds light on a dimension of birthright citizenship litigation that has …

Framing Solarity: Advancing Eco-Social Justice Through Solar Energy Narratives In Fly With Aerocene Pacha, Victoria Jara

INTI: Revista de literatura hispánica

No abstract provided.

La Homosocialidad Como Distopía En Los Cachorros, De Mario Vargas Llosa, Leanee Díaz Sardiñas

INTI: Revista de literatura hispánica

No abstract provided.

Avenida 10 De Julio Huamachuco By Nona Fernández: An Exploration Of Individual Guilt And Collective Responsibility, Helene C. Weldt-Basson

INTI: Revista de literatura hispánica

No abstract provided.

Waste Streams From Next Generation Molten Salt Reactors: The Challenge Of Creating An Insoluble Ceramic For Chloride Salt Waste, Alevtina A. Maksimova, Jake W. Amoroso, Matthew Page, Gregory Morrison, Hans Conrad Zur Loye

Faculty Publications

Molten salt reactors (MSRs) design development is of interest to many research groups and companies. Waste management for MSRs is one of the most important issues that needs to be resolved due to its impact on environmental safety, primarily via the dissolution of radionuclides in water. Furthermore, the waste treatment strategy will have a significant influence on the operating cost of MSRs, which is why a reliable process for the immobilization, transportation, storage and disposal of MSR waste must be addressed. This work presents a new approach for the immobilization of chloride salts from molten salt reactors in stable oxyhalide …