Digital Commons Network^™

Small Satellite Development And Mission Design For Low Earth Orbit And Geostationary Transfer Orbit Missions, Ashiqur Rahman

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Aerospace Center formerly known as cSETR at UTEP is a NASA funded center of excellence in aerospace and exploration, focusing on strategic capability development in propulsion and robotic lander, lunar surface exploration, and small spacecraft technologies. To support the center’s mission for space exploration and to demonstrate advancements in small satellite technologies, the Aerospace Center at The University of Texas at El Paso is on track to develop and launch several CubeSats in next few years. A CubeSat is a small satellite that has become popular in recent years due to their low cost, low complexity and short development timeline. …

Structural Impacts Of Super Heavy Load (Shl) Vehicles On Transportation Infrastructure, Ali Morovatdar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Operation of non-conventional Super Heavy Load (SHL) vehicles is an ongoing challenge for transportation stakeholders and the traveling public across the nation. Despite facilitating the movement of heavy, large, and non-divisible loads, passages of such vehicles with complex loading configurations that typically weigh several folds of the permissible weight limits set forth by regulatory agencies have been adversely affecting the structural integrity of pavement facilities. This translates into accelerated damage of pavement structures, which in turn poses safety concerns for users of the transportation facilities. Accurate quantification of such detrimental impacts is the precursor to preserve the existing transportation facilities. …

Building Energy Model Simulation Of A Single Building In Comparison To A Broader Building Stock, Paola Michelle Santillano

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Residential facilities and buildings are the largest consumers of energy in the United States. More than 76% of electricity and more than 40% of all energy consumption comes from providing a comfortable and healthy environment in buildings. Prioritizing building energy technology goals for performance and cost can significantly reduce energy use within the next ten years despite a substantial forecasted population increase. Retrofitting existing buildings and improving future construction has the potential to realize cost savings and environmental benefits over time. A key component to realizing these benefits is regional building energy modeling. One of the challenges to widespread building …

Comprehensive Study Of Human Pathogenic Trypanosomatids: From Chemotherapies To Disease Ecology, Felipe Rodriguez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The vector-borne diseases Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease, caused by the kinetoplastid parasites Leishmania spp. and Trypanosoma cruzi respectively, are among the most important parasitic diseases in the group of neglected tropical diseases. Even though the two diseases are endemic to the Americas, they affect millions of people worldwide. Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease cause a great array of symptoms and some of them can be fatal if left undiagnosed and untreated. Current treatment regimens are becoming less effective, vaccines are still not available, and diagnosis needs to be improved. Vector control has been responsible for a decrease of diseases in endemic …

Collige Et Impera: The United States Reengagement In Libya, Marco Schinella

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

President Biden's "America is back" pledge holds the potential to be put to the test with the ongoing crisis in Libya. The internationalization of the post-Ghaddafi Libyan breakdown, strained by great-power competition (GPC) dynamics, poses nonnegligible threats to the United States (US) national security that extends beyond Libya per se. Reframing the conflict from yet another Middle East and North Africa (MENA) conflict to an urgent multilateral Mediterranean security challenge will help elevate the country's profile on the global stage. This thesis outlines a qualitative, within-case study analysis of the ongoing Libyan crisis from the perspective of US national security …

Long-Term Effects Of Adolescent Fluoxetine Exposure On Hippocampal Gene Expression In Male C57bl/6 Mice, Anapaula Themann

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Mood-related disorders, including depression and anxiety, are prevalent among children and adolescents. This poses a public health challenge, given their adverse impact on these young populations. Treatment with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor fluoxetine (FLX) is the first line of pharmacological intervention in pediatric patients suffering from affect-related illnesses. Although the use of this antidepressant has been deemed efficacious in the juvenile population, the enduring neurobiological consequences of adolescent FLX exposure are not well understood. For this reason, we explored for persistent molecular adaptations, in the adult hippocampus, as a function of adolescent FLX pretreatment. To do this, we administered …

Radio Direction Finding Implementing Music Algorithm With Usrp Node Arrays, Kevin Valdez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Direction Finding techniques are widely used across the fields of radar, telecommunications, geolocation systems, sonar, among many others to estimate the reference position of the incoming signal source. For this, the implementation of antenna arrays is essential as it allows the use of more advanced techniques in signal processing called spatial spectrum estimation [1]. This method of estimation is performed based on the antenna or sensor array response to the signal spatial parameters in every direction and estimate the location of the incoming signals. Algorithms have been developed for the purpose of spatial spectrum analysis, the most popular are MUSIC …

Fabrication Of Alloy 625 Through Electron Beam Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing, Characterization And Mechanical Performance, Aldo Rubio Hidalgo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Electron Beam Powder Bed Fusion (EB-PBF) is an additive manufacturing process that allows for the fabrication of nearly fully dense Alloy 625 parts. In this study EB-PBF Alloy 625 samples were fabricated in an Arcam A2X, heat-treated, then machined and tensile tested. Preliminary process tests varying focus offset, and speed function were conducted to establish baseline process parameter conditions to fabricate Alloy 625 parts based on surface finish and structural defects. The microstructure observed in EB-PBF Alloy 625 parts along the build direction in the as-built state consists of irregularly sized columnar grains averaging 105 μm in width that have …

Identification Of Prostate Cancer-Associated Genomic Alterations By Analyzing Variant Frequencies, Functional Effects, And Protein Interactions, Bofei Wang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

With the ever-increasing varieties of sequencing techniques, the volume and scope of genomic data are explosively expanded, offering unparalleled opportunities for researchers to study gene-disease associations, identify biomarkers, and thus develop more effective diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. In this project, I have developed a computational workflow and a new scoring scheme, which combine statistical frequency-based analyses with two well-established functional effect prediction tools FATHMM and PROVEAN, to evaluate nonsynonymous GSVs and identify potential cancer-related protein-coding genes for downstream enrichment and protein-protein interaction (PPI) studies.

This method has been applied to process a collection of 503 whole exome sequencing datasets for …

Essays On The Economic Consequences Of Regulatory Monitoring, Yicheng Zhu

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation studies the economic consequences of regulatory monitoring in two chapters. In the first chapter, using hand-collected data on Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) violations, I examine how enforcement actions on financial institutions affect their investment bankersâ?? role as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisors. I document that FINRA violations in the current year lead to a loss of M&A market share in the following year. I further find that client performance improves in future M&A deals advised by the sanctioned banks. Specifically, I document that future bidder (client) cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) are positively related to both the number …

Utilizing Computational Approaches To Study Tubulin- Tubulin Electrostatic Interactions, Tolulope Ayodeji Ale

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Microtubules play significant roles in transporting cargos within the cell, as well as the cell cycle. They are essentially the highway for the transportation of cell organelles. Understanding the interactions among microtubule components is crucial for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. In this study, we utilize a series of computational approaches to study the electrostatic interactions at the binding interfaces of interacting tubulin monomers. Our study revealed that the electrostatic attractive interactions in the αβ tubulin dimer is the strongest while the interaction between two αβ tubulin dimers in the longitude direction is the weakest. The result identified …

Computational Study Of Grain Structure Evolution In Cdte/Cds Via Molecular Dynamics, Sharmin Abdullah

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Grain structure analysis plays an important role in the identification of grain boundary characteristics, which can affect the efficiency of Cadmium Telluride/Cadmium Sulfide (CdTe/CdS) solar cells since they can act as recombination centers for carriers. Computer simulations such as molecular dynamics (MD) can be a very convenient and cost- effective method of investigating the growth evolution and grain structure of materials. The recently reported and experimentally validated MD simulated growth of polycrystalline CdTe/CdS films shows that these materials mostly consist of zinc blende (ZB) and wurtzite (WZ) structures, along with highly disordered atoms. However, little information about the semiconductor compound …

Rational Design Of Multifunctional Nanocatalysts For Environmental Remediation And Energy Conversion Technologies, Md Ariful Ahsan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The discovery of efficient and sustainable carbon-based nanotechnologies to solve both the scarcity of drinking water and global energy crisis has become a paramount task in the last decades. Owed to the fast population growth and industrialization of the modern society, access to potable water and clean energy technologies is becoming very hard around the globe. Water pollutants have become a serious threat to the environment and ecology because of their toxic nature. Parallelly, the current hydrocarbon-based fuel industries are generating high levels of contamination across the planet, making imperative the development of cleaner energy technologies. In this regard, the …

¡Sí Se Puede!: Understanding The Experiences Of Latina Students During Their Doctoral Journey At A Hispanic-Serving Institution, Flor Del Rocio Acevedo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The existing body of literature on Latinas has mostly been focused on the undergraduate student experience (Hernandez, 2002; Hurtado et al., 1996; Kena et al., 2016; Tinto & Goodsell, 1994; Torres, 2004). Additionally, despite the increasing participation of women in graduate education since the 1980s (Walker et al., 2008), Latinas have been and continue to be underrepresented in doctoral programs and the professorate (Myers, 2016). In spite of recent increases in enrollment, Latinas attained just 8.8 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded from 2018-2019 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). As Latinas are projected to account for a third of …

The Physiological Factors Of Diabetes And Their Effect On The Cognitive And Emotional Functioning In Older Populations: A Secondary Data Analysis, Celeste Anahi Alvidrez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background: The rates of Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) have increased over the past 20 years in all age groups. The physiological factors that underlie T2D could have impact on specific brain pathways that support cognitive and emotional functioning. Aims and Objective: The goal of this study was to examine whether older Mexican American individuals with a history of T2D were more likely to develop later cognitive impairment and/or depression. Hypotheses: It was predicted that elderly participants (mean age at time of interview = 87.87 years) with a history of T2D onset prior to age 65, are more likely to have …

Examination Of The Association Between C - Reactive Protein(Crp) And Covid-19 Infection Severity And Length Of Hospitalization, Abdulahi Aremu Ayanwale

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Chronic stress can lead to many systemic complications and low-grade systemic inflammation including increased levels of inflammatory cytokines, such as C-reactive protein (CRP). CRP is a marker of systemic inflammation and is associated with depression and perceived stress. Elevations can result in ineffective immune responses, thereby increasing the risk of complications and mortality from infections. Recent evidence suggests that uncontrolled inflammatory responses associated with COVID 19 are a major determinant of disease severity.  The COVID 19 is transmitted from one person to another through droplets from coughing, sneezing, talking, touching droplets on surfaces and contamination by hand-to-mouth routes. The mechanism …

Interval Estimates: How To Make Them More Adequate And How To Use Them In Economic Analysis And Decision Making, Laura Adriana Berrout-Ramos

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In many real-life situations, we need to make decisions in situations when we do not have full information about the consequences of different decisions. In particular, instead of the exact values of the relevant quantities, we only know lower and upper bounds on these values – i.e., we know an interval that contains the actual (unknown) value. These interval estimates often come from experts. This fact naturally leads to the following important questions: How should we make decisions under such interval uncertainty? How to gauge the quality of the resulting decisions? And if this quality is not sufficient – because …

Addressing Security And Privacy Issues By Analyzing Vulnerabilities In Iot Applications, Francsico Javier Candelario Burgoa

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Internet of Things (IoT) environment has been expanding rapidly for the past few years into several areas of our lives, from factories, to stores and even into our own homes. All these new devices in our homes make our day-to-day lives easier and more comfortable with less effort on our part, converting our simple houses into smart homes. This increase in inter-connectivity brings multiple benefits including the improvement in energy efficiency in our homes, however it also brings with it some potential dangers since more points of connection mean more potential vulnerabilities in our grid. These vulnerabilities bring security …

Level Of Service For Parking Facilities Based On Search Time, Fernie Briones

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Level of Service (LOS) is a term used by transportation engineers to identify the quality of service of transportation facilities to the public. The Highway Capacity Manual has yet to provide guidance on LOS analysis for parking facilities. Parking search time has been proposed by several researchers as the indicator for the LOS criteria for parking facilities. This thesis investigated the use of search time for LOS analysis for on street and off-street parking facilities. The analysis of LOS for off-street parking focused on the measurement of parking search time. Three search time measurement methods have been proposed: the license …

An Investigation Of Upper Extremity Motor Impairments In Children Diagnosed With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Motor Planning Vs Motor Execution, Patrick Anthony Cereceres

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder typically diagnosedwhen a child displays social and communication impairments, repetitive behaviors, and rhythmic movements like hand flapping. This disorder is unique because of the high variability of symptoms displayed between each individual who is diagnosed. Because of this, no neurological or physiological test exists to diagnose a child with ASD. Current diagnostic tests are various forms of interviews or observations which an experienced clinician must administer. While these tests have been instrumental in diagnosing children with ASD, many go undiagnosed, which can be detrimental as they transition into adulthood. Current literature indicates …

Land Use And Land Cover Change Impact On Sustainability In The United Arab Emirates: A Big-Data Approach Using Google Earth Engine, Wissam Atwah

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The relevance of land use and land cover change (LULCC) impact on sustainability and well-being is increasing due to the urban growth challenges. LULCC data offers significant insight into the historic development patterns and their relations to various sustainability indicators. Different from the previous LULCC studies that merely focused on investigating LULCC problems in a small area (e.g., a city of an urban area) within a short span of time (e.g., a year), the current study intends to assess the long-term urbanization trend within a 20-year period for a whole country through the tracking of LULCC changes within the period. …

Predicting Zero Bin In The Semiconductor Manufacturing Industry: Machine Learning Algorithms, Yazmin Montoya

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The semiconductor industry has faced supply chain manufacturing shortages that ultimately led to a worldwide chip shortage during the COVID-19 pandemic. These chip manufacturers use sophisticated and advanced manufacturing machinery in their fabs to manufacture chips. As experienced during the pandemic, manufacturing unavailability is often due to the lack of critical manufacturing-related spare parts. This thesis evaluates the effectiveness of machine learning algorithms to identify significant factors contributing to manufacturing part outages (i.e., zero-bin) to keep manufacturing equipment running at total capacity within the organization. We propose clustering methods to segment the data and use logistic regression, logistic lasso regression, …

Equivalence: A Covariantly Constant Problem In General Relativity, Jaren Hobbs

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In studying the space-time structures described by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, it is often useful to identify particular properties referred to as geometrical invariants. These are attributes of the space-times which do not change regardless of the underlying coordinate systems used to study them. This project is part of a larger effort to catalogue space-times studied in general relativity. Specifically, computational software was used to identify structures known as covariantly constant vector fields.

Representations Of Masculinity And The Influence Of Bruce Lee In Film, Zhenxia Meng

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This thesis is an annotated bibliography that lays a critical foundation for examining the performance of heroism, violence, male bonding, and masculinity in the movies of Enter the Dragon (1973) by Bruce Lee, Hard Boiled (1992) by John Woo, and Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (2003-04) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino. I am interested in comparing the representations of masculinity in these films, focusing specifically on how Woo and Tarantino have been influenced by Lee’s films. Before I can begin this comparative research project, however, I need to conduct extensive research into several …

The Volatility Implications Of The Chinese Cryptocurrency Ban, Keaton Manwaring

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In this paper, I examine the effect of the May 18^th, 2021 Chinese ban of cryptocurrency transactions on the overall volatility of the cryptocurrency market. To do this, I analyze, in both univariate and multivariate settings, range-based volatility in various event windows surrounding the event. I find clear economic and statistical change in volatility in the five days after the ban. In the ten-day period after the ban, there is a moderate economic change in volatility. In the forty-day period after the ban, there is little economic change in volatility. I conclude that the Chinese ban had a …

Becoming A Flexible Teacher Through Critical Reflective Journaling, Marianne Young

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This thesis project is a portfolio that advises veteran teachers on the importance of journaling and self-reflection in order to stay involved and invested in the teaching community. As a practice, journaling helps teachers analyze how they teach, why they teach the way they do, and how they can improve their classroom through adaptation and change. Therefore, the pieces in this portfolio--a philosophy statement, a pedagogical essay, and a teaching tool-- demonstrate the need for reflection, allowing master teachers to become flexible within an ever-changing field.

Survey Of Ncaa Athletic Trainers’ Administration Of The National Wrestling Coaches Association Weight Certification Program, Samuel Konrath

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Context: The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) implemented a minimum weight certification program in 1997 to help protect wrestlers from dangerous weight loss practices. Despite nearly a quarter of a century of this program, there is no published research detailing the implementation of it.

Objective: Determine how the NCAA minimum weight certification is being implemented across Division I programs.

Design: Cross-sectional study

Setting: Survey

Patients or Other Participants: A total of 35 (45.5%) of 77 NCAA division I wrestling athletic trainers responded to the survey.

Main Outcome Measure(s): Survey data on how the NCAA minimum weight certification program was implemented …

A Reexamination Of The Illiquidity Premium In Cryptocurrencies, Wyatt Fitz

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In this study, I examine the illiquidity premium amongst the 372 most actively traded cryptocurrencies from September 2014 to May 2021. I find that the average returns on the most illiquid cryptocurrencies are larger than those on the most liquid cryptocurrencies. My results are robust to different weighting mechanisms for the market index and to various asset pricing model specifications. These results suggest that an investor might be able to go long a portfolio of illiquid cryptocurrencies while simultaneously shorting a portfolio of liquid cryptocurrencies to effectively generate a positive risk-adjusted return.

Forecasting Stock Market Prices: A Machine Learning Approach, Abraham Alhomadi

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

There has been extensive literature written about the efficiency of the stock market. Practitioners and academicians have debated whether investors can exploit publicly available information to generate excess returns. Clearly predicting the stock market’s return with high accuracy has been enormously difficult, but we are interested in contributing to the continuous exploration of the efficiency of the stock market using machine learning techniques. We also want to examine the relationship between our dataset’s macroeconomic indicators and foreign nations’ stock markets with our target feature—the S&P 500. In this paper, we will be using supervised machine learning models, like Linear Regression, …

An Examination Of Costume Design And Costume Shop Management; And Working In Theatre During A Pandemic, Jordan Draper

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

An examination of my work as a costume designer for two productions by the Theatre Arts Department in the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University, along with my work as the costume shop manager for the spring 2021 semester at Utah State University's theatre costume shop.