Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Wwu Marine Chemistry Lab And Field Assistant, Elsa (Christopher Adam) Lindenmeyr

College of the Environment Internship Reports

During this internship, I gained both laboratory and field experience through numerous things. I first learned how to assemble mold for the gels that would be used for the experiment. This was done by sandwiching a rubber tube and spacers between two pieces of glass and then pouring the liquid gels with a pipette. The pouring of the gels took preciseness to pour quickly enough that it doesn’t set half-way through and create stripes, and not pour so quickly that you get bubbles. I learned to make agarose and acrylamide solutions and how long and the conditions they need to …

Washington Conservation Corps Crew Member, Naomi A. Ellis

College of the Environment Internship Reports

One of my primary objectives going into this summer was to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the realities of physical labor, an essential aspect of applied science in the field, especially in conservation work. Although I have always enjoyed working with my hands and challenging myself with outdoor activities, my professional experience in this area was limited. The job met this objective right away, starting with a backcountry overnight trip, or spike. Our task involved camping out for four days while assisting in a grid search through a conserved natural area for lost DNR materials. It was important to …

Ahtna Intertribal Resource Commission Intern, Luke Joi Duvall

College of the Environment Internship Reports

This summer, I spent ten weeks working as a fisheries technician for the Ahtna Intertribal Resource Commission. My primary position duties involved taking genetic and health samples for sockeye and chinook salmon. Throughout this summer I developed knowledge in the anatomy, ecology, management, and sampling techniques associated with salmon along with gaining insight and experience in other fields while collaborating with organizations outside my own. Furthermore, I gained valuable insight into the multiple organizations and attitudes involved in the management of natural resources throughout Alaska. Coming out of this experience, I feel prepared to progress further into research and conservation …

Community Boating Center Bioluminescence Intern, Eddie Joi Nosal

College of the Environment Internship Reports

2024 is the third year of the bioluminescence internship position at the Community Boating Center. In the last two years, the Community Boating Center has partnered with Western Washington University to assist in research on bioluminescence and education through guided night kayak tours. Previous research was done by now-WWU alumni Lucy Greeley and Carrley Smith with the goal of identifying bioluminescent dinoflagellate species, planktonic community composition during bioluminescent events, and the effects of environmental factors on brightness of dinoflagellates. The work done by previous interns has gained recognition from the Bellingham Herald, presented at conferences, and has had a video …

Shannon Point Marine Center Research Intern, Sam Joi Clement

College of the Environment Internship Reports

For the past two quarters, I have worked with Professor Morgan Eisenlord on two experiments involving eelgrass wasting disease. In both experiments, samples were collected from Padilla Bay. One, which dates back to the Summer of 2023, analyzes how the protist Labyrinthula zostera (which causes eelgrass wasting disease) presents itself in eelgrass when compared to algae. Another, primarily worked on by two students at the Shannon Point Marine Center during the Summer of 2024, analyzed differences in eelgrass wasting disease between two different species of eelgrass in Padilla Bay: Zostera marina and Zostera Japonica.

Whatcom Humane Society Wildlife Rehab Intern, Bella Joi Moore

College of the Environment Internship Reports

For my internship through Western, I decided to go with Whatcom’s Humane Socierty’s Wildlife rehabilitation center. This particular place is part of Whatcom’s few different centers for animals but this one in particular deals with wildlife animals and sometimes (temporarily) marine mammals. I’ve always known I wanted to work with animals so this experience was one in a million. It was very hands on and right in the middle of the field which was very cool.

Roni Lifeworks Intern, Anthony Ortiz

College of the Environment Internship Reports

During this internship, I was under the guidance of Dr. Jocelyn Enabulele (Roni Lifeworks) and Seth Schromen-Wawrin (Seattle Department of Health). I am deeply passionate about environmental science, and I have always been intrigued by the relationship between humans and the natural environment, therefore this internship was naturally appealing and likely contributed to my ability to secure such an awe-inspiring opportunity to play a significant role in this research project. It has offered me the unique opportunity to dive into and apply some of the knowledge and critical thinking skills I have attained directly in the field. Participating in this …

Wild Bird Wildlife Rehab Intern, Maggy Herman

College of the Environment Internship Reports

During my internship at Barnswallow, I worked three days a week and was responsible for a variety of tasks each day. Every week followed a similar schedule such as one day a week being reserved for cleaning and another for preparing food, among other tasks. My main objective was to support the rehabilitation center by completing assigned tasks ensuring that the center ran smoothly. Overall, my role as an intern was to help maintain a good quality of life for all residents at Barnswallow.

Landmark Environmental Intern, Meredith Czoschke

College of the Environment Internship Reports

Landmark Environmental specializes in assessing and remediating chemically contaminated sites, often involving construction or redevelopment projects. Their work is divided into several key aspects: Phase I Environmental Site Assessments (ESAs), Phase II ESAs, and additional remediation activities. This report aims to provide a detailed account of my responsibilities, the skills I acquired, and how these align with my academic background and career goals.

Deception Pass State Park Beach Naturalist Intern, Mikaela Silva

College of the Environment Internship Reports

Deception Pass State Park in Oak Harbor, Washington, spans over 4,000 acres on two islands – Fidalgo to the north and Whidbey to the south (Deception Pass State Park, 2024). Originally, in 1866 the land around the pass was set aside to be a military reservation by the United States government (Deception Pass State Park, 2024). In 1922 the property was then designated by a Congressional Act for public recreation, creating Deception Pass State Park (Deception Pass State Park, 2024). The bridge that connects the two islands is a major tourist attraction along with the rugged cliffs, old-growth forest, historical …

Silfab Solar Processing Intern, Abigail A. Marshall

College of the Environment Internship Reports

The knowledge I gained about Lean manufacturing concepts also deepened my understanding of manufacturing and sustainability. A large part of Lean manufacturing includes a focus on reducing different types of waste. These wastes include transportation, excess production, excess inventory, defects, time, human talent, motion, and unneeded processing. Although the focus of Lean manufacturing is on maximizing production efficiency and improving customer value, many of these wastes are also deeply related to environmental sustainability. Unnecessary transportation, production, processing and materials are all direct contributors to carbon emissions. In this way, Lean manufacturing can be another valuable tool for both increasing profit …

The Large-Scale Environments Of Active Galactic Nuclei, Grayson C. Petter

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

It is now recognized that the energy released by accreting supermassive black holes observed as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) is integral in shaping the dynamics of baryons on up to cosmological scales, and AGN thus play a significant role in regulating the formation and evolution of galaxies. Studying the clustering properties of AGN reveals which environments they release this feedback energy into, testing models of AGN-galaxy coevolution and AGN structure. In this thesis, I leverage wide-area photometric and spectroscopic survey data to measure the clustering properties of various AGN samples containing millions of systems, placing tight constraints on the properties …

Reinforcement Learning Based Proactive Entanglement Swapping For Quantum Networks, Tasdiqul Islam, Md Arifuzzaman, Engin Arslan

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Entanglement generation and swapping is a difficult process due to probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. To overcome this issue, existing quantum routing algorithms try to create entanglement on multiple paths between source and destination. Although it is possible to save entangled qubits on unused links using quantum memories, the quantum routing algorithms discard them and try creating new entanglement in each time slot. In this work, we leverage the longevity of entanglement and introduce two enhancements to improve the performance of existing routing algorithms: (i) The generation and caching of entanglements across multiple time slots, and (ii) the proactively executing …

Effective Data Sharing In An Edge-Cloud Model: Security Challenges And Solutions, Arijit Karati, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The proposed protocol offers privacy-preserving authentication across several cloud platforms, flexible key management for consumer data protection, and effective user revocation. Performance evaluation demonstrates that the proposed framework supports low latency, safe unified remote access, and data privacy in the contemporary edge-enabled environment.

Effects Of Simulated Climate Change On Native Southeastern Grassland Vegetation Using Open Top Chambers, Makaila Carpenter

Theses

The southeastern United States is a critical biodiversity hotspot once covered in prairie grassland ecosystems and now facing significant threats due to urbanization, habitat destruction, over-exploitation, biological invasions, pollution, and climate change. This study analyzes the response of Alabama’s native prairie ecosystem to climate change. We used open top chambers (OTCs) to simulate climate change-induced warming. We assessed the response of ecosystem function and structure to higher temperatures (1-3^oC). The indicators of ecosystem function included phenology, leaf surface area (LSA), specific leaf area (SLA), and aboveground and below net primary productivity (ANPP and BNPP respectively). Ecosystem structure was …

Deception Pass State Park Beach Naturalist Intern, Joey Decaro

College of the Environment Internship Reports

The first day of my internship with the Deception Pass State Park was June 20th, 2024; the last was September 5th, 2024, where I had the privilege of being a Beach Naturalist at Rosario Beach. Deception Pass spans two different islands, Fidalgo and Whidbey, and has a plethora of attractions: the Deception Pass Bridge is the connection between the two islands; Cranberry Lake is a popular area to fish; the Rosario tide pools allow visitors to understand the ecosystem while protecting it; and many more. Due to all these attractions and the beautiful scenery, Deception Pass State Park is one …

Introduction To Programming And Applied Analytics Using Python, Matt Brown

ATU Faculty OER Books and Materials

This open electronic textbook is a collection of lecture notes, assignments, and additional background material for a junior level analytics course targeted for business students, it is free to use and copy. The text assumes readers have not had prior programming or computing courses, but have had at least one analytics course. The textbook differs from other textbooks because it serves a dual purpose, to first introduce to students the Python programming language and secondly to introduce analytics programming in Python. It is not meant to be a comprehensive book on the Python language or data analytics, rather a semester’s …

Assessing Soil Properties For Optimized Irrigation Development In Sudan, Northern Africa, Suhib Hamid, Derek M. Heeren, Aaron R. Mittelstet, Saleh Taghvaeian, Randall S. Ritzema

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Conference Presentations and White Papers

Sustainable irrigation methods maximize agricultural productivity in Northern African countries like Sudan. This project evaluates soil properties to develop optimized irrigation strategies for Sudan's arid and semi-arid climate. Assessing soil characteristics such as texture, infiltration rates, and nutrient content informs the selection of modern irrigation systems. Data from 3,192 locations, collected using GPS and ring infiltrometers for infiltration rates, alongside laboratory analyses for soil properties, were employed. A ranking system determined suitable irrigation systems for specific soil classes, considering factors like slope, wind, crop tolerance, available water capacity (AWC), drainage, germination, capital cost, labor cost, maintenance, and evapotranspiration (ET). The …

Uplifting The Critical Value Of The Lgbtq+ Climate Workforce, Brenda Castruita, Nicole Fassina

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

As the world faces unprecedented environmental challenges, the need for a robust and diverse environmental workforce has never been more critical. Historically, marginalized communities are at the forefront of these challenges and often bear the brunt of impacts from our changing climate. It is vital that the climate workforce reflects the diversity of our communities and is inclusive of individuals with lived experiences that can inform equitable and effective solutions. Among these marginalized communities, the LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, and others) community is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.¹ Research underscores how LGBTQ+ individuals …

A Comparison Of Structure, Bonding And Non-Covalent Interactions Of Aryl Halide And Diarylhalonium Halogen-Bond Donors, Nicole Javaly, Theresa M. Mccormick, David R. Stuart

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Halogen bonding permeates many areas of chemistry. A wide range of halogen-bond donors including neutral, cationic, monovalent, and hypervalent have been developed and studied. In this work we used density functional theory (DFT), natural bond orbital (NBO) theory, and quantum theory of atoms in molecules (QTAIM) to analyze aryl halogen-bond donors that are neutral, cationic, monovalent and hypervalent and in each series we include the halogens Cl, Br, I, and At. Within this diverse set of halogen-bond donors, we have found trends that relate halogen bond length with the van der Waals radii of the halogen and the non-covalent or …

Deception Pass State Park Beach Naturalist Intern, Cherise Russo

College of the Environment Internship Reports

This summer, I dedicated much of my time to supporting education and restoration at the tide pools of Deception Pass State Park. My internship at Deception Pass State Park has been an important learning experience. While working there, I have learned to work with people of diverse cultures, gained knowledge of the tide pool ecosystems of the park, and experienced working in a state park setting as part of a team and individually.

Hybridization Between The Rare Gray-Headed Chickadee And The Abundant Boreal Chickadee In The Midst Of Shifting Climate, Matthew R. Armstrong

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As species respond to changing climate, distributions and abundances may shift and alter species interactions. Hybridization, a relatively widespread phenomenon becoming more common with climate change, can have beneficial and detrimental effects on population growth rates and genetic integrity. Beneficial effects due to the introduction of advantageous alleles and increased genetic diversity may result from hybridization. Species may also accrue fitness costs associated with changing climates if mismatches occur between environmental variables and phenotypes. The gray-headed chickadee, Poecile cinctus lathami, is an extremely rare songbird that has experienced marked declines in recent decades within its restricted distribution in Alaska …

Population Demography, Occupancy, And Connectivity Of Invasive Bigheaded Carp In The Platte River, Nebraska And Its Tributaries, Blake W. Logan

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Silver Carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix and Bighead Carp H. nobilis, collectively referred to as bigheaded carp, are invasive species in the United States of America that have expanded their range throughout the Missouri River basin in the last three decades. It may be desirable to develop management plans directed at the monitoring, control, or removal of bigheaded carp within the Missouri River basin. However, a knowledge gap exists regarding bigheaded carp ecology in Missouri River tributaries, which may be important for the development of management plans. As such, this study characterized bigheaded carp population demographics, occupancy, and connectivity in …

Virtual Fencing In Livestock Management: Effects On Beef Cattle Stress And Enhancing Wildlife Conservation, Kaitlyn E. Dozler

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

I examined the effects of virtual fencing on beef cattle stress and how implementing the technology can aid wildlife habitat conservation at the University of Nebraska Gudmundsen Sandhills laboratory (GSL) near Whitman, NE. First, I examined how virtual fencing influences acute heart rate changes in beef cattle fitted with the virtual fencing collars. No significant difference in the average heart rate of a cow (P > 0.05) was observed between the 30 min control and virtual fenced periods for both trial dates. Second, I examined the influence of topography on wildlife species richness and presence at GSL using wildlife camera …

Spatial Ecology Of Mountain Lions Throughout Their Distribution In California, Kyle D. Dougherty

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Mountain lions (Puma concolor) have been studied extensively throughout their wide geographic distribution in the Western Hemisphere, but most research has been conducted at relatively small spatial scales. We used GPS telemetry data contributed by researchers in 16 study areas throughout California to advance understanding of mountain lion spatial ecology. First, we investigated multi-scale resource selection of mountain lions relative to spatially varying risk of intentional human-caused mortality associated with livestock depredation management. We show that individuals that proactively avoided mortality risk when selecting home ranges were able to relax their avoidance of risk when making resource selection …

Empowering Interprofessional Teams: Exploring Genai With The Health Sciences Library, Jess King, Teresa L. Hartman

Posters and Presentations: Leon S. McGoogan Health Sciences Library

The Leon S. McGoogan Health Sciences Library at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) organized workshops to delve into Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) applications in academic medical centers. These sessions, tailored for all skill levels, provided a safe forum for faculty and staff to engage with GenAI, increasing their digital literacy skills. Participants benefited from introductory sessions, hands-on activities, and reflective discussions, gaining practical insights into ethical GenAI use. These workshops form a vibrant GenAI community at UNMC, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange among healthcare professionals and paving the way for continued technological integration in academic and clinical settings

Enhancing Water Sustainability In North Africa: Literature Review And Synthesis Of Current Knowledge Gaps In Sudan, Osman M. A. Adam, Aaron R. Mittelstet, Derek M. Heeren, Troy E. Gilmore

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Conference Presentations and White Papers

This study delves into the critical role of groundwater in addressing global water challenges, with a focus on the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS) in North Africa. Groundwater constitutes a source of potable water, irrigation, and industrial use, especially in arid regions where surface water is limited. We analyzed the status of water quantity, withdrawals, recharge, and geological characteristics in the NSAS, specifically in Sudan, Egypt, Libya, and Chad. Though the NSAS is largely an untapped resource, we evaluated various scenarios to determine the quantity of cropland that can be sustainably irrigated. The NSAS is located in an arid region, …

Quantifying And Classifying Streamflow Ensembles Using A Broad Range Of Metrics For An Evidence-Based Analysis: Colorado River Case Study, Homa Salehabadi, David G. Tarboton, Kevin G. Wheeler, Rebecca Smith, Sarah Baker

Research Briefs

Using the Colorado River Basin as a case study, this research article highlights the need for streamflow ensembles that accurately represent potential future conditions rather than solely relying on historical data. The comprehensive set of statistical metrics introduced can be used to evaluate and classify these streamflow ensembles. This evidence-based framework can inform water resource management in the face of uncertain conditions.

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter, July 2024, University Of Northern Iowa. Iowa Waste Reduction Center.

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter

In this issue:

--- Farewell to Jordan Evans, Environmental Specialist
--- Keeping Tabs on PFAs
--- Library Compost Training Series visits Independence, IA
--- Important Reminders: Library Compost Training Series
--- Industry News

Heat Stress Changes The Bovine Methylome And Transcriptome And Investigation Of Two Novel Genetic Defects In Cattle, Rachel Renae Reith

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Heat stress is a major concern for livestock producers due to its negative impact on animal health and productivity. Heat stress does so by altering expression of genes through different regulatory mechanisms such as DNA methylation. Understanding how heat stress alters gene expression will help elucidate the genetic basis of physiological changes as well as identify targets for possible heat stress mitigation. The purpose of the first study was to understand how heat stress alters the adipose and skeletal muscle transcriptomes in zilpaterol-fed Brahman, as zilpaterol improves muscle growth and may mitigate the effects of heat stress. Differential expression and …