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ECEN191/ROBO150 Robotics Tools: Evaluating the Impact of Project-based Learning on Teaching Effectiveness
No full textThe course selected for this study aims to introduce the skills and knowledge needed to utilize software and hardware tools used to design and operate robots. In this introductory course, undergraduate students in the Robotics Engineering major are provided with the opportunity to broaden their skill set with focus on specializing in one of three engineering disciplines (Software, Electrical and Mechanical). The primary goal of this course is to teach how develop the proficiency in basic concepts in robotics and enable the students to build and program a small-scale fully functional robotic arm. In this portfolio study, I investigated the effectiveness of traditional teaching practices combined with project-based learning as a tool to engage students interested in various specializations of Robotics Engineering. Student performance data pertaining to the impact of hands-on projects on the overall grade was systematically analyzed. The impact of logically connected in-class and out-of-class learning activities on student engagement and knowledge retention was studied using outcome achievement data
(Dis)economies of Scale on the Family Farm
No full textThe example this article features is the belief that farms must get bigger, both by asset size and revenue, in order to achieve success. The remainder of this article will discuss when that is true, but will give multiple examples of when the opposite holds. Finally, the article will end with an argument for why communication amongst generational management is of the utmost importance
Annual Color Photo Section
No full textThe following seven pages show examples of this year’s theme: birds feeding or carrying food.
Osprey with striped bassSpotted Sandpiper with beetleScissor-tailed Flycatcher with insectMale Pine Grosbeak with green ash seedsMerlin eating sparrowWhooping Crane carrying ear of cornYellow-billed Cuckoo with harvestman spiderBlack-billed Magpie eating grainRed-tailed Hawk with plains garter snakeSummer Tanager with hackberry emperor butterflyCattle Egret with bullfrogJuvenile Red-shouldered Hawk eating garter snakeRed-breasted Merganser eating fishJuvenile White Ibis eating unidentified itemBohemian Waxwing eating crab applesRose-breasted Grosbeak eating sunflower seedsLoggerhead Shrike eating dragonflyYellow-crowned Night Heron eating insectCedar Waxwing with highbush cranberriesLesser Yellowlegs eating wormsAmerican Robin with mulberryNorthern Flicker feeding youngLark Sparrow with grasshoppersFemale Dickcissel with yellow garden spiderHouse Finches on safflower seed feederRed Crossbill with sunflower seedField Sparrow eating IndiangrassBlue-headed Vireo with female crane flyBlack-capped Chickadee with small caterpillarsIndigo Bunting with caterpillarNorthern Shrike eating a mouseRuby-throated Hummingbird on feederCommon NighthawkRare bilateral gynandromorph Northern CardinalConnecticut WarblerBlack-and-white WarblerEastern Kingbir
The Nebraska Bird Review (March 2025) 93(1), WHOLE ISSUE
No full textWinter Field Report, December 2024–February 2025, by W. Ross Silcock2024–2025 Christmas Bird Counts, by Don PasekaAnnual Color Photo SectionAnnual Treasurer’s Report for 2024, by Jan JohnsonSubscription and Organization Informatio
The Batiandi Li Family
No full textThe novel tells the story of six generations of the Li family over the course of nearly a century and a half, a legendary saga. The protagonists of the Li family in various historical stages of the book are searching for their own identity and the position of the family on the road of life. Sometimes they seize opportunities and create temporary brilliance for the benefit and glory of the family, while at other times they submit to fate and follow the tide of history, content to live ordinary lives like common people.
In 1832 the second brother of the Li family of LiJiaGu village in Pingdu, Shandong, migrated to Northeast China, beyond the Great Wall, to escape the drought, locusts, and famine destroying the land that had been his family’s home for more than six centuries. Li Tairen took his wife, baby son, and retainers on a thousand-mile journey by land and sea, and then settled and established the “Eight Fields” (ba tian) that became the foundation of the family’s position and prosperity … for a while. Six generations — Tai, Ping, Wen, Zhen, Yao, and Guang — experienced success, wealth, power, and the loss of all those things. They came to know poverty, exile, confinement, and no end of political instability. This book tells how they struggled over nearly 200 years, how they survived, where life carried them, and when and how it carried them back. It also gives us a fascinating view of family life under five Qing emperors, the Republic of China, the Japanese occupation, and the Peoples’ Republic.
doi: 10.32873/unl.dc.zea.1513https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/1171/thumbnail.jp
Response of Soybean to Variable Irrigation Levels in Eastern Nebraska Using the AquaCrop Model
No full textAquaCrop was calibrated and validated for soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] using 19 irrigation treatments from five years using data from field experiments. The model accurately simulated canopy cover (CC), soil water content (SWC), and grain yield, with overall validation nRMSE values of 12%, 7%, and 7%, respectively. The overall validation nRMSE for SWC in individual 30-cm soil layers was comparatively higher, at 19%. The model was subsequently applied for long-term simulations (2010–2024) to estimate soybean yield and water requirements for two dominant soil types, Yutan silty clay loam and Tomek silt loam under three irrigation levels - rainfed, deficit irrigation, and full irrigation. Full and deficit irrigation were triggered when 140% and 100% of Readily Available Water (RAW) were depleted, respectively. The highest average simulated yields were obtained under full irrigation, and had similar range from 3.93 to 4.51 Mg ha⁻¹ for both soils. Rainfed treatments produced the lowest average simulated yields, ranging from 1.11 to 4.39 Mg ha⁻¹ for Yutan soils and 0.85 to 4.39 Mg ha⁻¹ for Tomek soils. Across all years, the yield difference between full and deficit irrigation was less than 11%. Average irrigation requirements under full irrigation were 136 mm for Yutan soils and 159 mm for Tomek soils, while deficit irrigation reduced these amounts to 70 mm and 74 mm, respectively. Overall, AquaCrop showed good performance and can be valuable tool for evaluating irrigation strategies in Eastern Nebraska. Model results indicate that deficit irrigation has the potential to conserve water without significantly reducing soybean yield.
Advisors: Saleh Taghvaeian and Yufeng G
Analysis of Vision Transformers and Domain Adaptation in Long-range Facial Recognition
No full textAtmospheric turbulence presents a significant barrier to long-range facial recognition, introducing severe geometric distortions and blur that degrade image quality. This thesis investigates deep learning approaches for mitigating these effects, with a focus on transformer based architectures and domain adaptation strategies.
An in-depth benchmarking study was performed using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and vision transformers (ViTs) on the Husker BRIAR Research Collection from up to 500m (HBRC-500) face dataset. The results demonstrated that vision transformers, particularly hierarchical vision transformers like the shifted-window (Swin) transformer, outperform CNN-based models at long distances due to their ability to model global spatial relationships and compensate for turbulence-induced distortions.
Further experiments were conducted with the HBRC-500 and Biometric Recognition and Identification at Altitude and Range (BRIAR) datasets and a key contribution of this work is the development of deformable patch embeddings (DPE), which incorporate a lightweight offset network to adaptively correct geometric distortions as part of the tokenization process. DPE, trained with synthetic turbulence generated from both random and Kolmogorov-based simulations, yielded substantial improvements in Rank-1 accuracy and verification metrics, particularly at extreme ranges. This method proved more effective than generative restoration techniques like denoising diffusion probabilistic models (DDPM), as presented in AT-DDPM, which struggled with identity preservation and domain mismatch, and outperformed weakly supervised domain adaptation strategies that degraded gallery image quality. The DPE solution achieved competitive results with the image-quality informed low-rank adaptation (LoRA) framework of PETALface when evaluated with the same WebFaces4M pretrained backbone.
Additionally, this thesis introduced a novel attention rollout framework for hierarchical Swin transformers, offering high-resolution visualizations of model attention patterns that surpassed traditional Grad-CAM in interpretability. Attention rollout had previously only been implemented for columnar vision transformer architectures and did not account for the effect that windowed attention and patch merging had on the raster scan ordering of tokens when combining attention scores across layers.
Collectively, the findings underscore the viability of transformer-based backbones combined with spatially adaptive sampling mechanisms for long-range face recognition. The proposed methods close a significant portion of the domain gap between pristine indoor enrollment and degraded outdoor probes without relying on generative image restoration. This research lays the groundwork for future efforts in scalable, domain-robust biometric recognition systems under adverse imaging conditions.
Advisor: Benjamin S. Rigga
A Study of the History, Repertory and Instrumentation of the Band of the Corfu Philharmonic Society from 1840 until 1920
No full textThe Corfu Philharmonic Society band was founded in 1840 and is still active today. It is considered the one of the oldest continuously operating music education organizations in Greece. The people, repertoire, and instrumentation of this band influenced all other wind bands in Greece. There are important resources available on the topic, but dedicated research to the organization is in its infancy. Focusing on the changes in instrumentation through original manuscripts from the inaugural band (1840) through the end of the First World War reveals significant multinational influences that continue to be felt to this day. This is the first document that focuses on the instrumentation of a Greek wind band and its changes throughout the decades. A goal of this document is to insert Greek wind bands into the larger conversation of musicological study related to wind bands. The findings of this research highlight the band’s influences from bands of various European cultures such as the British, the Italian and the Austrian military bands.
Advisor: Carolyn Barbe
The Lived Experience of Religious Trauma among Transgender and Gender Diverse People: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
No full textReligion has served as a framework to support the psychological well-being of people across cultures throughout human history, yet there is growing scholarly and public interest in how religious institutions and people inflict harm on members through spiritual means. Extant literature demonstrated that transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people experience gendered microaggressions in religious spaces, and their social position within the church likely holds unique insights into the subjective experience of religious trauma. Even though research with people who have had adverse religious experiences has increased over time, little is known about TGD people who experience lasting psychological damage due to religious experiences. In the present study, guided by interpretative phenomenological analysis and feminist standpoint theory, six TGD people in the US participated in semi-structured interviews to explore their experiences of religious trauma, closely examining the intrapsychic, interpersonal, and spiritual implications of this form of psychological distress rooted in religion. Five group experiential themes were identified: (a) nuance in gender identity development, (b) transphobia cloaked in religious messages, (c) experiencing inner psychological struggles, (d) an ambivalent relationship with religion, and (e) the process of being in a religious world. Results suggested that insular and cisnormative religious communities created barriers for participants in gaining self-knowledge related to their internal sense of gender. The findings also highlighted the ‘stickiness’ of religious trauma, as negative psychological functioning remained despite distancing from organized religion. However, participants were often able to construct meaningful narratives regarding their religious trauma through relationships, personalized religion, and psychotherapy. In some ways, TGD people converged with previous research findings related to religious trauma, yet sin being located in the self (through gender identity) as opposed to a person’s actions presents novel findings. This research offers important insight for mental health professionals working with patients who identify as TGD and/or who experience religious trauma. I provide implications for clinical practice as well as document directions for future research.
Advisor: Dena Abbot
Hope against Hope: Problems, Possibilities, Agency, and Survival
No full textIn response to a critique of hope put forth by queer theorist Jack Halberstam, this thesis is a reassessment of what makes us capable of response—to “stay with the trouble,” in the words of Donna Haraway—in the face of overwhelming collapse. If not hope, then what? This thesis explores a number of questions about hope and its absence, opposites, and various deployments: is hope always an effective tool for survival? Does hopelessness always spell doom? Are hope and its apparent opposites necessarily incompatible? And if there is no hope, how do we keep going?—how do we survive? I explore these questions by bringing together scholarship, theory, and writing about hope from diverse disciplines and genres, including queer theory, Black studies, childhood studies, disability studies, human ecology, activism, and memoir. Drawing from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick\u27s reparative reading, Audre Lorde\u27s view of difference as a source of creative energy, Karen Barad\u27s theory of agential realism, and Gabrielle Owen’s concept of ethical relationality, among others, I offer the term agential hope to describe agency—hopeful or not—that becomes available to us through the entanglement and intra-action of hope, hopelessness, our selves, and the phenomena we encounter.
Advisor: Gabrielle Owe