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Enhancing the Eden Alternative Model with Well Standards: A Case Study Analysis
Get PDFThis thesis investigates the potential for improving the Eden Alternative Model, a person-centered approach to elder care that emphasizes creating a homelike environment and meaningful relationships, using WELL Standards, a building certification system focused on enhancing human health and well-being through improvements in environmental quality. Through a mixed-methods approach involving quantitative data analysis and qualitative case studies, this research examines how WELL Standards, which cover aspects such as air quality, water quality, lighting, and thermal comfort, can improve environmental quality and resident satisfaction within the Eden Alternative Model. This research introduces a tailored approach to elder care by combining these models, emphasizing how enhancements to environmental quality can respond to the rising expectations for improved living conditions in senior settings. Key findings suggest improvements in incorporating WELL standards into the Eden Alternative. The study provides actionable recommendations for integrating WELL Standards into the Eden Alternative Model, offering insights for policymakers, administrators, and practitioners in the senior care industry.
Advisor: Sonya Turkma
Using Fantasy Sports to Connect Process with Product in ADPR/SPMC 464/864 – Sports Media Relations and Promotion
Get PDFThe purpose of this portfolio is to analyze the relationship between assignments and desired learning outcomes in ADPR/SPMC 464/864 – Sports Media Relations and Promotion. ADPR/SPMC 464/864 Sports Media Relations and Promotion remains a challenging course to navigate but the process of developing this portfolio demonstrates that it has many strengths. The first of these strengths is the simple structure that centers the course around a fantasy football team (NFL in fall, EPL in spring). Most students were already familiar with fantasy sports and, in general, appreciated the inherent competition within this structure. Feedback from students’ year-end self-assessments from two semesters revealed three key areas of learning: feedback, collaboration, and skill-building. These concepts appear to align with the desired outcome that students learn to identify and articulate how process informs product
Syncretic Spirits / Espíritus Sincréticos
Get PDFSyncretic Spirits / Espíritus Sincréticos is a multimedia exhibition that invites viewers into a fantastical space where cultural identity and perception intertwine. Colorful shaped panels, sculptural installations, prints, and drawings bridge physical and metaphysical realms. Personal archetypes intuitively inspired by natural forms drive the work.
Influenced by the dualities of my upbringing as a first-generation Mexican American, I was immersed in Mexican culture through my family traditions while finding a home in the nurturing embrace of the heartland. The work has become a means of reclaiming a new layered sense of self, disentangling from my Catholic upbringing, embracing indigenous healing methods, and forming a personal spiritual and artistic practice.
The visual language is inspired by pre-Columbian glyph traditions, particularly those found in Mesoamerican codices, and focuses on plant forms. By blending personal history with collective symbols, I am cultivating a growing relationship with the natural world. The plant-like forms that appear in my work become spirit glyphs, acting as sentient guides and archetypes. Reflective of plants reaching toward the light, these imagined forms become extensions of myself exploring the unknown.
I want the audience to feel a sense of recognition and curiosity as if they have unveiled a hidden narrative. The pieces encourage slow looking, and the details offer a space for personal interpretation.
Advisors: Sophie Isaak and Matthew Sontheime
Course Portfolio: CSCE 478/878 Introduction to Machine Learning
Get PDFThis course portfolio was developed for CSCE 478/878: Introduction to Machine Learning, offered by the School of Computing at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, as part of the Faculty-led Inquiry into Reflective and Scholarly Teaching (FIRST) project. The course provides an introduction to foundational machine learning concepts, models, and programming tools. It enrolls both undergraduate and graduate students from a wide range of academic backgrounds, including computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, biological systems engineering, chemical engineering, business-related fields, etc. Offered in Spring 2025, the course was peer-reviewed to support continuous improvement in teaching. The primary goals of this portfolio are to enhance the instructor’s teaching practices and contribute to the development of high-quality course materials for the broader curriculum. This document outlines key components of the course, including its objectives, structure, teaching strategies, instructional resources, and student activities. In addition to presenting the course content, the portfolio evaluates student learning outcomes through formal assessments and peer feedback. The diversity of the student cohort informed efforts to tailor the course design and pedagogy to a range of learning needs. The final section of the portfolio offers a critical reflection on the course’s effectiveness, which identifies strengths and areas for improvement based on assessment data, peer observations, and the instructor’s own experiences
Assessment of Energy Efficiency Measures Recommended for Industrial Facilities: Environmental, Economic, and Life Cycle Perspectives
Get PDFThis study assesses the economic, environmental, and life cycle impacts of more than 800 industrial Energy Efficiency Measures (EEMs) identified in manufacturing facilities across Nebraska. These EEMs are notable for their rapid implementation and minimal disruption to the facility’s building structure or core processes.
The research evaluates the financial viability of EEMs by analyzing utility savings, implementation costs, and payback periods. It also examines their cost-effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including calculations of net cost and cost of mitigated CO₂-eq.
Key findings indicate that adding insulation to hot pipes and buildings, replacing personal fans with High-Volume, Low-Speed (HVLS) fans, and installing economizers on boilers are among the most cost-effective and environmentally beneficial EEMs. Additionally, lighting upgrades, occupancy sensors, and leak detection in compressed air systems were found to significantly reduce initial GHG emissions. Sector-specific equipment upgrades—such as the electrification of steam shrink tunnels—were also identified as effective decarbonization strategies, particularly when implemented at the end of the equipment’s useful life. These upgrades offered substantial GHG reductions and shorter payback periods. Conversely, measures such as motor replacements, especially when implemented before the equipment has reached the end of its efficient life, were found to be less cost-effective.
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was conducted to identify potential burden shifting, where reductions in GHG emissions may be offset by increases in other environmental impacts. LCA results generally aligned with reductions in Scope 1 and 2 operational emissions but also revealed instances of burden shifting. This was particularly evident in equipment-intensive measures such as motor and boiler replacements and the replacement of personal fans with HVLS fans, where high capital investment and the embodied emissions of new equipment materials led to increases in certain environmental impacts.
Advisor: Bruce I. Dvora
Algorithms for Order Statistics in Farey Sequences: A Computational Study
Get PDFFarey sequences are the sets of irreducible fractions in increasing order with denominator less or equal to some integer n. They are a well-known concept in number theory problems and are related to many other concepts in number theory including integer factoring, Fibonacci sequences, and Riemann’s Zeta function. In this paper, we investigate some known algorithms to solve certain problems in Farey sequences from a computational perspective. In particular, we implement established algorithms that have not been previously implemented with the goal of creating a package that can be used more broadly. We also develop a new algorithm for rational search which generalizes known algorithms for the problem.
Advisor: Vinodchandran N. Variya
A Curriculum to Cultivate Whole Musicians: A New Approach to Aural Skills Instructions Promoting Student Success in Other Music Classrooms
Get PDFThe following thesis is founded on the construction of a new undergraduate aural skills curriculum. While many aural skills methods may exploit some varieties in exercise and assessment formats, this method attends to and prioritizes the advantages of those formats more purposefully, thus being more transparent toward students in their learning and introducing certain agency they may hold in their studies.
Students undergo a 5-semester curriculum in this method, organized into a fundamentals semester, and Aural Skills courses 1, 2, 3, and 4, the last of which is split into two modular options. Students who participate in this curriculum are shown the importance of cross-study in aural training, whereby they not only synthesize exercises and the skills those activities nurture, but grow to understand a deeper connection between their experiences in aural skills courses and those in academic and professional music practice elsewhere. Optimally, students learn the process of catalyzing the concepts they encounter in a variety of genres and contexts. Students also develop the metacognition of their musical practice as a whole, perhaps a goal and outcome of other methods but one that is attended to with more purposeful and organic scaffolding here. This metacognitive understanding of their own capabilities supports students as they synthesize skills in order to distill theoretical concepts and extrapolate the various applications thereof. Students who are able to achieve these objectives become more competent and creative musicians as a whole.
The curriculum to follow shows the expansion of musical selection and use, as well as the blending of skill development and practice approaches. It maintains certain standard assessments that offer the clearest manners in which students show their proficiency and understanding of concept and practice, whilst implementing personal instrument and keyboard use alongside a greater variety of creative opportunities for students. Optimally, this approach works to bridge the gap between the mindsets held by the student and instructor, as well as the materials they collectively investigate and concepts they distill. The more effectively this gap is narrowed, the more thoroughly learning and synthesis of skills may take place.
Advisor: Stanley V. Kleppinge
Spatial Ecology and Predator–Prey Interactions of Mountain Lions in California\u27s San Francisco North Bay
Get PDFUnderstanding spatial ecology and predator-prey interactions are central to wildlife ecology and conservation. We tracked mountain lions with GPS telemetry to evaluate space use, predator-prey interactions, and resource selection in California’s San Francisco North Bay, USA. In Chapter 1, we evaluated the influence of human disturbance on home range size, prey composition, and kill rates on black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) across an urban-rural gradient. Both males and females increased home range size with increasing development at low to moderate levels of development, but female home range size stabilized across greater proportions of development while male home range size decreased, possibly due to constrained movement. Deer kill rates, prey composition, and time spent at kills did not vary relative to human infrastructure or natural landscape features relevant to predation (e.g., cover, productivity). The rate at which mountain lions killed deer in the North Bay was generally comparable to estimates reported across North America. In Chapter 2, we investigated scale-dependent responses by mountain lions to their primary limiting factors along a gradient of human disturbance. Mountain lions exhibited flexible strategies by selecting home ranges in both more and less developed areas. Within home ranges, responses to human infrastructure were highly variable as a function of both distance from tree cover and the amount of human infrastructure present. In Chapter 3, we evaluated resource selection by mountain lions at locations where they consumed black-tailed deer, their primary prey. Mountain lions strongly selected tree and shrub cover at feeding sites. However, their selection of primary productivity increased as a function of cover, indicating that mountain lions exhibited the strongest selection of areas with vegetative features where prey were likely both abundant and vulnerable. Our work highlights the significant overlap between mountain lions and people in the North Bay as mountain lions killed and consumed their primary prey surprisingly close to buildings (mean = 373 m). Mountain lions are highly adaptable and respond flexibly to human disturbance as some aspects of their behavior varied strongly relative to human disturbance (e.g., space use, resource selection), whereas other aspects appeared to be more consistent (e.g., predation).
Advisor: John F. Benso
Considerations and Techniques for Producing Urban Tree Canopy Maps Using Freely Available and Accessible Methods
No full textUrban forests are valued as green infrastructure for the variety of benefits they provide across ecological, social, public health, and economic domains. To understand the distribution of trees, maps are required. Many methods of mapping tree cover use expensive and data-intensive datasets such as hyperspectral and LiDAR imagery, making these methods inaccessible to municipal forest managers. Variations in the modelling approaches of existing, freely available methods are not addressed in sufficient enough detail to understand the trade-offs implicit in these variations. Further, characteristics of urban tree canopy mapping (high spatial resolution imagery, heterogeneous urban environments, the importance of the tree class) make it unclear to what extent results derived from other contexts apply. This dissertation addresses uncertainties related to feature selection methods, spatial variability of accuracy assessments, trade-offs involved in the use of different training sampling schemes and sample sizes, sources of classification error, and error in the reference map. Further, this dissertation proposes an optical method for change detection in urban tree canopy maps and compares estimates of tree cover derived from simple image differencing, a correspondence change detection method, and change detection performed with a reference method that incorporates LiDAR data. Random forest-based feature importance was found to be a more effective feature selection method than Kruskal-Wallis test of independence and correlation-based feature selection. The accuracy assessment varies spatially due to low inter-class variability, which can be characterized by unsupervised clustering. Sampling schemes should be determined considering the relative cost of error. Simple random sampling minimized commission error, stratified even sampling minimized omission error, and disproportionate stratified random sampling balanced commission and omission errors. Stratified even sampling was able to produce accurate maps with fewer samples. Maps produced with optical methods had overall agreement between 84.0–87.4% with optical + LiDAR maps when reference errors were corrected. Simple image differencing produced similar estimates of stable tree cover and tree canopy gain, but not tree canopy loss. The correspondence method visually improved parallax-induced errors and yielded high user’s accuracy for the stable tree class at the cost of greater omission error.Advisor: Brian D. Wardlo
Gonadotropin-releasing Hormone II and Its Receptor: Novel Regulators of Semen Quality and Follicular Function in Swine
Get PDFPigs are the only mammalian livestock species encoding functional proteins for the second form of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH-II) and its receptor (GnRHR-II). In the first study, GnRHR-II localized to developing germ cells and the connecting piece of ejaculated spermatozoa. Concurrently, GnRH-II was most abundantly produced in the testis compared with other reproductive tract organs and was present within seminal plasma. Moreover, treatment of extended semen with GnRHR-II analogues altered sperm motility, morphology, and kinematics. For remaining studies, we utilized a swine line with ubiquitous knockdown of GnRHR-II (GnRHR-II KD) developed in our laboratory. The second study demonstrated that circulating GnRH-II concentrations were reduced (75%) in GnRHR-II KD boars and GnRHR-II protein levels in transgenic spermatozoa were diminished (60%), but seminal plasma GnRH-II concentrations were similar between GnRHR-II KD and littermate control boars. Functional analyses revealed that GnRHR-II KD boars produced more voluminous semen ejaculates, whereas transgenic sperm exhibited reduced motility, more bent tails, fewer proximal droplets, and decreased membrane integrity. Further, differential proteins detected in seminal plasma-derived extracellular vesicles from GnRHR-II KD versus control ejaculates have been implicated in sperm quality and fertilization. In females, the third study discovered that compared with littermate controls, GnRHR-II KD gilts: 1) secreted 20% less serum 17β-estradiol throughout the follicular phase of the estrous cycle, independently of gonadotropin secretion; 2) exhibited reduced serum concentrations of progesterone upon luteolysis; and 3) possessed similar numbers of preovulatory follicles that were 10% larger. After discovering GnRH-II and GnRHR-II in granulosa cells (GC) and theca cells (TC) of porcine preovulatory follicles, the fourth study determined that GnRHR-II KD females produce 40% less GnRHR-II protein in TC compared with control TC or transgenic GC; however, no protein difference was observed between genotypes for GC. Further, concentrations of GnRH-II in follicular fluid were not different between genotypes. Transgenic preovulatory follicles also displayed fewer hypertrophic TC than control follicles, but similar numbers of hypotrophic GC. Differentially expressed proteins in TC and GC from GnRHR-II KD preovulatory follicles suggest impairments in steroidogenesis and cellular homeostasis. This research demonstrates that GnRH-II and GnRHR-II are novel regulators of porcine semen quality and follicular function.Advisor: Brett R. Whit