Poster Sessions

Understanding community perspectives regarding local needs, problems and assets is an important step towards community development. Needs assessments help identify gaps in public policies and/or available public services, such as public utilities, public safety, education, housing, health, and transportation, as well as asses the local/regional economy that affect the quality of life of residents. Assessment data helps to inform the development of useful interventions and data informed decision-making processes that can later be evaluated for their effectiveness and/or to make improvements and adjustments to public policies, and local initiatives to reach community goals. In rural communities, needs assessments can help prioritize issues/needs/wants among the various community stakeholders and inform comprehensive planning, program and policy development, and allocation of limited resources. This community-based action research examined the needs, problems, and local assets in the rural community of Magdalena, New Mexico. Input obtained from community stakeholders including citizens, village leaders, and businesses was designed to help support and strengthen the rural village volunteer-based governance system, improve community relations and civic engagement, and increase support for community-based organizations and businesses that serve the local community. The assessment was conducted in six phases, over a 24-month period and includes: 1) project planning, 2) methodology design, 3) data collection, 4) analysis, 5) reporting and 6) dissemination of the findings to the community. The needs assessment data collection included a mix methods process, in which key informant interviews, a communitywide survey, and text analysis provided multiple avenues to gain community perspectives. A literature review and examination of existing data that pertain to the study was included. The results of the study produced a Village of Magdalena Asset Map of the community’s resources, as well as prioritization of concerns by community members: which included economic development, public safety, food security, and youth resources and recreation.

Although anyone can be assumed to engage in style-shifting to construct a persona (e.g. Podesva 2007b, Eckert 2008), in the case of drag performers it can be argued that style-shifting results not in an alternate persona but in a performative identity. With this hypothesis in mind, this case study uses a style-shifting paradigm to explore the varying social meanings of phonation type and vowel quality in the construction of a drag queen identity. The speech of two gay male Hispanic drag queens (DQs) from Albuquerque, New Mexico (ABQ) was investigated in various speech situations to identify social meanings indexed by phonetic variants that emerge from style-shifting, and social constraints on their use. DQs constitute a subset of the LGBT community. A typical component of DQ identity is an oppositional stance toward both heteronormativity and normativity (e.g. Barrett 1998). Long-term ethnographic observations of the ABQ drag community, suggest that a typical, local DQ identity involves both exaggerated female impersonations designed for audience entertainment and challenging social norms, especially heteronormativity. This motivates the choice of variables in the present study. Phonation type (falsetto vs. non-falsetto) has been shown to be implicated in displays of non-heteronormativity (e.g. Podesva 2007a). Vowel quality was chosen in order to see whether the speakers’ vowel pronunciations are characteristic of California Vowel Shift (CVS) in either situation. The CVS is of interest because the sociolinguistic findings of previous work suggest that Anglo women are leading this change in the southwestern US (Brumbaugh and Koops, forthcoming), and that the speech style of the CVS is a resource available for the enregisterment of gay identity (Podesva 2011). The results confirm and extend existing accounts of the range of indexical meanings conveyed by falsetto phonation and support the idea that speakers use phonetic variants to construct personae and identities.

Ceria is widely studied in catalysis because of its high oxygen mobility and storage capacity. These properties are enhanced by the incorporation of dopant atoms into the ceria crystal structure. However, creating a homogenously doped structure requires a suitable synthesis technique. Otherwise, dopant atoms form an oxide phase on the ceria surface, which blocks highly active catalytic sites. Traditional production methods allow for cerium and dopant ions to segregate during synthesis. In this work, we demonstrate a novel sol gel synthesis method for producing homogeneously doped ceria. The method is easy and avoids the use of hazardous chemicals. Higher dopant loadings and surface areas are achieved, which improves catalytic activity. Further, doped ceria is shown to be stable in both oxidizing and reducing environments, conditions under which traditional catalysts deactivate.

Being pregnant and giving birth is one of the most personal experiences. Nobody else but the pregnant woman can feel what she is feeling. However, her experiences during this process are highly influenced by her sociocultural context. In this, as in many other human activities, mathematics is present with or without realizing it. According to Frankenstein (1997), “mathematics occurs in contexts, integrated with other knowledge of the world” (p. 13). This project explores the mathematical and cultural practices that are embedded in the process of pregnancy and childbirth within two different sociocultural contexts: traditional Mexican partería (midwifery) and western medicine, and the influence of context on this process. Specifically, this poster intends to emphasize how mathematics influences the same process differently contingent to the sociocultural context. On the one hand, to explain the “normal labor” process, western medicine relies on mathematical concepts and terms such as internal fetal rotation and cervical dilatation. These terms and concepts, although relevant if used as general guidelines, are generally being overused causing healthcare providers to resort to technology and medical interventions when women do not progress at the “expected” pace. On the other hand, traditional Mexican parteras (midwives) use their empirical inherited knowledge, which is embedded with nuanced and multifaceted mathematical concepts and practices. During the poster presentation, the mathematical and cultural practices in both sociocultural contexts will be discussed. The impact that those practices have on women’s experiences in the process of pregnancy and childbirth will also be discussed. Frankestein, M. (1997). In addition to the mathematics: Including equity issues in the curriculum. In J. Tentacosta (Ed.), Multicultural and gender equity in the mathematics classroom: The gift of diversity (pp. 10-22). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

In phylogenetic studies, gene trees are used to reconstruct species tree. Under the multispecies coalescent model, gene trees topologies may differ from that of species trees. The incorrect gene tree topology (one that does not match the species tree) that is more probable than the correct one is termed anomalous gene tree (AGT). Species trees that can generate such AGTs are said to be in the anomaly zone (AZ). In this region, the method of choosing the most common gene tree as the estimate of the species tree will be inconsistent and will converge to an incorrect species tree when the number of loci increases. In this work, we focus on unranked and ranked trees. The difference between these two is that the ranked gene tree not only depicts the topological relationship among gene lineages but also the sequence in which the lineages coalesce (join). In our project, software which allows computing probabilities of ranked gene trees given a species tree under coalescent process was developed to study how the parameters of the species tree simulated under a birth-death process can affect the AZ. Since some combinations of topologies and branch lengths in a species tree can produce AGTs, we compute the probabilities of ranked and unranked gene trees for the entire distribution of 5-8 taxon species trees to find a set of branch length space in which a species tree has either unranked AGTs, ranked AGTs, or both. Because the number of all possible tree topologies grows exponentially with the number of species, we propose some heuristic approaches for inferring large trees. Studying the properties of AGTs, as well as a connection between ranked and unranked anomaly zones, will help to find strategies for solving the problem of AGTs during phylogenetic inference.

Around the globe cities are growing and expanding in size. Growing urbanization changes the face of our planet. Since every city, county, and state have a set amount of land that they can conserve or develop, this thesis intends to establish the relations between land conservation, economic, and social processes in the selected area. This research is a work in progress. This thesis focuses on urban land conservation governance. From the very beginning this paper has been focusing on research and study of different approaches to land conservation governance that help municipalities to maintain and use their land resources. This thesis analyzes conservation policies, programs, ordinances, and plans that the City of Albuquerque uses in the context of its interactions with Bernalillo County, the Albuquerque Metro Area and the State of New Mexico for a case-study. Statistical analysis provides additional information on what factors influence conservation in urban areas. This paper also researches current methods of funding for public land conservation. This thesis analyses the impact of economic benefits and externalities of land conservation within the city limits. This paper intends to establish the connections between different factors that influence urban land conservation governance. Keywords: land conservation, urbanization, governance

The Western Interior Seaway (WIS) was a North American epicontinental sea that was connected to the open ocean through the passage of the northern Boreal Sea and the southern Tethys Sea from the early Albian (~113 million years ago) to the early Paleogene (~65 million years ago). The WIS began to recced and lost its connection to the southern Tethys Sea in the late Campanian (~72 million years ago). In the early Paleogene, the WIS dried up completely. The oxygen isotopic composition (δ18O) of benthic bivalves was measured from the upper Campanian and lower Maastrichtian (75 million years ago to 69 million years ago) to decipher if the WIS had different δ18O values than the δ18O values of the open ocean. This study would begin to answer the question if the δ18O values of the WIS changed over time since the WIS began to retreat from the open ocean in the late Campanian. We measured δ18O of a variety of well-preserved epifaunal (Anisomyon, Endocostea, Inoceramus, Ostrea, and Pteria) and infaunal (Cucullaea, Cymbophora, Geltena, Lucina, Nucula, and Tenuiptera) bivalves. Then, we compared the δ18O values of the WIS benthic bivalves to a literature search conducted on the δ18O values of WIS bivalves and ammonites and δ18O values of the open ocean foraminifera, bivalves, and ammonites. Most WIS δ18O values range from -6‰ to 0‰ and these δ18O values overlap with the open ocean studies, which range from -5‰ to +2‰. The δ18O values of the WIS are not significantly different than the δ18O values of the open ocean even though the WIS began to lose its connection to the open ocean. However, the WIS does has lower δ18O values than the open ocean and this could possibly be due to freshwater input to the WIS or increased evaporation in the WIS. This systematically collected dataset of bivalve δ18O values may contribute to Late Cretaceous climate models and paleoecological and paleoenvironmental studies.

Agriculture is the dominant water sector in New Mexico, responsible for more than 80% of water withdrawals in 2015 (USGS 2018). Water policy needs to be extremely adaptive and informed to meet the needs of not only farmers, but cities, industry and riparian uses. Since 1840, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has conducted census surveys assessing all levels of agriculture. These data are physically published at the county, state, and national level on a 5-year cycle, detailing various material counts such as acreage, yields, and water usage, as well as socioeconomic estimates of farm costs, revenues, and hired workers. Digitally, these data can be found on the USDA’s Quick Stats online webpage, however is limited to the 1997 census - current. Haines et al., (2018) has used a computer digitizer to sort through all published reports from 1840 to current, and house them in R data frames (.rda) freely available for download on the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) website. For this project, we have developed a program in R-Studio which uses a New Mexico subset of this data set for the years 1978 – 2012. The code outputs tabular and graphical figures with minimal user inputs and minimal data entry. We believe this is a valuable tool for students, professors, and researchers to quickly examine data for shifts and trends in agriculture and examine how they relate to water in New Mexico. As water managers are made aware of shifts and trends in agriculture, the coming water policy can be ‘right sized’ to fit the needs of the state as it moves forward.

Adolescent substance use is a serious public health problem (Johnston et al., 2016). Notably in adolescents, adverse childhood experiences including unwanted sexual experiences (Wills et al., 2001; Negriff, Schneiderman, & Trickett, 2015) and impulsive sensation seeking (impulsivity) (Donohew et al., 2000; Fernández-Artamendi et al., 2016) are linked to adolescent substance use and high-risk sexual behaviors. Research also suggests delinquent youths are particularly vulnerable to substance use disorders and sexually risky behaviors (Pinto et al., 2015). Given the health consequences of both prolonged substance abuse and risky sexual behaviors, identifying additional risk factors is critical to help inform interventions for high-risk youth. Data from 314 males, recruited as part of a randomized clinical trial (N = 460) evaluating a theory-based intervention to reduce sexually risky behaviors among justice-involved adolescents, were used for this analysis. Participants completed assessments of adverse childhood experiences, impulsivity, sociosexuality, substance use histories, alcohol/marijuana problems and dependency, and sexual histories. Structural equational modeling (SEM) was used to examine the influence of impulsivity, adverse childhood experiences, sociosexuality, and desirability of first sexual encounter on sexual risk taking and substance use. The final structural equation model including desirability of first sexual encounter, adverse childhood experiences, and impulsivity as exogenous predictors revealed good model fit, χ2(28) = 37.758, p = 0.1031, RMSEA = .033 (90% CI [.000–.058]), CFI = 0.976, WRMR = 0.678. More adverse childhood experiences were associated with higher levels of substance use (β = 0.206, p = .002), greater desirability of first sexual encounter was associated with more sexual risk taking (β = 0.246, p = .007), and higher impulsivity was associated with higher levels of substance use (β = 0.464, p < .001) and more sexual risk taking (β = 0.336, p = .001). Implications for future research and interventions for this vulnerable population are discussed.

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are on their way to becoming a significant part of our transportation systems and cities. Previous studies have mainly focused on how much AVs could improve traffic flow and reduce congestion or improve safety. Reducing congestion and the cost of travel time is also expected to increase travel demand, but by how much is not well understood. This study, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, uses an integrated travel demand and land-use modeling system to evaluate how AVs may affect congestion, travel demand and land use. Our modeling system considers how traffic patterns, travel demand and land use evolve year-over-year, providing a more comprehensive picture of how AVs may affect the growth of a region and traffic. Considering scenarios with 100% market share of AVs, we find, as others have, large reductions in congestion but we also find a moderate increase in vehicle miles traveled and average trip length. We also find that AVs may shift population and employment growth to suburban and fringe areas, and along previously congested highway corridors, further decentralizing the Albuquerque region. The increase in VMT raises air quality and climate change concerns as vehicle air pollutant emissions may also increase. Our results demonstrate that AVs are likely to have an important effect on land use and that integrated land-use and travel demand models should be used to more fully understand the potential traffic impacts of AVs.

The history between France and Africa has been peppered with numerous irregularities and crimes. Senegalese filmmaker Sembene Ousmane’s film Camp de Thiaroye (1988) returned to this painful story of the Thiaroye tragedy. That film chronicles the criminal massacre by the French of returning Senegalese soldiers. The latter, having sacrificed themselves for France during WWII, demanded treatment and compensation equal to their French counterparts. Interestingly, one of the significant details of this film is the multitude of languages and “patois” that the various African soldiers speak. At the same time, the lingua-franca, a kind of “pidgin” called Français-tirailleur, is simultaneously a demeaning “baby-talk” used by the French to speak to the African soldiers and serves, once coopted by the infantrymen, as a weapon of resistance. Indeed, it is my argument that with the complex politics of language in the film, Sembene turns French against itself, thereby signaling the crimes of the colonial power and their lingering legacy. Complicating matters, Francophone African literature and films are not only noteworthy for their use of various vernacular and/or local versions of French but as the meeting place of various local “African” languages that also interact in complex ways with the language of colonialism, modifying it and absorbing it equally. This is one of those aspects that Sembène significantly highlights in Camp de Thiaroye where language becomes an instrument of anti-colonial struggle. By their alleged misuse of the French language, African soldiers manifest their rejection of this language which is for them symbol of oppression. The cultural aspect then comes into play to reduce French content and absorb it completely. Therefore, the sociolinguistic approach will help for a thoughtful analysis of the linguistic dynamic of the film. The sociolinguistics integrates the speaking subject, producer of speech and language, his immediate environment and the influence that the social and historical context can have on the practice of the language in each environment. It appears from these remarks that languages evolve, and that to grasp what language theorist call "phonetic succession" requires to refer to the etymology of words. This is mostly found in cultural (and social) roots of the speakers themselves. That said, the norm in the field of language would be an evanescent, unstable fact that evolves (or varies) at the whim of societies and even habitus. It is in this linguistic field that Sembène’s film stages the stakes of the language. Through a poorly articulated French language on the part of returning African soldiers, the colonial architecture collapses. There is a rejection of imperialism manifested by the rejection of the language of the imperialists

Ultrasonic monitoring in cementitious materials is challenging due to the high degree of attenuation. In wellbore environments, monitoring becomes more challenging due to inaccessibility. Meta materials, also known as acoustic bandgap materials, exhibit an interesting feature of forbidding the propagation of elastic/sound waves and isolate vibration in a certain frequency band. Traditionally, acoustic bandgap materials are developed with inclusions such as tin, aluminum, gold, steel in a polymer matrix. In this study, we present the development of three-dimensional cementitious sensors capable of exhibiting stopbands in the acoustic transmission spectra using carbon nanotubes. Relatively wide stopbands were engineered using Floquet-Bloch periodic conditions and computational simulations were conducted with cementitious matrix incorporating carbon nanotubes inclusions. The result of our investigations demonstrates, for the first time, the possibility of using cementitious sensors with wide acoustic stopbands in cementitious media. Based on the above simulations, a new sensor is designed and fabricated and the methods of making the sensor is presented. The new cementitious sensors are subjected to a frequency sweep and the transmission spectra is observed demonstrating the possible monitoring behavior of cement casing in wellbore service environments.

Understanding how the plasmonic response of colloidally grown metallic nanostructures changes when coupled to a metallic film is an important research problem with significant consequences for a number of applications such as sensing, solar energy harvesting, spectroscopy, and photochemistry, to name a few. In this work we investigate, both through experimental and theoretical approaches, the optical response of ligand coated gold nanorods and their interaction with gold films. We find that the scattering response of these systems is dominated by a charge transfer plasmon, in which charge flows between the particle and film. Additionally, we show that the characteristics of this mode are determined by the particle-film junction, making the frequency of the plasmon far less sensitive to the individual nanoparticle geometry. This work serves to advance the fundamental understanding of particle-film interactions, as well as to provide a potential method for building robust plasmonic platforms.

Many experiments have shown that the diffusive motion of lipids and membrane proteins are slower on the cell surface than those in artificial lipid bilayers or blebs. One hypothesis that may partially explain this mystery is the effect of the cytoskeleton structures on the protein dynamics. A model proposed by Kusumi [1] is the Fence-Picket Model which describes the cell membrane as a set of compartment regions, each ~ 10 to 200 nm in size, created by direct or indirect interaction of lipids and proteins with actin filaments just below the membrane. To test this hypothesis, we have assembled a high-speed single particle tracking microscope and use a hybrid tracking and super-resolution approach on the same cell. We labeled the high-affinity FceRI receptor in Rat Basophilic Leukemia (RBL) cells and tracked these transmembrane proteins at up to 1000 frames per second. The cells were fixed immediately after tracking and further labeled for super-resolution imaging of actin filaments and other membrane-associated components were collected. For best correlation of tracking and super-resolution, we refined a fixation protocol to prevent morphology changes during the fixation process that often go unnoticed. Bright field images allow re-alignment of cell with about ~ 10 nm precision. This sequential approach allows use of far-red dyes for tracking and super-resolution, ameliorating chromatic aberrations. We will present the results of this high-speed tracking within the context of actin and other membrane associated proteins imaged with ~ 20 nm resolution. [1].Ritchie, K.; Iino, R.; Fujiwara, T.; Murase, K.; Kusumi, A. The fence and picket structure of the plasma membrane of live cells as revealed by single molecule techniques (Review). Mol. Membr. Biol. 2003, 20, 13−18.

The nuclear reactor design focuses on building a system that is robust and reliable, is efficient and economical, and do not run into undesirable transient accident scenarios. The nuclear reactor safety focuses on ensuring the system operation under the safety margins and requirements provided by the regulatory agencies. Following the Fukushima nuclear reactor accident, the US Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) Advanced Fuels Campaign (AFC) is working to develop fuel and cladding candidates with potentially enhanced accident tolerance: ‘Advanced Tolerant Fuel’ (ATF). As a part of the AFC, this research focuses on gaining mechanistic understanding of the material performance of proposed candidate ATF claddings in a thermal-hydraulics stand point. Unexplored thermal-hydraulics behaviors and the critical heat flux (CHF) of ATF claddings are key as it is vital information to towards safety margins during reactor operation, to the progression of design basis accidents, and to nuclear reactor and fuel design. Once CHF is reached during either normal operation or accident scenarios, material cannot avoid catastrophic failure caused from current fuel cladding promoting excessive temperature increment. Experimental boiling and CHF data is implemented in the system codes to further estimate assessment of the potential impact of ATF cladding materials on the progression of key design basis accidents in light water reactors (LWRs), including impacts due to differences in heat transfer characteristics. Findings of this study will not only benefit the current nuclear reactor operation and the new fuel designs utilizing candidate ATF claddings in the interest of nuclear reactor safety and optimal operation, but also benefit mechanistical understanding on effects of material surface characteristics and material thermal properties.

Hybrid organic–inorganic nanocomposite polymers, with inorganic nanoparticles embedded in organic matrix have emerged as a special category of multifunctional materials. With rational materials design, these hybrids can show the synergistic effect of the properties from both phases. Homogenous dispersion and orderly arrangement of the organic and inorganic components are key in their functionalities. By controlling the interface and corresponding interfacial interactions between the organic and inorganic entities, we have developed a logical approach to form stable and controlled hybrid nanofiber structures. We demonstrate the formation of hybrid polymer/quantum dots (or iron oxide nanoparticles) nanocomposites through non-covalent interactions (hydrogen bonding, ionic interactions, etc.). We show that by synthesizing conjugated polymers with specific functionalities, capping nanoparticles with different ligands, we can specifically assemble them into a well-ordered core/shell structure. Besides possessing the excellent conducting properties of the polymer, the resulting nanocomposites also show some added value, such as broader light absorption range when combined with PbS quantum dots, magnetic properties when combined with iron oxide nanoparticles. Further characterization under solar cell operation condition demonstrates their potential application for solar energy harvesting. We believe that this composite nanofiber strategy could be used to generate a wide variety of polymer/nanoparticle hybrid nanocomposites. Also, the achievement of homogeneous dispersion of inorganic species into a polymer matrix may offer opportunities to build a unified hybrid nanocomposite platform for different technical applications. Keywords: organic photovoltaic, conjugated polymer, quantum dot, magnetic nanoparticles, self-assembly

Background: Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of death after lung cancer among men in the US. The America Cancer Society predicts 164,690 new cases and 29,430 prostate cancer deaths in 2018. In 2014, nearly US $13.4 billion was spent on prostate cancer in the US and expected to reach US $15.4 billion by 2020. Objective: To conduct a cost-effective analysis of visceral mCRPC therapies post-docetaxel failure from a US healthcare payer perspective utilizing life-time horizon Markov model. These medications received highest National Comprehensive Cancer Network guideline recommendation to treat visceral mCRPC post-docetaxel failure. Methods: A pharmacoeconomic model was constructed using Microsoft Excel® supported by visual basic codes and macros functions to estimate the cost-effectiveness [cost per Life Year Gained (LYG)] and cost-utility analyses [cost per Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY)] of visceral mCRPC therapies. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the robustness of base-case analysis and provide cost-effectiveness acceptability curve at various willingness-to-pay thresholds. Results: About (98.7 %) of patients who receive abiraterone acetate plus prednisone, (83.8 %) who receive cabazitaxel plus prednisone and (86.8 %) who receive enzalutamide are expected to die in 3 years. Enzalutamide provided higher rates (36.1 %) of progression-free survival than cabazitaxel plus prednisone (3.2 %) and abiraterone acetate plus prednisone (12.8 %). Enzalutamide was found to be more effective (1.58 LYG and 0.79 QALY) compared to abiraterone plus prednisone (1.20 LYG and 0.58 QALY) and cabazitaxel plus prednisone (1.48 LYG and 0.56 QALY). Enzalutamide was also associated with lower incremental costs ($157,830) compared to abiraterone acetate plus prednisone ($235,853) and cabazitaxel plus prednisone ($496,756). Conclusion: Enzalutamide is cost-effective compared to abiraterone acetate plus prednisone and cabazitaxel plus prednisone from a US healthcare perspective. In addition, abiraterone acetate plus prednisone is less effective and less costly compared to cabazitaxel plus prednisone.

This research project identifies a plan to study best practices addressing unlawful workplace harassment and discrimination in New Mexico-based hospital healthcare systems. Initially, this project focusses on Presbyterian Healthcare Services and the University of New Mexico Hospital, with the possibility of including other local healthcare systems. In light of recent developments from “#MeToo” and “Time’s Up” movements, the issues of unlawful sexual harassment and discrimination are hot topics in today’s society and need to be more openly addressed by all levels of an organization, in order to identify these issues head-on and hopefully prevent them from continuing to occur in our workplaces. This research project will not only focus on workplace sexual misconduct and discrimination but will also include all forms of unlawful harassment and discrimination that occurs within New Mexico-based hospital healthcare systems. As an exploratory research project, qualitative research methods will be used such as unstructured interviews. In order to identify interview respondents, purposive, convenience and snowball sampling will be used. It is anticipated that these unstructured interviews will take place with subject matter experts, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) staff, local HR professionals and attorneys who have expertise and knowledge with unlawful harassment and discrimination in the workplace. The research methodology will also be conducted through reviewing and analyzing relevant documents and litigation pertaining to unlawful workplace harassment and discrimination. The June 2016 EEOC report “Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, ”is an important document which will be reviewed and analyzed in this study. It is anticipated that this exploratory research project will start to facilitate a greater understanding of unlawful harassment and discrimination and how they may be effectively addressed and prevented.

Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) is legislation that supports every child’s right to quality education, while the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA, 2004) specifically addresses the rights of students with disabilities. IDEA (2004) states that all children with disabilities, including students with extensive support needs (ESN), should receive grade-level instruction in general education classrooms alongside their peers to “the maximum extent appropriate” (IDEA, 2004). Unfortunately, students with extensive support needs (ESN) often experience obstacles that impede their ability to access educational opportunities in the general education setting (Pufpaff, 2008). Ruppar, Dymond, and Gaffney (2011) stated that academic instruction offered in inclusive contexts could be used as a powerful tool to build self-efficacy and independence for these students. The purpose of this research synthesis is to define the barriers faced by students with ESN and explore the evidence-based practices (EBP) that may result in increased access to inclusive education for this diverse group of learners (Taub, McCord, and Ryndak, 2017).

In this paper, the combined problem of power company selection and demand response management (DRM) in a smart grid network consisting of multiple power companies and multiple customers is studied via adopting a reinforcement learning and game-theoretic technique. Each power company is characterized by its reputation and competitiveness. The customers, acting as learning automata select the most appropriate power company to be served, in terms of price and electricity needs’ fulfillment, via a reinforcement learning based mechanism. Given customers’ power company selection, the DRM problem is formulated as a two-stage game theoretic optimization framework. At the first stage the optimal customers’ electricity consumption is determined and at the second stage the optimal power companies’ pricing is obtained. The output of the DRM problem feeds the learning system to build knowledge and to conclude to the optimal power company selection. To realize the aforementioned framework a two-stage Power Company learning selection and Demand Response Management (PC-DRM) iterative algorithm is introduced. The performance evaluation of the proposed approach is achieved via modeling and simulation and its superiority against other approaches is illustrated.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is developmental disability that is associated with social communication deficits and repetitive or restrictive behaviors. Research has systematically identified evidence-based strategies for working with individuals with ASD. It has demonstrated the importance of early intervention. There is, however, limited research on early intervention providers’ (e.g., speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and developmental specialists (DS)) knowledge of evidence-based strategies for working with individuals with ASD. To further explore this issue, we conducted an online survey that examined the ASD knowledge of early intervention DSs and SLPs in the state of NM. The survey included a demographics section, a section on self-reported knowledge and training needs, and a 24-question direct knowledge assessment of evidence-based strategies. A total of 111 participants completed at least part of the survey and 87 completed the entire survey. Results indicated that broad topics with the lowest overall knowledge assessment scores amongst SLPs and DSs were: dealing with challenging behaviors and addressing social communication skills. The broad topics with overall lowest self-rating scores were: dealing with challenging behavior and using different instructional formats. SLPs had higher average self-ratings and a higher average percentage correct on the knowledge assessment than DSs. Specific strategies with low percentages correct on the knowledge assessment amongst both groups were discrete trial teaching and naturalistic intervention (instructional formats), differential reinforcement and functional behavior assessment (strategies for addressing challenging behavior), and using the picture exchange system, and speech-generating devices (social communication strategies). Providers did have strengths related to knowledge of general instructional strategies (e.g., modeling, prompting). Results suggest that early intervention providers would benefit from further training in strategies related to decreasing challenging behavior, using augmentative and alternative forms of communication and implementing different instructional formats such as naturalistic intervention. These findings have important implications for professional development and training programs.

Heterotopic ossification (HO) is the presence of bone where bone normally does not exist. HO forms frequently at the elbow from various conditions including: Fracture, orthopedic surgery, certain genetic disorders, neurological injuries, amputation, and brain injury. A diagnosis of HO at the elbow can lead to decreases in range of motion which effects the person’s functional independence. Surgical excision to remove the bone can be done to improve functional outcomes, but is typically not performed until a year has passed from the time of injury. Even then, there have been instances where people have experienced recurrent HO post-surgery. Because of the gap that exists before the option of surgery, the toll that surgery can take on a person, and the possibility of HO recurring post-surgery, it is necessary for a person to receive occupational or physical therapy for treatment. This has led to a debate over the proper approach to implement therapy. The purpose of this study is as follows: Objective: To determine if active and passive range-of-motion are equally effective in maintaining or improving range-of-motion in people with HO at the elbow. Data Sources: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and OTSeeker were searched. To insure the search was comprehensive, the authors also conducted searches of the following journals: Burns and Trauma, Burns Journal, Burns Open, and the Journal of Hand Therapy. Data Extraction:The PEDro scale was used to measure the validity of the methodological quality of each article. Results: Five level V articles, as defined by the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine were included for analysis. Conclusion:There is insufficient literature to determine the efficacy of range-of-motion in people with HO. Future research is necessary to determine the clinical value of PROM versus AROM for patients diagnosed with HO at the elbow.

Firefighting is a dynamic activity with many operations occurring simultaneously. Maintaining situational awareness, defined as knowledge of current conditions and activities at the scene, are critical to accurate decision making. Firefighters often carry various sensors in their personal equipment, namely thermal cameras, gas sensors, and microphones. Improved data processing techniques can mine this data more effectively and be used to improve situational awareness at all times thereby improving real-time decision making and minimizing errors in judgment induced by environmental conditions and anxiety levels. This objective of this research employs state of the art Machine Learning (ML) techniques to create an automated system that is capable of real-time object detection and recognition utilizing currently gathered data to achieve improved situational awareness of firefighters on the scene. The algorithms authored effectively exploit the information gathered from the infrared camera by using a trained deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) system to identify, classify and track objects of interest. Crucial information is identified and relayed back to firefighters to assist their decision making processes and aid in safely navigating the environment. The ANN-based algorithm we are authoring is sufficient to infer human recognition and posture detection to deduce a victim’s health level to assist in prioritizing victims by need and guide firefighters accordingly. We also employ deep-learning based systems path planning and navigation, path reconstruction, scene segmentation, estimation of firefighter condition, Natural Language Processing for informing firefighter about the scene. We will integrate our search and rescue system with the image recognition system to produce a new search and rescue method that adapts to the changing environment by using Deep Q-learning.

Physiologically self-protective mechanisms borne from hominin evolutionary history that increase survivability are not unknown to science. In reviewing exercise science literature regarding testing and assessment measures of subjects talking while exercising, a logical question has materialized: To what degree has evolution facilitated synchronization of comfortable oral communication with sustainable exercise intensity? An individual able to engage a voice, represses fatigue. The Talk Test, is a practical strategy whereby a subject deliberately speaks during an exercise protocol. It is a common tool in both kinesiology and clinical fields because it inherently identifies a pivotal metabolic threshold. The coincidence of comfortable ability to talk and perform sustainable sub-threshold exercise intensity, also affords complete physiological recovery within one solar day. A sustained, increased vigor above this stage, though possible, requires more than 24 hours of metabolic recovery, and muscular and range of motion restoration due to overuse may require at least 96 hours.

Women are underrepresented in senior academic positions that depend on accomplishments like presentations and publications, and gender bias has shown to be a factor. We studied whether gender differences existed in multiple internal medicine venues: first authorship in a national trainee poster competition; first authorship in a national specialty-specific poster competition; peer reviewer-ship in three prestigious medical journals; and in presentations at UNM grand rounds. We found some progress in gender parity overall, but not yet enough. We first studied gender differences in authorship among residents in a 2015 national internal medicine resident poster competition; we found more authors were male than female (p=0.0000). We next second studied gender differences in first authorship for a 2017 trainee and attending physician scholarly competition, and found more male than female first authors in absolute numbers but the difference was not statistically significant (p=0.1225). Thirdly, we studied gender differences in peer reviewers for the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016. Female peer reviewers in all years and journals were less than the population proportion of female physicians except in JAMA 2006 (JAMA: p=0.410, p=0.005, p=0.000, p=0.000, respectively; NEJM: p=0.000 each year; Annals: p=0.000 each year). Lastly, we studied gender differences in UNM internal medicine grand rounds speakers and found increasing numbers of female presenters over 4.5 years, but the percent of female presenters was significantly lower than male presenters for all years except 2018 (p=0.000). Journal editors and conference organizers should be explicitly encouraged to invite female scientists, and women should be encouraged to embrace these opportunities. Having more female peer reviewers, authors, and presenters may expand an untapped well of knowledge, promote more scholarship from female scientists, and promote academic advancement for women.

Photonic crystals allow light to be controlled and manipulated such that novel photonic devices can be created. We are interested in using photonic crystals to increase the energy efficiency of our semiconductor whistle-geometry ring lasers. A photonic crystal will enable us to reduce the ring size, while maintaining confinement, thereby reducing its operating power. Photonic crystals can also exhibit slow light that will increase the interaction with the material. This will increase the gain, and therefore, lower the threshold for lasing to occur. Designing a photonic crystal for a particular application can be a challenge due to its number of parameters and features of interest. A genetic algorithm evolves solutions around the constraints of the application until the fittest solution is found. We are optimizing our crystal structures to maximize their bandgaps. However, our designs are using dielectric materials to fill any holes which lowers the refractive index contrast and bandgap for a given design. Our unique approach is to integrate several materials and sample the various permutations within the genetic algorithm. Thereby, allowing for complex structures with larger bandgaps to arise. Here we present our successful preliminary findings that show a large complete bandgap can be achieved despite a relatively low index contrast.

The pediatric Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) is a high-risk and hard-to-treat childhood cancer that originates in the bone marrow from immature white blood cells. Recently, more and more evidence indicates that aberrant splicing of genes is a common characteristic for AML. Gene expression profiles have proved extremely useful for identifying genes that are associated with clinical characteristics and survival outcome of cancer patients. However, conventional gene expression profiles do not account for the differences observed in expressed isoforms when alternative RNA splicing is analyzed. Alternative RNA splicing can generate dozens of distinct transcripts from individual genes and the expressions of some transcript isoforms may correlate with the patients’ characteristics and survival outcome. Current statistical methods in detecting and analyzing differentially expressed and spliced isoforms are limited. Recently we developed a novel approach to identifying differentially expressed or spliced isoforms among different medical conditions. We used a linear mixed effects model-based approach for analyzing the complex alternative RNA sequencing regulation patterns detected by whole-transcriptome RNA-sequencing technologies. Here, we applied this approach to perform differential isoform expression/splicing analysis with 234 patients in which 153 patients who were relapsed or dead within 3 years (Cases) and 81 who achieved continuous complete remission for three or more years (Controls). As a result, we identified 1144 genes with differentially expressed or spliced isoforms and 740 genes whose isoforms are differentially spliced between pediatric AML patients with good and bad outcomes. Our analysis provided biological insight for the disease progression as well as the biomarkers and therapeutic targets for the pediatric AML.

Over the past eighty years, the Rio Chama, a major tributary of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, has been subject to significant disruption of historic hydrological flow regimes due to water use demands. In recent years, a multiagency management effort has been initiated to restore some measure of historic flow regimes in the 39.6 km congressionally designated Wild and Scenic stretch through the Rio Chama Canyon Wilderness. We collaborated with managers at the US Army Corps of Engineers to collect approximately 15,870 frames of 10cm resolution multispectral imagery of the 82 km stretch of the river between El Vado Dam and Abiquiu Dam, which includes the Wild and Scenic area. Through structure-from-motion and multi-view stereo processing, a 20cm resolution digital surface model (DSM) and 10cm orthomosaic were generated. This imagery will be used for a variety of research and management purposes, but here we present the results of an experiment examining the impact of oblique-angle imagery on vertical error rates in DSMs. Two DSMs were derived from a subset of 1,674 frames of the aerial imagery, one with nadir imagery only and one with an additional 187 frames of oblique imagery flown at a 10 degree angle relative to the horizon. We used vertical root mean square error of check points collected with RTK positioning to evaluate vertical accuracy of the DSMs.

Management of dammed river systems is a complex problem. Spatial and temporal impacts result in complex system trade-offs, and shareholders have competing objectives. Dynamic modeling can provide improved information as decision-makers attempt to optimize the value of river flows. This paper models the direct and indirect economic impacts of a small reservoir-dam-river system and applies this framework to an existing Bureau of Reclamation dam and generator in the upper Rio Grande basin. Over past decades, concerns for river habitat preservation have reduced the production of peak-demand energy from hydroelectric plants. Over the same period, as U.S. power markets incorporate solar and wind generation, the demand for flexible, quick-ramping energy during evening hours is increasing. Hydroelectric power can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by making grid integration of solar and wind power less costly and by directly substituting for dirtier alternative power sources. Economic modelling of market and non-market values associated with the system permits optimization of hydroelectric power to reduce emissions and support intermittent renewable integration without sacrificing ecological goals. A system dynamics model of the dam allows a cost-benefit analysis of dispatchable energy production in the presence of constraining daily, weekly or monthly ecological flow requirements. The case study suggests that constrained economical dispatch of existing small hydropower generators may be optimal both economically and ecologically. This model provides a scalable framework for incorporating the ecological benefits of hydropower flexibility into the cost-benefit analysis that drives maintenance, upgrade and decommissioning decisions for existing U.S. hydroelectric dams.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. The most reliable screening method of CRC is a colonoscopy which requires a 4-Liter polymer with electrolytes preparation. Two in five patients are non-compliant to their colonoscopy schedules, with many patients who abstain reporting refusal due to significant discomfort associated with this preparation. Furthermore, there are distinct gender differences in the tolerance of colonoscopy preparations in male and female populations. We hypothesize the differences in clinic are a result of toxic effects of the drug associated with poor mixing by individual patients. PEG, the drug, is approved by the FDA for use in medical devices and has been recognized for many years as a biocompatible polymer but few studies have truly studied the short-term and long-term effects of high concentrations of PEG. We studied the toxic effects of the common preparations over a time frame of 2 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, and 48 hours and found that at higher concentrations of the drug, more cells were killed. We have developed an oral capsule that dissolves in stomach acid to control the release of PEG – accurately controlling the amount of drug that is ingested by patients and reducing adverse effects associated with the taste colonoscopy preparations. We have looked at and evaluated the capsules for chemical content and tested them with cells to confirm their safety.

This study focuses on Indigenous inquiry using the method of story as a holistic approach to gather information through the spoken word and movement. The project is to understand the dynamics of ancestral language ideologies through the ‘voice’ print of the elders through their BIA day school experiences of western schooling. Four participants, two males and two females, former students who attended the Santo Domingo Day School as children in the early 1900s will be interviewed, using two techniques based on Santo Domingo Pueblo Epistemology to convey information; semi-structured questions incorporating movement to express themselves using story to contextualize Santo Domingo Pueblo at a specific time and space. This should be able to give insight to cultural, communal, familial and individual perspectives of ancestral language ideologies towards Keres, as well as, contributing and assisting in answering the question, “How the Santo Domingo Day School left an impression on their Keres language ideology throughout their lives and how those ideologies affect language transmission within their children, grandchildren and or great-grandchildren(s) generation?” The goal is to have the participants’ voice inform present and future Santo Domingo children, and community members of how their western schooling experience looked like in the early 1900’s and how family, community or schooling may or may not have impacted their ancestral language ideologies within their familial, communal and individual lives impacting language transmission in their successive familial generations.

Broad and diverse participation of actors is well recognized as a prerequisite for effective and equitable water management. However, scholarship in development and social movement literature in Latin America demonstrates that patterns of participation are shifting to more diverse strategies with non-traditional alliances. This project explores how an internationally owned brewery development sparked renewed participation from various urban and rural groups in the Mexicali Valley. I argue that widespread resistance from different groups was underpinned by neoliberal development tensions that have diminished local agency, but the strong symbolic nature of water, beer and politics provided the catalyst for a social movement to reestablish local decision making power. Using an abstract, shifting and symbolic understanding of water, protests can include civil and uncivil protests, while still maintaining a sense of unity, a break from NGO lead movements of the 90s and 00s or class based movements of the 60s and 70s. This project contributes to the literature on contemporary social movement strategies against neoliberal change in Latin America, as well as the literature on water use and governance.

A central element to my dissertation research and the MFA performance Ink on Cottonwas ultimately subversive performance, how does one maintain agency when performing for oppressive classes. How does one grow like a lotus flower in a negative oppressive world? Key themes that I will explore are excess, performing the self, simultaneous opposition and fluidity of time. All of this will be discussed in the context of African American and Flamenco performance. Key scholars I will be in dialogue with are Rebecca Kowal, Roland Barthes, Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Meira Goldberg, Brooke Baldwin, Elizabeth de Martelly and more. Therefore, this project's quest of honoring and visibilizing blackness is joining a legacy of artists, scholars and activists working on unearthing the invisibilization of blackness (Gottschild 1-2) and bringing to light an influence that has been buried by racism.

Tuberculosis (TB) is currently the ninth leading cause of death for humans worldwide, causing 10.4 million new infections in 2016. According to the World Health Organization, of these infections, 600,000 were antibiotic resistant. However, the treatment success rate for resistant TB was only 54%. The potential for emergent epidemics of drug resistant TB highlights the need to understand the mechanisms for the spread of resistance. Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes TB, evolves resistant strains within individuals who are being treated with antibiotics. It has been assumed previously that the resistant characteristics of these strains are spread primarily by the transmission of the strains themselves through the air, by coughing. However, in other bacterial diseases, genes for resistance often spread by horizontal gene transfer, or the movement of DNA between cells. In this study, I asked whether resistant genes in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) could also spread by the same mechanism. One way to show evidence of horizontal transfer is to look for places in the cell’s DNA where new DNA has recently been incorporated, or recombined. I analyzed 67 whole genomes of drug resistant Mtb for recombination, using the program FastGEAR. I found evidence of ancestral recombination in 3 different places, and of recent recombination in 30 different places. This discovery may lead to new approaches for treating drug resistant tuberculosis.

In the United States, post-racial ideologies ask us to forget race as a central factor of inequality and discrimination. Often mixed race identities are framed as examples of a post-racial society because they demonstrate a disruption of typical understandings of race. However, studying the construction of mixed race identities can be used to critique post-racial logics. As a theoretical tool, mixed race studies reframes how race is historically understood and allows us to “identify the circulation of power” (Nishime 2017, p 16) in the United States. This study will focus on the experiences of mixed raced people in New Mexico. In New Mexico identities are influenced by multiple forces of colonialism resulting in different circulations of power which in turn produce different understandings of race. This is an important distinction from past mixed race theories that often focus on black/white racialization. Therefore, this project explores how the convergence of colonized races and spaces create complex identities. Specifically, I will analyze how the state’s unique identity politics can problematize US dominant ideologies of racial identity, challenging black/white binaries of mixed race, narratives of mixed race exceptionalism and conceptualizations of passing.

The Jemez River (JR), a tributary of the Rio Grande, is in north-central New Mexico within the Jemez Mountains, which houses the active, high-temperature (≤ 300 oC), liquid-dominated Valles Caldera geothermal system (VC). This work focuses on the northern portion of the JR, spanning a reach from the East Fork JR to the town of San Ysidro. Previous decadal work during low-flow or baseflow conditions (~10-20 cfs) has identified and characterized significant major-solute contributions from two outflow expressions of the VC, Soda Dam Springs and Jemez Hot Springs, and two major tributaries, Rio San Antonio and Rio Guadalupe. There is generally a net ~500-ppm increase from below Soda Dam to the end of the study segment. The distribution of concentrations of twenty-four trace metals from recent Fall 2017 sampling are defined by range from 'ultra-trace' levels (0.1-1 ppb) to measurements as much as 1 ppm. A set of elements (e.g., As, Li, Rb, Ba, Ti) follows the same downstream behavior of major ions, which is characterized by an increase in concentrations at each inflow and the observed greatest contribution (as much as an order of magnitude) is at Soda Dam. Another group (e.g., U, Al, Fe, Mn, Se) shows complex downstream patterns, which may be a result of non-conservative processes, such as precipitation/dissolution, sorption, and complexation. We attempt to resolve these potential in-stream processes with high-resolution (regular 1-km spacing with interspersed 50-m intervals around sites with complete chemistry) spatial surveys of temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, oxidation-reduction potential, and turbidity.

The strategic location of the Pump Station and its history, scream for a need of a public space that creates a dialogue between the University and the City of Albuquerque. The Pump Station was built in the early 1930's by the City of Albuquerque as a building to house the pump equipment for the large water reservoir. Both were purchased by UNM in 1990, with the reservoir being recently demolished by the Physics and Astronomy Interdisciplinary Studies (PAIS) breaking ground this year, the preservation of the Pump Station has become increasingly important while it has remained underused and forgetting the importance, it once held to both the city and the university. By allowing the preservation of the Pump Station while using the (PAIS) interdisciplinary model and the stations location, Yale Park, a place of rally and social-political engagement during the 1970’s, adaptation and reuse of the space can be used for integrative and interactive expressions. The project scope is to create a typical “People’s” plaza to foster dialogue and communication, and to allow interdisciplinary acts to share opinion and vision. A stage for poetry reading, simple spontaneous dance performances, visual mapping, film, guitar playing, an interactive place to voice an opinion with different languages which is open to academia and public realms. A proposal for the Pump Station reuse would entail a coffee shop or dining area to help encourage all form of social engagement, as well as a dual theater stage as an outside historically filled space intended to face the City. By allowing a direct interaction between the University and the city, a more integrated space would become available, effectively giving the importance the Pump Station and Yale Park has garnered over the decades as an integral part of the University and the City of Albuquerque.

Dark matter (DM) production in the early universe traditionally assumes a standard thermal history where the universe is in a radiation-dominated phase after the end of inflation until matter-radiation equality. However, the presence of additional scalar fields (which is a generic prediction of explicit string constructions) can lead to an epoch of early matter domination (EMD) that ends before the onset of big bang nucleosynthesis. Such an EMD phase has important cosmological consequences and renders thermal production of DM irrelevant. We present three scenarios for DM production involving an era of EMD: evaporation of primordial black holes into DM, DM freeze-out/in in the presence of two scalar fields, and production of PeV scale magnetic monopoles during EMD. These scenarios can reproduce the observed abundance of DM, and illustrate the diverse range of possible non-thermal mechanisms involving non-standard thermal histories.

Some extant literature argues that expectations drive enjoyment of experiences, while other literature argues that expectations only comparatively influence enjoyment. The current work addresses this discrepancy and demonstrates that while positive expectations do result in favorable enjoyment of experiences, negative expectations result in the comparative process suggested by others.

This paper investigates a novel approach for attitude control of 2 satellites acting as a virtual telescope. The Virtual Telescope for X-ray Observations (VTXO) is a mission exploiting 2 6U-CubeSats operating in a precision formation. The goal of the VTXO project is to develop a space-based, X-ray imaging telescope with high angular resolution precision. In this scheme, one CubeSat carries a diffractive lens and the other one carries an imaging device to support a focal length of 100 m. In this mission, the attitude control algorithms are required to keep the two spacecraft in alignment with the Crab Nebula observations. To meet this goal, the attitude measurements from the gyros and the star trackers are used in an extended Kalman filter, for a robust hybrid controller, and the energy and accuracy of attitude control is optimized for this mission using neural networks and multi-objective genetic algorithm

This research project seeks to better understand how protests of varying sizes take place in public spaces, focusing on the city of Rio de Janeiro. The relationship between cities and protests has increasingly gained importance as urban areas throughout the world become epicenters for demanding greater political rights and expanded notions of citizenship (Harvey, 2003) (Vicino, 2017). Understanding the dynamics of protest in Rio de Janeiro is particularly important now as the city struggles to overcome a financial crisis following nearly a decade of hosting international mega-events including the 2016 Olympics. Unstable funding has led to a public security crisis as the city grapples with a surge in criminal violence and a national corruption scandal. The combination of these problems has placed enormous pressure on civil society to stand up against injustice and communicate demands from the most underrepresented sectors of society. Protests are an essential tool of civil society, but their effectiveness often depends on the ability to access and move through urban spaces. Using qualitative data from interviews with activist leaders and the distribution of an online survey, I evaluate how space matters for protests in Rio. This paper explores how activists employ different strategies to perform protests in public spaces, overcome spatial challenges or restrictions, and communicate messages of civil resistance.

Many important molecules have quadrupolar excitations which occur at much slower rates than the competing dipolar transitions and hence are termed forbidden. In this work, we propose a new approach to enhance quadrupolar transitions using graphene nanostructures. We provide a detailed investigation of the enhanced transition rate in the vicinity of graphene nanoislands and use rigorous computational methods to analyze how this quantity changes with the geometrical and material parameters of the nanoisland. To support these calculations we also provide a semi-analytic approach. Finally, we investigate the performance of arrays of graphene nanoribbons, which constitutes a suitable platform for the experimental verification of our predictions. This work opens new possibilities for the enhancement and control of quadrupolar transitions of molecules and can find application in the detection of relevant chemical species.

An interferometer or resonator is a device in which optical beams of specific frequencies circulate with minimal losses. These losses are completely compensated by the gain inside a laser resonator. A small perturbation introduced inside the laser can affect its frequency, which in turns becomes a metric of that perturbation. The perturbation is usually caused by an electric or magnetic field, rotation, acceleration, nonlinear index of refraction etc. Tiny changes of optical frequency are monitored by superimposing the laser field and a reference field (from the same laser) on a detector. This technique requires creating a laser in which two beams - reference and sample beam - circulate independently. This can only be achieved with ultrashort pulses that do not occupy the same position in space at the same time. Another requirement is that the intracavity laser beams be “shielded” from the outside world, except where the sample beam has to interact with the quantity to be measured. Fiber lasers are ideal in this respect, since the beam is totally shielded from its surroundings. In our fiber laser, two ultrashort pulses circulate in opposite directions, and are extracted from the laser loop to interfere on a detector. As the loop rotates, the detector sees one sense of circulation Doppler shifted up, and the other direction Doppler shifted down, resulting in a “beat note” proportional to the rotation rate. In the measurement below, the rotation rate of the earth is dwarfed by a large beat frequency due to the nonlinear index of the fiber, and the fact that the laser cavity is not perfectly symmetric.

Statement of Problem: Eating disorders have been described as an epidemic and the “modern psychopathology of our culture” (Granek, 2007). Between 2 and 4% of the US population is affected by eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Eating disorders are a pervasive issue with only 10% of reported diagnoses coming from men (Granek, 2007). While there is a lack of research regarding the experiences of eating disorders in men, there is also a lack of research regarding the recovery process as well. The purpose of this study is to share lived-experiences of male anorexia as well as the recovery process. Methodology & Theoretical Orientation: An autoethnographic approach was utilized to collect data during the authors recovery from anorexia. Using the communication processes of resilience (Buzzanell, 2010) the author designed a strategy of resilience to recover from anorexia and body dysmorphia. The process and results were recorded via autoethnography and then analyzed using a thematic analysis grounded by resilience theory. Findings: The initial purpose of the study was to develop a strategy of resilience based on communication to recover from anorexia and the findings show that the strategy did work. The strategy of resilience not only helped the author recovery from anorexia and body dysmorphia, it increased his overall well-being. The dynamic interaction of various communication processes facilitated the authors recovery from anorexia and develop healthier habits that extend beyond diet and physical health. Findings suggest that resilience is culturally situated, dependent on the adversity being experienced, and can be conceptualized strategically.

The need to investigate numerical methods for the transport of radiation (thermal photons, light, neutrons, gammas) in random mixtures of immiscible materials arises in numerous applications, including inertial confinement fusion, turbid media (e.g., skin tissue), stellar atmospheres, clouds, and pebble bed nuclear reactors. Stochastic geometry techniques enable rendering of realizations of such random media and deterministic finite difference/finite element as well as Monte Carlo techniques are used to numerically simulate radiation transport on a large ensemble of realizations. The results are then averaged to obtain statistical moments of the radiation intensity, in particular the mean and variance, to assess the effect of random mixing on the radiation field. These approaches are computationally expensive but serve as valuable benchmarks for approximate, homogenized or reduced-order models such as obtained by ensemble averaging the random transport equation directly and invoking closures. In this work we consider a binary mixture with Markovian mixing statistics in 1D planar geometry and compare simulated average radiation intensities obtained from numerical solution of the so-called Levermore-Pomraning (LP) model against exact solutions obtained by realization averaging. The range of key physics and mixing parameters for which the LP-closure is valid are identified and an improved closure demonstrated. Finally, results from the numerical experiments are used to investigate higher order statistics, such as probability density distribution of functionals of the radiation intensity, which the closure models are incapable of providing.

Variations in New Mexico’s climate have been detected over the past century and are expected to continue into the future. Some of these climatic changes result in more frequent instances of extreme drought events and alterations of monsoon seasonality, with monsoons being pushed later into the fall. Such changes could make our Chihuahuan Desert plant communities less productive, shift the abundance of the plant species, or have other destabilizing impacts. Our experiment manipulated precipitation in two desert grassland communities at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge near Socorro, NM. Some plots were subjected to an extreme drought event, receiving only 33% of annual precipitation for five years, and others were subjected to a change in the timing of monsoon precipitation, delaying rainfall to September and October. We found that not only did plant production decrease but plant community assembly also changed in response to these treatments. The greatest production loss was in the extreme drought manipulation which also experienced a change in species diversity, an immediate diversity decrease that eventually recovered to levels above its initial condition. Plant diversity in the delayed monsoon treatments initially increased and eventually settled to near ambient levels, probably due to an initial propagation of bet-hedging species that had been accumulating in the seed bank. In both grasslands, the two treatments caused the dominate grasses to become subordinate which likely drove the lowered productivity and greater evenness of the plant abundances within communities of both treatments.

Chemical Reaction Networks (CRNs) are a popular tool in the chemical sciences for providing a means of analyzing and modeling complex reaction systems. In recent years, CRNs have attracted attention in the field of molecular computing for their ability to simulate the components of a digital computer. The reactions within such networks may occur at several different scales relative to one another – at rates often too difficult to directly measure and analyze in a laboratory setting. To facilitate the construction and analysis of such networks, we propose a reduced order model for simulating such networks as a system of Differential Algebraic Equations (DAEs). Beginning from the continuous stirred-tank reactor ODE system model, we perform a change of basis on the system in which we may model the fast reactions as infinite, also accounting for their different scales of reaction relative to one another. The resulting DAE system consists of a set of implicit ODEs coupled with a set of algebraic constraints. We conclude by demonstrating our model on several sample networks.

Computers based quantum logic are believed to solve problems faster and more efficiently than computers based on classical boolean logic. However, a large-scale universal quantum computer with error correction may not be realized in near future. But we can ask the question: can we devise a specific problem that a quantum device can solve faster than current state of the art super computers? One such problem is the so called "Boson Sampling" problem introduced by Aaronson and Arkhipov. The problem is to generate random numbers according to same distribution as the output number configurations of photons in linear optics. It was shown that this is a very hard task for classical computers, but can be realized using quantum devices. However, realizing this in photonic systems is proving to be harder than ever because of various challenges in preparation and measurements. We propose and analyze an alternate platform to implement this problem, ultra-cold atoms trapped in one-dimensional optical lattices.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face a variety of barriers in social, communicative, and behavioral functioning. In particular, children with ASD have deficits in social behavior that decrease opportunities to socialize and develop peer relationships (Kroeger, Schultz, & Newsom, 2006). A child’s early development of social skills has been linked to successful school adjustment and academic achievement while preschoolers with poor social behavior experience peer rejection, low academic achievement, and behavior problems (McClelland & Morrison, 2003). I conducted a systematic review of research on interventions that provided positive social outcomes for young children with ASD. Results from this study exposed common research designs (i.e., multiple baseline, randomized control trial), topics (e.g., joint attention, imitation), and practices (e.g., pivotal response training, peer mediation) applied to teaching social skills to this population. Research is limited on social interventions that do not include behaviorally-based techniques, which could reveal additional components of effective social skills interventions. Rigorous and well-designed research studies are needed to determine the most efficient and effective dosage of established scientifically-based practices, as well as measures of social validity, which was lacking in many of the studies reviewed. A discussion regarding targeting pivotal skills in early intervention is included in this review.

Nubians are indigenous peoples of the Nile River Valley whose ancient civilization parallels that of ancient Egypt. In 1964, 50,000 Egyptian Nubians were removed from their homeland along the Nile because of President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s initiative, the Aswan High Dam Project. With fertile lands and sacred temples doomed to inundation by the waters of what is now Lake Nassar, Nubians were resettled in government built villages that promised both preservation of culture and modern conveniences. What these riverine people received, in fact, were poorly constructed, unfinished dwellings located in the desert, more than five miles from the Nile. A repertoire of music evoking memory and a longing to return to the Nile homeland emerged during the years surrounding removal. I use the representational figuring of the Nile in these “Songs of Return” as a point of departure to explore my central research question: How do Nubian musicians sound the Nile in song-writing and performance. During fieldwork in Egypt summer 2018, I challenged a central tenet of my thesis: that music asserts presence and prior habitation in a way few other expressive forms can. My subsequent research findings, shared in this presentation, reveal how the Nile and its environment factor into Nubian music, not as subject or object “sounding” through lyrics that speak about the river; rather, through a “sounding” of the river rooted in ways of knowing (epistemological) and ways of being (ontological) that are tied to sensory perception, embodiment, and place.

In many communities, pedestrian infrastructure is discontinuous, inaccessible to those with physical disabilities, and poorly maintained. Correcting these problems would be a first step in providing infrastructure to achieve the active travel and related transportation goals of many communities. One nearly universal challenge to maintaining sidewalks in a state of good repair and addressing environmental justice concerns is an adequate, sustainable and equitable source of funding. Municipal governments across the country maintain and repair their streets and roadways; however, most require residents to maintain and repair public sidewalks adjacent to their property. These policies are difficult to enforce and may be at least partly responsible for the poor condition of many sidewalks. They may also place a relatively high cost on low-income households. We evaluate three alternative options for financing the maintenance of public sidewalks in Albuquerque, New Mexico: increasing the gross receipts tax (GRT), the gasoline excise tax, or the property tax. These are broad-based taxes that many municipalities already levy to pay for public infrastructure, including streets. We conclude that any of the alternatives would perform better than policies that require adjacent property owners to maintain public sidewalks. They are generally less regressive, cost less on average, and would allow municipalities to more effectively manage sidewalk assets. The differences between the alternatives are relatively minor compared to their benefits.

Various types of exercise therapies, have been implemented into treatment for those suffering from psychological disorders and traumatic brain injury. The prefrontal cortex (PFC), which houses key cognitive constructs is responsive to exercise, and is commonly measured using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Evidence suggests that exercise mediates neural adaptation through increased blood flow and neurogenesis, which enhances neural activation leading to improved cognitive performance. However, the intensity of exercise that has the most robust impact on brain blood flow is currently unknown. Purpose. Therefore, the primary aim of the study is to compare PFC activation during cognitive tasks performed after low-intensity, high intensity, and yoga exercises. Methods. Eight subjects (4=M, 4=F), aged 35±5 years completed a control, high intensity, low intensity, and yoga exercise trial followed by administration of a cognitive task (NIH Toolbox Fluid Cognition). Left and right PFC oxygenation were measured during the post-exercise cognitive assessment using fNIRS technology. Results. Oxygenation during the cognitive task was higher in the left PFC region after low intensity exercise compared to all other trials (control, high intensity, yoga). Regression model analysis showed that a 10% increase in %HRmax up to 70% intensity predicts an increase in left PFC oxygenation by 2.11 umol. Conclusion. Acute exercise below 70% aerobic intensity increased brain blood flow during a post-exercise cognitive task. Therefore, it may be beneficial for those who engage in any cognitive related activity to perform a brief bout of low-intensity exercise prior to the task (e.g. academic-based testing or motor training).

Proactive preparation for an upcoming goal differs from last-minute reactive adaptation, but it is unclear how preparatory mechanisms change based on when in the future a goal needs to be executed. To assess how timing information is integrated into preparatory control, we designed a novel variant of the Dot Pattern Expectancy task, where each cue signaled both task rule and delay duration (known short, known long, or unknown) between cue and probe. We recorded EEG while healthy young adult participants (n=36) performed this task, and found that delay demands elicited distinct prefrontal preparatory activities. Medial prefrontal amplitude was sensitive to delay knowledge and delay length. In addition, inter-site theta phase consistency between mid-frontal and right prefrontal sites was strengthened for known short delays. These results show that different prefrontal preparatory control processes are elicited depending on goal timing demands, and highlight the need to consider timing dynamics in control preparation.

The past decade has welcomed a surge in the creation of memory and human rights museums with existing scholarship linking concepts of transitional justice and the rush to memorialize. The role of symbolic reparation in transitional justice through memorials in Latin America, in particular, is increasingly prominent at both local and international scales, ranging from recommendations outlined by the Inter-American court system to the state-funded construction of memory sites in rural communities. Colombia, home to the longest ongoing civil conflict in the Americas and currently in transition towards peace, presents unique approaches to symbolic reparation. Apart from land restitution and financial support issued to victims, changes to the visual landscape warrant more investigation. The research behind this work surveys commemoration in Medellin, Colombia, considering who generates memorials, such as murals, sculptures, and museums, which address civil conflict. Presenting research on four sites of commemoration within and surrounding Medellin, Colombia, the poster highlights field notes and semi-structured interviews. The four sites include: the Museo Casa de la Memoria (Memory House Museum) of Medellin, the San Javier cemetery La America, the Salon de Nunca Mas (Hall of Never Again) of nearby rural Granada and the sculpture entitled “N.N.” in front of the Leon de Greiff Library-Park near downtown Medellin. Giving particular attention to spatial relationships through qualitative methods, the work draws primarily upon scholarship from museum studies and the geography of memory and memorialization. Placing the four sites in conversation allows not only for a comparison of degrees of community and institutionalization but also design aesthetics and the integration of the distinct painful histories behind the four sites before transforming into commemorative spaces.

When evaluating the prevalence of obesity rates throughout New Mexico (NM), it appears these rates have reached a plateau. A recent study conducted by the NM Department of Health (DOH) found that NM was among 19 other states that have had a first time decrease in child obesity rates among low income families. However, when examined deeper, when looking at geographical areas throughout NM, hidden geography of weight disparities become apparent. Although obesity rates may have decreased in some areas, they have increased in others. The purpose of this study is to effectively evaluate variability in weight trends between geographical areas throughout NM and to determine the relationship between obesity rates and specific socioeconomic determinants of health. This study utilized two mapped datasets, created at two distinct times, that were conjoined to form a trend map that allows for visual exploration of child weight trends from 2013 to 2015. All WIC management, early childhood groups, obesity prevention groups and researchers can utilize suggested findings of this study to effectively focus healthcare in areas where obesity rates have increased and improve quality of care in these communities.

Based on a review of research and best practices in mental health awareness and skills, this inquiry project argues for state legislative policies that would require mental health awareness and skills in the K-12 curriculum. Mental health affects individual accomplishments in every stage of people’s lives beginning in early childhood and throughout the life cycle. Prevention and treatment of mental illness plays a key role in the ability of an individual to cope with loss and develop resiliency and perseverance in challenging times and to make better decisions that improve the individual’s life and the lives of those around them. Recent research shows that mental health awareness and skills, which encompass social, psychological and emotional well-being, can be taught, measured, and mastered, starting at an early age. This inquiry project examines the question of how legislatively mandated mental health education in public schools can positively affect children's well-being and their future success. As a case in point, New York is the first state in the U.S. to require mental health to be part of health education. Virginia passed legislation requiring schools to teach mental health lessons to 9th- and 10th-grade students. New Hampshire, 4th in education and 2nd in child well-being, included mental health education in the first state-wide school safety plan. New Mexico could follow their lead and decisively turn around current conditions for child well-being and educational attainment. Implications of such proactive policies have been highlighted in research, including substantial decreases in childhood trauma, alcohol and drug addiction, violence and crime, with measurable increases in rates for student proficiency, high school and college graduation, teacher retention, employment, and eventually, a long-term, positive effect on our state's economy.

This research seeks to understand the effectiveness of the There is no Poop Fairy campaign through a public survey of dog owners. The There Is No Poop Fairy campaign was initiated in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2014, with the goal of getting dog owners to pick up and properly dispose of their dogs’ waste. The Rio Grande is contaminated with E. coli bacteria that originates in part from dog waste, which is carried to the river through storm water. Levels of E. coli in the Rio Grande have decreased dramatically within the past few years, coincident with the campaign. The main purpose of the study is to better understand whether or not the There Is No Poop Fairy Campaign may have contributed to the decrease in E. coli by surveying dog owners who live in the focus area of the campaign about their exposure to the campaign information and any subsequent changes in behavior. The research also investigates other issues such as dog owners’ feelings of responsibility in picking up their dogs’ waste (i.e., is it up to them or somebody else?) and the acceptability in leaving dog poop behind in public spaces (e.g., parks and open space settings). This is a non-probability survey and will be conducted using convenience sampling methods. To date, there have been approximately n=50 survey participants, with the goal of reaching 500-1000 participants. The survey will be conducted from October 1st, 2018 through December 1st, 2018. The findings will be of interest to other scholars in this area of research as well as city and county officials and scientists who are interested in the effectiveness of voluntary community campaigns related to environmental and public health.

The price tags associated with building sports centers have been ever increasing over the twentieth century, and with increases in those prices come increases in the public funding and subsidies required to fund them. Sports centers have been credited with having the potential of increasing tourism, employment, and public pride in metropolitan areas. However, the research has mostly shown negligible or adverse effects. We use a hedonic difference in difference approach to determine the effect of building the Century Link Field, a multi-purpose stadium in Seattle, Washington. We find that the building of the stadium was associated with an increase in residential property prices King County Washington, suggesting that building the stadium had a positive impact on the local economy.

The recovery of a movement is explored in this project inspired by the New Mexico Highlands University (HU) Archives and Special Collections. Known for its liberal student body in the 1960s and 1970s, I argue that HU was a catalyst for the Chicano Movement in northern New Mexico. The movement was punctuated by an influx of visitations by prominent activists such as Reies Lopez Tijerina and Rudolfo “Corky” Gonzales. Campus life at HU shifted from an Anglo-centric atmosphere to fostering a cultural space fueled by the Spanish language and the overt accusations of racism against minority students. Through my work, I show how Anglo and Chicano students confided in their school newspaper to express personal opinions and engage in racially charged correspondences across both groups. These conversations ignited a Chicano-student-based effort to elect the first Nuevomexicano and Chicano president of HU. These protests necessitated the involvement of the HU Board of Regents, whose readiness to elect a university president under such stipulations oscillated over the course of a year. Their responses to Chicano students are recorded in the HU Archives. I assert that the contrast of dialogues produced from the administrative entity and Chicano students reveals the latent racial tensions present on the HU campus. Finally, I demonstrate the manifestation of Mexican-American identity by investigating its historical contexts in New Mexico and its implications through a national lens. Post-Vietnam War sentiments speckle the racial commentary of students’ published works through art, poetry, and articles published in Spanish. By investigating primary, non-fictional sources, I work to reconstruct an historical movement and weave social commentary within a politically infused undertaking of exploring identity.

This paper presents the results of a place name documentation project dubbed the Manito Topos Project. From its conception in 2014, the purpose of this project has been to contest toponymic silencing in Nuevo México. As defined by Harley (1988, p.66), toponymic silencing is the cartographic practice by which “[c]onquering states impose a silence on minority or subject populations through their manipulation of place-names.” Thus, the federal government's Board on Geographic Names has, in the name of ‘standardization,’ radically erased from cartographic representation the geographic naming practices of Indohispano Nuevomexicanos as well as numerous indigenous groups. In a sample of 16 topographic maps depicting the Pecos Wilderness, less than 20% of the place names provided are accurate representations of Indohispano oral tradition. This paper presents the results of two past periods of intensive fieldwork (Fall 2014 and Fall 2017). So far, I have worked with scholar Roberto Valdez (Northern New Mexico College, Department of Geography) as well as partners from the communities of Las Trampas, Truchas, Pecos, Terrero, Cañoncito, Rowe, San José de la Cebolla (Ledoux) and Mora and together we have documented over 150 corrections and additions to the official name database. This information was processed in three ways: 1. to create new maps showing the names from oral tradition 2. to create an “accuracy index”, quantifying the accuracy with which USFS Topo maps maps representt Nuevomexicano place naming practice 3. to infer a typology of linguistic strategies used by the Board on Geographic Names to arrive from the traditional names at their “official” names. References Harley, J. B. (1988). Silences and secrecy: the hidden agenda of cartography in early modern Europe. Imago mundi, 40(1), 57-76.

The Giant Hummingbird (Patagona gigas) is twice as large as the next largest hummingbird species and has long been considered paradoxical with respect to flight biomechanics. It is also an extreme outlier in other respects. For example, it is the only hummingbird species that breeds above 4,000 m elevation and also along the beaches of the Pacific Ocean. The high Andean populations of Giant Hummingbird (P. g. peruviana) that we have studied previously have a beta-hemoglobin genotype (serine at beta-hemoglobin A positions 13 and 83) that is characterized by high O2-affinity and is only shared with four unrelated hummingbird taxa that are also restricted to extreme high altitudes. Here we report that lowland-breeding populations of Giant Hummingbird (P. g. gigas) are genetically highly similar to their high-elevation counterparts; they even share the same beta-hemoglobin genotype, a unique characteristic among lowland hummingbirds. We found that hemoglobin concentration is lower and red blood cell volume is higher in the lowland P. g. gigas compared to their high Andean relatives. Complicating this comparison is the possibility that coastal P. g. gigas may be a seasonal elevational migrant, but neither the geographic range nor elevation of non-breeding P. g. gigas are known at present. We describe our efforts to describe its migratory behavior using geolocators.

Innovative community driven spatial practices are integral to sustaining long lasting peace amidst post-peace-accords times and the continued structural genocide of Afro-Colombians and indigenous communities in Buenaventura, Colombia. This paper illuminates the case of multiple transformative spaces --the Humanitarian Space Puente Nayero and the Comunal Port Punta Icaco in the city of Buenaventura, the rural interethnic humanitarian and biodiversity space of La Esperanza and the Paro Cívico struggle in the district of Buenaventura-- as examples of the creative power of citizens and of the transformative production of spaces of peace that resist local and global violent development and urbanization processes. Through ethnographic evidence (participant observation and interviews), this paper explores the contrasting visions of peace held by the national government and the economic elites with visions of peace held by the inhabitants of Buenaventura while highlighting the contradictions in which peace activism and structural violence coexist and can actually result in social conflict and intensification of violence.

Access to maternity care is disappearing for women across rural America. In New Mexico, women often travel long distances in order to access hospitals and providers that offer childbirth services, as these resources are primarily concentrated in metropolitan areas. Although data on provider distribution is available, very few studies have explored the maternity care access crisis from the perspectives of the midwives and physicians who work in rural areas. The purpose of this study was to explore barriers and facilitators to the provision of childbirth services from providers’ perspectives with the intent of informing policy debates around the maintenance of safe, local birthing options. Over a one-year period, in-depth interviews and fieldwork were conducted in three rural northern New Mexico counties: Rio Arriba, Taos, and San Miguel, with attention to the unique historical context, challenges, and resources represented in each area. This study had three overarching findings: 1) Structural barriers to rural practice are persistent across disciplines and contribute to the maldistribution of maternity care providers; 2) Midwifery-led models of care are culturally appropriate and appealing to women, but they are not universally accessible and are often marginalized within rural health systems; 3) Perinatal support services such as home-visiting, doula services, and breastfeeding support are a critical complement to clinical care and help to counteract the fragmentation of rural services. This poster identifies implications for policy reform, clinical training and future research. In order to assure the sustainability of rural maternity care resources, it is imperative that the insights and expertise of providers, community members, and other stakeholders on the front lines be included in present and future policy directives.

Numerical simulations of partial differential equations (PDE) are used to predict the behavior of complex physics phenomena when the real life experiments are expensive. Discretization of a PDE is the representation of the continuous problem as a discrete problem that can be solved on a computer. The discretization always introduces a certain inaccuracy caused by the numerical approximation. By increasing the computational cost of the numerical algorithm the solution can be computed more accurately. In the theory of numerical analysis this fact is called the convergence of the numerical algorithm. The idea behind high order methods is to improve the rate of convergence so a slight increase of numerical work will lead to a significant increase of accuracy. We consider the wave equation on the domain around the body of a complex shape. This problem is challenging since because of the geometrical complexity. In this work we propose the Hybrid Hermite-Discontinuous Galerkin method of the overset grids for the wave equation. It combines highly efficient Hermite methods acting on Cartesian grids with the Discontinuous Galerkin method acting on a curvilinear grid around the body. The results of long time simulation will be presented to demonstrate the high order accuracy and stability of the proposed method. High energy particle physicists would like polarized electron beams in the next generation of circular particle accelerators. The so-called DK formulas predict well the level of polarization at current energies but they may not be valid at the higher energies of the next generation machines. We aim the check the validity of the formulas and extend them if needed by numerically integrating the so-called full Bloch equation. This is a system of PDEs which is more fundamental than the DK formulas and is believed to contain all the relevant physics. The full Bloch equations can be classified as an advection-diffusion problem in 3 degrees of freedom which is an enormous problem to solve on the computer. Our idea is to use the fast Fourier transform for the angular dimensions and introduce the parallel in Fourier modes numerical algorithm. The results of numerical simulation for a one degree of freedom and a two degrees of freedom model circular accelerator will be presented.

The use of Monte Carlo, random number sampling, for neutron transport has been used for about half a century. There are many benchmarks that have been used to validate neutronics codes, mostly for critical systems. Critical systems are systems where the neutron population from one generation to the next is the same. Subcriticality is when there are less neutrons in the next generation and supercriticality is when there are more neutrons in the next generation than there were in the previous. To calculate criticality, a set number of neutrons are started in a system. Those neutrons interact and the number that were created for the next cycle are compared to that of the previous cycle. This is done for a certain amount of cycles after the source has converged, which is necessary due to the stochastic nature. Another method of tracking neutrons is called a fixed source problem. In this case the neutrons are only tracked from start to finish and can be useful in dosimetry cases. This method relies on all the particles ultimately being captured, by larger nuclei, or leaking out of the system. For a critical or supercritical systems this may be impossible, due to the divergence of the neutron population. Therefore, it was proposed to use the previously mentioned method for neutron transport. This allows for the use of high fidelity fission event models. This would allow for more accurate fission event modeling and thus results for these fission events.

In this poster presentation I will present a project I completed with my family to make an inclusive environment for my daughter. Together we completed interviews, adapted books and calendars, read literary text about kids with disabilities, and discussed what least restrictive environment means and what it looks like. Through this presentation I will share how family members each have a unique trait and unique talents which can be utilized to support each other in leadership, self-advocacy, and improve quality of life. I will then share a literature review on the research to better support families when creating an inclusive family dynamic, improve quality of life for everyone, and support our family members to become self-advocates.

The years 1821–1912 were politically tumultuous and may have been especially important in the development of modern Hispanic identity in New Mexico. After New Mexico was annexed by the United States, one significant impact of incoming American racial discourses was a shift in the perception of Hispanic identity from a localized community identity, to a racial or ethnic identity at a regional or national scale. However, we have little understanding of what this meant in the lives of typical rural New Mexicans. This research addresses this problem through the study the material goods that historic New Mexicans consumed on a daily basis, and the consumer relationships people cultivated to acquire these goods. In frontier New Mexico, consumer relationships reflected important social networks that were both local, to acquire pottery, as well as regional, as New Mexicans imported goods across the Santa Fe Trail. I conducted archaeological analysis of materials excavated from four Hispanic homes occupied between 1830 and 1920. The homes were located in four regions along the Rio Grande—LA 160 and LA 4968 were located near Pojoaque Pueblo, LA 8671 was located near Placitas, and the Barela-Reynolds house is located on the main plaza in Mesilla. This research closely examined New Mexican historic pottery, manufactured materials imported from the United States and Mexico, and merchant inventories, ledger books, and licenses. Looking at the artifact assemblages and their sources, I constructed consumer profiles showing how site residents situationally prioritized local community relationships or regional social networks. Each site presented unique consumer strategies and, contrary to expectations, it appears that the most remote sites placed the greatest emphasis on regional relationships. This variation highlights important nuances in Hispanic New Mexican experiences and daily relationships at the core of changing Hispanic communities, which are often left out of historic documents.

This project’s objective is to study and propose an alternative budgeting method for use by the City of Albuquerque’s municipal government. Zero-base budgeting (ZBB) is a modern government budgeting process that allocates funds starting from a base of zero for operating units and requires annual justification of all resource and service items in the budget. Although traditional ZBB is rare in practice, local and state governments in the United States are starting to utilize elements of ZBB and are incorporating ZBB methods into their current budgeting process. Interannual variability in economic standing and resultant municipal revenues has prompted the City of Albuquerque to look at measures like ZBB that ensure fiscal preparedness in the event of an economic downturn. Albuquerque’s evaluation of the utility of ZBB procedures is currently in progress and will be conducted over the course of the following 8 weeks. It will involve an intensive review of programs and service items within the Planning Department and the Department of Finance and Administrative Services in the City of Albuquerque. For the greater part, the methodology used will be qualitative consisting of interviews and document review; however, the analysis of expenditure may be quantitative by necessity. The study design is informed by supporting literature on zero-based budgeting and is based on budget processes already used by the State of Georgia from which the questions to be asked in departmental interviews are drawn. The project will be conducted in two phases: the information-gathering process and the analytical summary. The information-gathering process for this project will be conducted in three steps: (i) program service identification and evaluation, (ii) development and evaluation of performance measures, (iii) analysis of program budget and expenditures. The second phase will be dedicated to development and summary of the analysis of the data collected in the preceding phase. The findings of this project will support recommendations on the viability and compatibility of ZBB methods for Albuquerque’s current budgeting process.