As the world’s population continues to increase every year, a greater proportion of people are living in urban environments. This process of global urbanization has been previously shown to affect evolution of plants and animals by restricting gene flow, increasing genetic drift, and causing divergent selection between rural and urban...
This thesis project explores Tim O’Brien’s use of fiction to go beyond simply recounting an experience in the Vietnam War to write a true war story through examination of his writing, interviews, and their impact on me as a reader. I dissect three of O’Brien’s fictional narratives for their similarities...
Profile Hidden Markov Models utilize the information stored in a multiple sequence alignment such as its residues and conserved regions to assign probabilities at each column. This indicates areas in the sequences where similar functionality is observed. These probability weights are then combined to assign a sequence score, which is...
Food insecurity is a common issue among college students in the United States with recent research suggesting that between 10-75% of college students are food insecure. In comparison, an estimated 10.2% of U.S. Households are food insecure. Food insecurity is associated with many negative health outcomes. The purpose of this...
This study examines issues related to prescription drug abuse among 12 – 17 year olds in the United States; namely, the physiological effects of prescription medications, current treatments, and prevention methods. The following research questions are addressed: 1) What factors influence and promote the growing prevalence of prescription drug abuse...
Pyrenophora tritici-repentis (Ptr) is the causal agent of the disease tan spot of wheat,
which can be responsible for the destruction of up to 50% of a wheat crop harvest.
Tan spot disease results in chlorotic and/or necrotic lesions triggered by the
pathogen’s production of one or several host-selective toxins...
Organizational values are an important factor in the work of many organizations and can guide both day-to-day decision-making and long-term strategic planning. Little previous research has documented the impact of core values on individual performance in military environments nor the effect of core values on leadership attributes. In this study,...
Microplastics (<5mm) are a ubiquitous environmental pollutant that have the potential to cause significant harm in many fish species. Therefore, understanding the quantities at which they are being consumed by living organisms is crucial for characterizing risk. There are currently gaps in the microplastic literature regarding microplastic data from finfish...