In the United States, rates of youth vaping are alarmingly high. In 2018, the U.S Surgeon General declared youth vaping as an epidemic (Truth Initiative, 2019a). However, LGBTQ+ youth are disproportionately affected. In 2017, current e-cigarette usage in youth was 13.2% among heterosexuals, but was 17.5% in LGBTQ+ youth (CDC,...
The objectification of women is a scourge of society, related to a host of negative mental and physical health implications for women. Objectification is largely influenced by the types of clothing worn. How much is objectification modified by contextual features (e.g., the situations the clothes are worn in)? In two...
In real life, reputation and community can shape a person’s identity, actions, and fate. The goal of this thesis is to explore those connections through the lens of a fantasy universe where humans and fictional gods clash and coexist. These gods are not all-knowing and powerful, but fallible individuals who...
Bird and bat collisions with wind turbines are a problem that needs to be better quantified for its impact to be fully understood. This thesis documents portions of the design of a sensor patch module for use on wind turbines blades to detect impacts caused by birds and bats. This...
This paper provides a literature review in order to capture the state of the Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) market, incorporating the most recent research from 2020 and 2021. SPACs are an alternative way to take a company public. Rather than going through the traditional IPO process to access public...
Five varieties of industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa) were grown in the field in Imperial Valley, CA, USA in order to determine whether light conditions or harvest times influence cannabinoid content. A total of 16 cannabinoids were investigated in this study: Delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol (THC-d9), Delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinolic acid (THC-a), Cannabidiol (CBD), Cannabidiolic acid (CBD-a),...
Rhizome is an information-centric model that uses different interaction methods than traditional desktop systems. I built Rhizome with the specific use case of sharing a photo to observe people using the Rhizome operating system (OS) shell and modern OS shells. The purpose of this is to measure the cognitive load...
Locating sources of radio signals can be useful in many applications. From pointing antennas at nearby radio towers to fox hunting, being able to determine the relative location or direction to a radio transmitter can be very useful. Generally, it is necessary to have the current GPS locations of both...
The scientific method applies hypothesis testing to material samples through experimentation, measurement, and data analysis, which produce representations—or features—that describe phenomena of interest. Biomolecular features come in numerous forms such as values, matrices, graphs, three-dimensional structures, trajectories, and molecular surfaces. Researchers have tested thousands of features related to protein molecules...
Distance estimation is a key process for movement and spatial cognition. However, this process is hindered when navigating virtual environments in virtual reality (VR) due to the movement being exclusively visually simulated. In order to contribute to the understanding of how this hinderance effects our ability to estimate distances in...