Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

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  Dog-Headed: Outcast to All

  Wesley Mills

  Cynocephali are a group of mythological, dog-headed, humans that appear throughout various cultures. Despite the wide range of region and time period in which they are used, they consistently represent a quality of "otherness".

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  Altered Toxin Binding or Access to the Binding Site, What Changes in the Tetrodotoxin Resistant Sodium Channels of Garter Snakes?

  Kenyon Mitchell

  Voltage-gated sodium ion channels are required for the generation and propagation of action potentials in vertebrate nerve and muscle cells. The neurotoxin tetrodotoxin (TTX) binds in the channel pore and blocks sodium channel function. Some populations of garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis) have evolved resistance to TTX in part due to amino acid substitutions in the pore of the voltage-gated sodium channel expressed in skeletal muscle fibers (tsNaV1.4). We have previously demonstrated that the four amino acid substitutions in tsNaV1.4 from snake populations in California reduce TTX binding. These four amino acid substitutions are at or near an amino acid position that binds TTX. In this study, we investigated if these four amino acid substitutions alter TTX binding by measuring the TTX binding affinity of a homology model of tsNaV1.4. We created a homology model of tsNaV1.4 using Swiss-Model with the full amino acid sequence from a TTX sensitive snake. We altered amino acids in the pore of the homology model to match the substitutions identified in TTX resistant snakes using the program PyMol. Then we modeled TTX binding in its pore binding site and compared the interaction energy of tsNaV1.4 and TTX for the TTX sensitive and TTX resistant channel sequence using AutoDock Vina. Surprisingly, we measured the same binding energy values for both the TTX sensitive and the TTX resistant channel. These results do not support the hypothesis that amino acid substitutions in the TTX binding site alter the binding affinity of this site for TTX. Rather, further evaluation of the homology model suggests that one of the amino acid substitutions may affect TTX entry into the pore binding site instead of TTX binding at the site. Our future plans include modeling how amino acid substitutions in tsNaV1.4 alter the interaction energy between the channel and toxin for the length of the outer pore using the Poisson-Boltzmann equation and directly measuring the on-rate for TTX binding of heterologously expressed tsNaV1.4 channels.

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  Functional Complementation of the PpGCN4 and PpNHX2 Genes in Arabidopsis thaliana to Study Salt Tolerance

  Amanda Moravek

  Climate change induces unexpected weather and causes abiotic and biotic stresses in plants. These stresses negatively affect crop growth and production. Additionally, a steady increase in the world population has been leading to higher food demand. Therefore, the development of more stress-resilient crops is essential to combat these problems. One such stress is a salinity that affects crop production. Almond is a salt-sensitive crop, so there is a need to identify salt-tolerant almond rootstocks. AtGCN4 is a novel gene that was identified in Arabidopsis thaliana to play a significant role in host-pathogen interaction and drought tolerance when overexpressed. The preliminary results show that GCN4 imparts salt tolerance too. Similarly, AtNHX2, codes for a sodium/hydrogen exchanger and is very well characterized in A. thaliana to play a significant role in salt tolerance. However, these genes have not been studied in almonds. In this study, we are amplifying both of these genes from Almond rootstock Nemagaurd. We have developed transgenic lines of PpNHX2 in the atnhx2 knockout mutant of A. thaliana for overexpression and endogenous level expression by floral dip transformations. We are selecting for the homozygous lines. We are checking the transgenic line by qRT-PCR for gene expression and genotyping. As GCN4 is an essential gene and complete deletion causes the death of the plant, we are expressing this gene in wildtype A. thaliana under 2X35S promoter for overexpression and under the native PpGCN4 promoter for endogenous expression using gateway technology. Once we select the homozygous lines, we will test them for salt tolerance at different levels of salt concentrations ranging from 50 mM to 150 mM NaCl. If almond PpGCN4 and PpNHX2 genes have the same function as Arabidopsis AtGCN4 and AtNHX2 genes, these genes can be used as a genetic marker in almond rootstocks to develop salt tolerance.

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  Modeling Performance of Microgrid and Electric Vehicle Technology on the Utah State University Electric Distribution Network

  Jackson Morgan

  To estimate the value of solar power, energy storage, and electric vehicle charging on a small utility's distribution network, power system simulation was performed to compare the load profiles and bills of various levels of deployment. This project used Utah State University's south distribution network and its new parking structure as a testbed for simulation and analysis of new energy technology. The project found that for a rate structure with a fixed capacity reservation and a low energy charge, campus solar power is not currently viable for significantly reducing costs. Conversely, electric vehicle charging could be implemented at a low cost and in high numbers, particularly if active load management is used to limit charging to avoid overloading the network.

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  Dogs in Police Work

  Jackson Morley

  This research project discusses canines and their involvement in police work. Why do we not have more police dogs? K-9 units are very effective and helpful, but there are also several drawbacks. Police dogs are extremely expensive, they also can be used as an abuse of power, having too many canine units also can be unnecessary for every event of police work. Having police dogs as a specialty unit in a specific region would be effective though.

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  Cytokine Indicators of Inflammation in Mice Fed a Western Type Diet

  Emily Mortensen

  Colorectal cancer is currently the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and is projected to cause 53,200 deaths during 2020. The risk of colon cancer increases by 8-20% in individuals who suffer from colitis, which is inflammation of the colon lining. Colitis is common in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The development of colorectal cancer is complex and can be associated with dysbiosis of the gut microbiota, which has been shown to be affected by diet. Disruption of the gut microbiome can lead to the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria which can contribute to disease. Pathogenic bacteria and other bacterial byproducts that manage to cross the epithelial barrier, trigger the immune system. Small, nonstructural proteins called cytokines are critical to immune response and may have either pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory effects. Two cytokines involved in inflammatory response associated with the development of colitis-associated colorectal cancer include IL-6 and IL-17. IL-6 is released by immune cells in response to some other inflammatory cytokines as part of the pro-inflammation signaling pathway that is often active in many chronic disease conditions associated with inflammation. Similarly, IL-17 is also a pro-inflammatory cytokine produced by a specific population of immune cells called T helper 17 cells that play an important role in maintaining the mucosal barrier of the intestine and help clear pathogens. The goal of this study is to determine the blood concentrations of certain cytokines in mice fed either healthy diet (AIN93G) or a Western style diet (TWD) prior to, during, and after colitis, as well as during tumorigenesis. Concentration of the two cytokines in blood samples will be determined using a commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit obtained from ThermoFisher. Data collection and analyses are still ongoing. Data will be analyzed using a standard linear mixed model for diet treatment, time point, and diet x time point with cage as a nested random factor. We expect blood levels of IL-6 and IL-17 to increase in animals fed a TWD diet indicating higher levels of colitis, and the levels to remain elevated through recovery and tumorigenesis. If our hypothesis is correct, the finding that IL-6 and IL-17 are increased in mice fed the TWD would suggest potential adverse systemic inflammation due to prolonged elevated cytokine release.

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  National Security & Climate Change

  Madison Mortensen

  Certain scientific subjects are often divisive or technical, which makes those topics difficult to discuss with audiences outside the scientific sphere. One way of getting around this obstacle is to cater scientific communication to different target audiences to cut through any audience biases. In order to accomplish that, a communicator needs to understand the relationship between audiences' worldviews, and what they know, feel, and do regarding the subject at hand, and then how that relationship influences the types of media audiences trust and to which they respond positively. The following study investigates the worldviews of a military audience with respect to climate change and found that its results are congruent with past studies on worldview and how it impacts the issues people care about. The study also found that the messenger for scientific communication can be important to influencing this audience regarding the subject of climate change.

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  The Importance of Experiment Replication in Understanding Distribution of 'Alalā Seed Retention Time

  Camilla Moses

  Hawaiian forests have suffered damages from climate change, introduced plants, and introduced animals that trample or graze on the native vegetation. The 'Alalā, a native Hawaiian bird that is being reintroduced from captivity, is a disperser of native plants and can facilitate the restoration of native vegetation in Hawaiian forests. If the seed retention time and the flight paths of the 'Alalā are known, we can estimate the distribution of the seeds they disperse and see the effect the species has on forest restoration. In this study, the seed retention time of the 'Alalā is predicted from body mass using a generalized linear model (GLM). The model was based on body mass and corresponding seed retention times for multiple bird species that were collected from scientific literature. A random sample of 47 birds was selected from a data set of 55 bird species to create 1000 GLMs, then the estimated body mass of the 'Alalā was used to predict 1000 'Alalā seed retention times. To assess the fit of the 1000 GLMs, the body masses of the remaining, unselected species were used to predict corresponding seed retention times. The root mean square error values between the predicted and observed seed retention times were found for all 1000 GLMs. The estimated 'Alalā seed retention time ranged from 84.54-140.36 min, while the root mean square error values ranged from 4.97-65.98 min. These ranges illustrate the variance in a prediction depending on the chosen sample set. Replicating the experiment allowed us to see the distribution of predicted values, which give a big picture estimate of the 'Alalā's seed retention time. Further research can be done to estimate the flight paths of the 'Alalā, so their affect on forest restoration can be visualized.

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  Congo 1961: Tracking CIA-Backed Weapon Smuggling in Africa's Copper Belt

  Brian Mott

  In 1960, the newly independent Congo erupted into civil war. Belgium, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union all rushed to influence the outcome. Congo sits atop some of the richest mineral deposits in the world; it was a critical Cold War battleground. The CIA came to the aid of one of the warring parties: the rebel state of Katanga. One of the critical ways they aided Katanga was by supplying otherwise unavailable weaponry. I focus on one instance of arms smuggling in particular: when three fighter jet aircraft were smuggled to the rebel Katangan regime. Historians have not come to a consensus of where these jets came from, or who paid for them. In this study, I make the case that the CIA planned the smuggling through a complex network of front companies, legitimate businesses, and partners in foreign governments.This smuggling was orchestrated by a Zambian arms dealer with complicity from the French and Belgian governments, a French aircraft manufacturer, a Belgian bank, and an American charter airline secretly owned by the CIA. For this study, I collected and read over 1,000 pages of State Department documents from the National Archives, over 1,000 pages from the CIA's archive, 29 pages of never before released UN archival documents, and smaller numbers of documents from many other archives including the National Military Museum of the Netherlands, the Eugene McDermott Library at UT-Dallas, and UNLV Special Collections. I also found great utility in US Air Force and FAA airplane transaction logs, in following paper trails left by smugglers. Thanks to this research, I found the first name and business partner of the Zambian arms dealer, known to other historians by his last name only, and have confirmed that the American airline, suspected of CIA ties by other historians, was in fact covertly owned and operated by the CIA. This helps establish what I believe was a wider pattern of CIA strategy in covert operations throughout the era.

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  (2,3)-Cordial Digraphs

  Jonathan Mousley and Manuel Santana

  This presentation is about graphs (the vertex-edge kind, not the y = f(x) kind). A graph is a mathematical object that represents objects and some relationship among them; the objects are represented by vertices and the relationships are represented by the edges. Graphs have applications in just about every field imaginable, including artificial intelligence, social network theory, and parallel computing theory. A directed graph is a type of graph used to represent relationships that are one-sided or not symmetric. We discuss a graph labeling scheme on directed graphs introduced by LeRoy Beasley called a (2,3)-cordial labeling. In such a labeling, the vertex set of a directed graph is partitioned into two equally sized subsets by labeling half of vertices 0 and the other half 1; edges of the directed graph receive a label according to their direction and affiliated vertex labels such that the edge set is partitioned into three equally sized subsets in accord with whether their labels are 1, 0, or -1. Although not every directed graph can be labeled in accord with the (2,3)-cordial scheme, we discuss properties that indicate when a directed graph can be so labeled as well as applications of (2,3)-cordial labeling. In particular, we present results on the existence of (2,3)-cordial labelings on oriented hypercubes, trees,and tournaments.

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  Static Heat Exchanger for the Wireless Charging of Electric Vehicles

  James Mullen

  The USU College of Engineering partnered with the Aspire NSF Engineering Research Center to develop wireless charging pads for electric vehicles. These concrete pads, when placed in roadways, charge the batteries of electric vehicles that pass over them. As the pads charge vehicles, they produce excessive thermal energy (heat), which dissipates slowly through the surrounding concrete. This excess heat reduces the efficiency of the charging apparatus and can damage the imbedded electrical components. To manage the pad temperatures, the USU Nanoscale Thermal Energy Lab proposed to submerge the heat-generating elements in a Phase Change Material (PCM). As a solid, a PCM absorbs excess heat while maintaining the pad's optimal operation temperature. As the PCM absorbs energy, it melts and begins to heat up. PCMs don't absorb thermal energy evenly throughout their volume; the PCM closest to a heat-producing element melts long before the bulk material absorbs much energy. If the pad components were submerged in a PCM without any additional structures, some of the PCM would melt but most of its volume wouldn't be utilized.This presentation discusses an innovative static heat exchanger designed to transfers thermal energy from the heat-generating elements of wireless charging pads into surrounding Phase Change Material. Transient modeling demonstrated that the heat exchanger improved the thermal performance of the charging pads by distributing heat throughout the PCM volume. This presentation includes a discussion of the components that were fabricated in USU facilities and concludes with recommendations for future design improvements.

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  Mediating Factors of Family Risk and Parent-Child Interaction Quality

  Gable Munn

  Medium or high family risk is defined as having 2 or more risk factors as present in intake surveys in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project (EHSREP). Previous research has shown that high and medium risk families are more prone to negative parent-child interactions (Steele et al., 2016), but mediating variables are not clear. We hypothesize that parental stress and familial conflict are significant mediating variables between family risk and parent-child interaction quality. We also suspect that stress will have a more significant effect (Mak et al., 2020). The present study used extant data from the EHSREP (N=3001) for our analysis. We utilized self-reports taken from the Parenting Stress Index (Abidin, 1995) as data for the stress variable. Family Environment Scale (Moos, 1974) data was used for the conflict variable. Parent Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations (PICCOLO) scores at 36 months were used as a measure of parent-child interaction. Multiple regression and mediation analyses were the analysis methods chosen for this study. Our mediation analyses for FES measures revealed that family risk and conflict are correlated, but conflict was not correlated with PICCOLO scores at 36 months. Thus, family risk does lead to greater conflict, but greater conflict does not lead to lower PICCOLO scores at 36 months. Our mediation analysis for PSI data revealed that stress is a mediating variable between family risk and PICCOLO scores at 36 months. Family risk and PICCOLO scores at 36 months are strongly correlated. To reduce negative parent-child interactions, it may be prudent to provide stress management techniques to parents of at-risk families. Keywords: parent-child interaction, parental stress, family conflict, family risk, mediation, parenting as a teen, living alone, public assistance, limited education, not working, not in school.

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  Expanding Healthcare to Underserved Communities

  Hunter Murdock and Colten Dougher

  According to the Bureau of Health's Workforce Health Resources and Services Administration, there are almost 253 million people who do not have adequate access to healthcare in the United States. While innovations in technology, drug manufacturing, and procedures will continue to make healthcare more affordable and more accessible, policies restricting doctors' and nurses' abilities to practice healthcare are creating barriers that prevent them from utilizing existing technology to reduce healthcare shortages in underserved areas. The underserved populations in America include rural communities, Native Americans, and linguistic minority groups. Many of today's healthcare policy suggestions aim at increasing health insurance coverage but we suggest innovative healthcare delivery options to increase access to care and decrease the cost of care: decreasing the restrictions on telehealth services, allowing nurse practitioners and physicians assistants full scope of practice, and decreasing the difficulties that international medical graduates face when seeking residencies and U.S. licensing. We explore and synthesize contemporary research that suggests the safety and effectiveness of each of these proposed solutions. The general finding of our paper is that regulatory reforms, some of which have been temporarily implemented and proven successful during the pandemic, offer a low-cost, low-risk means of improving the accessibility and affordability of healthcare services for those who need it most.

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  Media and the COVID-19 Infodemic

  Alek Nelson

  With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, many challenges have arisen across the world. From overloaded hospitals to economic fallout to mental health issues, this pandemic is a new challenge for many people. Among the difficulties faced is the increase in misinformation, information "that is false due to lack of scientifically reliable evidence," regarding treatment, prevention, and the virus itself (Bahrami et al., 2019). An online survey was conducted during June 2020 to determine how media sources affects belief in COVID-19 misinformation. The results of the survey show that people are either using bad news sources, mainstream news is reiterating disinformation, and/or that information was changing so fast that people were generally confused about COVID-19 facts.The likelihood of believing in falsehoods was amplified in those who only received science and health news only from social media. This effect was reversed for those who used public health websites as a science and health news source.

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  Identification and Characterization of PD-L1 in Bovine Placentas

  Andre Nguyen

  Successful bovine pregnancy requires that the maternal immune system modulate T lymphocytes. Program death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) is an inhibitory protein that is associated with immune tolerance and modulation of T cells. Previous studies have linked PD-L1 to suppressing T cell activity and modulating cytokine production, therefore, inducing maternal tolerance and acceptance of the fetus. PD-L1 may be a possible mechanism involved in establishing successful bovine pregnancies. To this day, no evidence of PD-L1 RNA or protein was found in bovine placentas. We hypothesize that PD-L1 is present in the bovine placenta and its expression differs between trimesters. To analyze the presence of PD-L1, we have developed a quantitative Real-Time PCR and Western Blotting protocol to detect and characterize PD-L1 RNA and protein, respectively. For PD-L1 RNA, recombinant plasmids were used as a positive control. The cDNA was diluted at 1:4, 1:8, 1:16, 1:32, 1:64, and 1:128 to generate a standard curve. Anti PD-L1 was used as the primary antibody for Western Blot detection. It is expected that PD-L1 is present in bovine placentas and differs through gestation periods with higher expression of PD-L1 during the first trimester of gestation. In this study, PD-L1 mRNA and protein expression were observed in bovine placentas. PD-L1 is also expected to potentially modulate immune cell expression indicating that PD-L1 RNA and proteins can be used to induce a receptive maternal immune system to fetal antigens.

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  Dogs in Ancient Egypt

  Ella Olson

  The Ancient Egyptians are infamous for their love of cats, but what about dogs? It turns out that dogs were equally loved and praised in Egyptian culture. A large part of this comes from the religious significance of dogs- they are connected to the afterlife through Anubis, the god of the dead, and were thought to act as companions and guides to humans in the afterlife. Anubis is an interesting god to look at because he's one of the oldest and most respected gods. In today's terms, we refer to him as having a jackal head, but the Egyptians considered him to be dog-headed. They even called him the "dog that swallows millions" in reference to his role in judging the dead. Other than religion, dogs were practically useful, and were also commonly kept as pets. These pets were commonly named until around the 26th Dynasty and almost always wore collars.

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  Dogs and Dehumanization

  Carter Ottley

  Oppressors have categorized enslaved groups as less than human through animalization. In my research I find the role that comparisons with dogs had and look at the impacts on our current society.

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  How Alternative Proteins are Helping Consumers Reduce Their Carbon Footprint

  Samantha Petersen

  The alternative protein market is trending toward creating more animal product alternatives, not just meatless meat. Alternative protein is a growing market that creates meat alternatives for groups like vegans and vegetarians. Large meat companies are starting to invest in meatless meat research and technology. Reducing meat consumption is one of the best ways to reduce land and water usage as well as reducing carbon emissions.

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  Motivations to Choose English Teaching at Utah State University

  Aaron Piscione

  One of the most important careers is that of teaching—but why do students at Utah State choose the English Teaching major? Understanding the answer to this question will help prospective English teaching majors to know if the major is right for them, advising and advising services at USU to direct students to the major if it is correct for them, and the English department at USU to understand why it is that those students have chosen to be there. The methods used to obtain the results of this study are simple—a combination of surveys and interviews given to current students in this major as well as current and past high school English teachers.

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  Power and Pain: Dickinson's Approach to the Sublime

  Isabelle Quigley, Westin Smith, and Sariah Dutkiewicz

  Dickinson's poetry remains an enigma for contemporary readers and scholars because she maintained such a reclusive life as a poet. The ambiguity of her personal and professional life reflects the uncertainty in her poetry, and her refusal to publish much of her work in her lifetime further obscures concrete readings of her poems. However, she did prepare her poetry in the form of manuscript books for future readers. Unlike other authors, Dickinson offered no guidelines on how to approach her work. This lack of guidance has created a constant struggle of interpreting Dickinson's poetry, and to try a resolve this issue we look to read her poems in the context of their manuscript. The links between different poems in these collections help illuminate our understanding of individual poems within. She tackles issues like power from a variety of points of view. Reading a poem like "A nearness to Tremendousness" in the context of its entire manuscript begins to offer new ways to approach the poem's meaning and to shape our interpretation. The original poem of "A nearness to Tremendousness" initially reads as a speaker investigating the cost of greatness, affliction, and discontent with life's need for variety. However, the accompanying fascicle reveals how the ideas of success's cost applies to a variety of topics, such as religion, love, and publication. For Dickinson, approaching power brought on a certain level of agony, and reading all the poems in the manuscript together reveals how the idea of power applies to many aspects of life and death.

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  "They Need to Grow Up": Variations Among Legal Definitions of Minors

  Yocheved Ramirez

  Legally defining adulthood seems straightforward: individuals reach the age of majority at 18 and are granted key privileges based on age. But, that definition is actually pretty vague. We see evidence for that vagueness when we look at legal culpability—policies around waiving minors into adult court vary by state which means that there is no national consensus on how age affects understanding the consequences of one's actions.Some of the justifications against minor criminal culpability include undeveloped cognition (cognitive development theory) and a lack of moral maturity. This research poster seeks to investigate how the legal system differentiates minors from adults and what psychological theories are used to justify (or undermine) that differentiation and how that differentiation varies in state policies regarding adult waivers.

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  No Nearer Neighbor Have They: How Emily Dickinson's Fascicle 37 Explores Nature as a Link Between Man and God

  Evan Rasmussen, Mckay Brezenski, and Xiomara Castro

  It is typically the practice to examine poems individually to grasp their meaning, but examining Emily Dickinson's poems in the context of their fascicle sheets, and the fascicles, themselves, can be an illuminating and worthwhile endeavor. When Emily Dickinson's poem "Four Trees - upon a solitary Acre - " is interpreted in isolation from the other poems Dickinson placed on the same manuscript sheet, it emerges as a beautiful commentary on the natural world and its relationship with humanity. The poem separates its speaker from nature, concluding that nature is something mankind may never fully comprehend. However, when this poem's interpretation is expanded to incorporate the other poems in the hand-written, hand-bound manuscript book that editors have labeled Fascicle 37, the poem becomes a layered musing on nature's role in connecting humanity to God. The poems exhibit several speakers who wrestle with how the creation of art allows them to better interact with and understand Divinity. This project aims to show readers the value and process of a horizontal reading of Dickinson's fascicles by comparing several poems from Fascicle 37 with "Four Trees - upon a solitary Acre - ," specifically "Conscious am I in my Chamber –," "Autumn - overlooked my Knitting – ,” “Bloom upon the mountain stated – ,” “Publication – is the Auction,” and “Growth of Man – like Growth of Nature – .” By being able to view Dickinson's fascicles as complete works, we're able to utilize horizontal reading techniques to draw new conclusions further contributing to the work of Dickinson scholars. To supplement the poems with scholarly context, the project also uses Christine Gerhardt's A Place for Humility: Whitman, Dickinson, and the Natural World and two texts from James McIntosh: Nimble Believing: Dickinson and the Unknown and "Dickinson's Kinetic Religious Imagination."

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  Galactic Sources in Gamma-Ray Diffuse Emission

  Melissa Rasmussen

  The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has detected hundreds of Galactic gamma-ray sources, most of them pulsars. But the Galaxy contains tens of thousands of such sources which are still undetected due to their low flux, or because of conflation of the foreground with sources. Characterizing the general properties of detected sources would allow us to estimate the contribution to the diffuse Galactic emission from these undetected sources and in turn it would help the detection of new sources and even searches for dark matter. We present updates on our long-term effort to characterize the general properties of Galactic gamma-ray sources with source population studies and to estimate the number of sources below the Fermi LAT flux sensitivity threshold. Here we show results after adjusting a model of the detected and undetected pulsars for best fit parameters, by comparing it with the Fermi 4FGL-DR2 catalog. We identify preliminary best fit luminosity function slope, minimum luminosity, and source density for a given source distribution. We then use the model with the best fit parameters to determine the number of pulsars as a function of flux, including those below the sensitivity threshold.

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  What are the Consequences of (de)Criminalization?

  Isaac Rhea

  The US has the highest incarceration rate of any developed country (1.46M in 2018) and this large population of inmates creates a significant cost for taxpayers and governments. Further, the traditional prison system may not be the most effective way to reduce crime and rehabilitate offenders. Extensive researchhas been conducted to study decriminalization as a solution to these problems, and promising results have been found indicating a path forward to reduce inmate populations and government expenditures, improve offender outcomes, and maintain public safety.

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  Drought Tolerant Plants for the Western United States in Response to Climate Change

  Emily Rice

  The Southwest United States has been severely impacted by climate change. Already the driest region of the US, temperatures in the area have risen approximately 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the previous century ("Climate Impacts in the Southwest", 2017). Those temperatures are expected to rise by 3.5 to 9.5 degrees before the end of the current century ("Climate Impacts in the Southwest", 2017). In a region already considered to have many drought areas, this temperature increase will stress water sources, making the competition between farmers, urban areas, and native groups to become more intense. The same temperature increases that cause severe drought in inland areas will also contribute to rising seas in coastal areas ("Southwest", 2014) The following crops all possess unique characteristics which enable them thrive, not merely survive, in these discouraging conditions. The drought resistant features of these crops are discussed in relation to soil preferences, growing conditions, and profitability.