In this joint project, students from REC 315 Travel Industry Management researched the Southwest Airlines (SWA) flight disruption that happened in December 2022. Considering both the causes and the outcomes of the event, a variety of issues are explored including lost luggage liability, antiquated technology used by SWA, airline structure, customer sentiment, economic impacts, human resources and steps to take to avoid in the future.

Climate change, the most pressing issue of our contemporary world, will not be addressed without coming up with local solutions to this global problem. My project focuses on creating an avenue that would allow the campus community and the local community to work together to tackle local concerns. In tandem with HSU’s sustainability office and Center for Community Based Learning we’ve been able to develop such a resource: The Sustainable Practitioners Directory. This directory will allow faculty to easily find community partners working to resolve critical economic, social and environmental challenges, and who are willing to bring their work to the classroom.

Second-growth stands of conifers are increasingly being looked to for timber production and ecosystem services across the Pacific Northwest. These stands, regenerated after old-growth logging in the mid-20th century, have the potential to provide timber products, watershed protection and wildlife habitat. However, for these stands to function to their fullest potential, they often require silvicultural treatments such as variable density or restoration thinning. This project conducted a preliminary inventory of the Jacoby Creek Forest using geospatial analysis. Previous silviculture, stand conditions, road networks and watercourses were all compiled to create inventory maps of the forest.

The burgeoning demand for nanotechnology presents a specific issue in that it requires the production of electronic components at a physical scale that is difficult and costly to achieve. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have potential in a wide range of electronics applications (1), but there are many lingering questions about their behavior. This project seeks to use computational modeling to propose a relationship between the number of CNT-on-CNT contacts and the effective resistance of a CNT network as the physical parameters change.

We completed an exploratory secondary analysis examining 167 students’ perceptions of their self/group’s warmth, entitativity, and the extent to which they identity with their group. Results indicate that perceptions of self-warmth, group warmth, and entitativity each positively predict group identification. A mismatch of the group variables are indicative of a threatening ingroup (low group warmth and high entitativity). Findings suggest that positive views of the self can act as a protective function against a threatening ingroup and may be related to projecting positive images of the self onto the group.

Active Galactic Nuclei are still somewhat of an enigma; young, bright galaxies with a large range of redshifts. Our current research is focused on gas outflows from the active galactic nucleus (AGN). These outflows are identified by broad absorption lines in the spectra of AGN. Current multi-epoch observations of many active galactic nuclei (AGN) have resulted in broad absorption lines that appear and disappear over time. Current observations show that these outflows have speeds up to 0.2c. Our team’s ultimate goal is to understand the mechanism that drives quasar outflows and characterize the broad spectral absorption lines, as well as why the outflows are variable

The Library Scholar Internship team is digitizing historically significant objects from the library’s Special Collections. This process involves more than scanning objects, but publishing to a broader research community using Omeka.net to create digital exhibits. In this poster we discuss our process creating metadata, scanning procedures, researching the collections and publicizing our work. Our goal is to encourage students and faculty to use the library’s resources such as Collaboration Stations, SkillShops, librarians, computer labs, #mondopad and peers to improve and publish their research. The library is a dynamic space for students to work on innovative and collaborative projects.

Due to the many industrial processes of modern America, heavy metal contamination of our waterways, specifically in densely populated areas, has become a major issue. The Prokaryotic species Caulobacter vibrioides exhibits a surface layer protein, RsaA, forming a 2-D crystallin array above the cell membrane. RsaA can be modified to exhibit a high binding potential with many of the charged ions, such as heavy metals, which are found in waterways. Here we show through an quantitative fluorescence assay that upon exposure to 39.063nM Pb solution, engineered C. vibrioides strains Hcm 027, and 028 remediated approximately 10% more Pb than the wildtype, Hcm 009.

Heavy metal contamination of soils and waterways due to industrial processes, continues to be a problem in the United States. Recent reports indicate that microbial surface layers (S-layers) are able to bind and sequester heavy metals, thereby removing them from the environment. Our approach is to enhance this process for heavy metal bioremediation. Using a highly sensitive fluorescent dye, lead remediation was measured in the nanomolar range. Results show that upon exposure to 39.0 nM Pb solution engineered C. vibrioides strains Hcm 027,028, remediated the solution to, 9.6 ± 0.3 nM, 9.0 ± 0.2 nM respectively and 13.3 ± 0.1 nM for the wild type.

One major contemporary environmental issues is the pollution of heavy metals into waterways. However, removal of heavy metal ions via bioremediation may be a possible solution. Using modified C. vibrioides paracrystalline RsaA surface layer proteins (S-layer proteins), our team hopes to bind lead, and other metal ions for decontamination through use of a filtration system. It is known that modified S-layers can be displayed on the microbial surface. Our initial target sequence (TNTLSNN) was chosen for its ability to bind Pb. Our future goals are the observation of heavy metal binding efficiency of each engineered RsaA surface, and the generation of prototype binding cartridges.