The states bordering the US and Mexico are very diverse. California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas each have different factors influencing the way they continue to advance. The past 50 years have experienced a large shift in technology as well as accessibility to renewable energy. In this project, we constructed energy profiles for each state, along with analysis based off of their unique aspects. Based on this analysis, we determined the state with the best quality profile and provided predictions for their energy usage in the years 2025 and 2050.

Several bat species can be observed in Humboldt County, including the Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis), hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), and big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus). The objectives of this study were to investigate what bat species occur on campus and how variables such as artificial light, weather, and lunar phase might influence bat activity. Ultrasonic acoustic recorders were deployed on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus to capture recordings of bat vocalizations. Additional data from the Arcata Community Forest during a previous year was used to compare the detected species in the forest in Spring 2019 to the detected species on campus in Spring 2025.

The array of metals obtained from the GEOTRACES cruise in 2013 provides evidence for anomalous metal behavior. Trace metals in the ocean can act as indicators of hydrothermal vents, providing evidence for iron and magnesium sources to the ocean. However, anomalies of other dissolved trace metals (DTM) have been observed at theoretical hydrothermal vent sites, specifically depletions of cerium, lanthanum, nickel, and yttrium. Initially, these depletions were thought to be the result of redox reactions, but this only partially explained the DTM deficiencies. Particulate scavenging through the formation of metal oxides from DTM is also a possible cause for anomalous depletion.

In growing need to accommodate graduate students' housing issues from Humboldt State University as well as the need for urban revitalization projects in Old Town Eureka, ENST seniors James Bradas and Rebecca Ron partnered with Greenway Partners: an Arcata-based engineering design, consultancy, and facilitation firm to continue with the lead on this project. Through research within the Old Town quarter of Eureka, research in city, county, and state municipal code, and using the lived experiences of the Humboldt State domestic experience with the current housing market, a conceptual framework grew from a critical understanding about the community, place, and placement of prospective housing.

Global climate models predict a more variable climate in the future through increased frequency of extreme wet and dry years. Since water is the most limiting resource in the Chihuahuan desert, investigating how semi-arid plants respond to precipitation extremes is pertinent to understanding how desert ecosystems will be altered in the future. To study these responses, I experimentally applied an extreme precipitation treatment to black grama, a dominant desert grass, during June and July 2018 in the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge before the monsoon season. This experiment supports black grama's ability to survive in the desert with few precipitation events due to its growth response.

Niemann Pick Disease Type C1 (NPC1) is a rare lysosomal storage disorder that affects 1:150,000 people. The disease is characterized by cholesterol accumulation within lysosomes, as well as clinical cognitive decline and neurodegeneration. These symptoms can be attributed to a mutation in the NPC1 gene that leads to the interruption of the intracellular cholesterol transport. Using CRISPR Cas9 technology, the ability to make a cellular model with inducible CRISPR gene regulation can give researchers considerable insight into the cellular pathology of Niemann Pick Disease Type C1 as well as the ability to apply targeted drug therapy and potentially lead to drug discovery.

Our Spring 2023 Senior project is an event that invited the community to a 5 vs 5 soccer tournament in Arcata. The event took place on Saturday, April 22nd on the College Creek soccer field at Cal Poly Humboldt. Using a large facility like this outdoor soccer field will gave us the opportunity to host a large number of participants, Providing a safe and equal environment to play with others. One of the objectives of Green Goal Futbol was to create an accessible all inclusive event on campus to bring people together and have fun. We are hoping that people's memories of the event will inspire others to host similar events in the future.

People use verbal communication with other group members as unique social identity markers. As a result, when individuals recognize the informal language (slang) of their fellow group members, they should feel confident and included in their group. The current work focuses on the use of group specific slang, which is the identity-specific information derived from group membership, as a marker of social identity. Specifically, confidence in one’s ability to recognize ingroup specific slang should mediate the relationship between knowledge of the ingroup’s slang and feelings of inclusion in the group and similarity to ingroup peers.

The purpose of this study was to analyze and focus on gender roles, expectations, and ideologies portrayed in Disney animated feature films through the use of nonverbal communication. The researchers of this analysis observed three distinct Disney Films across history: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), The Little Mermaid (1989), and Moana (2016) to draw similarities and differences between them. By 1) uncovering hegemonic principles and gender norms in Disney animation and 2) determining changes in stereotypical representations of Disney characters throughout history, the researchers sought to understand why gender roles and norms have primarily remained the same throughout history.

Studying race, class, gender and age are considered crucial for understanding social inequality and offending, but criminology has yet to fully explore sexuality. In this study, we provide a baseline examination of sexuality and offending in the U.S. for several life course stages. We find that the effect of being a sexual minority on the likelihood of offending is often larger than or comparable to the significant effects of race and gender; this varies over the life course and across behaviors. We demonstrate that sexual orientation is another crucial attribute for understanding social inequality and offending, and join the call for a more intersectional approach to the study of offending.