Carlos Moreno Loachamin: capstone

2023 Spring.Colorado State University Art and Art History Department capstone project.Capstone contains the artist's statement, a list of works, and images of works.The artist's statement: The body of work I have made in my four years at CSU has been a ramping evolution in the exploration of contemporary American mental health struggles, the notion of the sublime, and the beauty in such raw emotions as shame, guilt, and exhaustion. This evolution has primarily taken place through material exploration. Beginning with pen and ink on paper my freshman year, I have ventured into different media as I've painted, sculpted, and animated pieces which grew imbued with flashes of self-flagellation, exhaustion, and the buckling weight that follows when one holds onto torturing ideals for an excruciating amount of time

Analysis of 3D facial anthropometric measurements for respirator fit outcomes

Includes bibliographical references.2023 Spring.Anthropometry is central to the development of efficacious products and environments (i.e., personal protective equipment, clothing, sunglasses, chairs, interior spaces, etc.) used by humans. Three-dimensional (3D) scanning is increasingly common for collecting anthropometric data, as it is faster and less intrusive than traditional manual methods. Additionally, 3D anthropometric methods used to derive facial dimensions provide greater contextual application in the development of respirators and facemasks. More than 2,000 3D facial scans were analyzed to assess measurement reliability and the dimensions of 27 facial features. This research represents the largest sample of 3D facial anthropometrics assessed to date. The three specific aims of the research included: 1) to assess the intra- and inter-rater reliability of 3D facial measurement methods, 2) to compare the 3D facial anthropometric summary statistics from the present study to relevant summary statistics from manual facial measurements found in the literature, and 3) to assess the presence of differences in 3D facial anthropometrics related to respirator fit, based on demographic factors of gender, race/ethnicity, and age. Post hoc analyses were completed to quantify 3D facial measurement differences between demographic groups (within the larger demographic categories of gender, race/ethnicity, and age group). The most notable results of this research include a) high reliability in 3D measurement data collection methods, b) differences in measurement data summary statistics between 3D and manual methods, and c) significant differences in facial measurements between demographic categories of gender (Male and Female/Other), race/ethnicity (White, Black, LatinX, Asian, and Other), and age (18-34, 35-54, and 55-72)

Familiarity-detection from different facial feature-types: is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?

2023 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Prior research indicates that perceived familiarity with a cue during cued recall failure can be systematically increased based on the amount of feature overlap between that cue and studied items in memory (Huebert et al., 2022; McNeely-White et al., 2021, Ryals & Cleary, 2012). However, these studies used word or musical stimuli. Faces represent a special class of stimuli, as evidence suggests that unlike other types of stimuli (such as word or musical stimuli), faces may be primarily processed in a holistic fashion. A recent study demonstrated that even when a person's identity was prevented by the presence of a facial occlusion like a surgical mask or sunglasses, familiarity-detection with the occluded face could still occur, suggesting that holistic processing was not a requirement for facial familiarity-detection (Carlaw et al., 2022). However, some researchers have suggested that although faces can be decomposed into component parts when partially occluded, when faces are presented unoccluded in their entirety, the holistic face processing system may then be obligatory (Manley et al., 2019). The present study suggests that this is not the case. Isolating specific feature types at encoding through partial occlusion of faces at study (via a surgical mask or sunglasses), then embedding those familiarized feature sets in otherwise novel whole faces at test, systematically and combinedly increased the perceived familiarity of the otherwise novel whole faces. These results suggest that even whole faces are processed as sets of component parts

Spatial asynchrony and cross-scale climate interactions in populations of a coldwater stream fish

2023 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Climate change affects animal and plant populations over broad geographic ranges due to spatially autocorrelated abiotic conditions known as the "Moran Effect". However, populations do not always respond to broad-scale environmental changes synchronously across a landscape. We used a retrospective analysis of time-series count data (5-28 annual samples per site) at 170 stream segments dispersed over nearly 1,000 km to characterize the population structure and scale of spatial population synchrony in a coldwater stream fish (brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis), which is sensitive to temperature and flow alterations, across its southern native range. Spatial synchrony differed by life stage and geographic region: it was stronger in the juvenile life stage than the adult life stage and in the northern sub-region than the southern sub-region. Spatial synchrony of trout populations extended to 100-150 km but was much weaker than that of climate variables such as temperature, stream flow, and precipitation. Early life stage abundance changed over time due to annual variation in summer temperature and winter and spring stream flow conditions. Climate effects on abundance differed between sub-regions and among local populations, indicating multiple cross-scale interactions where climate interacted with local habitat to generate only a modest pattern of population synchrony over space. We conclude that heterogeneous responses to climate variation lead to only a modest level of spatial synchrony among local trout populations, which leads to varying susceptibility to climate change. This response heterogeneity indicates that some local segments characterized by population asynchrony and resistance to climate variation could represent unique populations of this iconic native coldwater fish that warrant attention in their conservation planning in a changing climate. Identifying such priority populations and incorporating them into landscape-level conservation planning is imperative to their conservation. Our approach is applicable to other widespread aquatic species sensitive to climate change

Quantitatively distinguishing between bone surface modifications using confocal microscopy and scale–sensitive fractal analysis

2023 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.The damage found on fossilized bone surfaces resulting from the feeding behavior of various prehistoric taphonomic actors (hominins, carnivores, raptors, etc.) in archaeological assemblages is a crucial piece of evidence that provides an inferential framework within which archaeologists can reconstruct the ecological and behavioral contexts of our hominins ancestors. However, these reconstructions are only useful if the bone surface modifications (BSM) can be inferentially linked to the specific taphonomic actor which created the mark. The inability to do so in a standardized and replicable manner has sparked multidecade-long debates over the actors responsible for individual marks and has resulted in drastically different interpretations of site formation processes and hominin behavioral ecology. Therefore, the goal of this study is to determine whether variations in within-mark fractal variables, paired with the micromorphological variables presented in Pante et al. (2017), can aid in quantitatively distinguishing between four different taphonomic agents (cut, trample, tooth, and percussion marks). To achieve this goal, a sample of 100 experimentally - produced BSM were sampled from the existing collection in the 3D imaging and analysis laboratory at Colorado State University. Scans of individual marks were acquired using Sensofar's S-neox 3D scanner, while 3D models of the marks were analyzed with the Digital Surf® software. Quadratic discriminant and complimentary random forest models were created to identify relationships between the measured fractal variables and the taphonomic agents creating BSM. The results of the quadratic discriminant and random forest models classifying all 4 BSM agents result in low classification accuracies between 52% - 58%, thereby indicating the micromorphological and fractal variables could not be used to accurately identify taphonomic agents by their within-mark surface complexity/roughness measurements. However, sub - grouping the dataset into models discriminating between only pairs of BSM types (i.e., cutmark vs trample mark) increases the classification accuracy of the QDA and random forest models to the 60% - 86% range, thereby indicating the micromorphological variables presented in Pante et al. (2017), when paired with the fractal variables Smooth – Rough Crossover (SRC), Area Scale Fractal Complexity (Asfc) and the Scale of Max Fractal Complexity (Smfc), can discriminate between the known taphonomic agents in the sample with relative accuracy. This study is beneficial to the study of archaeological BSM as it aids in our understanding of hominin subsistence behavior in prehistoric contexts by continuing the development of an objective and standardized method of differentiating feeding traces which provides a platform for more scientific, i.e. testable inferences about hominin behavior in archeological sites

Quaternary alluvial lineaments in the Atacama Desert, northern Chile: morphology, relationships to bedrock structures, and link to the seismic cycle of the Andean subduction margin

2023 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Located in the upper plate of the modern Nazca-South American subduction zone, the hyperarid Atacama Desert is an ideal place to study forearc deformation through surface geomorphology. We studied neotectonic lineaments in alluvium between ~25.5° and 26° S in the Coastal Cordillera with the goal of understanding modern forearc strain. Visible in satellite imagery, these lineaments are defined by linear to curvilinear structures consisting of subparallel ridges that range from tens of meters to kilometers in length. Field observations and 10 cm-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) derived from drone imagery record a consistent, asymmetrical "ridge-trough-ridge" morphology that commonly traces into ~1–2 m-wide bedrock fissures containing gypsum and calcite. Most lineaments in this region trend ~N-S to NW-SE, parallel to the dominant bedrock structural grain and the Cretaceous Atacama and Taltal fault systems. Small-scale faults found in the lineament ridges have cm- to mm-scale apparent normal-sense displacement and consistently dip moderately to steeply (50–70°) towards the lineament troughs, defining a graben-like structure. In outcrop, these normal fault zones are enhanced by differential erosion, and in thin section faulted material is distinguishable by increased cementation within fractures penetrating grain boundaries. A tuff deposit within an alluvial fan containing several lineaments yields a zircon U-Pb age of 2.2 ± 0.1 Ma, indicating that lineaments in this fan are Quaternary in age and likely related to upper plate strain due to modern subduction along the Nazca-South American plate boundary. Older alluvial surfaces tend to have lineaments with broader and taller ridges than those formed on relatively younger alluvial surfaces, indicating that these structures formed progressively through time. In addition, profile data gathered from DEMs show a weak linear correlation between lineament trough width and ridge height, meaning that wider lineaments tend to have taller ridges. Along the flanks of two trenched ridges, we observed shallowly-dipping planes that resemble thrust faults, suggesting the ridges may have formed in response to contractional deformation. We propose the lineaments record alternating forearc shortening and extension related to interseismic and coseismic phases of the earthquake cycle, with the development of ridges and thrust faults recording interseismic shortening and normal faults and fissures which form the central troughs recording coseismic extension