Rongxian Xu: 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: As a graphic designer, I am inspired by the events that occur in our lives and the impact they have on us. My work focuses on creating designs that capture the essence of these events and bring them to life. Through my designs, I aim to convey the emotions and messages of these events in a visually compelling way that resonates with the viewer. Whether it is a social movement, a political movement or a cultural phenomenon, my designs seek to highlight the importance of these events and encourage people to engage with them. I believe that design has the power to shape how people view the world around them, and I strive to harness this power to create designs that inspire, inform and entertain. As a graphic designer, my passion for storytelling and desire to create designs that change people's lives drives my work. I am excited to continue exploring new ways to bring what happens in our lives to the forefront of our concerns through design

Graduate students' representational fluency in elliptic curves

2023 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Elliptic curves are an important concept in several areas of mathematics including number theory and algebraic geometry. Within these fields, three mathematical objects have each been referred to as an elliptic curve: a complex torus, a smooth projective curve of degree 3 in P2 with a chosen point, and a Riemann surface of genus 1 with a chosen point. In number theory and algebraic geometry, it can be beneficial to use different representations of an elliptic curve in different situations. This skill of being able to connect and translate between mathematical objects is called representational fluency. My work explores graduate students' representational fluency in elliptic curves and investigates the importance of representational fluency as a skill for graduate students. Through interviews with graduate students and experts in the field, I conclude 3 things. First, some of the connections between the above representations are made more easily by graduate students than other connections. Second, students studying number theory have higher representational fluency in elliptic curves. Third, there are numerous benefits of representational fluency for graduate students

Forest type and burn severity affect understory response to historic wildfires

2023 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.The fire season of 2020 was unprecedented in the Western US. In one summer, three different fires individually broke the record of Colorado's largest wildfire. Understanding the recovery following these unprecedented events can lend insight into the compounding effects of wildfire and climate change. Reorganization of the understory community after disturbance can indicate changes in conditions not yet reflected in tree communities. Understory dynamics also affect watershed characteristics and wildlife, so knowledge about the influence of wildfire on understory plants is crucial. The purpose of this study is to determine if a trend toward thermophilization is being shown in understory vegetation following 4 different wildfires in 2020 and to compare the relative importance of burn severity, forest type, and other environmental factors on understory community composition. We found a trajectory toward thermophilization in high elevation forests that burned with high severity. We also that drivers of community composition varied by forest type. These findings help assess how wildfire is affecting plant communities in the 21st Century and highlight where future management concerns may be

Spatiotemporal variability of peroxy acyl nitrates (PANs) over megacities from satellite observations

2023 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Peroxy acyl nitrates (PANs) are photochemical pollutants with implications for health and atmospheric oxidation capacity. PANs are formed via the oxidation of non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) in the presence of nitrogen oxide radicals (NOx = NO + NO2). PANs serve as reservoir species and sources for NOx in outflow regions of megacities, facilitating O3 production downwind. While urban environments are large sources of PANs, in-situ observations in urban areas are generally limited. Here we use satellite measurements of PANs from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) and the S-NPP Cross-Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) to evaluate the spatiotemporal variability of PANs over and surrounding 9 megacities: Mexico City, Beijing, Los Angeles, Tokyo, São Paulo, Delhi, Mumbai, Lagos, and Karachi. We use monthly mean values of PANs to determine the seasonal cycle within the urban center of megacities. We find pronounced seasonal cycles of PANs in megacities and seasonal maxima in PANs correspond to seasonal peaks in local photochemical activity. Local fire activity can explain some of the observed interannual variability in PANs over and around megacities. We use S-NPP CrIS data to probe the spatial outflow pattern of PANs produced within urban Mexico City during the month with the largest mixing ratios of PANs (April). Peak outflow in April occurs to the northeast of the city and over the mountains south of the city. Outflow to the northwest appears infrequent. CrIS is used to further explore changes in PANs associated with substantial declines in megacity NOx in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We only identify two cities over which PANs changed significantly in response to NOx perturbations: Beijing and Los Angeles. This work demonstrates that the space-based observations provided by CrIS and TES can increase understanding of the spatiotemporal variability and sensitivity to precursor emissions of PANs over and around global megacities

From ancient Rome to colonial Mexico: religious globalization in the context of empire

Includes bibliographical references and index.From Ancient Rome to Colonial Mexico compares the Christianization of the Roman Empire with the evangelization of Mesoamerica. With the analysis of empire and globalization and a postcolonial perspective on religion, the book proposes the method of "analytical comparison" to conceptualize affinities and differences between geographies.--Provided by publisher.Ritual mediation on the middle ground: Rome and New Spain compared / Greg Woolf -- A long way to become Christian: Romans, Hungarians, and the Nahua / György Németh -- Human sacrifice and the religion of the other: barbarians, pagans and Aztecs / Francisco Marco Simón -- The Aztec sun and its Mesoamerican milieu from a classical Mediterranean perspective / Lorenzo Pérez Yarza -- Donkeys and hares: the enemy warrior in the early European Chronicles of the Conquest / Paolo Taviani -- Cultural persistence and appropriation in the Huamantla map / David Charles Wright-Carr -- Comparison and the Franciscan construction of Mesoamerican polytheism through Augustine of Hippo's De Civitate Dei / Sergio Botta -- Bernardino de Sahagún on Nahua astrology and divination: Greco-Roman traditions, Christian disapproval and ambiguity, and Mesoamerican practices / Guilhem Olivier -- A version of the millennial Kingdom in the Portería of the Franciscan Convent in Cholula, México / María Celia Fontana Calvo -- Smoking stones and smoking mirrors: the limits of antiquarianism in New Spain / Martin Devecka

Resilience-based seismic design based on time-to-functionality for tall mass timber buildings

Includes bibliographical references.2023 Spring.Mass timber has existed for years as a structural material; however, only in the last decade or so has progress been made in North America on the adoption of mass timber for moderate to high seismic regions. During this time, there has been significant research effort and resources allocated to demonstrating various mass timber products as suitable for seismic applications, in particular as seismic force resisting systems (SFRS). However, during the research process, the potential suitability of mass timber for mid-rise or tall buildings was identified, and research efforts into the applicability of mass timber for taller buildings in seismic regions have been increasing in the past several years. Along with the growing interest in mass timber for tall buildings, a larger more general push for resilient buildings and communities has also been prevalent, providing the opportunity to design mass timber SFRS for tall buildings that not only meet current performance standards, but also have the potential to contribute to resilience-based design and ultimately community resilience. This research presented in this dissertation develops and applies the time-to-functionality fragility (TTF) methodology to provide resilience-based design guidance for tall mass timber buildings. The new TTF methodology incorporates many of the considerations of previous performance-based methodologies (such as FEMA P-58) and resilience methods (such as the REDi rating system) into a multi-layer direct Monte Carlo simulation to estimate various recovery levels. This method was then applied to a two-story test specimen utilizing a new mass timber SFRS (a cross laminated timber [CLT] rocking wall), developed as a part of the Natural Hazards Equipment Research Infrastructure (NHERI) TallWood project, to demonstrate the resilience capabilities of the system. While the CLT rocking wall SFRS demonstrated excellent resilience capabilities, a dearth of data in mass timber (in terms of resilience considerations) were identified both as a part of the TTF methodology development and as a part of NHERI TallWood. To address some this lack of data, nail laminated timber (NLT) and dowel laminated timber (DLT) diaphragms were tested using quasi-static reversed cyclic loading, determining the lateral capacity of these systems as well as identifying damage states to better incorporate them into the TTF methodology. With the resilience of the CLT rocking wall system demonstrated, and several of the identified research data gaps addressed, the TTF methodology was applied to the two-story, six-story, and ten-story archetypes utilizing the CLT rocking wall system and varying the different structural components to create a database of TTF performance. A total of 243 SFRS designs were considered, and this database was leveraged using the developed resilience-based design guidance to estimate the TTF performance of two ten-story design examples. The research presented here demonstrates that it is possible to design tall mass timber buildings with resilience considerations, and that there are mass timber SFRS suitable for resilient design. While the findings focus on mass timber, the methodology itself is not limited to mass timber. The design guidance presented herein represents the first step towards a more prescriptive solution for TTF performance, with the potential for the incorporation of other structural systems and materials beyond the CLT rocking wall. In addition, there is a significant push to codify functionality, often termed "functional recovery", into U.S. design codes in the next 10 years. The TTF methodology directly considers functionality as a part of the method and this research and research like it will provide the foundation for the codification effort

Principles of Macroeconomics 2e support material for OpenStax textbook: week 2, chapter 6 - OER project materials

Missing weeks are exam review weeks. There is a discussion prompt but no recitation material for week 4 (exam review).ECON 204.Week 2 discussion: Measuring GDP (chapter 6). The material included here was developed to support the use of the OpenStax textbook Principles of Macroeconomics 2e. The material includes two components: (1) weekly discussion prompts that were developed for use on online discussion boards; and (2) weekly recitation worksheets and answer keys.Please see online textbook: https://openstax.org/details/books/principles-macroeconomics-2e.The materials were collected for the OER project funded by the Colorado OER Council Grant (AY 2021)

Library Web Site Usage Statistics: Digital Collections, 2003-2017

This dataset contains usage statistics collected via Google Analytics for various digital collections on the CSU Libraries’ website, covering dates between 2003 and 2017. These statistics were originally generated and documented by Greg Vogl (Middleware Developer, Academic Computing and Networking Services, formerly Library Technology Services staff), and stored on a website (https://lib2.colostate.edu/staff/web/webstats/digital.html) which was discontinued in 2022. The usage statistics reports were downloaded by Amy Ball Wicklund (Library Developer and Applications Administrator), and this README documentation was created by Mara Sedlins (Data Management Specialist). Contact persons listed on the collection pages are included as authors as well