Digital Commons Network^™

An Exploration Of Undeclared Students' Expectations Of Experiences For Faculty Interactions And Co-Curricular Involvement, Lorie Anne Kittendorf

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Student persistence and achievement are areas of significant concern for institutions of higher education. With national college graduation rates hovering in the 50% range, it is important for colleges and universities to understand which student characteristics and campus environments lead to greater success, as well as the expectations students have of the college experience.

Research on undeclared students is vast and dates back more than 70 years, and many of the seminal studies and respected research data have led to the perception that they are at higher risk of attrition and have lower levels of academic achievement than their declared …

Low Level Exposure To Air Pollution And Risk Of Adverse Birth Outcomes In Hillsborough County, Florida, Maria B. Mainolfi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this retrospective cohort from 2002 through 2007, 104,003 singleton live births in Hillsborough County, Florida were analyzed to elucidate the relationship between feto-infant morbidity outcomes and prenatal exposure to six criteria air pollutants. This study is based on three linked databases: The Florida Hospital Discharge database; The vital statistics records of singleton live births; Air Pollution meteorological data from the Environmental Protection Agency. There are six common air pollutants, particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5), particulate matter 10 (PM10), ground-level ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen (NOx), and lead (Pb). These pollutants are harmful to human health and the environment. The …

Hydrologic And Microclimate Characterizations Of Thornton’S Cave, West-Central Florida (Usa), Dorien K. Mcgee

Studia UBB Geologia

A cave’s environment is controlled by a suite of factors unique to the environments in which they formed, including, but not limited to, regional geologic and climate settings. These factors collectively owe to wide variations in cave biology, geomorphology and overall speleogenesis. This report combines local climate, hydrologic, and CO₂ data collected over the course of a two-year study at Thornton’s Cave, a partially-flooded cave in the West-Central Florida karst belt, to characterize its current environment and yield insight regarding how changes in regional climate and hydrology impact its past and future speleogenesis. Data loggers continuously monitoring cave and …

Management In A Neotropical Show Cave: Planning For Invertebrates Conservation, Thais Giovannini Pellegrini, Rodrigo Lopes Ferreira

International Journal of Speleology

Lapa Nova is a dolomitic cave about 4.5 km long located in northwestern Minas Gerais state, Brazil. The cave experiences intense tourism, concentrated over a single period of the year, during the Feast of Our Lady of Lapa. In order to evaluate the impacts felt by the invertebrate community from this tourism, a new methodology was proposed. Four types of areas (intense visitation area, outlying visitation areas, moderate visitation areas and no-visitation areas) were sampled for invertebrates. There was one sampling prior and another on the last day of the 128^th feast, to evaluate the effects of visitation on …

The Global Social Forum Rhizome: A Theoretical Framework, Peter N. Funke

Government and International Affairs Faculty Publications

This work draws on Deleuze and Guattari's image of the ‘rhizome’ to develop a framework for mapping and understanding the global social forum process and its implications for the broader global left. The image of the rhizome is insightful for analytically accentuating the nature and workings, as well as the challenges and contemporary shortcomings, of the social forum process and more generally the broader global movement(s). Thriving on multiplicity and thus lacking a dominant core or main axis, the social forum-as-rhizome emphasizes the multi-connectivity and heterogeneity of this process, which has no central actor, issue, strategy, or ideology, beyond the …

Stable Carbon Isotope Discrimination By Rubisco Enzymes Relevant To The Global Carbon Cycle, Amanda J. Boller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Five different forms of ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RubisCO; IA, IB, IC, ID, II), the carboxylase of the Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle (CBB), are utilized by plants, algae and autotrophic bacteria for carbon fixation. Discrimination against ¹³C by RubisCO is a major factor dictating the stable carbon isotopic composition (δ¹³C = {[¹³C/¹²C sample/¹³C/¹²C standard] - 1} X 1000) of biomass. To date, isotope discrimination, expressed as ε values (={[¹²k/¹³k] - 1} X 1000; ¹²k and ¹³k …

Mangroves, Mudbanks And Seawalls: Political Ecology Of Adaptation To Sea Level Rise In Suriname, Ravic Nijbroek

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to understand how global discourses of sea level rise (SLR) and mangrove ecology influence national climate change adaptation policy to reduce coastal vulnerability in Suriname. A majority of the Surinamese population lives along the low elevation coastal zone and is highly exposed to projected SLR. Failure by the international community to reach agreement on climate change mitigation means that vulnerable coastal communities must adapt. The Suriname coast is predominantly shaped by mudbanks and mangroves which together provide protection against coastal erosion and trap sediments resulting in coastal accretion. Knowledge claims of mangrove ecology and utility in SLR …