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Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation: Meta-Analysis And Optimization Of Amendment Carbon Rate And C:N Ratio To Control Key Plant Pathogens And Weeds, Utsala Shrestha

Doctoral Dissertations

Anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD) is an environmentally friendly and cost effective pre-plant soil treatment technique that allows effective control of soilborne pests by creating anaerobic conditions, particularly for specialty and organic crop production under diverse environmental conditions. In spite of being a proven technique, ASD has to be optimized to fit into local production systems with specific pathogen pressure using locally available amendments for successful implementation on a commercial scale. Our meta-analysis study on soilborne pathogens, plant parasitic nematodes, and weeds validated that ASD is an effective approach to control various soilborne pathogens. This study aims to optimize the carbon …

Place In Habits And Habits In Place, Robert E. Low

Doctoral Dissertations

The concept of habit has had a controversial history in psychology, but support for a habit theory is plentiful in various areas of research, such as learning and environmental psychology, including embodied and dual-process theories of cognition. Further, recent advances in measurement have provided support for habit as an independent construct and enabled research into the contribution of habits to a wide variety of behaviors. As a framework to guide further advances, I propose a 3-part conceptualization based on recurring elements within the definitions of habit in previous research: Habits are patterns of responding characterized by repetition, automaticity, and psychological …

Debridement Of Diabetic Foot Ulcers: Public Health And Clinical Implications. A Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, And Meta-Regression, David Dayya

Doctoral Dissertations

Background

Diabetic Foot ulceration has devastating complications. These include amputations resulting in poor quality of life, and serious infections including osteomyelitis and life threatening sepsis. Diabetic wounds can be protracted, take significant time to heal, and they can recur after they have healed. They can be very costly and consume healthcare resources. These consequences have serious public health and clinical implications. Debridement is often used as a standard of care in efforts to help avert these consequences. It is used to remove nonviable or necrotic tissue such as nonviable tissue in order to facilitate the wound healing process and help …

Non-Market Valuation Methods: Evaluation And Applications, Wei Shi

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the methodological development, evaluation and applications of non-market valuation techniques in environmental economics. The first essay reviews 38 studies on the valuation of beach proximity using hedonic property value models since the 1980s. I find that choice of control variables and site characteristics are significant determinants of the value estimates. Therefore, the meta-analysis benefit transfer that incorporates site characteristics is much more preferred than the other benefit transfer methods, such as the direct value transfer and function transfer.

The second essay seeks to address the sampling bias in the analysis of on-site survey data. I propose …