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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Preventing Extinction Of At-Risk Plant Species In A Complex World, Holly Lee Bernardo Aug 2018

Preventing Extinction Of At-Risk Plant Species In A Complex World, Holly Lee Bernardo

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Earthճ current biodiversity crisis is now considered a true mass extinction event, with species level extinction rates well above background rates and population level extinction rates orders of magnitude more common that species extinctions. There are many threats driving this loss of biodiversity. How each threat impacts the viability of a species is highly context dependent, but all are anthropogenic in origin and so as the human population continues to increase, so too will the pressure of these threats on our natural systems. Ultimately, how much a threat decreases the viability of a species depends on how that threat influences …


Fundamental Controls On The Reactivity Of Aluminum Oxide And Hydroxide Surfaces: Contributions Of Surface Site Coordination States And Interfacial Water Structure, Tingying Xu Aug 2018

Fundamental Controls On The Reactivity Of Aluminum Oxide And Hydroxide Surfaces: Contributions Of Surface Site Coordination States And Interfacial Water Structure, Tingying Xu

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chemical reactions at mineral-water interfaces are of great importance in many geological and environmental processes. Essential to many of these is adsorption because it directly controls contaminant fate and nutrient availability, promotes the nucleation and growth of minerals, initiates surface redox reactions, and plays a crucial role in carbon cycling and sequestration. These reactions occur at mineral surface sites having multiple possible coordination states that interact with both adsorbates and water. While general ion adsorption mechanisms and surface charging behaviors are well established, the roles of individual surface functional group types and water in affecting the structure and reactivity of …


Wild Primates In Documentary Films: Biodiversity, Behavior, And Pedagogical Applications, Crystal Marie Riley Koenig May 2018

Wild Primates In Documentary Films: Biodiversity, Behavior, And Pedagogical Applications, Crystal Marie Riley Koenig

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The representation of wild primates in the nature documentary genre could have important implications for conservation and education. However, no prior research has looked at the content of this genre or its use in education. To fill this gap, the current research included a content analysis of all available documentaries focused on wild primates (n = 210) and a survey of 219 college-level anthropology instructors, with an emphasis on determining how primate biodiversity was portrayed, whether primate behavior was realistically depicted in documentaries, whether mistakes and inaccuracies were common, and how college instructors use primate documentaries as resources in their …


Dying Worlds: Environment, Ecology, And Empire In British Literature 1878-1919, Susanna Williams May 2018

Dying Worlds: Environment, Ecology, And Empire In British Literature 1878-1919, Susanna Williams

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that models of approaching environmental crisis in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British literature have been obscured by a false, mid-twentieth century, American-centered genealogy of environmentalism. As Victorian scientists made discoveries about deep time, entropy, and tidal drag, scientific and popular writers in the following decades came to terms with ideas about an earth made unfit for human existence and humans’ imminent extinction. Writers grappled with feelings of loss and grief, and they felt disoriented by time scales and energetic processes that were beyond the scope of a single human life. This overwhelming information required them to take a …