Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Power, Subjectivity, And Life In Spain: A Continuation Of Elite Power, Matthew Mason

Master's Theses

On December 20, Spain will hold national elections to determine the new prime minister and national and local parliaments. These elections will be another crossroads in the long history of Spain. The elections come about in a political and social atmosphere of ‘change’ and ‘regeneration,’ marked by the rise of two new political parties, Podemos and Ciudanos. These parties are the new forces in the political scene in Spain. This atmosphere of change is the result of the 2008 economic crisis. The economic crisis of 2008 was not only an economic crisis in Spain, but it provoked a political and …

Wild Things: Stories, Transition And The Sacred In Ecological Social Movements, Luigi Russi

Luigi Russi

This article examines the role of stories in ecological activism. It first situates stories inside object ecologies, encompassing relationships of reliance, care and maintenance of things. It suggests that ecologies of this sort work as an extended mind where our cognition takes place and meaning is apprehended, so that what we can think of is always a function of what we have Ôat handÕ. The article then considers how these ecologies are impacted by discourses on climate change and peak oil, which stress the impossibility to keep ordering our lives through the same entanglements that have supported them so far. …

Identifying Missing Dictionary Entries With Frequency-Conserving Context Models, Jake Ryland Williams, Eric M. Clark, James P. Bagrow, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

In an effort to better understand meaning from natural language texts, we explore methods aimed at organizing lexical objects into contexts. A number of these methods for organization fall into a family defined by word ordering. Unlike demographic or spatial partitions of data, these collocation models are of special importance for their universal applicability. While we are interested here in text and have framed our treatment appropriately, our work is potentially applicable to other areas of research (e.g., speech, genomics, and mobility patterns) where one has ordered categorical data (e.g., sounds, genes, and locations). Our approach focuses on the phrase …

Characterizing The Google Books Corpus: Strong Limits To Inferences Of Socio-Cultural And Linguistic Evolution, Eitan Adam Pechenick, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

It is tempting to treat frequency trends from the Google Books data sets as indicators of the "true" popularity of various words and phrases. Doing so allows us to draw quantitatively strong conclusions about the evolution of cultural perception of a given topic, such as time or gender. However, the Google Books corpus suffers from a number of limitations which make it an obscure mask of cultural popularity. A primary issue is that the corpus is in effect a library, containing one of each book. A single, prolific author is thereby able to noticeably insert new phrases into the Google …

Effects Of Skeletal Streetscape Design On Perceived Safety, Chester Harvey, Lisa Aultman-Hall, Stephanie E. Hurley, Austin Troy

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

It is important for planners and urban designers to understand how physical characteristics of urban streetscapes contribute to perceptions of them as safe, comfortable urban spaces. While urban design theory offers numerous suggestions for successful streetscapes there is meager empirical evidence of their effects. We suggest that this is largely due to precision and sample size limitations on audit-based physical design and human perception measurements. This paper overcomes these limitations by identifying a key set of "streetscape skeleton" design variables that can be efficiently measured using a GIS-based method. It then measures these variables on a large and diverse sample …

If You've Seen One Worm, Have You Seen Them All? Spatial, Community, And Genetic Variability Of Tubificid Communities In Montana, Nilanjan Lodh, Donna M. Rizzo, Billie L. Kerans, Stephanie Mcginnis, Nikolaos Fytilis, Lori Stevens

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Genetic studies are recognized increasingly as important for understanding naturally occurring disease dynamics and are used to predict host genetic diversity and coevolutionary processes and to identify species composition in ecological communities. Tubifex tubifex, the definitive host of the whirling disease parasite Myxobolus cerebralis, comprises 6 known lineages that vary widely in parasite susceptibility. We used 16S ribosomal DNA (16S rDNA) to identify relationships among genetic variability of 3 oligochaete genera (T. tubifex, Rhyacodrilus spp., and Ilyodrilus spp.; Oligochaeta:Tubificidae), oligochaete assemblage composition, and the presence of whirling disease in 9 locations across 4 watersheds in Montana, USA. We assessed genetic …

Transportation And Sanitation Drivers Of Land Use/Land Cover Change: Loss Of The Jamaica Bay Wetlands, Margaret Joy Cytryn

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents an analysis (1830-2014) of the historical events of land use/land cover change in the Jamaica Bay estuary, identification of the agents of change, and a perspective on the potential drivers of transportation and sanitation in land use/land cover change.

Climate Change Sentiment On Twitter: An Unsolicited Public Opinion Poll, Emily M. Cody, Andrew J. Reagan, Lewis Mitchell, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Christopher M. Danforth

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

The consequences of anthropogenic climate change are extensively debated through scientific papers, newspaper articles, and blogs. Newspaper articles may lack accuracy, while the severity of findings in scientific papers may be too opaque for the public to understand. Social media, however, is a forum where individuals of diverse backgrounds can share their thoughts and opinions. As consumption shifts from old media to new, Twitter has become a valuable resource for analyzing current events and headline news. In this research, we analyze tweets containing the word "climate" collected between September 2008 and July 2014. Through use of a previously developed sentiment …

Zipfs Law Holds For Phrases, Not Words, Jake Ryland Williams, Paul R. Lessard, Suma Desu, Eric M. Clark, James P. Bagrow, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

With Zipfs law being originally and most famously observed for word frequency, it is surprisingly limited in its applicability to human language, holding over no more than three to four orders of magnitude before hitting a clear break in scaling. Here, building on the simple observation that phrases of one or more words comprise the most coherent units of meaning in language, we show empirically that Zipfs law for phrases extends over as many as nine orders of rank magnitude. In doing so, we develop a principled and scalable statistical mechanical method of random text partitioning, which opens up a …

Delta Narratives: Saving The Historical And Cultural Heritage Of The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Steve Boilard, Robert Benedetti, Margit Aramburu, Gregg Camfield, Philip Garone, Jennifer Helzer, Reuben Smith, William Swagerty, Marcia Eymann, Tod Ruhstaller, David Stuart, Leigh Johnsen, Dylan Mcdonald, Michael J. Wurtz, Blake Roberts, Margo Lentz-Meyer

College of the Pacific Faculty Reports

From August 2014 through July 2015, the Delta Narratives project, on contract to the Delta Protection Commission, addressed two questions. First, in what ways does the historical experience of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta contribute to an understanding of key themes in regional and American history? Second, how might Delta stories gain wider appreciation within the region, throughout Northern California, and among people in the rest of California and beyond?

Scholars on the project team documented ways the history of the Delta illustrates trends in land management and reclamation, technological shifts in transportation and agriculture, the impact of ethnicity and labor …

Entropy And The Economy Of Violence: Anthropophagy And Sacrificial Violence In Late Modernity, Benjamin Corey Webster

Masters Theses

In this project, I explore the relationship of biosocial perspectives, specifically the study of energy and entropy, to contemporary work in criminology and social theory. After working through an elaboration of entropy, I explore its relevance to social life through an eclectic but necessary survey of a key set of scholars whose work focuses upon the sacrifice and criminalization of the poor, the intensification of exclusion and genocidal contexts, and finally, the possibility of a politics of change through indigenous knowledges. Bringing these various schools of thought together allows us to see the interdisciplinary linkages that might better reveal the …

Impacts Of Community-Based Natural Resource Management On Wealth, Food Security And Child Health In Tanzania, Sharon Pailler, Robin Naidoo, Neil D. Burgess, Olivia E. Freeman, Brendan Fisher

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is a major global strategy for enhancing conservation outcomes while also seeking to improve rural livelihoods; however, little evidence of socioeconomic outcomes exists. We present a national-level analysis that empirically estimates socioeconomic impacts of CBNRM across Tanzania, while systematically controlling for potential sources of bias. Specifically, we apply a difference-indifferences model to national-scale, cross-sectional data to estimate the impact of three different CBNRM governance regimes on wealth, food security and child health, considering differential impacts of CBNRM on wealthy and poor populations. We also explore whether or not longer-standing CBNRM efforts provide more benefits than …

Mining, Resistance And Livelihood In Rural Bangladesh, Md Rashedul Alam

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In 2006, over fifty thousand people in the Phulbari Sub-District of Bangladesh mobilized against an open-pit coal mining-project that posed serious environmental and social risks. The state authorities negotiated with the protesters intensively over four days to reach an agreement. However, the state failed to fulfill the agreement, and the protest movement continued. The agrarian communities successfully halted the mining project for the last nine years. My research aims to understand how the protesters resisted this project. My objectives have been to explore the practices of a grassroots movement, attendant transformations in the sociopolitical landscape and role of the state …

Notes From The Field: Lessons Learned From Using Ecosystem Service Approaches To Inform Real-World Decisions, Mary Ruckelshaus, Emily Mckenzie, Heather Tallis, Anne Guerry, Gretchen Daily, Peter Kareiva, Stephen Polasky, Taylor Ricketts, Nirmal Bhagabati, Spencer A. Wood, Joanna Bernhardt

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

While there have been rapid advances in assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES), a critical remaining challenge is how to move from scientific knowledge to real-world decision making. We offer 6 lessons from our experiences applying new approaches and tools for quantifying BES in 20 pilot demonstrations: (1) Applying a BES approach is most effective in leading to policy change as part of an iterative science-policy process; (2) simple ecological production function models have been useful in a diverse set of decision contexts, across a broad range of biophysical, social, and governance systems. Key limitations of simple models arise …

Reply To Garcia Et Al.: Common Mistakes In Measuring Frequency-Dependent Word Characteristics, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Eric M. Clark, Suma Desu, Morgan R. Frank, Andrew J. Reagan, Jake Ryland Williams, Lewis Mitchell, Kameron Decker Harris, Isabel M. Kloumann, James P. Bagrow, Karine Megerdoomian, Matthew T. Mcmahon, Brian F. Tivnan, Christopher M. Danforth

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

L’Inscription Territoriale De La Peur Dans Le Roman Urbain Camerounais De Langue Française, Étienne-Marie Lassi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article analyzes the fictionalization of Cameroonian urban socio-political and geographical realities as well as the literary effects derived from the inclusion of real urban spaces in the novel. Based on the concepts of ecology of fear and existential territory, it shows that in Cameroon urban novels, the physical environment is a factor of instability of individuals and communities. It speculates that, in the novels studied, physical environment crystallizes political, social and psychological fears and anguish and presents itself as an important issue both in the interpretation of literary texts and in the resolution of postcolonial crises.

Framing Fracking: The Environmental And Social Implications Of Hyraulic Fracturing, Lindsay Cohen

Honors Theses

Hydraulic fracturing is a process currently used to obtain natural gas that is trapped in rock, which has low porosity and permeability. The natural gas obtained from this process had had positive impacts such as creating jobs and boosting our economy, but has also had some detrimental impacts on our environment, as well as people.

Text Mixing Shapes The Anatomy Of Rank-Frequency Distributions, Jake Ryland Williams, James P. Bagrow, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Natural languages are full of rules and exceptions. One of the most famous quantitative rules is Zipf's law, which states that the frequency of occurrence of a word is approximately inversely proportional to its rank. Though this "law" of ranks has been found to hold across disparate texts and forms of data, analyses of increasingly large corpora since the late 1990s have revealed the existence of two scaling regimes. These regimes have thus far been explained by a hypothesis suggesting a separability of languages into core and noncore lexica. Here we present and defend an alternative hypothesis that the two …

Adolescent Girls, Human Rights And The Expanding Climate Emergency, Holly G. Atkinson, Judith Bruce

Publications and Research

Many adolescent girls—the poorest girls in the poorest communities—already live in an “emergency.” Humanitarian crises only amplify the call on their coping and caring capacities, while exacerbating their vulnerabilities. The frequency and intensity of emergencies, including natural disasters, conflicts, and infectious disease outbreaks such as Ebola, appear to be growing.¹ These emergencies threaten entire communities and whole countries, often with global implications. Many become virtually permanent. The authors urge key actors responding to both the threats and opportunities that climate change poses to understand adolescent girls as exceptionally at risk on the one hand, and as exceptionally resilient and …

A Comparison Of Infant And Toddler Reactions To Strangers Who Have Similar Attributes To An Established Attachment Figure Vs. Strangers Who Have Different Attributes, Jessica Hamilton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A child's early attachment experiences can have a lasting impact on later development. Early attachment relationships often result in greater Social and cognitive skills, as well as better school performance (Peisner et al., 1999). For these reasons, it is important to address those components that may contribute to secure attachments with care givers in the child care setting. The current study looked at the reactions of infants and toddlers when presented with two previously unknown individuals: one who physically resembled an established caregiver with whom they had already established attachment and one who looked different from this caregiver. The study …

Robustness Of Spatial Micronetworks, Thomas C. Mcandrew, Christopher M. Danforth, James P. Bagrow

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Power lines, roadways, pipelines, and other physical infrastructure are critical to modern society. These structures may be viewed as spatial networks where geographic distances play a role in the functionality and construction cost of links. Traditionally, studies of network robustness have primarily considered the connectedness of large, random networks. Yet for spatial infrastructure, physical distances must also play a role in network robustness. Understanding the robustness of small spatial networks is particularly important with the increasing interest in microgrids, i.e., small-area distributed power grids that are well suited to using renewable energy resources. We study the random failures of links …

Participation And Contribution In Crowdsourced Surveys, Robert Swain, Alex Berger, Josh Bongard, Paul Hines

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

This paper identifies trends within and relationships between the amount of participation and the quality of contributions in three crowdsourced surveys. Participants were asked to perform a collective problem solving task that lacked any explicit incentive: they were instructed not only to respond to survey questions but also to pose new questions that they thought might-if responded to by others-predict an outcome variable of interest to them. While the three surveys had very different outcome variables, target audiences, methods of advertisement, and lengths of deployment, we found very similar patterns of collective behavior. In particular, we found that: the rate …

Nutrition-Related Policy And Environmental Strategies To Prevent Obesity In Rural Communities: A Systematic Review Of The Literature, 2002-2013, Larissa Calancie, Jennifer Leeman, Stephanie B. Jilcott Pitts, Laura Kettel Khan, Sheila Fleischhacker, R. Evenson Kelly, Michelle Schreiner, Carmen Byker, Clint Owens, Jared Mcguirt, Ellen Barnidge, Wesley Dean, Donna Johnson, Jane Kolodinsky, Emily Piltch, Courtney Pinard, Emilee Quinn, Lauren Whetstone, Alice Ammerman

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Introduction Residents of rural communities in the United States are at higher risk for obesity than their urban and suburban counterparts. Policy and environmental-change strategies supporting healthier dietary intake can prevent obesity and promote health equity. Evidence in support of these strategies is based largely on urban and suburban studies; little is known about use of these strategies in rural communities. The purpose of this review was to synthesize available evidence on the adaptation, implementation, and effectiveness of policy and environmental obesity-prevention strategies in rural settings. Methods The review was guided by a list of Centers for Disease Control and …

Utopian Visions In Radical Communities: Burning Man, Anthony J. Colella Sir

Capstone Collection

This research paper is a collection of utopian visions gathered from the Radical Community of Burning Man. The goal of this research is to collect a sample of utopian visions from this community, organize them, and share them in a way that can be effectively used in a professional and/or activist environment. Research was done in the fall of 2013 at the Burning Man Festival, in 2014 at a Regional Burning Man Event: Lakes of Fire, and with the Burner Community around these times. The primary research question is: "What are utopian visions of the 'Burning Man' radical community?" The …

Human Language Reveals A Universal Positivity Bias, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Eric M. Clark, Suma Desu, Morgan R. Frank, Andrew J. Reagan, Jake Ryland Williams, Lewis Mitchell, Kameron Decker Harris, Isabel M. Kloumann, James P. Bagrow, Karine Megerdoomian, Matthew T. Mcmahon, Brian F. Tivnan, Christopher M. Danforth

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Using human evaluation of 100,000 words spread across 24 corpora in 10 languages diverse in origin and culture, we present evidence of a deep imprint of human sociality in language, observing that (i ) the words of natural human language possess a universal positivity bias, (ii ) the estimated emotional content of words is consistent between languages under translation, and (iii ) this positivity bias is strongly independent of frequency of word use. Alongside these general regularities, we describe interlanguage variations in the emotional spectrum of languages that allow us to rank corpora. We also show how our word evaluations …

Towards A Model Of Optimal Family Leisure, Keri Schwab, Daniel Dustin

Keri Schwab

Towards a model of optimal family leisure Keri A. Schwaba and Daniel L. Dustin Recreation, Parks, & Tourism Administration Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA; bDepartment of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA Leisure is an important component of family life, yet many families struggle to focus on or participate in family leisure. This study examined the structural characteristics of family life that can impede or promote family leisure. Employing a systems perspective, a literature-based model of family leisure was created, and in-depth interview data were gathered from three families …

Do Pollinators Contribute To Nutritional Health?, Alicia M. Ellis, Samuel S. Myers, Taylor H. Ricketts

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Despite suggestions that animal pollinators are crucial for human nutritional health, no studies have actually tested this claim. Here, we combined data on crop pollination requirements, food nutrient densities, and actual human diets to predict the effects of pollinator losses on the risk of nutrient deficiency. In four developing countries and across five nutrients, we found that 0 to 56% of populations would become newly at risk if pollinators were removed. Increases in risk were most pronounced for vitamin A in populations with moderate levels of total nutrient intake. Overall, the effects of pollinator decline varied widely among populations and …

Mobility In The Mangroves: Catch Rates, Daily Decisions, And Dynamics Of Artisanal Fishing In A Coastal Commons, Christine M. Beitl

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

This paper integrates institutional theories of the commons with insights from geography and human behavioral ecology to explore the spatial and temporal dynamics of artisanal fishing in Ecuador’s coastal mangrove swamps. The focus is on the cockle fishery commons characterized by a mixture of formal institutional arrangements and an informal division of fishing space that partially influences fisher decisions about where and when to fish. Individual decisions are further explained to a certain degree by the patch choice model since fishers often move on to new grounds when their catch rates fall below average. These optimizing strategies requiring rotation within …

Mainstreaming Early Warning Systems In Development And Planning Processes: Multilevel Implementation Of Sendai Framework In Indus And Sahel, Asim Zia, Courtney Hammond Wagner

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

The third UN World Congress on Disaster Risk Reduction, held in Sendai, Japan in March 2015, agreed on a new framework to guide disaster risk reduction policy and practice for the next 15 years. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR) leaves important implementation issues unspecified and potentially creates both problems and opportunities for complex, multilevel governance systems in coping with hazards and disastrous events. Early warning systems (EWS), if built into the mainstream of planning for development and disaster relief and recovery, could present a significant opportunity to realize many SFDRR goals. We explore the complexities of …

Building On Social Capital To Improve Health: The Interactional Approach To Community Development, Matthew Charles Tomlin Mr

Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development—Student Research

Since political scientist, Robert Putnam, (1995) brought the concept of social capital into popular discourse, there has been a surge in debate over its definition, causes, and consequences in a range of social science disciplines. While social capital has been found to support self-rated overall health at the state level (Kawachi et al, 1999), there is still a dearth of data and research on localities in different regions of the country. This study analyzes survey data collected in the United Way of McLean County’s 2014 Community Assessment to better understand the dynamic between social capital and health in one Central …