Digital Commons Network^™

Factors Affecting Presence And Occupancy Of Marabou Storks (Leptoptilos Crumeniferus) At Abattoirs And Slaughter Slabs Near Jinja, Uganda, Elena Arroway

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

This study examined the factors affecting the presence and occupancy of marabou storks at abattoirs and slaughter slabs near Jinja, Uganda. The average number of storks per unit area was compared across different areas within one large abattoir, including an analysis of the presence of free food, human disturbance, and other scavenging birds (pied crow, piapiac, spur-winged lapwing, and cattle egrets). Occupancy across two abattoirs and one slaughter slab was compared and related to the number of animals slaughtered daily at the facility. Direct observations at abattoirs and slaughter slabs were conducted for ten minutes with five minutes between observations. …

Riverine Commons And Institute Framework Plan, Community Design Center

Community Design Center Project Reports

The nonprofit Watershed Conservation Resource Center is restoring a 98-acre riparian wetland landscape near downtown Fayetteville as a River Commons and Institute. The Framework Plan combines watershed restoration with architecture and urban design to house a river education center, a visitor interpretive center, walking trails, passive recreation facilities including bird watching and canoeing, and outdoor heritage exhibitions. The Plan operates at the intersection of anthropology, ecology, and design in developing a lasting and robust riverine knowledge fund across space and time.

Y-Chromosomal Short Tandem Repeat Variation In Kurd, Assyrian, And Armenian Populations In Iraq Kurdistan, Sabriya K. Khalid, Yousif M. Fattah

Polytechnic Journal

Background and objectives: North central Middle Eastern countries Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria all have persistent Kurdish regions. Over thousands of years, several ethnicities have immigrated, settled, or resided in the region, including Turks, Persians, Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Chechens, and Azeris. The aim of the present study is to use a set of Y-STR to characterize the genetic structure of the Kurd, Assyrian, and Armenian population and build a phylogenetic tree among them. Methods: Eleven Y-chromosome STRs were evaluated in a total of 90 unrelated males from the Kurds, Armenians, and Assyrians populations in the Kurdistan region of Iraq …

Population Structure And Hybridisation In A Population Of Hawaiian Feral Chickens, Maria Luisa Martin Cerezo, Saioa Lopez, Lucy Van Dorp, Garrett Hellenthal, Martin Johnsson, Eben Gering, Rie Henriksen, Dominic Wright

Biology Faculty Articles

Chickens are believed to have inhabited the Hawaiian island of Kauai since the first human migrations around 1200AD, but numbers have peaked since the tropical storms Iniki and Iwa in the 1980s and 1990s that destroyed almost all the chicken coops on the island and released large numbers of domestic chickens into the wild. Previous studies have shown these now feral chickens are an admixed population between Red Junglefowl (RJF) and domestic chickens. Here, using genetic haplotypic data, we estimate the time of the admixture event between the feral population on the island and the RJF to 1981 (1976–1995), coinciding …

Physical Activity And Exercise For Hot Flashes: Trigger Or Treatment?, Sarah Witkowski, Rose Evard, Jacquelyn J. Rickson, Quinn White, Lynnette Leidy Sievert

Exercise and Sport Studies: Faculty Publications

Importance and Objective: Hot flashes (HFs) are a prevalent feature of menopause. Hot flashes can be bothersome and affect quality of life. However, HFs have also been associated with the risk for cardiovascular disease. Therefore, providing current evidence on the effect of therapies to reduce HFs can help patients and providers with decision making. This review provides details on the scientific evidence to date related to the effect of physical activity (PA) and exercise to alter the HF experience in women

Methods: The PubMed database was searched between June 2020 and June 2022 for currently available evidence regarding the relation …

Grasses As Biofactories: Scoping Out The Opportunities, Nick Roberts, K. Richardson, G. Bryan, Christine R. Voisey, W. Mcnabb, T. Conner, M. Christey, R. Johnson

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

1. Plant biopharming is set to dominate commercial recombinant protein expression for specific proteins.
2. The choice of plant species depends on a multitude of factors and is determined on a case- by-case basis.
3. As a leaf based expression system grasses would have to compete predominantly with tobacco and alfalfa.
4. The grass-endophyte symbiosis offers a number of unique possibilities for biopharming.

Recreating Pastoralist Futures, T. J. P. Lynam

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Research experience in southern Africa is used to reflect on key determinants of pastoral futures and how they might need to be addressed. The paper begins with a brief review of what we mean by marginality. A set of observations on key issues defining the option sets for pastoralism in the future is then presented. The first of these is that only a small number of structures or processes actually control the behaviour of social-ecological systems such as pastoralist systems. A second observation is that the future is so uncertain that there is a need to learn to design for …

The View From Ventress - 2021-22 Academic Year, University Of Mississippi, College Of Liberal Arts

Liberal Arts Newsletters

News from the College of Liberal Arts

Human Generation Times Across The Past 250,000 Years, Richard J Wang, Samer I Al-Saffar, Jeffrey Rogers, Matthew W Hahn

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The generation times of our recent ancestors can tell us about both the biology and social organization of prehistoric humans, placing human evolution on an absolute time scale. We present a method for predicting historical male and female generation times based on changes in the mutation spectrum. Our analyses of whole-genome data reveal an average generation time of 26.9 years across the past 250,000 years, with fathers consistently older (30.7 years) than mothers (23.2 years). Shifts in sex-averaged generation times have been driven primarily by changes to the age of paternity, although we report a substantial increase in female generation …

Integration Of Disability Studies And Culinary Instruction Into Nutrition Curriculum Development, Joanne Sullivan, Regina Subach, Janice Goldschmidt

Journal of Dietetic Education

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is currently promoting the advancement of cultural humility as a means for nutritional professionals to better appreciate the lived experience and identities of others as well as the power dynamics that create health inequalities. At the same time, the Academy has struggled to advance services to underserved populations such as those with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) and autism spectrum disorder. Here the authors argue that both goals can be achieved by involving nutrition students in the teaching of food preparation skills to individuals with IDD. Dietetic students emerge with an enhanced understanding of …

Rapid Growth In Late Cretaceous Sea Turtles Reveals Life History Strategies Similar To Extant Leatherbacks, Laura E. Wilson

Geosciences Faculty Publications

Modern sea turtle long bone osteohistology has been surprisingly well-studied, as it is used to understand sea turtle growth and the timing of life history events, thus informing conservation decisions. Previous histologic studies reveal two distinct bone growth patterns in extant sea turtle taxa, with Dermochelys (leatherbacks) growing faster than the cheloniids (all other living sea turtles). Dermochelys also has a unique life history compared to other sea turtles (large size, elevated metabolism, broad biogeographic distribution, etc.) that is likely linked to bone growth strategies. Despite the abundance of data on modern sea turtle bone growth, extinct sea turtle osteohistology …

Analysis Of Lepilemur Edwardsi Seasonal Acoustic Activity, Samantha Henry

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) has historically been used as a noninvasive technique to study biodiversity, activity patterns, distribution, and species dispersal. The use of acoustic data has expanded in ecological research; however, studies focusing on primates are underrepresented, especially for nocturnal species. This study seeks to increase the understanding of acoustic activity in the nocturnal Milne-Edwards' sportive lemur (Lepilemur edwardsi). This species is endangered and endemic to the lowland dry forests in northwest Madagascar. Specifically, this study aims to describe the daily and annual acoustic activity patterns of the L. edwardsi. The PAM survey was conducted using …

Orb-Web Spider Argiope (Araneidae) As Indigenous Arrow Poison Of G/Ui And G//Ana San Hunters In The Kalahari, Tharina L. Bird, Smith Moeti, Robert K. Hitchcock, Melinda C. Kelly, Lefang L. Chobolo, Nonofo Gotcha, Kgosi K. Moatlhodi, Leungo D. Mukoka, Emmanuel K. Sekopo, Caroline Simmrita Chaboo

University of Nebraska State Museum: Staff and Affiliates, Publications

Hunting has been crucial in early human evolution. Some San (Bushmen) of southern Africa still practice their indigenous hunting. The use of poisons is one remarkable aspect of their bow-and-arrow hunting but the sources, taxonomic identifications of species used, and recipes, are not well documented. This study reports on fieldwork to investigate recent indigenous hunting practices of G/ui and G//ana San communities in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), Botswana. Here we discuss their use of spider poison. The hunters use the contents of the opisthosoma (‘abdomen’) of a spider as sole ingredient of the arrow poison and discard the …

Sandhill Crane Lead Poisonings Linked To A Wetland Restoration, Andrew J. Caven, Joshua D. Wiese

Proceedings of the North American Crane Workshop

Toward the end of the 2018 spring sandhill crane migration on the Platte River in Nebraska, we detected 7 dead cranes near a recently restored wetland within 200 m of the river’s main channel. Topographic recontouring of the soils had occurred in January of 2018 and the area was not yet revegetated. The area had formerly hosted an excavated pond where hunting occurred for many years prior to the 1991 ban on lead ammunition for waterfowl harvest. Two of the cranes with no physical signs of trauma were submitted for necropsy. The cause of death in both cases as lead …

Manydogs Project: A Big Team Science Approach To Investigating Canine Behavior And Cognition, Daniela Alberghina, Emily E. Bray, Daphna Buchsbaum, Sarah- Elizabeth Byosiere, Julia Espinosa, Gitanjali E. Gnanadesikan, C.-N. Alexandrina Guran, Elizabeth Hare, Daniel J. Horschler, Ludwig Huber, Valerie A. Kuhlmeier, Evan L. Maclean, Madeline H. Pelgrim, Bryan Perez, Dana Ravid-Schurr, Liza Rothkoff, Courtney L. Sexton, Zachary A. Silver, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

Dogs have a special place in human history as the first domesticated species and play important roles in many cultures around the world. However, their role in scientific studies has been relatively recent. With a few notable exceptions (e.g., Darwin, Pavlov, Scott, and Fuller), domestic dogs were not commonly the subject of rigorous scientific investigation of behavior until the late 1990s. Although the number of canine science studies has increased dramatically over the last 20 years, most research groups are limited in the inferences they can draw because of the relatively small sample sizes used, along with the exceptional diversity …

Entangled Mangrove Roots: The Shrimp Industry, Ancestral Afro-Descendant People, And Community Resistance In Esmeraldas, Ecuador, O'Philia Le

Pitzer Senior Theses

Mangroves are one of the most important ecosystems because of the many services they provide on a local and global scale, but in contrast, are one of the most threatened by anthropogenic activities at a global level. Being sources of food for various kinds of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks, they are essential for the economy, culture, and livelihood of locals in Esmeraldas, Ecuador. This thesis takes an environmental justice approach in the discussion of the loss of mangroves in Esmeraldas, Ecuador. While toxic industries may not be apparent at first, environmental injustice prevails in adverse human health effects, environmental degradation, …

Cleome Serrulata, Rocky Mountain Beeweed, Uses By Native Americans, Marielle Gomez, John Ubelaker

Research

This paper examines the use of beeweed (Cleome serrulata), a native annual commonly called Rocky Mountain beeplant, as a traditional dye and paint source for pottery in Northern New Mexico.

Can Host Traits And Environmental Conditions Predict Helminth Fecundity And Length?, Finley Melnikoff

Pitzer Senior Theses

Helminths are some of the most common parasites in the world, infecting anything from humans to plants to mice. These parasites can play a massive role in determining a host's fitness and ultimately can have consequences on their body condition, reproductive ability, and infection transmission potential. Many factors influence the potential burden helminths have on their hosts–from host traits to environmental conditions–yet helminth fecundity and length have been studied very little in relation to these factors. Helminth fecundity–or how many eggs each female worm has in its ovaries–determines the transmission of the parasite, and helminth length is correlated with fecundity, …

Warm Land Surface Temperatures And Eastern Asian Homo, Robert Patalano, Hong Yang

Biological and Biomedical Sciences Department Faculty Journal Articles

Climate change and hominin evolution are inextricably linked. Pleistocene climate variability, for example, is thought to have had major influences on hominin morphology, brain size, and diversity. However, clear cause-and-effect relationships between specific climatic events and major evolutionary occurrences are difficult to establish due to temporal and spatial gaps in paleoclimatic, paleoenvironmental, and archaeological records. A new branched GDGT paleotemperature record from the Lantian Basin of Central China (Lu et al., 2022), a location known for the earliest hominin presence in East Asia, illustrates warm land surface temperatures over a two-million-year period between 2.6 and 0.6 Ma, a critical time …

Of Dogs And Bonds, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

In four of Charles Darwin’s classic works (Darwin, 1859, 1868, 1871, 1872), the domestic dog (Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris)¹ featured prominently, offering key examples to illustrate his ideas about evolution, domestication, comparative behavior and cognition, and emotional expression. Darwin held a clear fondness for dogs, and when replying to letters detailing the “sagacity” of dogs, he remarked “I can believe almost anything about them” (Darwin, 2014). Despite the early interest in their behavior and cognition by a number of leading scientists, dogs were rarely subject to serious investigation as a study species for 150 years. …

Social Cognitive Processes Explain Bias In Juror Decisions, Jaime J. Castrellon, Shabnam Hakimi, Jacob M. Parelman, Lun Yin, Jonathan R. Law, Jesse A.G. Skene, David A. Ball, Artemis Malekpour, Donald H. Beskind, Neil Vidmar, John M. Pearson, J. H. Pate Skene, R. Mckell Carter

Faculty Scholarship

Jury decisions are among the most consequential social decisions in which bias plays a notable role. While courts take measures to reduce the influence of non-evidentiary factors, jurors may still incorporate biases into their decisions. One common bias, crime-type bias, is the extent to which the perceived strength of a prosecutor’s case depends on the severity of the crime. Moral judgment, affect and social cognition have been proposed as core processes underlying this and other biases. Behavioral evidence alone has been insufficient to distinguish these explanations. To identify the mechanism underlying crime-type bias, we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging patterns …

American Sign Language (Asl): Linguistically And Cognitively - Why Deaf People Should Learn Asl & Learn It Early, Helena Isabel Berczes

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis presents data supporting the value of including American Sign Language (ASL) in the education of Deaf people. Historically, Deaf education has not fully included or has excluded ASL in an effort to focus on English due to a belief that ASL hinders learning English. ASL must fit within the definition of language with unique linguistic features for its inclusion in language education. Plasticity of the brain lends itself to the ability for language processing networks to form based on language experience. Deaf people can fully access visual language versus auditory language. Therefore, acquiring ASL early in life, during …

Traditional Ecological Philosophy, Michael J. Desrosier

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

A collection of creative essays that span a range of topics centered on Indigenous environmental wisdom.

The Long-Term Effects Of Wildfire Severity On Oak-Pine Communities And Their Microclimates, Scott Glenn Culbert

Theses and Dissertations--Forestry and Natural Resources

In the eastern U.S., fire-dependent tree species have historically dominated upland forest communities, but are now experiencing widespread regeneration challenges as a result of 20^th century fire suppression policies, and are being replaced by mesophytic species. Wildfires that contain areas of high burn severity may provide an important means of mitigating these challenges and facilitating fire-dependent species regeneration and recruitment into larger size classes. One mechanism by which high-severity fire can accomplish this is by modifying understory microclimate characteristics to be more conducive to these species’ growth. A wildfire within the Daniel Boone National Forest, Kentucky, USA, provided the …

Between Choice And Compulsion: An Examination And Critique Of The Evolution Of 'Original Sin', Matthew James Wynn

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

“Why are we the way that we are?” is one of the hardest questions to answer because it requires grasping the origin of human beings. This has left philosophers and theologians in century-long debates on forming a “cosmogony of ontology” (i.e., how the origin of the universe informs the human condition). The concept, “original sin” was developed by a North African theologian named Augustine (354 – 430 CE). Augustine’s reading of Genesis 3, and inaccurate translation of Romans 5:12, taught that a person is born morally culpable for a fault antecedent to their existence. This way of thinking about the …

The Relationship Between Gluteus Maximus Activation And Running Kinematics In Recreational Distance Runners, Ricardo Sanchez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Within the running community, there are strategies that a trainer will utilize to improve the performance of an athlete. One of these strategies suggests that an increase in activation of the Gluteus Maximus (GM) muscle will result in an increase in the efficiency of runners. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between GM activation and running kinematics.

Methods: Three female and seven male recreational runners (27±8 yrs) from California Polytechnic State University, Humboldt and the local community. A Pearson product-correlation was used to determine the strength of the relationship between Gluteus Maximus activation and kinematic …

Intestinal Parasite Infection In Tibetan Macaques (Macac Thebetana) In Eastern China, Miarisoa Ramilison

All Master's Theses

Grooming is one of the crucial social behaviors of primate species that functions to remove parasites and maintain social bonds. Although, much data exists to support the idea that grooming is essential in forming and sustaining social bonds among individuals, there is a lack of information about the extent to which it removes ectoparasites or contributes to the spread of internal parasites. To fill this gap in the literature, we investigated the relationship between social contact behavior including grooming and intestinal parasite infection in Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana). This species lives at Mt. Huangshan in China. We used …

Forest Patrol Guards And Caregivers' Perceptions Of Wild Chimpanzee Populations Near Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Sierra Leone, Virginia Sanchez

All Master's Theses

Relationships between humans and alloprimates, in particular between humans and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), have occurred for centuries. Chimpanzee discoveries by western philosophers date back to the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and their earliest accounts in West Africa suggest that chimpanzees interacted and lived in close contact with humans, thus shaping the way both species adapt to their environments. Humans occupy this same space along with chimpanzees, and we need them as much as they need us. The continued decline in wild populations of species such as chimpanzees can have negative impacts for biodiversity. Chimpanzees have a …

Comparison Of Bone Robustness Between Fore- And Hindlimb In Neonatal And Infant Galago, Jeremy Busken

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

According to Wolff’s law, bone is constantly subject to change based on loading patterns (Ruff et al., 2006). Those subjected to greater stress become more robust by increasing bone mineral density and often changing geometric properties. Previous studies of primate anatomy have found significant differences in bone robustness between the fore- and hindlimbs in adult leaping primates. Because leaping primates, such as Galago senegalensis and Galago moholi, subject their hindlimbs to much greater stress, this difference in robustness may come as a result of bone functional adaptation/Wolff’s law. This study sought to investigate this possibility by testing neonatal and infant …

Sound Speed Estimation For Distributed Aberration Correction In Laterally Varying Media, Rehman Ali, Trevor M Mitcham, Melanie Singh, Marvin M Doyley, Richard R Bouchard, Jeremy J Dahl, Nebojsa Duric

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Spatial variation in sound speed causes aberration in medical ultrasound imaging. Although our previous work has examined aberration correction in the presence of a spatially varying sound speed, practical implementations were limited to layered media due to the sound speed estimation process involved. Unfortunately, most models of layered media do not capture the lateral variations in sound speed that have the greatest aberrative effect on the image. Building upon a Fourier split-step migration technique from geophysics, this work introduces an iterative sound speed estimation and distributed aberration correction technique that can model and correct for aberrations resulting from laterally varying …