Digital Commons Network^™

Corticosterone As A Mediator Of The Tradeoff Between Survival And Reproduction, Stephen Harold Patterson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Organisms cannot simultaneously maximize their investment in survival and reproductive success, thus these traits are said to trade off against one another. The physiological mechanisms that help guide these investment decisions are not fully understood. Stress-induced corticosterone is a strong candidate mechanism, because it is thought to promote survival-oriented behavior and physiology at the expense of non-critical functions such as reproduction. In this dissertation, I studied multiple components of corticosterone physiology (baseline corticosterone and stress-induced corticosterone) in several species of passerine birds to address this question from a variety of angels. I first provide direct support for corticosterone playing a …

D-Colorable Digraphs With Large Girth, Liam Rafferty

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In 1959 Paul Erdos (Graph theory and probability, Canad. J. Math. 11 (1959), 34-38) famously proved, nonconstructively, that there exist graphs that have both arbitrarily large girth and arbitrarily large chromatic number. This result, along with its proof, has had a number of descendants (D. Bokal, G. Fijavz, M. Juvan, P.M. Kayll and B. Mohar, The circular chromatic number of a digraph, J. Graph Theory 46 (2004), 227-240; B. Bollobas and N. Sauer, Uniquely colourable graphs with large girth, Canad. J. Math. 28 (1976), 1340-1344; J. Nesetril and X. Zhu, On sparse graphs with given colorings and homomorphisms, J. Combin. …

Debt Structure In The West: Money And Gift, And The Influence On Community, James A. Becker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Debt structures all relationships in America as well as all of our economic material exchanges. Historically debt has always been seen thus with our religious texts being written both in the terminology of the metaphysical and the economical combining them together in an attempt to understand the social and economic systems that individuals live in. At the core of the social and economic systems is community. In America the myth of the gift is a dominant catalyst that uses debt to make community through time. In order to study the structure of debt within America I will be using an …

Aesthetics Of The Brink: Environmental Crisis And The Sublime In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein And Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Aaron Francis Schneeberger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Mary Shelley�s Frankenstein is today remembered as the progenitor of the science fiction genre, the first major literary work to link a long history of fictional narratives concerning the origins of life � notably drawing itself from the stories of Prometheus and Milton�s Paradise Lost � to the scientific rationalism of the enlightenment. Of the science fiction stories that would follow, Philip K. Dick�s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? perhaps remains one of the closest to Shelley�s novel in terms of its concerns and themes. Dick�s text is concerned with the thematic of the creation of human simulacra, but …

Application Of Randomized Branch Sampling To Conifer Trees: Estimating Crown Biomass, Ryan Michael Schlecht

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Randomized branch sampling (RBS) is a sampling scheme which can be implemented to estimate many different attributes of an object displaying a branched or forked form. The aboveground structure of trees (stem and branches) lends itself naturally to this type of sampling design. RBS utilizes the branching form of the crown itself to draw probability samples and generate unbiased estimates. When implemented correctly, RBS can also greatly reduce the costs in time and labor of sampling when the purpose is estimating attributes borne within crown portions of trees. However, RBS was created for and has been implemented primarily in applications …

Indirect Interactions And Plant Community Structure, Erik Aschehoug

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

no abstract

Informal Mathematics Activities And The Beliefs Of Elementary Teacher Candidates, Matt B. Roscoe

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study sought to determine the relationship between participation in informal mathematics activities and the formal-to-informal beliefs of university teacher candidates in elementary education. Three classes of preservice teachers participated in the study through their enrollment in a content mathematics course for elementary education majors. Four informal mathematics activities were employed as part of the course requirements. Pre and post formal-to-informal beliefs about mathematics and mathematics instruction were measured using a Likert-scale beliefs assessment instrument used by Collier (1972) and Seaman et al. (2005). Changes in beliefs about mathematics and mathematics instruction were compared to a control group. Student reflection …

Literature Meets Biology: An Evolutionary Approach To Literary Studies, Samantha Reneé Dwyer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The following thesis engages with the relatively young development in literary studies, called evocriticism, which uses scientific perspectives to look at literature. It first gives an overview of the current state of English departments and their decline in numbers, budgets, and cultural relevancy, mostly due to outdated modes of literary criticism and theory. It then introduces evocriticism as a new paradigm for studying literature. Literature and the arts are studied as human behaviors with possible adaptive benefits. Individual texts are interpreted through a scientific lens, using the theory of evolution to find cultural and biological human universals that can help …

Metadata Analysis Of The Montana Department Of Environmental Quality's Reference Stream Project Datasets, Jonathan Samuel Leiman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This Master’s Thesis examines certain aspects of the frequently incongruous relationship in the State of Montana between the natural science of water quality measurement and the actual practices to which water quality management research is put. These discordances can be the source of misunderstandings about the purposes and uses for which data were collected. Moreover, miscues regarding the sharing of information among stakeholders have become more significant as adaptive and shared management programs continue to expand. At the core of this study are assessments of the value of water quality data generated by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) …

The Statistical Relationship Among Number Sense, Computational Fluency, And Montana Comprehensive Assessment System, Amy Jo Burland

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

According to recent studies, less than half of U.S. students perform at the proficient or advanced levels in mathematics by the time they reach grade 4 and the trend continues through high school. In order to improve instruction many districts have adopted scientifically based researched programs such as Response to Intervention (RTI), which allows for the examination of the effectiveness of the core curriculum that is being used in a school or classroom. In addition, RTI provides school administrators and teachers with educational tools to identify students who may be at-risk of failing and to inform teachers of supplemental instruction …

The Szego Kernel For Non-Pseudoconvex Domains In C2, Michael Gilliam

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

There are many operators associated with a domain Ω ⊂ â„‚ⁿ with smooth boundary ∂Ω. There are two closely related projections that are of particular interest. The Bergman projection B is the orthogonal projection of L²(Ω) onto the closed subspace L²(Ω)∩O(Ω), where O(Ω)is the space of all holomorphic functions on Ω. The Szeg� projection S is the orthogonal projection of L²(∂Ω) onto the space H²(Ω) of boundary values of elements of O(Ω). These projection operators have integral representations

B[f](z) = ∫_Ω,f(w)B(z,w)dw, S[f](z) = ∫_{∂Ω, …}

The Categories Of Graphs, Demitri Joel Plessas

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In traditional studies of graph theory, the graphs allow only one edge to be incident to any two vertices, not necessarily distinct, and the graph morphisms must map edges to edges and vertices to vertices while preserving incidence. We refer to these restricted morphisms as strict morphisms. We relax the conditions on the graphs by allowing any number of edges to be incident to any two vertices, as well as relaxing the condition on graph morphisms by allowing edges to be mapped to vertices, provided that incidence is still preserved. We call the broader category of these graphs and …

The Influence Of Environmental Variables On Predicting Rare-Plant Habitat In The Nez Perce National Forest, Thor Burbach

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Habitat suitability modeling is widely-used in both biogeography and ecology to characterize the biophysical requirements and distribution of plant and animal species. Many of these modeling efforts use different variants of essentially the same topo-climatic variables (elevation, slope, aspect, precipitation, and temperature). However, these commonly used variables may not sufficiently explain the distribution of rare-plant species, which may have additional habitat needs. The aim of this project was to determine guidelines for selection of variables to include in statistical modeling efforts to predict suitable rare-plant habitat. Additionally, how background extent, data resolution, sample size, and various ranking criteria effect environmental …

Seeking More Than Nothing: Two Elementary Teachers Conceptions Of Zero, Gale Russell, Egan J. Chernoff

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Zero is a complex and important concept within mathematics, yet prior research has demonstrated that students, pre-service teachers, and teachers all have misconceptions about and/or lack of knowledge of zero. Using a hermeneutic approach based upon Gadamer’s philosophy, this study examined how two elementary mathematics teachers understand zero and how and when zero enters into their teaching of mathematics. The results of this study add new insights into the understandings of teachers and students related to zero and the origins, relationships between, and consequences of those understandings. Significant gaps and misconceptions within both teachers’ understandings of zero suggest the need …

The Education Of Mathematically Gifted Students: Some Complexities And Questions, Roza Leikin

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In this paper I analyze some complexities in the education of mathematically gifted students. The list of issues presented in this paper is not inclusive; however, all of them seem to be typical on the international scope. Among these issues are: (1) the gap between research in mathematics education and the research in gifted education; (2) the role of creativity in the education of the gifted and the theoretical perspective on the relationship between creativity and giftedness, and (3) teaching the gifted and the teachers of gifted, including relationships between the equity principle in mathematics education and views on the …

Historical Perspectives On A Program For Mathematically Talented Students, Harvey B. Keynes, Jonathan Rogness

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The University of Minnesota Talented Youth Mathematics Program (UMTYMP) is a highly accelerated program for students who are extremely talented in mathematics. This paper describes our experiences running UMTYMP since its inception thirty years ago, the challenges in implementing such a program, and how changes in the student body have necessitated changes in the program over three decades.

Climate-Mediated Nitrogen And Carbon Dynamics In A Tropical Watershed, Ashley P. Ballantyne, P. A. Baker, S. C. Fritz, B. Poulter

Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences Faculty Publications

Climate variability affects the capacity of the biosphere to assimilate and store important elements, such as nitrogen and carbon. Here we present biogeochemical evidence from the sediments of tropical Lake Titicaca indicating that large hydrologic changes in response to global glacial cycles during the Quaternary were accompanied by major shifts in ecosystem state. During prolonged glacial intervals, lake level was high and the lake was in a stable nitrogen-limited state. In contrast, during warm dry interglacials lake level fell and rates of nitrogen concentrations increased by a factor of 4–12, resulting in a fivefold to 24-fold increase in organic carbon …

Biogeochemical Response Of Alpine Lakes To A Recent Increase In Dust Deposition In The Southwestern, Us, Ashley P. Ballantyne, J. Brahney, D. Fernandez, C. L. Lawrence, J. Saros, J. C. Neff

Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences Faculty Publications

The deposition of dust has recently increased significantly over some regions of the western US. Here we explore how changes in dust deposition have affected the biogeochemistry of two alpine watersheds in Colorado, US. We first reconstruct recent changes in the mass accumulation rate of sediments and then we use isotopic measurements in conjunction with a Bayesian mixing model to infer that approximately 95% of the inorganic fraction of lake sediments is derived from dust. Elemental analyses of modern dust indicate that dust is enriched in Ca, Cr, Cu, Mg, Ni, and in one watershed, Fe and P relative to …

Prospective Teachers’ Conceptions About Teaching Mathematically Talented Students: Comparative Examples From Canada And Israel, Mark Applebaum, Viktor Freiman, Roza Leikin

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In this paper we analyze prospective mathematics teachers' conceptions about teaching mathematically talented students. Forty-two Israeli participants learning at mathematics education courses for getting their teaching certificates, and fifty-four Canadian pre-service (K-8) teachers participating in mathematics didactics course were asked to solve a challenging mathematical task. We performed comparative analysis of problem-solving strategies, solution results and participants' success. Based on the discussion with 25 Israeli participants we composed an attitude questionnaire, in which prospective teachers were asked to express their degree of agreement with statements expressing different beliefs about education of mathematically talented students. The questionnaire was presented to 56 …

Mathematical And Didactical Enrichment For Pre-Service Teachers: Mentoring Online Problem Solving In The Casmi Project, Manon Leblanc, Viktor Freiman

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In order to teach successfully, future teachers should not only be educated about students’ conceptions, but also about different forms of knowledge and classroom culture. In our research, we examined whether the participation in the Internet-based challenging problem solving community CASMI contributes to the development of the aforementioned awareness and understanding in order to meet the needs of all students including the gifted ones. The results obtained enabled us to note that the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the project as a source of enrichment are mainly positive. However, analyzing schoolchildren’s strategies, the participants preferred to use pre-determined criteria instead of …

Disrupting Gifted Teenager’S Mathematical Identity With Epistemological Messiness, Paul Betts, Laura Mcmaster

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Mathematics is widely perceived as a universal and uncontested discipline, contrary to the philosophy of mathematics literature. Other researchers have considered the potential role of philosophy in school, but there is little work with gifted students engaged with issues concerning the nature of mathematics. We developed a philosophy of mathematics unit intended to enlarge gifted students’ perceptions of the nature of mathematics by exposing the uncritical and tidy rendering of mathematics within school math. Using a narrative methodology, we attended to gifted student’s students’ stories of relationship with mathematics, based on the premise that a person’s relationship with mathematics is …

Gifted Students And Advanced Mathematics, Edward J. Barbeau

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The extension to a wide population of secondary education in many countries seems to have led to a weakening of the mathematics curriculum. In response, many students have been classified as “gifted” so that they can access a stronger program. Apart from the difficulties that might arise in actually determining which students are gifted (is it always clear what the term means?), there are dangers inherent in programs that might be devised even for those that are truly talented.

Sometimes students are moved ahead to more advanced mathematics. Elementary students might be taught algebra or even subjects like trigonometry and …

The Promise Of Interconnecting Problems For Enriching Students’ Experiences In Mathematics, Margo Kondratieva

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The interconnecting problem approach suggests that often one and the same mathematical problem can be used to teach various mathematical topics at different grade levels. How is this approach useful for the development of mathematical ability and the enrichment of mathematical experiences of all students including the gifted ones? What are the benefits for teachers’ and what would teachers need to implement this approach? What directions would further research on these issues take? The paper discusses these and closely related questions.

I propose that a long-term study of a progression of mathematical ideas revolved around one interconnecting problem is useful …

Creativity Assessment In School Settings Through Problem Posing Tasks, Ildikó Pelczer, Fernando Gamboa Rodríguez

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Research in math education on mathematical creativity relies on the idea that creativity is potentially within all students and it can be fostered by properly structured activities. The tasks most commonly used for its assessment are problem solving and problem posing. In our approach we use problem posing tasks to get insight into students’ creativity. Based on a qualitative analysis of the participants’ answers to the questionnaire that followed the task, we define algorithmic, combined and innovative creativity as constructs that can be put in correspondence with the types and level of knowledge involved in the problem posing task. We …

Forthcoming Tmme Vol8,No3 [August 2011: Special Section On The North Calotte Conference In Mathematics Education : Tromsø-2010], Bharath Sriraman

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

Tme Volume 8, Numbers 1 And 2

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

Editorial: Opening 2011’S Journal Treasure Chest, Bharath Sriraman

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

Vignette Of Doing Mathematics: A Meta-Cognitive Tour Of The Production Of Some Elementary Mathematics, Hyman Bass

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Mathematics educators, including some mathematicians, have, in various ways, urged that the school curriculum provide opportunities for learners to have some authentic experience of doing mathematics, opportunities to experience and develop the practices, dispositions, sensibilities, habits of mind characteristic of the generation of new mathematical knowledge and understanding – questioning, exploring, representing, conjecturing, consulting the literature, making connections, seeking proofs, proving, making aesthetic judgments, etc. (Polya 1954, Cuoco et al 2005, NCTM 2000 - Standard on Reasoning and Proof). While this inclination in curricular design has a certain appeal and merit, its curricular and instructional expressions are often contrived, or …

Transcriptions, Mathematical Cognition, And Epistemology, Wolff-Michael Roth, Alfredo Bautista

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The epistemologies researchers bring to their studies mediate not only their theories but also their methods, including what they select from their data sources to present the findings on which claims are based. Most articles reduce mathematical knowing to linguistic/mathematical structures, which, in the case of embodiment/enactivist theories, undermines the very argument about the special nature of mathematical knowing. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how different transcriptions of mathematics lessons are generally used to support different epistemologies of mathematical knowing/competence. As part of our third illustration, we provide embodiment/enactivist researchers with an innovative means of representing classroom …

Revisiting Tatjana Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa’S (1931) “Uebungensammlung Zu Einer Geometrischen Propädeuse”: A Translation And Interpretation, Klaus Hoechsmann

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.