Digital Commons Network^™

Alternative Splicing Regulates The Innate Immune Response To Viral Infection, Luke A. White

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is a mosquito-borne RNA virus that infects humans and livestock in sub-Saharan Africa and the Arabian peninsula, causing disease ranging from a mild flu-like illness to liver damage, blindness, hemorrhagic fever, death, and, especially in livestock animals, high rates of abortive pregnancies. There is no approved vaccine for RVFV, and as a disease with a high rate of spread that causes severe illness, it is listed as a Category A pathogen by the USA CDC. A better understanding of RVFV’s molecular virology will be instrumental to combating RVFV as climate change causes its mosquito host …

Understanding Media Richness And Social Presence: Exploring The Impacts Of Media Channels On Individuals’ Levels Of Loneliness, Well-Being, And Belonging, Ashley M. Arsenault

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Loneliness is a universal part of being human and is detrimental to well-being. The need-to-belong hypothesis claims that individuals frequently having positive interactions with people close to them mitigates their loneliness. Media richness theory adds that rich media channels allow individuals to perceive higher levels of social presence and maintain those vital, close relationships. Understanding how a given media channel impacts online interactions and, in turn, the interactants is vital. This study used a pretest-posttest equivalent groups experimental design to examine if individuals who interacted with a close relationship partner over a rich media channel would have a decrease in …

New Interdisciplinary Research At 48pa551: Land Tenure And Subsistence Strategies Among Middle Holocene Rocky Mountain Hunter-Gatherers, Ethan Patrick Ryan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation studies land tenure and resource procurement strategies among Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). The research provides a better understanding of a stratified archaeological site on the eastern flank of the Yellowstone Plateau, 48PA551, a crucial location for winter resource procurement. Geophysical survey, collection’s research, obsidian sourcing, and stable isotope analysis are all used to test theoretical models of social conditions and hunting strategies during the harsh winters of the mountainous environment of northwest Wyoming. Site 48PA551 has already proven to contain evidence for a unique Middle Archaic adaptive strategy, being one of the only …

Subfamily Clustering Using Label Uncertainty (For Transposable Element Families), Audrey M. Shingleton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Biological sequence annotation is typically performed by aligning a sequence to a database of known sequence elements. For transposable elements, these known sequences represent subfamily consensus sequences. When many of the subfamily models in the database are highly similar to each other, a sequence belonging to one subfamily can easily be mistaken as belonging to another, causing non-reproducible subfamily annotation. Because annotation with subfamilies is expected to give some amount of insight into a sequence’s evolutionary history, it is important that such annotation be reproducible. Here, we present our software tool, SCULU, which builds upon our previously-described methods for computing …

Combined Effects Of Temperature And Heavy Metals On The Performance Of The Giant Salmonfly., James Frakes, Amanda Andreas, Benjamin P. Colman, Aurthur Woods

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In many freshwater ecosystems, communities of aquatic insects are facing the combined stresses of warmer waters due to climate change and increased exposure to heavy metal toxicants. Although each stressor may threaten aquatic insects independently, they also likely interact in important ways to affect insect physiology and performance. Here we investigate this potential interaction using two populations of aquatic nymphs of the giant salmonfly, Pteronarcys californica, collected from adjacent rivers in Montana: naïve individuals from Rock Creek, a relatively pristine stream, and individuals from the Upper Clark Fork River, which has a history of heavy metal pollution and higher …

"Sexual Harassment Is My Job": The Impact Of Display Work On Bikini Barista Interactions, Sara R. Wozniak

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study compares the experiences of women working in “bikini” coffee stands with women working in "family-friendly" coffee stands. These stands are similar in that customers drive up and purchase coffee through a window. However, bikini coffee stands differ from their family friendly counterparts because they are staffed by scantily-clad women. This study contributes to the existing literature by comparing the experiences of service workers in sexualized and non-sexualized environments. Additionally, this study examines the understudied service job of bikini coffee. Using semi-structured interviews to examine the baristas’ thoughts and experiences surrounding their work, I find that both types of …

Examining The Interpersonal Psychological Theory Of Suicide In A Sample Of Individuals With Psychosis, Jennifer Villa

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Psychotic disorders confer high risk for suicidality. Previous research has found the symptom clusters of psychosis to have differential relationships with risk for suicidal ideation and behavior. Despite evidence for unique determinants of suicide among people with disorders on the psychosis spectrum, little research has examined theoretical models of suicide that aim to explore the transition from suicidal thoughts to behavior in this population. The Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicide (IPTS) may be particularly useful in delineating this transition, as the constructs underlying the IPTS overlap with symptoms and experiences salient in people with psychosis. We examined baseline data from an …

And The Busy World Is Hushed, Emily Elizabeth Collins

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Gigi, Helen Wesley Kapp

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Francis’s grandpa taught her how to wrestle alligators. By the time Francis was sixteen, she could hold her own, but all it takes is one gator. Just one gator who almost gets the best of you, and suddenly you’ve got a dead animal; somebody’s getting stitches; you’re getting haunted by the ghost of the alligator you just killed; and your mom’s making you move to Charleston to attend a swanky prep school where the kids don’t wrestle gators, but surviving the gossip is even harder.

Are Risk Attitudes And Rainfall Variability Determinants Of Diversification? Evidence From Rondonia, Brazil, Brenna Swinger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Risk exposure and management are inherent to smallholder farmers. One of the risks they face is climate change. Climate change decreases rainfall, increases frequency of drought, adds heat stress to crops from higher temperatures, and leads to higher rainfall variability. The threat of rainfall variability causes higher production in some years and lower in others. Even if the average income remains the same, people’s welfare is reduced by the variability and the size of the loss will depend on their attitudes towards risk.

Diversification is one adaption strategy that may help reduce climate risk. Diversified farmers produce multiple types of …

Facing The Fire - Challenges And Triumphs Of Western Firefighters In A Changing Climate, Mak Sisson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The American West sits at a dangerous position in the age of climate change. Wildfires burn hotter, longer, and cover more area than ever measured. Decreased snowpack, early spring run-off, a glut of built-up timber in parks and public lands, and longer droughts all build upon one another, and it just takes one spark to start a raging wildfire that devastates a community. As such, a firefighting force is needed to deal with this changing landscape.

However, that force is dwindling, especially at the federal level. A reported 20% of wildland firefighting positions are vacant, and the Bureau of Land …

Keeping What You Sow: Intellectual Property Rights For Plant Breeders And Seed Growers, Paulina B. Jenney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Over the last 150 years, the food system in the present-day United States has undergone a transformational restructuring, from a diversified, decentralized, network of farmers and seed growers, to one in which the majority of crop production is controlled by a few industrial corporations. The consolidation of power has been under-girded by the application of intellectual property rights (IPR)—especially utility patents—to plant varieties and genetic traits, which are leveraged to exclude small-scale seed growers from accessing quality germplasm. Patents and restrictive licensing agreements recapitulate colonial structures by appropriating common and traditionally community-held resources for profit, and by creating reliance on …

Where Should Conservation Draw The Line And When Should It Push Forward, Jessica L. Mejia

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Management And Consequences Of Hybridization Between Nonnative Rainbow Trout And Native Westslope Cutthroat Trout, Anthony James Dangora

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The introduction of nonnative fish is a major driver in the decline of native fish species. Nonnative rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss; RBT) introduced into the native range of westslope cutthroat trout (O. clarkii lewisi; WCT) have led to the introgressive hybridization between these two species. This widespread hybridization is a primary threat to the long-term persistence of WCT as it can cause population-level genomic extinction. Since there are no set management solutions for hybridization, there is a need to evaluate the different conservation approaches to ensure the persistence of WCT populations. Additionally, beyond propagule pressure, the array of drivers that …

Is Growing Food Wasting Water? Stories From A Surge Of Groundwater Regulations In California, Abigail Jean Lauten-Scrivner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This long-form feature story examines how the nascence of California’s new era of groundwater regulation is playing out for the farmers, families and agencies who must adapt to a sweeping new law against the backdrop of climate change.

California became the last state in the west to adopt a statewide management plan for the invaluable natural resource when it first embarked on a path toward groundwater sustainability in 2020. Known as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), the 20-year plan requires California’s most depleted groundwater basins to become sustainable by 2040.

When SGMA matured in 2020, California’s next drought began …

Sensitivity Of Lidar Derived Fuel Cells To Fire Modeling At Laboratory Scale, Anthony Albert Marcozzi

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Computational models of wildfires are an important tool for fire managers and scientists. However, fuel inputs to wildfire models can be difficult to represent with sufficient detail to be both computationally efficient and representative of observations. Recent advances in fuel mapping with airborne and terrestrial laser scanning (LIDAR) techniques present new opportunities to capture variation in fuels within a tree canopy and on a landscape. In this paper, we develop a technique for building 3D representations of vegetation from point clouds created by Terrestrial Laser Scans (TLS). Our voxel based approach can be extended to represent heterogeneous crown fuels as …

Lasso: Listing All Subset Sums Obediently For Evaluating Unbounded Subset Sums, Christopher N. Burgoyne, Travis J. Wheeler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this study we present a novel algorithm, LASSO, for solving the unbounded and bounded subset sum problem. The LASSO algorithm was designed to solve the unbounded SSP quickly and to return all subsets summing to a target sum. As speed was the highest priority, we benchmarked the run time performance of LASSO against implementations of some common approaches to the bounded SSP, as well as the only comparable implementation for solving the unbounded SSP that we could find. In solving the bounded SSP, our algorithm had a significantly faster run time than the competing algorithms when the target sum …

The Contrasting Physiological Mechanisms Of Two Distinct Migratory Strategies, Joely Gabriel Desimone

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Migration allows animals to use resources that vary in time and space. The predictability of this resource variation underlies different migratory strategies. Obligate migrants, with predictable movements, use resources that covary with the seasonal phenology of temperature or rainfall patterns. Facultative migrants, with unpredictable timing and destination of movements, rely on unpredictably variable resources. In this dissertation I explore the physiological changes birds undergo in preparation for obligate vs. facultative migratory flight. Hormones facilitate rapid organismal responses to environmental and internal information, making them an ideal physiological system to understand mechanisms controlling migratory behavior. I focus on corticosterone (CORT), a …

Kid Gloves, Anne North Kolle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Kid Gloves is an excerpt from a novel in progress that follows the lives of three generations of women—Dorothy, Lydia, and Maisie—and explores the privileges and traumas they hold onto and pass down. The novel takes place in wealthy Baltimore society in the week leading up to Maisie’s debutante ball, but it is interspersed with stories from the past that inform the lives of the three women today.

Into The Tidy Shape Imagined, Hope Isabella Ruskaup

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Tracing Migration And Social Stratification In Subadults At The Archaeological Site Of Convento: A Preliminary Strontium Isotopic Analysis, Holli Kaye Mcdonald

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Re-Modeling The Interior: Spatial Methods And Policy Revisions To Improve Inventory And Designation Of Blm’S Areas Of Critical Environmental Concern, Amy H. Katz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages a vast amount of public land in the western United States, most of which they currently manage for multiple uses. Specific conservation and management of these lands could mitigate climate change impacts and contribute to the global initiative to conserve 30 percent of lands and waters by 2030. Particularly, the agency can achieve this through more effective administration of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), a designation that is prioritized under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). To do so requires updated regulations that set clear parameters around inventory and designation, …

In The Landscape Of Her Life, Susan M. Sinitiere

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

To reconcile perceptions of female expectations in light of realistic outcomes, the idealized domestic space where formality and dilapidation coexist with botanicals is the aesthetic of the autobiographical context of Seeds Once Sown. The ‘home’ melds together an acknowledgement of matriarchal influence that formed my identity as a homemaker and mother, but also serves as a place of independent contemplation on a mid-life passage through a seasonal change of life, now separate from domestic adherences.

Ecological Effects Of Prescribed Burning, Mechanical Cutting, And Post-Treatment Wildfire For Restoration Of Pinus Albicaulis, Enzo Paolo Martelli Moya

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The field of ecological restoration is growing rapidly, increasing the need for reliable and generalizable information on the impacts of management interventions aimed to be restorative. Prescribed burning and mechanical cutting have been proposed as primary strategies for restoration. However, there is limited information on their efficacy and effects in subalpine forest types, suggesting that monitoring to inform adaptive management is a priority need. I used data from a 15-year, replicated before-after-control-impact (BACI) study on Pinus albicaulis (whitebark pine) restoration to assess the ecological effects of prescribed burning and mechanical cutting, with and without subsequent unplanned wildfire, as well as …

Relationships Between Water, Sediment, Basal Resources, And Aquatic Insects In A Mine-Contaminated River On A Longitudinal And Habitat Patch Scale, Chelsea A. Wisotzkey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

It is well established that aqueous exposure and dietary exposure both lead to the accumulation of metals and metalloids in aquatic organisms living in a contaminated environment, but the relative contribution of each remains unclear. To examine how a contamination gradient affects patterns of metal(loid)s among periphyton, BPOM (benthic particulate organic matter), water, and sediment, we collected samples from multiple sites across a 210km stretch of the mine-contaminated Upper Clark Fork River, Montana. To investigate metal(loid) accumulation patterns among basal resources and aquatic insects, we collected samples of periphyton, BPOM, and larval insects from discrete habitat types at a single …

Spermatogenesis Molecular Evolution In Murine Rodents, Emily Emiko Konishi Kopania

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Reproductive traits are fascinating from an evolutionary perspective because they are necessary for individuals to produce offspring and increase their evolutionary fitness. Given the essentiality of reproduction to fitness, genes involved in reproduction may be expected to be highly conserved. However, some genes involved in reproduction evolve very rapidly, including many spermatogenesis genes. This rapid evolution may result from intense sexual selection acting on reproductive traits, particularly in species where females mate multiply thus creating the potential for sperm competition. In addition to sexual selection, other evolutionary forces may shape rapid spermatogenesis evolution, including genomic conflict and relaxed pleiotropic constraint …

Spatial Behavior, Foraging, And Population Dynamics Of A Subarctic Ungulate, Elizabeth (Libby) Parr Williamson Ehlers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The concept of density-dependence is foundational to our understanding of the ecology and management of large herbivores. As the abundance of large herbivores increases, competition for high-quality resources increases and animals select for lower-quality foods potentially resulting in reduced vital rates that cause declines in population growth. What remains unclear is how foraging at finer scales, like the ‘bite’, translates to demography. This is difficult because it’s challenging to scale bite-level foraging to population-levels. I test the fine-scale foraging mechanisms of density dependence in a large subarctic herbivore, Barrenground caribou (Rangifer tarandus granti). The nutritional landscape for arctic herbivores is …

Traditional Vs. Home-Based Phase Ii Cardiac Rehabilitation In A Rural Setting: A Retrospective Study, Cassie Marie Reisdorph

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation addresses the following questions: 1) the impact of three environmental conditions (altitude, heat, and woodsmoke exposure) on the blood oxidative stress response to exercise; 2) the effect of exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation programs (home-based, HBCR; traditional, TCR) on health outcomes in those who have experienced a cardiovascular event and/or severe diagnosis resulting in referral to cardiac rehabilitation. Study 1: Examine effects of lab-simulated hypobaric and hypoxic conditions on oxidative stress during a 4-hour recovery period after 1-hour of cycling (70% watts max). Exercise increased markers of antioxidant status (TEAC, FRAP) and lipid damage (8-ISO) (p<0.05). No effects of hypobaria and hypoxia were observed. Study 2: Compare the blood oxidative stress response to an exercise tolerance trial (1-hour, 50% W_peak) in hot …

The Syndemic Landscape: A New Paradigm For Montana Suicide Prevention Grounded In Agricultural Renewal, Emory Chandler Padgett

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Montana has had one of the highest suicide rates in the nation for half a century, and since 2000, it has risen almost 50%. Despite suicide’s alarming persistence in the state, there has been minimal academic study of suicide or mental health specifically in Montana, so this thesis attempts to answer a few questions: Why does Montana have such a high suicide rate? Is there something culturally, historically, or socially unique about Montana that contributes to suicide? Are current prevention efforts helpful, harmful, or lacking? Could a consideration of culture and land benefit an understanding of suicide in Montana? What …

Agricultural Adaptation To Climate Change: How Montana Farmers Make Proactive Changes Despite Unpredictable Conditions, Austin Schuver

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In Montana, climate change is projected to increase interannual variability and the severity of weather events like drought. To sustain agricultural production, farmers must adapt to climate change within a complex decision-making process responsive to a range of climate and non-climate stressors. This study explores how Montana farmers approach proactive and long-term adaptation, two types of adaptation which are not well studied, but are expected to be increasingly important for adapting to the impacts of climate change. To understand Montana farmers’ approaches to adaptation, I conducted 30 in-depth interviews with farmers across the state. Farmers explained how unpredictability in weather …