Digital Commons Network^™

More Than Fast Food: Development Of A Story Map To Compare Adolescent Perceptions And Observations Of Their Food Environments And Related Food Behaviors, Kristin A. Riggsbee, Jonathon Riggsbee, Melissa J. Vilaro, Lauren Moret, Marsha Spence, Elizabeth Anderson Steeves, Wenjun Zhou, Melissa D. Olfert, Lisa Franzen-Castle, Tanya Horacek, Elizabeth Hall, Sarah E. Colby

Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this convergent, multiphase, mixed methods study was to better understand the perceptions of adolescents’ food environments and related food behaviors using grounded visualization and story mapping. Adolescents from one high school (13–16 years) in the southeastern United States were evaluated via data from health behavior surveys (n = 75), school environment maps, focus groups (n = 5 groups), and Photovoice (n = 6) from October 2016 to April 2017. Data from each phase were integrated using grounded visualization and new themes were identified (n = 7). A story map using ArcGIS Online was developed from data integration, …

Molecular Population Structure For Feral Swine In The United States, Blake E. Mccann, Timothy J. Smyser, Brandon S. Schmit, Robert A. Newman, Antoinette J. Piaggio, Mathew J. Malek, Seth R. Swafford, Richard A. Sweitzer, Rebecca B. Simmons

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Feral swine (Sus scrofa) have invaded most of the United States and continue to expand throughout North America. Given the ecological and economic threats posed by increasing feral swine abundance, it is imperative to develop an understanding of their patterns of natural range expansion and human-mediated introductions. Towards this goal, we used molecular markers to elucidate the genetic structure of feral swine populations throughout the United States and evaluated the association between historical introductions and contemporary patterns of genetic organization. We used STRUCTURE and discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC) to delineate genetic clusters for 959 individuals genotyped …

Regional-Based Mitigation To Reduce Wildlife–Vehicle Collisions, Nathan P. Snow, Zhen Zhang, Andrew O. Finley, Brent A. Rudolph, William F. Porter, David M. Williams, Scott R. Winterstein

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Vehicular collisions with large ungulates pose serious challenges for managing and conserving large ungulates throughout the world. Despite the global frequency, mitigation efforts are mostly limited to localized hotspots and not effective on broad scales. Our goal was to determine whether dynamic, regional attributes could inform broader focus for mitigation efforts. We applied a spatiotemporal dynamic model to examine the regional influences on white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)–vehicle collisions (DVCs) throughout the Midwest United States from traffic, abundance of deer, and composition and configuration of the landscape during 2000–2011. The regions included eco-zones representing landscape dominated by shelter-forage habitats …

Civil Airports From A Landscape Perspective: A Multi-Scale Approach With Implications For Reducing Bird Strikes, Morgan B. Pfeiffer, Jason D. Kougher, Travis L. Devault

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Collisions between birds and aircraft are a global problem that jeopardizes human safety and causes economic losses. Although landscape features have been suggested as one of a number of factors contributing to bird strikes, no evidence exists to support this suggestion. We investigated the effects of landscape structure on the adverse effect (AE) bird strike rate at 98 civil airports in the United States. The number of reported AE bird strikes was standardized by air carrier movements between 2009 and 2015. Land use structure and composition were quantified within 3, 8, and 13 km radii extents from airports. We predicted …

Modeling The Distributions Of Tegu Lizards In Native And Potential Invasive Ranges, Catherine S. Jarnevich, Mark A. Hayes, Lee A. Fitzgerald, Amy A. Yackel Adams, Bryan G. Falk, Michelle A. M. Collier, Lea R. Bonewell, Page E. Klug, Sergio Naretto, Robert N. Reed

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Invasive reptilian predators can have substantial impacts on native species and ecosystems. Tegu lizards are widely distributed in South America east of the Andes, and are popular in the international live animal trade. Two species are established in Florida (U.S.A.) - Salvator merianae (Argentine black and white tegu) and Tupinambis teguixin sensu lato (gold tegu) – and a third has been recorded there—S. rufescens (red tegu). We built species distribution models (SDMs) using 5 approaches (logistic regression, multivariate adaptive regression splines, boosted regression trees, random forest, and maximum entropy) based on data from the native ranges. We then projected …

State Management Of Human– Wildlife Conflicts, Kurt C. Vercauteren, Daniel Hirchert, Scott Hygnstrom

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Many positive experiences are associated with wildlife, from passively watching animals in our backyards to actively hunting in publicly owned forests. Unfortunately, wildlife can be a double- edged sword. Human– wildlife conflicts are pervasive in society, and nearly all segments—wealthy and in need, urban and rural, east and west—can experience problems with wildlife. Agricultural producers lose an estimated $45 billion each year as a result of crop and livestock damage caused by big game, predators, waterfowl, and other wildlife species (Conover 2002). Row crops, forages, rangeland, fruits, vegetables, ornamentals, turf, and livestock are susceptible to damage by wildlife at various …

Operationalizing Resilience For Conservation Objectives: The 4s’S, Clare E. Aslan, Brian Petersen, Aaron B. Shiels, William Haines, Christina T. Lang

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Although resilience thinking is increasingly popular and attractive among restoration practitioners, it carries an abstract quality that hinders effective application. Because resilience and its components are defined differently in social and ecological contexts, individual managers or stakeholders may disagree on the definition of a system’s state, occurrence of a state change, preferred state characteristics, and appropriate methods to achieve success. Nevertheless, incentives and mandates often force managers to demonstrate how their work enhances resilience. Unclear or conflicting definitions can lead to ineffective or even detrimental decision-making in the name of resilience; essentially, any convenient action can be touted as resilience-enhancing …

American Black Bear Den-Site Selection And Characteristics In An Urban Environment, Toryn L. J. Schafer, Stewart W. Breck, Sharon Baruch-Mordo, David L. Lewis, Kenneth R. Wilson, Julie S. Mao, Thomas L. Day

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Selection of den sites is a crucial aspect of American black bear (Ursus americanus) life history. High-quality dens provide thermal insulation, protection from disturbance, suitable environment for parturition and cub development, and proximity to available forage upon emergence. Black bears are increasingly coexisting with people in human-dominated landscapes; however, little is known about whether urban environments influence characteristics of dens and den site selection. Our objective was to determine the effect of housing density (a proxy for human activity and availability of anthropogenic resources) on selection of den sites in years of good and poor natural forage.We additionally …

Elevated Fecal Ph Indicates A Profound Change In The Breastfed Infant Gut Microbiome Due To Reduction Of Bifidobacterium Over The Past Century, Bethany M. Henrick, Andra A. Hutton, Michelle C. Palumbo, Giorgio Casaburi, Ryan D. Mitchell, Mark A. Underwood, Jennifer T. Smilowitz, Steven A. Frese

Department of Food Science and Technology: Faculty Publications

Historically, Bifidobacterium species were reported as abundant in the breastfed infant gut. However, recent studies in resource-rich countries show an increased abundance of taxa regarded as signatures of dysbiosis. It is unclear whether these differences are the product of genetics, geographic factors, or interventions such as formula feeding, antibiotics, and caesarean section. Fecal pH is strongly associated with Bifidobacterium abundance; thus, pH could be an indicator of its historical abundance. A review of 14 clinical studies published between 1926 and 2017, representing more than 312 healthy breastfed infants, demonstrated a change in fecal pH from 5.0 to 6.5 (adjusted r …

Unmanned Aerial Systems-Based Remote Sensing For Monitoring Sorghum Growth And Development, Sanaz Shafian, Nithya Rajan, Ronnie Schnell, Muthukumar Bagavathiannan, John Valasek, Yeyin Shi, Jeff Olsenholler

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Systems (UAV or UAS) have become increasingly popular in recent years for agricultural research applications. UAS are capable of acquiring images with high spatial and temporal resolutions that are ideal for applications in agriculture. The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of a UAS-based remote sensing system for quantification of crop growth parameters of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) including leaf area index (LAI), fractional vegetation cover (f_c) and yield. The study was conducted at the Texas A&M Research Farm near College Station, Texas, United States. A fixed-wing UAS equipped with a …

Osi2018 Summary Report On The 1st Summit Meeting Of The Global Open Scholarship Initiative, March 12-14, 2018, The Open Scholarship Initiative, Glenn Hampson

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

When the roadmap for OSI was first being developed in 2015, our original intent was to hold a series of 10 annual meetings beginning in 2016. After the first two meetings, however, it became apparent that the next step in this process should be to pause and have just the summit group meet to formally discuss and plan out what comes next instead of having this complex conversation online (which we had been doing since mid-2017) or amongst a group of several hundred participants. This decision was also necessitated by the lack of a large enough budget to put together …

The African Open Science Platform: The Future Of Science And Science For The Future, African Academy Of Sciences, Academy Of Science Of South Africa, Committee On Data For Science And Technology, International Council For Science, National Research And Education Networks, Research Data Alliance, South African Department Of Science & Technology, National Research Foundation, Square Kilometre Array, Unesco

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

This document presents a draft strategy and makes the scientific case for the African Open Science Platform (AOSP). It is based on an expert group meeting held in Pretoria on 27-28 March 2018. Its purpose is to act as a framework for detailed, work on the creation of the Platform and as a basis for discussion at a stakeholder meeting to be held on 3-4 September 2018, which will lead to a definitive strategy for implementation from 2019. Expert group members at the March meeting were drawn from the following organisations: African Academy of Sciences (AAS), Academy of Science of …

Sharing-Based Social Capital Associated With Harvest Production And Wealth In The Canadian Arctic, Elspeth Ready

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Social institutions that facilitate sharing and redistribution may help mitigate the impact of resource shocks. In the North American Arctic, traditional food sharing may direct food to those who need it and provide a form of natural insurance against temporal variability in hunting returns within households. Here, network properties that facilitate resource flow (network size, quality, and density) are examined in a country food sharing network comprising 109 Inuit households from a village in Nunavik (Canada), using regressions to investigate the relationships between these network measures and household socioeconomic attributes. The results show that although single women and elders have …

Effects Of A Government-Academic Partnership: Has The Nsf-Census Bureau Research Network Helped Improve The U.S. Statistical System?, Daniel H. Weinberg,, John M. Abowd, Robert F. Belli, Noel Cressie, David C. Folch, S. H. Holan, Margaret C. Levenstein, Kristen Olson, Jerome P. Reiter, Matthew D. Shapiro, Jolene Smyth, Leen-Kiat Soh, Bruce D. Spencer, Seth E. Spielman, Lars Vilhuber, Christopher K. Wikle

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The National Science Foundation-Census Bureau Research Network (NCRN) was established in 2011 to create interdisciplinary research nodes on methodological questions of interest and significance to the broader research community and to the Federal Statistical System (FSS), particularly to the Census Bureau. The activities to date have covered both fundamental and applied statistical research and have focused at least in part on the training of current and future generations of researchers in skills of relevance to surveys and alternative measurement of economic units, households, and persons. This article focuses on some of the key research findings of the eight nodes, organized …

What Is To Be Done With Curriculum And Educational Foundations' Critical Knowledges? Toward Critical And Decolonizing Education Sciences, James C. Jupp, Theodorea Regina Berry, Amanda Morales, Ann Mogush Mason

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

As editors of the special issue in Teaching Education titled What Is To Be Done with Curriculum and Educational Foundations’ Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers, our purpose with this conceptual essay is twofold. First, we historicize and characterize the critical knowledges deployed in this special issue as a broad array of criticalities. Second, we provide a reading of these criticalities that together we tentatively call critical and decolonizing education sciences. In our discussion and conclusion, we focus on the dual challenges of developing work in critical and decolonizing education sciences: (a) …

Teacher Twitter Chats: Gender Differences In Participants’ Contributions, Stacey L. Kerr, Mardi J. Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Gender differences in participation were examined across four Twitter chats for social studies teachers. Analyses drawing on mixed methods revealed that while there was parity across most kinds of tweets, participants identified as men were more likely to use the examined Twitter chats to share resources, give advice, boast, promote their own blog/resource/website, and offer critique to another participants’ tweet. Participants identified as women were more likely to write tweets that included positive affirmations for other chat participants. These findings suggest that there are differences in the way that women and men tend to participate in teacher Twitter chat spaces.

What Does An Anthropologist Of Educational Policy Do? Methodological Considerations, Edmund T. Hamann, Thirusellvan Vandeyar

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Although Margaret Mead (Hughes, 1952; Mead, 1961), Manuel Gamio (1916), and other leaders of 20th-century anthropology often made pronouncements regarding what schooling should and shouldn't do-in essence proposing to be educational policymakers of a sort-the turn of anthropology to the study of policy and particularly education policy is relatively new (Shore & Wright, 1997). It follows that what an anthropologist of educational policy implementation should do is therefore not yet depicted all that clearly or in detail. The groundbreaking work of Sutton and Levinson (2001) and their contributing authors in some senses stands out as an important exception to that …

2017 Nebraska Water Leaders Academy - Final Report, Mark E. Burbach, H. Reiners-Hild

Conservation and Survey Division: Faculty and Staff Publications

Twenty participants completed the 2017 Water Leaders Academy bringing the total number of graduates to 101 since the inception of the program in 2011. Assessment of participants’ transformational leadership skills, champion of innovation skills, water knowledge and engagement, civic capacity, and entrepreneurial leadership behaviors showed a significant increase over the course of the year, from both participants’ and their raters’ perspectives. Feedback from participants was highly positive and constructive. Participant concerns were addressed, and only minor changes are planned for the 2018 Academy curriculum. Results of the program assessment indicate that the curriculum is meeting Academy objectives. Most importantly, Alumni …

Redescripción Del Género Ogyges Kaup (Coleoptera: Passalidae) Con Una Lista Comentada De Los Tipos Primarios, Enio B. Cano

Insecta Mundi

Se redescribe el género Ogyges Kaup, 1871 (Coleoptera: Passalidae), incluyendo su historia taxonómica. Se presentan las imágenes, los datos registrados en las etiquetas, las coordenadas geográficas, mediciones, comentarios taxonómicos y las instituciones depositarias de 19 tipos primarios que fueron descritos o que están incluidos dentro del género Ogyges Kaup. El nombre infrasubespecífico Ogyges laevior ab. vinculotaenia Kuwert, 1897, está indisponible, de acuerdo al artículo 45.6.2 del ICZN.

The genus Ogyges Kaup, 1871 (Coleoptera: Passalidae) is redescribed, including the taxonomic history. Also, images, data registered in labels, geographic coordinates, measurements, taxonomic comments, and repository institutions of 19 primary types previously described …

Advanced Biotechnology Tools For Invasive Species Management, Invasive Species Advisory Committee

National Invasive Species Council

Increasingly, genetic tools are being used to detect and solve pressing environmental, social, and health-related challenges. It is clear that investments in technology innovation can be game changing, as advances in biotechnology may provide new methods to protect the nation’s resources from the negative impacts of invasive species. The current toolbox of management options is recognizably insufficient to deal with many of the high-impact species that have been introduced. However, “surrendering” to these species is generally not a viable option from ecological, health, economic, socio-cultural, or political perspectives. Cost-efficient solutions to these “grand invasive species challenges” need to be found. …

Spatial Analysis Of Ethnic And Racial Segregation In The Chicago Metropolitan Area, 2000–2014, Roy Yao

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Racial segregation has long been a great concern in the United States. Scholars study and measure racial segregation over different time periods to trace the changing patterns of racial segregation. Chicago, as the nation’s third largest city, also ranked on top of the most segregated cities. Previous studies measured racial segregation in Chicago only numerically; few studies have used geospatial statistic methods to identify racial segregation patterns in the Chicago metropolitan area. This study uses “Hotspot Analysis” (Getis Ord Gi*) to identify Chicago’s most recent segregation patterns among four major ethnic and racial groups: White, African American, Hispanic and Asian. …

The Considerations Given To Determining Authorship, Christopher N. Jacques

The Prairie Naturalist

Greetings GPNSS members! Over the past year, I have been asked by prospective authors and colleagues whether The Prairie Naturalist has criteria for authorship. Given that this issue continues to arise, it is comforting to know that I am not the only one who struggles with considerations given to determining authorship. I checked the current submission guidelines and found nothing specific, which in turn motivated me to explore what other journals such as the Journal of Wildlife Management, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Ecology recommend to prospective authors (Merrill 2015). Much to my surprise, discussions of authorship …

Rqgis: Integrating R With Qgis For Statistical Geocomputing, Jannes Muenchow, Patrick Schratz, Alexander Brenning

The R Journal

Integrating R with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) extends R’s statistical capabilities with numerous geoprocessing and data handling tools available in a GIS. QGIS is one of the most popular open-source GIS, and it furthermore integrates other GIS programs such as the System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses (SAGA) GIS and the Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS) GIS within a single software environment. This and its QGIS Python API makes it a perfect candidate for console-based geoprocessing. By establishing an interface, the R package RQGIS makes it possible to use QGIS as a geoprocessing workhorse from within R. Compared to other …

Simulating Probabilistic Long-Term Effects In Models With Temporal Dependence, Christopher Gandrud, Laron K. Williams

The R Journal

The R package pltesim calculates and depicts probabilistic long-term effects in binary models with temporal dependence variables. The package performs two tasks. First, it calculates the change in the probability of the event occurring given a change in a theoretical variable. Second, it calculates the rolling difference in the future probability of the event for two scenarios: one where the event occurred at a given time and one where the event does not occur. The package is consistent with the recent movement to depict meaningful and easy-to-interpret quantities of interest with the requisite measures of uncertainty. It is the first …

Bayesbd: An R Package For Bayesian Inference On Image Boundaries, Nicholas Syring, Meng Li

The R Journal

Wepresent the BayesBD package providing Bayesian inference for boundaries of noisy images. The BayesBD package implements flexible Gaussian process priors indexed by the circle to recover the boundary in a binary or Gaussian noised image. The boundary recovered by BayesBD has the practical advantages of guaranteed geometric restrictions and convenient joint inferences under certain assumptions, in addition to its desirable theoretical property of achieving (nearly) minimax optimal rate in a way that is adaptive to the unknown smoothness. The core sampling tasks for our model have linear complexity, and are implemented in C++ for computational efficiency using packages Rcpp and …

Aquifers Of Nebraska Ii: The Niobrara Aquifer, Dana Divine, Robert Matthew Joeckel, Sue Olafsen Lackey

Conservation and Survey Division: Faculty and Staff Publications

The marine shale, chalk, marl, and chalky limestone of the Niobrara Formation directly underlie Quaternary sediments in 23 counties from south-central to northeastern Nebraska. Nevertheless, the formation serves as an aquifer only in and around Cedar, Madison, and Nuckolls counties. Niobrara aquifer wells mostly supply irrigation, domestic, and livestock needs. Two hundred of the approximately 230 active registered wells in Nebraska that are screened entirely in the Niobrara aquifer are in Cedar County and environs. About another 200 wells in this area are screened in both the Niobrara aquifer and overlying Quaternary sediments. Wells screened entirely in the Niobrara aquifer …

Resource Allocation For Acorn Production: A Comparison Across Species Pairs Of Oaks With Contrasting Acorn Production Patterns And Water Use Strategies, Kyle A. Funk

School of Biological Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Mast seeding, or masting, is a phenomenon where inter-annual seed production by individuals is synchronized across a population of plants. Masting is hypothesized to confer a selective advantage to plants by increasing rates of pollination or by decreasing rates of seed predation. Masting can also play a crucial role in ecosystem functioning as fluctuations in annual seed crops correspond with fluctuations in seed predator populations, which in turn have consequences that ripple throughout food webs. The mechanism(s) that causes masting is unresolved, but the high variability in seed production of masting plants is hypothesized to be caused, in part, by …

Life Cycle Assessment In Foundry Sand Reclamation – Comparison Of Secondary Reclamation Processes, Samuel Keith Ghormley

Department of Environmental Engineering: Theses and Other Student Research

Foundries represent a significant part of the base of the world’s economy and as a sector are one of the largest consumers of energy and producers of solid waste in the United States. Sand casting foundries use approximately 5-10% of their total energy on sand handling processes. By adding a secondary sand reclamation process, foundries can expect to become more energy efficient as well as reducing solid waste from the foundry. To measure the broader environmental impacts, life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used. The goal of the current research was to examine a medium-sized foundry in the United States …

The Effects Of Culture On International Advertising Appeals: A Cross-Cultural Content Analysis Of U.S. And Japanese Global Brands, Dan Zhao

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

An international advertising campaign can be standardized in creative strategy, but localized in execution. As an integral part of the execution, advertising appeals should be tailored to local culture to maximize the effectiveness of international advertising campaigns while minimizing cost. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether advertising appeals mirror predicable differences in cultural values.

This study is based on the influential Hofstede model (Hofstede, 2001; Hofstede & Mooij, 2010), which distinguishes cultures according to six dimensions. While individualism and collectivism have been widely discussed in published studies, other dimensions that are also important indicators of advertising appeals …

Applying Topographic Classification, Based On The Hydrological Process, To Design Habitat Linkages For Climate Change, Yongwon Mo, Dong Kun Lee, Keunyea Song, Ho Gul Kim, Soo Jin Park

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The use of biodiversity surrogates has been discussed in the context of designing habitat linkages to support the migration of species affected by climate change. Topography has been proposed as a useful surrogate in the coarse-filter approach, as the hydrological process caused by topography such as erosion and accumulation is the basis of ecological processes. However, some studies that have designed topographic linkages as habitat linkages, so far have focused much on the shape of the topography (morphometric topographic classification) with little emphasis on the hydrological processes (generic topographic classification) to find such topographic linkages. We aimed to understand whether …