Digital Commons Network^™

Preliminary Report Of Animal Bones From Hrísheimur, Mývatn District, Northern Iceland, Sophia Perdikaris, Thomas H. Mcgovern

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

In 2000 and 2001 the FSl / NABO project Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland collected animal bones from the heavily eroded site of Hrísheimur south of lake Mývatn. The 2001 season produced a substantial archaeofauna from a 2 x 2 meter test excavation of a midden deposit that apparently fills a small sunken-feature structure. While further excavations are planned to collect more material and to better understand the deposit and site as a whole, it may be useful to provide an interim overview of the bone materials recovered from the largest context (003) of the midden deposit tested in …

Casting The Buffalo Commons: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Print Media Coverage Of The Buffalo Commons Proposal For The Great Plains, Mary L. Umberger

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

T hey filed into the auditorium and found seats, waiting politely for what they expected to be a preposterous talk. The featured speaker rose and began his prepared speech. The audience took note of his attire, his educated vocabulary, his "eastern" ways. Their scrutiny became vocal as he proposed his dream for the Great Plains.

Book Review: Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine: A Casebook , Robert Bensen

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

To readers raised on the literary Great Plains of Rolvaag and Cather, or in the West of Native writers Momaday, Welsh, and Silko, the North Dakota of Louise Erdrich's Ojibwa and mixed-blood characters in Love Medicine (1984, 1993) may seem a comically alien and tragically magical place. Hertha D. Wong's casebook will prove a welcome and reliable guide to the strange practices of Love Medicine. These thirteen critical studies (complemented, even upstaged, by two Erdrich essays and interviews with her and Michael Dorris) address important questions concerning history and culture, identity and narrativity, oral and literary structure, and Erdrich's 1993 …

Book Review: Dream A Little: Land And Social Justice In Modern America By Dorothee E. Kocks., Betsy Downey

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In the beginning was land. Lots of land. "Before there was a welfare state, there was a frontier state," which distributed land in hopes of ending poverty. Dream a Little explores what Dorothee Kocks calls the "geographic embrace": the dream that nature has a moral function and offers "a blueprint to a good society." The first part of her book examines the frontier state, finding many similarities with the welfare state. Most Americans seem blind to the parallels, believing that nature and land are good; land is a "birthright," and a homestead is not a handout. "Asking for land is …

Notes And News

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Contents:

Call for Papers
Graduate Fellowships
Call for Papers
Arts and Culture of the Ute Indians
2002 Great Plains Chautauqua

Ecogeographic Surveys As Tools For Analyzing Potential Reproductive Isolating Mechanisms: An Example Using Solanum Juglandifolium Dunal, S. Ochranthum Dunal, S. Lycopersicoides Dunal, And S. Sitiens I. M. Johnston, Stacey Dewitt Smith, Iris Edith Peralta

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

An ecogeographic survey was completed for two pairs of South American Solanum species: (1) S. juglandifolium and S. ochranthum, and (2) S. lycopersicoides and S. sitiens. The purpose of this survey was to characterize the distribution, ecology, and phenology of these species and to screen for factors that might constitute premating reproductive isolating mechanisms between each pair. Passport data from 276 herbarium specimens were entered into a database, which was subsequently analyzed to determine the ecogeographic distribution and phenology of the surveyed species. The differences between species uncovered by the survey were then considered in the context of …

Taking Evoultionary Transitions Seriously, Daniel R. Brooks

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty Publications

The distinction between reversible and irreversible phenomena in biological information systems provides a basis for distinguishing microevolution from macroevolution. Biological transitions encompass the entire class of irreversible changes in biological systems, including physiological and developmental phenomena. Evolutionary transitions are the subset of biological transitions that have an impact on the quality and quantity of biological information transmitted to future generations. Evolutionary transitions are manifested empirically as macroevolutionary changes, i.e. evolutionary changes that can be detected only through phylogenetic analysis among groups of species sharing a unique common ancestry.

Review Of Creating Colorado: The Making Of A Western American Landscape, 1860-1940 By William Wyckoff, Brian Page

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The history of Colorado has been well portrayed, but most often in geographical bits and pieces. What has been missing from this literature is a comprehensive view of how these constituents coalesce into a coherent picture of the formation and evolution of the state's geography of human production, settlement, movement, power, and meaning. William Wyckoff's Creating Colorado provides a panoptic view of Colorado's geographical history rendered in broad stokes and a fluid, eloquent prose.

Understanding Caesar’S Ethnography: A Contextual Approach To Protohistory, Erin Osborne Martin

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The Celts of western and central Europe1 flourished during the height of Greek and Roman civilization, and yet there is a methodological schism between the study of the Mediterranean world and that of the “peripheral” Europeans. Our appreciation of classical society stems primarily from the plentiful written texts – texts that provide us with minute details of society, religion, and politics from the words of the people who actively participated in that culture. The study of the Celts, on the other hand, is more oblique: our primary source is archaeology, and what little textual evidence we do have derives from …

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council -- Volume 3, No. 1 -- Complete Issue

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

CONTENTS

Call for Papers
Submission Guidelines
Dedication
Editor’s Introduction -- Ada Long

FORUM ON LIBERAL LEARNING
We THINK We Can, We THINK We Can… -- Sam Schuman
Liberal Education: “Learning to Learn” -- Dale Knobel
That Fine Little House -- Rosalie Otero
Creating a Common Voice for Liberal Arts Education -- Charles F. Blaich and Mauri A. Ditzler
The “Little House” That Can -- John Nichols
Presidents’ Call: Campaign for the Advancement of Liberal Learning -- Carol Schneider

LIBERAL LEARNING AT ITS BEST
Understanding Caesar’s Gallic Ethnography: A Contextual Approach to Protohistory -- Erin Osborne-Martin (Portz Award Winner)

PEDAGOGIES OF …

That Fine Little House, Rosalie Otero

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

I was intrigued by Sam Schuman’s allegory about liberal arts education using Virginia Lee Burton’s story of The Little House. Sam points out that it was not the little house that changed, but its neighborhood. I would argue that not only the neighborhood changed, but what went on inside the little house. Like most people, my first house was small, and the activities that went on within our house generally centered around a young family and a new career. As the years progressed, I moved to a larger house, and the activities changed from managing teenagers to grandchildren and …

"How The Great Do Tumble": Mark Twain's Later Articles In The San Francisco Daily Alta California, Andrew Jewell

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

On November 20, 1867, Mark Twain wrote the San Francisco Daily Alta California to say that he had come home to America. It was the end of his tour of Europe and the Holy Land aboard the Quaker City, the trip that produced dozens of letters to the Daily Alta and, eventually, a book, The Innocents Abroad. These writings were enormously successful for Twain, as many papers picked up the series written to California, and the whole country knew about him; he was, upon his arrival, a “national figure"(Kaplan 57). It was, for Mark Twain, a moment of …

Report Of Animal Bones From Tjarnargata 3c, Reykjavík, Iceland, Sophia Perdikaris, Colin Amundsen, Thomas H. Mcgovern

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Executive Summary

During rescue excavations in downtown Reykjavík in 1999 nearly 100 kg of well-preserved animal bone was recovered in investigations at Tjarnargata 3 C by Fornleifastofnun Islands (FSÍ) directed by Mjöll Snaesdóttir. This bone collection (or archaeofauna) was largely sieved (4 mm and 1 mm mesh wet screen) and represents one of the largest archaeofauna recovered from Iceland to date. Analysis was carried out at City University of New York’s Northern Science & Education Center’s two zooarchaeology laboratories at Brooklyn College and Hunter College in 2000-01. The analyzed bone materials were returned for long term curation at the National …

An Annotated Checklist Of Wisconsin Scarabaeoidea (Coleoptera), Nadine A. Kriska, Daniel K. Young

Insecta Mundi

A survey of Wisconsin Scarabaeoidea (Coleoptera) conducted from literature searches, collection inventories, and three years of field work (1997-1999), yielded 177 species representing nine families, two of which, Ochodaeidae and Ceratocanthidae, represent new state family records. Fifty-six species (32% of the Wisconsin fauna) represent new state species records, having not previously been recorded from the state. Literature and collection distributional records suggest the potential for at least 33 additional species to occur in Wisconsin.

Three Approaches From Europe: Waldorf, Montessori, And Reggio Emilia, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia are three progressive approaches to early childhood education that appear to be growing in influence in North America and to have many points in common. This article provides a brief comparative introduction and highlights several key areas of similarity and contrast. All three approaches represent an explicit idealism and turn away from war and violence toward peace and reconstruction. They are built on coherent visions of how to improve human society by helping children realize their full potential as intelligent, creative, whole persons. In each approach, children are viewed as active authors of their own …

Migrations Of The Imagination: Photographs By Michael Forsberg, Drawings, Sculptures And Quotations By Paul A. Johnsgard, And Additional Works Of Art, Paul A. Johnsgard, Michael Forsberg

Papers in Ornithology

Migrations of the imagination are those images, sounds, smells, and tastes that transport one to another time and place, possibly as close as Nine- Mile Prairie near Lincoln, or perhaps as far away as the Canadian high arctic, and to times that may be decades or centuries removed from one's personal life and experiences. They hold us in their thrall, expanding our vision, and touching our lives in special ways. They help retrieve our own memories or perhaps stir us to make new ones that will live with us for a lifetime.

The migratory images here are those of nature, …

Distribution, Abundance And Habitat Use Of American White Pelicans In The Delta Region Of Mississippi And Along The Western Gulf Of Mexico Coast, D. Tommy King, Thomas C. Michot

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Aerial surveys of American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) were conducted over coastal Louisiana and the delta region of Mississippi on 1-2 days during December, February, and April each year from 1997 to 1999. Additional surveys were conducted in coastal Texas and Mexico during January 1998 and 1999. The numbers, location, and habitat of all pelicans observed were recorded. The coastal zone of Louisiana consistently had higher numbers of pelicans (18,000 to 35,000 birds) than other areas surveyed (3,000 to 8,000 birds), indicating that Louisiana may be the most important wintering area for American White Pelicans east of the …

Improvement In Quantity And Quality Of Prevention Measurement Of Toddler Injuries And Parental Interventions, Lizette Peterson, David Dilillo, Terri Lewis, Kenneth Sher

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Injury is the leading killer of children in the United States, yet little research has focused on this vital subject. One of the distinct barriers to injury prevention is the absence of effective assessment devices. Epidemiological aspects of injury have been assessed, but these provide little information at a level sufficient to allow conclusions about potential behavioral prevention methods. This paper describes an alternative, the Participant Event Monitoring (PEM) system. In this paper, the PEM system is used to examine a sample of 170 toddlers (ages 18 to 36 months), over a 6-month period, resulting in data on over 4,200 …

Education And Policy In The New Latino Diaspora, Edmund T. Hamann, Stanton Wortham, Enrique G. Murillo Jr.

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

Increasing numbers of Latinos (many immigrant, and some from elsewhere in the United States) are settling both temporarily and permanently in areas of the United States that have not traditionally been home to Latinos-for example, North Carolina, Maine, Georgia, Indiana, Arkansas, rural Illinois, and near resort communities in Colorado.' Enrique Murillo and Sofia Villenas have called this the New Latino Diaspora (Murillo and Vienas, 1997). Newcomer Latinos are confronted with novel challenges to their senses of identity, status, and community. Instead of arriving in settings, like the Southwest, where Latinos have lived for centuries, those in the New Latino Diaspora …

Visual Predators Select For Crypticity And Polymorphism In Virtual Prey, Alan B. Bond, Alan Kamil

Papers in Behavior in Biological Sciences

Cryptically colored animals commonly occur in several distinct pattern variants. Such phenotypic diversity may be promoted by frequency-dependent predation, in which more abundant variants are attacked disproportionately often, but the hypothesis has never been explicitly tested. Here we report the first controlled experiment on the effects of visual predators on prey crypticity and phenotypic variance, in which blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) searched for digital moths on computer monitors. Moth phenotypes evolved via a genetic algorithm in which individuals detected by the jays were much less likely to reproduce. Jays often failed to detect atypical cryptic moths, confirming frequency- …

Cxquery: A Novel Xml Query Language, Peter Revesz, Yi Chen

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

XML is becoming the data exchange standard on the Internet. Previously proposed XML query languages, such as XQuery, Quilt, YALT, Lorel, and XML-QL, lack schema definition of the query result; therefore, they are limited for defining views, integrating data, updating, and further querying, all of which are often needed in e-Business applications. We propose a novel XML query language called CXQuery, which defines the schema of the query results explicitly and can easily define views, and integrate, update, and query XML data. In addition, CXQuery can express spatial and spatio-temporal queries using a constraint-based querying approach.

Wildland Fire In Ecosystems Effects Of Fire On Air, David V. Sandberg, Roger D. Ottmar, Janice L. Peterson, John Core

Joint Fire Science Program Synthesis Reports

This state-of-knowledge review about the effects of fire on air quality can assist land, fire, and air resource managers with fire and smoke planning, and their efforts to explain to others the science behind fire-related program policies and practices to improve air quality. Chapter topics include air quality regulations and fire; characterization of emissions from fire; the transport, dispersion, and modeling of fire emissions; atmospheric and plume chemistry; air quality impacts of fire; social consequences of air quality impacts; and recommendations for future research.

Estimation Of Depth-Area Relationships Using Radar-Rainfall Data, S. Rocky Durrans, Lesley T. Julian, Michael Yekta

United States Department of Commerce: Staff Publications

Depth-area relationships, such as those published by the National Weather Service in TP 40 and the NOAA Atlas 2, enable conversion of point rainfall depths to areal average depths for the same storm duration and recurrence interval. This problem of conversion is most germane to hydrologic analyses for moderate to large drainage basins, where point rainfall depths are not representative of the spatial distribution of a storm event. Historically, depth-area relationships have been developed on the basis of data from dense networks of recording gauges. However, with the ongoing accumulation of radar-rainfall records, radar-rainfall data represent an alternative to gauging …

Research At Nebraska, 2001-2002 Report, University Of Nebraska-Lincoln

Office of Research and Economic Development: Publications

This publication is a snapshot of the fiscal year’s activities. To read more stories about research and creativity at Nebraska, visit the online edition at http://research.unl.edu/news/annualreport01-02.pdf. Additional multimedia are available for many stories.

Predicting The Spatial Dynamics Of Rabies Epidemics On Heterogeneous Landscapes, David L. Smith, Brendan Lucey, Lance A. Waller, James E. Childs, Leslie A. Real

Zoonotics and Wildlife Disease: Publications

Often as an epidemic spreads, the leading front is irregular, reflecting spatial variation in local transmission rates. We developed a methodology for quantifying spatial variation in rates of disease spread across heterogeneous landscapes. Based on data for epidemic raccoon rabies in Connecticut, we developed a stochastic spatial model of rabies spread through the state’s 169 townships. We quantified spatial variation in transmission rates associated with human demography and key habitat features. We found that large rivers act as semipermeable barriers, leading to a 7-fold reduction in the local rates of propagation. By combining the spatial distribution of major rivers with …

Assessing Vulnerability To Agricultural Drought: A Nebraska Case Study, Olga V. Wilhelmi, Donald A. Wilhite

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Recent drought events in the United States and the magnitude of drought losses indicate the continuing vulnerability of the country to drought. Until recently, drought management in many states, including Nebraska, has been largely response oriented with little or no attention to mitigation and preparedness. In 1998, Nebraska began to revise its drought plan in order to place more emphasis on mitigation. One of the main aspects of drought mitigation and planning is the assessment of who and what is vulnerable and why. This paper presents a method for spatial, Geographic Information Systems-based assessment of agricultural drought vulnerability in Nebraska. …

Spatial Representation Of Agroclimatology In A Study Of Agricultural Drought, Olga V. Wilhelmi, Kenneth Hubbard, Donald A. Wilhite

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Agricultural drought is the leading cause for crop failure throughout the world. In the USA, significant impacts of recent droughts on agricultural production indicate the continuing vulnerability of the country to drought. This paper presents a methodology for spatial representation of the agroclimatic component of agricultural drought vulnerability. This methodology was developed as a part of an integrated assessment of drought vulnerability. For the spatial analysis, the state of Nebraska was selected as a study area because of the considerable variation in climatology, soil characteristics, land use, and cropping patterns. The underlying approach assumes that the best spatial characterization of …

Montana Wolf Conservation And Management Planning Document

Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery: Annual Reports

Executive Summary

The State of Montana recognizes the gray wolf as a native species and will integrate wolves as a valuable part of our wildlife heritage. Since 1973, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has managed wolves as an endangered species in Montana, under the authority of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Wolves are likely to be removed from the endangered species list within 3-5 years. Upon delisting, management authority for wolves will return to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (MFWP). MFWP recognizes and accepts the challenges, responsibilities, and benefits of a restored wolf population. Managing gray wolves will …

Pharmaceuticals, Hormones, And Other Organic Wastewater Contaminants In U.S. Streams, 1999-2000: A National Reconnaissance, Dana Kolpin, Edward Furlong, Michael Meyer, E. Michael Thurman, Steven Zaugg, Larry Barber, Herbert Buxton

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

To provide the first nationwide reconnaissance of the occurrence of pharmaceuticals, hormones, and other organic wastewater contaminants (OWCs) in water resources, the U.S. Geological Survey used five newly developed analytical methods to measure concentrations of 95 OWCs in water samples from a network of 139 streams across 30 states during 1999 and 2000. The selection of sampling sites was biased toward streams susceptible to contamination (i.e. downstream of intense urbanization and livestock production). OWCs were prevalent during this study, being found in 80% of the streams sampled. The compounds detected represent a wide range of residential, industrial, and agricultural origins …

Holocene Multidecadal And Multicentennial Droughts Affecting Northern California And Nevada, Larry Benson, Michaele Kashgarian, Robert Rye, Steve Lund, Fred Paillet, Joseph Smoot, Cynthia Kester, Scott Mensing, Dave Meko, Susan Landström

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Continuous, high-resolution δ¹⁸O records from cored sediments of Pyramid Lake, Nevada, indicate that oscillations in the hydrologic balance occurred, on average, about every 150 years (yr) during the past 7630 calendar years (cal yr). The records are not stationary; during the past 2740 yr, drought durations ranged from 20 to 100 yr and intervals between droughts ranged from 80 to 230 yr. Comparison of tree-ring-based reconstructions of climate change for the past 1200 yr from the Sierra Nevada and the El Malpais region of northwest New Mexico indicates that severe droughts associated with Anasazi withdrawal from Chaco Canyon …