Digital Commons Network^™

Predicting Changes In Bee Assemblages Following State Transitions At North American Dryland Ecotones, Melanie R. Kazenel, Karen W. Wright, Julieta Bettinelli, Terry L. Griswold, Kenneth D. Whitney, Jennifer A. Rudgers

All PIRU Publications

Drylands worldwide are experiencing ecosystem state transitions: the expansion of some ecosystem types at the expense of others. Bees in drylands are particularly abundant and diverse, with potential for large compositional differences and seasonal turnover across ecotones. To better understand how future ecosystem state transitions may influence bees, we compared bee assemblages and their seasonality among sites at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (NM, USA) that represent three dryland ecosystem types (and two ecotones) of the southwestern U.S. (Plains grassland, Chihuahuan Desert grassland, and Chihuahuan Desert shrubland). Using passive traps, we caught bees during two-week intervals from March–October, 2002–2014. The …

The Utah Statesman, January 14, 2020, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

A Molecularly Engineered Antiviral Banana Lectin Inhibits Fusion And Is Efficacious Against Influenza Virus Infection In Vivo, Evelyn M. Covés-Datson, Steven R. King, Maureen Legendre, Auroni Gupta, Susana M. Chan, Emily Gitlin, Vikram V. Kulkarni, Jezreel Pantaleón García, Donald F. Smee, Elke Lipka, Scott E. Evans, E. Bart Tarbet, Akira Ono, David M. Markovitz

Animal, Dairy, and Veterinary Science Faculty Publications

There is a strong need for a new broad-spectrum antiinfluenza therapeutic, as vaccination and existing treatments are only moderately effective. We previously engineered a lectin, H84T banana lectin (H84T), to retain broad-spectrum activity against multiple influenza strains, including pandemic and avian, while largely eliminating the potentially harmful mitogenicity of the parent compound. The amino acid mutation at position 84 from histidine to threonine minimizes the mitogenicity of the wild-type lectin while maintaining antiinfluenza activity in vitro. We now report that in a lethal mouse model H84T is indeed nonmitogenic, and both early and delayed therapeutic administration of H84T intraperitoneally are …

Social Media Interaction As Informal Science Learning: A Comparison Of Message Design In Two Niches, Lisa Lundgren, Kent J. Crippen, Richard T. Bex Ii

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Social media provides science learners opportunities to interact with content-specific messages. However, most science-specific social media content is designed to disseminate information instead of encouraging dialog. In this novel, ex post facto exploratory study of a science social media community, we sought to understand the relationships among community member interaction, design elements of messages, and post type on two digital niches (i.e., Facebook and Twitter). Framed by the theory of symbolic interactionism, we conducted a content analysis of 1370 messages that were systematically created by an informal science learning project and found that usage frequency of messaging elements varied by …

Integrating Agriculture And Ecosystems To Find Suitable Adaptations To Climate Change, Anastasia W. Thayer, Aurora M. Vargas, Adrian A. Castellanos, Charles W. Lafon, Bruce A. Mccarl, Daniel L. Roelke, Kirk O. Winemiller, Thomas E. Lacher

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

Climate change is altering agricultural production and ecosystems around the world. Future projections indicate that additional change is expected in the coming decades, forcing individuals and communities to respond and adapt. Current research efforts typically examine climate change effects and possible adaptations but fail to integrate agriculture and ecosystems. This failure to jointly consider these systems and associated externalities may underestimate climate change impacts or cause adaptation implementation surprises, such as causing adaptation status of some groups or ecosystems to be worsened. This work describes and motivates reasons why ecosystems and agriculture adaptation require an integrated analytical approach. Synthesis of …

Show Me, Don’T Tell Me: A Picturesque View Of Perceptions Of Police, Nancy Marion, Jason Twede

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

A positive relationship between law enforcement and the public is critical for the effective operation of the agency and continued safety of the community. The public’s perception of law enforcement officers is one indication of the nature of that relationship. Past research on perception of the police has used questionnaires to untangle how the public views officers. This research uses an alternative method to measure the public’s perceptions of the police by asking respondents to draw a picture of a police officer. By analyzing the drawings, it can be seen what characteristics people identify with law enforcement. This study analyzed …

The Utah Statesman, January 7, 2020, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Early Goose Arrival Increases Soil Nitrogen Availability More Than An Advancing Spring In Coastal Western Alaska, Ryan T. Choi, Karen H. Beard, Katharine C. Kelsey, A. Joshua Leffler, Joel A. Schmutz, Jeffrey M. Welker

Ecology Center Publications

An understudied aspect of climate change-induced phenological mismatch is its effect on ecosystem functioning, such as nitrogen (N) cycling. Migratory herbivore arrival time may alter N inputs and plant–herbivore feedbacks, whereas earlier springs are predicted to increase N cycling rates through warmer temperatures. However, the relative importance of these shifts in timing and how they interact to affect N cycling are largely unknown. We conducted a 3-year factorial experiment in coastal western Alaska that simulated different timings of Pacific black brant (Branta bernicla nigricans) arrival (3 weeks early, typical, 3 weeks late, or no-grazing) and the growing season …

Voices Of Usu: An Anthology Of Student Writing, Vol. 13, Utah State University Department Of English

Voices of USU

This collection of student writing represents the voices of over 2,000 students who enroll each academic year in Utah State University’s second-year composition course, Intermediate Writing: Research Writing in a Persuasive Mode. Voices of USU celebrates excellence in writing by providing undergraduate students of diverse backgrounds and disciplines the opportunity to have their work published.

Cereus Fun: An Introduction To Microbiological Techniques, Holly Ahern, Jessica Habashi

Course Materials

Microbiology is a field of science devoted to the study of organisms that are too small to see; therefore, an engaging laboratory experience is often the key to capturing students' interest. It was with this in mind that this book was first conceived and developed. The goal was to provide undergraduate microbiology students with an engaging and meaningful laboratory experience that nurtured a sense of discovery and encouraged greater interest in microbiology as a topic, a field of study, or a career.

This lab manual – which has been field-tested by hundreds of microbiology students over several years – builds …

Peer-Prompted Engineering Design: How Do Adolescents Interact And Strategize?, Kristin Marie Strong, Oenardi Lawanto, Amy Wilson-Lopez

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

Engineering design was integrated into K–12 science education in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013), but teaching design remains a challenge for educators. Design problems are ill-defined, ill-structured, and complex problem-solving tasks. Their solutions require creativity and recursive, metacognitive processes that cannot be taught with simple algorithms. Moreover, adolescents do not demonstrate fully developed metacognitive skills because they are undergoing profound developmental changes. In this comparative case study, we explored how peer-delivered metacognitive prompts supported adolescents during a design challenge. We investigated how scripted prompts sparked reflection and stimulated design changes and identified which prompts were most …

The Naked Emperor: Politics Without Romance In The Calculus Of Consent, William F. Shughart Ii, Arthur R. Wardle

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Published more than a half-century ago, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Buchanan and Tullock 1962) is one of a handful of pathbreaking contributions to the then contemporary literatures of economics and political science that launched the public-choice research program and its subfield of constitutional political economy.¹ It has remained in print ever since, most readily available nowadays as volume 3 of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan (Buchanan and Tullock [1962] 1999) and as volume 2 of The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock (Buchanan and Tullock [1962] 2004).2 The Calculus was one of the …

"Let's Go On A Gym Raid Tonight!": Video Game Affinity Spaces In English Language Instruction, Marta Dominika Halaczkiewicz

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The present article describes a study that analyzed practical applications of informal online spaces in formal instruction. It was conducted in an intermediate ESL course at an American University. The concept of affinity spaces was used to guide the research. Students in the course were instructed to play the video game, Pokémon Go as an inspiration for their writing. This qualitative study examined the types of affinity space participation, the participant attitudes toward those spaces and to using video games in formal instruction. The data sources consisted of weekly gaming journals and interview transcripts. The findings showed that the participants …

Visualization Tools For Visual Impact Assessments: A Study Of Existing Technologies, Anthony J. Depriest, Tim D. Keane, Brent C. Chamberlain, Mark Lindquist

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Faculty Publications

In the last few decades, digital technology has dramatically altered how visual resource management and visual impact assessments (VIAs) are conducted. The recent emergence of low-cost immersive technology offers a suite of tools that could facilitate the VIA process. However, to date there is limited empirical evidence evaluating how these emerging technologies could influence VIA. The research presented here begins to fill this gap by comparing immersive virtual environments to existing 2D photo-based methods for assessing the visual impacts of development. 23 participants familiar with VIAs rated the visual qualities of different scenes presented as 360° images, Google Earth and …

A Pedagogical Retrospective: Gamifying The Konza Prairie Through An Interdisciplinary Studio, Howard Hahn, Brent C. Chamberlain

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Faculty Publications

Recently we embarked on developing an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach that integrates concepts of virtual reality and gaming design to leverage these technologies’ potential to influence how we interpret, visualize, design and analyze environments. The approach was developed as part of an advanced studio at Kansas State University led by two professors and represented by students across three different disciplines: landscape architecture, education and computer science. The entire project consisted of a core studio, buttressed by a seminar and technical module. We refer to the courses and project as “Studio Konza.” This retrospective paper highlights why this effort was undertaken, what …

Re-Legitimizing The Unfaithful Bastard Traitor: Re-Productive And Contestatory Intertextuality In Andrés Bello’S Gramática And Orlando, Angela Delutis-Eichenberger

Decimonónica

Conceived prior to his parents’ matrimony in Venezuela, Andrés Bello (1781-1865) was later accused of fathering an illegitimate child from an adulterous liaison in Chile. By then, some had also considered him a traitor of the patriots for his supposed deviant behavior at the onset of the revolution in Caracas in 1810. Following his departure from Venezuela that year, Bello had begun an unforeseen nineteen-year residency in England (1810-1829) that ended with his relocation to Chile (1829-1865). These “exiles” were marked by impressive strides in politics and scholarship. His grammatical studies advanced in London persisted in Santiago, and culminated in …

“Una Cualidad Lírica De Un Encanto Duradero:” El Diálogo De Pintores (Y Pinturas) Estadounidenses Y Chilenos En El Centenario De 1910, M. Elizabeth Boone

Decimonónica

Con motivo del centenario de la independencia en 1910, el gobierno chileno patrocinó una gran Exposición Internacional que tomó lugar en el recién construido Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes en Santiago de Chile.¹ Entre los países invitados a enviar una muestra de arte moderno y exponerla en el nuevo edificio se encontraba Estados Unidos de América, así que en una de las galerías del museo se encontraba una obra del paisajista estadounidense J. Francis Murphy y, en otra, lucía un paisaje bucólico del chileno Pedro Lira. Representaban ambas el mes de octubre, o tal vez noviembre, y dialogaban entre …

Petimetres En La Urbe: Cuerpos En Crisis En La Habana Colonial (1790-1805), Roseli Rojo

Decimonónica

El cruce del siglo XVIII al XIX representó para La Habana un avivamiento económico, arquitectónico y cultural como corolario de las reformas ilustradas que la corona española llevó a cabo en sus colonias durante el Siglo de las Luces. En el caso habanero, la toma de La Habana por los ingleses acrecentó los tratos paternalistas de la metrópoli. Para que los criollos antillanos no echaran en falta las libertades comerciales alcanzadas en el periodo de ocupación inglesa, se derogó en 1778 la ley que prescribía el comercio habanero con los puertos de Cádiz. Aún más importante, en 1789, se autorizó …

¡Mi Hijo Es Mío, Puñales! Excessive Paternal Devotion In Benito Pérez Galdós’S Torquemada Novels, Gabrielle Miller

Decimonónica

While Margaret Mead’s provocative statement that “motherhood is a biological necessity, but fatherhood is a social invention” may be inherently problematic, it successfully underlines “the role of the father” as a culturally-inscribed rather than universal construct (cited in Garbarino 13). In industrialized Western countries of the nineteenth century, the dominant gender ideology of the so-called separate spheres defined the “good father” as a “distant breadwinner” who, as unequivocal family patriarch, provided for his family’s material needs through monetarily-compensated work (Lupton and Barclay 14). Unsurprisingly, the dominant model of fatherhood that emerged in Spain in the second half of the nineteenth …

The Icy Bride And The Invisible Husband: Shivering Solitary Pleasure In Horacio Quiroga’S “El Almohadón De Plumas” (1917), Natalie Love

Decimonónica

Despite the extensive scholarship on Horacio Quiroga’s “El almohadón de plumas,” no study has established a direct correlation between the enigmatic illness of the sexually frustrated bride and prevalent nineteenth-century medical discourses on female frigidity and masturbation. When taking into account these treatises, the infamous deathly “parasite” found lurking inside of Alicia’s feather pillow can be reinterpreted as a metaphor for her wasteful onanistic indulgences caused by sensual dissatisfaction.¹ Given the warnings in masturbation treatises surrounding the parasitical nature of feather bedding, Alicia’s vampiric pillow not only points to her solitary pleasures, but she also displays several other characteristics …

Patterns Of Epiphytic Lichen Abundance On Aspen Stands In Proximity To Roads Of Varying Vehicular Traffic, D. Aragon, C. Castillo, J. Moffroid, G. Thomas

Aspen Bibliography

Although present in nearly any wild space with available moisture and on a wide variety of substrates, lichen, and its importance as a bioindicator for an ecosystem, is often overlooked. As air pollution becomes a greater concern for flora, fauna, and even humans, the story told by lichen growth becomes more useful as we try to make sense of the downstream effects of anthropogenic contributions to poor air quality. One such human-driven pollutant is the level of emissions that result from vehicular travel. The Jackson Hole area has experienced a large increase in vehicular traffic in the past five to …

Collective Effect Of Landfills And Landscape Composition On Bird–Aircraft Collisions, Morgan B. Pfeiffer, Bradley F. Blackwell, Travis L. Devault

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Ninety-three percent of all reported bird strikes occur below 1,067 m, which based on the typical approach and departure angles of aircraft is within 8–13 km of an airport. Concomitantly, the Federal Aviation Administration and the International Civil Aviation Organization recommend that any feature that would attract hazardous wildlife to the approach and departure airspace be restricted. Thus, preventing the establishment of wildlife attractants, such as municipal solid waste landfills (MSWLFs) within 8 km or 13 km extents (U.S. and international recommendations, respectively) of airports, has been recommended to mitigate the risk of bird–aircraft collisions (strikes). However, robust evidence linking …

Management Of The Brown-Headed Cowbird: Implications For Endangered Species And Agricultural Damage Mitigation, Brian D. Peer, Barbara E. Kus, Mary J. Whitfield, Linnea S. Hall, Stephen I. Rothstein

Human–Wildlife Interactions

The brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater; cowbird) is unique among North American blackbirds (Icteridae) because it is managed to mitigate the negative effects on endangered songbirds and economic losses in agricultural crops. Cowbird brood parasitism can further affect species that are considered threatened or endangered due to anthropogenic land uses. Historically, cowbirds have often been culled without addressing ultimate causes of songbird population declines. Similar to other North American blackbirds, cowbirds depredate agricultural crops, albeit at a lower rate reported for other blackbird species. Conflicting information exists on the extent of agricultural damage caused by cowbirds and the effectiveness …

Field Guarding As A Crop Protection Method: Preliminary Implications For Improving Field Guarding, Leah J. Findlay, Russell A. Hill

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Negative interactions between crop farmers and wild primates are an issue of significant concern. Despite many crop farmers using field guards as a method of crop protection against foraging primates, there are very few published accounts of how effective this technique is and how it might be improved. To bridge this knowledge gap, we used direct observations from a hide to collect the behaviors of field guards, chacma baboons (Papio ursinus; baboons), and vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus; vervets) foraging in a 1-ha butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata) field for 4 months (May to August) in …

Can Farmers And Bats Co-Exist? Farmer Attitudes, Knowledge, And Experiences With Bats In Belize, Hannah G. Shapiro, Adam S. Willcox, Mallory Tate, Emma V. Willcox

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Bats (Chiroptera) are often viewed negatively by the public. Negative public perceptions of bats may hinder efforts to conserve declining populations. In Belize, the presence of vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus and Diphylla ecaudata) exacerbates the potential for conflicts with humans because of the increased rabies transmission risks. To mitigate these risks, the Belize government provides farmers with assistance to trap and remove vampire bats. In June 2018, we surveyed farmers (n = 44) in and adjacent to the Vaca Forest Reserve in Belize to learn more about their attitudes, knowledge, and experiences with bats. This information may …

Remote Sensing Applications For Abating Aircraft–Bird Strike Risks In Southeast Brazil, Natalia S. Novoselova, Alexey A. Novoselov, Arthur Macarrão, Guilherme Gallo-Ortiz, Wesley Rodrigues Silva

Human–Wildlife Interactions

The rising number of aircraft collisions with birds requires the development of appropriate mitigation measures to control their populations in the vicinity of airports. The black vulture (Coragyps atratus; vultures) is considered one of the most dangerous species for aviation in Brazil. To better understand the spatial distribution patterns of flying vultures and the risks they may pose to aviation, we studied natural and anthropogenic superficial factors and then numerically estimated and mapped the risk of collision with birds over the Airport Safety Area (ASA) for the Amarais Airport and Presidente Prudente Airport in the southeast part of …

The Times They Are A-Changin’, Terry A. Messmer

Human–Wildlife Interactions

This is the Letter from the Editor.

Evaluation Of The Impacts Of Radio-Marking Devices On Feral Horses And Burros In A Captive Setting, Kathryn A. Schoenecker, Sarah R. B. King, Gail H. Collins

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Radio-collars and other radio-marking devices have been invaluable tools for wildlife managers for >40 years. These marking devices have improved our understanding of wildlife spatial ecology and demographic parameters and provided new data facilitating model development for species conservation and management. Although these tools have been used on virtually all North American ungulates, their deployment on feral horses (Equus ferus caballus) or burros (E. asinus) has been limited. To determine if radio-collars and radio-tags could be safely deployed on feral equids, we conducted a 1-year observational study in 2015 to investigate fit and wear of radio-collars …

Stone-Stacking As A Looming Threat To Rock-Dwelling Biodiversity, Ricardo Rocha, Paulo A. V. Borges, Pedro Cardoso, Mirza Dikari Kusrini, José Luis Martín-Esquivel, Dília Menezes, Mário Mota-Ferreira, Sara F. Nunes, Inês Órfão, Catarina Serra-Gonçalves, Manuela Sim-Sim, Pedro Sepúlveda, Dinarte Teixeira, Anna Traveset

Human–Wildlife Interactions

This letter to the editor describes the surge of “photo-friendly” stacks of stones as an emerging tourism-associated threat to rock-dwelling biodiversity.

Book Review: Saving Species On Private Lands: Unlocking Incentives To Conserve Wildlife And Their Habitats, Lorien Belton

Human–Wildlife Interactions

This is a book review of Saving Species on Private Lands: Unlocking Incentives to Conserve Wildlife and their Habitats.