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The Surprising God Of Jonah: His Compassion And Our Genuine Obedience, Jiri Moskala

Faculty Publications

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Paul Bork Dies, Paul J. Ray

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No abstract provided.

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Short Report: Raising Children Bilingually, Henriette Langdon

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to describe the process of becoming bilingual by sharing my own experience being raised in a four-language environment and how it influenced the upbringing of my daughter in two, and subsequently three languages. The other purpose is to dispel the myth that children with language, developmental and/or intellectual impairments or those diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum cannot or should not be exposed to two languages because it is confusing, or because they simply cannot handle two languages due to their disability. As a bilingual speech and language pathologist (SLP) who has practiced …

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Evaluation Of Three Modis-Derived Vegetation Index Time Series For Dryland Vegetation Dynamics Monitoring, Linlin Lu, Claudia Kuenzer, Cuizhen Wang, Huadong Guo, Qingting Li

Faculty Publications

Understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of vegetation is essential in drylands. In this paper, we evaluated three vegetation indices, namely the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) and the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Surface-Reflectance Product in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China (XUAR), to assess index time series’ suitability for monitoring vegetation dynamics in a dryland environment. The mean annual VI and its variability were generated and analyzed from the three VI time series for the period 2001–2012 across XUAR. Two phenological metrics, start of the season …

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Global Technology Experiences For Upper-Division Engineering Students: An Assessment, Patricia Backer, Wenchiang Chung

Faculty Publications

In order for students to thrive in the highly competitive global economy, it is critical for them to develop international perspectives and appreciation. As a result, in 2004, the San Jose State University’s Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering established a one-million-dollar Global Technology Initiative (GTI) program. The mission of the GTI program is to expand students’ horizons about the opportunities and challenges of a global economy, to expose them to global, environmental, and energy problems in which technology plays a central role, to motivate their learning of global issues and different cultures, and to introduce them to a more …

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Crop Rotational Diversity Enhances Belowground Communities And Functions In An Agroecosystem, L. K. Tiemann, A. Stuart Grandy, E. E. Atkinson, E. Marin-Spiotta, M. D. Mcdaniel

Faculty Publications

Biodiversity loss, an important consequence of agricultural intensification, can lead to reductions in agroecosystem functions and services. Increasing crop diversity through rotation may alleviate these negative consequences by restoring positive aboveground–belowground interactions. Positive impacts of aboveground biodiversity on belowground communities and processes have primarily been observed in natural systems. Here, we test for the effects of increased diversity in an agroecosystem, where plant diversity is increased over time through crop rotation. As crop diversity increased from one to five species, distinct soil microbial communities were related to increases in soil aggregation, organic carbon, total nitrogen, microbial activity and decreases in …

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The Utility Of Total Lightning Trends In Diagnosing Single-Cell Thunderstorm Severity: Examples From The Central Appalachians Region, Paul Miller, Andrew Ellis, Stephen Keighton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Going With The Flow Or Against The Grain? The Promise Of Vegetation For Protecting Beaches, Dunes, And Barrier Islands From Erosion, Rusty A. Feagin, Jens Figlus, Julie C. Zinnert, Jake Sigren, Marisa L. Martínez, Rodolfo Silva, William K. Smith, Ashley Cox, Daniel Cox, Donald R. Young, Gregory A. Carter

Faculty Publications

Coastlines have traditionally been engineered to maintain structural stability and to protect property from storm‐related damage, but their ability to endure will be challenged over the next century. The use of vegetation to reduce erosion on ocean‐facing mainland and barrier island shorelines – including the sand dunes and beaches on these islands – could be part of a more flexible strategy. Although there is growing enthusiasm for using vegetation for this purpose, empirical data supporting this approach are lacking. Here, we identify the potential roles of vegetation in coastal protection, including the capture of sediment, ecological succession, and the building …

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Topographical Emphases In Hugh Glass Narratives, 1825-2015, Thomas Simmons

Faculty Publications

This paper was presented at the 47th Annual Dakota Conference: Where the West Begins? Geography, Identity and Promise at the Center for Western Studies, Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota on April 24, 2015 and was lightly updated in 2016. It summarizes the life of Hugh Glass and examines the evolving role of topography, landscape and environment in the fictional retellings of the Hugh Glass saga spanning the years 1825 to 2015.

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Improved Polsar Image Classification By The Use Of Multi-Feature Combination, Lei Deng, Ya-Nan Yan, Cuizhen Wang

Faculty Publications

Polarimetric SAR (POLSAR) provides a rich set of information about objects on land surfaces. However, not all information works on land surface classification. This study proposes a new, integrated algorithm for optimal urban classification using POLSAR data. Both polarimetric decomposition and time-frequency (TF) decomposition were used to mine the hidden information of objects in POLSAR data, which was then applied in the C5.0 decision tree algorithm for optimal feature selection and classification. Using a NASA/JPL AIRSAR POLSAR scene as an example, the overall accuracy and kappa coefficient of the proposed method reached 91.17% and 0.90 in the L-band, much higher …

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Quantifying Land Cover Change Due To Petroleum Exploration And Production In The Haynesville Shale Region Using Remote Sensing, Daniel Unger, I-Kuai Hung, Kenneth W. Farrish, Darinda Dans

Faculty Publications

The Haynesville Shale lies under areas of Louisiana and Texas and is one of the largest gas plays in the U.S. Encompassing approximately 2.9 million ha, this area has been subject to intensive exploration for oil and gas, while over 90% of it has traditionally been used for forestry and agriculture. In order to detect the landscape change in the past few decades, Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery for six years (1984, 1989, 1994, 2000, 2006, and 2011) was acquired. Unsupervised classifications were performed to classify each image into four cover types: agriculture, forest, well pad, and other. Change detection …

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Interspecific Competition Affects Evolutionary Links Between Cavity Nesting, Migration And Clutch Size In Old World Flycatchers (Muscicapdae), Sahas Barve, Nicholas A. Mason

Faculty Publications

© 2015 British Ornithologists' Union. The ecology of cavity nesting in passerine birds has been studied extensively, yet there are no phylogenetic comparative studies that quantify differences in life history traits between cavity- and open-nesting birds within a passerine family. We test existing hypotheses regarding the evolutionary significance of cavity nesting in the Old World flycatchers (Muscicapidae). We used a multi-locus phylogeny of 252 species to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cavity nesting and to quantify correlations between nest types and life history traits. Within a phylogenetic generalized linear model framework, we found that cavity-nesting species are larger than open-nesting …

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Drivers Of Observed Biotic Homogenization In Pine Barrens Of Central Wisconsin, Daijiang Li, Donald Waller

Faculty Publications

© 2015 by the Ecological Society of America. Fire suppression throughout the 20th century greatly altered plant communities in fire-dominated systems across North America. Our ability to assess these effects over the long term, however, is handicapped by the paucity of baseline data. Here, we used detailed baseline data from the 1950s to track changes in the over- and understory composition of pinebarrens vegetation growing on sandy, glacial lake-bed sediments in central Wisconsin. We expected fire suppression to favor succession to closed-canopy conditions, leading to decreases in shade-intolerant and fire-Adapted species and consequent reductions in alpha and gamma diversity. We …

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Small Data Surveillance V. Big Data Cybersurveillance, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

This Article highlights some of the critical distinctions between small data surveillance and big data cybersurveillance as methods of intelligence gathering. Specifically, in the intelligence context, it appears that "collect-it-all" tools in a big data world can now potentially facilitate the construction, by the intelligence community, of other individuals' digital avatars. The digital avatar can be understood as a virtual representation of our digital selves and may serve as a potential proxy for an actual person. This construction may be enabled through processes such as the data fusion of biometric and biographic data, or the digital data fusion of the …

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Asor 2014, Paul J. Ray

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Editorial, Michael Leitner, Marco Helbich

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Hurricane Risk Variability Along The Gulf Of Mexico Coastline, Jill C. Trepanier, Kelsey N. Ellis, Clay S. Tucker

Faculty Publications

Hurricane risk characteristics are examined across the U. S. Gulf of Mexico coastline using a hexagonal tessellation. Using an extreme value model, parameters are collected representing the rate or λ (frequency), the scale or σ (range), and the shape or ζ (intensity) of the extreme wind distribution. These latent parameters and the 30-year return level are visualized across the grid. The greatest 30-year return levels are located toward the center of the Gulf of Mexico, and for inland locations, along the borders of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Using a geographically weighted regression model, the relationship of these parameters to sea …

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Seismic Stratigraphy Of The Central South China Sea Basin And Implications For Neotectonics, Chun Feng Li, Jiabiao Li, Weiwei Ding, Dieter Franke, Yongjian Yao, Hesheng Shi, Xiong Pang, Ying Cao, Jian Lin, Denise K. Kulhanek, Trevor Williams, Rui Bao, Anne Briais, Elizabeth A. Brown, Yifeng Chen, Peter D. Clift, Frederick S. Colwell, Kelsie A. Dadd, Iván Hernández-Almeida, Xiao Long Huang, Sangmin Hyun, Tao Jiang, Anthony A.P. Koppers, Qianyu Li, Chuanlian Liu, Qingsong Liu, Zhifei Liu, Renata H. Nagai, Alyssa Peleo-Alampay, Xin Su, Zhen Sun, Maria Luisa G. Tejada, Hai Son Trinh

Faculty Publications

©2015. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. Coring/logging data and physical property measurements from International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 349 are integrated with, and correlated to, reflection seismic data to map seismic sequence boundaries and facies of the central basin and neighboring regions of the South China Sea. First-order sequence boundaries are interpreted, which are Oligocene/Miocene, middle Miocene/late Miocene, Miocene/Pliocene, and Pliocene/Pleistocene boundaries. A characteristic early Pleistocene strong reflector is also identified, which marks the top of extensive carbonate-rich deposition in the southern East and Southwest Subbasins. The fossil spreading ridge and the boundary between the East and Southwest Subbasins …

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Fall Armyworm (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) Ecology In Southeastern Cotton, Jarrod T. Hardke, Gus M. Lorenz, B. Rogers Leonard

Faculty Publications

The fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith), is a sporadic pest with a diverse host range. This insect occasionally causes damage to cotton across the United States from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast. Fall armyworm has been problematic in cotton due to its overall tolerance to many insecticide use strategies and difficulty in finding and surveying field infestations with sampling protocols. A review of insect biology, description of life stages, behavior and host strain identification, injury to cotton, and potential management options for the southeastern United States are presented.

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Regional Patterns In The Otolith Chemistry Of Juvenile Spotted Seatrout (Cynoscion Nebulosus) Differ Under Contrasting Hydrological Regimes, Chet F. Rakocinski, Bruce H. Comyns, Mark S. Peterson, Alan M. Shiller

Faculty Publications

The value of using otolith chemistry to characterize recruitment in terms of natal source regions depends on how consistently spatio-temporal variation can be resolved. The objective of this study was to compare regional classification patterns in the otolith chemistry of juvenile Spotted Seatrout (Cynoscion nebulosus) between two years experiencing disparate hydrological regimes, and separated by a five year interlude. Spatial patterns in the whole-otolith chemistry of juveniles of this estuarine-dependent species were compared between years using five otolith elements and two stable isotopes. Consistent size-related trends in uptake and deposition were evidenced by parallel ontogenetic relationships for six otolith variables. …

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Hispanics At The Starting Line: Poverty Among Newborn Infants In Established Gateways And New Destinations, Daniel T. Lichter, Scott R. Sanders, Kenneth M. Johnson

Faculty Publications

High rates of Hispanic fertility raise an important question: Do Hispanic newborn babies start life's race behind the starting line, poor and disadvantaged? To address this question, we link the newborn infants identified with the new fertility question in the 2006–2010 American Community Survey (ACS) to the poverty status of mothers. Our results document the disproportionately large share (40 percent) of Hispanic babies who are born into poverty. The prospect of poverty is especially high in new Hispanic destinations, especially those in rural areas. For Hispanic newborn babies, poverty cannot be reduced to supply-side explanations that emphasize maladaptive behavioral decision-making …

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Convergence Of Soil Nitrogen Isotopes Across Global Climate Gradients, Joseph M. Craine, Andrew J. Elmore, Lixin Wang, Laurent Augusto, W. Troy Baisden, E. N. J. Brookshire, Michael D. Cramer, Niles J. Hasselquist, Erik A. Hobbie, Ansgar Kahmen, Keisuke Koba, J. Marty Kranabetter, Michelle C. Mack, Erika Marin-Spiotta, Jordan R. Mayor, Kendra K. Mclauchlan, Anders Michelsen, Gabriela B. Nardoto, Rafael S. Oliveira, Steven S. Perakis, Pablo L. Peri, Carlos A. Quesada, Andreas Richter, Louis A. Schipper

Faculty Publications

Quantifying global patterns of terrestrial nitrogen (N) cycling is central to predicting future patterns of primary productivity, carbon sequestration, nutrient fluxes to aquatic systems, and climate forcing. With limited direct measures of soil N cycling at the global scale, syntheses of the 15N:14N ratio of soil organic matter across climate gradients provide key insights into understanding global patterns of N cycling. In synthesizing data from over 6000 soil samples, we show strong global relationships among soil N isotopes, mean annual temperature (MAT), mean annual precipitation (MAP), and the concentrations of organic carbon and clay in soil. In both hot ecosystems …

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Regional Disparities In Obesity Prevalence In The United States: A Spatial Regime Analysis, Candice A. Myers, Tim Slack, Corby K. Martin, Stephanie T. Broyles, Steven B. Heymsfield

Faculty Publications

Objective Significant clusters of high- and low-obesity counties have been demonstrated across the United States (US). This study examined regional disparities in obesity prevalence and differences in the related structural characteristics across regions of the US. Methods Drawing on model-based estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, regional differences in county-level adult obesity prevalence (percent of the adult population [≥ 20 years] that was obese [BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2] within a county, 2009) were assessed with a LISA (Local Indicators of Spatial Association) analysis to identify geographic concentrations of high and low obesity levels. Regional regime analysis was …

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Ant Community Structure And Response To Disturbances On Coastal Dunes Of Gulf Of Mexico, Xuan Chen, Benjamin Adams, Cody Bergeron, Alexander Sabo, Linda Hooper-Bùi

Faculty Publications

Coastal dunes are complex and fragile ecosystems. The decrease in environmental stressors from sea to inland creates zonation patterns of habitats, which support high biodiversity. Although coastal dunes have been examined in primary succession studies for more than 100 years, invertebrates have received much less attention than other taxa. In this study, we examined ant community composition and its relationship with vegetation structure on dunes, and used ants as indicators to reveal the influence of anthropogenic disturbances on these habitats. Quadrat sampling, hand collecting, and beating plants were used to sample ants on coastal dunes fringing the northern Gulf of …

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Modis-Based Fractional Crop Mapping In The U.S. Midwest With Spatially Constrained Phenological Mixture Analysis, Cheng Zhong, Cuizhen Wang, Changshan Wu

Faculty Publications

Since the 2000s, bioenergy land use has been rapidly expanded in U.S. agricultural lands. Monitoring this change with limited acquisition of remote sensing imagery is difficult because of the similar spectral properties of crops. While phenology-assisted crop mapping is promising, relying on frequently observed images, the accuracies are often low, with mixed pixels in coarse-resolution imagery. In this paper, we used the eight-day, 500 m MODIS products (MOD09A1) to test the feasibility of crop unmixing in the U.S. Midwest, an important bioenergy land use region. With all MODIS images acquired in 2007, the 46-point Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time …

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The Digital Atlas Of Ancient Life: Delivering Information On Paleontology And Biogeography, Jonathan R. Hendricks, Alycia L. Stigall, Bruce S. Lieberman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Friendship As Method, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

“Friendship as Method,” appendix of the book In Solidarity: Friendship, Family, and Activism Beyond Gay and Straight (Routledge 2015), overviews the author's approach to and philosophy of research. She defines friendship, posits it as a kind of fieldwork, and lays the methodological foundations of friendship as method. After arguing that friendship as method involves researching with the practices, at the pace, and in the natural contexts of friendship, the author describes this approach’s strengths and considerations for both researcher and participants. To learn more, visit the book's website: http://www.insolidaritybook.com.

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The Medical Tourism Index: Scale Development And Validation, Marc Fetscherin, Renee-Marie Stephano

Faculty Publications

Medical tourism is an estimated $100 billion dollar industry. Despite the increasing number of people, companies and countries involved in medical tourism, we know very little about the key drivers and how countries are perceived as medical tourism destinations. The purpose of this paper is to present the Medical Tourism Index, a new type of country-based performance measure to assess the attractiveness of a country as a medical tourist destination. We followed a rigorous multi-steps scale development procedure by using four empirical studies based on 4995 respondents. The MTI is a multidimensional construct with 4 dimensions (country, tourism, medical costs, …

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Integrating Hands-On Undergraduate Research In An Applied Spatial Science Senior Level Capstone Course, David Kulhavy, Daniel R. Unger, I-Kuai Hung, David Douglass

Faculty Publications

A senior within a spatial science Ecological Planning capstone course designed an undergraduate research project to increase his spatial science expertise and to assess the hands-on instruction methodology employed within the Bachelor of Science in Spatial Science program at Stephen F Austin State University. The height of 30 building features estimated remotely with LiDAR data, within the Pictometry remotely sensed web-based interface, and in situ with a laser rangefinder were compared to actual building feature height measurements. A comparison of estimated height with actual height indicated that all three estimation techniques tested were unbiased estimators of height. An ANOVA, conducted …

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Decline Of Yangtze River Water And Sediment Discharge: Impact From Natural And Anthropogenic Changes, S. L. Yang, K. H. Xu, J. D. Milliman, H. F. Yang, C. S. Wu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

The Surprising God Of Jonah: His Compassion And Our Genuine Obedience, Jiri Moskala

Faculty Publications

Paul Bork Dies, Paul J. Ray

Faculty Publications

Short Report: Raising Children Bilingually, Henriette Langdon

Faculty Publications

Evaluation Of Three Modis-Derived Vegetation Index Time Series For Dryland Vegetation Dynamics Monitoring, Linlin Lu, Claudia Kuenzer, Cuizhen Wang, Huadong Guo, Qingting Li

Faculty Publications

Global Technology Experiences For Upper-Division Engineering Students: An Assessment, Patricia Backer, Wenchiang Chung

Faculty Publications

Crop Rotational Diversity Enhances Belowground Communities And Functions In An Agroecosystem, L. K. Tiemann, A. Stuart Grandy, E. E. Atkinson, E. Marin-Spiotta, M. D. Mcdaniel

Faculty Publications

The Utility Of Total Lightning Trends In Diagnosing Single-Cell Thunderstorm Severity: Examples From The Central Appalachians Region, Paul Miller, Andrew Ellis, Stephen Keighton

Faculty Publications

Faculty Publications

Topographical Emphases In Hugh Glass Narratives, 1825-2015, Thomas Simmons

Faculty Publications

Improved Polsar Image Classification By The Use Of Multi-Feature Combination, Lei Deng, Ya-Nan Yan, Cuizhen Wang

Faculty Publications

Quantifying Land Cover Change Due To Petroleum Exploration And Production In The Haynesville Shale Region Using Remote Sensing, Daniel Unger, I-Kuai Hung, Kenneth W. Farrish, Darinda Dans

Faculty Publications

Interspecific Competition Affects Evolutionary Links Between Cavity Nesting, Migration And Clutch Size In Old World Flycatchers (Muscicapdae), Sahas Barve, Nicholas A. Mason

Faculty Publications

Drivers Of Observed Biotic Homogenization In Pine Barrens Of Central Wisconsin, Daijiang Li, Donald Waller

Faculty Publications

Small Data Surveillance V. Big Data Cybersurveillance, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

Asor 2014, Paul J. Ray

Faculty Publications

Editorial, Michael Leitner, Marco Helbich

Faculty Publications

Hurricane Risk Variability Along The Gulf Of Mexico Coastline, Jill C. Trepanier, Kelsey N. Ellis, Clay S. Tucker

Faculty Publications

Faculty Publications

Fall Armyworm (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) Ecology In Southeastern Cotton, Jarrod T. Hardke, Gus M. Lorenz, B. Rogers Leonard

Faculty Publications

Regional Patterns In The Otolith Chemistry Of Juvenile Spotted Seatrout (Cynoscion Nebulosus) Differ Under Contrasting Hydrological Regimes, Chet F. Rakocinski, Bruce H. Comyns, Mark S. Peterson, Alan M. Shiller

Faculty Publications

Hispanics At The Starting Line: Poverty Among Newborn Infants In Established Gateways And New Destinations, Daniel T. Lichter, Scott R. Sanders, Kenneth M. Johnson

Faculty Publications

Faculty Publications

Regional Disparities In Obesity Prevalence In The United States: A Spatial Regime Analysis, Candice A. Myers, Tim Slack, Corby K. Martin, Stephanie T. Broyles, Steven B. Heymsfield

Faculty Publications

Ant Community Structure And Response To Disturbances On Coastal Dunes Of Gulf Of Mexico, Xuan Chen, Benjamin Adams, Cody Bergeron, Alexander Sabo, Linda Hooper-Bùi

Faculty Publications

Modis-Based Fractional Crop Mapping In The U.S. Midwest With Spatially Constrained Phenological Mixture Analysis, Cheng Zhong, Cuizhen Wang, Changshan Wu

Faculty Publications

The Digital Atlas Of Ancient Life: Delivering Information On Paleontology And Biogeography, Jonathan R. Hendricks, Alycia L. Stigall, Bruce S. Lieberman

Faculty Publications

Friendship As Method, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

The Medical Tourism Index: Scale Development And Validation, Marc Fetscherin, Renee-Marie Stephano

Faculty Publications

Integrating Hands-On Undergraduate Research In An Applied Spatial Science Senior Level Capstone Course, David Kulhavy, Daniel R. Unger, I-Kuai Hung, David Douglass

Faculty Publications

Decline Of Yangtze River Water And Sediment Discharge: Impact From Natural And Anthropogenic Changes, S. L. Yang, K. H. Xu, J. D. Milliman, H. F. Yang, C. S. Wu

Faculty Publications