Digital Commons Network^™

Nutritional Needs In Collegiate Female Soccer Athletes, Alysa M. Brown

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Brown, Alysa, ATC, Spring 2017 Athletic Training

Nutritional Needs in Collegiate Female Soccer Athletes

Chairperson: Dr. Valerie Moody

Many times, athletes do not have enough time to meet their nutritional needs. They are busy going to school, attending meetings, lifting weights, receiving treatments and attending practices and may forget to eat or simply do not have enough time. Several studies suggest nutritional knowledge and habits directly impact how well an athlete will perform. Due to the rigorous training regimen of a collegiate athlete, they should be fueling their bodies throughout the day to maximize their performance. The Women’s soccer team …

How Should We Conceptualize Moral Disagreements About Animals?, Kristian Cantens

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

I intend this paper as a sort of philosophical reflection on my experiences as an animal activist. In my three years of doing outreach on college campuses, I came to an increasing appreciation for what Murdoch referred to as “the difficulty and complexity of the moral life and the opacity of persons” (Murdoch 1998d, 293). This appreciation came in turn at the cost of an increasing disappointment with many of the philosophers I admired at the time – namely, Peter Singer and Tom Regan. What I came to understand is that many of these contemporary moral theories were in fact …

Molecular Diversity Of Foliar Fungal Endophytes In Relation To Defense Strategies And Disease In Whitebark Pine, Lorinda Bullington

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

An invasive fungal pathogen, Cronartium ribicola (the causative agent of white pine blister rust) infects and kills whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) throughout the western US. Blister rust has decreased whitebark pine populations by over 90% in some areas. Whitebark pine, a keystone species, has been proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act in the U.S., and the loss of this conifer is predicted to have severe impacts on forest composition and function in high elevations. Hundreds of asymptomatic fungal species live inside whitebark pine tissue, and recent studies suggest that these fungi can influence the frequency and …

Archaeology For The Living: How Studying The Past Is Helping Native Alaskans’ Future, Madison A. Dapcevich

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This professional paper highlights a project in southcentral Alaska in collaboration with the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, the US Forest Service, Kenaitze Indian Tribe, Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and Applied Archaeology International. The area is a case study in a relatively new lens of looking at archaeology – a collaborative, community-based approach that helps to better inform the science an benefit affected communities.

At the Crescent Creek Complex near Cooper Landing, Alaska the team discovered various evidences of an ancient Denai’na village complex. What makes this project unique, however, is the collaboration between field school students and Kenaitze interns to …

An Investigation Of The Relations Between Stress And Prospective Memory, Brandon T. Stewart

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Prospective memory (PM) is a future-oriented memory system that entails “remembering to remember” intentions, or to perform actions in the future. People spend significant portions of their day-to-day lives forming and acting on intentions, and the ability to successfully generate, retain, and complete these intentions has important implications for one’s daily functioning and quality of life. Another common human experience is stress, whether that be short-term, acute stress, or long-term, chronic stress. Despite the significance and ubiquity of both PM and stress, the research base documenting the relations between them is sparse. This topic area necessitates additional research to delineate …

A Vision To Serve The Community: A Grounded Theory Approach Examining Educational Persistence Among American Indian Graduate Students, Karla D. Bird

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to examine the process of educational persistence among American Indian graduate students attending non-Native colleges and universities in Montana. Specifically, a grounded theory approach was used to generate a theory to describe persistence, using the concepts derived from participant interviews. Participants were American Indian graduate students currently enrolled at the following Montana institutions: University of Montana-Missoula, Montana State University-Bozeman, Montana Tech-Butte, Montana State University-Billings, and Montana State Northern-Havre. This study explored the following central research questions: What is persistence in the context of the American Indian graduate student experience? Why and how …

Coupling Biophysical Complexity And Forest Metabolism In A Floodplain Landscape, Peter Davis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Floodplains are biophysically complex systems that are considered among the most productive and biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. Until recently, quantitative assessment of the relationship between complexity and terrestrial production has been constrained by technological limitation. To address how floodplain biophysical complexity and ecosystem function are related, I employed remote sensing, GIS, and spatial analyses to quantify and couple metrics of complexity and terrestrial production, as well as explore the relationship among complexity, vegetation structural diversity, and terrestrial primary productivity. The study site is a 6.75-km by 1.75-km portion of the Bitterroot River floodplain near Carlton, MT upon which 551 sample …

Fertility And Reproduction's Niche: Human Sexual Diversity, Samuel W. Austin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Abstract: Biologically exploring the origins and forms of human sexuality is of paramount importance. Scientific research has indicated that homosexuality was linked to reproduction, fertility, and adaptive child caring strategies, traits that seem to display cross-cultural similarities. This suggests that sexual diversity may be one of human’s earliest adaptations. While most of the previous research has been on individuals of European descent, little research on Native American populations has been completed to test whether these patterns continue in their population.

The research presented here tests the Sexually Antagonistic Hypothesis for Male Homosexuality, Fraternal Birth Order Effect, and childhood atypical gender …

Performing Whale-Watching In Juneau, Alaska, Chelsea Karthauser

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Nature-based tourism activities provide special contexts for human-wildlife interaction. In Juneau, Alaska, summertime tourists seek encounters with humpback whales, hundreds of which feed seasonally in Southeast Alaska’s coastal waterways. Tourists support a thriving whale-watching industry in the region. Voices in nature-based tourism studies, departing from prior rigid conceptualizations of tourism, have identified the need to investigate activities using innovative frameworks to address the tourism experience as an ongoing and fluidly constructed phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to construct a new understanding of nature-based tourism using a performance metaphor. The flexibility provided in a metaphorical approach allows for a …

The Prescribed West, Evan M. Hauser

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Predicting Habitat Distribution For Five Rare Plant Species Within The Blackfoot Swan Landscape Restoration Project, Annalisa Suzan Ingegno

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study predicted rare-plant habitat at the landscape scale. Using the Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) algorithm, relationships to and between each environmental variable were quantified for five species in the Blackfoot Swan Landscape Restoration Project (BSLRP) study area in western Montana. This project is part of a greater vegetation assessment for BSLRP that utilizes remotely sensed products for planning and management purposes. The five rare plant species studied in this analysis were common camas (Camassia quamash), clustered lady’sslipper (Cypripedium fasciculatum), western pearlflower (Heterocodon rariflorum), Howell’s gumweed (Grindelia howellii), and crested shieldfern (Dryopteris cristata). Rare plant models typically do not address dispersal …

Dispersal, Genetic Structure, Network Connectivity And Conservation Of An At-Risk, Large-Landscape Species, Todd Bartholomew Cross

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wide-ranging species face many threats to genetic connectivity. In light of these threats, one major challenge is the efficient use of scarce resources for the conservation of these species. Setting conservation priorities for landscapes and connectivity can be informed using molecular genetics, and can ensure the efficient use of scare resources to maximize returns in biodiversity conservation.

The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter sage grouse) is a species of conservation concern that spans eleven state boundaries, land managed by multiple agencies, and one international boundary. Across the species’ distribution, the threats to the genetic connectivity range from agricultural conversion to …

Set The Net: The Heritage Significance Of Fish Camp And Wild Salmon In Bristol Bay, Alaska, Sarah Jane Braund

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In over 10 years of environmental and socioeconomic studies surrounding the controversial Pebble Limited Partnership mine project design and permitting, commercial salmon fishers’ voices in Bristol Bay, Alaska remain unheard. To meaningfully participate in cultural resource management decision-making that affects them, communities need to speak, yet fisher communities rarely have an established voice. This dissertation uses critical collaborative ethnography and Indigenist research paradigms to describe how the recognition of living heritage communities can be facilitated through the identification of ethnographic landscapes. Such landscapes reflect the meaningful relationship of culture and place, concepts that are currently under-represented in Alaska. Not only …

Linking Landscape Pattern To Population Processes For A Carnivorous Mammal, Keith Michael Slauson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As a taxonomic group, carnivores are amongst those with the highest conservation concern due to the combination of wide-ranging behavior, typically slow reproductive rates, and low density. The Pacific marten (Martes caurina) is a carnivore species of conservation concern throughout much of its southern range in the U. S. The Pacific marten (marten hereafter) is considered a habitat-specialist, due to its association with late-successional forest habitat which provide specific elements, such as cavities in large-diameter trees for denning, to meet a variety of its life history needs. Across its range, threats to marten persistence range from timber harvest, wildfire and …

A Case For Theatre-Based Programming In Early-Childhood And Elementary Education, Tina M. La Plant

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper seeks to answer the question, How can I use my professional experience developing a theatre-based curriculum for early-childhood and elementary students as a platform to advocate for the importance of theatre-based curricula in early and elementary education? The subject of this research project is a Pre-Kindergarten through Fifth Grade theatre-based education program founded by the author. The program was developed over the past 20 years at the Bertschi School, an independent PK-Fifth elementary school located in Seattle, Washington. For the purposes of this paper, the program itself will serve as a proving ground to explore and define primary …

Does Shape Matter? Breeding Habitat Use And Reproductive Performance Of Gray Catbirds (Dumetella Carolinensis) In Two Western Woodland Habitats, Sharon Fuller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Inflammatory Effects Of Natural And Engineered Airborne Particulate Matter In The Lung, And Related Cellular Mechanisms Of Immunity, Sophia Tracy Carvalho

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Asthma, defined as a complex, chronic inflammatory disease of the airways, affects approximately 300 million individuals worldwide and is the single most common chronic disease among children. Airway inflammation is the defining characteristic of asthmatic pathophysiology; and as asthma increases in severity, the airways become more susceptible to environmental insults, including air pollutants. Wildfires and prescribed burns are significant sources of airborne particles, as well as gaseous pollution, which can temporarily increase the overall levels of air pollution over hundreds or thousands of square miles. Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) are increasingly used in a broad range of applications, including medical …

Cationic Latex Nanoparticles In Electrokinetic Chromatography: Synthesis, Characterization, And Application To The Separation Of Explosives, Julie Rebecca Mcgettrick

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Electrokinetic chromatography (EKC) is a powerful analytical technique that uses the instrumentation of capillary electrophoresis (CE) and the principles of chromatography to separate ionic and neutral analytes. A capillary is filled with background electrolyte (BGE), and when a voltage is applied ionic species migrate to the electrodes. Neutral compounds have no mobility, so a pseudo-stationary phase (PSP) is added to the BGE that consists of an ionic group to provide mobility and a hydrophobic group to interact with analytes. Analytes interact with the PSP which changes their apparent mobilities, leading to a separation. It is possible to coat the negatively …

Integrated Stress And Community Perceptions: Toward An Understanding Of Human-Cougar Tolerance, Lara Brenner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Evidence suggests that cougars (Puma concolor) are beginning to recolonize their traditional range in the Midwestern and Eastern US, returning to a landscape and a social environment that have changed drastically in a century of absence. Any hope of the cougar’s persistence depends on both human tolerance of their presence and on cougar tolerance of disrupted habitat. In this thesis, we took advantage of diverse cougar policy in place in the Western US to explore variation in human attitudes and acceptability of cougars and in the cougar stress response. We validated a process to identify and extract cortisol …

Student Satisfaction With A Student-Written Textbook In An Introductory College Biology Course, Greg Peters

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Textbooks are ubiquitous tools in college classes, particularly in the sciences. Regular use of textbooks to complement science coursework can foster academic achievement and scientific literacy. Textbooks are chronically underused in college study due to high costs, challenging and time-intensive content, and perceived low value. In response, professors are increasingly using textbook alternatives including open textbooks, etextbooks, and wikis. Each has unique strengths and weaknesses.

Student-written textbooks are a less common, but growing, resource used to offer a low-cost alternative to publisher textbooks using collections of student research and writing. Student-written textbooks carry the possible benefits for students of supporting …

Moving Toward A Holistic Menstrual Hygiene Management: An Anthropological Analysis Of Menstruation And Practices In Western And Non-Western Societies, Sophia A. Bay

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Educating girls is not only their human right, but also proposed as one of the best investments for improving quality of life in developing countries (Montgomery et al. 2016, 2). Although menstruation is a universal, biological process, it is fraught with cultural stigmas and taboos throughout Western and non-Western societies. Menstrual-related absenteeism is believed to be a primary cause of missed attendance and early dropout rates, so the developing field of menstrual hygiene management (MHM) is seeking to understand and evaluate what factors are contributing to these findings. After the analyzation of the current literature, a more holistic, nine-pronged approach …

The Russian Mission: Seventh-Day Adventism, Bolshevism, And The Imminent Apocalypse, 1881 - 1946, Garett B. Tree

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The first Adventist missionaries made their way into Russia in the late 1880’s, where they experienced imprisonment, exile, and sometimes both. The scope of my thesis concerns the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and how Adventist missionaries and leaders endeavored on the Russian Mission. Using the writings, letters, and correspondence of these missionaries, as well as the myriad Adventist periodicals, I explain and analyze the evolution of the Mission from its inception to the end of the Second World War. In what ways did Adventist missionaries or Adventist media outlets abroad understand, explain, or justify the Russian Mission and its hardships? What …

Selene, Sarah Justice

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

My MFA Thesis Exhibition, Selene (Greek goddess of the moon), is an autobiographical journey through self- discovery, recognizing the power of my past seductive and destructive behavior surrounding sexuality. This current body of work serves as a metaphor for “moth to a flame” analogy and “if you are not careful the flame can burn you”.

My journey through personal healing from past traumatic events has taught me that my vulnerability is what breeds my strength. Ways that people navigate life being vulnerable and how they heal from wounds stemming from abuse, addictions, broken hearts, and loss varies among people. I …

Determining The Presence Of Remains Using The Chemical Composition Of Burned Cadaver Ash, Megan J. Richardson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

New Methods To Estimate Abundance From Unmarked Populations Using Remote Camera Trap Data, Anna K. Moeller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Abundance estimates are central to the field of ecology and are an important tool for wildlife managers. While many tools are available for estimating abundance from individually identifiable animals, it is much more difficult to estimate abundance of unmarked animals. Most species have no natural markings and capturing them to apply artificial marks is invasive. One step toward noninvasive abundance estimation is the use of passive “traps” such as remote cameras or acoustic recording devices. The continuous-time data from these traps can be used to estimate abundance, although most available methods still require individually identifiable animals. There is a great …

Evolution Of Molt Phenology In Dwarf Hamsters, Zachary Clare-Salzler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Environmental seasonality presents many challenges for survival. In response, organisms from across the tree of life exhibit adaptive phenology, which can facilitate survival from season to season. In particular, many species are white in the winter and brown in the summer where winter snow cover alters the visual environment. There is an extensive body of literature describing the physiological and cellular regulation of this trait in the Siberian dwarf hamster (Phodopus sungorus), but there are major shortcomings in our understanding concerning the evolution and molecular regulation of mammalian skin phenology. Notably, little is known about the genetic basis …

Aerodynamics And Ecomorphology Of Flexible Feathers And Morphing Bird Wings, Brett Klassen Van Oorschot

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Birds morph their wings during a single wingbeat, across flight speeds, and among flight modes. Such morphing may allow them to maximize aerodynamic performance, but this assumption remains largely untested. We tested the aerodynamic performance of swept and extended wing postures of 13 raptor species in three families (Accipitridae, Falconidae, and Strigidae) using a propeller model to emulate mid-downstroke of flapping during takeoff and a wind tunnel to emulate gliding. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that 1) during flapping, wing posture would not affect maximum ratios of vertical and horizontal force coefficients (CV:CH), and that 2) extended wings would …

The Ecology Of Montane Bengal Tigers (Panthera Tigris Tigris) In The Himalayan Kingdom Of Bhutan, Tshering Tempa

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Large carnivores are endangered across the globe. Loss of habitat and habitat fragmentation, prey depletion, and direct poaching for the illegal wildlife trade are the major causes driving them towards extinction. Although tigers (Panthera tigris) once roamed across Asia, they are now restricted to 7 % of their historical range and experiencing rapid population declines. This warrants a concerted, multipronged strategy that will halt further declines of tigers in the wild. One approach put forth by some scientists is to focus conservation on 6% of the presently occupied tiger habitat identified as tiger sources sites. Other scientists argued for a …

The Balancing Act: Ecological Interventions And Decision Tradeoffs To Preserve Wilderness Character, Lucy A. Lieberman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Global climate change, land use intensification and increasing development are impacting federal wildernesses in new and unprecedented ways. Ecological restoration is one tool that that wilderness managers are using to combat degradation, though the decision to intervene in wilderness is complicated by the Wilderness Act’s legal mandate to preserve wilderness character and demonstrate managerial restraint. The purpose of this study is to document a baseline of ecological interventions that have occurred in the NWPS over the last five years, and to understand how wilderness managers make decisions related to ecological interventions. I sent a quantitative survey to over five hundred …

Assessing The Character Of Place To Guide Geotourism In Montana: A Case Study Of Whitefish And White Sulphur Springs, Montana, Michael E. Tipton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In 2007 the governor’s Montana Tourism Advisory Council adopted the Montana Tourism and Recreation Charter. Its guiding principle of geotourism pledged to sustain and enhance the character of the places that the people of Montana call home. How can the state’s efforts to keep this pledge be assessed when “character of place” has never been clearly defined or understood in detail? To keep this pledge, and chart the future of geotourism in the state, it was important to clarify what is meant by character of place and identify the full range of present and potential problems that threaten the integrity …