Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of The Cb1 Receptor In Learning, Memory And Anxiety-Like Behaviors, Loretta Lynn Bolyard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Several lines of evidence support a role of the endocannabinoid (eCB) system in cognition and anxiety. This study explores cognitive processes and anxiety-like behaviors in wild type (CB1+/+) and CB1-receptor-deficient (CB1-/-) mice of differing ages. Differences were observed between CB1+/+ and CB1-/- mice in a Morris Water Maze acquisition task. Furthermore, CB1-/- mice did not display deficits in extinction during reversal learning. In the Light-Dark Box and Suok tasks, the CB1-/- mice demonstrated greater anxiety-like behaviors relative the CB1+/+ mice. No differences were observed in the Open-Field task, suggesting that the observed behavioral differences may be related to anxiety rather …

Crossing The Threshold: What Motivates Individuals Who Are Actively Abusing Substances To Enter Treatment?, Katherine Michelle Peavy

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Although there is an abundance of research in the area of substance abuse, much of it samples people who are already enrolled in treatment. The treatment seeking population may differ from people who are actively using substances. One aim of this study is to describe a sample of individuals who have not sought out treatment, but still actively use substances. Specifically, the investigators assessed 51 county detention facility inmates recently arrested on drug- or alcohol-related charges, examining the factors that both inhibit and promote treatment seeking. We hypothesized that motivation levels for seeking treatment would differ based on several factors: …

No Margin For Error: Driving The East Shore Of Flathead Lake, Deborah Brae Tanner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Tanner, Deborah Brae, M.A., Fall 2009 Journalism, Print No Margin for Error: Driving the East Shore of Flathead Lake Chairperson: Nadia White Controversy currently surrounds truck traffic on the east shore of Flathead Lake, Highway 35. The design, age and surrounding geography of the road contribute to the controversy, and trucks carrying hazardous materials have exacerbated the situation. A trucking accident near Polson, Montana, in April 2008 in which almost 6,400 gallons of fuel was spilled has reinvigorated the debate. The Montana Department of Transportation, trucking companies, residents and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have sought a resolution. This …

Rational Number Fluency: A Prerequisite For Success In High School Mathematics Courses?, Renae Walter Seegmiller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation examined high school students' skill with rational numbers and compared that skill level with the skill level of middle school students by testing 147 high school seniors with 16 rational number word problems released from the National Assessment of Educational Progress assessments. The questions included equal amounts of fraction and money problems. The seniors were grouped by gender and by whether they had completed only beginning algebra and geometry or had more mathematics than geometry.

The findings of this study replicated the high school seniors' low rational number skill level seen in other studies with various age groups. …

Math Ability And Gendered Self-Perceptions, Lorianne Deleen Burhop

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Gender stereotypes continue to be prevalent in American society and have the potential to influence the self-perceptions of both males and females. One stereotype that has been particularly persistent is the belief that mathematics is a masculine subject and that males are inherently better at math than females. Despite increasing evidence showing males and females to be equally competent in the subject, previous studies have indicated that females frequently underestimate their abilities to succeed in mathematics. This study uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS: 88) and the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS: 2002). Both …

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi: Factors Affecting Soil Organic Matter Storage, Carl Lee Rosier

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are soil fungi forming symbiotic associations with majority of land plants. AMF alter soil organic matter (SOM) directly through stabilization of soil aggregates and indirectly providing a path in which plant fixed C02 is transferred below-ground. Understanding contributions of AMF to SOM via protein production and stabilization of soil aggregates will greatly aid our understanding of soil carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling and mitigation of soil erosion. The work presented in chapter 2 challenges the glomalin extraction process and assesses the accuracy of the Bradford and monoclonal-antibody ELISA detection methods. My results clarify the contribution of glomalin …

"The Last Of The True:" The Kid's Place In Cormac Mccarthy's Blood Meridian, William Dean Clement

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this study I examine the relationship of “the kid” and “the judge” in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian Or The Evening Redness in the West (1985), specifically, how and why the kid resists Judge Holden’s overbearing existential philosophy. In my introduction I set the stage for Judge Holden’s imperial philosophy and practice through a brief explanation of his character, both historical and fictional, and the novel’s success because of his tyrannical grandeur. I then juxtapose the recalcitrant character of the kid against this megalomaniac to set up the rest of the examination of their relationship. In my chapter on Judge …

“The Sort . . . Of People To Which I Belong”: Elizabeth Gaskell And The Middle Class, Allison Masters

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this thesis, I examine Elizabeth Gaskell’s development as a middle-class author, which is a position that most scholars take for granted. Moving away from traditional Marxist readings and drawing on revisionist class studies, I reconsider Gaskell as the typical bourgeois woman of her era by looking at her relationship with the middle class and its ideals over the course of her career. Overall, her large body of work reveals an increasing awareness of, and willingness to engage with the divisions within the middle class. In turn, as Gaskell explores such tensions and negotiates middle-class boundaries and values in her …

"This Blessed Plot": Negotiating Britishness In Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha Of Suburbia, And Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Kathleen Vickers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis considers how contemporary British literature helps us negotiate better ways of being in an increasingly diverse world. Britain understood itself as a relatively homogenous white society and reacted badly when commonwealth citizens unexpectedly began to “return” following World War II. Colonial migrants’ increasingly large presence, particularly as many settled and had children, challenged the myth of a “pure” Anglo-Saxon Britain and forced a re-conceiving of what it is to be British. This thesis particularly examines how colonial immigrants found ways to (re)negotiate their identities as British in the face of hostility in their “mother country.” Chapter One looks …

One Day There Will Be Nothing To Show That We Were Ever Here, Scott Alexander Jones

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

A book of poems addressing the transitory nature of existence, from individual lives to civilizations to the world itself, with an incessant awareness that even if human apes are able to narrowly avert nuclear or otherwise apocalypse, the sun will without the shred of a doubt one day stop converting hydrogen into helium.

Get Back To Where You Once Belonged: Essays On Purpose And Perpetuity And To A Lesser Extent Gospel Music, Recycling, Bikes, Life, Death And Things Found In Alleys, Brian Lukas Kevin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Sibling Support On Children's Post-Divorce Adjustment: A Turning Point Analysis, Kimberly Ann Jacobs

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Most previous research on children’s adjustment following the divorce of their parents has focused on the consequences of parents’ actions and communication choices. Relatively little is known about the impact that sibling relationships have on post-divorce adjustment. The current study was designed to explore the relationship between sibling social support (emotional, instrumental, and informational support) and adjustment. Data was collected from 34 participants using the Retrospective Interview Technique (RIT). Participants identified key turning points in their adjustment process and used those points as an interview guide to talk about support from and communication with their siblings. Numerical questionnaire data was …

Spatio-Temporal Dynamics Of Biomes In The Northwestern United States (9000 Ybp To The Present), Christopher Caleb Stump

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The goal of this study was to quantitatively analyze and map the vegetation composition of forest, grassland, and steppe ecosystems in the northwestern United States in the present and through the last 9,000 years. The modern analysis used canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) on pollen percentages from recent sediment cores reflecting modern vegetation assemblages and climates to evaluate the amount of influence of selected environmental variables on present species distributions. The fossil analysis used non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (NMDS) on a merged database containing relative pollen percentages from the last 9000 years. A predefined list of environmental parameters and floristically and ecologically …

Territoriality And Habitat Selection Of Feral Pigs On Fort Benning, Georgia, Usa, William Deroche Sparklin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Feral pigs are one of the most successful, widespread, economically and environmentally damaging invasive mammalian species worldwide. I conducted a study of feral pig sounders (female social groups) on Fort Benning, Georgia to test our hypotheses that feral pigs were territorial at the sounder level and that territoriality was a key factor influencing habitat selection of feral pigs. I used Global Positioning System (GPS) location data from 24 individuals representing 18 sounders combined with mark-recapture and camera trap data to evaluate evidence of territorial behavior at the individual and sounder levels by comparing the degree of overlap between home ranges. …

The House That Smokey Built: The Forest Service Management Of Historic Structures In Wilderness, Molly Michelle Ryan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ryan, Molly M., M.S., 2009 Recreation Management The House That Smokey Built: The Forest Service Management of Historic Structures in Wilderness Committee Chair: Dr. Perry J. Brown Debates about the appropriateness of historic structures being present and preserved in wilderness are not new issues. In some form or another, this topic has surfaced, been debated, then simmered, but never properly addressed or resolved. The purposes of this paper are to identify management gaps within the Forest Service administration regarding the management of historic structures within wilderness areas and to recommend how these gaps can be filled. Data were collected from …

The Relationship Between Positive Behavior Supports, Student Achievement, Severe Problem Behavior, And Administrative Stress, Jennifer Guthals

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Guthals, Jennifer, Ed. D., May 2009 Educational Leadership

The Relationship between Positive Behavior Supports, Student Achievement, Severe Problem Behavior, and Administrative Stress

Chair: Dr. John Matt

Due to the pressures and expectations for current and future principals to create safe and welcoming schools with high student achievement, a better of understanding of the relationship between Positive Behavior Supports (PBS), student achievement, severe problem behavior, and administrative stress was needed. This study investigated the relationship between these four factors, as measured through the Effective Behavior Supports Survey (Sugai, Horner, & Todd, 2003), Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) (OPI, 2008), suspension/expulsion rates, the …

The Genesis Of Ribosome Structure: A Tale Of Two Proteins, Christopher James Woolstenhulme

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Living cells are dependent upon protein synthesis for virtually all cellular functions. The cellular machine responsible for protein synthesis, called the ribosome, is formed through the association of two unequally sized subunits, each composed of RNA and proteins. Proper assembly of each subunit is essential to ribosome function and therefore essential to the cellular life cycle. Previous studies focused on dissecting the assembly of the small ribosomal subunit (30S subunit) from E. coli have shown that 21 proteins sequentially assemble on the 16S rRNA at multiple nucleation sites. For the first time, we are able to monitor changes in the …

Water Quality And Waterborne Disease Along The Niger River, Mali: A Study Of Local Knowledge And Response, Ashley Lauren Williams

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper presents the findings of a study to assess patterns in local knowledge of and response to water quality and waterborne diseases in relation to seasonal changes in the Niger River Inland Delta. The study draws on field data collected in four villages along the Niger River in the Mopti district of Mali during September 2008. The major findings suggest: (1) water use behaviors and diarrheal disease management are influenced by the tremendous seasonal fluctuations in the riverine environment; (2) local awareness of the relationship between poor water quality, oral-fecal disease transmission, and waterborne disease is low; (3) interventions …

A Taxonomy Of Rules: Authority, Dangers, And Possibilities, Muriel Rebecca Friedman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Rules, originally a means toward group solidarity, are the alternative to the need for ongoing physical dominance. Seemingly omnipresent in modern life, rules can be overt or subtle, explicit or tacit, rigidly enforced or overlooked. They may clash with our autonomy. This thesis names and explores different functional types of rules: safety, personal, socio-cultural, legal-religious, and technical. Rules in general are discussed from social and ethical theoretical viewpoints and using ideal type methodology. Understanding that there are different types of rules and the authority behind them makes it easier to determine one’s obligations to follow them, especially with the notion …

Barriers To E-Learning Job Training: Government Employee Experiences In An Online Wilderness Management Course, Lisa Ayrdrie Kathleen Eidson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Learning at work as an employee is inherently different from being a student in an academic setting and, as such, is beset with different challenges. As trends in the adoption of e-learning for the delivery of job training increase, new challenges related to distance learning with technology have also emerged. Recognition that continued learning in the workplace, now via technological methods, is required for maintaining proficiency and achieving career goals means that understanding the challenges unique to learning at work is paramount.

This qualitative study explored barriers to successful online job learning. Interviews with thirty federal government employees from the …

Beyond Wilderness: Wildness As A Guiding Ideal, Christopher James Dunn

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis is largely a response to William Cronon’s essay “The Trouble with Wilderness or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” found in The Great New Wilderness Debate. Cronon is himself responding to many things, in large part to Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature and also to the wilderness vision typified by Dave Foreman; thus this thesis is also a response to McKibben and in many respects a defense of Foreman-like thought. Besides Cronon, I consider a wide variety of sources, taking from them in order to build a case for, and to explicate, wildness as a guiding ideal. …

An Investigation Of Spatial And Temporal Variability In Several Of Montana's Reference Streams: Working Toward A More Holistic Management Strategy, Kathryn Elizabeth Makarowski

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Water temperature is a physical property that fundamentally affects stream ecology and is considered an important water quality parameter from scientific and legal view points. On global, catchment and reach scales, anthropogenic activities have substantially altered natural stream temperature regimes, impairing these systems’ ability to maintain ecological integrity. Thermal degradation often can be attributed to a variety of human activities, and global climate change, which has been accelerated by the demands of an exponentially expanding human population, will play a central role in defining stream temperature regimes in the future. Natural spatial and temporal variability in stream temperatures adds to …

Developing The Whole Child Through Movement In The Music Classroom, Laura Rosenberg Morris

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The early twentieth century brought forth some very strong figures in the world of arts pedagogy. Among them were Carl Orff and Emile Jacque-Dalcroze. Both were composers as well as music educators. Both believed that in order for a musician to perform expressively rather than mechanically, one had to feel music in the body. Orff and Dalcroze followers today uphold these men’s idea that movement is an essential part of the music class. Seeking to feel more comfortable and knowledgeable about movement in teaching K-6 general music classes, I set out to research through books, films, my own movement experiences …

Geotourism In The Crown Of The Continent: Developing And Testing The Geotourism Survey Instrument, Bertram Bynum Boley

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Boley, Bertram Bynum, M.S., Spring 2009 Recreation Management Geotourism in the Crown of the Continent: Developing and Testing the Geotourism Survey Instrument (GSI) Co-Chairperson: Norma P. Nickerson Co-Chairperson: Keith Bosak The perceived failures of mass tourism to holistically benefit a destination’s character, has created a global concern for the future of tourism destinations managed under the mass tourism model. This global concern for how tourism can negatively impact a region’s character has manifested itself in the rise of various forms of sustainable tourism such as ecotourism, community-based tourism, integrated rural tourism, and now geotourism. The focus of this study was …

Guide To Implementing A Middle School Activity Program, Laura Elizabeth Balis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of the guide is to describe the steps in designing, implementing, and evaluating a cardiovascular health program for middle school students, called CATCH Fridays, and to create a guide for others who wish to replicate the program at their school.

Indoor/Ambient Residential Air Toxics Results In Rural Western Montana, Heidi Lee Underberg

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Indoor and ambient concentrations of 21 volatile organic compounds (including 14 hazardous air pollutants) were measured in the homes of nearly 80 western Montana (Missoula) high school students as part of the ‘Air Toxics Under the Big Sky’ program during the 2004/2005 and 2005/2006 school years. Target analytes were measured using low flow air sampling pumps and sorbent tubes, with analysis of the exposed samples by thermal desorption/gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (TD/GC/MS). The results reported here present the findings of the first indoor/ambient air toxics monitoring program conducted in a semi-rural valley location located in the Northern Rocky Mountain/Western Montana region. …

Integration Of Higher-Order Physics In The Community Ice Sheet Model: Scientific And Software Concerns, Timothy Joseph Bocek

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Community Ice Sheet Model (CISM) is a next-generation land ice model that is designed to answer important questions regarding the response of Earth’s land ice to climate forcing. The program extends Glimmer, an ice sheet model based on the shallow ice approximation. This thesis concerns a project to ready CISM for these questions by integrating an ice velocity diagnostic based on a first-order approximation of the Navier-Stokes equations. I present in detail the derivation of the first-order momentum balance equations for both the interior of an ice sheet and a variety of boundary conditions. I discuss the numerical techniques …

Invisible Woman, Kristin Deanne Howe

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The aim of this paper is to illuminate the ways in which working class women are invisible within the feminist and ecofeminist movements. Using the faces and forces of oppression as presented by Iris Marion Young and Hilde Lindemann, I show how the working class experiences oppression. I also show how oppression based on class differs from that based on gender and how these differences contribute to the invisibility of working class women within feminism. In the second section, I use Val Plumwood and Karen J. Warren’s versions of ecofeminist philosophy to show how working class women are again absent. …

Knowing The Natural World: The Construction Of Knowledge About Evolution In And Out Of The Classroom, Alison Emily Havard Perkins

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Evolution is a central underlying concept to a significant number of discourses in civilized society, but the complexity of understanding basic tenets of this important theory is just now coming to light. Knowledge about evolution is constructed from both formal and "free-choice" opportunities, like television. Nature programs are commonly considered "educational" by definition, but research indicates the narratives often promote creationist ideas about this important process in biology. I explored how nature programs influenced knowledge construction about evolutionary theory using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Because misconceptions about evolution are common, I examined how students` conceptual ecologies changed …

Multivariate Statistical Analysis Of Three Crania Housed At The University Of Montana Physical Anthropology Lab, Bonny Marie Christy

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this research was to attempt to identify the population affinity of three crania (UMFC 103, 104, and 120), housed at the University of Montana Physical Anthropology Lab, using multivariate statistical analyses. A database collected by Dr. Hanihara and another collected by researchers at the University of Michigan were used for comparative purposes. Multiple populations from both databases were chosen so as to be representative of various Asian, African, Indian, and Native American populations. Two variations of each of the databases were used in the following statistical analyses: principal components analysis and discriminant function analysis. It was shown …