Digital Commons Network^™

Aesthetic Appreciation Of The Natural Environment: Scientific Knowledge & The Extension From Aesthetics To Ethics, John K. Hays

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Aesthetics has played an influential role in how we ascribe value to the environment. Yet, it seems that if we are to take the beauty of the natural world seriously, certain aesthetics judgments must be better than others. The scientific cognitive model posits that the natural world must be interpreted through an understanding of biological and geological categories, which are provided by scientific knowledge and common sense. While there are clearly merits to this model, it is not without its own set of problems and limitations. These problems exist in both the model itself and with its extension to environmental …

Winter Habitat Use By Mule Deer In Idaho And Montana, Sonja M. Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Winter survival for species such as Rocky Mountain mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus hemionus) depends on an energy conservation strategy where they use habitats at lower elevations and on south facing slopes with adequate thermal or canopy cover. However, not all mule deer habitats are equivalent in components or weather conditions, which contribute to differences in habitat use patterns and behavior among wintering populations. We examined winter habitat use by mule deer on the East Front of the Rocky Mountains, Montana and Warm Springs and Sink Creek, east-central Idaho to determine how weather and vegetation affect habitat use in different winter …

The Use Of Ct Analysis To Assess The Ages Of A Modern Human Tooth Sample: A Comparision With Dental Attrition And The Lamendin Method, Kristina Galdes

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

An analysis of 81 contemporary adult human teeth was conducted in order to determine which of three methods best determines age at death. The teeth were loaned from the University of Tennessee body farm to the University of Michigan’s Biomedical Research Laboratory and were comprised of central incisors, lateral incisors and canines. Each tooth was of known age and most were also associated with sex and ancestry. Three observers used Lovejoy’s (1985) method of dental attrition, the Lamendin et al. (1992) periodontosis method and micro computed tomography to determine how accurately each method was able to assess the ages at …

Towards Sentence Compliance: Examining Pfma Offender Pathways Through Missoula Municipal And Justice Courts, Sara Justine Shapiro

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In recent years, there has been great concern among those who work in the criminal justice system, in Missoula, Montana, about the processing of domestic violence offenders. Many of these people believe that domestic violence defendants are not being consistently prosecuted, and that convicted offenders are not completing their mandated anger management program. To address these concerns, this analysis examines the adjudication, from arrest to sentencing, of a cohort of defendants appearing in Missoula Municipal Court and Missoula County Justice Court. The sample includes defendants whose final charge between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008 was Partner/Family Member Assault …

University Of Montana Forensic Case #12: Comprehensive Case Analysis, Lauren Leanne Richardson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The remains labeled University of Montana Forensic Case #12 (UMFC 12) were unearthed on August 30, 1983 during the construction of Cruse Avenue in Helena, Montana near the old School Administration Building on Allen Street. Construction workers, using a bulldozer accidently exposed the decomposing grave (Roesgen, 1983). It has been speculated that these remains might belong to a Chinese laborer dating back to the gold rush (Joyce, 1983). An 1884 map of Last Chance Gulch, in which the remains were discovered, indicate that a Chinese cemetery is in the area but the exact coordinates have never been determined (Joyce, 1983). …

Sex And Ancestry Estimation Using The Base Of The Cranium, David Andrew Carlisle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Discriminant function analysis was employed to test sexual dimorphism and ancestral differences in the basicrania of European Americans and African Americans. The data used was originally collected on crania from the Terry and Bass III Donated Collections, using a three-dimensional digitizer. The data was converted to linear data using the method of Franklin et al. (2005). The results showed that sexual dimorphism and ancestral differences do exist in the cranial base of European and African Americans and individuals can be correctly classified at rates ranging from 75% to 80.4%, depending on the analysis.

Wildland Firefighter Health And Safety, Joseph Wimand Domitrovich

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Over the past fifty years the University of Montana, in conjunction with the United States Forest Service, has been investigating the job demands of wildland firefighters. This document is a combination of three research projects with a connection of health and safety of wildland firefighters.

Smokejumpers are unique because they parachute into remote fires and are used primarily as initial attack wildland firefighters. Studies have shown that initial attack is the most energy intensive part of wildland firefighting. The first study identifies maximal and sustainable aerobic fitness possessed by US Smokejumpers. The maximal aerobic characteristic of US smokejumpers is well …

Cultural Landscapes In Conflict: Addressing The Interests And Landscape Perceptions Of Native Americans, The National Park Service, And The American Public In National Parks, Emily Anne Eide

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Prayer and Fasting Project of 2010 from Glacier National Park produced startling results indicating that many areas which have cultural significance to Native American peoples have been adversely impacted by national park recreationalists. This thesis addresses the significance of these impacts along with other management issues associated with conflicting landscape perceptions of national park lands. These concerns are explored through the examination of past and present archaeological theories along with cultural resource management approaches to landscapes. The need to identify and consider different cultural perceptions of landscapes in research and management scenarios is stressed throughout this work. The inclusion …

In The Game Of Love, Play By The Rules: Implications Of Relationship Rule Consensus Over Honesty And Deception In Romantic Relationships, Katlyn Elise Roggensack

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this study is to investigate the implications of relationship rule consensus over the meanings of honesty and deception in romantic relationships. Relationship rules are implicit understandings developed over time that guide individuals’ behavior in relationships, but they are often ambiguous and unspoken. Honesty and deception rules are particularly vulnerable to different interpretations given that honesty is held to such high esteem, yet deception is common in relationships. Since deception becomes a salient source of conflict when discovered, coordination of these rules should be linked to relational quality. In part one of the study, in-depth interviews helped identify …

A Case For 'Be Going To' As Prospective Aspect, Sara E. Schroeder

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The focus of this thesis is the feature of current relevance as it is expressed by the English present perfect and the present be going to construction. I propose that be going to expresses the current relevance of a future situation in the same way that the present perfect expresses the current relevance of a past situation. Based on this shared feature of current relevance, I propose that the be going to construction is prospective aspect, the future equivalent of the present perfect. While literature on the English be going to construction has discussed the notion of current relevance as …

A Comparative Analysis Between Knowledge And Bear Safety Information Utilization By Day Hikers In Glacier National Park, Phillip Wayne Zumstein

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this study was to identify Glacier National Park backcountry day users’ bear safety information source utilization, obtain their knowledge level of bear safety, and identify any differences in knowledge level when compared to sources used. The results of this study were intended to provide park managers with a means to more effectively implement the park’s bear safety information program. The study was conducted within Glacier National Park in Montana during the summer of 2011. A survey was given to 540 backcountry day users during their day hikes within the park. A bear safety quiz section was included …

Metadata Analysis Of The Montana Department Of Environmental Quality's Reference Stream Project Datasets, Jonathan Samuel Leiman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This Master’s Thesis examines certain aspects of the frequently incongruous relationship in the State of Montana between the natural science of water quality measurement and the actual practices to which water quality management research is put. These discordances can be the source of misunderstandings about the purposes and uses for which data were collected. Moreover, miscues regarding the sharing of information among stakeholders have become more significant as adaptive and shared management programs continue to expand. At the core of this study are assessments of the value of water quality data generated by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) …

Pedestrian Pal: A Route Recommendation System For The Android Mobile Phone, Bradley H. Bahls

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

With mobile phone technology pervading people's everyday lives, using these devices has become prevalent for route recommendations while traveling in unfamiliar locations. Current research works to improve algorithms that calculate efficient and effective routes between two or more points. While expedient travel is necessary in time constraint situations, efficiency is not always required. This paper describes Pedestrian Pal, an application built for the Android mobile phone, which offers route recommendations to users based upon their desired specifications. The recommended routes are not necessarily efficient, but rather are paths based upon collected user ratings, aesthetic interests, and users' inputted parameters. During …

Environmental Documentary Film: A Contemporary Tool For Social Movement, Rachel Gregg

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Building a 21st century movement capable of inspiring social and structural change requires creative education, resourceful collaboration, and civic engagement. The U.S. environmental movement is in need of strategies that bring a wide spectrum of people together, facilitate appropriate interpretation of problems, and prompt innovative, forward-thinking solutions. Environmental documentary film has the ability to dramatize the reality of environmental issues and empower audiences to become an active part of the change necessary to address environmental crises. Utilizing a specific genre of environmental documentary film in novel and inventive ways, people can be gathered, educated, and inspired to become active participants …

Wildfire Science, Neil Larubbio

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wildfire Science by Neil LaRubbio firenews.firecenter.umt.edu

Taekwondo Principles: Guidelines For A Balanced Life, Deborah Ann Hendricks

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Hendricks, Deborah A., M.A., Spring 2011 Fine Arts, Integrated Arts and Education Taekwondo Principles: Guidelines for a Balanced Life Chairperson: Karen Kaufmann ‘Taekwondo Principles: Guidelines for a Balanced Life’ is a project that developed as a result of my field experience during the first year of the Creative Pulse program working toward a Master of Fine Arts in Integrated Arts and Education. Because the idea of being creative and artistic seemed not only foreign but overwhelming, I wanted to explore physical creativity and artistry. In my exploration of different physical activities I discovered a passion for taekwondo. I tried taekwondo …

Fifty Years On The Fringe: Murray Bookchin And The American Revolutionary Tradition, 1921-1971, Aaron David Hyams

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Hyams, Aaron, M.A., Spring 2011 History Fifty Years on the Fringe: Murray Bookchin and the American Revolutionary Tradition 1921-1971 Chairperson: Dr. Michael Mayer Murray Bookchin was an American revolutionary and political theorist born in New York City in 1921. His career as both an activist and a theorist through the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties, made him an active participant and influential voice for both the American Old Left, and the New Left. Writing for Contemporary Issues, a left wing journal edited by Josef Weber, Bookchin became an important part of the schismatic Left, a loose conglomeration of Marxist and …

Retracing The 1910 Carruthers Royal Geographical Society Expedition To The Turgen Mountains Of Mongolia – Reconstruction Of A Century Of Glacial Change, Kevin Gregory Mcmanigal

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Turgen Mountains lie in northwestern Mongolia, roughly 80 kilometers south of the Russian border. The area was visited in 1910 by a Royal Geographical Society (RGS) expedition led by Douglas Carruthers. They undertook an extensive survey of the range and produced a detailed topographic map. They also documented the extent of the glaciers with photographs. This modern study consisted of three phases. The first step was to procure the historical documents from the RGS in London, including copies of the photos, journal entries, and the map. Field work in Mongolia entailed traveling to the remote study site and retracing …

Students' Development In Proof: A Longitudinal Study, Nicolas John Haverhals

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite importance of teaching proof in any undergraduate mathematics program, many students have difficulties with proof (Dreyfus, 1999; Harel & Sowder, 2003; Selden & Selden, 2003; Weber, 2004). In this qualitative case study, nine undergraduate students were each interviewed once every two weeks over the course of an academic year. During each interview, the students were asked to complete, evaluate or discuss mathematical proofs. The results of these interviews were then analyzed using two different frameworks. The first focused on proof type, which refers to what kind of proof is created and how it came about. The second framework addressed …

Individual Agency And Military Structure: Personal Artifacts From 1890s Fort Missoula, Jackson Cossitt Mueller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

With a history spanning over 135 years, Fort Missoula, Montana, was involved in several aspects of local and national history, including the Battle of the Big Hole, the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and World War II internment camp. In the 1980s, former University of Montana anthropology professor Carling Malouf led a series of excavations, recovering hundreds of artifacts which, until this project, had been left unanalyzed. Over the course of two years and over 1500 hours of invested labor, the collections were re-processed, analyzed and curated, producing a detailed artifact catalogue and establishing provenience for most …

An Equivalent Class Solution For A Complete Test Of A Parallel Program, Peter Michael Wolf

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

With the advent of multi-core chips (multiple CPUs on a single chip) a fundamental shift in the design of programs is taking place. Previous use of parallel code in programs was limited to servers that contained multiple CPUs on separate chips. This idea is starting to change, with the majority of chips sold today containing multiple CPUs which require parallel code in software programs. The use of parallel code is not without problems. Non-parallel code executes programming statements in the same order, every time the same inputs are used. This result contrasts parallel code in the extreme. Identical inputs and …

Communal Empathy In Native American Older Adults, Heather Lynn Dorlando

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Recently it has been posited that resilience is a dynamic process that develops, fluctuates, and is embedded in social context. With a dynamic systems approach it is possible to investigate resilience within a Native American community, which includes addressing the concept of cultural resilience and empathy. A secondary qualitative data analysis of 28 interviews with Native American older adults was conducted. Research questions addressed the context in which empathy was demonstrated, what dimensions of empathy were utilized, if empathy was used as an emotion-focused or communal coping strategy, and what outcomes were described when using empathy as a coping strategy. …

Bernard Williams On Coercion And Reasons For Action, Joseph Stephenson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Understanding the nature of reasons for action and, specifically, how one can come to understand and criticize another’s reasons for action can help us to better understand what possible outcomes we can hope for when engaging another agent. Understanding reasons for action may even give us some insight into what shared ground ethical theory can offer. Bernard Williams’ treatment of reasons for action informs much of the contemporary discussion. Williams argues that there are generally two classes of statements about reasons: internal and external. An internal reason, according to Williams, is a reason which depends entirely on an agent’s motivations …

Application Of Randomized Branch Sampling To Conifer Trees: Estimating Crown Biomass, Ryan Michael Schlecht

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Randomized branch sampling (RBS) is a sampling scheme which can be implemented to estimate many different attributes of an object displaying a branched or forked form. The aboveground structure of trees (stem and branches) lends itself naturally to this type of sampling design. RBS utilizes the branching form of the crown itself to draw probability samples and generate unbiased estimates. When implemented correctly, RBS can also greatly reduce the costs in time and labor of sampling when the purpose is estimating attributes borne within crown portions of trees. However, RBS was created for and has been implemented primarily in applications …

A Model Of Successful Adaptation To Online Learning For College-Bound Native American High School Students, Collier Kaler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The primary purpose of this grounded theory study was to shed light on the personal online learning experiences of Native American high school students in Montana. The overarching research question was: What are the conditions for college-bound Native American high school students that result in a successful adaptation to an online learning environment?

Eight Native American students attending high schools on the Flathead and Blackfeet Reservations, and one small urban city, were interviewed two separate times for approximately 45 minutes. All participants had passed online coursework with a grade of C or better, taken through Montana Digital Academy. One hundred …

The Worst, Molly Laich

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Literature Meets Biology: An Evolutionary Approach To Literary Studies, Samantha Reneé Dwyer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The following thesis engages with the relatively young development in literary studies, called evocriticism, which uses scientific perspectives to look at literature. It first gives an overview of the current state of English departments and their decline in numbers, budgets, and cultural relevancy, mostly due to outdated modes of literary criticism and theory. It then introduces evocriticism as a new paradigm for studying literature. Literature and the arts are studied as human behaviors with possible adaptive benefits. Individual texts are interpreted through a scientific lens, using the theory of evolution to find cultural and biological human universals that can help …

No Star Galore, Zachary Cody Lee Carlsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Not you, me shadows of stainedglass on normal glass, where nothing moves not even if we say an owl can sing nothing changes.

The Effects Of Large Herbivores On Small Mammal Communities, Plants And Ecosystem Processes In Northern Arizona, Elliott Wentworth Reed Parsons

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Large herbivores are major drivers of community structure and function in many terrestrial systems. Through their direct effects on plants, large herbivores can influence the structure and complexity of habitats, the population abundance of animals that rely on those habitats, and the rates of ecosystem processes within those systems. These manifold impacts on systems are potentially magnifying, as removal of top predators and changes in land use have triggered large increases in large herbivore populations. Although increasing evidence suggests that large herbivores can critically shape the structure and function of the ecosystems they inhabit, few studies have detailed the direct …

Empowerment Through Voice: A Case Study In The Leadership Of Restorative Justice, Kim Dalene Harding

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This qualitative case study identified shared leadership as a necessary component in the sustenance of restorative justice, a reform justice model used at Ada County Juvenile Court Services located in Boise, Idaho. Within each of its divisions, ACJCS utilizes this shared leadership model. At this court, leadership capacity was built though encouraging team members to take initiative and show innovation. Community capacity was built by the creation of networks with other private and county agencies, providing both leadership opportunities and community service hours for offending youth. Shared leadership sustains this reform justice model by allowing leaders to become followers and …