Digital Commons Network^™

A Case For Untrammeledness As The Foundational Goal Of Wilderness Management, Robert A. Mcglothlin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis addresses the quandary faced by wilderness managers in a time of heightening anthropogenic change, who are tasked with the conflicting goals of leaving wilderness untrammeled from management control, while simultaneously maintaining natural conditions free from human influence. I explain how this debate between conflicting management goals reflects a deeper rift between two competing philosophical paradigms of wilderness stewardship, which I term the Naturalness- paradigm and the Untrammeledness-paradigm. The Naturalness-paradigm embraces a techno-centric view of wilderness stewardship that exalts the role of managers in shaping wilderness ecosystems, whose persistence it considers to be dependent upon human provisioning. The Untrammeledness-paradigm …

More Than Zero: Variation In The Tattooed Population, Zachary Reiter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sociological research treats all individuals with more than zero tattoos as being part of the tattooed population. This type of categorization fails to capture the significant differences between tattooed individuals. For example, a gang member with a criminal insignia tattooed on his or her neck would be part of the same research population as long term tattoo artists with their entire body covered in tattoos or even a middle aged man with a single tattoo on his bicep. By interviewing tattoo artists, this thesis details the unique nature of tattooing as an occupation, the changing nature of the modern tattooing …

Src Family Kinases Mediate Individual Cell Responses To Receptor Tyrosine Kinase Signaling In Neuroblastoma Cells, Juan Enrique Palacios Moreno

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Receptor Tyrosine Kinases (RTKs) are involved in proliferation, differentiation, cellular metabolism, and homeostasis. More than half of the RTKs in the human genome are expressed in neuroblastoma cell lines. RKTs activate downstream signaling pathways including the canonical pathways of ERK, AKT, PLCγ, and SRC Family Kinases (SFKs). Phosphoproteomic data showed high expression and phosphorylation levels of SFK scaffold PAG1, and SFKs FYN and LYN in neuroblastoma cell lines and endosomes. We hypothesized that FYN and LYN distinguish between proliferation- and differentiation-inducing signals from different RTKs in neuroblastoma cells.

To test this hypothesis, we measured changes in FYN and LYN’s intracellular …

Gender Nonconformity, Psychosocial Stressors, And Psychopathology: Looking Beyond Sexual Orientation, Kathryn M. Oost

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

LGBT individuals experience disproportionately more victimization than their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts. Within these populations, perceived gender nonconformity predicts even higher rates of victimization. The current investigation examined relationships between gender nonconformity, experiences with victimization, and psychopathology among 671 students from the University of Montana, including 64 LGBT-identified individuals, who took part in an online study as part of course requirements. Hierarchical regressions were calculated to examine the relationships between gender expression, victimization, and psychopathology while controlling for sexual orientation, gender identity, and ethnicity. Gender nonconformity was a significant predictor of reported victimization, beyond sexual orientation and ethnicity (ΔR …

Aquatic Food Webs And Heavy Metal Contamination In The Upper Blackfoot River, Montana, Jack E. Landers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Acid mine drainage (AMD), characterized by low pH and abundant heavy metals, is a widespread problem affecting water quality and fish habitat in Montana. Montana’s upper Blackfoot River exhibits impaired water quality from historic mining that has significantly degraded aquatic habitat and reduced fish and invertebrate abundance in impacted streams. The goal of this study is to investigate the direct and indirect effects of mine-related heavy metals contamination on aquatic ecosystems by examining changes in aquatic community composition, bioaccumulation, and toxicity risk of heavy metals along a contamination gradient in the upper Blackfoot River. Three primary research questions were addressed …

Determining The Associations Between Sibling Relationships And Their Amount Of Physical Activity, And The Risk Of Childhood Obesity, Samantha Dalton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Seventy percent of children who are obese will grow up to be an overweight or obese adult, increasing their risk for mental, physical and health conditions including heart disease, diabetes, and joint problems (CDC, 2012). The sibling relationship consists of four major domains: 1) warmth and affection, 2) hostility and conflict, 3) rivalry, and 4) relative status/power (Furman, Buhrmester, 1985). These domains may be associated with sibling levels of physical activity (PA) and risk for obesity. Very few studies have assessed how sibling relationships affect one another’s PA and how these variables are related to the risk of childhood obesity. …

Hazardready – A Geographically Based Natural Hazard Education And Preparedness Web Application, Carson C. Macpherson-Krutsky Ms.

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and other natural disasters are inevitable and costly both in terms of lives lost and money spent on recovery. Scientific research on natural hazards is widely shared within the scientific community, but is less often made more widely accessible, as methods or pathways for providing scientific natural hazard information and data in non-technical language are limited. Priorities for imparting hazard information include: 1) scientific accuracy, 2) spatial granularity, 3) integration of information about all relevant hazards, 4) nontechnical content, 5) appropriate preparedness activities, and 6) engagement with existing disaster response and mitigation capabilities. In response to these …

Confidence Judgments In A Simultaneous Task Using Sprague Dawley Rats (Rattus Norvegicus), Jessica K. Kumm

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the present experiment, metacognitive confidence judgments were measured in the Sprague-dawley rats using a simultaneous discrimination task. Performance on two types of trials were compared: Forced and Choice. For Forced trials, subjects were required to classify a range of eight tones as either a “long” or “short” tone with the four longest frequency durations comprising the “long” tone category and the four shortest frequency tones comprising the “short” tone duration category. The Choice trials were identical to the Forced trials with the exception that a bailout response was also available, allowing the subject to advance to the next trial …

Modeling The Cryosphere With Fenics, Evan M. Cummings

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This manuscript is a collection of problems and solutions related to modeling the cryosphere using the finite element software FEniCS. Included is an introduction to the finite element method; solutions to a variety of problems in one, two, and three dimensions; an overview of popular stabilization techniques for numerically-unstable problems; and an introduction to the governing equations of ice-sheet dynamics with associated FEniCS implementations. The software developed for this project, Cryospheric Problem Solver (CSLVR), is fully open-source and has been designed with the goal of simplifying many common tasks associated with modeling the cryosphere. CSLVR possesses the ability to download …

Individuals’ Perceptions Of Disordered Eating Pathology: Development And Validation Of The Inventory For Disordered Eating Attributions (Idea), Lindsay Katherine Crosby

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Eating pathology may be triggered by a number of biological, environmental, personal, and social experiences. Research in the field of disordered eating has uncovered numerous intrinsic and extrinsic vulnerabilities to developing abnormal eating behavior, and these etiologies often impact the onset, severity, type, and prognosis of disordered eating behavior in varying ways. Further, a limited number of measures have been created to examine individualsÆ beliefs about why they are experiencing various mental health conditions (e.g. reasons for depression, developing substance dependence, etc.), which has implications for tailoring assessment and intervention. However, there is currently no such measure for individuals experiencing …

Characterization Of The Assembly Of Human Cytomegalovirus Gh/Gl/Go And Gh/Gl/Ul128-131 Complexes And Studies On Their Functions During Virus Entry And Tropism, Momei Zhou

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a human pathogen that can cause severe diseases in immunocompromised individuals, and also is a leading cause for congenital infection, making it a major public health concern. Currently, there is no effective vaccine available and antiviral treatment is often associated with problems, like drug toxicity, and drug resistance. Intervention in the virus entry process during the replication cycle could serve as a useful therapeutic strategy. The overall aims of the research in this dissertation are to characterize the roles of HCMV two gH/gL glycoprotein complexes during virus entry and tropism, and to study the molecular basis …

Hyperconnected School Leadership: Shared Experiences, Elizabeth Sue Wargo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Leaders remain perpetually connected to their work because of the rapid advancement of information technology. This research, using a qualitative approach, explored how increased connective technology is affecting school leaders with the central question: How is hyperconnectivity experienced by school leaders? Using personal interviews, the lived experiences of fifteen international middle and high school principals with one-to-one student-to-device programs were collected. Raw transcriptions of their experiences were analyzed using the descriptive phenomenological approach as outlined by Giorgi (2009). This approach allowed for the data to be reduced into a single narrative description shared by all participants indicating the essences of …

The Effects Wild Fires Have On Skeletal Remains, Paula Eileen Specht

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

On The Road To Better Health? Impacts Of New Market Access On Food Security, Nutrition, And Well-Being In Nepal, Himalaya, Michelle Ursula Grocke

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The first road to be built into Humla, Nepal has connected this once-remote Himalayan region to a market in China. This dissertation research assesses the impacts of this road on villagers’ food security, diet and nutrition, and subjective well-being, and investigates the link between objective and subjective health outcomes. The primary aim of this study is to decipher whether villagers’ ‘proximity to road’ is the strongest predictor of the aforementioned health outcomes, or whether other sociocultural and economic variables play a more significant role. A mixedmethods approach and a case-control ethnographic research design were implemented in order to investigate this …

Exploring Barriers To The Generalization Of Social Skills Interventions For Children Diagnosed With Asd: A Qualitative Analysis Of ‘Youth Engagement Through Intervention’, Zachary Shindorf

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Many children who are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulty with social skills and maintaining friendships. In turn, many social skills interventions have been developed to aid in the treatment of children diagnosed with ASD. Children with ASD, however, have difficulty generalizing the skills learned in social skills interventions to more natural settings like the home and school. This study, therefore, explored the barriers to the generalization of a social skills intervention, Youth Engagement Through Intervention (YETI) for children with ASD. Barriers to the generalization of YETI were explored through the qualitative examination of parents’ acceptability of the …

Purpose And Satisfaction Of Activities In Rural Communities Using Ecological Momentary Assessment, Jennifer Lauren Wong

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Individuals’ wellbeing have been investigated through one of two primary perspectives, hedonic or eudaimonic. The hedonic perspective has focused on studying happiness and considers individuals’ maximization of their pleasurable moments as the pathway to happiness (Henderson & Knight, 2012). The eudaimonic perspective suggests that people should live a life of virtue and that actualizing their potential is the pathway to wellbeing (Henderson & Knight, 2012). Both perspectives have used retrospective recall to investigate individuals’ wellbeing. This method has given researchers a better understanding of individuals’ overall wellbeing, but is unable to describe their wellbeing as it varies throughout the day. …

Advanced Measurements Of Undersampled Globally Significant Biomass Burning Sources, Chelsea Elizabeth Stockwell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

During the fourth Fire Lab at Missoula Experiment (FLAME-4) laboratory campaign, we burned historically undersampled and globally significant biomass fuels. The open-path Fourier transform infrared (OP-FTIR) spectroscopy system provided new emissions data while measuring gases that overlap with fire emissions measured in numerous field campaigns. Based on the lab-field comparisons, we conclude that our lab-measured emission factors (EFs) for some of the fires can be adjusted to better represent typical open burning. In addition we deployed a high-resolution proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-TOF-MS) to characterize biomass burning (BB) emissions for the first time. BB is the second largest global atmospheric …

Political Ecology Of Cordyceps In The Garhwal Himalaya Of Northern India, Laura Bess Caplins

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the Garhwal, Indian Himalaya, rural mountain people labor to piece together their livelihoods in an ever changing world. One particular group, the Bhotiya (an ethnically and culturally distinct tribal group) were historically engaged in seasonal migration (i.e. transhumance) to take advantage of scarce mountain resources and trade relations with Tibet. This livelihood practice has all but disappeared; however, today one way the Bhotiya are adapting to these changing circumstances is by engaging in the collection and sale of a valuable alpine medicinal fungus locally known as keera jari, and commonly called the caterpillar fungus or cordyceps (Ophiocordyceps sinensis). The …

Modulating Male Aggression And Courtship: Detecting External Pheromonal And Nutritional Information, Jonathan C. Andrews

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Survival and reproduction in the natural world requires an organism to identify and react to the presence of environmental stimuli in a time and cue dependent manner. Such temporal specificity requires the development and use of specialized sensory organs that receive this external sensory information. Neurons within the specialized sensory organs respond to touch, taste, pheromones, chemicals, and light, and transduce this information to the central brain. In many systems, gustatory and olfactory chemosensation in particular, provides critical information regarding sex and species identification as well as the status of food resources. The output of neurons which receive chemical information …

Examining The Role Of Parents In Concussion Legislation Across The United States, Jessica A. Cremer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Postactivation Potentiation: Practical Implications In The Collegiate Setting, Steven T. Banks

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Banks, Steven, M.S., May 2016

Health and Human Performance, Exercise Science

POSTACTIVATION POTENTIATION PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS IN THE COLLEGIATE SETTING

Chairperson: Matthew Bundle Ph.D.

Postactivation potentiation (PAP) induced by a voluntary conditioning activity (CA) has been shown to increase peak force and rate of force development during subsequent muscle contractions increasing performance. We examined existing PAP literature, the underlying physiological mechanisms responsible for PAP, and the various factors that affect protocols used to elicit the PAP response. Furthermore, we aimed to determine what combination of factors are optimal for eliciting a PAP response in training and competition. The proposed mechanism underlying …

Close Call With Nonexistence: A Memoir, Jeff Gailus

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Fred Eduard Gailus was born on April 26, 1944, in Memelland, a place that no longer exists. It was a tiny sliver of Germandom on the far eastern edge of Hitler’s outsized German Reich. When the Soviet Red Army swept through on their way to Berlin, to end World War Two and the reign of terror perpetrated by the German people, the homeland of my father’s ancestors was wiped off the map forever. Thanks to the courage and tenacity of his mother, Fred survived the largest forced migration in human history to marry young and raise a family of four …

The Healthy Heart Program At The University Of Montana: A Program Review, Laura B. Porisch

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Porisch, Laura, M.S., Spring 2016 Health and Human Performance

Abstract—The Healthy Heart Program at the University of Montana: A Program Review

Chairperson: Steven Gaskill

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify whether the Healthy Heart Program at the University of Montana is successful at facilitating lifestyle behavior changes. Methods: Six participants from Spring of 2015 were interviewed 3-4 months post and again 9-10 months post participation in the program. Interview questions focused on whether participants were working toward goals as well as their opinion of the program and what could be done to improve it. Additionally, 18 participants …

Prescribing The American Dream: Psychoanalysts, Mass Media, And The Construction Of Social And Political Norms In The 1950'S, Daniel P. Kamienski

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper surveys how and why psychoanalysis during the 1950s—its “Golden Age” in the United States—emerged as a highly respected professional discipline with great public currency. The prevalence and popularity of psychoanalysts in public culture is substantiated by an extensive survey of primary print sources featuring psychoanalysts opining on many of the major social and political issues of the decade. Combining these opinions with those expressed in professional journals and publications, this paper reveals how psychoanalysts used their growing public currency to shape debates about which social identities and behaviors, cultural values, and political ideals were appropriate and legitimate for …

Performance Measures Of Road Crossing Structures From Relative Movement Rates Of Large Mammals, Adam Andis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In recent decades, there has been an increase of engineering projects that seek to mitigate the barrier effect roads impose on wildlife by installing wildlife crossing structures that promote permeability of the road corridor. The 41 fish and wildlife crossing structures installed along a 90km stretch of US Highway 93 on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana, represent one of the most extensive of such projects in North America. As mitigation efforts are increasingly considered and implemented in road construction projects, the need to assess these structures’ effectiveness grows. This study is the first to compare observations of animal …

Baseline Study Of Recovering Headwater Streams In The Sapphire Mountains, Western Montana, Morgan Vinyard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Many riparian areas in the western United States have been degraded by grazing and logging. In the year 2000, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) re-initiated an effort to identify and characterize reference streams, or least impacted streams in each region of the state. In Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, most streams have been impacted by grazing, irrigation, and timber production. The Montana DEQ has not been able to identify reference streams in the Sapphire Mountains on the east side of this valley. MPG Ranch, located on the west-facing slopes of the Sapphire Mountains and purchased in 2009 by a conservation-minded …

Tectonic Alteration Of A Major Neogene River Drainage Of The Basin And Range, Stuart D. Parker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Depositional characteristics of the ‘Divide unit’ of the Cretaceous Beaverhead Group within the southern Beaverhead Mountains challenge previous interpretations. This study reassigns the Divide unit to the Neogene. This revised age assignment highlights a major influx of immature sediment at the onset of Basin-Range normal faulting. Syntectonic deposition in an active half-graben continued from Middle Miocene to the Pliocene, attaining a thickness of 800 m. Local clasts of carbonate, siliciclastic and orthoquartzite entered the channel from the immediate west through large mass-wasting events. Dacitic fluvial cobbles dated herein to 98 Ma were transported from an unknown southwesterly source. Clasts of …

Beyond Blood: Examining The Communicative Challenges Of Adoptive Families, Mackensie C. Minniear

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study examined how adoptive families discursively create family identity through their communication. Building on theories of discourse dependence and family communication patterns, this research examined how families whose identity does not meet a bio-genetic view of family must re-define family using communication. Often times, families that are created outside biological means must renegotiate family identity both within the family, and outside the family, from those who feel comfortable commenting and questioning their family composition. Communication becomes a tool that adoptees must use to understand their family identity, as well as their own adoptive identity. Furthermore, this study looked to …

A Comparison Of The Utility Of Craniometric And Dental Morphological Data For Assessing Biodistance And Sex-Differential Migration In The Pacific Islands, Brittney A. Eubank

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Genetic analysis of maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA and the paternally-inherited Y-chromosome yield contrasting pictures of movement of peoples into the Pacific Islands. A possible explanation for this discrepancy is a matrilocal residency pattern practiced by early Pacific settlers, in which Melanesian men were brought into settler communities to intermarry with local women, yielding a higher intrapopulation variance and lower interpopulation variance exhibited in males compared to females. This research investigates the possibility of sex-differential migration in the Oceanic populations of Easter Island, Fiji, Guam, Mokapu, and New Britain through analysis of biodistance based on dental morphological trait frequencies and craniometric measures …

Between Rivers: Reflections On Home, Obligation, And Otherness From A Confluence Of Conservation And Connectivity, Chandra M. Brown

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Between Rivers is an exploration of the role of the outsider in international watershed conservation. Through extended personal narrative and analysis of current events, ethnographic texts, and sociopolitical history, this thesis considers questions related to responsibility in conservation. The narrative focuses on Ecuador’s Jondachi Fest, a case study in international collaboration and celebration of an ecologically key river system. Grassroots celebrations and river festivals are sprouting up on endangered rivers all across South America. In this thesis, the author examines her own experience as an outsider working to facilitate one such festival – the challenges, shortcomings, relationships, and victories – …