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Glucocorticoid Hormone Levels Increase With Group Size And Parasite Load In Cliff Swallows, Samrrah A. Raouf, Linda C. Smith, Mary Bomberger Brown, John C. Wingfield, Charles R. Brown

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Animals often cope with adverse events by releasing glucocorticoid hormones, which in turn promote increased energy assimilation. In captive animals, crowding also leads to increased glucocorticoid activity, probably because of increased levels of social competition. We investigated how group size and ectoparasite infestations affected endogenous levels of the glucocorticoid hormone, corticosterone, in colonial cliff swallows, Petrochelidon pyrrhonota, in southwestern Nebraska, USA. Parasites were removed from some colonies by fumigating nests. Baseline levels of corticosterone in breeding adults varied significantly with whether parasites were present, colony size (measured by total number of active nests at a site), and nesting stage. …

Nonparametric Estimation Of Natural Selection On A Quantitative Trait Using Mark-Recapture Data, Olivier Gimenez, Rita Covas, Charles R. Brown, Mark D. Anderson, Mary Bomberger Brown, Thomas Lenormand

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Assessing natural selection on a phenotypic trait in wild populations is of primary importance for evolutionary ecologists. To cope with the imperfect detection of individuals inherent to monitoring in the wild, we develop a nonparametric method for evaluating the form of natural selection on a quantitative trait using mark-recapture data. Our approach uses penalized splines to achieve flexibility in exploring the form of natural selection by avoiding the need to specify an a priori parametric function. If needed, it can help in suggesting a new parametric model. We employ Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling in a Bayesian framework to estimate …

A Coprological View Of Ancestral Pueblo Cannibalism Debate Over A Single Fecal Fossil Offers A Cautionary Tale Of The Interplay Between Science And Culture, Karl J. Reinhard

Karl Reinhard Publications

As the object of my scientific study, I’ve chosen coprolites. It’s not a common choice, but to a paleonutritionist and archaeoparasitologist, a coprolite—a sample of ancient feces preserved by mineralization or simple drying—is a scientific bonanza. Analysis of coprolites can shed light on both the nutrition of and parasites found in prehistoric cultures. Dietary reconstructions from the analysis of coprolites can inform us about, for example, the origins of modern Native American diabetes. With regard to parasitology, coprolites hold information about the ancient emergence and spread of human infectious disease. Most sensational, however, is the recent role of coprolite analysis …

Analytical Solutions For The Electromagnetic Fields Of Tightly Focused Laser Beams Of Arbitrary Pulse Length, Scott M. Sepke, Donald Umstadter

Donald Umstadter Publications

The analytical solution for a monochromatic focused laser beam was recently published [Opt. Lett. 31, 1447 (2006)]. The effect of introducing bandwidth by including a finite-length temporal pulse envelope is included exactly. This is done formally first in the frequency domain for an arbitrary pulse shape, and the specific case of a cosine-squared envelope is then solved analytically for all pulse lengths, thereby decreasing the computation time by 2 orders of magnitude. The inclusion of longer wavelengths reduces the fraction of laser energy in the focus from 86.5% to 83.5% for a 5 fs Ti:sapphire laser and 72.7% in a …

Exact Analytical Solution For The Vector Electromagnetic Field Of Gaussian, Flattened Gaussian, And Annular Gaussian Laser Modes, Scott M. Sepke, Donald Umstadter

Donald Umstadter Publications

The exact vector integral solution for all the electromagnetic field components of a general flattened Gaussian laser mode is derived by using the angular spectrum method. This solution includes the pure and annular Gaussian modes as special cases. The integrals are of the form of Gegenbauer’s finite integral and are computed analytically for each case, yielding fields satisfying the Maxwell equations exactly in the form of quickly converging Fourier–Gegenbauer series.

The Problem Of Secular Sacredness: Ronald Dworkin, Michael Perry, And Human Rights Foundationalism, Ari Kohen

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

The concept of human rights ultimately rests on the premise that there are some things that ought to be done for human beings and other things that ought not to be done to human beings in light of the fact that they are human. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these rights stem from the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” (Ishay 1997: 407). Some would argue that this notion has its roots in the natural law and natural rights tradition that is an important …

Determination Of Diphacinone Residues In Hawaiian Invertebrates, Thomas M. Primus, Dennis J. Kohler, John J. Johnston

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

A reversed-phase ion-pair liquid chromatographic analysis combined with a solid-phase extraction clean-up method is used to assess the quantity of diphacinone residue found in invertebrates. Three invertebrate species are exposed to commercially available diphacinone-fortified bait used for rat control. The invertebrate samples are collected, frozen, and shipped to the laboratory. The samples are homogenized after cryogenic freezing. A portion of the homogenized samples are extracted with acidified chloroform–acetone, followed by cleanup with a silica solid-phase extraction column. Diphacinone is detected by UV absorption at 325 nm after separation by the chromatographic system. The method limit of detection (MLOD) for snail …

Developing And Extending Sustainable Agriculture: A New Social Contract, Michele Schoeneberger, Gary Bentrup, Charles A. Francis, Richard Straight

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Conclusions

Based on the practical community applications of woody buffe rs and multifuncti onal areas that grew from the ini tial concepts ofecobelts. we are convinced that this type of initiative is a viable option in establishing a positive interface between different types of human activities. The challenge becomes more real every day, as cities expand and both city-edge subdivisions and acreages create ever more interfaces between people with different and often con!1icting activities and basic values. There is a need to provide some logical and acceptable boundary between these people and their different lifestyles. It is also desirable to …

All Parents Are To Blame (Except This One): Global Versus Specific Attitudes Related To Parental Responsibility Laws, Eve M. Brank, Stephanie A. Hays, Victoria Weisz

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Increasing state legislation and media interest give the appearance of public support for parental responsibility laws; however, some national polls suggest otherwise. Based on disparate global and specific attitudes in other areas of the criminal justice literature, it was hypothesized that relatively weak global support for parental responsibility would be diminished even more if a specific juvenile was described. The current studies confirmed that participants were even less supportive of parental responsibility laws when a specific juvenile and his parents were described than they were when they answered questions about parents in general.

Differentiating Phonotactic Probability And Neighborhood Density In Adult Word Learning, Holly L. Storkel, Jonna Armbrüster, Tiffany Hogan

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to differentiate effects of phonotactic probability, the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence, and neighborhood density, the number of words that sound similar to a given word, on adult word learning. A second purpose was to determine what aspect of word learning (viz., triggering learning, formation of an initial representation, or integration with existing representations) was influenced by each variable.
Method: Thirty-two adults were exposed to 16 nonwords paired with novel objects in a story context. The nonwords orthogonally varied in phonotactic probability and neighborhood density. Learning was measured following 1, 4, …

A Continuous 250,000 Yr Record Of Oxygen And Carbon Isotopes In Ostracode And Bulk-Sediment Carbonate From Bear Lake, Utah-Idaho, Walter E. Dean, Jordon Bright, Darrell S. Kaufman, Richard M. Forester

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Oxygen and carbon isotopes from a continuous, 120-m-long, carbonate-rich core from Bear Lake, Utah-Idaho, document dramatic fluctuations in the hydrologic budget of the lake over the last 250,000 yr. Isotopic analyses of bulk sediment samples capture millennialscale variability. Ostracode calcite was analyzed from 78 levels, mainly from the upper half of the core where valves are better preserved, to compare the isotopic value of purely endogenic carbonate with the bulk sediment, which comprises both endogenic and detrital components. The long core exhibits three relatively brief intervals with abundant endogenic aragonite (50±10%) and enriched δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C. …

A Method For Mapping Corn Using The Us Geological Survey 1992 National Land Cover Dataset, S. K. Maxwell, J. R. Nuckols, M. H. Ward

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Long-term exposure to elevated nitrate levels in community drinking water supplies has been associated with an elevated risk of several cancers including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, colon cancer, and bladder cancer. To estimate human exposure to nitrate, specific crop type information is needed as fertilizer application rates vary widely by crop type. Corn requires the highest application of nitrogen fertilizer of crops grown in the Midwest US.We developed a method to refine the US Geological Survey National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) (including map and original Landsat images) to distinguish corn from other crops. Overall average agreement between the resulting corn and other …

Use Of Mammal Manure By Nesting Burrowing Owls: A Test Of Four Functional Hypotheses, Matthew D. Smith, Courtney J. Conway

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Animals have evolved an impressive array of behavioural traits to avoid depredation. Olfactory camouflage of conspicuous odours is a strategy to avoid depredation that has been implicated only in a few species of birds. Burrowing owls, Athene cunicularia, routinely collect dried manure from mammals and scatter it in their nest chamber, in the tunnel leading to their nest and at the entrance to their nesting burrow. This unusual behaviour was thought to reduce nest depredation by concealing the scent of adults and juveniles, but a recent study suggests that manure functions to attract arthropod prey. However, burrowing owls routinely …

Comprehensive Genetic Analyses Reveal Evolutionary Distinction Of A Mouse (Zapus Hudsonius Preblei) Proposed For Delisting From The Us Endangered Species Act, Tim L. King, John F. Switzer, Cheryl L. Morrison, Michael S. Eackles, Colleen C. Young, Barbara A. Lubinski, Paul Cryan

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Zapus hudsonius preblei, listed as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA), is one of 12 recognized subspecies of meadow jumping mice found in North America. Recent morphometric and phylogenetic comparisons among Z. h. preblei and neighbouring conspecifics questioned the taxonomic status of selected subspecies, resulting in a proposal to delist the Z. h. preblei from the ESA. We present additional analyses of the phylogeographic structure within Z. hudsonius that calls into question previously published data (and conclusions) and confirms the original taxonomic designations. A survey of 21 microsatellite DNA loci and 1380 base pairs from two mitochondrial …

Long-Term Population Monitoring: Lessons Learned From An Endangered Passerine In Hawai‘I, Luanne Johnson, Richard J. Camp, Kevin W. Brinck, Paul C. Banko

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Obtaining reliable population estimates is crucial to monitoring endangered species and developing recovery strategies. The palila (Loxioides bailleui) is an endangered seed-eating Hawaiian honeycreeper restricted to the subalpine forests of Mauna Kea, a volcano on the island of Hawai‘i, USA. The species is vulnerable to extinction primarily because >90% of the population is concentrated in <30 km² of habitat on the western slope of this high, dormant volcano. Annual surveys of the palila population have been conducted for ecological, legal, and other purposes since 1980. Because refinements to sampling protocols and analytical methods have evolved, we examined means of …

Sex Determination Of Pohnpei Micronesian Kingfishers Using Morphological And Molecular Genetic Techniques, Dylan C. Kesler, Iara F. Lopes, Susan M. Haig

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Conservation-oriented studies of Micronesian Kingfishers (Todiramphus cinnamominus) have been hindered by a lack of basic natural history information, despite the status of the Guam subspecies (T. c. cinnamominus) as one of the most endangered species in the world. We used tissue samples and morphometric measures from museum specimens and wild-captured Pohnpei Micronesian Kingfishers (T. c. reichenbachii) to develop methods for sex determination. We present a modified molecular protocol and a discriminant function that yields the probability that a particular individual is male or female. Our results revealed that females were significantly larger than males, …

Modeling Approaches In Avian Conservation And The Role Of Field Biologists, Steven R. Beissinger, Jeffrey R. Walters, Donald G. Catanzaro, Kimberly G. Smith, John B. Dunning Jr., Susan M. Haig, Barry R. Noon, Bradley M. Stith

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

This review grew out of our realization that models play an increasingly important role in conservation but are rarely used in the research of most avian biologists. Modelers are creating models that are more complex and mechanistic and that can incorporate more of the knowledge acquired by field biologists. Such models require field biologists to provide more specific information, larger sample sizes, and sometimes new kinds of data, such as habitat-specific demography and dispersal information. Field biologists need to support model development by testing key model assumptions and validating models. The best conservation decisions will occur where cooperative interaction enables …

Reply To The Discussion By F. Lagroix And S.K. Banerjee Of “Geochemical Evidence For The Origin Of Late Quaternary Loess In Central Alaska”, Daniel R. Muhs, James R. Budahn

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

We thank F. Lagroix and S.K. Banerjee (2006) for their Muhs and Budahn 1895 interest in our recent paper and welcome this opportunity to clarify our thoughts on the issues they raise. ...

The loess deposits of central Alaska contain a long and detailed record of sedimentation and soil formation. However, we are convinced that this history is a complex one and, therefore, we again thank Lagroix and Banerjee (2006) for the opportunity to articulate some additional thoughts on the geologic record here. We applaud the use of new methods, such as those of Lagroix and Banerjee (2002, 2004), in …

Asymmetry Of Processing Trade In China : Theory And Empirics, Zhaopeng Xing

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This paper studies decision of whether outsourcing or localization in China. Both strategies can enjoy low wage advantage. But outsourcing induces processing trade, while localization, which has additional localization cost can turn processing trade of some goods to ordinary trade. The asymmetric effect lies on that once localized, it is hard to return to outsourcing due to competition or fixed expenditures involved. If wage difference larger, it is more preferable to localized. Therefore, we can expect asymmetric effect of processing trade due to movement of relative wage difference, which was proved by econometrics on recent data by cointegrating analysis within …

Peoples' Tribunals: Legitimate Or Rough Justice, Christine M. Chinkin

Articles

The article examines the use of Peoples' Tribunals in seeking access to justice where none has been possible through more formal methods. It uses as illustration the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal that sought justice for the so-called comfort women, the primarily Asian women who were subjected to sexual slavery by the Japanese military before and during World War Two. The article briefly recounts the fate of the comfort women and then considers the legal and practical obstacles they faced in accessing justice at the end of the War. It outlines how towards the end of the 20th century the …

Book Notes: Science For Segregation: Race, Law, And The Case Against Brown V Board Of Education, By John P. Jackson, Jr., Audrey Ngo-Lee

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Modal Logic In Computer Science, Leigh Lambert

Theses

Modal logic is a widely applicable method of reasoning for many areas of computer science. These areas include artificial intelligence, database theory, distributed systems, program verification, and cryptography theory. Modal logic operators contain propositional logic operators, such as conjunction and negation, and operators that can have the following meanings: "it is necessary that," "after a program has terminated," "an agent knows or believes that," "it is always the case that," etc. Computer scientists have examined the difficulty of problems in modal logic, such as satisfiability. Satisfiability determines whether a formula in a given logic is satisfiable. The complexity of satisfiability …

Visualization Of Secondary Rna Structure Prediction Algorithms, Brandon Hunter

Master's Projects

This chapter introduces the secondary structure prediction problem. It describes what the secondary structure prediction problem is and why it is important. Based on the importance of the algorithm it is essential to have a clear means to visually represent the problem. Therefore, this chapter details the high level goals of the visualization. It details how the visualization will visually represent the problem through several simultaneous representations. These visual representations will be tied together in order to increase the understanding of the algorithm.

A Meaningful Md5 Hash Collision Attack, Narayana D. Kashyap

Master's Projects

It is now proved by Wang et al., that MD5 hash is no more secure, after they proposed an attack that would generate two different messages that gives the same MD5 sum. Many conditions need to be satisfied to attain this collision. Vlastimil Klima then proposed a more efficient and faster technique to implement this attack. We use these techniques to first create a collision attack and then use these collisions to implement meaningful collisions by creating two different packages that give identical MD5 hash, but when extracted, each gives out different files with contents specified by the atacker.

Study Of Rna Secondary Structure Prediction Algorithms, Lisa Yu

Master's Projects

Dynamic programming algorithms such as Nussinov algorithm and Zuker algorithm define criteria to search the most stable RNA secondary structures. Stochastic Context-Free Grammar (SCFG) predicts the most possible RNA secondary structure using context-free grammar and a defined set of probabilities for each grammar rule. These algorithms form the base of using computer programs to predict RNA secondary structures without pseudoknots. In this report, we review these RNA secondary structure prediction algorithms and present our own software implementations of these algorithms. The Nussinov algorithm is easy to understand. But our results show that the Nussinov algorithm is overly simplified and can …

Automatic Extraction Of Keywords And Co-Occurrence Keyword Sets, Mong-Hang Vo

Master's Projects

Internet search has become an essential part of almost everyone’s daily life and work. To make wise personal and business decisions in a timely fashion, one must access the most relevant information efficiently. Because the amount of information on the Internet is enormous, it is important that a search engine ranks the information appropriately when it presents search results to users. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) addresses relevance ranking based on how significant a search word is in each document. Some innovative approaches of computing higher dimensional LSI (HD-LSI) were explored in this project. In traditional LSI, the term frequency-inverse document …

Enhancing Tcp Performance In Wired-Cum-Wireless Networks, Shruthi B. Krishnan

Master's Projects

Increasing popularity for mobile devices has prompted industrial and academic research towards improving the performance of wireless applications. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) plays an important role in defining a network’s performance, and its use in wireless networks has exposed several inadequacies in its operation. Tight coupling of TCP’s error and congestion control mechanisms has proven to be incompatible with the unique characteristics of wireless channels. TCP, designed for wired networks, assumes any loss of packet to be an indication of congestion in the network. Wireless networks exhibit a higher bit error rate, low and varying bandwidth, and disconnections of hosts …

Clustering High Dimensional Data Using Svm, Tam P. Ngo

Master's Projects

The Web contains massive amount of documents from across the globe to the point where it has become impossible to classify them manually. This project’s goal is to find a new method for clustering documents that are as close to humans’ classification as possible and at the same time to reduce the size of the documents. This project uses a combination of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) with Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) calculation as well as Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification. With SVD, data sets are decomposed and can be truncated to reduce the data sets size. The reduced data set …

Internal Tides In The Southwestern Japan/East Sea, Jae-Hun Park, D. Randolph Watts

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

This paper investigates the internal tidal energy distribution in the southwestern Japan/East Sea using vertical round-trip travel time (τ) data from 23 pressure-sensor-equipped inverted echo sounders (PIES). The τ records are analyzed by bandpass filtering to separate time-dependent variability of the semidiurnal and diurnal bands. The semidiurnal internal tides exhibit a horizontal beam pattern of high energy, propagating into the open basin. They originate from a restricted portion of the shelf break where the Korea Strait enters the Ulleung Basin. The generation appears to occur at ∼200-m water depth near 35.5°–35.7°N and 130°–131°E, where the slope of bottom …

Miranda's Reprieve: How Rehnquist Spared The Landmark Confession Case, But Weakened Its Impact, Yale Kamisar

Articles

June marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most praised, most maligned-and probably one of the most misunderstood-U.S. Supreme Court cases in American history, Miranda v. Arizona. The opinion by Chief Justice Earl Warren conditions police questioning of people in custody on the giving of warnings about the right to remain silent, the right to counsel and the waiver of those rights. 384 U.S. 436. This ruling represents a compromise of sorts between the former elusive, ambiguous and subjective voluntariness/totality-of-the-circumstances test and extreme proposals that would have eliminated police interrogation altogether. But William H. Rehnquist didn't see Miranda that …