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Testing Multigenerational Colonization Of Carrion By Blow Flies In The Great Plains, Timothy E. Huntington, David O. Carter, Leon G. Higley

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The relationship between carrion and blow flies is well understood, but in situations where fresh carrion sources are unavailable, as may occur on the Great Plains, the potential for multigenerational colonization of a single carcass exists. By testing this possibility through a replicated choice/no-choice experiment using pig carcasses, we were able to demonstrate that multigenerational colonization of carrion by blow flies does not occur. Fresh pig carcasses were exposed to blow fly infestation, then placed in insect exclusion cages. After the emergence of this first generation of blow fly adults, "choice" cages were supplied with a fresh pig cadaver. No …

Literature Review Of Mule Deer And White-Tailed Deer Movements In Western And Midwestern Landscapes, Scott E. Hygnstrom, Scott R. Groepper, Kurt C. Vercauteren, Chuck J. Frost, Justin R. Boner, Travis C. Kinsell, Gregory M. Clements

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The relationships among seasonal change, population dynamics, social pressures, landscape dynamics, anthropologic disturbances, and behavioral ecology are complex. Therefore, migration and seasonal movements are poorly understood and dispersal continues to be one of the least understood aspects of animal ecology in North America. We reviewed scientific literature on movements of mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and white-tailed deer (O. virginianus) in western and midwestern landscapes to identify gaps in our knowledge and direct future research. We used electronic databases, library catalogs, Internet search engines, and peer-reviewed journals to conduct key word searches for pertinent articles. We found …

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Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

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Great Plains Research: A Journal Of Natural And Social Sciences, Volume 18, Number 2 (2008): Table Of Contents

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Social Sciences

Stated Preferences for Ecotourism Alternatives on Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation (Robert R. Hearne and Sheldon Tuscherer) ......... 131

Investigating Psychosocial Well-Being among Ethnically Diverse Rural Women: Expect the Unexpected (Rochelle L. Dalla, Catherine A. Huddleston-Casas, and Maria León) ........ 143

Moving to the Rural Great Plains: Point of Origin Differences in the Decision-Making Process (Randy Cantrell, Cheryl Burkhart-Kriesel, Bruce Johnson, Charlotte Narjes, and Rebecca Vogt) ........ 155

Producer Responses to Carbon Sequestration Incentives in the Northern Great Plains (Dean A. Bangsund and F. Larry Leistritz) ........ 165

Natural Sciences

Six Centuries of Fire History at Devils Tower …

Use Of Passive Integrated Transponders In Hatchling Texas Horned Lizards, Scott E. Henke

The Prairie Naturalist

The Texas horned lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum) is a Texas state-threatened species and acquisition of data related to the species' ecology is essential. To accomplish this task individual animals need to be marked. Many marking techniques are available for lizards, however the majority of techniques have been tested on adults only. Studies involving hatchling and juvenile horned lizards are scarce due to problems associated with marking and relocating individuals in these age classes. I demonstrated that injection of passive integrated transponders (PIT's) can safely be used as a marking method in young Texas horned lizards. Thirty-two captive bred hatchling lizards were …

Mortality Of An American Marten From An Off-Highway Vehicle, Joshua B. Smith, Jonathan A. Jenks

The Prairie Naturalist

While there are several reviews of the effects of OHVs and recreational activity on wildlife populations (Knight and Gutzwiller 1995, Joslin and Youmans 1999), most studies have focused on physiological (Creel et al. 2002) or behavioral (Van Dyke et al. 1986, Riley et al. 2003) responses to disturbance; none have addressed the potential for direct mortality. In 2005, we documented the death from an OHV of a juvenile, female American marten (F299) that had been radiocollared during a study documenting the distribution and abundance of American marten in the Black Hills, South Dakota (Smith 2007); the Institutional Animal Care and …

Points Without Limits: Individual Inquiry, Collaborative Investigation, And Collective Scholarship, Richard A. Gale

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter proposes that a scholarship of teaching and learning focused on collaborative and collective inquiry can be more effective and have greater impact on student learning and the advancement of knowledge than investigations accomplished by individual faculty and students working in isolation. This conclusion is arrived at as a result of examining the work of Carnegie Scholars and the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Campus Program participants since 1998.

Assessment Of A Faculty Learning Community Program: Do Faculty Members Really Change?, Susan Polich

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In this study, participants in a faculty learning community (FLC) program were followed to see if they had really changed their epistemological beliefs and teaching methods. Of the 39 FLC participants, 87% reported a change in their epistemological beliefs and 79% reported a change in their teaching methods. Seven participants were followed in-depth to determine if their reported changes actually occurred. Observations suggest that none of the seven appeared to have changed epistemological beliefs although all changed teaching methods. More importantly, the participants adopted their new pedagogy only when the pedagogy was aligned with their beliefs.

2008 Acropolis, Whittier College

Acropolis (Yearbook)

2008 Acropolis yearbook for Whittier College.

Easing Entry Into The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning Through Focused Assessments: The “Decoding The Disciplines” Approach, Joan K. Middendorf, David Pace

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Students’ difficulty in mastering material can motivate faculty toward the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) if instructors’ frustration can be framed as a researchable question, and they have practical models for assessing learning outcomes. The “decoding the disciplines” approach supports this shift from reflective teaching to SoTL. By focusing on narrowly defined bottlenecks to learning, faculty define researchable questions convincing to their disciplines. The specificity of these inquiries makes the assessment of learning much easier through the application of existing tools, such as those provided in Angelo and Cross’s Classroom Assessment Techniques (1993). Example of specific assessments are provided.

Promoting Learning–Focused Teaching Through A Project–Based Faculty Development Program, Susanna Calkins, Greg Light

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter describes how we incorporated project-based learning into a yearlong faculty development program at a research-intensive private university located in the Midwest. This inquiry-based approach fosters critical reflection on teaching and promotes learner-focused teaching in a manner that encourages deeper student approaches to learning. We use case studies, drawn from critical accounts of faculty projects, to illustrate a model that depicts how faculty understand improvement in their teaching and to identify key program elements that facilitated the adoption of learning-focused teaching practices by our participants.

A Research–Based Rubric For Developing Statements Of Teaching Philosophy, Matthew Kaplan, Deborah S. Meizlish, Christopher O'Neal, Mary C. Wright

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Despite its ubiquity as the way that instructors represent their views on teaching and learning, the statement of teaching philosophy can be a frustrating document to write and the results are often uneven. This chapter describes a rubric created at the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching to help faculty and graduate students craft teaching statements. We describe the research that informed the creation of the rubric, talk about how we use the rubric in our consultations and workshops, and present an assessment that validates the use of the rubric to improve instructors’ teaching statements.

Meeting The Challenges Of Integrative Learning: The Nexia Concept, Jane Love

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Integrative learning challenges faculty developers to facilitate integrative and connective experiences not only for students, but for faculty as well. For many faculty, curricular requirements impede connective teaching, and the widespread assumption that connectivity must be taught on the course level also limits their ability to enrich students’ learning through diverse perspectives and interactions. Nexia is an approach to this problem based on the concept of ad hoc connectivity, or small-scale, focused, short-term connections that allow students from two or more courses to interact around points of interest to both classes. By releasing connective teaching from expensive curricular constraints, the …

Literary Ornithology: Bird-Watching Across Academic Disciplines With Honors Students, Kateryna Schray

Honors in Practice Online Archive

As professors of literature, we have a fairly good chance of engaging our students when we teach Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” True, the text can seem daunting on a first read, but who can resist a moody if not downright creepy ghost story told by the survivor of a nightmarish ordeal to a detained and gradually mesmerized wedding guest? The story has an intriguing psychological component in the progressive isolation of its main narrator, strong theological references, and vivid tactile images. And it has a bird in it, an albatross, the image of which has …

Creating Faculty-Student Interaction, Lindsay Roberts, Jessie Salmon

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Creating a thriving community is a challenge for any honors program or college, especially for a program in transition like the Honors College at Towson University. The Honors College has approximately nine hundred students out of about sixteen thousand undergraduate students, and within the past three years it has undergone major curricular and structural changes. To keep honors students and faculty connected and invested in their honors experience through this transition period, the Honors College has focused on establishing a tighter bond between faculty and students, one that is unique to the college and recognized by the university as a …

Portable Widgets And Techie Tattoos: Honors Of The Future, Rosalie Ortero

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Just twenty-five years ago, in 1982, Gray Austin from Ohio State was the NCHC President. William Daniel from Winthrop College was the program chair for the NCHC conference that was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The conference fee was $46 and a room at the Hilton cost $37 a night. Writing Across the Curriculum was big news, and interdisciplinary seminars centered on the Great Books concept were a major component of honors programs. Today, there are honors programs and colleges at large and small universities, colleges, and community colleges. Service Learning is big news as is Outcomes Assessment. Honors curricula …

Planning For Pandemic Influenza: Lessons From The Experiences Of Thirteen Indiana Counties, George H. Avery, Mark Lawley, Sandra Garrett, Barrett Caldwell, Marshall P. Durr, Dulcy Abraham, Feng Lin, Po-Ching C. Delaurentis, Maria L. Peralta, Alice Russell, Renata A. Kopach-Conrad, Lalaine M. Ignacio, Rebeca Sandino, Deanna J. Staples

RCHE Publications

Significant concerns exist over the ability of the healthcare and public health systems to meet the surge demands that would result from an event such as an influenza pandemic. Current guidance for public health planners is largely based on expert opinion and may lack connection to the problems of street-level public health practice. To identify the problems of local planners and prepare a state-level planning template for increasing health care surge capacity that accounted for these issues,a study was conducted of local pandemic planning efforts in thirteen counties, finding that cognitive biases, coordination problems, institutional structures in the healthcare system, …

The Involvement Of Rho-Associated Kinases (Rocks) In Epha4 Signaling In Xenopus Laevis, Ashley Bate

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

XEphA4 is a cellular receptor that functions to regulate cell and tissue interactions in amphibian embryos via a repulsive mechanism that involves actin cytoskeleton reorganization. Ectopic EphA4 signaling in Xenopus embryos results in a loss of cell-adhesion and rounded cell morphology, and this phenotype is consistent with EphA4 signaling in cultured A6 cells. How EphA4 achieves its effects on the actin cytoskeleton at the molecular level is largely unknown. One known step in the pathway is that EphA4 causes inhibition of the small GTPase RhoA. RhoA has many downstream effectors that cause cytoskeletal reorganization; the most recognized of these are …

An Evaluation Of Health Research Methodology In The Literature, A. Irene Gamalski

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

Understanding the research being conducted in health care is essential to being an effective manager. Using databases such as Medline and Pub Med, provided by the National Institute of Health, and selecting the criteria of keywords "health", "management", "research" and "trial", published since 2002 in English and on human subjects, a population of peer-reviewed journals was identified. A random sample from this population was obtained; the research methodologies were evaluated and compared for practical application.

Fat Is Fine: Influences Of Medical Research, Body Image And Self-Esteem And Social Justice On Socially Unaccepted Bodies, Rachel Girard

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

In the current popular of America, fat is seen as a very bad thing. Having excess weight is not only a perceived health risk, but is also socially unacceptable. Three major areas relating to fat— medical research, body image and self-esteem, and social justice—are explored in order to explain the current perceptions of excess weight, the impact these perceptions have and what could be done to change them. The overarching goal of this project is to make readers more aware of the conflicting research there is about fat, to show how unnecessary this negative view of excess weight is and …

Polychlorinated Biphenyls In Air And Water Of The North Atlantic And Arctic Ocean, Rosalinda Gioia, Rainer Lohmann, Jordi Dachs, Christian Temme, Soenke Lakaschus, Stlef Schulz-Bull, Ines Hand, Kevin C. Jones

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Air and seawater samples were collected on board the R/V Polarstern during a scientific expedition from Germany to the Arctic Ocean during June–August 2004. The air data show a strong decline with latitude with the highest polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) concentrations in Europe and the lowest in the Arctic. Σ_ICES PCBs in air range from 100 pg m⁻³ near Norway to 0.8 pg m⁻³ in the Arctic. A comparison with other data from previous and ongoing land‐based air measurements in the Arctic region suggests no clear temporal decline of PCBs in the European Arctic since the mid‐1990s. Dissolved …

Changes In A Benthic Megafaunal Community Due To Disturbance From Bottom Fishing And The Establishment Of A Fishery Closure, Rebecca G. Asch, Jeremy S. Collie

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Trawling and dredging on Georges Bank (northwest AtlanticOcean) have altered the cover of colonial epifauna, as surveyed through in situ photography. A total of 454 photographs were analyzed from areas with gravel substrate between 1994 and 2000 at depths of 40–50 m and 80–90 m. The cover of hydroids, bushy bryozoans, sponges, and tubewormswas generally higher at sites undisturbed by fishing than at sites classified as disturbed. The magnitude andsignificance of this effect depended on depth and year. Encrusting bryozoans were the only type of colonial epifauna positively affected by bottom fishing. Species richness of noncolonial epifauna declined with increasedbottom …

Book Review: Ladybugs Of Alberta: Finding The Spots And Connecting The Dots By John Acorn. Edmonton, R. W. Longair

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Only a few groups of insects, among all their immense diversity, have escaped the aversive response of most adults toward things with six legs and allowed nonbiologists to look on them with a more appreciative eye. With this publication, John Acorn has now given us a scientifically sound and entertaining view of three of the groups with this elevated status: butterflies, damselflies, and lady beetles. This new volume, like most of the animals it describes, is attractive as well as highly readable and informative.

Engineer Cantonment, Missouri Territory, 1819-1820: America's First Biodiversity Ineventory, Hugh H. Genoways, Brett C. Ratcliffe

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

It is our thesis that members of the Stephen Long Expedition of 1819-20 completed the first biodiversity inventory undertaken in the United States at their winter quarters, Engineer Cantonment, Missouri Territory, in the modern state of Nebraska. This accomplishment has been overlooked both by biologists and historians, but it should rank among the most significant accomplishments of the expedition. The results of this inventory allow us to evaluate the environmental, faunal, and floral changes along the Missouri River in the intervening nearly 190 years. The historical records form a visual image of a dynamic riverine system in which a highly …

Book Review: Managing Biodiversity In Agricultural Ecosystems Edited By D.I. Jarvis, C. Padoch, And H.D. Cooper, Richard K. Baydack

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Managing Biodiversity in Agricultural Ecosystems is a series of 18 edited contributions that investigate a vast body of material relating to the broad category of "agricultural biodiversity." This subject is of increasing importance across the Great Plains of North America as we strive to ensure that our planet is able to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the abilities of future generations to meet theirs. As such, the editors have sequenced and categorized the contributions so as to ensure that treatment of a wide range of topics- crop genetic resources; livestock genetic resources; aquatic biodiversity; pollinator diversity; …

Review Of Handbook Of Forage And Rangeland Insects. Edited By William O. Lamp, Richard C. Berberet, Leon G. Higley, And Craig R. Baird. Lanham, J. E. Mcpherson

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This handbook is another in the outstanding series published by the Entomological Society of America, now in cooperation with the American Phytopathological Society. Arranged in four sections-"Forage and Rangeland Production," "Arthropods and Their Management," "Injurious Arthropods," and "Beneficial Organisms"- each of these is divided into clearly delineated subsections, allowing readers easy access to information (along with references) that particularly interests them. The text is accompanied by outstanding color photographs throughout.

"Forage and Rangeland Production" includes a forage production history followed by discussions of North America's important legumes and grasses. Along with detailed tables of both groups' major species and their …

Review Of Predator Upon A Flower: Life History And Fitness In A Crab Spider. By Douglass H. Morse, Hank Guarisco

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This masterfully written, 377-page book is a product of the author's 25 years of detailed natural history studies of a commonly encountered crab spider (Misumena vatia) which frequents prairies and old fields in the United States, Canada, Alaska, Mexico, Europe, Asia, and North Africa. It is a delight to read because of the author's flowing narrative style and his adeptness in placing his fascinating natural history observations of this consummate sit-and-wait predator within the broader contexts of foraging theory, reproductive biology, learning behavior, resource allocation, and, ultimately, lifetime fitness.

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Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Charles E. Bessey Award

Leslie Hewes Award

Symposium Announcement

Review Of George Miksch Sutton: Artist, Scientist, And Teacher. By Jerome A. Jackson., Paul A. Johnsgard

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Sutton, an introspective and very private man, sadly destroyed many of his personal papers before he died. His Bird Student: An Autobiography (1980) documents his life only through 1935 and the end of his Cornell days. Jackson's book is especially valuable, therefore, in documenting Sutton's later years, after he had reached his prime both as scholar and artist. Although I thought I personally knew Sutton very well and wrote a small book based on a collection of his paintings of baby birds, I learned much from Jackson's narrative, which details Sutton's World War II experiences, his often frustrating years at …

Personal Characteristics Preceding Pro-Environmental Behaviors That Improve Surface Water Quality, Courtney E. Quinn, Mark E. Burbach

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The decisions made by individual farmers to adopt conservation practices that improve surface water quality will be of increasing importance in the 21st century. Currently, models attempting to explain pro-environmental behaviors ignore or minimize the role of individual personality characteristics. In this paper we give an overview of current research regarding how personal characteristics influence the adoption of Best Management Practices (BMPs) and propose an expansion of measured characteristics to include farmers' work motivation, environmental attitude, and moral reasoning toward the environment. Our purpose is to spur an interest in understanding the antecedents to the pro-environmental behavior of farmers that …