Digital Commons Network^™

Regional Assessment On Influence Of Landscape Configuration And Connectivity On Range Size Of White-Tailed Deer, W. David Walter, Kurt C. Vercauteren, Henry Campa Iii, William R. Clark, Justin W. Fischer, Scott E. Hygnstrom, Nancy E. Mathews, Clayton K. Nielsen, Eric M. Schauber, Timothy R. Van Deelen, Scott R. Winterstein

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Variation in the size of home range of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) has broad implications for managing populations, agricultural damage, and disease spread and transmission. Size of home range of deer also varies seasonally because plant phenology dictates the vegetation types that are used as foraging or resting sites. Knowledge of the landscape configuration and connectivity that contributes to variation in size of home range of deer for the region is needed to fully understand differences and similarities of deer ecology throughout the Midwest. We developed a research team from four Midwestern states to investigate how size of …

Survival And Cause-Specific Mortality Of Wild Turkeys In Northern Indiana, Lee A. Humberg, Travis L. Devault, Olin E. Rhodes Jr.

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Information regarding survival and cause-specific mortality of eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) is vital to their management, especially in small or isolated populations. Between January 2003 and August 2005, we used radio telemetry to investigate survival and cause-specific mortality of 87 [44 male (24 adult and 20 juvenile) and 43 female (34 adult and 9 juvenile)] wild turkeys in northern Indiana. We estimated annual and seasonal survival using the Kaplan-Meier product-limit method. Mean male and female annual survival estimates were 0.257 and 0.777, respectively. Annual survival estimates were different between sexes within years, but were homogenous within …

A Review Of Mitigation Measures For Reducing Wildlife Mortality On Roadways, David J. Glista, Travis L. Devault, J. Andrew Dewoody

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

A growing literature in the field of road ecology suggests that vehicle/wildlife collisions are important to biologists and transportation officials alike. Roads can affect the quality and quantity of available wildlife habitat, most notably through fragmentation. Likewise, vehicular traffic on roads can be direct sources of wildlife mortality and in some instances, can be catastrophic to populations. Thus, connectivity of habitat and permeability of road systems are important factors to consider when developing road mortality mitigation systems. There are a variety of approaches that can be used to reduce the effects of roads and road mortality on wildlife populations. Here, …

Avian Visual System Configuration And Behavioural Response To Object Approach, Bradley F. Blackwelll, Esteban Fernández-Juricic, Thomas W. Seamans, Tracy Dolan

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Antipredator behavior theory provides a framework to understand the mechanisms behind human–wildlife interactions; however, little is known about the role of visual systems in the responses to humans. We quantified responses of brown-headed cowbirds, Molothrus ater (Boddaert), and mourning doves, Zenaida macroura (Linnaeus), to object approach (a ground-based vehicle) and vehicle lighting regimen, and we examined two visual properties (visual acuity and visual fields) that could influence antipredator behavior. Brown-headed cowbird groups exposed to vehicle approach and constant illumination of the vehicle-mounted lamp showed alert behavior earlier than did groups exposed to pulsating treatments or no lamp. Interestingly, light treatments …

Feral Swine Damage And Damage Management In Forested Ecosystems, Tyler A. Campbell, David B. Long

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Invasive feral swine (Sus scrofa) cause deleterious impacts to ecosystem processes and functioning throughout their worldwide distribution, including forested ecosystems in the United States. Unfortunately, many feral swine damage management programs are conducted in a piecemeal fashion, are not adequately funded, and lack clearly stated or realistic objectives. This review paper identifies damage caused by feral swine to forest resources and presents techniques used to prevent and control feral swine damage. Concluding points related to planning a feral swine damage management program are: (1) the value of using a variety of techniques in an integrated fashion cannot be …

Feasibility Of Infectious Prion Digestion Using Mild Conditions And Commercial Subtilisin, John L. Pilona, Paul B. Nash, Terry Arver, Don Hoglund, Kurt C. Vercauteren

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Two serine protease enzymes, subtilisin 309 and subtilisin 309-v,were used to digest brain homogenates containing high levels of prion infectivity using mildly alkaline conditions to investigate prion decontamination methods. To establish that PrP^res infectivity was eliminated, we utilized the Rocky Mountain Laboratory (RML) mouse-adapted scrapie model system for bioassay. Only one digestion condition (subtilisin 309 at 138mAU/ml, 55 ◦C and 14 h digestion time pH 7.9) was considered to be highly relevant statistically (P < 0.001) compared to control, with 52% of challenged mice surviving until the end of the study period. In contrast, treatment of PrP^res by autoclaving at 134 ◦C or treatment with hypochlorite at a concentration of 20,000ppm completely protected mice from prionosis. Further, in vitro assays suggest …

Unearthing Archaeology: A Study Of The Recent Coverage Of Selected English-Language Archaeology Journals By Multi-Subject Indexes And By Anthropological Literature, David C. Tyler, Yang Xu, Emily Dust Nimsakont

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

Librarians, faculty, and professional researchers, and students already encounter difficulties in locating journal articles for the field of archaeology, yet, in the current budgetary climate, librarians needing to reduce subscription costs may be tempted to cancel smaller, discipline-specific indexes in favor of large multi- subject indexes with broad coverage. This study examines and compares the coverage provided to 208 archaeology and archaeology-related journals and magazines by six multi-subject indexes (Academic Search Premier, ArticleFirst, eLibrary, IngentaConnect, Wilson OmniFile, Web of Science) and by anthropology’s primary index, Anthropological Literature, over a twenty year period (1988–2007).

The Willa Cather Archive In The Classroom, Andrew Jewell

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

This essay discusses many of the opportunities for teachers I believe are present in the Willa Cather Archive (http://cather.unl.edu), particularly in the way the Archive makes new materials available or older materials available in a new way. Additionally, this essay suggests some of the implications of the Archive’s digital presentation of resources. However, the place of digital scholarship in academic life is still evolving, and students and teachers are just getting accustomed to using the form. Given this circumstance, many of my thoughts are inconclusive, observations based upon preliminary understandings into how this resource affects our classrooms. I avoid confident …

Analysis Of Connections Between Pseudocodewords, Nathan Axvig, Deanna Dreher, Katherine Morrison, Eric T. Psota, Lance C. Pérez, Judy L. Walker

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

The role of pseudocodewords in causing noncodeword outputs in linear programming (LP) decoding, graph cover decoding, and iterative message-passing decoding is investigated. The three main types of pseudocodewords in the literature — linear programming pseudocodewords, graph cover pseudocodewords, and computation tree pseudocodewords — are reviewed and connections between them are explored. Some discrepancies in the literature on minimal and irreducible pseudocodewords are highlighted and clarified, and a value for the minimal degree cover necessary to realize an LP pseudocodeword is found. Additionally, some conditions for the existence of connected realizations of graph cover pseudocodewords are given. This allows for further …

Psychological Ownership: Theoretical Extensions, Measurement, And Relation To Work Outcomes, James B. Avey, Bruce Avolio, Craig Crossley, Fred Luthans

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Viewing psychological ownership as a positive resource for impacting human performance in organizations, the present study investigated the components of an expanded view of psychological ownership. Confirmatory factor analyses on a proposed measure of psychological ownership provided support for a positively-oriented, ‘‘promotion-focused’’ aspect of psychological ownership comprised of four dimensions: self-efficacy, accountability, sense of belongingness, and self-identity. In addition, territoriality was examined as a unique and more ‘‘prevention-focused’’ form of ownership. Practical implications and suggestions for future research on psychological ownership and positive organizational behavior conclude the article.

Constitutionalism Before Constitutions: Burma's Struggle To Build A New Order, David C. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Human Rights Potential Of Sovereign Wealth Funds, Christiana Ochoa, Patrick Keenan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In April, 2008, World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, called for sovereign wealth funds to invest one percent of their capital in Africa. The result will be the International Finance Corporation's Sovereign Funds Initiative and is an attempt to nurture the potential of sovereign wealth funds to contribute to economic development and improved well-being in a number of countries in Africa and elsewhere. This article explores the actual potential of the Sovereign Funds Initiative to realize its desired goals. After exploring and demonstrating the disappointing effects of natural resource wealth, development aid and foreign direct investment on some developing countries, the …

After The Revolution: Global Health Politics In A Time Of Economic Crisis And Threatening Future Trends, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 2008, global health’s political revolution, which unfolded over the preceding 10-15 years, ended when four global crises damaged global health and altered the political, diplomatic, and governance contexts in which global health activities operate. The climate change, energy, food, and economic crises revealed limitations in global health’s ability to shape large-scale political, economic, and environmental problems that adversely affect health or harm underlying determinants of health. In addition, projected trends in world affairs potentially threaten health and the ability of countries to craft effective collective action responses to global problems damaging health directly and indirectly. In the post-revolution period, …

Recent Occurrence Of An American Black Bear In Nebraska, Justin D. Hoffman, Sam Wilson, Hugh H. Genoways

University of Nebraska State Museum: Mammalogy Papers

We report on a young male, cinnamon-phase American black bear (Ursus americanus) that was collected in northwestern Nebraska on May 12, 2008. This specimen represents the first black bear taken in Nebraska since 1907. Cranial characteristics and mass of the individual indicated a 15–16-month old bear. This bear may have dispersed from the Laramie Mountains in southeastern Wyoming along the North Platte River into western Nebraska. This record adds to the growing number of cases where large carnivores are reinvading previously occupied territory in the Great Plains. These reinvasions potentially have broad ecological implications to local prey populations …

Dos And Don'ts Of Data Breach And Information Security Policy, Fred H. Cate, Martin E. Abrams, Paula J. Bruening, Orson Swindle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

On The Role Of Groundwater And Soil Texture In The Regional Water Balance: An Investigation Of The Nebraska Sand Hills, Usa, Tiejun Wang, Erkan Istanbulluoglu, John D. Lenters, Durelle T. Scott

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Partitioning of precipitation between evapotranspiration and runoff at the basin scale is primarily controlled by climate and basin characteristics. Here we use the Budyko hypothesis to investigate the impacts of soil texture and groundwater (e.g., baseflow) on annual and long-term mean annual water balances of basins in a semiarid region located in and around the Sand Hills region of Nebraska, USA. Native grasslands are dominant across the study area with soil textures dramatically different for the Nebraska Sand Hills (primarily sand deposits) and the adjacent regions (mainly less permeable silt loam). For each basin, long-term hydrologic and meteorological data are …

Optimal Segment Size For Fixed-Sized Segment Protection In Wavelength-Routed Optical Networks, Raghunath Tewari, Byrav Ramamurthy

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Protecting a network against link failures is a major challenge faced by network operators. The protection scheme has to address two important objectives - fast recovery and minimizing the amount of backup resources needed. Every protection algorithm is a tradeoff between these two objectives.

In this paper, we study the problem of segment protection. In particular, we investigate what is the optimal segment size that obtains the best tradeoff between the time taken for recovery and minimizing the bandwidth used by the backup segments. We focus on the uniform fixed-length segment protection method, where each primary path is divided into …

Auction-Based Resource Allocation For Cooperative Video Transmission Protocols Over Wireless Networks, Zhu Han, Guan-Ming Su, Haohong Wang, Song Ci, Weifeng Su

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

Cooperative transmission has been proposed as a novel transmission strategy that takes advantage of broadcast nature of wireless networks, forms virtual MIMO system, and provides diversity gains. In this paper, wireless video transmission protocols are proposed, in which the spectrum resources are first allocated for the source side to broadcast video packets to the relay and destination, and then for the relay side to transmit side information generated from the received packets. The proposed protocols are optimized to minimize the end-to-end expected distortion via choosing bandwidth/power allocation, configuration of side information, subject to bandwidth and power constraints. For multiuser cases, …

A Flexible Divide-And-Conquer Protocol For Multi-View Peer-To-Peer Live Streaming, Miao Wang, Lisong Xu, Byrav Ramamurthy

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Multi-view peer-to-peer (P2P) live streaming systems have recently emerged, where a user can simultaneously watch multiple channels. Previous work on multi-view P2P streaming solves the fundamental inter-channel bandwidth competition problem at the individual peer level, and thus can be used with very limited types of streaming protocols. In this paper, we propose a new protocol for multi-view P2P streaming, called Divide-and-Conquer (DAC), which efficiently solves the inter-channel bandwidth competition problem using a divide-and-conquer strategy at the channel level, and thus is flexible to work with various streaming protocols. This makes DAC more suitable for upgrading current single-view P2P live streaming …

Directed Test Suite Augmentation, Zhihong Xu, Gregg Rothermel

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

As software evolves, engineers use regression testing to evaluate its fitness for release. Such testing typically begins with existing test cases, and many techniques have been proposed for reusing these cost-effectively. After reusing test cases, however, it is also important to consider code or behavior that has not been exercised by existing test cases and generate new test cases to validate these. This process is known as test suite augmentation. In this paper we present a directed test suite augmentation technique, that utilizes results from reuse of existing test cases together with an incremental concolic testing algorithm to augment …

Intelligent User Interfaces With Adaptive Knowledge Assistants, Adam Eck, Leen-Kiat Soh

School of Computing: Technical Reports

One promising application of intelligent user interfaces (IUIs) is the support of daily tasks for information workers. In such a scenario, users perform various general and domain-specific information generation, processing, and retrieval tasks (e.g., processing data, creating reports, and searching for previous results). Intelligent user interfaces can improve the daily lives of such workers through activities such as task management, including managing the user’s todo list and schedule (Conley and Carpenter, 2007; Myers et al., 2007), as well as summarizing meeting notes (Basu et al., 2008) or recommending tasks for the user to perform (Cosley et al., 2007) or users …

An Efficient Threshold-Based Power Management Mechanism For Heterogeneous Soft Real-Time Clusters, Leping Wang, Ying Lu

School of Computing: Technical Reports

With growing cost of electricity, the power management of server clusters has become an important problem. However, most previous researchers only address the challenge in homogeneous environments. Considering the increasing popularity of heterogeneous systems, this paper proposes an efficient algorithm for power management of heterogeneous soft real-time clusters. It is built on simple but effective mathematical models. When deployed to a new platform, the software incurs low configuration cost because no extensive performance measurements and profiling are required. To strive for efficiency, a threshold-based approach is adopted. In this paper, we systematically study this approach and its design decisions.

Quarantine: Java Heap Protection In The Presence Of Native Code, Du Li, Witawas Srisa-An

School of Computing: Technical Reports

By using Java Native Interface (JNI), programmers can integrate Java programs with legacy systems or third-party libraries written in other languages (e.g., C, C++, and Pascal). However, the use of JNI may violate Java type safety feature because these native programs are not type-safe. As a result, such integration can cause memory errors that can be difficult to isolate.

In this paper, we propose Quarantine, a runtime system that preserves memory safety of Java objects in spite of integration with native code. The goal of Quarantine is ensuring that no native threads can directly access objects in the Java …

Revealing The Copy And Paste Habits Of End Users, Kathryn T. Stolee, Sebastian Elbaum, Gregg Rothermel

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Transferring data across applications is a common end user task, and copying and pasting via the clipboard lets users do so relatively easily. Using the clipboard, however, can also introduce inefficiencies and errors in user tasks. To help researchers and tool developers understand and address these problems, we studied how end users interact with the clipboard through cut, copy, and paste actions. This study was performed by logging clipboard interactions while end users performed everyday tasks. From the clipboard usage data, we have identified several usage patterns that describe how data is transferred within the desktop environment. Such patterns help …

The Coordination Pyramid: A Perspective On The State Of The Art In Coordination Technology, Anita Sarma, David Redmiles, André Van Der Hoek

School of Computing: Technical Reports

Effective coordination is essential for any group work and has been studied widely in the fields of Management Science and Organizational Behavior. A classic definition of coordination is “the management of task dependencies” as proposed by Thompson [16], who distinguished among pooled tasks, where the results of individual actions are simply aggregated; sequential tasks, where the output for one is the input for another; and reciprocal tasks, where work flows back and forth between tasks. More recently, Malone and Crowston [12] developed detailed catalogs of general types of interdependencies that occur across many domains, and particular types of dependencies that …

An Ethical Governor For Constraining Lethal Action In An Autonomous System, Ronald C. Arkin, Patrick Ulam, Brittany Duncan

School of Computing: Technical Reports

The design, prototype implementation, and demonstration of an ethical governor capable of restricting lethal action of an autonomous system in a manner consistent with the Laws of War and Rules of Engagement is presented.

Measuring Performance Of Innovative Pavement Features, Wayne Jensen, Zhigang Shen, Cody Kluver

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Faculty Publications

The Nebraska Department of Roads (NDOR) conducts annual examinations of the state's interstate and federal highway pavements. During these examinations, numerous indicators of pavement performance are measured directly or compiled from parameters recorded by a vehicle passing over the pavement section. Parameters are documented and analyzed for each one-tenth mile pavement segment. Seven sections where innovative features have been incorporated into the pavement were selected by the NDOR for comparison to nearby conventional pavement sections. This study used various parameters recorded by the NDOR as well as field observations to compare the performance of seven pairs of pavement sections. Each …

Correction To “The Theory Of Quaternion Orthogonal Designs”, Tadeusz Wysocki, Beata J. Wysocki, Sarah Spence Adams

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

Seberry et al. claimed that even though the dual-polarized transmission channel cannot be considered as described by means of a single quaternionic gain, the maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding rule can be decoupled for orthogonal space–time-polarization block codes (OSTPBCs) derived from quaternion orthogonal designs (QODs) [1, Sec. IV]. Regretfully, a correction is necessary, and we will show that decoupled decoding using the method presented therein is only optimal for codes derived from certain QODs, not from arbitrary QODs as previously suggested.

An Adaptive Steganography Scheme For Voice Over Ip, Hui Tian, Ke Zhou, Hong Jiang, Yongfeng Huang, Jin Liu, Dan Feng

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

This paper presents an adaptive steganography scheme for Voice over IP (VoIP). Differing from existing steganography techniques for VoIP, this scheme enhances the embedding transparency by taking into account the similarity between Least Significant Bits (LSBs) and embedded messages. Moreover, we introduce the notion of Partial Similarity Value (PSV). By properly setting the threshold PSV, we can adaptively balance the embedding transparency and capacity. We evaluate the effectiveness of this scheme with G.729a as the codec of the cover speech in StegTalk, a covert communication system based on VoIP. The experimental results demonstrate that our technique provides better performance than …

Density-Based Clustering Of Polygons, Deepti Joshi, Ashok Samal, Leen-Kiat Soh

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Clustering is an important task in spatial data mining and spatial analysis. We propose a clustering algorithm P-DBSCAN to cluster polygons in space. PDBSCAN is based on the well established density-based clustering algorithm DBSCAN. In order to cluster polygons, we incorporate their topological and spatial properties in the process of clustering by using a distance function customized for the polygon space. The objective of our clustering algorithm is to produce spatially compact clusters. We measure the compactness of the clusters produced using P-DBSCAN and compare it with the clusters formed using DBSCAN, using the Schwartzberg Index. We measure the effectiveness …