Digital Commons Network^™

Seasonal Photoperiods Alter Developmental Time And Mass Of An Invasive Mosquito, Aedes Albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae), Across Its North-South Range In The United States, Steven A. Juliano, Donald A. Yee, Steven M. Vamosi

Faculty Publications – Biological Sciences

The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus (Skuse), is perhaps the most successful invasive mosquito species in contemporary history. In the United States, Ae. albopictus has spread from its introduction point in southern Texas to as far north as New Jersey (i.e., a span of approximate to 14 degrees latitude). This species experiences seasonal constraints in activity because of cold temperatures in winter in the northern United States, but is active year-round in the south. We performed a laboratory experiment to examine how life-history traits of Ae. albopictus from four populations (New Jersey [39.4 degrees N], Virginia [38.6 degrees N], North …

Evolution Of A Sexually Dimorphic Trait In A Broadly Distributed Topminnow (Fundulus Olivaceus), Jacob F. Schaefer, David D. Duvernell, Brian R. Kreiser, Charles Champagne, Scott R. Clark, Melissa Gutierrez, Laura K. Stewart, Chazz Coleman

Faculty Publications

Understanding the interaction between sexual and natural selection within variable environments is crucial to our understanding of evolutionary processes. The handicap principle predicts females will prefer males with exaggerated traits provided those traits are indicators of male quality to ensure direct or indirect female benefits. Spatial variability in ecological factors is expected to alter the balance between sexual and natural selection that defines the evolution of such traits. Male and female blackspotted topminnows (Fundulidae: Fundulus olivaceus) display prominent black dorsolateral spots that are variable in number across its broad range. We investigated variability in spot phenotypes at 117 sites …

Impacts Of Upstream Drought And Water Withdrawals On The Health And Survival Of Downstream Estuarine Oyster Populations, Laura E. Petes, Alicia J. Brown, Carley R. Knight

Faculty Publications

Increases in the frequency, duration, and severity of regional drought pose major threats to the health and integrity of downstream ecosystems. During 2007-2008, the U.S. southeast experienced one of the most severe droughts on record. Drought and water withdrawals in the upstream watershed led to decreased freshwater input to Apalachicola Bay, Florida, an estuary that is home to a diversity of commercially and ecologically important organisms. This study applied a combination of laboratory experiments and field observations to investigate the effects of reduced freshwater input on Apalachicola oysters. Oysters suffered significant disease-related mortality under high-salinity, drought conditions, particularly during the …

Survival, Growth And Reproduction Of Non-Native Nile Tilapia Ii: Fundamental Niche Projections And Invasion Potential In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, Michael R. Lowe, Wei Wu, Mark S. Peterson, Nancy J. Brown-Peterson, William T. Slack, Pamela J. Schofield

Faculty Publications

Understanding the fundamental niche of invasive species facilitates our ability to predict both dispersal patterns and invasion success and therefore provides the basis for better-informed conservation and management policies. Here we focus on Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus Linnaeus, 1758), one of the most widely cultured fish worldwide and a species that has escaped local aquaculture facilities to become established in a coastal-draining river in Mississippi (northern Gulf of Mexico). Using empirical physiological data, logistic regression models were developed to predict the probabilities of Nile tilapia survival, growth, and reproduction at different combinations of temperature (14 and 30°C) and salinity …

Deep-Water Benthic Habitat Characterization And Cable Impact Assessment For The South Florida Ocean Measurement Facility (Sfomf)., Charles G. Messing, Brian K. Walker, John K. Reed

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this effort was to (1) provide a characterization of benthic habitats within the South Florida Ocean Measurement Facility (SFOMF) OP AREA cable corridor along deep fiber optic cable C/S 96 from a depth of ~30 m to the reported eastern seaward terminus on the Miami Terrace (~500 m depth), and (2) identify and estimate impacts to deep benthic habitat resources from cable infrastructure in the same corridor preparatory to an Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) Assessment.

The project was carried out in response to a request from the SFOMF (a detachment of Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division …

Is Maternal Smoking During Pregnancy A Causal Environmental Risk Factor For Adolescent Antisocial Behavior? Testing Etiological Theories And Assumptions, Brian M. D'Onofrio, Carol A. Van Hulle, Jackson A. Goodnight, Paul J. Rathouz, Benjamin B. Lahey

Psychology Faculty Publications

Background—Although many studies indicate that maternal smoking during pregnancy (SDP) is correlated with later offspring antisocial behavior (ASB), recent quasi-experimental studies suggest that background familial factors confound the association. The present study sought to test alternative etiological hypotheses using multiple indices of adolescent ASB, comparing differentially exposed siblings, and testing assumptions in the sibling-comparison design.

Learning From Libya, Acting In Syria, Caitlin A. Buckley

Journal of Strategic Security

The international community has reached an impasse. The violence committed by Syrian President Assad's government against opposition forces, who have been calling for democratic reform, regime change, and expanded rights, has necessitated a response from the international community. This article explores various ways the international community could respond to the crisis in Syria and the consequences of each approach. It compares the current calamity in Syria to the crisis in Libya and examines the international community's response to the violence perpetrated by Qaddafi's regime. It further analyzes reports, primarily from the UN and news sources, about the ongoing predicament in …

The Case Of Karen Atala And Daughters: Toward A Better Understanding Of Discrimination, Equality, And The Rights Of Women, Rosa M. Celorio

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.

Health Parameters Across The Lifespan Among The Ache Of Paraguay, John D. Wagner

Anthropology ETDs

This work provides an integrative approach for assessing population health among a group of indigenous South American forager-farmers, the northern Aché of eastern Paraguay. The Aché were full-time hunting and gathering nomads up until the time of first peaceful contact in the early 1970s when they experienced a devastating virgin-soil population epidemic that killed approximately 40% of the population, where all age and sex groups were affected more or less equally with the exception of a higher survival rate among reproductive-aged women. The Aché are now settled on several reservations and have fully recovered their population numbers. The Aché have …

New Paleoclimate Reconstruction Techniques In Archaeology: Applications In Greece, New Mexico, And Portugal, Brandon Lee Drake

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation develops new techniques of analysis that make existing archaeological data more useful for understanding past climate change. These techniques are introduced through three key case studies in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico, the Lower Alentejo of Portugal, and the Eastern Mediterranean. A 12,000 year record of pollen collected from packrat middens across Chaco Canyon were analyzed using a new normalization procedure to produce a Holocene record of piñon and ponderosa pine abundance. The normalization procedure, species occurrence, enabled statistical analysis of the data. Simple linear models indicated that piñon and ponderosa pollen were strongly correlated with …

The Spatial Distribution Of K-Factor Values Across A Toposequence And A Soil Survey Map Unit, Jacqueline Elizabeth Tilligkeit

Master's Theses

Rivers and streams are adversely affected by an increase in sedimentation in their waters from eroding land. High sediment loads in streams can bury fish eggs and prevent hatching, increasing nutrients in the water causing algae blooms, or even contaminating the water with heavy metals carried in or on the aggregates. The erodibility of soil is valuable knowledge to all land users so that we may predict soil loss and its potential to pollute streams. This is done by using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE). By predicting soil loss from a given landscape, land managers can take mitigation …

How Librarians Can Help Improve Law Journal Publishing, Benjamin J. Keele, Michelle Pearse

Library Staff Publications

Librarians are well positioned to improve law journal publishing and help it evolve in the ever-changing digital environment. They can provide student editors with advice on a variety of issues such as copyright, data preservation, and version control. Librarians can also help journals adopt technical standards and improve the discoverability and usability of journal content. While few libraries will be able to adopt all these suggestions, a checklist of ideas is provided to help librarians select those that are most suitable to their libraries and journals.

Research Proposal For Study: Can Artifical Emulation Of Synesthesia Aid Visual Word Recognition?, Lucas Charles

Anthós

The field of synesthesia has largely been unexplored beyond mere analysis of the condition and only a few papers on the topic of new applications have been published within the last decade. The condition can potentially provide great benefits to the study of the psychology of language along with its role in language use itself. As understanding of this condition continues to grow, one can draw links between it and its effect on language use, thereby enabling a greater understanding of the language process itself. Synesthesia involves the stimulation of one sense along with involuntary activation of another sensory pathway. …

Entanglement: Health, Healing And Society In Africa, Haley Noel

Anthós

As a continent, Africa has been explored, exploited, and largely abandoned by the West. During the colonial era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, foreign powers encountered diverse cultures, superstitions and disease before promptly labeling the entire continent a dangerous and primitive place. For early explorers and colonialists, disease and the threat of ill health is what defined Africa. They overlooked the pre-existing strategies and practices that Africans had adapted to guard against certain diseases, either ignoring them or labeling the misunderstood safety nets as primitive. Also overlooked was the importance of societal organization and communal cooperation among …

Toward A Culture Of Healing: Why Alternative Therapies And A Feminist Framework Are Needed In The Care Of Pregnant Women And Treatment Of Postpartum Mood Disorders, Angela Leonardo

Anthós

Pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood are areas of human development that have systematically migrated away from their roots as a series of natural life events to a highly, and perhaps unnecessarily, medicalized arena. This shift has been detrimental for women, especially for poor, socially isolated, single, and/or ethnic minority women. In this paper, I outline my concerns with the increased medicalization of birth and postpartum care, as well as with the status of mothers in the United States, and critically examine the patriarchal context in which this shift has occurred. My focus is on maternal health and mortality, including depression …

Historical And Legal Aspects Of Piracy And Armed Robbery Against Shipping, Francesca Pellegrin

Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Ad Libitum Hydration On Cognitive Function Following Exercise In The Heat, Matthew Wittbrodt

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to quantify the effect of different hydration strategies on physiological and cognitive variables after an exercise bout in the heat. On three occasions, twelve males performed three heat stress tests of 50min at 60%VO_2peak in a hot environment (32°C; 65%RH). The heat stress tests differed in hydration strategy to be implemented during exercise (NF: no fluid, AL: ad libitum, FR: full fluid replacement). A cognitive battery was administered pre-­ and post-­exercise to examine alterations in cognition. Fluid loss during NF was greater than the AL and FR (NF: 1.54 %; AL: 0.29 …

Valuing The Goodness Of Earth, Jame Schaefer

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

Though John Chrysostom, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, when reflecting on the creation story, valued all types of creatures, living and non-living, intrinsically for their unique goodness and instrumentally for the sustenance they provide to others, they valued most highly their complex interrelation in the physical world.

Upcycling: Where Function Follows Form, Anthony Crabbe

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Up-cycling is a “responsible” design approach in which designers seek to put discarded consumer products, such as bottles, to new and valuable uses, such as making lampshades. Since that approach involves finding new functions for extant manufactured forms, upcycled products appear to be typical of other products created as a result of both designers and users adapting extant forms to serve entirely different functions. This form-adaptive approach appears to reverse the causal direction implied by Louis Sullivan's famous dictum "form ever follows function". This paper then reviews antecedents of the up-cycling approach historically, in order to critically examine the form-function …

Towards A Taxonomy Of Airport Passenger Activities, Philip J Kirk, Vesna Popovic, Ben Kraal, Alison Livingstone

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Airports are vital sources of income to a country and city. Airports are often understood from a management perspective, rather than a passenger perspective. As passengers are a vital customer of airports, a passenger perspective can provide a novel approach in understanding and improving the airport experience. This paper focuses on the study of passenger experiences at airports. This research is built on recent investigations of passenger discretionary activities in airports by the authors, which have provided a new perspective on understanding the airport experience. The research reported in this paper involves field studies at three Australian airports. Seventy one …

Transforming Universities With Design Thinking, Randy Swearer

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This author asserts that U.S. higher education must greatly accelerate the rate at which it innovates by fundamentally redesigning itself. The paper approaches this subject by first outlining the significant challenges faced by American colleges and universities. It then analyzes the case of a university that is facing these challenges by broadly integrating design thinking into its curriculum and planning processes. The author frames the rationale for pursuing an innovation agenda in this manner and critically presents the results. The case suggests that under certain conditions it is possible for universities to become designable, and when this occurs innovative and …

Genes 101: Are Human Genes Patentable Subject Matter?, Andrew Bowman

Law Student Publications

This comment proposes a totality-of-the-circumstances approach to analyzing biological molecules under § 101 such that both the structure and its information is examined. Part II of this note reviews relevant precedent in patent law. Part III analyzes the Federal Circuit's Myriad decision, and Part IV explains the potential effects of the recent Supreme Court decision Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories. Finally, in Part V, the patent eligibility of human genes is examined. Analyzing this issue under the proposed totality-of-the-circumstances approach, this article concludes that isolated human genes are not patentable.

Walk, Feel, Think, And Make: Creative Design Learning With Nature, Eunsook Kwon, Karen Fraiser-Scott

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The purpose of this study is to examine and establish a road map of the integration process of sustainable and experiential learning into the industrial design curriculum. In order to facilitate the sustainable design process while developing the reflective learning to become more environmentally responsible a new approach was initiated to incorporate new sustainable tools into our design process in 2011. An immersive workshop was developed on the basis of the shared philosophies of John Dewey’s experiential education and Biomimicry, and introduced to the senior design studio. The workshop was conducted over a four day period giving the students the …

Understanding The Airport Passenger Landside Retail Experience, Alison Livingstone, Vesna Popovic, Ben Kraal, Philip J. Kirk

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The landside environment of an airport terminal is an important area for both passengers and the airport as it is the first area passengers enter and experience, influencing passengers’ overall airport experiences. This paper focuses on landside passenger experiences and factors which influence the quality of these experiences. Data collection occurred through video recorded observations of 40 passengers’ airport experiences at two Australian international departure terminals. The Observer software was used to code and analyse data. Indicative results show that passengers spend over half of their landside dwell time undertaking processing activities. The results highlight the important influencing role passengers’ …

System Site Patient: A Three-Tiered Methodological Approach To Constructing Holistic Understanding Of The User Through Design Research, Tara Mullaney, Helena Pettersson, Tufve Nyholm

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper argues that the methods and methodologies used to conduct user research often provide a singular view of the user. It aims to demonstrate that by combining the strengths of three different research methodologies into a structured, correlative research platform we can create a rich, more holistic understanding of our users. Using a three-tiered methodological approach to research the cancer patient experience, we investigated patient anxiety and the emotional impact that curative radiation therapy has on these individuals. Our methodology, comprised of methods taken from quantitative, qualitative, and design research approaches, was designed to construct a research platform that …

A Critique Of Design Methods In Synthetic Biological Design, Orkan Telhan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Today, with the emergence of Synthetic Biology, living systems are increasingly conceived as design products that can circulate outside laboratories, factories, or distant farm lands. From medical applications to fashion, product, graphic design, and architecture, biological designs claim the potential to shape the social norms and influence the aesthetic, economic, ethical, and moral values of everyday. Synthetic biological design shares tools, techniques, and paradigms with most modern design disciplines. Designers compose biological forms and functions running modeling and simulation software; order standardized biological parts from online libraries and databases; ask companies to synthesize gene products to prototype their designs; and …

Making Sense Of Interventions In Public Places As Drivers Of Urban Renewal, Sandra Viña

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The aim of this paper is above all to discuss urban renewal through interventions and experiments in public city places. The conceptual framework builds on how and why people appropriate urban places, and illustrates the impact of consensual and dissensual interventions in everyday city life. The paper starts by providing a brief literature review of the standpoints of urban renewal, and states some current problems about the utilization of the city. I will present a typology of interventions in urban public places, which illustrates different interventions in a table. The vertical axis of the table illustrates on one side consensual …

Relating Methanogen Community Structure And Function In Anaerobic Digesters, Benjamin T.W. Bocher

Dissertations (1934 -)

A deeper understanding of how microbial community structure relates to process function would help improve anaerobic digester design. This dissertation describes both qualitative and quantitative relationships between anaerobic digester function and microbial community structure. Community structure was characterized using banding pattern intensities from denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) for the mcrA gene of methanogenic Archaea. The first project compared a single-stage continuously mixed stirred tank reactor (CSTR) and staging with an acidogenic CSTR followed by a methanogenic CSTR. After seeding with the same biomass, these unique process configurations exhibited different function and qualitatively different methanogen communities. Compared to a single-stage …

Service Design For Social Interaction: Mobile Technologies For A Healthier Lifestyle, Pelin Arslan, Fiammetta Costa, Federico Casalegno

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents outcomes of a PhD research that explores the relations between service design, health and today’s social media specifically mobile technologies. Mobile and social media tools offer new opportunities for a more user centered, socially connected, and economically sustainable healthcare system. A major focus of research is to understand how to bring users to involve in their own health management through mobile narratives social networks to incite social interaction in promoting healthier lifestyles. This research aims to identify the problem and explore answers through a practice-based approach. It is based on research through design model and explores the …

Design For Notes: A New Vision Of A Flexible Endoscopic Platform, Marita Canina, Laura Anselmi, Antonello Forgione, Nicolò Barlera, Andrea Bellotto

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In the continuous quest for better surgical treatment, reduction of physical trauma, faster postoperative recovery and better cosmetic results, technological progress and the evolution of several diagnostic and therapeutic techniques have led to the rapid development of mini-invasive techniques that use the human body's natural orifices and thus completely eliminate all types of incision. One of these techniques is NOTES (Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery), a surgical technique that accesses the peritoneal cavity and thorax through natural orifices without generating any scars. The purpose of this research is to develop innovative technological tools for mini-invasive surgery through an interdisciplinary and …