Digital Commons Network^™

Utilization Of Crowdsourced Maps In Catastrophic Disasters, Makiko Hong

Master's Theses

Crowdsourced data, the collective messages from citizens through social media like Twitter® or Facebook®, have been increasingly recognized as a vital information source in a catastrophic disaster. Because there is often insufficient emergency personnel to gather situational information during a big disaster, the crowdsourced data can offer a supplemental means for data collection or dissemination immediately after the disaster. In addition, crowdsourced maps can empower citizens with their involvement.

In the Haiti earthquake of 2010, crowdsourced data was first used to create a web map application to aid the humanitarian effort. With some success in Haiti, these crowdsourced maps have …

Regulation Of Tree Squirrel Populations With Immunocontraception: A Fox Squirrel Example, Sara K. Krause, Douglas A. Kelt, Dirk H. Van Vuren, James P. Gionfriddo

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Tree squirrels (Sciurus spp.) are highly successful immigrants to urban and suburban areas in North America and Europe, causing both economic and ecological damage. Control of such invasive populations is challenging but of increasing importance to local managers. We studied an invasive population of fox squirrels (S. niger) and applied an immunocontraceptive vaccine in an experimental study of demographic control. Here we integrate our data into a simple stage-structured population model to simulate population reduction under 2 treatment levels (60 and 80% of females, respectively) for vaccines lasting from 1 to 5 years. Contraception can be an effective …

Evaluation Of Foliar Sprays To Reduce Crop Damage By Canada Geese, Charles D. Dieter, Cody S. Warner, Curiong Ren

Human–Wildlife Interactions

South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks annually spends >$500,000 managing crop damage caused by grazing Canada geese (Branta canadensis). Foliar applications of a chemical feeding deterrent could provide an effective alternative to the methods currently being used to reduce damage. In 2011 and 2012, we evaluated Rejex-It Migrate Turfguard®, Bird Shield®, Avian Control®, and Avipel® as grazing deterrents. We used a ground sprayer to apply the treatments every 7 days to plots in soybean fields in Day County, South Dakota. We monitored activity in the plots using time-lapse photography. We began treating the plots after geese …

Meta-Analysis Of Melanoma Incidence In The United States: Demographic Variation And Relationship With Uv Index And Latitude, Charles Thomas Pritchard

Honors Theses

A link between exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation and melanoma skin cancer formation has generally been accepted in the scientific community, but precise quantification of such a link into a predictive equation is difficult to find in scientific literature. It was the aim of this study to determine if a quantifiable relationship exists between UV exposure and melanoma rates in the United States. Prior to the initiation of this study, it was hypothesized that existing predictive equations using accumulated UV index and latitude for general skin cancer incidence (i.e., including both melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers) in Chile would be …

Forced Evictions, Mass Displacement, And The Uncertain Promise Of Land And Property Restitution In Haiti, Greger B. Calhan

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake produced human suffering on an unimaginable scale. The disaster's aftermath-marked by widespread displacement, secondary occupation of land, and consequent forced evictions-raises critical questions of land ownership and housing rights. It also provided a testing ground for the body of restitutionary legal norms developed in the decades following the Cold War. Using the earthquake in Haiti as a lens, this article critically examines the development of the restitution model, from its inception in the Balkans conflicts of the 1990s to its current expression in the United Nation's Pinheiro Principles. While the Pinheiro Principles are positive in many …

Lessons From Mt. Holly: Leading Scholars Demonstrate Need For Disparate Impact Standard To Combat Implicit Bias, Equal Justice Society, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

In 2013, the United States Supreme Court was set to hear oral arguments in Mount Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action, Inc. However, weeks before the hearing, the parties settled. Despite the settlement, the arguments raised by plaintiffs and amici remain valuable. Mt. Holly represented the second time in two years that the Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether the Fair Housing Act of 1968 ("FHA") allows plaintiffs to bring claims challenging official housing decisions and policies that are not necessarily the result of intentional discrimination, but have a disproportionately harmful impact on minorities or other groups …

Review Of Factors Affecting Sustainability In The Universities, Hosna Ajilian

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Purpose – The focus of this research is to find out a meaningful relationship between adopting sustainability practices and some of the characteristics of institutions of higher education (IHE). IHE can be considered as the best place to promote sustainability and develop the culture of sustainability in society. Thus, this research is conducted to help developing sustainability in IHE which have significant direct and indirect impact on society and the environment.

Design/methodology/approach – First, the sustainability letter grades were derived from “Greenreportcard.org” which have been produced based on an evaluation of each school in nine main categories including: Administration, Climate …

Implementation Of Photogrammetry To Improve Proactive Assessment Of Retaining Walls Along Transportation Corridors, Daniel J. Cerminaro

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Retaining walls are important assets in the transportation infrastructure and assessing their condition is important to prolong their performance and ultimately their design life. Retaining walls are often overlooked and only a few transportation asset management programs consider them in their inventory. Because these programs are few, the techniques used to assess their condition focus on a qualitative assessment as opposed to a quantitative approach. The work presented in this thesis focuses on using photogrammetry to quantitatively assess the condition of retaining walls. Multitemporal photogrammetry is used to develop 3D models of the retaining walls, from which offset displacements are …

Fishery Co-Management Opportunities Between Tribal And State Agencies: Conflict To Collaboration, J. Marty Holtgren

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Over the past 40 years global recognition has occurred for indigenous groups to be represented and have input in how natural resources are managed. This has largely occurred because of how management decisions have consequences to indigenous groups that reach beyond natural resource issues but into cultural, spiritual, social and political elements including sovereignty, legitimacy, justice, equity and empowerment and using indigenous paradigms to meet indigenous needs. In the United States numerous legal agreements have been reached that pair state and tribal agencies into co-management. This project concerns a recent co-management agreement between the State of Michigan and five Native …

State-And-Transition Modeling And Adaptive Management: Tools For Future Co-Development Of Madagascar’S Natural Resources And People, Patrick Thomas Spencer

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Madagascar’s terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems have long supported a unique set of ecological communities, many of whom are endemic to the tropical island. Those same ecosystems have been a source of valuable natural resources to some of the poorest people in the world. Nevertheless, with pride, ingenuity and resourcefulness, the Malagasy people of the southwest coast, being of Vezo identity, subsist with low development fishing techniques aimed at an increasingly threatened host of aquatic seascapes. Mangroves, sea grass bed, and coral reefs of the region are under increased pressure from the general populace for both food provisions and support of …

Deep Learning Methods For Multiband Explosive Hazard Detection Using L-Band And X-Band Forward-Looking Ground-Penetrating Radar, John T. Becker

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Explosive hazards are one of the most deadly threats in modern conflicts. The U.S. Army is interested in a reliable way to detect these hazards at range. A promising way of accomplishing this task is using a forward-looking ground-penetrating radar (FLGPR) system. Recently, the Army has been testing a system that utilizes both L-band and X-band radar arrays on a vehicle mounted platform. Using data from this system, we sought to improve the performance of a constant false-alarm-rate (CFAR) prescreener through the use of three deep learning architechtures; deep belief networks (DBNs), stacked denoising autoencoders (SDAEs), and convolutional neural networks …

An Annotated Bibliography To Assist The Researcher Writing A Biography On The Political Career Of Leroy Collins, James Anthony Schnur

USF St. Petersburg Campus Faculty Publications

A guide to sources about (Thomas) LeRoy Collins, the thirty-third governor of Florida. Born in 1909, Collins served as a state legislator in both the House of Representatives and Senate. Following the untimely death of Governor Dan McCarty in 1953, Collins decided to run against Acting Governor (and Senate President) Charley E. Johns in a 1954 election to complete the second half of McCarty's term. Collins won the election. He became the first and only governor to run for a second consecutive term under the 1885 Florida constitution after the Florida Supreme Court ruled that he could run for reelection …

An African-Centered Approach To Land Education, Salvotore Engel-Dimauro, Karanja Keita Carroll

Publications and Research

Approaches to environmental education which are engaging with place and critical pedagogy have not yet broadly engaged with the African world and insights from Africana Studies and Geography. An African-centered approach facilitates people's reconnection to places and ecosystems in ways that do not reduce places to objects of conquest and things to be exploited for profitability and individual gain. Such an approach offers effective critiques of settler coloniser perspectives on the environment and deeper understandings of the relationship between worldview and ecologically sensitised education. Through examples from Africana Studies and Geography, this article provides an introduction to how an African-centered …

Reading With The Grain: On Vin Nardizzi’S Wooden Os: Shakespeare’S Theatres And England’S Trees, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Environmental History Of Marine Mammal Exploitation In Trinidad And Tobago, W.I. And Its Ecological Impact, Aldemaro Romero Jr., Ruth Baker, Joel E. Creswell, Anuradha Singh, Annabelle Mckie, Michael Manna

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Climate, Humans Pose Consequences For Water, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Economies And Cultures Can’T Be Separated, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Local Mapping Lab Serves Many Interests, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Fixin' To Tell: Cultural Preservation, Multiculturalism, And A Delicate Double Commitment In Appalshop's "Insider" Activism, Kathleen S. Hudson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From global non-profits to local community centers, many groups working with and from within mis- and under-represented populations have embraced documentary media in activist work as a tool for undermining stereotypes and engendering positive identity formation. Despite steady increases in community-based documentary work, such programs remain relatively underscrutinized, with the majority of scholarship praising the liberatory potentials of documentary self-representation. Further, of the many programs implementing community-based documentary work as a tool for social change, I found very few based in rural regions of the Southern U.S. Likewise, in scholarly discourse associated with such programs, the South, in general, remains …

A Study Of J.S. Bach’S Sacred And Secular Vocal Works Influenced By Popular Stylized Dance Of The French Baroque Court: A Performer’S Guide, Dione J. Napier

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Among the existing body of literature on J.S. Bach’s massive compositional output, a scarce percentage of this research is dedicated specifically to the study of French Baroque court dances and their influence on Bach’s solo vocal repertoire. This study presents secular and sacred solo vocal works by J.S. Bach that were influenced by popular French court dances of the eighteenth century. The study explores musical and dance traits extracted from some of the most popular French Baroque court dances and incorporated into solo vocal repertoire. The intent of this paper is to provide a resource from a performer’s perspective that …

From Piano Girl To Professional: The Changing Form Of Music Instruction At The Nashville Female Academy, Ward’S Seminary For Young Ladies, And The Ward-Belmont School, 1816-1920, Erica J. Rumbley

Theses and Dissertations--Music

During the nineteenth century middle and upper-class women in Nashville and the surrounding region occupied a clearly defined place within society, and their social and academic education was designed to prepare them for that place. Even as female education gradually became more progressive in the later nineteenth-century, its scope was still limited by gender roles and expectations. Parents wanted their daughters to learn proper social graces, and “ornamental” studies such as music, needlework, and painting were a large part of their education. As the nineteenth gave way to the early twentieth-century, the focus of women’s education began to shift, with …

Immaculate Defamation: The Case Of The Alton Telegraph, Alan M. Weinberger

Texas A&M Law Review

At the confluence of three major rivers, Madison County, Illinois, was also the intersection of the nation’s struggle for a free press and the right of access to appellate review in the historic case of the Alton Telegraph. The newspaper, which helps perpetuate the memory of Elijah Lovejoy, the first martyr to the cause of a free press, found itself on the losing side of the largest judgment for defamation in U.S. history as a result of a story that was never published in the paper—a case of immaculate defamation. Because it could not afford to post an appeal bond …

When The Author Owns The World: Copyright Issues Arising From Monetizing Fan Fiction, Steven D. Jamar, Christen B’Anca Glenn

Texas A&M Law Review

Fan fiction is amateur writing that imaginatively reinvents a work in pop culture while maintaining the identifiable aspects of the preexisting work. Fans of various books, films, and television series write their own versions of the stories and post them online in fan fiction communities. Fan fiction as practiced today is a way for fans to creatively express themselves and become integrated into the story and world they love. The stories range from highly derivative works, where relatively few plot points are changed, to entirely new plot lines using the same world and characters of the original, underlying work. Some …

Water Governance Challenges In New Mexico's Middle Rio Grande Valley: A Resilience Assessment, Melinda Harm Benson, Dagmar Llewellyn, Ryan Morrison, Mark Stone

Law of the Rio Chama

No abstract provided.

The Environment Of Poverty And The Limits Of Girlhood: The Struggle For The Right To An Education In North India. Gareebi Ka Mahual Aur Ladkeo Ki Hud, Imandeep Kaur Grewal

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative dissertation explored the lived worlds and educational experiences of adolescent girls living in poverty in North India. Class, caste, gender, and regionally-based inequalities result in striking disparities leading to restricted, gendered opportunities and individual freedoms. The purpose of this ethnographic study was an in-depth exploration of the lives of 20 girls living in poverty, and how their own educational futures were impacted by educational policy and practices. Illustrative case studies were used to explore the broader question of educational access. In keeping with Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the primary focus …

The Choice Is Yours! Researchers Assign Subject Metadata To Their Own Materials In Institutional Repositories, Maira Bundza

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Publications

The Digital Commons platform for institutional repositories provides a three-tiered taxonomy of academic disciplines for each item submitted to the repository. Since faculty and departmental administrators across campuses are encouraged to submit materials to the institutional repository themselves, they must also assign disciplines or subject categories for their own work. The expandable drop-down menu of about 1,000 categories is easy to use, and facilitates the growth of the institutional repository and access to the materials through the Internet.

Use Of Incentive-Based Pricing: Cataloguing Current Water Rate Structures And Analyzing Community Adopter Characteristics For Select Municipalities In New Mexico, Ashley M. Hooper

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

Facing water scarcity, population growth, and issues of climate change, New Mexico municipalities should consider incentive-based pricing (IBP), empirically shown to encourage conservation. Given that adoption of IBP will likely be affected by community and political will, it is important to know what socio-economic and demographic factors may influence a municipalitys decision to adopt. As such, this research descriptively summarizes and catalogues the use of IBP structures for a select sample of 30 NM communities; further, t-tests are used to statistically investigate significant differences in a select set of 12 community characteristics between those that adopt IBP and those that …

Detecting The Influence Of Best Management Practices On Vegetation Near Ephemeral Streams With Landsat Data, Matthew Rigge, Alexander Smart, Bruce Wylie, Kendall De Van Kamp

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Various best management practices (BMPs) have been implemented on rangelands with the goals of controlling nonpoint sourcepollution, reducing the impact of livestock in ecologically important riparian areas, and improving grazing distribution.Providing off-stream water sources to livestock in pastures, cross-fencing, and rotational grazing are common rangeland BMPsthat have demonstrated success in drawing livestock grazing pressure away from streams. We evaluated the effects of rangelandBMP implementation with six commercial-scale pastures in the northern mixed-grass prairie. Four pastures received a BMPsuite consisting of off-stream water, cross-fencing, and deferred-rotation grazing, and two pastures did not receive BMPs. Wehypothesized that the BMPs increased the quantity …

Resistance Of Fall Armyworm, Spodoptera Frugiperda (J.E. Smith) To Bacillus Thuringiensis, Ying Niu

LSU Master's Theses

The fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith), is a target pest of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn in North and South America. In this study, multiple tests were conducted in the laboratory and greenhouse to 1) determine the susceptibility of two field populations of S. frugiperda collected from Florida (FL) and Puerto Rico (PR) to purified Cry1F protein and Bt corn leaf tissue and 2) evaluate larval survival of and plant injury by Cry1F-susceptible, -resistant, and –heterozygous genotypes of S. frugiperda on whole plants of transgenic corn containing single and pyramided Bt genes. Corn hybrids evaluated in this study included five …

The Purpose Of The Fourth Amendment And Crafting Rules To Implement That Purpose, Thomas K. Clancy

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.