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Grand Valley Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 3 Winter 2015, Grand Valley State University

Grand Valley Magazine

Grand Valley Magazine is a quarterly publication about Grand Valley State University produced by University Communications since 2001.

Annual Report Of The Town Of Lyme, New Hampshire For The Year Ending December 31, 2014, Lyme Town Representatives

Lyme, NH Annual Reports

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire.

Mechanistic Species Distribution Modelling As A Link Between Physiology And Conservation, Tyler G. Evans, Sarah E. Diamond, Morgan W. Kelly

Faculty Publications

© The Author 2015. Climate change conservation planning relies heavily on correlative species distribution models that estimate future areas of occupancy based on environmental conditions encountered in present-day ranges. The approach benefits from rapid assessment of vulnerability over a large number of organisms, but can have poor predictive power when transposed to novel environments and reveals little in the way of causal mechanisms that define changes in species distribution or abundance. Having conservation planning rely largely on this single approach also increases the risk of policy failure. Mechanistic models that are parameterized with physiological information are expected to be more …

How Global Biodiversity Hotspots May Go Unrecognized: Lessons From The North American Coastal Plain, Reed F. Noss, William J. Platt, Bruce A. Sorrie, Alan S. Weakley, D. Bruce Means, Jennifer Costanza, Robert K. Peet

Faculty Publications

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Biodiversity hotspots are conservation priorities. We identify the North American Coastal Plain (NACP) as a global hotspot based on the classic definition, a region with > 1500 endemic plant species and > 70% habitat loss. This region has been bypassed in prior designations due to misconceptions and myths about its ecology and history. These fallacies include: (1) young age of the NACP, climatic instability over time and submergence during high sea-level stands; (2) climatic and environmental homogeneity; (3) closed forest as the climax vegetation; and (4) fire regimes that are mostly anthropogenic. We show that …

The Fracking Revolution: Shale Gas As A Case Study In Innovation Policy, John M. Golden, Hannah J. Wiseman

Emory Law Journal

The early twenty-first century has witnessed a boom in oil and natural gas production that promises to turn the United States into a new form of petrostate. This boom raises various questions that scholars have begun to explore, including questions of risk governance, federalism, and export policy. Relatively neglected, however, have been questions of why the technological revolution behind the boom occurred and what this revolution teaches about innovation theory and policy. The boom in U.S. shale gas production reflected long-gestating infrastructure developments, a convergence of technological advances, government-sponsored research and development, the presence or absence of intellectual property rights, …

African Cowboys On The Argentine Pampas: Their Disappearance From The Historical Record, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Blue, The Gray, And The Green: Toward An Environmental History Of The Civil War, Theresa L. Young

Civil War Book Review

Environmental History More than “Waving the Muddy Shirt"

The works contained in The Blue, the Gray, and the Green: Toward an Environmental History of the Civil War are groundbreaking, not only for their content but also for their potential to expand the connections between the two s....

Sixteenth-Century Soil Carbon Sequestration Rates Based On Mexican Land-Grant Documents, Andrew Sluyter, Richard Hunter

Faculty Publications

A significant gap in our understanding of global change involves the linkages between historical land-use and land-cover change (LULCC), Holocene terrestrial carbon (C) pool fluxes, and climate change. To address that research problem, this method uses land grants for sheep ranches awarded in early colonial (1521–1620 CE) Mexico to quantify the amount of land converted from cropland to pastureland. Soil is the largest terrestrial C pool, and converting cropland to pastureland significantly increases soil C sequestration rates, thereby reducing atmospheric C. The land grants and associated archival documents contain location-specific information about soils, vegetation, hydrology, and other variables that make …

Dreaming Of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation In Colonial Mexico City, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

African Fire Cultures, Cattle Ranching, And Colonial Landscape Transformations In The Neotropics, Andrew Sluyter, Chris Duvall

Faculty Publications

Fire regimes emerge partly from human activities that reflect cultural-ecological knowledge of the relationships among fire, vegetation, grazing, climate, and other variables, as well as social relations. More knowledge of such “fire cultures,” past and present, therefore remains necessary to better understand the causes and persistent consequences of landscape burning. In the neotropics, people have used fire for centuries to manage livestock pastures. Conventional wisdom has long posited that such practices derived solely from antecedent European and indigenous, Native American fire cultures. Analysis of accounts of rangeland burning from throughout the neotropics during colonial times, however, demonstrates that ranchers incorporated …

Bhabha's Hybridity And Kenyan Development: A Close Look At Banking, Land And Health, Hannah F. Tuttle, Hannah Tuttle

Honors Theses

What happens when two distinct cultures come into contact? During colonialism, this resulted in the practice of "othering," or the separation of colonial identity, portrayed as positive, modern and good, from colonized identity, illustrated as backward, barbaric and sinful. In this paper, I discuss the ways that Homi K. Bhabha's concept of "hybridity," or the ways that the intersection of these two spheres caused a third "hybrid" culture to arise, manifests in contemporary development practice. Based on a month of field research in Kisumu, Kenya this past January, I discuss the ways that these "hybrids" have formed at the intersection …

From Development To Desintegration: Elites And The Connectedness Of Mountain Communities In Western North Carolina From The Antebellum Period To The End Of The Civil War, Colin W. Hull

Honors Theses

This paper undertakes as study of western North Carolina and the connectedness of mountain communities as they developed and disintegrated over the course of the antebellum period and the American Civil War. The research and conclusions in this paper confront common stereotypes of Appalachia, which include individualism, backwardness, isolation, and unionism during the Civil War. These stereotypes and generalizations have been attributed to the region by early histories, outsider accounts, and popular representations and have led to a myth of an engrained mountain culture, embodying those stereotypes. Mountain communities were not stagnant and unchanged throughout the 19^th century, but …

Ip As Metaphor, Brian L. Frye

Chapman Law Review

No abstract provided.

From A Patent Market For Lemons To A Marketplace For Patents: Benchmarking Ip In Its Evolution To Asset Class Status, Ian D. Mcclure

Chapman Law Review

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Carbon Impacts Of Colby College’S Biomass Plant, Alice Hotopp

Honors Theses

Biomass energy plants are considered to be carbon neutral systems under some definitions. However, this concept of carbon neutrality needs to be rethought in order to understand the true carbon impact of biomass plants upon global climate change. A biomass plant’s wood source, the extent to which the biomass plant emits carbon dioxide, and the timescale over which the biomass plant emits carbon should all be taken into account. In this study, I consider the Colby College biomass plant’s role in carbon cycling. Colby’s Physical Plant Department provided me with information on how much carbon (tons of woodchips) is used …

Nurturing Environmental Literacy At Colby College: Higher Education And The Environmental Crisis, Molly Nash

Honors Theses

The environmental crisis will affect all people, career paths, and academic disciplines. Acknowledging this, does higher education have an obligation to educate all students for environmental literacy (EL)? This study reviews literature on how to effectively assess and implement EL initiatives and highlights how other colleges successfully nurture EL in all students. This study also uses quantitative and qualitative survey measures to understand student levels of EL at Colby College and to highlight specific programming or curriculum that leads to high EL levels in students. Findings include significantly different EL scores between environmental studies student respondents and respondents in all …

At-Risk In Trio: Perceptions Of African American Male First-Generation Students, Diana Ogbevire

Masters Theses

This study employed phenomenology to explore at-risk African American male first-generation students' experiences in the TRiO Student Support Services Program (TRiO) and the role they perceived it played in their college success. Participants were six upperclassmen who were interviewed about their overall college experience, the challenges that they faced, and the role that TRiO played in helping them overcome those obstacles. Data were interpreted within a cultural capital theoretical framework, as well as, Schlossberg's Transition Theory. Findings indicated that the risk factors influencing African American male first-generation student's college experience are challenges with academics, finances, culture, and social integration. Although …

Collaboration Portal For Researchers At Eastern Illinois University, Fatemeh Khastkhodaardekani

Masters Theses

This thesis addresses a need for an online collaboration environment for the researchers at Eastern Illinois University (EIU). As the solution, it provides a portal for researchers (students and faculties) who wish to explore and collaborate on projects based on ideas from those who may not have the necessary skills. This is considered to help developing projects based on the ideas as well as making teams, and teach different groups of people different perspectives. Therefore, it offers a learning environment. I started off by examining existing tools and methodologies to satisfy this purpose. As the result, the deliverable project is …

Yeah You Write: Authenticity And Authority In Katrina Literature, Terri Coleman

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of The Energizers Program On Children's Moods, Emily Estes

Masters Theses

This study examined the effects of an eight week classroom-based physical activity program (Energizers) on the moods of third and fourth-grade students. One third and one fourth grade class participated in the teacher-led Energizers program, while the other third and fourth grade classes served as a control group. Students reported their mood at baseline, four weeks, and at eight weeks. There was no significant interaction between group membership and changes in positive or negative mood. However, girls were found to have higher long-term positive mood scores and lower long-term negative mood scores compared to boys. There was also a main …

Does The Geographic Information Systems Benefit The Insurance Industry?, Andrew R. Brachear

Masters Theses

This research is intended to determine if the insurance companies are benefiting from Geographic Information System technology in the insurance industry. This is based on the consumers' point of view through the use of research, survey results, and technology at the insurance company's disposal. Today, this technology is used in many different areas including renewable energy, delivery business, and city planning. Insurance companies use this technology in order to determine safe driving habits. Some examples include Progressive's Snapshot and State Farm's In-Drive. These devices are used to collect data on response time, speed, and breaking. This is a possible concern …

The Impact Of Singing-Integrated Reading Instruction On The Oral Reading Fluency And Motivation Of Elementary Students In An Out-Of-School Time Program, Yvette M. Moorehead-Carter

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of singing-integrated reading instruction on the oral reading fluency and motivation of elementary students in an after school program. Participants were third graders (n = 29) who attended the singing-integrated oral reading fluency (SI ORF) intervention twice a week for eight weeks. Components of the intervention included teacher-modeling of fluent oral reading, oral support, repeated reading and singing activities from a variety of children’s literature, and individual free-time.

The adapted Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS; McKenna & Kear, 1990) measured recreational, academic, and composite reading attitudes. The Qualitative Reading …

Expressionism And Ethnography: Max Pechstein In Nidden And Palau, Roland M. Coffey

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a new way to conceptualize Hermann Max Pechstein’s “primitivism” as a kind of ethnographic “primitivism.” By creating a constellation that connects Pechstein’s Nidden and Palau-based projects, Paul Gauguin’s “primitivist” aesthetic, and the research produced by German ethnographers, I argue that the “documentary” nature of Pechstein’s work paradoxically merges the “scientific” aspects of ethnography with his, and more generally, other Expressionists’ interest in the “primitive.” In addition, the following work demonstrates that the purportedly “scientific” representations and visual accounts of South Seas natives that ethnographers like Otto Finsch produced in the late 1800s and early 1900s heavily and …

South Dakota State University Graduate Catalog 2015-2016, South Dakota State University

South Dakota State University Catalogs and Bulletins: 1935 to present

No abstract provided.

Biodiversity Comparison Among Phylogenetic Diversity Metrics And Between Three North American Prairies, P. Roxanne (Steele) Kellar, Dakota Ahrendsen, Shelly K. Aust, Amanda R. Jones, J. Chris Pires

Biology Faculty Publications

Protection of Earth’s ecosystems requires identification of geographical areas of greatest biodiversity. Assessment of biodiversity begins with knowledge of the evolutionary histories of species in a geographic area. Multiple phylogenetic diversity (PD) metrics have been developed to describe biodiversity beyond species counts, but sufficient empirical studies, particularly at fine phylogenetic scales, have not been conducted to provide conservation planners with evidence for incorporating PD metrics into selection of priority regions. We review notable studies that are contributing to a growing database of empirical results, we report on the effect of using high-throughput sequencing to estimate the phylogenies used to calculate …

The Bunk House Rules: Housing Migrant Labour In Ontario, Adrian A. Smith

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

The paper tackles the recent controversy surrounding an application to convert an abandoned school into housing for migrant agricultural workers in Ontario, Canada. It examines how the written reactions of community residents to a proposed municipal zoning by-law amendment convey and invoke understandings of the legal regulation of temporary labour migration. When viewed through a legal consciousness analytic lens, reconstituted to attend to the material practices and context underpinning residents’ discursive and ideological responses, what I term a ‘materialist legal consciousness studies’, it is evident that the residents’ submissions intervene in the organization and regulation of agricultural production. While framed …

The Interactive Dynamics Of Transnational Business Governance: A Challenge For Transnational Legal Theory, Stepan Wood, Kenneth W. Abbott, Julia Black, Burkard Eberlein, Errol Meidinger

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

Conflict, convergence, cooperation, competition and other interactions among governance actors and institutions have long fascinated scholars of transnational law, yet transnational legal theorists’ accounts of such interactions are for the most part tentative, incomplete and unsystematic. Having elsewhere proposed an overarching conceptual framework for the study of transnational business governance interactions (TBGI), in this article we propose criteria for middle-range theory-building. We argue that a portfolio of theoretical perspectives on transnational governance interactions should account for the multiplicity of interacting entities and scales of interaction; the co-evolution of social agency and structure; the multiple components of regulatory governance; the role …

Systemic Corruption In An Advanced Welfare State: Lessons From The Québec Charbonneau Inquiry, Denis Saint-Martin

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

The Quiet Revolution in the 1960s propelled the province of Québec onto the path of greater social justice and better government. But as the evidence exposed at the Charbonneau inquiry makes clear, this did not make systemic corruption disappear from the construction sector. Rather, it adapted to its new institutional environment and was significantly shaped by the incentives structure it provided. The patterns of corruption emerging from the Charbonneau inquiry bear the imprint of the so-called “Québec model” inherited from the Quiet Revolution in at least three ways: (i) in the economic nationalism that made public policies partial towards French-speaking …

Transit And Economic Resilience, Arthur C. Nelson, Matt Miller, Joanna P. Ganning, Philip Stoker, Jenny H. Liu, Reid Ewing

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Do fixed-guideway transit systems facilitate resilience with metropolitan areas? There is little literature making this connection theoretically and none testing it empirically. This paper helps close this gap in both respects. In evaluating metropolitan areas with light rail transit systems the authors find evidence that transit corridors on the whole performed better than control corridors during the recovery period of two recessions: that of the early 2000s and the so-called Great Recession. In particular, during the Great Recession transit corridors outperformed control corridors among many economic sectors. Outcomes were more impressive during recoveries from both the recession of the early …

China's Obligation To Conduct Transboundary Environmental Impact Assessment (Teia) In Utilizing Its Shared Water Resources, Nadia Sanchez Castillo, Yongmin Bian

Natural Resources Journal

New water development projects in China threaten the environment of international rivers. Chinese law, however, does not require developers to assess the effects of proposed projects on the environment outside China’s borders. Nevertheless, examples of transboundary cooperation and international agreements provide a basic legal foundation that allows China to implement transboundary environmental impact assessments (TEIA) as a standard practice. This article explores China’s customary law obligation to conduct TEIA by examining relevant treaties and instances of joint action. The article finds that a basic legal structure is already in place to support carrying out environmental impact assessments in a transboundary …