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Differentiating Deference, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

When an administrative agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statutory term is challenged in court, the Chevron doctrine instructs judges to evaluate whether it is reasonable. But how does a court know reasonableness when it sees it? Here, I first show that reasonableness review is more complex than it might seem. Contrary to common images, for instance, courts do not determine a range of reasonable interpretations; and that is a good thing, because they are not competent to do so. Moreover, because traditional statutory interpretation approaches presume the existence of one correct meaning for a given word, they are not well …

Stem Learning In Your Own Backyard, Brooke A. Whitworth, Stephanie Beyea, Melora Purell

Publications

No abstract provided.

Importance Of Soil And Plant Community Disturbance For Establishment Of Bromus Tectorum In The Intermountain West, Usa, A. Joshua Leffler

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

The annual grass Bromus tectorum has invaded millions of hectares in western North America and has transformed former perennial grass and shrub-dominated communities into annual grasslands. Fire plays a key role in the maintenance of B. tectorum on the landscape but the type of disturbance responsible for initial invasion is less well understood. We conducted an experiment in a perennial shrub/grass/forb community in eastern Idaho, USA to examine the roles of plant community and soil disturbance on B. tectorum emergence and establishment prior to state-changing fires. Our experiment consisted of a plant community disturbance treatment where we (1) removed the …

A Simple Method To Reduce Interpretation Error Of Ages Estimated From Otoliths, Bradley J. Smith, Daniel J. Dembkowski, Daniel A. James, Melissa R. Wuellner

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

We designed and tested a novel otolith viewing apparatus termed the otolith illumination device (OID) to ascertain if its use would result in a reduction of interpretation error as determined by increased precision of age estimates obtained from otoliths of walleye Sander vitreus and smallmouth bass Micropterus dolomieu. Clarity of annuli on otolith sections viewed with the OID was generally greater than clarity of annuli on sections viewed with an alternative method. OID-based age estimates were equally as, and in some instance more precise than ages estimated using the alternative method. Additionally, no systematic differences in coefficients of variation …

Winter Habitat Quality But Not Long- Distance Dispersal Influences Apparent Reproductive Success In A Migratory Bird, Clark S. Rushing, Peter P. Marra, Michele R. Dudash

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Long- distance breeding and natal dispersal play central roles in many ecological and evolutionary processes, including gene flow, population dynamics, range expansion, and individual responses to fluctuating biotic and abiotic conditions. However, the relative contribution of long- distance dispersal to these processes depends on the ability of dispersing individuals to successfully reproduce in their new environment. Unfortunately, due to the difficulties associated with tracking dispersal in the field, relatively little is known about its reproductive consequences. Furthermore, because reproductive success is influenced by a variety of processes, disentangling the influence of each of these processes is critical to understanding the …

Determining The Barriers To And Opportunities For Community Involvement In The Management Of The Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, Uttarakhand, India, Trisha Singh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Today’s global political environment places a high value on social equality and economic well- being. In this climate, emphasizing biodiversity conservation over socio-economic development through exclusionary methods of habitat protection has become ethically questioned and politically dangerous. The goal of this research was to understand the barriers and opportunities for local involvement in the management of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve in Uttarakhand, India. We attempted to understand the feasibility of local community involvement in the management of the NDBR from the perspective of policy-making organizations and that of the local communities.

Key findings highlight barriers to community participation at …

Conservation Genetics On The Frontline, Kenneth W. Rand

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Conservation genetics stands out as an effective tool for discovering and monitoring rare, endangered or invasive populations of plants and animals. Particularly when compared to traditional search and capture methods, it provides more holistic studies to preserve the disappearing biodiversity of the American West and the world.

Three stories highlight the work done to preserve biodiversity through the use of conservation genetics:

1. Trout Rescue: A new hope for westslope cutthroat in Montana How to save a disappearing westslope cutthroat trout through genetic rescue by adding genetic diversity to ensuring future survival in increasingly warming waters more harm than good. …

Spatio-Temporal Analysis Of Ungulate Browsing On Willow (Salix Spp.) Communities Within The Northern Range Of Yellowstone, Donald L. Belile Jr.

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Variation in ungulate browsing intensity on willow (Salix spp.) communities across Yellowstone’s northern range has been attributed to various biophysical factors including climate, topography, and predators. These studies were conducted without a long-term browsing dataset; they lacked a spatially extensive sampling design, and did not include dynamic snow characteristics known to affect ungulate mobility, habitat selection, and foraging strategies. We therefore focused on snow, an extreme landscape level disturbance that places nutritional stress on ungulates during the winter when most browsing on shrubs occurs. We applied a non-destructive sampling method by consecutively recording whether stem leaders were browsed between …

Human Shields And Redistribution Of Prey Species Complicate The Utility Of Protected Areas As Ecological Baselines, Wesley Sarmento

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

A key goal of protected areas is the conservation of biodiversity, an aim that garners increasing public support through positive experiences. Increasing visitation, however, can come at the cost of reduced ecological integrity. A fundamental conundrum is that if parks are to serve as our most pristine places, then we must understand how our presence alters species interactions. Species redistributing closer to people is of growing management concern both in and out of national parks because of 1) human safety, 2) animal health, and 3) ecological consequences. Across parks drivers of distributional change are often dissimilar, and include movement to …

An Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of Eukaryotic Dna Extraction From Burial Soil Samples, Ariane Thomas

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

DNA is a valuable resource as a unique identifier of physical characteristics at both the population and individual levels. Due to a variety of factors that contribute to genetic decay, forensic and bioarchaeological investigators have limited outlets in which to extract viable DNA after most of a body’s organic materials have fully decomposed. This preliminary research focused on extracting DNA from the soil surrounding buried Sus scrofa domesticus cadavers to confirm the presence of viable and analyzable DNA. After a decomposition period of five months in Montana, soils were collected at incremental distances above the remains and sequenced to identify …

Confidence Judgments In A Simultaneous Task Using Sprague Dawley Rats (Rattus Norvegicus), Jessica K. Kumm

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the present experiment, metacognitive confidence judgments were measured in the Sprague-dawley rats using a simultaneous discrimination task. Performance on two types of trials were compared: Forced and Choice. For Forced trials, subjects were required to classify a range of eight tones as either a “long” or “short” tone with the four longest frequency durations comprising the “long” tone category and the four shortest frequency tones comprising the “short” tone duration category. The Choice trials were identical to the Forced trials with the exception that a bailout response was also available, allowing the subject to advance to the next trial …

Extreme Hybrid Growth, Genomic Imprinting, The Large X Effect, And The Drivers Of Speciation In Mammals, Thomas David Brekke

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Mammalian hybrids often show abnormal growth, indicating that developmental inviability may play an important role in mammalian speciation. Yet it is unclear if this recurrent phenotype reflects a common genetic basis. Here I describe patterns of hybrid inviability between two closely related species of dwarf hamsters, Phodopus campbelli and P. sungorus. Using genetic crosses, I found extreme parent-of-origin dependent growth in hybrid embryos and placentas. Abnormal growth in hybrid mammals has been empirically linked to genomic imprinting, the parent-specific silencing of a single allele that occurs in many genes involved in regulating embryonic growth. Epigenetic disruptions of genomic imprinting activate …

Animal Rights Unraveled: Why Abolitionism Collapses Into Welfarism And What It Means For Animal Ethics, Luis E. Chiesa

Journal Articles

Most people support laws that seek to reduce the suffering of animals. Yet animal cruelty statutes and other kinds of animal welfare laws are under sustained attack by the so-called abolitionists. Animal rights abolitionists claim that it is categorically wrong to treat animals as commodities, and animal welfare laws should be opposed because they do not alter the property status of animals. Abolitionists also claim that animal welfare regulations do not meaningfully reduce animal suffering. In fact, abolitionists argue that such statutes likely increase future animal suffering, either by delaying the advent of abolition or by soothing the conscience of …

Political Decision-Making At The National Labor Relations Board: An Empirical Examination Of The Board's Unfair Labor Practice Disputes Through The Clinton And Bush Ii Years, Amy Semet

Journal Articles

Does partisan ideology influence the voting of members of multi-member adjudicatory bodies at “independent agencies”? In studying the federal circuit courts of appeals, scholars have found that results of cases vary depending upon the partisan composition of the particular panel hearing a case. Few scholars to date, however, have systematically studied whether partisan panel effects occur in administrative adjudication. In this Article, I explore the impact that partisan ideology and panel composition have on the vote choices of an administrative agency rumored to be one of the most partisan: the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”). Employing an original dataset of …

Impact Of A Diesel Spill On Macroinvertebrate Communities In Ponds In S.E. Alabama, Usa, Katie E. Winkles

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, macroinvertebrate communities were examined to determine an indication of the water quality in ponds on a wetlands property after a diesel spill. In 2012, a train derailed, and at least 3000 gallons of diesel fuel leached into a small pond of the wetlands. Even after clean-up attempts there remains major concerns that the contamination spread throughout the wetlands. This concern led to the present study. Macroinvertebrates were the chosen focus due to their sensitivity to changes in the environment. Two field trials were conducted in which Hester-Dendy multiplate samplers were placed in ponds to allow macroinvertebrates to …

A Case Study Of The Progressive Era Librarian Edith Guerrier: The Public Library, Social Reform, 'New Women', And Urban Immigrant Girls, Margaret Bausman

Publications and Research

This paper investigates the intertwined evolution of librarianship and social welfare work during the Progressive Era (1900–1920) via a case study of the librarian Edith Guerrier (1870–1958). From 1898 through 1917, Guerrier worked in the immigrant community of Boston’s North End. She established a programme of girls’ reading groups that provided access to core elements of a progressive liberal arts education. The most notable of these was the Saturday Evening Girls (SEG). Concurrently, Guerrier established the Paul Revere Pottery, a retail art pottery studio run by the young women of the SEG. Using Guerrier’s varied career as a starting point, …

The Rise Of Cheap Nature, Jason W. Moore

Sociology Faculty Scholarship

We live at a crossroads in the history of our species – and of planetary life. What comes next is unknowable with any certainty. But it is not looking good. Environmentalist theory and research tells us, today, just how bad it is. Mass extinction. Climate Change. Ocean acidification. To these planetary shifts, one can add countless regional stories – runaway toxic disasters on land and at sea; cancer clusters; frequent and severe droughts. Our collective sense of " environmental consequences " has never been greater. But consequences of what? Of humanity as a whole? Of population? Of industrial civilization? Of …

Supporting Reading Curriculum Without Restricting Access To Library Materials: Resources For Teacher Librarians, Tricia Carty

Graduate Research Papers

External pressure upon teacher librarians to arrange library book collections by level and to limit students’ choices to books within their level is complex due to the interwoven but sometimes conflicting demands of providing quality reading instruction, resources for independent reading, and relevant readers’ advisory. The school library and its teacher librarian are positioned squarely in the middle of this dynamic topic. The purpose of this study was to identify the strategies and policies teacher librarians use to support reading instruction without restricting students’ access to library materials. This study revealed that through the use of focused instruction, adaptable policies, …

Content Analysis Of Two Libraries Resources For Supporting Primary Economics Instruction, Lindsey J. Hilts

Graduate Research Papers

The teaching of some primary teachers is being compromised in schools with a lack of rich science and social studies library collections that have been intentionally developed by a professional teacher librarian in collaboration with teachers. The purpose of this study was to analyze and compare school library resources for the same economics unit taught in two different elementary schools’ primary classrooms, including the quality of resources available and their usefulness in teaching social studies economics standards. School B had a higher quantity of resources meeting the standards as well as more texts determined to be of high quality. The …

Sign Language In The Preschool Classroom : A Self-Study, Dianna Geiger

Graduate Research Papers

This research was a self-study involving the learning and implementation of sign language in the preschool classroom. Over the course of eight weeks, I taught myself sign language and implemented what I learned in my preschool classroom of three- and four-year-old children. Through journaling, videotaping and surveys, I was able to increase my sign language knowledge at a good rate, increase student engagement and find a unique way to bond with my students. My memory was the biggest challenge for me during the study. Knowing someone that speaks in sign language would be beneficial to someone just starting out. While …

Behavior And Survival Of The Filth Fly Parasitoids Spalangia Endius And Urolepis Rufipes (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) In Response To Three Granular House Fly Baits And Components., Edwin R. Burgess, Bethia H. King

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Behaviors and mortality of two filth fly parasitoid wasps, Spalangia endius Walker and Urolepis rufipes Ashmead, were tested in response to granular fly baits containing one of three active ingredients (AI): Golden Malrin (methomyl), QuickBayt (imidacloprid), or Quikstrike (dinotefuran). Behavioral responses to each of two components of the baits, the AIs and the fly attractant pheromone (Z)-9-tricosene, were also examined independently. S. endius avoided contact with bait granules, regardless of bait type. However, when S. endius contacted bait residue, the imidacloprid bait appeared to be the least harmful of the baits for S. endius, at least in the short term. …

Effects Of Size And Age Of The Host Musca Domestica (Diptera: Muscidae) On Production Of The Parasitoid Wasp Spalangia Endius (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae), S.A. Broski, Bethia H. King

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

One method of control of house flies, Musca domestica L. (Diptera: Muscidae), and other filth flies is by repeated release of large numbers of pupal parasitoids such as Spalangia endius Walker. Rearing these parasitoids may be facilitated by understanding how host factors affect their production. Previous studies have examined the effects of host size and host age on parasitoid production, but have not examined the interaction between host size and host age or the effects with older females, which may be less capable of drilling tough hosts. Females were given hosts of a single size-age category (small young, small old, …

The Scholar Magician In English Renaissance Drama, Ashley M. Minnis-Lemley

Scripps Senior Theses

In this paper, I will explore the rise and fall of the scholar magician or sorcerer, both as a popular dramatic subject and as an arc for individual characters, and the ways in which these figures tied into contemporary fears about the intersection of religion and developing scientific knowledge.

The Role Of Chronic Sugar Consumption As A Moderating Variable On Acute Sugar Consumption And Aspects Of Executive Function, Caroline M. Joyce

Scripps Senior Theses

This study explores the relationship between acute sugar consumption and its effect on executive function (EF). Specifically, this study examines the effect of both acute and chronic sugar consumption on EF. An epidemiological survey was given on an online work distribution platform, where participants finished cognitive tasks of EF after completing questionnaires assessing sugar consumption both in the last year and last 24 hours (n = 273). It was hypothesized that acute and chronic sugar intake would significantly predict scores on measures of aspects of EF. Additionally, it was hypothesized that chronic sugar intake would significantly moderate the relationship …

Crowded: Population Pressures In San Francisco Bay Area National Park Service Properties, Caroline R. Ebinger

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper hopes to analyze the intersection between diversity and numbers of visitors and landscape preservation in the National Park Service. Current scholarship addresses either diversity in the Park System or carrying capacity and human population pressures. However, both are critical issues facing the National Park Service in the 21^st century, and looking at the issues in isolation means missing a key interaction and potentially working to solve one problem that in turn amplifies another. Here, diversity of park-goers and preservation priorities will be addressed together, each as part of the other.

Pinnacles National Park, Golden Gate National Recreation …

Performing The Uncanny: An Exploration Of Self Through Alternative Process Photography, Caroline Thomas

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper considers how the tradition of self-portraiture and alternative process photography can be used in conjunction with one another to perform the uncanny. I discuss the "uncanny" through three theoretical lenses: Sigmund Freud, Hal Foster, and Rosalind Krauss. I then go on to discuss how the "uncanny" has been used in alternative processes of contemporary work by examining Robert Heinecken and Joyce Neimanas. Finally by looking at Francesca Woodman's self-portraiture, I address how self-portraiture can be a type of performance and how this influenced my own series during my 2015 Fall semester. As a whole this paper addresses how …

You Can't Catch A Fish With A Robot, R. Grant Gilmore Jr.

Gulf and Caribbean Research

Abstract

In this essay I will relate the challenges associated with deep sea ocean exploration as well as the advantages and disadvantages of today’s ocean technologies based on experience with most of these systems. After nearly five decades using robotic vehicles (Remotely Operated Vehicles = ROVs and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles = AUVs) and manned submarines for fish research, I thought it would be appropriate to briefly describe a career spent using these technologies as they were developed. Deep sea ichthyologists cannot effectively catch a swimming fish with a robot even 40 years after the development of the first ROV for …

Age, Growth And Natural Mortality Of Blackfin Snapper Lutjanus Buccanella From The Southeastern United States And U. S. Caribbean, Michael L. Burton, Jennifer C. Potts, Daniel R. Carr

Gulf and Caribbean Research

We determined ages of Blackfin Snapper (Lutjanus buccanella Cuvier 1828; n = 622) collected from the southeastern United States coast and U.S. Caribbean from 1979–2015 using sectioned sagittal otoliths. Opaque zones were determined to be annular, forming March – July (peaking in April–June). Blackfin Snapper ranged from 1–27 years and from 180–609 mm total length (TL). Body size relationships for Blackfin Snapper were: TL = 1.09 FL + 0.81 (n = 203, r2 = 0.99); FL = 0.91 TL + 3.38 (n = 203, r2 = 0.99); TL = 1.23 SL + 14.27 (n = 83, r2 = 0.97); FL …

Assessment Of Celecoxib Poly(Lactic-Co-Glycolic) Acid Nanoformulation On Drug Pharmacodynamics And Pharmacokinetics In Rats, Sam Harirforoosh, Kelsi O. West, Derek E. Murrell, James W. Denham, Peter C. Panus, Greg A. Hanley

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

OBJECTIVE: Celecoxib (CEL) is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) showing selective cycloxygenase-2 inhibition. While effective as a pain reducer, CEL exerts some negative influence on renal and gastrointestinal parameters. This study examined CEL pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics following drug reformulation as a poly(lactic-co-glycolic) acid nanoparticle (NP).

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Rats were administered either vehicle (VEH) (methylcellulose solution), blank NP, 40 mg/kg CEL in methylcellulose, or an equivalent NP dose (CEL-NP). Plasma and urine (over 12 hrs) samples were collected prior to and post-treatment. The mean percent change from baseline of urine flow rate along with electrolyte concentrations in plasma …

Finding, Understanding And Learning: Making Information Discovery Tasks Useful For Children And Teachers, Ion Madrazo Azpiazu, Nevena Dragovic, Maria Soledad Pera

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

We present our ongoing efforts on the development of a search environment tailored to 6-15 year-olds that can foster learning though retrieval of materials that not only satisfy the information needs of users but also match their reading abilities. YouUnderstood.me is an enhanced environment based on a popular search engine specifically designed to help students deal with search for learning tasks, and allow teachers to track their progress. An initial assessment conducted on YouUnderstood.me and well-known (children-oriented) search engines based on queries generated by K-9 students, showcases the need for this type of environment.