Digital Commons Network^™

Managing Mining Pollution: The Case Of Water Quality Governance In The Transboundary Kootenai/Y, Ashley Juric

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis addresses current water quality management challenges in the transboundary Kootenai/y River Basin, and how these challenges are shaped by historical, economic, political, and social factors. The water quality of this basin, both in the United State and Canada, has been severely affected by coal mining that has occurred in British Columbia over the last hundred years and continues to be threatened by several proposed mining expansion projects. The goals of this research are to uncover the forces shaping water management and to determine the potential for interested and affected parties to participate in crafting water quality protection measures. …

40 Years On The International Flathead: An Assessment Of Transboundary River Governance, Jedd Sankar-Gorton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Global population growth, climate change, and industrialization, are putting extreme pressures on worldwide freshwater supplies (Cosens 2010). Of the global freshwater supplies, transboundary water sources play a crucial role in sustaining populations. Over 40% of humans on Earth rely on a transboundary river or lake for access to water, and 90% of the world’s population lives in countries that share bodies of water with at least one other country (UN 2008). Taken together, the motivations for improving governance of transboundary water systems have never been stronger. To meet the challenges associated with transboundary water governance, researchers working at multiple scales …

Greening Of The Arctic: Plot-Scale Analysis Of Interactions Between Climate, Vegetation, And Permafrost At Toolik Lake, Alaska (1995 - 2017), Brianna Rick

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Air temperatures across the Arctic have increased in recent decades, and through complex feedbacks, vegetation and permafrost (frozen ground) are actively responding as climate warming continues. This study investigates the trends and interactions of observed air, soil-surface temperature (SST), and active-layer thickness (ALT) at Toolik Lake on the Alaskan North Slope between 1995 and 2017, as well as vegetation change over time.

Time series between 1995 and 2017 at CALM site U12B, a 1 ha plot near Toolik Lake, reveal an increase (0.50 °C/decade) in mean summer (Jun-Aug) air temperatures and a decrease (­0.23 °C/decade) in mean summer SST. In …

Implications Of Modulating Glaciers And Snow Cover In Mongolia, Caleb Gikai Pan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Mongolia’s cryosphere (glaciers and snow cover) drives ecosystem services and in turn, supports emerging economies in the water-restricted country. However, as Mongolia experiences long-term drought conditions and an increase in annual air temperatures at twice the global rate, the potential adverse effects of the changing cryosphere during a period of climate uncertainty will have cascading implications to water availability and economic development. Using several data sources and methods, I partitioned my dissertation into two components to determine the hydrologic and economic implications of modulations in Mongolia’s cryosphere. The first component is an examination of glacier recession in Mongolia’s Altai Mountains, …

Are Social Networks A Double-Edged Sword? A Case Study Of Defense Contractors, Xiaobing Shuai, Christine Chmura

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

Utilizing a survey of defense contractors in the New England region, this study explores the effect of social networks on business performance—measured by annual employment growth and market diversification—during a time when defense spending in the United States was contracting. In contrast to prevailing literature focusing on entrepreneurial firms, this study offers insights on how social networks function in defense contractors, which tend to be mature firms. The main conclusion is that having more network connections is associated with faster short-term employment growth (from 2014 to 2015) for defense contractors, but there is a limit to that benefit. The analysis …

Public Private Partnerships For Economic Development: Impacts On Shrinking Cities, Brenden M. Geraghty

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Over the last few decades in the United States, Public Private Partnerships have become essential devices to city development and redevelopment. This study examines the uses of Public Private Partnerships within the discipline of Economic Development. The cities researched are located in the Rust Belt region of the United States and their economies have experienced a drastic decline over the last half-century. This research reveals the economic impacts on these shrinking cities that have had programs and projects implemented through the agreements and workings of the public and private sectors. Several factors are analyzed to determine what constitutes the (un)successful …

Binghamton's Missing Teeth: A Study Of City-Owned Vacant Lots In Binghamton, New York, Pauline Helene Berkowitz

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Vacant land prevails in shrinking cities that have experienced urban outmigration and economic decline. Low-income neighborhoods and blight lead to conditions where vacant lots exist, consequently producing disamenities for the residents that live near them. Considered magnets of crime and stigmatized for their association with urban decay, vacant land is an environmental justice issue not often directly addressed by municipal governments. Despite this, vacant lots can still be seen as potential opportunities to improve social, environmental and economic qualities of life for surrounding residents. Urban agriculture, rain gardens and pocket parks are examples of how vacant lots can be reused …

Visibly (Un)Just: The Optics Of Grand Jury Secrecy And Police Violence, Nicole Smith Futrell

Faculty Scholarship

Police violence has become more visible to the public through racial justice activism and social justice advocates’ use of technology. Yet, the heightened visibility of policing has had limited impact on transparency and accountability in the legal process, particularly when a grand jury is empaneled to determine whether to issue an indictment in a case of police violence. When a grand jury decides not to indict, the requirement of grand jury secrecy prevents public disclosure of the testimony, witnesses, and evidence presented to the grand jury. Grand jury secrecy leaves those who have seen and experienced the act of police …

Copyrightability Of Artworks Produced By Creative Robots And Originality: The Formality-Objective Model, Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, Luis Antonio Velez- Hernandez

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Awareness And Prevalence Of Human Milk Sharing And Selling In The United States, Elizabeth O'Sullivan, Sheelagh R. Geraghty, Kathleen Maher Rasmussen

Articles

There are limited data available about the prevalence of human milk (HM) sharing and selling in the general population. We aimed to describe attitudes toward HM selling among participants in a qualitative‐interview study and prevalence of HM sharing and selling among a national sample of U.S. mothers. Mothers (n = 41) in our qualitative‐interview study felt that sharing or donating HM was more common than selling; none had ever purchased or sold HM. Three themes related to HM selling emerged from this work: questioning the motives of those selling HM, HM selling limits access to HM to those with money, …

Global Legal Pluralism As A Normative Project, Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Legal pluralists have long recognized that societies consist of such multiple overlapping normativecommunities. These communities are sometimes state based but sometimes not, and they are sometimes formal, official, and governmental, but again sometimes they are not. Scholars studying interactions among these multiple communities have often used the term “legal pluralism” to describe the inevitable intermingling of these normative systems.

In recent decades, a new application of pluralist insights has emerged in the international and transnational realm. This new legal pluralism research was born in the decades following the collapse of the bipolar Cold War order in 1989. During this period, …

Everybody But Us: Constructing Evangelical Identities By Defining The Skeptic, Pace Tyler Ward

Honors Theses

Pew research shows that 25.4% of American Christians identify as evangelical Protestants, accounting for the highest percentage of Christians in America (20.8% identify as Catholic and 14.7% identify as mainline Protestants). Evangelical Protestantism may be the strongest religious force in the U.S. but defining the movement has proven difficult. Researchers have used a variety of definitions to develop a better understanding of evangelical demographics, geographies, or religious strength. My interests and the goal of this research deals more with the performance of these identities; I wanted to know how members of Welcome Church do their Christianity. This research focused on …

Conservation, Development, And Dispossession: The Implications Of Unesco World Heritage Designation For The Bayei People In The Okavango Delta, Botswana, Jamie Shinn

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

In December of 2012, I visited the village of Jao for the first time. The village, located on a small patch of dry land deep in the heart of the Okavango Delta in Northern Botswana, is one of the only remaining settlements in the Delta’s interior and all residents are members of the water-based Bayei tribe. Jao is also one of the few settlements located within the boundaries of a recent World Heritage site designation of the Okavango Delta by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). While much attention has been paid to the unique ecological qualities …

Environmental Governance And Climate Change Adaptation In The Okavango Delta, Botswana, Jamie Shinn

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Increased environmental variability as a result of climate change will continue to intensify in coming decades, with particularly acute consequences for those living in already marginal conditions. The impacts of these biophysical changes require new approaches to environmental governance to facilitate successful forms of climate change adaptation for individuals and communities in changing social-ecological systems.

Risk Assessment And Mapping Of Hand, Foot, And Mouth Disease At The County Level In Mainland China Using Spatiotemporal Zero-Inflated Bayesian Hierarchical Models, Chao Song, Yaqian He, Yanchen Bo, Jinfeng Wang, Zhoupeng Ren, Huibin Yang

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) is a worldwide infectious disease, prominent in China. China’s HFMD data are sparse with a large number of observed zeros across locations and over time. However, no previous studies have considered such a zero-inflated problem on HFMD’s spatiotemporal risk analysis and mapping, not to mention for the entire Mainland China at county level. Monthly county-level HFMD cases data combined with related climate and socioeconomic variables were collected. We developed four models, including spatiotemporal Poisson, negative binomial, zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP), and zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) models under the Bayesian hierarchical modeling framework to explore disease …

Water, Women, And Migration: Examining The Interconnections Between Water Scarcity, Environmental Migration, And Women In Bolivia, Sarah T. Meeks

Honors Theses

Water insecurity has received growing attention as climate change is worsening environmental conditions, and research has established how water insecurity has differentiated impacts according to one's gender. In light of both an increasing trend in environmental migration and extreme weather events in Bolivia, this paper sought to establish environmental migration's explicit role in the relationship between water scarcity and gendered effects. To do so, it addressed the question, how does environmental migration influence the relationship between gendered effects and water scarcity? and hypothesized that migration is a more subtle and overlooked contributor to the gendered effects of water scarcity. The …

Interculturality In Health: The Infant Mortality Rate Of Bolivia, Allen G. Crosthwait

Honors Theses

The Bolivian government implemented an intercultural reform in 2006 in an attempt to improve the quality of health for its indigenous citizens throughout the country. One of the biggest focuses thereof was to improve the infant mortality rate, as it has historically far surpassed the rates of other Latin American nations. Though superficial data presented by the government seem to suggest that the intercultural reform has been an unprecedented success, very little extensive research has been done on the topic. My work gauges the merits of the intercultural reform and assesses which areas particularly have been successful. To do so, …

Education In Mississippi: Did Integration Elicit Equality?, Baylee Mozjesik

Honors Theses

Founding father Thomas Jefferson said, Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. Preservation of liberty is not all that education has the power to impact; education provides the basis for life-long success and affords people the opportunity to alter their own future, and the futures of others. Yet, in a nation that has been plagued by racist sentiments for centuries, educational opportunities are still inequitable. This truth is strikingly so across the state of Mississippi, from the Gulf Coast, to the Capital-River region, to the Delta. …

Recommendations For A Brighter Future, S. Joseph Kidder, Gerardo Oudri

180 Symposium Publications

No abstract provided.

Using Technology To Build Community Within The Sabbath School Program, Denton Grady

180 Symposium Publications

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Immigrant Rights: Between Political Geography And Transnational Interventions, Deborah M. Weissman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Characterization Of Wild And Captive Baboon Gut Microbiota And Their Antibiotic Resistomes, Pablo Tsukayama, Manish Boolchandani, Sanket Patel, Erica C. Pehrsson, Molly K. Gibson, Kenneth L. Chiou, Clifford J. Jolly, Jeffrey Rogers, Jane E. Phillips-Conroy, Gautam Dantas

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Importance Of Case Age In The Purported Association Between Phylogenetics And Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome In Escherichia Coli O157:H7 Infections, G.A.M. Tarr, S. Shringi, H.N. Oltean, J. Mayer, P. Rabinowitz, J. Wakefield, P.I. Tarr, T.E. Besser, A.I. Phipps

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Characteristics Of The Cancer Genome Atlas Cases Relative To U.S. General Population Cancer Cases, Xiaoyan Wang, Joseph T. Steensma, Matthew H. Bailey, Qianxi Feng, Hannah Padda, Kimberly J. Johnson

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Survival Signal Reg3Α Prevents Crypt Apoptosis To Control Acute Gastrointestinal Graft-Versus-Host Disease, Thaddeus S. Stappenbeck, Aaron Ver Heul, Ta-Chiang Liu, Et Al

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy In Synovial Sarcoma: A Systematic Review, Richard F. Riedel, Robin L. Jones, Antoine Italiano, Chet Bohac, Juliette C. Thompson, Kerstin Mueller, Zaeem Khan, Seth M. Pollack, Brian A. Van Tine

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Subclinical Infection Of Macaques And Baboons With A Baboon Simarterivirus, Connor R. Buechler, Matthew Semler, David A. Baker, Christina Newman, Joseph P. Cornish, Deborah Chavez, Bernadette Guerra, Robert Lanford, Kathy Brasky, Jens H. Kuhn, Reed F. Johnson, David H. O'Connor, Adam L. Bailey

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Population Structure, Antibiotic Resistance, And Uropathogenicity Of Klebsiella Variicola, Robert F. Potter, William Lainhart, Joy Twentyman, Meghan A. Wallace, Bin Wang, Carey-Ann D. Burnham, David A. Rosen, Gautam Dantas

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Toward Optimal Implementation Of Cancer Prevention And Control Programs In Public Health: A Study Protocol On Mis-Implementation, Margaret Padek, Peg Allen, Paul C. Erwin, Melissa Franco, Ross A. Hammond, Benjamin Heuberger, Matt Kasman, Doug A. Luke, Stephanie Mazzucca, Sarah Moreland-Russell, Ross C. Brownson

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Cancer Incidence And Mortality Rates And Trends In Trinidad And Tobago, Wayne A. Warner, Smriti Bajracharya, Vasavi Sundaram, Jingqin Luo, Adetunji T. Toriola

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.