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The Anthropocene In The Time Of Trump, Financial Markets, Climate Change Risk, And Vulnerability

UBC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Identifying Breed Effects For Cow Mature Weight, Madeline J. Zimmermann

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Mature weight (MWT) in beef cattle has increased over the past 30 yr. In general, larger cows are costlier to maintain than smaller cows, and their profitability depends on their production environment. A wide range of beef production environments exist in the United States. There are also a variety of beef cattle breeds that can be chosen and mated to create a type of cow which will be optimally suited to excel in a given environment. However, there remains a need for tools allowing effective comparison among breeds to facilitate such decision making. Unfortunately, estimated progeny differences ( …

Evaluation Of The Interaction Of Beta-Adrenergic Agonists Supplementation And Heat Stress On Growth Performance And Carcass Composition In Feeder Lambs, Lauren Elisabeth Kett

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Forty-nine crossbred feeder lambs (wethers, n = 49; 53.3 ± 3.7 kg BW) were utilized to evaluate the interaction of b - adrenergic agonist (bAA) supplementation and heat stress on growth performance and carcass composition. Utilizing and 3 x 2 factorial design, lambs were randomly assigned to one of three bAA supplementation: 1) Control, CON, 2) Ractopamine Hydrochloride at 40 mg/hd/d, RHCL, and Zilpaterol Hydrochloride at 2.5 mg/hd/d, ZHCL for a period of 20 d and one of two environmental conditions (Thermal Neutral: TN and Heat Stress: HS). The TN environment had a constant thermal heat index (THI) of 16.6°C. …

Airborne Bacteria In Earth's Lower Stratosphere Resemble Taxa Detected In The Troposphere: Results From A New Nasa Aircraft Bioaerosol Collector (Abc), David J. Smith, Jayamary D. Ravichandar, Sunit Jain, Dale W. Griffin, Hongbin Yu, Qian Tan, James Thissen, Terry Lusby, Patrick Nicoll, Sarah Shedler

Marine Science Faculty Publications

Airborne microorganisms in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere remain elusive due to a lack of reliable sample collection systems. To address this problem, we designed, installed, and flight-validated a novel Aircraft Bioaerosol Collector (ABC) for NASA's C-20A that can make collections for microbiological research investigations up to altitudes of 13.7 km. Herein we report results from the first set of science flights—four consecutive missions flown over the United States (US) from 30 October to 2 November, 2017. To ascertain how the concentration of airborne bacteria changed across the tropopause, we collected air during aircraft Ascent/Descent (0.3 to …

Avian Jurisprudence And The Protection Of Migratory Birds In North America, Marshall A. Bowen

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

African Trypanosomes Evade Immune Clearance By Oglycosylation Of The Vsg Surface Coat, Jason Pinger, Dragana Nešić, Liaqat Ali, Francisco Aresta-Branco, Mirjana Lilic, Shanin Chowdhury, Hee-Sook Kim, Joseph Verdi, Jayne Raper, Michael A. J. Ferguson, F. Nina Papavasiliou, C. Erec Stebbins

Publications and Research

The African trypanosome, Trypanosoma brucei spp., is a paradigm for antigenic variation, the orchestrated alteration of cell surface molecules to evade host immunity. The parasite elicits robust antibody-mediated immune responses to its Variant Surface Glycoprotein (VSG) coat, but evades immune clearance by repeatedly accessing a large genetic VSG repertoire and “switching” to antigenically distinct VSGs. This persistent immune evasion has been ascribed exclusively to amino acid variance on the VSG surface presented by a conserved underlying protein architecture. We establish here that this model does not account for the scope of VSG structural and biochemical diversity. The 1.4Å resolution crystal …

Social Interactions Occurring During An Introductory College Of Agriculture Course, Brittany Renea Leek

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the development of the internet, today’s students no longer are confined to the resources only found in their classrooms or public libraries and have been given the ability to gain access to virtually unlimited quantities of information on the topics or events they are discussing in their class rooms and with their peers. The use of technology for communication and education is rapidly changing, but the challenges of technology-driven learning opportunities rest on questions of access and use. There is a need to determine whether students use these methods (i.e., technology based) to more prevalently communicate today. The primary …

Investigation Of Molecular Mechanisms Involved In Retardation Of Immunosenescence In Caenorhabditis Elegans By Royal Jelly, Ojas Natarajan

All Dissertations

With recent advances in medicine, life expectancy has been steadily increasing. This increasing geriatric populous encounter various age-associated diseases including decline in immunity called immunosenescence, which renders them susceptible to an extended array of pathogens like Staphylococcus aureus. These nosocomial pathogens gain resistance to a variety of antibiotics, hence a strong innate immune system is important for host survival. Caenorhabditis elegans has no complex immune system. Hence, it is an excellent model to study the innate immune response.

Royal jelly, a nutraceutical has been previously shown to prolong the lifespan and UV, oxidative and heat shock resistance in C. …

Graphene/P(Vdf-Trfe) Heterojunction Based Wearable Sensors With Integrated Piezoelectric Energy Harvester, Soaram Kim

All Dissertations

Graphene, with its outstanding material properties, including high carrier mobility, atomically thin nature, and ability to tolerate mechanical deformation related strain up to 20% before breaking, make it very attractive for developing highly sensitive and conformable strain/pressure sensor for wearable electronics. Unfortunately, graphene by itself is not piezoresistive, so developing a strain sensor utilizing just graphene is challenging. Fortunately, graphene synthesized on Cu foil can be transferred to arbitrary substrates (preserving its high quality), including flexible polymer substrates, which will allow the overall flexibility and conformability of the sensing element, to be maintained. Furthermore, a graphene/polymer based sensor devices can …

Select Psychological And Physical Impacts Of Therapeutic Yoga For Informal Caregivers: A Feasibility Study, Alysha Amber Walter

All Dissertations

An informal caregiver (ICG) is an individual who provides unpaid care to a person with a disease or disability. The psychological and physical well-being for care recipients are positively impacted by the ICG, but an ICG's psychological and physical well-being are often negatively impacted as a result of providing informal care. Yoga may be one therapeutic intervention for ICGs to improve psychological and physical well-being. A mixed methods concurrent design was utilized to examine select psychological and physical impacts for ICGs after participating in a therapeutic yoga intervention. After the 8-week intervention, participants (n = 8) experienced a statistically significant …

Persuasive Intelligence: On The Construction Of Rhetor-Ethical Cognitive Machines, Nathan D. Riggs

All Dissertations

This work concerns the rhetorical and moral agency of machines, offering paths forward in machine ethics as well as problematizing the issue through the development and use of an interdisciplinary framework informed by rhetoric, philosophy of mind, media studies and historical narrative. I argue that cognitive machines of the past as well as those today, such as rapidly improving autonomous vehicles, are unable to make moral decisions themselves foremost because a moral agent must first be a rhetorical agent, capable of persuading and of being persuaded. I show that current machines, artificially intelligent or otherwise, and especially digital computers, are …

Living With Giants: Human-Elephant Conflict And Poaching In Myanmar, Christie Lynn Sampson

All Dissertations

To address both the impacts of poaching on the wildlife and human populations and create effective conservation policy, conservation efforts must engage communities and include their views as stakeholders in the development of the policy. The involvement of local people has been shown to increase the effectiveness and sustainability of conservation efforts. However, to appropriately engage local people, the government and conservationists must understand their experiences with wildlife, and how local communities' experiences with human-wildlife conflict and poaching influence their willingness to support wildlife conservation programs. Using the Asian elephant as an example, we developed what we consider to be …

Plutonium In The Presence Of Natural Organic Ligands: Sorption Kinetics, Surface Complex Stability, And Subsurface Transport, Jennifer Christine Wong

All Dissertations

This work investigated aging of plutonium (Pu) on the surface of goethite, the effect of natural organic ligands on the enhancement of Pu desorption and mobility, and Pu transport in a natural soil. Because adsorption of Pu is frequently observed to be initially rapid followed by slower adsorption over days to weeks, Pu may undergo aging, where a surface process following initial adsorption causes a change in Pu state over time. Pu uptake which exhibits fast and slow sorption phases has been successfully modeled using a multisite model where sorbed Pu is represented as two compartments with different rates of …

The Clemson Ghost Tour: Disrupting Rhetorical Stagnation, Stephen Joseph Quigley

All Dissertations

How do we teach in sick places, physically and institutionally designed to exclude? Through activism? Through inquiry? Perhaps somewhere in-between? I argue that an understanding of rhetoric grounded in an early Greek understanding of space and place is of utmost importance to our students' ability to live among others in a more civil, just, and equitable society, a society that extends beyond physical spaces and places and into virtual ones. This dissertation explores our relationality through an ecological-ethical design approach that views writing and teaching not only as acts of disruption, but also as a means of attending to our …

Using Motion Perception To Improve The Nighttime Conspicuity Of Bicyclists At Street Crossings, Drea Kevin Fekety

All Dissertations

Recent literature indicates that active lighting, when strategically positioned, improves bicyclists' conspicuity at night. Road cyclists are unique among other vulnerable road users in two ways: 1) they can leverage their own biological human motion and mechanical bicycle motion when using conspicuity solutions; 2) their visual surface area shown to approaching traffic is greater when viewed from a right angle (i.e., 90 degrees) than from the front/rear. However, research has not yet identified how to utilize these factors to maximize conspicuity. This project investigated the conspicuity benefits of using various configurations of six LEDs on a cyclist's body and bicycle. …

Using Multinomial Regression To Examine The Mediating Effect Of Parental Knowledge About College Tuition On Postsecondary Attendance Expectations, Chuck Knepfle

All Dissertations

The purpose of the following paper is to utilize multinomial regression to study the effect of various demographic and family characteristic variables on both the parental expectations of future postsecondary degree attainment and the parental estimates of college costs. I also explore the effect of college cost estimates as a mediating factor on the parents' expectation of the students' degree attainment. There is significant existing research on college costs, affordability, financial aid, and educational attainment for the various demographic factors found in this study. The missing piece in both the literature and overall understanding of the problem lies in the …

Reducing Uncertainty In The Assessment Of Aging Effects On Soil Liquefaction, Barnabas Bwambale

All Dissertations

Uncertainties associated with the assessment of diagenesis or aging effects on soil liquefaction are investigated in this dissertation. Liquefaction-induced ground failure is a major cause of damage during earthquakes. Current liquefaction triggering evaluation procedures are primarily based on field case histories where liquefaction occurred in soil deposits that are less than a few thousand years old. Without correction for diagenesis, these evaluation procedures can provide excessively conservative predictions, often resulting in unnecessary and costly ground improvements in natural and older man-made soils. The assessment includes a comprehensive review of several field case histories indicating greater resistance to liquefaction in aged …

Kinetic Processes And Stable Isotopes In Cave Dripwaters As Indicators Of Winter Severity, Vasile Ersek, Bogdan P. Onac, Aurel Perșoiu

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

We examine how the stable isotope composition of meteoric water is transmitted through soil and epikarst to dripwaters in a cave in western Romania. δ²H and δ¹⁸O in precipitation at this site are influenced by temperature and moisture sources (Atlantic and Mediterranean), with lower δ¹⁸O in winter and higher in summer. The stable isotope composition of cave dripwaters mimics this seasonal pattern of low and high δ¹⁸O, but the onset and end of freezing conditions in the winter season are marked by sharp transitions in the isotopic signature of cave dripwaters of …

Biology Ii, Bio 1201, Course Outline, Tatiana Voza

Open Educational Resources

This course outline for Biology II includes resources for both students and instructors including the OpenStax Biology textbook, lecture schedule, lecture slides, labs, list of related resources and Interdisciplinary (ID) Biology II topics and assignments.

A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis Of Player Motivations And Problematic Involvement In Multiplayer Online Games: Exploring An Alternative Diagnostic Approach That Minimizes The Risk Of Pathologizing Healthy Gaming Behaviors, Casey O'Brien

Education Doctoral

More than 80 million people in the United States play online video games, and this prevalent form of entertainment has enabled players from various geographic settings to interact in highly complex and realistic virtual worlds. However, despite the popularity of online gaming and the evolution of a socially oriented culture, the rapid growth of the industry has raised concerns among parents, educators, clinicians, and the general public about the potential consequences of online gaming. The proposal to classify Internet gaming disorder as a behavioral addiction has produced considerable debate as to whether the classification is empirically justified. Evidence suggests that …

Conservation Of A Mid-19th Century Children’S Sofa, Daniel J. Kaping

Art Conservation Master's Projects

The conservation treatment of a small mid-19th century sofa with horsehair upholstery has been performed in this project, with the primary goals of: stabilization, reduction of visual disruption from damage, and detention of original material. This has involved utilizing fill materials and repairs where possible in contrast to traditional reupholstering techniques. Secondary to these goals, analysis and imaging have been performed in order to more closely understand the materials involved in the construction of the sofa, its intended purpose (likely as a child’s plaything), and in hopes of uncovering some of its history and origin. Analytical techniques such …

A Dual Examination Of Learning Through Pedagogical Training And Alzheimer's Disease Pathology, Donielle Breanna Hutchinson

Theses and Dissertations

Active learning strategies are important for facilitating deep learning that may be carried throughout life, but which is still finding its way into the college setting. Educators are not often trained in effective learning practices, which reduces the cognitive and proficiency gains of their students. By providing such guidance in the formative years of a teacher’s training, we hypothesize that the learning environment will be greatly enriched and enhanced. On the opposite end of the spectrum of life and cognition, the plague of dementia also warrants examination. Alzheimer’s disease (AD), an incurable neurodegenerative disorder progressing from the medial temporal lobe, …

Effect Of Differences In The Primary Structure Of The A-Chain On The Aggregation Of Insulin Fragments, Paul P. Nakka, Ke Li, Daniel Forciniti

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Bovine and human insulin have similar primary structures. In this article, the region of the insulin A-chain of bovine and human insulin where the amino acid composition is different was studied. Bovine insulin fragment (BIF) and human insulin fragment (HIF) were synthesized in solid-phase peptide synthesis. The effects of pH, temperature, urea, ionic strength, and stirring on the formation of fibrils were studied using a fractional factorial resolution III experimental design. Fibrillation was monitored by fluorescence and infrared spectroscopy and optical microscopy. Both fragments formed fibrils at pH 1.6 and a temperature of 60 °C. The lag time and apparent …

New Mediterranean Biodiversity Records (July 2018), N Chartosia, D Anastasiadis, H Bazairi, Et Al

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

In the present article, new records are given for 15 species (4 native and 9 alien and 2 cryptogenic), belonging to 6 Phyla (i.e. Chlorophyta, Ctenophora, Cnidaria, Mollusca, Arthropoda, and Chordata), from 10 Mediterranean countries: Morocco: the finding of the crab Callinectes sapidus represents the westernmost one of the species in the Mediterranean; Italy: first records of the nudibranch Polycera hedgpethi from the harbour of La Spezia, and first finding of the invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi in the Fiora River; Tunisia: Caulerpa taxifolia var. distichophylla is recorded for the first time, showing an even wider distribution in the Mediterranean; Greece: …

Cause Of Cambrian Explosion - Terrestrial Or Cosmic?, Edward J. Steele, Shirwan Al-Mufti, Kenneth A. Augustyn, Rohana Chandrajith, John P. Coghlan, S. G. Coulson, Et. Al.

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

We review the salient evidence consistent with or predicted by the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of Cometary (Cosmic) Biology. Much of this physical and biological evidence is multifactorial. One particular focus are the recent studies which date the emergence of the complex retroviruses of vertebrate lines at or just before the Cambrian Explosion of ∼500 Ma. Such viruses are known to be plausibly associated with major evolutionary genomic processes. We believe this coincidence is not fortuitous but is consistent with a key prediction of H-W theory whereby major extinction-diversification evolutionary boundaries coincide with virus-bearing cometary-bolide bombardment events. A second focus is …

Long-Term Focus Of Attentional Biases, Garrett Pollert

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Prior research regarding attentional biases, or patterns of visual attention, have focused on attention over the initial second when exposed to pictoral food stimuli. This manuscript reviews the literature regarding attentional biases in overweight/obese individuals over this timeframe for the two previously defined components of attentional bias (attentional orientation and attentional maintenance). A new component is proposed, called “attentional re-engagement,” defined as the pattern of attentional shifts towards target stimulus types over longer periods of time. Overweight/Obese and Normal-weighted participants were recruited and engaged in an Extended Dot Probe task, wherein attentional orientation, maintenance, and re-engagement were assessed using the …

Association Mapping And Genomic Selection For Yield And Agronomic Traits In Soft Winter Wheat, Dennis Bulusan Lozada

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tools such as genome-wide association study (GWAS) and genomic selection (GS) have expedited the development of crops with improved genetic potential. While GWAS aims to identify significant markers associated with a trait of interest, the goal of GS is to utilize all marker effects to predict the performance of new breeding lines prior to testing. A GWAS for grain yield (GY), yield components, and agronomic traits was conducted using a diverse panel of 239 soft winter wheat (SWW) lines evaluated in eight site-years in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Broad sense heritability of GY (H2=0.48) was moderate compared to other traits including …

Statistics Anxiety Towards Learning New Statistical Software, Shahd Saad Alnofaie

Theses

Based on previous research, statistics anxiety towards statistics were discussed. There is a study about anxiety and attitude of graduate students in on-campus vs. online statistics courses, and student attitude toward statistics. To date, no one has seemed to examine anxiety toward statistics with regard to use of coding vs. noncoding software. The purpose of this study was to know the level of anxiety towards learning new statistical software. Responses from seventy-nine graduate students who have or had classes in the Applied Statistics Division were collected. The survey made for this study had a Likert scale that included three categories …

Pubh 3130- Substance Use And Abuse (Net), Jamie S. Cromley

College of Public Health: Faculty Syllabi (2014-2021)

This course will explore legal and illegal drug use in modern society. Issues related to the social, cultural, political, economic impact of drug use will be addressed. The recurrent theme throughout the course will be on prevention. This will include discussions on the best ways to postpone the initiation of substance use and abuse among school aged persons as well as the cessation of use and treatment for abuse among adult populations. Substance use and its abuse effects ALL of us and does NOT discriminate on the basis of age, gender, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity or income.

Building Bigness: Reputation, Prominence, And Social Capital In Rural South India, Eleanor A. Power, Elspeth Ready

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Anthropologists have long been concerned with how reputations help people gain the support of others. Here, we study the support ties among adult residents of two Tamil villages, asking how reputational standing in each village mediates access to social support. We find that a reputation for influence has the weakest effect on support ties with others, while a reputation for generosity has the strongest. Further, a reputation for influence is not associated with greater connections to people of “high position” outside the village. Given the weak effects of a reputation for influence, we turn to a network measure of social …