Digital Commons Network^™

Resident Perceptions Of Human–Beaver Conflict In A Rural Landscape In Alberta, Canada, Nicholas T. Yarmey, Glynnis A. Hood

Human–Wildlife Interactions

The North American beaver (Castor canadensis) plays a key ecological role in wetland systems, yet their activities can result in costly damage to human infrastructure. Although qualitative research on human perceptions of beavers is rare, studies on human–beaver conflict in the United States identified generally positive attitudes toward beavers and opposition to lethal management, yet in Alberta, Canada, 79% of municipalities that managed beavers reported using trapping and shooting to remove problem beavers. Given the important ecological contributions of beavers and their potential conflict with humans, qualitative research is needed to assess perspectives of stakeholders who directly experience …

Viewing Bornean Human–Elephant Conflicts Through An Environmental Justice Lens, Elena C. Rubino, Christopher Serenari, Nurzhafarina Othman, Marc Ancrenaz, Fauzie Sarjono, Eddie Ahmad

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Sabah, on the northeastern corner of Borneo, is concurrently Malaysia’s largest producer of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) and home to the endangered Bornean elephants (Elephas maximus borneensis; elephants). Concomitantly, Sabah has been experiencing increasing and unsustainable human–elephant conflicts (HECs), which have not been thoroughly investigated from a human dimensions standpoint. To address this void, in March 2019, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 37 villagers located in the Sabah districts of Lahad Datu, Tawau, and Telupid to investigate villager cognitions regarding elephants, behaviors toward elephants, the formal and informal village institutions employed to mediate HECs, and the …

The Coloniality Of Disaster: Race, Empire, And The Temporal Logics Of Emergency In Puerto Rico, Usa, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

This essay uses the case of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico to discuss “the coloniality of disaster”: how catastrophic events like hurricanes, earthquakes, but also other forms political and economic crisis deepen the fault lines of long-existing racial and colonial histories. It argues that disaster capitalism needs to be understood as a form of racio-colonial capitalism and that this in turn requires us to question our understandings of both “resilience” and “recovery.” The article focuses on the “wait of disaster” as a temporal logic of state subjugation and on how Puerto Ricans responded to state abandonment through modes of autogesti� …

How Athletic Trainers Use Goal Setting With Injured Athletes, Jenna Wing

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to identify if current Certified Athletic Trainers (ATCs) understand the importance of consistent use of sport psychology, specifically goal setting, in the athletic training room with injured athletes. Participants (n = 77) were current ATCs who have been certified by the Board of Certification (BOC), who had proper licensure in their designated districts, and were members of the National Athletic Trainers Association (NATA). A questionnaire was created to assess the frequency with which they used goal setting, how important and effective they feel goal setting is, and how prepared they feel to use …

They Decided To Graduate: A Study Of Collegiate African American Men’S Transformational Experiences In College And Beyond, Kathy Marie Freeman

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This is a study of African American men alumni who were members of a Black Male Initiative (BMI) organization at a predominantly white institution (PWI) in the Midwest. The research explores the motivation and transformational experiences of BMI alumni and how their participation in the organization provided the support and motivation they needed to persist and graduate. Self-determination theory and transformational learning theory formed the theoretical frameworks that inform this study. This qualitative study obtained data from 10 African American men by using a 60-90 minute in-depth interview structure with 10 open-ended questions. This dissertation builds on the growing literature …

Burning With Potential: Understanding The Relationship Between Biochar And Agriculture Of The Northern Glaciated Plains Ecoregion, Kaitlyn Abrahamson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Achieving global sustainable agriculture is one of the most incredible challenges of this century, yet many continue to try to solve this problem through the development of precision technologies. Biotechnologies, such as biochar, can perform like a precision technology while protecting agricultural land from soil erosion and fertility loss. The Northern Glaciated Plains ecoregion of the United States is little researched in the benefits from the use of biochar through improved soil nutrient capture and water retention, crop health improvements, and yield increases. The study plot has four sections of corn stover biochar and eight sections of control sections. This …

Flooding The Cities: How Land Use Policies Contribute To Climate Gentrification, Rakiah Bonjour

Seton Hall Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Open-Mindedness Is An Achievement: Prototyping A New Threshold Concept For Information Literacy, Mark N. Lenker Iii

Library Faculty Presentations

Open-mindedness is an achievement, not a trait that one has by default. It requires careful attention to the best available evidence and argument on a question. It finds its fullest expression in the context of a loving pursuit of truth.

Let’S Try This Again, Separate Educational Facilities Are Inherently Unequal: Why Minnesota Should Issue A Desegregation Order And Define Adequacy In Cruz-Guzman V. State, Christie Geter

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Carbon-Dioxide Pipeline Infrastructure Route Optimization And Network Modeling For Carbon Capture Storage And Utilization, Karthik Balaji

Theses and Dissertations

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is a technology value-chain which can help reduce CO2 emissions while ensuring sustainable development of the energy and industrial sectors. However, CCUS requires large-scale deployment of infrastructure for capturing feasible amounts of CO2 that can be capital intensive for stakeholders. In addition, CCUS deployment leads to the development of extensive pipeline corridors, which can be inconsistent with the requirements for future CCUS infrastructure expansion. With the implementation and growth of CCUS technology in the states of North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah in mind, this dissertation has two major goals: (a) to identify …

Biophysical And Socioeconomic Impacts Of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration In Burkina Faso, Basnewende Brice Fulgence Zoungrana

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human actions such as overgrazing, the development of cities at the expense of forests, high intensity and poor agricultural management, and so forth, reduce the resources available for future generations. Because Earth has limited resources, it is important to judiciously use and manage natural resources. Human actions towards nature are the focus of my research in Africa. Increased demands for grazing, agriculture, and ecosystem services led some farmers in developing countries to use unsustainable practices, which may lead to low incomes and poor food nutrition for households. Farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) may be a solution to these issues. FMNR …

Personal Epistemological Beliefs And Teaching Practices: A Case Study Of Three High School History Teachers, Monica Boehle

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This study explored the personal epistemological beliefs of three veteran secondary-level history teachers concerning the teaching of history, how students learn history, how those beliefs are enacted, and the congruence of those beliefs with teaching practices. Using a qualitative approach, data were gathered through the Beliefs about History Questionnaire, observational data, and in-depth teacher interviews including a think-aloud and video-based interview. Personal epistemological beliefs and historical reasoning provided frameworks to examine the description of beliefs and congruence of those beliefs in instructional practices.

The findings show that the teachers’ personal epistemological beliefs were shaped by their own experiences as learners …

Synchrony: An Aspect Of The Abilities Of Steppe Horse Archers In Eurasian Warfare (525 Bce – 1350 Ce), Chris Hanson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Animals moving in unison as a group are quite intriguing to observe. Horses can run across terrain and change directions without jostling each other. They appear to move as if they know how to avoid crashing into others and run fluidly through their environment. This ability to maneuver without hindering herd is called synchrony and also extends to other animals including fish in schools and birds in flocks. Humans, on the other hand, need to create orderly formations in battle to move without interfering with adjacent warriors. For example, the Romans, Greeks, Persians, Chinese, and Byzantines trained their infantry and …

Measuring Development Across The Rural Urban Continuum In The United States Northern Rocky Mountain Region, Morgan E. Anderson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In recent years, the U.S. Northern Rocky Mountain Region has undergone a broad shift in landscape resulting in previously working agricultural, forestry, or other natural resource-based lands transitioning into residential and commercial development. Sprawl, exurban development, loss of crop and forest land have been identified as development concerns in the region. The region is unique because it is generally comprised of smaller metropolitan and micropolitan centers and highly dispersed rural towns making haphazard development issues a concern across the rural‑urban continuum. To identify and describe shifts in development patterns from 2001 to 2016, structural landscape metrics were used to measure …

Comparing Fence Modeling And Mapping Approaches To Support Wildlife Management And Research In Southwest Montana, Simon Albert Buzzard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Fences pose significant challenges to wildlife movement, but their effects are difficult to quantify because fence location and fence type data are lacking on a global scale. We developed a fence location and density model in southwest Montana, USA to provide data to researchers and managers, and test whether previous models could be applied to a new region and retain suitable levels of statistical accuracy. Our model used local expert opinion to inform how road, land cover, and ownership spatial layers interacted to predict fence locations. We validated the model against fence data collected on random 3.2 km road transects …

Host-Parasite Interactions: Comparative Analyses Of Population Genomics, Disease-Associated Genomic Regions, And Host Use, Sara Rose Seibert

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Birds are major vectors and reservoir hosts of pathogens across our globe. Pathogens can be spread through the dispersal and seasonal movements of migratory and resident wild birds. Although biogeographic barriers have the potential to restrict completely or in part gene flow in wild birds, variation in ecological drivers of dispersal likely influences the effectiveness of these barriers amongst different species. This dissertation seeks to enhance our knowledge of Southern Hemisphere waterfowl species’ dispersal, population genomics, and disease ecology using population genomic techniques (double-digest restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (ddRADseq)) and multi-variate statistics. First, we investigated the roles of dispersal behavior …

Faithless Or Faithful Electors? An Analogy To Disobedient But Conscientious Jurors, Jeffrey Abramson

Emory Law Journal Online

Do delegates to the Electoral College have any discretion in how they vote for President or Vice President? Two pending cases call upon the Supreme Court to answer this question. This Essay draws a comparison between disobedient jurors and so-called “faithless” electors. Both jurors and electors make a pledge to follow their instructions. However, we do not punish jurors who violate their oaths in order to discharge their duty as they see fit. We do not even call them “faithless.” We call them conscientious. This Essay explores whether electors are another example of government actors who are bound by an …

Open Communities And Formal Organizations: A Symbiosis View, Tanner Skousen, Hani Safadi, Richard Watson

Faculty Publications

How can formal organizations and open communities engage in mutually beneficial relationships? We develop a framework that explains how an open community’s engagement with a formal organization can be mutually beneficial to both in the long-term. We theorize how a symbiotic relationship between open communities and formal organizations can be forged by nurturing various forms of capital flow between them as well as creating virtuous feedback loops within and across each other’s capital creation systems. The framework has implications for understanding innovation in ecosystems and networked economies.

Effect Of Patient-Level Characteristics On Fluoroquinolone Susceptibility, Jeffrey Alan Franks

All ETDs from UAB

Antimicrobial stewardship programs are becoming more widespread to combat antibiotic resistance. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of patient-level characteristics on fluoroquinolone susceptibly among five gram-negative isolates to help better their implementation. We performed a retrospective analysis of patients over the age of 18 for five gram-negative isolates (Acinetobacter species, Enterobacter cloacae, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa). We utilized Cox proportional hazards to determine the risk of patient-level characteristics, for both hospital and community-acquired infections, on fluoroquinolone resistance between 2016 and 2019. The population sample consisted of 8,285 patients receiving fluoroquinolones for at least one of the …

Early Childhood Quality Of Education And Late-Life Cognitive Function In A Population-Based Sample From Puerto Rico, Cheyanne Celine Barba

All ETDs from UAB

In general, greater years of education is associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment in older adulthood, but the strength of this association has been found to differ by study population. Additionally, quality of education is understudied, despite evidence that quality of education and, in turn, literacy, may be additional indicators of cognitive reserve. This thesis examined years of education, literacy, and childhood quality of education indicators in relation to late-life cognitive outcomes in an older Puerto Rican population. We hypothesized that greater years of education, literacy, and quality of childhood education would be positively associated with each other, as …

Developing High School Students' Historical Empathy Skills Using Historical Dialogues: A Qualitative Study, Nefertari Yancie

All ETDs from UAB

This qualitative case study explored how perspective writing, in the form of historical dialogues, had the potential to help high school students in an urban school develop historical empathy skills. The study took place in an 11th grade United States history class where three types of data, interviews with the teacher, observation field notes, and student work, were collected over one school semester. Findings indicate that when presented with counter-narratives that introduce the experiences of groups that have been historically marginalized through U.S. history, students are more easily able to make personal connections and empathize with people from the past. …

Investigation Of Landslide-Induced Tsunami Generation And Propagation Through Numerical Modeling, Lauren Schambach

Open Access Dissertations

This body of work consists of three manuscripts regarding numerical modeling of landslide-induced tsunamis.

Landslide Tsunami Hazard Along the Upper US East Coast: Effects of Slide Deformation, Bottom Friction, and Frequency Dispersion

Numerical simulations of Submarine Mass Failures (SMFs) are performed along the upper US East Coast to assess the effect of slide deformation on predicted tsunami hazard. Tsunami generation is simulated using the three-dimensional nonhydrostatic model NHWAVE. For rigid slumps, the geometry and law of motion are specified as bottom boundary conditions. Deforming slide motion is modeled using a depth-integrated bottom layer of dense Newtonian fluid, fully coupled to …

The Language Flagship Program And Multilingualism In Overseas Language Immersion, Samuel Eisen

Russian Language Journal

The relocation of the overseas Arabic and Russian Language Flagship programs to Morocco and Kazakhstan created challenges and also opportunities for advanced students of Arabic and Russian to develop greater intercultural understanding as they negotiate the cultural underpinnings of these multilingual environments. These students will bring in more nuanced understanding of complex international environments as they move into positions in government or other international fields. The Language Flagship program is designed to meet the need for professional language proficiency and intercultural skill in federal service. In both Morocco and Kazakhstan, the local language is undergoing revitalization while the post-colonial language …

Financial Development In Developing Countries, Obinna Franklin Ezeibekwe

Masters Theses

What are the economic, political, institutional, socio-cultural, and geographical determinants of financial development in developing countries? This paper uses the two-way fixed effects (with clustered standard errors) and annual panel data from 1980 to 2018 for 69 developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, East and South Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean to address this question. The principal component analysis is employed to construct a financial development index based on three financial development indicators. This study builds on previous studies by introducing new potential determinants of financial development, such as the perception of corruption, and by …

Storytelling, Spoon-Feeding, And Traditions: Teaching Art History Better, Gay Sweely

Pedagogicon Conference Proceedings

As an art historian, it is increasingly hard to teach art history to students who have no background or interest in history. This paper definitely does not criticize my university or my state’s educational practices, but I believe that teaching history is very important to all of our students as citizens. I was educated in, have taught in three countries, and have published in four countries. That said, in the past 20 years, it has become more and more difficult to teach the history of art, artists, and stylistic movements. Why? The majority of my students lack any background or …

The Labour Of Austerity: Absurdity, Performative Resistance, And Cultural Transformation, Nora Almeida

Publications and Research

This essay explores the social-psychic toll of prolonged austerity on academic librarians and the range of strategies that have (or could) serve as tools of resistance. Using a combination of theoretical analysis and autoethnography, I examine the emotional impact of bottomless and invisible labour imposed by austerity and the ways institutions use emotional coercion to promote self-surveillance, meta-work, and hyper-productivity. Following this analysis, I discuss the ways that oppressive institutional cultures silence dissent and absorb common resistance tactics advocated by educators. Finally, I introduce several examples of performance-based resistance projects and explore how creative, personal, and absurd forms of protest …

The Effect Of Spacing Of Vetiver Grass (Chrysopogon Zizanioides) Hedgerows On Hillslope Erosion In Eastern Region, Ghana, Evan R. Lanese

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Soil erosion in Ghana negatively effects many small holder farmers due to heavy rainfall, continuous land use, and a changing climate. Inexpensive, local, and sustainable practices that can be used to reduce soil movement thus building productive soils would benefit farmers in Ghana. Vetiver grass (Chrysopogon zizanioides) has been used to this effect worldwide. Its local availability and positive reputation leaves desire to learn about its applicability in Ghana. A field study was conducted on plots of sloping farmland (10ft by 60ft) with three treatments: (1) control with no vetiver grass, (2) two vetiver grass hedgerows, (3) four …

Jacob A. Riis: The Ideal American Citizen, Flemming Just

The Bridge

At his death in 1914, Jacob A. Riis was one of the US's best-known and most admired citizens, who had been able to effect more social change than most of his peers. President Theodore Roosevelt had earlier declared Riis to be "the most useful citizen of New York," and now called him "the ideal American citizen." In one of many obituaries of Riis we read:

Denmark gave him to us, and if we gave Denmark millions in return, we could not pay her for what Riis did for us and for what Riis inspired us to do. He landed in …

Twenty Years Of The Religious Educator, Brad Wilcox, Timothy G. Morrison

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Where were you twenty years ago? That was before the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the heightened airport security that followed. Do you remember when the vote between George W. Bush and Al Gore dangled on a few hanging chads in Florida? President Gordon B. Hinckley was the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2000 and dedicated the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. Faith Hill was singing “Breathe,” and the Yankees beat the Mets in the 2000 World Series. The Sixth Sense was an Oscar-nominated movie that had us on the edge of our …

The Isaiah Map: An Approach To Teaching Isaiah, John Hilton Iii

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Isaiah is an extremely important prophet—his words were endorsed by the Savior himself (see 3 Nephi 23:1). Because Isaiah’s words can be difficult to comprehend, religious educators have a significant responsibility to help their students understand them. Perhaps the best opportunity to teach Isaiah in a Sunday School, seminary, or institute setting is during a course in the Old Testament. The next best opportunity is when teaching the Book of Mormon. “Nineteen of Isaiah’s sixty-six chapters are quoted in their entirety in the Book of Mormon and, except for two verses, two other chapters are completely quoted. Of the 1,292 …