Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Curatorial Implications Of Ophyra Capensis (Order Diptera, Family Muscidae) Puparia Recovered From The Body Of The Blessed Antonio Patrizi, Monticiano, Italy (Middle Ages), Johnica J. Morrow, Diesel A. Baldwin, Leon G. Higley, Dario Piombino-Mascali, Karl J. Reinhard

Karl Reinhard Publications

The discovery of dipteran remains on mummified individuals can lead to either cause for curatorial concern or to a better understanding of the individual’s post-mortem environment. The present study analyzed insect remains associated with the body of a unique medieval mummy of religious significance, that of the Blessed Antonio Patrizi da Monticiano. A total of 79 puparia were examined and all were identified as Ophyra capensis (Diptera: Muscidae). Additionally, a desiccated moth (Lepidoptera: Tineidae) was encountered. Puparia of O. capensis would be associated with normal decomposition shortly after the death of the mummified individual, and not an infestation beginning during …

56 | Gamla Iii: The Shmarya Gutmann Excavations 1976–1989: Finds And Studies, Part 1, Danny Syon

IAA Reports—Monograph Series of the Israel Antiquities Authority

This volume is Part 1 of the publication of the finds from Gamla. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the history of Gamla and a background for the many rich finds. This first volume presents the finds related to the Jewish War and the coins, a prime chronological indicator. Part 2 (IAA Reports 59) presents the many other finds.

57 | Caesarea Maritima, Volume I: Herod’S Circus And Related Buildings, Part 2: The Finds, Yosef Porath

IAA Reports—Monograph Series of the Israel Antiquities Authority

This is Part 2 of Volume I in a series of final reports of the IAA Excavation Project at Caesarea (1992–1998), the renowned ancient city built by King Herod. Volume 1: Part 2 presents the pottery, coins and glass finds from excavations in Herod’s Circus.

Similarities And Differences Between Heterosexual And Homosexual Couples Based On Marq Data, Kraig S. Shattuck

Wayne State University Theses

There has been a lack of comparative research on homosexual couples, comparing them to heterosexual couples, which is also grounded in solid theory. In order to remedy this, evolutionary theory is used to make predictions on similarities and differences between heterosexual and homosexual couples within three domains, relationship satisfaction, jealousy, and mate guarding. It was predicted that 1) homosexual couples would not differ from heterosexual couples in relationship satisfaction; 2) some gender differences relating to jealousy would be the same and some would be reversed in homosexual individuals; 3) mate guarding would be present, but lower, in homosexual individuals as …

Acoustic Cues Of Physical Formidability In Cage Fighters, Stefan Mattias-Maria Goetz

Wayne State University Theses

Across the animal kingdom, the sex that experiences the most reproductive variance tends to evolve sexually dimorphic traits—both behavioral and morphological—which aid in reproduction. Human evolution has been marked by greater male intrasexual selection and as a result, men display a variety of secondary sexual characteristics, putatively serving to enhance biological fitness. Among these, fundamental frequency, closely related to perception of pitch, among men is half that of women. Likewise, monotonicity, that is, variance in pitch across an utterance, is higher in men (i.e., women show greater variance in pitch) while formant dispersion, which gives the voice its timbre, is …

Science 108-002h Essentials Of Forensic Science Hybrid Fall 2015, Sybil Anderson

General Science

No abstract provided.

Coastal Environmental Policies And Water: Environmental Values In Ghana And Senegal, Molly R. Loftus

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis provides a comparative analysis of the environmental values present in Ghana’s and Senegal’s coastal regions, and the implications that those have for the surrounding environment. The countries approaches to urban farming, mining and oil and gas extraction, fishing, marine debris and municipal waste management are assessed in order to reach a greater understanding of these environmental issues. In undertaking this thesis, I attempted to draw a correlation between the handling of these issues and how people perceive their environment. Through the comparison of environmental degradation and the level of effort to achieve a more sustainable developmental framework in …

Reducing Subjectivity: Meditation And Implicit Bias, Diana M. Ciuca

CMC Senior Theses

Implicit association of racial stereotypes is brought about by social conditioning (Greenwald & Krieger, 2006). This conditioning can be explained by attractor networks (Sharp, 2011). Reducing implicit bias through meditation can show the effectiveness of reducing the rigidity of attractor networks, thereby reducing subjectivity. Mindfulness meditation has shown to reduce bias from the use of one single guided session conducted before performing an Implicit Association Test (Lueke & Gibson, 2015). Attachment to socially conditioned racial bias should become less prevalent through practicing meditation over time. An experimental model is proposed to test this claim along with a reconceptualization of consciousness …

Knowledge-Driven Personalized Contextual Mhealth Service For Asthma Management In Children, Pramod Anantharam, Tanvi Banerjee, Amit P. Sheth, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Surendra Marupudi, Vaikunth Sridharan

Kno.e.sis Publications

Wide adoption of smartphones and availability of low-cost sensors has resulted in seamless and continuous monitoring of physiology, environment, and public health notifications. However, personalized digital health and patient empowerment can become a reality only if the complex multisensory and multimodal data is processed within the patient context. Contextual processing of patient data along with personalized medical knowledge can lead to actionable information for better and timely decisions. We present a system called kHealth capable of aggregating multisensory and multimodal data from sensors (passive sensing) and answers to questionnaire (active sensing) from patients with asthma. We present our preliminary data …

Using Ehrs For Heart Failure Therapy Recommendation Using Multidimensional Patient Similarity Analytics, Maryam Panahiazar, Vahid Taslimitehrani, Naveen L. Pereira, Jyotishman Pathak

Kno.e.sis Publications

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) contain a wealth of information about an individual patient’s diagnosis, treatment and health outcomes. This information can be leveraged effectively to identify patients who are similar to each for disease diagnosis and prognosis. In recent years, several machine learning methods 1 have been proposed to assessing patient similarity, although the techniques have primarily focused on the use of patient diagnoses data from EHRs for the learning task. In this study, we develop a multidimensional patient similarity assessment technique that leverages multiple types of information from the EHR and predicts a medication plan for each new patient …

High Power Pulsed Terahertz Light Generation From Superconducting Antenna Arrays, Nicholas C. Padgett, Stephanie R. Lake, Jason A. Deibel, T. Bullard, D. Latypov, J. Patel, J. Murphy, J. Bulmer, W. Tang, M. Sebastian, Timothy J. Haugan

Celebration of Undergraduate & Graduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Materials

Terahertz radiation is invaluable in spectroscopy and imaging due to its nondestructive nature. It has become a key focus for those wishing to develop sensors capable of detecting weapons and narcotics unobtrusively and at a distance. An ultrafast pulsed (femtoseconds) laser incident on a superconducting ring causes the emission of terahertz (THz) radiation. It is theorized that the radiation is a result of the supercurrent being modulated by the breaking and recombining of Cooper pairs on the order of picoseconds, where the time scale determines the frequency of the emitted radiation. We propose to investigate the terahertz emission from Yttrium …

Pericyte Nf-Κb Activation Enhances Endothelial Cell Proliferation And Proangiogenic Cytokine Secretion In Vitro, Katherine E. Labarbera, Robert D. Hyldahl, Kevin S. O'Fallon, Priscilla M. Clarkson, Sarah Witkowski

Exercise and Sport Studies: Faculty Publications

Pericytes are skeletal muscle resident, multipotent stem cells that are localized to the microvasculature. In vivo, studies have shown that they respond to damage through activation of nuclear-factor kappa-B (NF-κB), but the downstream effects of NF-κB activation on endothelial cell proliferation and cell– cell signaling during repair remain unknown. The purpose of this study was to examine pericyte NF-κB activation in a model of skeletal muscle damage; and use genetic manipulation to study the effects of changes in pericyte NF-κB activation on endothelial cell proliferation and cytokine secretion. We utilized scratch injury to C2C12 cells in coculture with human primary …

An Economic Analysis Of High-Intensity, Short-Duration Grazing Systems In South Dakota And Nebraska, Larry Janssen, Bronc Mcmurtry, Matthew Stockton, Alexander Smart, Sharon A. Clay

Agronomy, Horticulture and Plant Science Faculty Publications

Four different grazing systems: two rotational systems, a continuous grazing system, and a modified high-intensity, short-duration (mob) system were evaluated from an economic return and risk perspective. Stocking rates and average daily gains (ADG) were obtained from 2011 – 2014 from university ranch experiments in northern Nebraska. Simulation models were used to examine net returns and risk in each system and rank systems according to risk preferences. A twice through rotational grazing system was most profitable. Mob grazing was the least preferred, although when risk aversion increased, it rose in preference. Mob grazing could be profitable if adjustments increased animal …

Behavior Of Pollinators That Share Two Co-Flowering Wetland Plant Species, Joshua R. Morris

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Abstract:

Intermixed, co-flowering plant species often attract the same pollinators and may therefore compete for pollinator visits. Mimulus ringens and Verbena hastata are sympatric wetland plants that flower in synchrony and share many pollinators, the most common being bumblebees. The possibility of competition between these two plant species led to this observational study tracking pollinator movements in an area intermixed with both M. ringens and V. hastata. We identified pollinator species and tracked them as they visited flowers and moved from plant to plant. Smaller bees seemed to prefer the smaller flowers present on the V. hastata, and …

Michigan Academician, Volume 42, Issue 1

Michigan Academician

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between Vagal Tone, A Marker Of Parasympathetic Activity, And Pro-Social Behavior, Emily A. Goodlin

Scripps Senior Theses

Vagal tone, a measure of parasympathetic activity via the vagus nerve, is known to be associated with positive emotion because it promotes social engagement and self-soothing behavior. Heart rate variability (HRV), especially high frequency oscillation, is a direct measure of vagal tone, and has been used in previous studies to test the correlation between vagal tone and positive emotion. This study aims to determine if the two major oscillations of heart rate variability, high frequency (HF-HRV) and low frequency (LF-HRV) can predict pro-social behavior, which is classified as giving donations to charities. Baseline LF- and HF-HRV levels were recorded, and …

Javan Gibbon (Hylobates Moloch) Non-Vocal Social Communication And Gesture Use With Conspecifics, Melanie Bell

All Master's Theses

I explored gestures used by captive Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch) at the Gibbon Conservation Center (Santa Clarita, CA). I hypothesized that a sender gibbon’s gesture modality would vary with the recipient gibbon’s attentional state and the sender would be equally likely to use all modalities (tactile, visual, actions, and facial expressions) when the recipient was attending (facing the sender), but would use more tactile gestures and actions when the recipient was non-attending (oriented away from the sender). I collected data from 10 individuals using all-occurrences sampling and an ethogram to score behaviors from video recordings. In 1,143 interactions, …

Female Social Connectivity Through The Leadership And Movement Progression Of Tibetan Macaques At Mt. Huangshan, China, Gregory P. Fratellone

All Master's Theses

The present study investigates the leadership and progression of collective movements of Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana) found in Mt. Huangshan, China. I gathered information on their movements and social networks through all-occurrence, focal and scan sampling. I hypothesize that high-ranking females lead more collective movements than males as they have highly structured social bonds. I also predict that movements weighted by female presence are more efficient as societies are matrilineally structured and females are more socially connected. There were a total of 128 successful collective movements recorded over a 2-month period. There was no significant effect of sex, …

A Comparison Of Chimpanzee (Pan Troglodytes) Responses To Caregiver Use Of Positive Reinforcement Training (Prt) And Species-Specific Behaviors (Ssb), Whitney D. Emge

All Master's Theses

The present study compared the effects of positive reinforcement training (PRT) and unstructured interactions (UI) on chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) behavior. In the PRT condition, a caregiver interacted with a chimpanzee to condition behaviors for 10 min. In the UI condition, a caregiver interacted without PRT for 10 min. Participants were five chimpanzees in a sanctuary setting. Chimpanzees were also videotaped for 10 min after trials (PTP) and for 10 min in a matched control (MC) period on a different day. From these videotapes experimenters coded chimpanzee behaviors and calculated durations in behavioral contexts. Chimpanzees spent a significantly higher …

Influence Of Landscape On Gene Differentiation In The American Pika (Ochotona Princeps) Within The Interstate 90 Snoqualmie Pass Corridor, Craig P. Fergus

All Master's Theses

Understanding the impact of different landscape features on the movement of genes among populations can be helpful in managing wildlife populations. Our study used GIS tools to compare genetic connectivity among 13 American pika (Ochotona princeps) habitat patches across an approximately 77 square km area adjacent to Interstate 90 near Snoqualmie Pass, WA. Tissue samples were collected from 85 individuals and genotyped at six microsatellite loci to determine genetic differentiation among each pair of patches. A variety of models estimating the influence of landscape factors on gene flow were then used to find “resistance scores” between each pair …

Electrophysiological And Behavioral Working Memory Differences Between Musicians And Non-Musicians, Benjamin P. Richardson

All Master's Theses

The current study examines the P300 brainwave and working memory differences between musicians and non-musicians. Differences in aspects of recorded electrical brain activity have been used to quantify differences in updating processes of working memory possibly related to differences in amount of music experience. The current study is designed to partially replicate and enhance a method previously implemented in research describing how music experience may be associated with differences in visual processing as well auditory working memory and executive function. Behavioral data were collected using six standardized subtest measures of the TOMAL – II, followed by ERP recordings during a …

Behavioral Response Of Pacific Lamprey (Entosphenus Tridentatus) To Predator Odors, Laurie L. Porter

All Master's Theses

Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus), a species facing serious threats to their existence, experience a number of challenges in reaching their desired spawning grounds during the adult migratory phase, and predators are suspected to be one of these challenges. Understanding if Pacific lamprey respond to predator odorants may provide a management tool for use in conjunction with attractants in guiding lamprey to suitable spawning habitat and deterring them from poor habitat. Previous research has failed to explore Pacific lamprey response to predator odorants, although much research exists on attractant odorants. In our study, we tested Pacific lamprey response to …

Provisioning And Its Effects On The Social Interactions Of Tibetan Macaques (Macaca Thibetana) At Mt. Huangshan, China, Brianna I. Schnepel

All Master's Theses

The dispersal patterns of food resources has a significant effect on the composition of primate groups and social interactions within those groups. Humans often alter the dispersal of food. Non-humans often use affiliative behaviors to elicit tolerance or support from other group members. I investigated whether provisioned food resources alter the social interactions and group dynamics of Macaca thibetana. All-occurrence sampling and scan sampling were used for data recorded by camera traps. Trail-cameras were placed at six locations that contain natural and human food resources and recorded 60-second videos. Social behavior and proximity of the monkeys were recorded. I …

Effects Of Partner Familiarity On Conversational Style In Signed-Interactions With Chimpanzees, Susan Ann Keenan

All Master's Theses

Chimpanzees that use signs of American Sign Language (ASL) sign to friends and strangers, both human and nonhuman. Transcripts of signed conversations between four chimpanzees and 43 human interlocutors within a 4 min trial were analyzed for their style including lexical diversity. Twenty-two of the interlocutors were familiar to the chimpanzees, 21 were strangers, and all had basic or more know ledge of ASL. Overall, familiar signers used more vocabulary and had more conversations than unfamiliar signers. The two groups had 53 vocabulary signs in common. Only one chimpanzee, Loulis, participated in enough trials and in both conditions to elicit …

Saffron Cod (Eleginus Gracilis) In North Pacific Archaeology, Megan A. Partlow, Eric Munk

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Saffron cod (Eleginus gracilis) is a marine species often found in shallow, brackish water in the Bering Sea, although it can occur as far southeast as Sitka, Alaska. Recently, we identified saffron cod remains in two ca. 500-year-old Afognak Island midden assemblages from the Kodiak Archipelago. We developed regression formulae to relate bone measurements to total length using thirty-five modern saffron cod specimens. The archaeological saffron cod remains appear to be from mature adults, measuring 22–45 cm in total length, and likely caught from shore during spawning. Saffron cod may have been an important winter resource for Alutiiq people living …

Energetic Costs Of Aggression In The Northern Cardinal, Sarah K. Wright

Honors Program Theses

Territorial aggression during the nonbreeding season has not been sufficiently studied, especially in a natural system. There has been some evidence to suggest that the steroid hormone precursor, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) may regulate male aggression during the nonbreeding season, rather than testosterone. This study aimed to investigate the effects of energy status (through food supplementation) on nonbreeding aggression in the Northern Cardinal and add to the pre-existing evidence of a DHEA-mediated mechanism of aggression. It was hypothesized that if aggression was maintained for an extended period of time, metabolite levels would favor energy usage (more glycerol and less triglycerides) compared to …

Obesity-Related Behaviors Among Poor Adolescents And Young Adults: Is Social Position Associated With Risk Behaviors?, Miranda Lucia Ritterman Weintraub, Lia C. Fernald, Elizabeth Goodman, Sylvia Guendelman, Nancy E. Adler

This cross-sectional study examines multiple dimensions of social position in relation to obesity-related behaviors in an adolescent and young adult population. In addition to using conventional measures of social position, including parental education and household expenditures, we explore the usefulness of three youth-specific measures of social position – community and society subjective social status and school dropout status. Data are taken from a 2004 house-to-house survey of urban households within the bottom 20th percentile of income distribution within seven states in Mexico. A total of 5,321 Mexican adolescents, aged 12–22 years, provided information on obesity-related behaviors (e.g., diet, physical activity, …

What Are The Possible Causes For Autism Spectrum Disorder?, Rochel Preiserowicz

The Science Journal of the Lander College of Arts and Sciences

Ever since the mid 1980’s when Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) started to become increasingly prevalent, researchers have been trying to find a possible cause for it. Autism Spectrum Disorder is a developmental disorder that manifests itself in children who are between 18-30 months old. People with autism have reduced social skills, and they have a difficult time communicating verbally and non-verbally. Autism is diagnosed through a questionnaire and other instruments that allow psychologists, psychiatrists, speech therapists, neurologists and many other doctors to determine if a child has a form of ASD. There are many theories about what causes autism. It …

A Basic Guide For Empirical Environmental Social Science, Michael Cox

Dartmouth Scholarship

In this paper, I address a gap in the literature on environmental social science by providing a basic rubric for the conduct of empirical research in this interdisciplinary field. Current literature displays a healthy diversity of methods and techniques, but this has also been accompanied by a lack of consistency in the way in which research in this area is done. In part this can be seen as resulting from a lack in supporting texts that would provide a basis for this consistency. Although relevant methods texts do exist, these are not written with this type of research explicitly in …

Assessing Computer Vision Syndrome Risk For Pilots, Curt Mowry, David C. Ison

Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research

The purpose of this study was to determine if pilots are at risk for computer vision syndrome (CVS) as computer display technology becomes commonplace in modern cockpits and simulators. A review of computer vision syndrome respect to causes and effects is provided. Display technology used in aircraft and simulators are outlined. Ergonomics and human factors for pilots in aircraft and in simulators are discussed in relation to video displays. A survey of 178 individuals was conducted to determine if there is a statistically significant link between exposure to computer displays and three categories of symptoms of CVS on the flight …