Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Relationship Between University Student Characteristics And Water Conservation Behaviors, Matthew A. Wise

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water over-consumption is a critical issue due to it being a mismanaged, and virtually finite, natural resource. In order to convey this information to the public and promote change, it is important to understand the public’s current attitude towards the topic in order to develop more targeted teaching approaches. The purpose of this study was to determine college-age students’ perceptions about water resource usage, their personal levels of active engagement in water conservation, and if any differences existed between agriculture students and non-agriculture students. This study utilized an online quantitative survey, guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior, which was …

College Of Natural Sciences Newsletter, July 2020, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Volume 1. Issue 6

Contents:

Dean’s Update P.1
Awards & Recognition P.2
Interest in Science | Updates P.3
Research Spotlight | Open PRAIRIE P.4
Monthly Photo Series: Books P.5

A Survey Of Dairy-Goat Keeping In Zanzibar, Tiffanie Stone, Charles A. Francis, L. O. Eik

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Dairy goats with improved genetics for milk production were recently introduced onto small-scale farms in Zanzibar through governmental and non-governmental projects. These projects were meant to support small-scale farmers by improving both income and household nutrition through milk production. No follow up had been conducted to understand what effects dairy goat keeping had on these small-scale farms, or how they could be improved. A survey of 193 dairy goat farmers in Zanzibar was conducted, including 30% and 60% of all dairy goat farmers on Unguja and Pemba, the two largest islands, respectively. The objective was to understand the impact keeping …

The Value Of Soil Sampling And Sampling Density: Conceptual Framework (Part 1), Taro Mieno, David Bullock

Cornhusker Economics

When considering variable-rate nitrogen or seed application, soil sampling can provide farmers and their consultants with valuable information about the spatial distributions of soil properties such as organic matter, micro- and macro-nutrients, and pH. Conceptually, that information may be especially valuable for site-specific input management. But just as farmers make decisions about input applications, they also must make decisions about soil sampling, and in particular, must choose soil sampling density. It is standard practice for U.S. corn and soybean farmers to take soil samples on their fields every three or four years at a density of one sample per 2.5 …

Drivers Of Rural Development Strategies At The Farm Level: A Case Study On Circular Agriculture In The Netherlands, Anna Berger Mulder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The sustainability of the agricultural sector worldwide is increasingly being pressurized by ecological, economic, and social developments. The Dutch government is promoting enhancing circular agriculture as an important rural development strategy in response to the challenges the sector is facing. All farmers in the country will have to be involved in closed cycles by 2030, but many farmers do not want to or cannot make this transition. This study aims to identify the different factors that influence a farmer’s decision to transition towards circular agriculture. Based on thirteen semi-structured interviews with already transitioned farmers, a policy officer, a consultant, and …

Rice Fortification By Parboiling In Limited-Water Soaking To Alleviate Mineral And Vitamin Deficiency, Annegret Jannasch

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fortification of rice by parboiling is considered a potential alternative to currently available fortification technologies to produce rice with higher mineral and vitamin content significantly contributing to nutrient intake in populations with high prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies. Higher nutrient retention rates and improved sensory characteristics are advantages of fortified parboiled rice compared to fortified rice obtained by currently used fortification technologies including dusting, coating, and extrusion. However, conventional parboiling processes employ excess water that presents an environmental hazard if discarded without treatment. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate a limited-water soaking method for the fortification of rice …

Effect Of The Prospect Of Transport On Captive Tiger Behavior And Fecal Cortisol In Naïve And Experienced Tigers, Callan Lichtenwalter

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With close to 5,000 captive tigers in the United States, it is vital to ensure that these tigers are receiving adequate welfare whether they are in an accredited facility, or privately owned. The goal of this study was to assess whether captive tigers at a rescue facility with experience being transported outside of the facility would respond differently to the presentation of their transport vehicle than their naïve counterparts who had only been transported within the facility. The behavior of 5 naïve and 7 experienced tigers (n = 12) located at Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Eureka Springs, Arkansas was …

Pre-Emptive Detection Of Mature Pine Drought Stress Using Multispectral Aerial Imagery, Nancy Grulke, Jason Maxfield, Phillip Riggan, Charlie Schrader-Patton

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Drought, ozone (O₃), and nitrogen deposition (N) alter foliar pigments and tree crown structure that may be remotely detectable. Remote sensing tools are needed that pre-emptively identify trees susceptible to environmental stresses could inform forest managers in advance of tree mortality risk. Jeffrey pine, a component of the economically important and widespread western yellow pine in North America was investigated in the southern Sierra Nevada. Transpiration of mature trees differed by 20% between microsites with adequate (mesic (M)) vs. limited (xeric (X)) water availability as described in a previous study. In this study, in-the-crown morphological traits (needle chlorosis, …

Effects Of Inter-Male Status Challenge And Psychopathic Traits On Sexual Aggression, Amy M. Hoffmann

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sexual aggression (SA) is a serious social problem that has been linked to a variety of negative physical and mental health outcomes for survivors and produces significant monetary costs to society. In the past five decades, a wealth of research has improved our understanding of the individual and sociocultural factors that contribute to SA perpetration; however, epistemological differences in theoretical approaches to the subject (i.e., evolutionary, feminist) have resulted in gaps in the empirical literature. Informed by both feminist and evolutionary perspectives, this study attempts to examine the ways in which same-gender interpersonal interactions and individual psychopathology interact to produce …

Full Issue, Volume 8, Number 2, Donna J. Peterson, Kathleen Kelsey

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

No abstract provided.

Process Evaluation Of An Email-Based Walking Program With Extension Educators, Elizabeth A. Richards, Stephanie Woodcox

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

This study evaluated the implementation process of an email-based walking program from the perspectives of program deliverers. Twenty-four Extension Educators participated in the process evaluation. We used an online survey to examine the perceptions of the implementation process of Get WalkIN’, a twelve-week email-based walking program. Educators agreed that the provided program training and recruitment materials were sufficient for successful program delivery. Program implementation involved sending emails to program participants at least weekly. Educators also agreed that the program was easy to deliver and took twenty minutes or less to implement each week. Strengths and areas for program improvement are …

Harvest Of The Month For Early Childhood Education: Parent Perspectives, Christine Lux, Brianna Routh, Lacy Stephens

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

The purpose of this research brief is to report on the impact of Harvest of the Month (HOM) for Early Care and Education (ECE) at home to better understand parent perspectives and influences on children’s nutrition behavior. Harvest of the Month (HOM) is a farm to school programming strategy that features a locally grown food in at least one nutrition and agriculture lesson, taste test activity, and a snack or meal recipe each month. This exploratory study used a survey research design to gather parent perspectives during pilot implementation of HOM for ECE during the 2017 – 2018 school year. …

Experiences From A Forestry Extension Long-Term Impact Evaluation, Jason Gordon, Marc Measells, John Willis, Brady Self

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

This report describes a long-term impact evaluation conducted by a Forestry Extension program. Documenting long-term impacts is increasingly important to demonstrate the perceived public value of Extension programming. However, the extended time frame of forestry activities creates challenges for technology transfer, including the realization of learning objectives and reporting to administrators and public officials. Mississippi State University has attempted to address these challenges through in-person impact evaluation. Three years of results are presented from an ongoing long-term impact assessment conducted after clients received forestry information from an educational program. The assessment demonstrated 31% of clients had implemented forestry practices since …

Choosing A Life Of Impact: A Grounded Theory Approach To Describe The Career Choice Of Becoming A High School Agriculture Teacher, Debra S. Korte, Rebecca Mott, Kari H. Keating, Jon C. Simonsen

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

The purpose of this grounded theory qualitative research was to identify the influences on students’ decisions to pursue a career as a high school agriculture teacher and develop a proposed theoretical model to conceptualize this career decision. Two samples of students – one sample of high school students and one sample of college students – were the participants in this study. Each participant included in the two samples was either considering teaching as a career or was currently enrolled in a university teacher licensure program. Data were collected from individual interviews, focus groups, and writing samples. The findings from this …

Teaching Foundational Aquatic Skills To Children In Open Water Environments, Chris Button, Angela J. Button, Anne-Marie Jackson, Jim D. Cotter, Brian Maraj

International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education

Learning to swim in a swimming pool might not prepare water competence sufficiently for different aquatic environments. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of teaching children water safety knowledge and skills in open water environments (i.e., harbor, river, and surf). The aquatic knowledge and skills of 98 children (7-11 years old) were tested in a swimming pool before, immediately after, and three months after receiving a three-day intensive education program. At pre-test, typically fewer than 50% of children achieved a high level of water safety competence. After the program, competency in each of the six tasks …

Survivorship Of The Reintroduced Kihansi Spray Toads Nectophrynoides Asperginis In A Soft Release Experiment At The Kihansi Gorge, Tanzania, Flora John Magige, Nassoro Mohamed

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The Kihansi Spray Toad (KST) Nectophrynoides asperginis is endemic to the unique wetland habitat surrounding the Kihansi Falls, Tanzania, with which it was associated. The species was declared extinct in the wild in 2009 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), following the loss of its unique habitat due to the diversion of the Kihansi River for hydropower production. This study is an initial attempt to determine the survivorship and possible sources of mortality of newborn and adult KSTs placed in cages in their original habitat in the Upper Spray Wetland (USW) and Lower Spray Wetland (LSW) areas. …

An Eeg Study On Loneliness And Recognition Memory, Carmen Jia Wen Chek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Loneliness, the perception of unmet social needs, has been shown to relate to recollection-based recognition deficits, but the relationship between loneliness and recognition memory (i.e., recollection and familiarity) has not been thoroughly examined. The current study hypothesized that more lonely individuals would have lower recognition memory performance, specifically recollection, with smaller ERP parietal old-new effects than less lonely individuals. Forty participants, grouped into less (n = 13) and more (n = 9) lonely groups based on their R-UCLA responses, completed an associative memory task. EEG was used to assess recognition memory effects. Results showed no significant difference in …

The Trauma Of Head Injury

DePaul Magazine

Thanks to the vision and leadership of Vincent de Paul Professor of Biological Sciences Dorothy Kozlowski, who has teamed with scientists and researchers across the country, DePaul is playing an instrumental role in advancing our understanding of the speci­fic causes and e‑ffects of traumatic brain injury (TBI). In collaboration with colleagues at DePaul partner institution Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, Kozlowski developed a novel animal model to study the connection between repeat concussions and long-term health problems. Some of the research includes looking at learning and memory on the cellular level for those with Alzheimer’s and TBI, and …

Farm And Ranch Enterprise Budgets: Return To What?, Larry Van Tassell, Jay Parsons, Glennis Mcclure

Cornhusker Economics

Budgets capturing the projected revenues and costs associated with producing and marketing a single commodity are generally called enterprise budgets or cost and return estimates but can also be referred to as profit center budgets. Two of the major purposes for developing enterprise budgets are to determine which enterprises are the most profitable and to determine breakeven prices for use in a marketing plan. Enterprise budgets produced by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln can be found at farm.unl.edu.

Introduction To The R-Package: Usdampr, Elliott James Dennis, Bowen Chen

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

Why the Need for the Package? In the 1990’s, concern over growing packer concentration and a hog industry market shock resulted in discontent among producers and packers. As a result, the United States Congress passed the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999 (1999 Act) [Pub. L. 106-78, Title IX] which is required to be reauthorized every five years. See here for a full history of the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Background.

Market reports were publicly issued in the form of .txt files with varying frequency from April 2000 to April 2020. Current and historical data were also housed in a USDA-AMS …

Reconsidering The Obstetrical Dilemma: Correlations Between Head And Pelvic Size, Kelsey Catrice Fox

LSU Master's Theses

The Obstetrical Dilemma (OD) theory has become canon in biological anthropology. The OD posits that i] dystocia results from bipedal mothers and encephalized infants, ii] contrasting selection for bipedality and obstetrics hinders locomotive efficiency, and iii] the contradicting requirement of the fetus being small enough to pass through the birth canal yet being cognitively advanced enough to cling to its mother after birth. Females, theoretically, exhibit deficient gait efficiency for the sake of successful childbirth. An obstetric advantage theory has been posited where taller individuals with a larger head size have larger pelves. If the distance between the acetabulae increases …

Can Commodity Prices Be Negative? Revisiting The Events In The Crude Oil Market In April., Fabio Mattos

Cornhusker Economics

Preventive measures adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic have changed our lives and businesses in many ways. Commodity markets have also witnessed unique events that were partially influenced by those changes. In April, for the first time in history, prices in a large exchange-traded futures market turned negative. Crude oil futures prices for May 2020 delivery were traded below zero on April 20 and 21, reaching a minimum of –$40.32/barrel. If I am selling crude oil to you for –$40.32/barrel, it means that I am giving you the contracted amount of crude oil and paying you $40.32/barrel to take my oil. …

Long-Term Ndvi And Recent Vegetation Cover Profiles Of Major Offshore Island Nesting Sites Of Sea Turtles In Saudi Waters Of The Northern Arabian Gulf, Rommel H. Maneja, Jeffrey D. Miller, Wenzhao Li, Hesham El-Askary, Ace Vincent B. Flandez, Joshua J. Dagoy, Joselito Francis A. Alcaria, Abdullajid U. Basali, Khaled A. Al-Abdulkader, Ronald A. Loughland, Mohamed A. Qurban

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Vegetation is an important ecological component of offshore islands in the Arabian Gulf (AG), which maintains long-term resilience of these islands. This is achieved by influencing sediment retention and moisture acquisition via condensation during periods of high humidity and by providing a variety of microhabitats for island fauna. The resilience of offshore islands’ ecosystems in the Saudi waters is important because they host the largest number of nesting hawksbill and green turtles in the AG. This study defines the characteristics and the long-term trends in vegetation cover of the offshore islands used by sea turtles as nesting grounds in the …

Utilizing Annual Forage Crops In Rotations, John Hewlett, Jay Parsons, Jeff Tranel

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

First paragraph

Approximately 60 million acres of forage are harvested annually in the United States, according to the National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS). With lower commodity grain and oilseed prices along with high pasture rental rates and/or difficulty finding range and pasture to rent, some producers are considering ways to incorporate more forages into their crop rotations.

Vertebrates On The Brink As Indicators Of Biological Annihilation And The Sixth Mass Extinction, Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, Peter H. Raven

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Library Materials

The ongoing sixth mass species extinction is the result of the destruction of component populations leading to eventual extirpation of entire species. Populations and species extinctions have severe implications for society through the degradation of ecosystem services. Here we assess the extinction crisis from a different perspective. We examine 29,400 species of terrestrial vertebrates, and determine which are on the brink of extinction because they have fewer than 1,000 individuals. There are 515 species on the brink (1.7% of the evaluated vertebrates). Around 94% of the populations of 77 mammal and bird species on the brink have been lost in …

Infant Attraction: Why Social Bridging Matters For Female Leadership In Tibetan Macaques, Xi Wang, Dong-Po Xia, Lixing Sun, Paul A. Garber, Randall C. Kyes, Lori K. Sheeran, Bing-Hua Sun, Bo-Wen Li, Jin-Hua Li

Biology Faculty Scholarship

Leadership is a key issue in the study of collective behavior in social animals. Affiliation–leadership models predict that dyadic partner preferences based on grooming relationships or alliance formation positively affect an individual’s decision to follow or support a conspecific. In the case of many primate species, females without young infants are attracted to mother–infant dyads. However, the effects of mother–infant–female associations on affiliation–leadership models remain less clear. In free-ranging Tibetan macaques Macaca thibetana, we used social network analysis to examine the importance of “mother-infant-adult female” social bridging events as a predictor of who leads and who follows during group …

Flooding, Landslides, Wildfires, Air Pollution, And Income: Risk In California, Brittany Bondi, Alyssa J. Kaewwilai

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

California is infamously known for its likelihood of environmental hazards such as flooding, landslides, air pollution, and forest fires which can be attributed to the natural climate of the area as well as anthropologically influenced climate change. Air pollution also poses potential threats and dangers to the civilians of California as increasing populations and uses of fossil fuels continue to contribute to the growing issue of climate change. The goal of this study was to examine and analyze the geospatial trends environmental hazards in California such as landslides, air pollution, flooding, and forest fires. A weighted test, zone and slope …

Workshop #2: Health And Infection Control Measures During The 2020 Hurricane Season: After-Action Report (Aar), Converge Nsf Working Group, Joshua G, Behr, Wie Yusuf, Jennifer Marshall, Elizabeth Dunn

Presentations, Lectures, Posters, Reports

Participants in the CONVERGE NSF Working Group Workshop 2 (Health) breakout sessions identified that along with populations traditionally considered vulnerable during hurricane season (e.g., special-needs evacuees and the elderly), there will be new vulnerable populations based on their heightened risks from exposure to COVID-19. There is also overlap between these groups of vulnerable evacuees, including individuals with physical, intellectual or developmental disabilities; those with immunodeficiency, chronic, acute, or infectious illnesses; pregnant women and infants; and immigrants, non-English speakers, and other socially vulnerable groups.

This indicates a potentially greater number of special-needs evacuees at shelters. Simultaneously, fear of contracting COVID-19, particularly …

Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (Cfap) Payments, Anil Giri, E. Wesley F. Peterson, Sankalp Sharma

Cornhusker Economics

On April 17, 2020, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP), a new program to assist producers and consumers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (USDA 2020b). CFAP will provide $19 billion in relief to producers and entities throughout the supply chain. This will be done through two programs, Direct Support to Farmers and Ranchers ($16 billion) and USDA Purchase and Distribution ($3 billion) (USDA 2020a). Producers will be paid on actual losses due to decreases in prices and/or disruption of supply chains. On May 19, 2020 USDA announced the details of the CFAP. There …

"Thinking Across Borders." 13th Annual Research Week: Event Proceedings, Office Of Research And Sponsored Projects Operations

Excellence Summit (Research Week) Archived Proceedings

Poster and podium presentations of research by students and faculty of University of the Incarnate Word.