Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Problems With Studying Wolf Predation On Small Prey In Summer Via Global Positioning System Collars, Vicente Palacios, L. David Mech

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

We attempted to study predation on various-sized prey by a male and female wolf (Canis lupus) with global positioning system (GPS) collars programmed to acquire locations every 10 min in the Superior National Forest of Minnesota. During May to August 2007, we investigated 147 clusters of locations (31% of the total) and found evidence of predation on a white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fawn and yearling, a beaver (Castor canadensis), ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), and fisher (Martes pennanti) and scavenging on a road-killed deer and other carrion. However, we missed finding …

Mechanisms For Decisions About The Future, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Evolutionary and psychological perspectives on decision making remain largely separate endeavors. The bounded rationality approach integrates these two perspectives by focusing on simple, plausible mechanisms of decision making and the cognitive capacities needed to implement these mechanisms. Decisions about the future provide a class of decisions that lend themselves to a bounded rationality approach. Though many different mechanisms may exist for making decisions about the future, only a subset of these mechanisms actually require a representation of the future. The bounded rationality approach helps focus on the cognitive capacities and decision mechanisms that are necessary for a full understanding of …

Foreword, From Holy Places And Pilgrimages: Essays On India, Robert H. Stoddard

Geography Program: Faculty Publications

This collection of twelve articles continues a long and rich body of information about pilgrimages. Written materials in the form of pamphlets, guidebooks, manuals, itineraries, and treatises about pilgrimages date from antiquity (see, e.g. the discussion in this volume by Rana Singh about ancient epics, pp. 15-20). Travelling to places regarded by worshippers as having extraordinary spiritual power is a phenomenon permeating all religious traditions so it is logical that it appears in various literary forms.

Where Have All The Plant Foods Gone? The Search For Refined Dietary Reconstruction From Chinchorro Mummies, Karl J. Reinhard, Sara Le-Roy-Toren, Bernardo Arriaza

Karl Reinhard Publications

The Chinchorro cemeteries of northern Chile are the first graveyards of the Andes (Arriaza 1995, Schiappacasse & Niemeyer 1984). The excavation and analysis of Chinchorro mummies reveals the 'true character of the people'. The burials themselves are optimal for preservation of corpses, burial furniture, and aspects of ceremonies associated with the dead. The analysis of corporeal remains gradually clarifies the details of daily activities and status. Therefore, we feel that a holistic approach to mummy studies provides enormously fruitful paths to understanding the character of the ancient Chinchorro society.

Paleoepidemiology Of Intestinal Parasites And Lice In Pre-Columbian South America, Adauto Araujo, Karl Reinhard, Daniela Leles, Luciana Sianto, Alena M. Iñiguez, Martin Fugassa, Bernardo Arriaza, Nancy Orellana, Luis Fernando Ferreira

Karl Reinhard Publications

Some human parasites originated in prehominid ancestors in Africa. Nematode species, such as Enterobius vermicularis (pinworm), hookworms and Trichuris trichiura are shared by humans and other close phylogenetic primates (Pan and Gorilla), showing that they infected a common ancestor to this group. When humans migrated from Africa to other continents they carried these parasites wherever climate conditions allowed parasite transmission from host to host. Other parasites, however, were acquired throughout human biological and social evolutive history when new territories were occupied. Paleoparasitology data is a valuable source to recover emergence and disappearance of parasite infections through analysis of …

Plato's Heroic Vision: The Difficult Choices Of The Socratic Life, Ari Kohen

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Faced with charges of impiety and corruption of the youth, Socrates attempts a defence designed to vindicate the philosophic way of life. In this he seems to be successful, as Socrates is today highly regarded for his description of the good life and for his unwillingness to live any other sort of life, a position that is most obviously exemplified by his defence in the Apology. After his sentencing, Socrates' arguments and actions - in the Crito and the Phaedo - also lend considerable support to the idea that the philosopher is committed to living a particularly good sort of …

School-Based Extracurricular Activity Involvement And Adolescent Self-Esteem: A Growth-Curve Analysis, Lisa A. Kort-Butler, Kellie J. Hagewen

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Research on adolescent self-esteem indicates that adolescence is a time in which individuals experience important changes in their physical, cognitive, and social identities. Prior research suggests that there is a positive relationship between an adolescent’s participation in structured extracurricular activities and well-being in a variety of domains, and some research indicates that these relationships may be dependent on the type of activities in which adolescents participate. Building on previous research, a growth-curve analysis was utilized to examine self-esteem trajectories from adolescence (age 14) to young adulthood (age 26). Using 3 waves of data from National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health …

Alcohol Use Trajectories And Problem Drinking Over The Course Of Adolescence: A Study Of North American Indigenous Youth And Their Caretakers, Jacob E. Cheadle, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This study investigated the links between alcohol use trajectories and problem drinking (DSM-IV abuse/dependence) using five waves of data from 727 North American Indigenous adolescents between 10–17 years from eight reservations sharing a common language and culture. Growth mixture models linking fundamental causes, social stressors, support, and psychosocial pathways to problem drinking via alcohol use trajectories over the early life course were estimated. Results indicated that 20% of the adolescents began drinking at 11–12 years of age and that another 20% began drinking shortly thereafter. These early drinkers were at greatly elevated risk for problem drinking, as were those who …

Introduction: Charlotte Perkins Gilman On The Sociology Of Families, Marriages, And Children, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Charlotte Perkins Gilman died in 1935, but she remains today a provocative sociological writer; she makes us think, argue, and question our preconceptions, especially with regard to marriage and family. Several posthumous volumes of Gilman’s work have been produced and it has been my pleasure to help present three of Gilman’s (1997, 2002, 2004) major sociological writings to new generations of readers in English. As noted in the preface, it has been a special honor to acquaint an audience of Italian readers with a selection of her powerful writings on families, marriages, and children.1 The present volume joins a small …

Queryarch3d: Querying And Visualising 3d Models Of A Maya Archaeological Site In A Web-Based Interface, Giorgio Agugiaro, Fabio Remondino, Gabrio Girardi, Jennifer Von Schwerin, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Raffaele De Amicis

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Constant improvements in the field of surveying, computing and distribution of digital-content are reshaping the way Cultural Heritage can be digitised and virtually accessed, even remotely via web. A traditional 2D approach for data access, exploration, retrieval and exploration may generally suffice, however more complex analyses concerning spatial and temporal features require 3D tools, which, in some cases, have not yet been implemented or are not yet generally commercially available. Efficient organisation and integration strategies applicable to the wide array of heterogeneous data in the field of Cultural Heritage represent a hot research topic nowadays. This article presents a visualisation …

Factors Controlling Pre-Columbian And Early Historic Maize Productivity In The American Southwest, Part 1: The Southern Colorado Plateau And Rio Grande Regions, Larry V. Benson

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Maize is the New World’s preeminent grain crop and it provided the economic basis for human culture in many regions within the Americas. To flourish, maize needs water, sunlight (heat), and nutrients (e.g., nitrogen). In this paper, climate and soil chemistry data are used to evaluate the potential for dryland (rain-on- field) agriculture in the semiarid southeastern Colorado Plateau and Rio Grande regions. Processes that impact maize agriculture such as nitrogen mineralization, infiltration of precipitation, bare soil evaporation, and transpiration are discussed and evaluated. Most of the study area, excepting high-elevation regions, receives sufficient solar radiation to grow maize. The …

2010 Ohio Animal Welfare Compromise, J. David Aiken

Cornhusker Economics

In June 2010, Ohio elected officials and animal welfare activists negotiated an animal welfare compromise agreement that kept an animal welfare proposition off the November ballot in Ohio.

2011 Federal Estate Tax Update, J. David Aiken

Cornhusker Economics

Estate planning is a very important topic for farm families. In 2001, President Bush signed legislation that reduced the federal estate taxes up until 2010, when the federal estate tax was reduced to zero. If no new federal legislation had been enacted, the Federal Estate Tax Exemption would have fallen from unlimited to $1 million on January 1, 2011. However, on December 17, 2010 President Obama signed HR 4853, which extended the Bush tax cuts through the end of 2012. This means that from January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2012, the Federal Estate Tax Exemption is $5 million, but …

Empathy Tempering Economic Choice: The Empirical Evidence, Marianna Khachaturyan, Gary D. Lynne, Natalia Czap, Hans Czap, Mark E. Burbach

Cornhusker Economics

The notion that something beyond money could also be an important part of economic choice goes back hundreds of years. Adam Smith, who is credited with providing the framework for modern market-based economies, wrote extensively in the late 1700s about the role of the “moral sentiments.” In fact, his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments was actually drafted first, and he worked on it many years after the publication of his better known book On the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations, the latter focused “on the money.” Intriguingly, the sentiments/empathy book is all about how …

Web Of Science Citation Data, Rachel Stohr

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The unprecedented challenges of “information overload” in the digital age have prompted academic institutions to develop new approaches to gauge scholarly authority and productivity, and disseminate research. The goal of this chapter is to consider the strengths and weaknesses of one such metric, and to speculate on the implications of its continued use for the academy, the communication studies discipline, and society. Specifically, I explore Web of Science citation patterns, a contemporary metric of scholarly authority that measures scholarly impact and influence via number of author and/or article citations over time. This report is comprised of four sections: (1) a …

H-Index, Travis Bartosh

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The h-index is a metric that uses both the number of an author’s publications along with the number of times those publications have been cited by other authors in an attempt to gauge an author’s perceived academic authority in their given fields of research. Balandin and Stancliffe explain how the h-index functionally operates: “If all of a researcher’s total of N publications are listed in order of the number of times they have been citd – from most to least – then that researcher’s h-index is the number of papers (h) that have been cited h or more times.” For …

Internet Usage Data, Adam Knowlton

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Interest in quantifying the the amount of traffic directed to specific websites grew soon after the rise of the internet in the early-to-mid 1990s. Drawing from scholarly metrics such as citation analysis, Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a ranking system for the internet that would apply numerical value to a website based on the number of hyperlinks contained within, and linked to, that same website. This measurement tool opened the door for academic scholars to learn more about how their work circulates online. However, personal websites are not the only way that scholars have been able to make public …

Scholarly Books, Sarah Jones

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As an academic’s career progresses, there are many landmarks: teaching that first class, completing the dissertation, publishing the first article, getting a tenure-track position, publishing that first book, and receiving the first promotion, among others. Tracking a scholar’s progress often apears to be linear and cumulative. Charles Bazerman and his colleagues point out that “publication of a scholarly book is frequently a central part of the evidence offered in support of tenure and promotion cases.” In fact, a brief review of tenure and promotion requirements for three prominent communication studies departments—University of Iowa, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the University …

Pregnancy And Mental Health Of Young Homeless Women, Devan M. Crawford, Emily C. Trotter, Kelley J. Sittner Hartshorn, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Pregnancy rates among women in the U.S. who are homeless are much higher than rates among women who are housed (Greene & Ringwalt, 1998). Yet little research has addressed mental health, risk and resilience among young mothers who are homeless. This study utilizes a sample of women from the Midwest Longitudinal Study of Homeless Adolescents (MLSHA) to investigate pregnancy and motherhood over three years among unaccompanied homeless young mothers. Our data are supplemented by in-depth interviews with a subset of these women. Results show that almost half of sexually active young women (n = 222, μ age = 17.2) had …

Maturation, Peer Context, And Indigenous Girls' Early-Onset Substance Use, Melissa L. Walls, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This paper examines a biosocial model of the impact of puberty on Indigenous girls' early-onset substance use by considering the potential mediating role of peer context (i.e. mixed-sex peer groups and substance use prototypes) on the puberty and substance use relationship. Data include responses from 360 girls of a common Indigenous cultural group residing on reservations/reserves in the upper Midwest and Canada. Results of structural equation modeling revealed that the statistically significant relationship between girls' pubertal development and early-onset substance use was mediated by both mixed-sex/romantic peer groups and favorable social definitions of substance use. Implications for substance use prevention …

Archival Methods And The Veil Of Sociology, Mary Jo Deegan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Archival methods of research are crucial to reconstruct. interpret. and evaluate contributions of early sociologists that are hidden behind the veiIs of racism and sexism. Many of these founding sociologists profoundly shaped their communities and created important organizations to combat social inequality and injustice. Their lives as intellectuals were frequently controversial. which made them political anathemas to mainstream sociologists, usually white males working in prestigious universities who wanted money. fame, and prestige for the new discipline and its leaders.

In this chapter, [recount how r began a career using historical research to understand the rich. alternative history of the profession. …

The Social Construction Of Infertility, Arthur L. Greil, Julia Mcquillan, Kathleen S. Slauson-Blevins

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Health and illness are not objective states but socially constructed categories. We focus here on infertility, a phenomenon that has shifted from being seen as a private problem of couples to being seen as a medical condition. Studying infertility provides an ideal vantage point from which to study such features of health care as inter-societal and cross-cultural disparities in health care, the relationship between identity and health, gender roles, and social and cultural variations in the process of medicalization. Infertility is stratified, both globally and within Western societies. Access to care is extremely limited for many women in developing societies …

An Experimental Examination Of The Content Of Persuasion Letters On Nonresponse Rates And Survey Estimates In A Nonresponse Follow-Up Study, Kristen Olson, James M. Lepkowski, David H. Garabrant

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Nonresponse follow-up studies are often conducted to understand whether respondents and nonrespondents differ on survey variables of interest in sample surveys. Methods used to recruit respondents often differ between nonresponse follow-up studies and main studies. One method is persuasion letters sent from study staff to nonrespondents that are tailored to the types of concerns raised by the respondent and recorded in paradata about the survey recruitment process. This study examined whether tailored persuasion letters yield higher response rates in nonresponse follow-up and whether respondents to a nonresponse follow-up differ depending on the content of the persuasion letter. Nonrespondents to the …

Are We Keeping The People Who Used To Stay? Changes In Correlates Of Panel Survey Attrition Over Time, Kristen Olson, Lindsey Witt

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

As survey response rates decline, correlates of survey participation may also be changing. Panel studies provide an opportunity to study a rich set of correlates of panel attrition over time. We look at changes in attrition rates in the American National Election Studies from 1964 to 2004, a repeated panel survey with a two-wave pre-post election design implemented over multiple decades. We examine changes in attrition rates by three groups of variables: sociodemographic and ecological characteristics of the respondent and household, party affiliation and political and social attitudes recorded at the first interview, and paradata about the first wave interview. …

Risk Factors For Running Away Among A General Population Sample Of Males And Females, Kimberly A. Tyler, Kellie J. Hagewen, Lisa A. Melander

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The present study examines risk factors for running away and homelessness among a sample of more than 7,000 currently housed youth using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Structural equation modeling results revealed that those with greater levels of family instability and those who ran away at Wave 2 were significantly more likely to run away and/or become homeless 5 years later at Wave 3. Family instability also had a significant indirect effect on running away and/or being homeless at Wave 3 through greater levels of problem behaviors and running away at Wave 2. Running away at …

Multiple Auxiliary Variables In Nonresponse Adjustment, Frauke Kreuter, Kristen Olson

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Prior work has shown that effective survey nonresponse adjustment variables should be highly correlated with both the propensity to respond to a survey and the survey variables of interest. In practice, propensity models are often used for nonresponse adjustment with multiple auxiliary variables as predictors. These auxiliary variables may be positively or negatively associated with survey participation, they may be correlated with each other, and can have positive or negative relationships with the survey variables. Yet the consequences for nonresponse adjustment of these conditions are not known to survey practitioners. Simulations are used here to examine the effects of multiple …

The Effect Of Poor Parenting On Male And Female Dating Violence Perpetration And Victimization, Kimberly A. Tyler, Douglas A. Brownridge, Lisa A. Melander

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This study examines the effects of poor parenting on dating violence perpetration and victimization among approximately 900 males and females from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Results revealed that more physical abuse and low parental warmth were linked to greater substance use and higher rates of delinquency. In addition, low parental warmth, more neglect, and greater delinquency had positive direct effects on dating violence perpetration, whereas more physical abuse, low parental warmth, and increased delinquency were all positively associated with dating violence victimization. Finally, delinquency mediated the link between low parental warmth and dating violence perpetration …

Same-Sex Marriage In A Welcoming World: Rights Consciousness Of Heterosexuals In Liberal Religious Institutions, Emily Kazyak

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Previous research suggests that gays and lesbians not only look to the law as an important site of social recognition but also pursue strategies to legitimate their relationships outside of the law, such as having commitment ceremonies in religious institutions. While previous research suggests that homosexuality is a divisive issue within religious communities, we know little about how heterosexual religious people understand same-sex marriage. I aim to fill this gap and analyze the rights consciousness of heterosexual members in liberal religious denominations. Drawing on in-depth interviews, I examine how people make sense of the relationship between law and social change. …

The Importance Of Fatherhood To U.S. Married And Cohabiting Men, Veronica Tichenor, Julia Mcquillan, Arthur L. Greil, Raleigh Contreras, Karina M. Shreffler

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Using a non-hierarchical approach to identity theory, we construct a scale to analyze the characteristics associated with the importance of fatherhood in a national sample of male partners (N = 932) of U.S. women of reproductive age, including fathers and non-fathers. OLS multiple regression shows that economic situation is not associated with importance of fatherhood, but valuing career success, higher education, higher religiosity and non-egalitarian gender attitudes (compared to egalitarian) are associated with higher importance of fatherhood scores. Leisure, age, fertility problems, and non-egalitarian gender attitudes are associated with importance of fatherhood scores differently for fathers and non-fathers. Although fathers …

The Human-Environment Dialog In Award-Winning Children’S Picture Books, J. Allen Williams, Christopher Podeschi, Nathan Palmer, Philip Schwadel, Deanna Meyler

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Picture books often play an important role in childhood socialization. Given the seriousness of environmental problems, we ask how natural, modified, and built environments have been portrayed in children’s books. To answer this question, we analyze the 296 books receiving Caldecott awards from 1938 to 2008. Two possibilities are explored with respect to content change. Growing concern about critical environmental problems, such as decline in biodiversity and deforestation, may have led to an increase in illustrations and stories about wild animals and the natural environment. Alternatively, the increasing isolation of people from the natural world may have resulted in a …