Despite the importance of fire for maintaining the health of many ecosystems, the social and economic costs of wildfires have risen sharply in recent years. Across the western United States, historical land and fire management practices combined with climate change and modern human development pressures, are contributing to increased wildfire...
REDD+ is a heavily promoted mechanism to mitigate climate change through the carbon market worldwide, however, initial projects presented challenges related to effectiveness, efficiency, and equity (3E criteria) during implementation. In Peru, it has been promoted since 2008 due to high deforestation rates in the tropical forest, with 30 ongoing...
The development of a market for currently non-merchantable forest material, such as harvest residues of tops and limbs of trees or small diameter trees, has been suggested as a possible win-win solution that could: (i) provide a financial incentive to help motivate treatments to reduce wildfire risk or restore forest...
Similar to other spectacular scenic areas in the American West, Idaho’s White Cloud Mountains have been a contested landscape since the beginning of the 20th century. Although, legislation was introduced in Congress as early as 1913 to protect the towering mountains of south-central Idaho as a national park, the issue...
In this dissertation, I qualitatively examined the meaning of mothering a child with autism in two countries: the United States and South Korea. The overarching research question focused on how sociocultural ideas about mothering and disability, particularly autism spectrum disorders, shape women’s understanding of themselves and their children with disabilities....
It is the responsibility of humans, as environmental stewards, to monitor our impact on the environment so that efforts can be made to remediate the effects of our actions and change behaviors. To better understand our environmental footprint, sensitive and simple analytical methods are needed to quantify the contaminants that...
A sensitive, selective, rapid analytical method based on large-volume injection (LVI)
liquid chromatography/ tandem mass spectrometry was developed using
commercially-available hardware that eliminates the need for either off-line or on-line
solid phase extraction. Centrifugation followed by the direct injection of 1,800 µL
was used for the quantification of illicit drugs,...
The Great Recession, which resulted from the burst of housing bubble and officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, started as a national recession in the U.S. and then affected countries across the world. Economies reacted differently to this recession and those systems that lost fewer jobs and/or recovered...
Always Talk to Strangers contains the first seven chapters to a novel. The novel focuses on the friendship between Amanda and Maria, two fourteen-year-old girls who are experiencing their last summer before high school in Madison, Wisconsin. Their friendship is a complicated one: Maria was kidnapped four years ago, the...
Curbing overall disease burden with faster intervention requires early stage and accurate diagnostics. Ultrasound (US) provides a safe, nonionizing, inexpensive, and noninvasive imaging modality that has become commonplace in diagnostics. Paired with the relatively new technology of photoacoustic imaging (PAI), optical level resolution becomes feasible with the deeper signal penetration...
Systems biology is a powerful approach which considers and sheds light on all of the puzzle pieces which make up complex biological processes, and is an effective alternative to unraveling these processes using traditional molecular approaches alone. It is a natural companion approach for computational biology, which leverages the power...
The ~5 km3, 4.54 to 4.09 Ma Caspana Ignimbrite of the Altiplano-Puna Volcanic Complex (APVC) of the Central Andes records the eruption of an andesite and two distinct rhyolitic magmas. It provides a unique opportunity to investigate the production of silicic magmas in a continental arc flare-up, where small volumes...
Zinc is an essential mineral that is integral to many proteins and transcription factors that regulate key cellular functions. The normal prostate accumulates high concentrations of zinc; however, malignant tissues have significantly lower zinc levels. This unique relationship between zinc and the prostate has sparked interest in the role of...
Public attention and concern about per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are increasing due to detection of PFASs in drinking water supplies, the environment, including remote locations, and wildlife and to the lowering of the federal health advisory levels of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) in drinking water. Aqueous film-forming...
The effect of landuse change on the hydrologic, biogeochemical and ecological response of watersheds is a concern throughout the world. To help characterize the potential magnitude of such changes, and of the potential to remediate or avoid undesirable features, studies focused on the cumulative watershed effects of site level change...
Exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P) has been determined to be a risk factor for various forms of human cancer. PAH DNA adducts have been shown to cause mutations, but carcinogenesis is also accompanied by alterations in gene expression. Inhibiting individual cytochrome P450s could clarify the interaction...
Mass timber (MT) offers viable eco-conscious solutions within the building industry, with its high strength ratings, dimensional stability, light weight and renewable nature enhancing its status as a low carbon alternative to conventional building materials like steel and concrete. Moisture intrusion, coupled with the inherent organic nature of wood pose...
Ecological domains seeking to understand the environment and the behavior of species have received little attention in machine learning (ML), despite the fact that environmental changes have a significant impact on humans as well as ecosystems. Some ecological problems can be formulated similarly to other common ML applications, but there...
The purpose of this study is to examine the learning that occurs in Latina students
who enroll in learning communities designed for underprepared community college
students. The research question guiding this study is: What are the experiences of Latina
students enrolled in developmental learning community courses which have the greatest...
By 1900 domestication was a promising, if somewhat vexed, subject in biology. Volumes had been written about domestication, but little serious scientific inquiry was directed toward the phenomenon. Expertise lay with practical men, primarily breeders and fanciers. The bulk of scientific commentary on domestication came from anthropologists who derived theories...