Incorporating Human Beliefs and Behaviors into Wildlife Ecology

Like much of the global biosphere, wildlife species have experienced rapid declines during the Anthropocene. Wildlife ecologists have responded to these crises by developing a range of technologies, techniques, and large datasets, which together have revolutionized the field, provided novel insights into the movements and behaviors of animals, and identified new risks and impacts to wildlife in a human-dominated world. While these advances have been vitally important, wildlife ecology has been slower to recognize and incorporate humans themselves into its new research domains. The chapters of this dissertation explore methods for better incorporating human behaviors, beliefs, actions, and infrastructure into the theories and approaches in wildlife ecology that have flourished in the last two decades. The research presented here demonstrates the importance of linking human beliefs and behaviors to wildlife ecology both by presenting novel findings and by showing the opportunities missed when narrow approaches are applied to complex socio-ecological problems.In Chapter 1, I provide a general introduction on the theories underlying this research, contextualize the research questions in light of the loss and recovery of large predators, and describe the research site where I collected much of the data for this dissertation. In Chapter 2, I apply the methods of movement ecology to some of the first fine-scale telemetry data collected on rifle hunters. I draw conclusions about their individual, site-level, and regional-level hunting behaviors and discuss the broad implications of these findings for hunting management. In Chapter 3, I examine livestock-predator conflict using approaches from both ecology and the social sciences. I describe a form of selection bias that is likely widespread but unreported due to the omission of social data from ecological models of conflict, and I offer guidelines for combining and translating ecological and social research on conflict. In Chapter 4, I explore the ecological impacts of one of the most globally widespread human constructions, the fence. I show for the first time the potential extent of fencing at large scales and discuss the wide variety of ecological effects of fences for both humans and ecosystems. I further highlight biases and gaps in fence research that have thus far limited a complete understanding of the environmental effects of these features. In Chapter 5, I conclude by making recommendations regarding how research might better incorporate human perceptions, decisions, and actions into ecology

Access to the Brazilian City - from the perspectives of low-income residents in Recife

This paper describes a study of the transport and accessibility needs of residents living in low-income communities in the City of Recife in Brazil. It discusses the theoretical background underpinning the academic and policy rationale for such a study. We outline the qualitative methodological approach, which was adopted to engage in meaningful knowledge exchanges with what are often considered by policymakers to be the ‘hard-to-reach’ citizens of Brazil’s favelas. In the exploration of our study results, we describe the complex relationship between the mobilities and livelihoods of the research participants. A key question the paper seeks to examine is how far the restricted mobility and activity patterns of citizens in these low-income communities influences or interacts with their quality of life outcomes in terms of their wealth, health and wellbeing? A second question is whether transport planning and policy can have a role to play in enhancing their future life chances? Currently, transport planners and policymakers in Brazil know very little about the specific accessibility and mobility needs of people living in Brazilian low-income communities. Our aim is to shed some light on the issue of their mobility needs in the context of a wider set of policy discussions about how to protect the livelihoods and wellbeing of low-income populations within rapidly emerging urban economies

Specifying, Estimating and Validating a New Trip Generation Model: Case Study in Montgomery County, Maryland

This paper discusses the development of an afternoon peak period trip generation model for both work and non-work trips. Three data sources are used in model development, a Household Travel Survey, a Census-Update Survey, and a Trip Generation Study. Seven one-direction trip purposes are defined, specifically accounting for stops made on the return trip from work to home. Trips are classified by origin and destination activities rather than by production and attraction, so reframing the conventional schema of home-based and non-home-based trips. Prior to estimating the model, the Household Travel Survey was demographically calibrated against the Census-Update to minimize demographic bias. A model of home-end trip generation is estimated using the Household Travel Survey as a cross-classification of the demographic factors of age and household size in addition to dwelling type. Non-home-end generation uses employment by type and population. The model was validated by comparison with a site based Trip Generation Study, which revealed an under-reporting of the relatively short and less regular shopping trips. Normalization procedures are developed to ensure that all ends of a chained trip were properly accounted for. .

The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface: Progress Beyond Communication and Control

The combined effect of fundamental results about neurocognitive processes and advancements in decoding mental states from ongoing brain signals has brought forth a whole range of potential neurotechnological applications. In this article, we review our developments in this area and put them into perspective. These examples cover a wide range of maturity levels with respect to their applicability. While we assume we are still a long way away from integrating Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology in general interaction with computers, or from implementing neurotechnological measures in safety-critical workplaces, results have already now been obtained involving a BCI as research tool. In this article, we discuss the reasons why, in some of the prospective application domains, considerable effort is still required to make the systems ready to deal with the full complexity of the real world.EC/FP7/611570/EU/Symbiotic Mind Computer Interaction for Information Seeking/MindSeeEC/FP7/625991/EU/Hyperscanning 2.0 Analyses of Multimodal Neuroimaging Data: Concept, Methods and Applications/HYPERSCANNING 2.0DFG, 103586207, GRK 1589: Verarbeitung sensorischer Informationen in neuronalen Systeme

The integration of contact by impact verbs into the intransitive motion construction

The present investigation will analyze the lexical-constructional integration of contact by impact verbs (transitive by origin) into the intransitive-motion construction. Departing from the classical works by Levin (1993), Goldberg (1995) and Faber and Mairal (1999) on contact by impact verbs, I will propose a new taxonomy that overcomes the weaknesses of previous classifications and discuss the constructional use of these verbs in real language data. Finally, I will explain the compatibility of such verbs with the intransitive-motion construction following the explanatory tools provided by the Lexical Constructional Model (Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal, 2008a, 2008b, 2011). The main conclusions that derive from this study are that most contact-by-impact verbs are compatible with the intransitive-motion construction, this integration being possible by applying different high-level metaphors and metonymies and that all contact-by-impact verbs that are related to sound (batter, bump, crack,…) are licensed into the intransitive-motion construction thanks to the use of the high-level metonymy RESULT FOR ACTION, in which the resulting sound is taken as the action performed by the subject

Aerospace Medicine and Biology. A continuing bibliography with indexes

This bibliography lists 244 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in February 1981. Aerospace medicine and aerobiology topics are included. Listings for physiological factors, astronaut performance, control theory, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics are included