Using host species traits to understand the consequences of resource provisioning for host–parasite interactions

1.Supplemental food provided to wildlife by human activities can be more abundant and predictable than natural resources, and subsequent changes to wildlife ecology can have profound impacts on host–parasite interactions. Identifying traits of species associated with increases or decreases in infection outcomes with resource provisioning could improve assessments of wildlife most prone to disease risks in changing environments. 2.We conducted a phylogenetic meta-analysis of 342 host–parasite interactions across 56 wildlife species and three broad taxonomic groups of parasites to identify host-level traits that influence whether provisioning is associated with increases or decreases in infection. 3.We predicted that dietary generalists that capitalize on novel food would show greater infection in provisioned habitats owing to population growth and food-borne exposure to contaminants and parasite infectious stages. Similarly, species with fast life histories could experience stronger demographic and immunological benefits from provisioning that affect parasite transmission. We also predicted that wide-ranging and migratory behaviors could increase infection risks with provisioning if concentrated and non-seasonal foods promote dense aggregations that increase exposure to parasites. 4.We found that provisioning increased infection with bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa (i.e., microparasites) most for wide-ranging, dietary generalist host species. Effect sizes for ectoparasites were also highest for host species with large home ranges but were instead lowest for dietary generalists. In contrast, the type of provisioning was a stronger correlate of infection outcomes for helminths than host species traits. 5.Our analysis highlights host traits related to movement and feeding behavior as important determinants of whether species experience greater infection with supplemental feeding. These results could help prioritize monitoring wildlife with particular trait profiles in anthropogenic habitats to reduce infectious disease risks in provisioned populations

Time Perspectivism, Temporal Dynamics, and Battlefield Archaeology: A Case Study from the Santiago Campaign of 1898

Given the unique ability of archaeology to illuminate temporal processes, archaeologists have begun employing a number of theoretical models to understand the nature of these processes, and the ways in which the modern archaeological landscape retains their physical traces. Battlefields, as discrete temporal events taking place in physical settings with their own history, offer an intriguing avenue to explore archaeological temporality. This paper reviews the ways in which archaeologists have employed the Annales approach and time perspectivism, and considers a case study in battlefield archaeology - the 1898 battlefield of EI Caney, Cuba

Three Hoes in the Kitchen: The Conceptualization of Peachtree Plantation, St. James Santee Parish, South Carolina

Historical background research, precedent case studies, and archaeology are used to determine architectural antecedents, floor plan, and room uses of Peachtree Plantation. Peachtree is the ruin of a two-story dwelling once owned by the Lynch family, prominent Lowcountry rice planters and politicians. Thomas Lynch, Jr. was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The house was built between 1760 and 1762 on the South Santee River in St. James Santee Parish, South Carolina. It burned in 1840 and was never reconstructed; what remains today is a ruin of partial walls and rubble. This thesis uses a multi-disciplinary approach to explore the inhabitants of Peachtree, likely origins of the house, and floor plan, and expands its significance by applying National Register of Historic Places criteria standards. Historical research and archaeological excavation informed reconstruction of the house floor plan. Artifacts recovered from the ruin provided additional information to determine room uses. Recommendations are presented to assist in the future conservation of Peachtree

Microdebitage analysis of 3rd Unnamed Cave : a terminal archaic chert mine on the Cumberland Plateau

The purpose of this study was to examine the distribution of microartifacts in a prehistoric chert mine located deep within the dark zone of 3rd Unnamed Cave, which is located on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee. Previous research at this site concluded that prehistoric hunter-gatherers entered the cave about 3,000 years ago to mine and then extensively test and reduce chert nodules, subsequently leaving hundreds of piles of flintknapping debris in primary position. Microartifacts were used in this study to augment and strengthen the inferences made about the mining and flintknapping activities practiced in 3rd Unnamed Cave during the Terminal Archaic. Microartifact analysis has been shown to be particularly useful in the identification of activity areas, due to the fact that sediment-size artifacts are less subject to postdepositional disturbance than larger artifactsIn this research spatial distributions of microartifacts are analyzed and compared to macroartifact spatial distributions in order to test if the flintknapping concentrations are in fact primary accumulations or secondary deposits. It is proposed that if these lithic accumulations are in primary position, the distribution of macrolithics will have a corresponding distribution of microlithics. The microartifact distribution in stratified profiles within the mining chamber will also be analyzed in order to detect possible buried activity areas

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis dissertation utilizes law and society research, as well as communication advocacy, to frame analysis and offer an extra-legal solution to conflicts between modders, fans who create new content from existing videogames, and game companies. It utilizes grounded theory and the traditional legal adversarial documentary method to abstract and analyze conflict caused by a cease and desist (C&D) letter sent to Kajar Laboratories concerning Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes - Kajar's mod to Square Enix's Chrono Trigger. Through qualitative analysis of websites, forum posts, and blog comments about the C&D this dissertation discovers the grounded theory Legal Threats Break Moral Communities. Utilizing the grounded theory and legal argumentation a critique is made of proposed legal solutions. A nonlegal solution to ameliorate future conflict is then suggested as a means to satisfy both the needs of modders and game companies. In analyzing the conflict this dissertation illustrates how the threat of law stops modders, disrupts the community, and chills future mods. This dissertation reinforces a regulatory understanding of copyright law arguing limited monopolies on intellectual property serve to advance the arts and sciences. Modding, like many forms of participatory culture, promotes valuable science, technology, engineering, and math through self-learning. Mods promote the original games while also generating new art. The dissertation also shows that both regulatory and proprietary interpretations of copyright law benefit from modding. Through critique of status quo solutions and analysis of a Microsoft exemplar this dissertation suggests a generic game content usage guide as an extra-legal, feasible solution that advances the goals of all parties involved without requiring legal intervention

Apocalypticism and Modern Thinking

This article seeks to draw forth the deeply apocalyptic ground of a uniquely modern thinking, which it attempts to understand as a rebirth of an original Christian apocalypticism. Such a ground is already manifest in the birth of modern science, and in the advent of a new and dichotomous interiority, one decisively present in Cartestian thinking and in German Idealism, and which in Hegel evolves into a fully apocalyptic systematic thinking. But modern apocalyptic thinking is grounded in a uniquely modern realization of the death of God, which can be understood as a conceptual realization of the crucifixion, as the crucifixion for the first time undergoes a purely conceptual expression. In Nietzsche, modern apocalyptic thinking passes into a uniquely modern nihilism, one which is being transcended and reversed in our time by the purely apocalyptic thinking of D. G. Leahy, a thinking which is apocalyptic and Catholic at once

The Anonymity of God

Simply to speak of theology today is to raise a question, and that question is the question of the possibility of theology itself. Is theological speech possible in our world? Is it actually possible for us to speak of God? Can we speak of God and truly say anything at all? These questions and others are driving us to the realization that we can only speak of God by realizing a new identity of theology. One route to such an identity is the realization that what we once knew as theology has become a soliloquy, a narcissistic soliloquy in which the speaker speaks only to itself. Thereby, too, the God which is evoked is the absolutely solitary God, the God which is only insofar as it is solely and only itself. We can name that God only by way of total obedience, an obedience to the wholly other, and that other can be spoken only in the language of pure otherness. But a language of pure otherness can be spoken only in solitude, a solitude in which the speaker is only itself, for actually to speak of the God which is only itself is to speak in a solitary and isolated speech. Finally, that speech becomes isolated even from itself, and thereby ceases to speak. Yet the silence of that cessation is not a simple ending of speech, it is rather a blockage of speech, an impotence of speech wherein a primal identity becomes unmanifest because unsaid

Literature and Rite

It has become a virtually established doctrine among both literary and religious scholars that myth and ritual are one and the same thing, the apparent difference between them deriving from the disjunctive power of an analytic mind beholding an originally organic and unitary phenomenon. Efforts to effect a real distinction between myth and rite are therefore declared to be fallacious. whether these arise from an attempt to assign a chronological priority to one or the other. or to apprehend either in an isolated and truly distinctive form. In Christian theological terms. this doctrine would appear to have a Catholic form. for it seemingly assaults both the meaningfulness and the validity of the claim of classical Protestantism to be grounded in sola scriptura. and this because it denies the possibility of a sacred scripture that could be divorced from the authority and the cultic acts of the religious community or the Church. At the same time it also assaults all critical attempts to distinguish between the roles of myth and ritual in literature. whether these seek to understand the origin of literature by way of the advent of an historical disjunction between myth and rite. or whether they seek to interpret particular works of literature in terms of the distinctive roles of myth and rite. Nevertheless. the fact remains that myth has ever increasingly become a dominant category in much modern thinking and understanding. whereas the analysis of ritual is largely confined to the work of the anthropologist and the psychoanalyst. Few literary critics or theologians have occupied themselves with the study of ritual. whereas theological and literary studies have become almost indissolubly related to the study of myth. Yet. in our time. a ritual theatre is being reborn in our midst and many modern literary movements from surrealism to the new novel and concrete poetry appear to have a cultic or ritual as opposed to a mythical identity. Indeed. rite. or the primal religious act. has ever more fully become manifest to us as that form or expression of religion which embodies religious passion and power in its most naked and immediate form. Who knows if the man has yet been born who is liberated from the power of rite? The example of Confucius should be a lesson to all. for in reducing religion to rite he established the most long-lived religious tradition in history. and one that may well have been reborn in Maoism