Evolution of Antarctic Yeasts

This thesis is composed of six manuscripts which are presented as chapters, each complete in itself without additional supporting material. The manuscripts constituting the first four chapters have been published in the following refereed national or international journals: " Budding morphology of a psychrophilic Cryptococcus and related species compared with Leucosporidium scottii" (Chapter I) in Mycologia (73: 618-633, 1981), " A fixation method for visualization of yeast ultrastructure in the electron microscope" (Chapter II) in Mycopathologia (77: 19-22, 1982), " The evolution of Antarctic yeasts: DNA base composition and DNA-DNA homology" (Chapter III) on Canadian Journal of Microbiology (28: 406-413, 1982), and "cryptococcus lupi sp. nov., an Antarctic Basidioblastomycetous (Chapter IV) in International Journal of Systematic Bacteriology (32: 229-232, 1982). The manuscript entitled "Five new basidioblastomycetous yeast species segregated from Cryptococcus vishniacii emend. auct., an Antarctic yeast species comprising four new varieties" (Chapter V) has been accepted for publication in International Journal of Systematic Bacteriology. The data presented in Chapter VI, "Phylogenetic relationships in the basidiomycetous yeasts: complementary DNA-25S ribosomal RNA homology, have not yet been submitted for publication.Microbiolog

Incarceration Nation: The “What,” “How,” and “Why” of the United States Prison System

Beginning in the 1970s, the United States experienced an exponential growth in its prison population that corresponded with a sharp rise in violent crime. However, while that rate began to fall around the mid-1990s and has been dropping ever since, incarceration rates have continued to climb, only recently experiencing a decline of their own. Today, the United States leads the world in the raw number of its own citizens it incarcerates and is second only to the tiny African nation of Seychelles in imprisonment rate per 100,000 citizens. This study looks at why incarceration is so high in the 50 states and finds several contributing factors, including Republican control of government, higher black and Hispanic population levels, poverty rate, ideology, and levels of welfare expenditures. It then examines how the United States’ prison system came to be this way through a series of case studies, which show that private prisons and the drug war have played a major role in some states. Finally, the study discusses the consequences of mass incarceration on America’s citizens and communities, and it proposes a set of policy solutions in an effort to contribute to the national dialogue on criminal-justice reform