Proposal for the Auditing of Charitable Nonprofit Organizations

32 pages. A thesis presented to the Department of Accounting and the Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for degree of Bachelor of Science, Spring 2014.American public charities received over $1.59 trillion in revenue in 20ll. Despite receiving funding equivalent to 10% of US GDP, the nonprofit sector still has finite resources, leading to fierce competition among the organizations for donations and volunteers. This competition necessitates the need for verifiable comparability between nonprofits for potential donors and fraud prevention. My solution for these unresolved needs is the implementation of a program to require the external audits of larger non profits with the audited financials being made public and with the internal controls of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) being developed and improved. The organization best suited to implement this plan is the IRS. The IRS will need authorization to expand its responsibilities/power to mandate audits for NPOS. These responsibilities include the mandating of audits, the facilitation of public access to audit findings, and the potential revocation of tax-exempt status for NPOs not in compliance

EEG-Monitored Electrical Activity to Track Stored Information With High Temporal Precision

28 pages. A thesis presented to the Department of Biology and the Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for degree of Bachelor of Science, Spring 2014.Because working memory is correlated with measures of fluid intelligence and is relevant on a daily basis, it is important to investigate its properties. By monitoring neural activity with electroencelography (EEG), we are able to generate channel tuning functions from the electrical waves oscillating in the alpha band frequency (7.5-12.5 Hz). This study seeks to validate the temporal precision allowed with EEG by exploring the sensory systems responsible for governing visual working memory, specifically the manner in which populations of sensory neurons work together to create cognitive representations of relevant features of the outside world. Focusing on the neural activity responding to oriented lines, we found that while visual stimuli invoked equivalent responses for both the relevant and irrelevant orientations when two lines occupied the visual field, an amplitude increase in the tuning functions associated with the relevant feature coincided with an amplitude decrease in tuning functions associated with the irrelevant feature when the subject was asked to hold the orientation in memory. These findings validate the influential role of selective attention on populations of orientation-selective neurons

Facultative Altitudinal Movements by Mountain White-Crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia Leucophrys Oriantha) in the Sierra Nevada

Mountain White-crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys oriantha) winter in Mexico and often arrive in the vicinity of their breeding grounds in the Sierra Nevada well before nesting is possible. Arrival at Tioga Pass, California (elevation 3,030 m), usually occurs in early May, but residual winter snow and adverse weather can delay nesting for weeks. We used radiotelemetry to determine whether prebreeding Mountain White-crowned Sparrows engaged in weather-related altitudinal movements during the waiting period between the end of spring migration and onset of breeding during 1995-2001, with a range of residual winter snowpacks. Interannual variation in arrival date and onset of egg laying was 18 and 41 days, respectively. We tracked females for two years and males for all seven years. During spring snowstorms (which occurred in four years), radiomarked individuals moved to lower elevation sites, where they often remained for several days. Departing birds left Tioga Pass by early afternoon and returned early in the morning after storms. More frequent storms during tracking increased the likelihood of facultative altitudinal movements, but heavier residual winter snowpack did not. Warm days increased the likelihood of birds returning to Tioga Pass from low elevation. This study demonstrates that facultative altitudinal movement behavior can be a common feature of spring arrival biology in montane-breeding birds. Received 1 November 2002, accepted 30 June 2004.Integrative Biolog

Transient Elevation of Corticosterone Alters Begging Behavior and Growth of White-Crowned Sparrow Nestlings

Developing animals may face a cost–benefit tradeoff during growth mediated through hormones such as glucocorticoids, as the hormone is essential for development but can have detrimental consequences. To investigate potential tradeoffs caused by brief, moderate elevations of corticosterone in avian young, we artificially elevated the hormone levels in two ways: feeding corticosterone-containing worms and applying corticosterone dermal patches. The former experiment tested the effects of an acute corticosterone elevation (25 min) on begging behavior, whereas the latter explored the effects of artificially elevated corticosterone for 24 to 48 h on growth. Corticosterone altered both begging behavior and growth of white-crowned sparrow nestlings. It increased latency to beg immediately after the treatment and suppressed growth as early as 24 h after the patch application. These experiments also showed that the effects depended on the age or types of development (e.g. gaining mass or growing feathers) that the nestlings were going through

Plasma Testosterone Correlates with Morph Type Across Breeding Substages in Male White-Throated Sparrows

White-throated sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis) exhibit a genetic polymorphism that affects plumage and behavior in both sexes. White-striped morphs are more territorially aggressive, whereas tan-striped morphs provision nestlings at a higher rate. We investigated testosterone physiology in this species in an effort to understand hormonal mechanisms for the observed differences in aggression and parental care between the morphs. We found a small but significant difference in plasma testosterone between free-living white-striped and tan-striped males over the course of the breeding season. This difference correlates with previously observed differences in aggressive behavior and suggests that testosterone may mediate these differences. Testosterone remained higher in white-striped males relative to tan-striped males when males were provisioning nestlings and fledglings. Thus, testosterone may also contribute to the relatively reduced levels of parental care exhibited by white-striped males. In contrast to males, plasma testosterone did not differ between free-living white-striped and tan-striped females, which suggests that testosterone does not mediate differences in aggression between female morphs. Injection with gonadotropin-releasing hormone led to greater testosterone secretion in both captive and free-living males and captive females but did not differ by morph. Therefore, we conclude that differences in plasma testosterone between the morphs are due to differences in testosterone regulation upstream of the pituitary