Los Proyectos de La Gamba: Gender Issues in Rural Sustainable Development Projects in the Southern Zone of Costa Rica

The University of Kansas has long historical connections with Central America and the many Central Americans who have earned graduate degrees at KU. This work is part of the Central American Theses and Dissertations collection in KU ScholarWorks and is being made freely available with permission of the author through the efforts of Professor Emeritus Charles Stansifer of the History department and the staff of the Scholarly Communications program at the University of Kansas Libraries’ Center for Digital Scholarship.In 1992 at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED), Costa Rica pledged to make a political commitment to incorporate the sustainability of the environment into the socioeconomic development of the country. Costa Rica and various governments and non-governmental organizations at UNCED, agreed to use the document, Agenda 21, to design sustainable development programs. My field research in the community of La Gamba, Costa Rica, examines two smallscale rural sustainable development projects in a campesino community. The first project promotes the sustainability of an endangered animal called the Tepezcuintle, which the community uses as a potential source of income and protein. The second project involves a medicinal plant garden that provides the community with medicines, soaps, and shampoos. I utilize an analytical framework that examines the extent to which the projects are achieving sustainability according to the guidelines suggested in Agenda 21 for sustainable development programs. In addition, I examine the extent of women's participation in these projects based on the mandates pertaining to gender equality stated in Agenda 21. Moreover, my thesis explicates what the rural participants think about their projects, how they view sustainable development programs, and what suggestions they have for improving their projects

Digestibility Kinetics of Polyhydroxyalkanoate and Poly(butylene succinate-co-adipate) after In Vitro Fermentation in Rumen Fluid

Using polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) materials for ruminal boluses could allow for longer sustained release of drugs and hormones that would reduce administration time and unneeded animal discomfort caused by continuous administration. The objective of this study was to determine ruminal degradability and kinetics of biodegradable polymers and blends. A proprietary PHA-based polymer, poly(butylene succinate-co-adipate) (PBSA), PBSA:PHA melt blends, and forage controls were incubated in rumen fluid for up to 240 h. Mass loss was measured after each incubation time, and digestion kinetic parameters were estimated. Thermogravimetric, differential scanning calorimetry, and intrinsic viscosity analyses were conducted on incubated samples. Generally, across treatments, mass loss was significant by 96 h with a minimum increase of 0.25% compared to 0 h but did not change thereafter. Degradation kinetics demonstrated that polymer treatments were still in the exponential degradation phase at 240 h with a maximum disappearance rate of 0.0031 %/h. Melting temperature increased, onset thermal degradation temperature decreased, and intrinsic viscosity decreased with incubation time, indicating structural changes to the polymers. Based on these preliminary findings, the first stage of degradation occurs within 24 h and PHA degrades slowly. However, further ruminal degradation studies of biodegradable polymers are warranted to elucidate maximum degradation and its characteristic

Genetic parameters estimated at receiving for circulating cortisol, immunoglobulin G, interleukin 8, and incidence of bovine respiratory disease in feedlot beef steers

Citation: Cockrum, R. R., Speidel, S. E., Salak-Johnson, J. L., Chase, C. C. L., Peel, R. K., Weaber, R. L., . . . Enns, R. M. (2016). Genetic parameters estimated at receiving for circulating cortisol, immunoglobulin G, interleukin 8, and incidence of bovine respiratory disease in feedlot beef steers. Journal of Animal Science, 94(7), 2770-2778. doi:10.2527/jas2015-0222Bovine respiratory disease complex (i.e., shipping fever and bacterial bronchopneumonia) is a multifaceted respiratory illness influenced by numerous environmental factors and microorganisms. Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is just one component of BRD complex. Because BRD is moderately heritable, it may be possible to reduce the incidence of BRD through genetic selection. The objectives of this study were to determine the heritability and associative genetic relationships among immune system traits (i.e., cortisol, total IgG, IgG isotypes, and IL-8) in cattle monitored for BRD incidence. At an average of 83 d after weaning (219 d age and mean = 221.7 kg [SD 4.34]), crossbred Bos taurus steer calves (n = 2,869) were received at a commercial feedlot in southeastern Colorado over a 2-yr period. At receiving, jugular blood samples were collected at 212 (yr 1) and 226 d (yr 2) of age for immune trait analyses. The BRD phenotype was defined as a binomial variable (0 = no and 1 = yes) and compared with immune system traits measured at receiving (prior to illness onset). An animal identified as BRD positive exhibited ? 2 clinical signs (i.e., eye or nasal discharge, cough, lethargy, rapid breathing, acute interstitial pneumonia, or acute upper respiratory syndrome and/or a rectal temperature > 39.7°C). Heritability and genetic correlation estimates for categorical variable BRD, cortisol, IgG, IgG1, IgG2, and IL-8 were estimated from a sire model using ASREML. Heritability estimates were low to moderate for BRD (0.17 ± 0.08), cortisol (0.13 ± 0.05), IgG (0.15 ± 0.05), IgG1 (0.11 ± 0.05), IgG2 (0.24 ± 0.06), and IL-8 (0.30 ± 0.06). A moderate negative genetic correlation was determined between BRD and cortisol (rg = ?0.19 ± 0.32). Moderate positive correlations were found between BRD with IgG (0.42 ± 0.28), IgG1 (0.36 ± 0.32), and IL-8 (rg = 0.26 ± 0.26). Variation in the BRD phenotype and immune system traits suggested herd health improvement may be achieved through genetic selection. © 2016 American Society of Animal Science. All rights reserved

Prospectus, September 23, 1974

ALL SET FOR STUGO ELECTION; Trustees Approve Budget For \u2774-\u2775, Partial Figures On Page 12; 16 Candidates On Ballot For 1st \u2774 Election; PC Counselors Offer More Than Counseling; Attention: Transfer Students; mercy for who?; The Short Circuit; The Kaleidoscope; Letters; Point-Counterpoint: How Do You View America\u27s Future?; Here Are Candidates\u27 Platforms; State House Candidates To Debate Here; Friends; Untitled; Lit. 1.: A Secret Something, Untitled, Rebirth, Everyone\u27s looking for...; \u27DIRT\u27 Comes Off Clean; Really Raunchy Record Review: Eric Clapton, 461 Ocean Boulevard; Meeting For Prospective Debators; Classified Ads; Books: All The President\u27s Men; Republicans To Have Coffee Wednesday; Phi Beta Lambda Meetings Scheduled; APO Chapter Formed Here; In The Dark: That\u27s Entertainment ; Jock Talk; Harriers Perform Well, Abbey Pleased; IM Football Starts Play On 25th; Howell First \u27Fast Freddy\u27; Bowling Bulletin Board; Watching A Counselor At Work; Registration Drive; Cross Country Schedule; Last Chance For Girls IM Football; Fast Freddy\u27s Football Forecast; Callboard; Parkland Events; Summary Of Approved Budget; Vets Elect Officers; A Column By And For Women; Fashion Forecasthttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_1974/1009/thumbnail.jp

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

Population growth of Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana) predates human agricultural activity

Background Human activities, such as agriculture, hunting, and habitat modification, exert a significant effect on native species. Although many species have suffered population declines, increased population fragmentation, or even extinction in connection with these human impacts, others seem to have benefitted from human modification of their habitat. Here we examine whether population growth in an insectivorous bat (Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana) can be attributed to the widespread expansion of agriculture in North America following European settlement. Colonies of T. b. mexicana are extremely large (~106 individuals) and, in the modern era, major agricultural insect pests form an important component of their food resource. It is thus hypothesized that the growth of these insectivorous bat populations was coupled to the expansion of agricultural land use in North America over the last few centuries. Results We sequenced one haploid and one autosomal locus to determine the rate and time of onset of population growth in T. b. mexicana. Using an approximate Maximum Likelihood method, we have determined that T. b. mexicana populations began to grow ~220 kya from a relatively small ancestral effective population size before reaching the large effective population size observed today. Conclusions Our analyses reject the hypothesis that T. b. mexicana populations grew in connection with the expansion of human agriculture in North America, and instead suggest that this growth commenced long before the arrival of humans. As T. brasiliensis is a subtropical species, we hypothesize that the observed signals of population growth may instead reflect range expansions of ancestral bat populations from southern glacial refugia during the tail end of the Pleistocene

The economic impact of the Homeland Security Advisory System the cost of heightened border security

The majority of literature written on the economic impact of border security has indicated that the increased security following 9/11 has had adverse effects on the flow of foreign imports. This study measures the direct cost the Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS) had on U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) overtime spending and the indirect cost on the U.S. economy by reducing the daily flow of imports. Three case studies were conducted at the United States' largest ports of entry. Each compared CBP overtime spending and the daily flow of imports during the seven periods the HSAS was elevated to ORANGE between 2002 and 2005. The study found that increased threat levels of the HSAS resulted in 50% more overtime spending by CBP. However, the HSAS had no impact on the daily flow of imports into the United States during the seven periods of elevated security between 2002 and 2005.http://archive.org/details/theeconomicimpac109453866Outstanding ThesisUS Air Force (USAF) author.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited