The seasonal vertical movements of wireworms (Elateridea) in soil near Manhattan, Kansas

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Pirates of the Prairie: Fraudulent County Organization in 1870s Kansas

"Scandal!" "Fraud!" These words often resounded through the late nineteenth century, as scandal, graft and criminal activity seemed to infiltrate and infect every level of American society. The disease wormed its way even more so into government, from the President of the United States down to the lowest levels of county government in south central and southwest Kansas

Helminth infection and metabolic disease: Strongyloides stercoralis infection and type 2 diabetes mellitus in an Aboriginal community

Recent years have seen an upsurge in interest in the relationship between helminth infections and metabolic diseases such as insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Limited clinical and laboratory studies have suggested that chronic helminth infections may protect against the development of T2DM, and have suggested an immunometabolic mechanism for such an effect. Aims: This thesis seeks to examine the relationship between Strongyloides stercoralis infection and T2DM in an Australian Aboriginal community, and to examine the importance of this relationship in the context of efforts to treat and control this infection. Methods: The thesis reports on a cross sectional observational study of adults attending the health centres in an Aboriginal community, testing them for both strongyloides infection and T2DM, and establishing the nature of the relationship between these two conditions. A cohort of infected and un-infected subjects is thereby established and followed over a three-year period, enabling characterization of both the treatment outcomes for this infection at 6 months and three years in the context of T2DM, and the effects that treatment for strongyloides has on subsequent metabolic parameters. In addition, the relationship between S. stercoralis infection, T2DM and eosinophilia is examined, and limited studies into the cytokine responses in treated individuals are performed Results: The study demonstrates a strong negative association between pre-existing S. stercoralis infection and T2DM. It shows T2DM is a predictor of treatment failure for S. stercoralis at 6 months, and demonstrates that eosinophilia is not a reliable predictor of S stercoralis infection in this community, but is a more constant finding in those patients with S. stercoralis and T2DM. The three-year follow up shows that ivermectin is an extremely effective treatment for S. stercoralis infection in this community, and demonstrates that treatment of S. stercoralis infection is associated with an increased risk of developing T2DM and impaired glucose tolerance when compared to an uninfected and untreated group. Conclusions: The thesis provides evidence to support a protective effect for S. stercoralis infection against T2DM and suggests an immunometabolic model to explain the negative association which has been found. These findings are discussed in the context of ongoing efforts to control and eliminate strongyloides infection in Australian Aboriginal communities

Global Agricultural Price Supports: The Political and Economic Forces that Drive Unsustainable Agricultural Protectionism Policy

Agricultural tariffs and price supports are the last bastion of US and European protectionism. While all other areas of commerce have embraced change and welcomed open-market international commerce, agriculture has remained the lone holdout. The small farmers for whom these support programs were designed no longer exist. Yet governments appropriate billions of dollars annually for the continued support of these outdated programs. The fact that these governmental agencies resist change, even in an age of economic crises, record national debt, and one of the highest negative trade balances in history, is testimony to American civic indifference. Public apathy precludes timely reform. While most of the population is unaware of the scope of agricultural price-support spending, or of the trickledown effect it has on consumer pricing, the small groups that benefit from it spend millions annually in their effort to continue to receive billions in aid payments. This dissertation posits that agricultural price supports are no longer necessary, and that they promote overproduction of certain crops, create artificially high retail costs, and may actually hinder economic progress in some less-developed agrarian societies. If progress is to be made in the arena of international agricultural open-market economics, the organizational dynamics of the developed nations must first be replaced with institutional oversight through organizations such as the World Trade Organization

Aesthetic Appreciation of the Natural Environment: Scientific Knowledge & the Extension from Aesthetics to Ethics

Aesthetics has played an influential role in how we ascribe value to the environment. Yet, it seems that if we are to take the beauty of the natural world seriously, certain aesthetics judgments must be better than others. The scientific cognitive model posits that the natural world must be interpreted through an understanding of biological and geological categories, which are provided by scientific knowledge and common sense. While there are clearly merits to this model, it is not without its own set of problems and limitations. These problems exist in both the model itself and with its extension to environmental ethics. This thesis functions as an analysis and critique of this particular model, suggesting that it should not be thought of as comprehensive in both a descriptive and a normative sense, nor relied on exclusively for environmental decision making. I suggest two other models of aesthetic appreciation that can and should exist alongside the scientific cognitive model, eventually settling on a position of constrained pluralism

High resolution Doppler lidar

A high resolution lidar system was implemented to measure winds in the lower atmosphere. The wind speed along the line of sight was determined by measuring the Doppler shift of the aerosol backscattered laser signal. The system in its present configuration is stable, and behaves as indicated by theoretical simulations. This system was built to demonstrate the capabilities of the detector system as a prototype for a spaceborne lidar. The detector system investigated consisted of a plane Fabry-Perot etalon, and a 12-ring anode detector. This system is generically similar to the Fabry-Perot interferometer developed for passive wind measurements on board the Dynamics Explorer satellite. That this detector system performs well in a lidar configuration was demonstrated

Vulnerability-attention analysis for space-related activities

Techniques for representing and analyzing trouble spots in structures and processes are discussed. Identification of vulnerable areas usually depends more on particular and often detailed knowledge than on algorithmic or mathematical procedures. In some cases, machine inference can facilitate the identification. The analysis scheme proposed first establishes the geometry of the process, then marks areas that are conditionally vulnerable. This provides a basis for advice on the kinds of human attention or machine sensing and control that can make the risks tolerable