Response of Bird Populations to Long-term Changes in Local Vegetation and Regional Forest Cover

We analyzed data from a woodland site for a 59-year period to determine whether changes in bird populations are related to changes in the diversity and relative abundance of woody plant species even when vegetation structure, degree of forest fragmentation in the surrounding landscape, and regional changes in bird populations are taken into account. Principal component analyses generated vegetation factors encompassing variables such as total basal area, shrub density, basal area of common tree species, and measures of tree and shrub species diversity. We also calculated a forest edge/ forest area index based on GIS analysis of the landscape within 2 km of the study site. Poisson regression models revealed relationships between these covariates and population changes for 19 bird species and for seven groups of species characterized by similar migration strategies or habitat requirements. All groups of habitat specialists showed a positive relationship with the first vegetation factor, which indicates that they declined as total basal area and dominance of oaks and maples increased and as tree and shrub diversity decreased. This suggests that floristic diversity may be important for determining habitat quality. Bird species associated with the shrub layer and with hemlock stands showed positive relationships with the second vegetation factor, suggesting that the recent decline in eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) because of hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) had an adverse impact on these species. Forest migrants, shrub-layer specialists, long-distance migrants and permanent residents showed negative relationships with the forest edge/forest interior index, indicating that conservation efforts to protect bird communities should take the wider landscape into account. The strongest relationship for most species and species groups was with the first vegetation factor, which suggests that species composition and diversity of trees and shrubs may be especially important in determining abundance of many forest bird species

Journal Self-Citation XV: The Quest for High Quality Research in IS – Unintended Side Effects

This paper addresses the research quality produced and published by the IS academic community by providing a lens through which future in depth discussion of the issues raised can be framed. It uses a systems thinking approach to do so, and argues that the discipline may be caught in a vicious cycle of unintended consequences (side effects) that has arisen because of our focus on achieving quality. The paper provides examples of the side effects and posits that we must address these in the short run to increase the quality of both inputs (research conducted and submitted to journals) and outputs (the journals themselves)

Fashioning Mobility: Navigating Space in Victorian Fiction

My dissertation examines how heroines in nineteenth-century British Literature manipulate conventional objects of feminine culture in ways which depart from uses associated with Victorian marriage plots. Rather than use fashionable objects to gain male attention or secure positions as wives or mothers, female characters deploy self-fashioning tactics to travel under the guise of unthreatening femininity, while skirting past thresholds of domestic space. Whereas recent Victorian literary and cultural criticism identifies female pleasure in the form of consumption and homosocial/erotic desire, my readings of Victorian fiction, from doll stories to the novels of Charlotte Brontë, Wilkie Collins, and Marie Corelli, consider that heroines find pleasure in deploying fashionable objects – such as dolls, clothes, cosmetics, and jewelry – which garner access to public space typically off limits for Victorian women. In the first chapter, girls use dolls to play in wilderness spaces, fostering female friendships. Muted dress provides a cloak of invisibility, allowing the heroine to participate in the pleasure of ocular economies in the second chapter. The third chapter features a female detective who uses cosmetics to disguise her infiltration of men’s private spaces in order to access private secrets. Finally, the project culminates with jewelry’s re-signification as female success in the publishing world. Tracing how female characters in Victorian fiction use self-fashioning as a pathway, this study maps the safe travel heroines discover through wild landscapes, urban streets, and professional arenas. These spaces were often coded with sets of conditions for gendered interactions. Female characters’ proficient self-styling provides mobility through locations guarded by the voices of neighbors, friends, and family who attempt to keep them in line with Victorian gender conventions. Female characters derive an often unexplored pleasure: the secret joy of being where they should not and going against what they are told. In the novels I examine, female protagonists navigate prolific rules and advice about how to arrange and manage their appearances, not to aspire to paragons of Victorian beauty and womanhood but in order to achieve physical and geographic mobility outside domestic interiors

Rehabilitation nursing needs of recently employed public health staff nurses

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Alley\u27s Mills: A 19th Century Mill Town

The Alley\u27s Mills town site was discovered\u27 while examining a timber tract on Alley\u27s Creek for a harvest cut by International Paper. A deep, rock-lined well, and a profusion of handmade bricks was discovered on a small knoll overlooking Alley\u27s Creek, a tributary of Big Cypress Creek. Also found on the knoll were pieces of whiteware pottery, English blue transfer china, square nails, and glass fragments. I contacted a local historian, Mr. Fred McKenzie, about the site. We walked over the site, which he had discovered several years ago. In the creek bottom, he pointed out an earthen structure that had been built around 1838 as a mill race to divert water to a grist mill wheel. The mill race is a levee-like structure, about one meter wide and two meters high, and runs in a NW-SE direction for about 800 meters. A wooden sluice was built on top of the race to direct the water flow. At the end of the mill race, under the surface of the water, is a large hand cut beam about one meter long with regularly spaced hand-hewn notches. The old roadbed of the Jefferson-Pittsburg road is visible across the tract, running directly past the knoll on which the brickwork was found and crossing the creek at the end of the mill race where the mill is located

NURSE-DELIVERED SHOE-LACING INTERVENTION: EFFECT ON COMFORT AND TOE PRESSURES FOR ACTIVE COMMUNITY-DWELLING ADULTS (AGE 65+)

Significance: Problems with shoe fit are endemic, affect gait and balance and lead to falls. Falls are physically, emotionally, and economically costly. Low-cost, easily implemented interventions, that reduce pain and improve balance meet the “triple aim” of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Purpose: Evaluate the impact on community-dwelling adults (65+) of two nursing interventions involving foot repositioning and shoe relacing. Outcome measures: Toe pressures, experiences of pain and comfort. Method: Repeated-measures, mixed-methods lab-based study. Walk #1 Control. Intervention #1, participant’s heel secured to back of shoe, the participant’s chosen lacing pattern snugged. Intervention #2, heel secured to back of shoe, specific lacing pattern snugged. Results: 19 participants, aged 65-91(Av 74.7), 14 women, 5 men. When the participant’s heel was secured to back of shoe, and their chosen lacing was snugged (Intervention #1), there were 129/190 (68%) decreases in average peak toe pressures and 57% (11/19) stated there was an improvement in comfort. When the heel was secured to back of shoe, and a specific lacing pattern snugged. (Intervention #2) there were 148/190 (78%) decreases in average toe pressures and 133/190 (70%) decreases of Intervention #2 over Intervention #1. 63% (12/19) experienced greater comfort over Intervention #1. Orders of magnitude of the changes varied. ANOVA and two sample t-tests resulted in statistical significance on the 2nd and 4th left toes. This study was fueled by observations of nurses operating in the field doing foot care, who are trying to enhance mobility and quality of life for older people desiring to remain in their communities. The strength is the simplicity of the intervention and the focus on older adults and combination of qualitative and quantitative data that offset many of the weaknesses of each method. Limitations of this study were the sample was small, not diverse and the lab based nature of this study excluded those less able who are make up a large segment of the older adult population. Conclusion: Results supported the initial hypotheses that changing the foot position in a shoe and the lacing pattern can positively impact experiences of comfort/pain and reduce toe pressures

An EDI Transaction Set Development Lifecycle (TSDL): A Case Study in the Food Manufacturing Industry

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is widely regarded by organizations worldwide as the business standard for the timely and secure exchange of electronic business transactions in an expanding global marketplace. While numerous research efforts have explored how the adoption, implementation, and integration of this technology can impact an organization\u27s technical, organizational, and competitive environment - few studies have documented the process used by organizations to implement EDI transaction sets with trading partners. This paper advances an innovative lifecycle used by a food manufacturing company to successfully design, implement, and test an EDI transaction set. This paper also describes how this transaction set development lifecycle (TDSL) can be integrated into an organization\u27s standard systems development lifecycle (SDLC) to ensure the timely completion of IT projects. Finally, a discussion of the impact of the TDSL on the organization\u27s business practices is presented

Airborne Particles in Museums

Presents one in a series of research activities aimed at a better understanding of the origin and fate of air pollution within the built environment