The role of outdoor recreation in building community resilience and adaptive capacity

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2014For the first time, outdoor recreation theory is applied within the framework of resilience theory to define the conceptual relationship between recreation benefit outcomes and community resilience. A theoretical and practical disconnect between the two disciplines is evident from the lack of literature identifying conceptual and operational linkages. Emerging from the application is a Recreation System Community Resilience Framework that models agent behavior, embedded green space, networks of service providers and feedback mechanisms to demonstrate recreation connections to resilience concepts. The Recreation Benefits-Based Model is identified as the best fit to deliver sustainable high leverage and capacity-building resilience for communities. Anchorage, Alaska neighborhoods are chosen to test the operational relationship between the constructs of outdoor recreation opportunity diversity and community resilience and adaptive capacity. The findings indicate support for the hypothesis that community resilience increases as recreation diversity increases. The results demand widespread implementation of the Benefits-Based Model in order for recreation to fully participate in the community well-being, resilience, and adaptive capacity discussion. The message to resilience practitioners is to reject activity-based visitor numbers, trail miles and park acres to indicate community health and insist on meaningful recreation system outcome indicators.Chapter 1 Introduction -- Chapter 2 Resilience Theory -- 2.1 Theoretical Basis to Resilience Theory -- 2.2 Understanding Resilience and Adaptive Capacity -- 2.3 Resilience Elements to Consider in Choosing a Recreation Framework -- Chapter 3 Recreation Theory -- 3.1 Towards an Outcome Approach to Outdoor Recreation -- 3.2 Theoretical Basis to Outdoor Recreation -- 3.3 Recreation Production Models -- 3.4 Comparing Recreation Production Models -- 3.5 The Benefits Outcome Approach to Recreation --3.6 Benefits-Based Model Links Recreation To the Greater Community -- Chapter 4 Resilience and Recreation Theories Connected -- 4.1 Recreation-System Community-Resilience Framework -- 4.2 Community Resilience and Adaptive Capacity -- 4.3 The Resilience Practitioners Disconnect with Recreation Practitioners -- 4.4 The Recreation Practitioner Disconnect with Resilience Practitioners -- 4.5 The Conceptual Match and Fit between Recreation and Resilience -- 4.6 The Recreation-System Community-Resilience Framework Emerges -- 4.7 Recreation System Services Bridge the Recreation-Resilience Gap -- Chapter 5 Research Design and Analysis -- 5.1 Background -- 5.2 Research Methodology -- 5.3 Research Results -- 5.4 Discussion -- Chapter 6 Conclusion -- Literature Cited

Exploring Personal Growth in Individuals Living with Heart Failure

This exploratory study described levels of personal growth and examined relationships among personal growth, demographic, clinical, and cognitive factors in a convenience sample (N = 103) of community-residing adults with New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class II-IV heart failure (HF). The study was guided by Mishels reconceptualized uncertainty in illness theory and Tedeschi and Calhoun\u27s post-traumatic growth model. The following research questions were addressed: (1) Do adults living with NYHA class II-IV HF report personal growth following their diagnosis of HF? (2) To what extent are age, sex, ethnicity, disease severity, time since diagnosis, symptom status, and uncertainty levels associated with personal growth in individuals with HF? and (3) Which variables (age, sex, ethnicity, disease severity, time since diagnosis, symptom status, or uncertainty levels) make independent contributions to personal growth in individuals living with NYHA class II-IV HF? Participants completed a demographic and clinical survey, the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), the Mishel Uncertainty in Illness Scale-Community Version, and the Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale—Heart Failure. Participants reported moderate levels of personal growth (M = 48.6, SD = 28.6). There were no significant differences in personal growth by sex, ethnicity, or disease severity. Personal growth had a weak, negative correlation with age (r = —.20, p \u3c .05) and a weak, positive correlation with symptom burden (r = .20, p \u3c .05). Uncertainty was positively correlated with symptom burden (r = .49, p \u3c .01) and disease severity (r = .28, p \u3c .01), but was not significantly correlated with PTGI scores. A hierarchical regression model that included age, sex, ethnicity, NYHA classification, years since diagnosis, uncertainty, and symptom burden did not account for significant variance in PTGI scores. Findings provide foundational knowledge to guide future study of personal growth in HF and add to the overall literature on personal growth in relation to uncertainty and symptoms within chronic illness

The role of amino acid changes in the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 transmembrane domain in antibody binding and neutralization

AbstractThe detailed interactions between antibodies and the HIV-1 envelope protein that lead to neutralization are not well defined. Here, we show that several conservative substitutions in the envelope gp41 led to a ~100 fold increase in neutralization sensitivity to monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) that target gp41: 4E10 and 2F5. Substitution at position 675 alone did not impact neutralization susceptibility to MAbs that recognize more distal sites in gp120 (b12, VRC01, PG9). However, changes at position 675 in conjunction with Thr to Ala at position 569 increased the neutralization sensitivity to all gp41 and gp120 MAbs and plasma, in some cases by more than 1000-fold. Interestingly, the T569A change had a dramatic effect on b12 binding, but no effect on neutralization sensitivity. This finding suggests that antibody neutralization may occur through a multi-step pathway that includes distinct changes in envelope conformation that may affect binding but not neutralization susceptibility

Writing the bicycle: women, rhetoric, and technology in late nineteenth-century America

This project examines the intersections among rhetoric, gender, and technology, examining in particular the ways that American women appropriated the new technology of the bicycle at the turn of the twentieth century. It asks: how are technologies shaped by discourse that emanates both from within and beyond professional boundaries? In what ways do technologies, in turn, reshape the social networks in which they emerge--making available new arguments and rendering others less persuasive? And to what extent are these arguments furthered by the changed conditions of embodiment and materiality that new technologies often initiate? Writing the Bicycle: Women, Rhetoric and Technology in Late Nineteenth-Century America addresses these questions by considering how women's interactions with the bicycle allowed them to make new claims about their minds and bodies, and transformed the gender order in the process. The introduction, Rhetoric, Gender, Technology, provides an overview of the three broad conversations to which the project primarily contributes: science and technology studies, feminist historiography, and rhetorical theory. In addition, it outlines a techno-feminist materialist methodology that emphasizes the material and rhetorical agency of users in shaping technologies beyond their initial design and distribution phases. The second chapter, Technology and the Rhetoric of Bicycle Design, describes the context in which the bicycle craze emerged and explains how the popular safety model responded to users' concerns about its predecessor, the high wheeled ordinary bicycle. The third chapter, Popular Magazines and the Rise of the Woman Bicyclist, offers a glimpse at a genre that generated both wider acceptance of the new technology and specific prescriptions as to how it might be useful to women. Finally, the fourth and fifth chapters--titled, respectively, Bicycling and the Invention of Women's Athletic Dress and The Medical Bicycle --examine two discourses that shaped the women's bicycling phenomenon, both rhetorically and materially, and that were in turn transformed by this phenomenon: the heated issues of women's dress reform and women's health

Chronic HIV-1 Infection Frequently Fails to Protect against Superinfection

Reports of HIV-1 superinfection (re-infection) have demonstrated that the immune response generated against one strain of HIV-1 does not always protect against other strains. However, studies to determine the incidence of HIV-1 superinfection have yielded conflicting results. Furthermore, few studies have attempted to identify superinfection cases occurring more than a year after initial infection, a time when HIV-1-specific immune responses would be most likely to have developed. We screened a cohort of high-risk Kenyan women for HIV-1 superinfection by comparing partial gag and envelope sequences over a 5-y period beginning at primary infection. Among 36 individuals, we detected seven cases of superinfection, including cases in which both viruses belonged to the same HIV-1 subtype, subtype A. In five of these cases, the superinfecting strain was detected in only one of the two genome regions examined, suggesting that recombination frequently occurs following HIV-1 superinfection. In addition, we found that superinfection occurred throughout the course of the first infection: during acute infection in two cases, between 1–2 y after infection in three cases, and as late as 5 y after infection in two cases. Our results indicate that superinfection commonly occurs after the immune response against the initial infection has had time to develop and mature. Implications from HIV-1 superinfection cases, in which natural re-exposure leads to re-infection, will need to be considered in developing strategies for eliciting protective immunity to HIV-1

Heavily glycosylated, highly fit SIVMne variants continue to diversify and undergo selection after transmission to a new host and they elicit early antibody dependent cellular responses but delayed neutralizing antibody responses

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Lentiviruses such as human and simian immunodeficiency viruses (HIV and SIV) undergo continual evolution in the host. Previous studies showed that the late-stage variants of SIV that evolve in one host replicate to significantly higher levels when transmitted to a new host. However, it is unknown whether HIVs or SIVs that have higher replication fitness are more genetically stable upon transmission to a new host. To begin to address this, we analyzed the <it>envelope </it>sequence variation of viruses that evolved in animals infected with variants of SIVMne that had been cloned from an index animal at different stages of infection.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that there was more evolution of <it>envelope </it>sequences from animals infected with the late-stage, highly replicating variants than in animals infected with the early-stage, lower replicating variant, despite the fact that the late virus had already diversified considerably from the early virus in the first host, prior to transmission. Many of the changes led to the addition or shift in potential-glycosylation sites-, and surprisingly, these changes emerged in some cases prior to the detection of neutralizing antibody responses, suggesting that other selection mechanisms may be important in driving virus evolution. Interestingly, these changes occurred after the development of antibody whose anti-viral function is dependent on Fc-Fcγ receptor interactions.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>SIV variants that had achieved high replication fitness and escape from neutralizing antibodies in one host continued to evolve upon transmission to a new host. Selection for viral variants with glycosylation and other envelope changes may have been driven by both neutralizing and Fcγ receptor-mediated antibody activities.</p