Investigating the Challenges and Successes of Community Participation in the Fishery Co-management Program on Lake Victoria, East Africa.

Formal fishery co-management institutions facilitate collaboration between national governments and local communities. The intent of co-management is to empower fishing communities to self-organize and conduct sustainable fishery management. This dissertation investigates the challenges and successes of this approach, focusing on community fishery management organizations called Beach Management Units (BMUs), on Lake Victoria, East Africa. To determine what degree community participation is necessary in fishery management, it is valuable to identify the appropriate relationship with central governments, since natural resources are often under their trust. I first compared approaches to fishery management on two major fresh water fisheries, the Laurentian Great Lakes and Lake Victoria. Results revealed the necessity for stronger community inclusion on Lake Victoria due to the nature of dependence on the fishery by a large number of the population’s livelihoods. Community inclusion requires central government involvement in the form of devolving appropriate amount of authority and financial resources for communities to administer fishery management. There is often a disproportionate distribution of fiscal and authoritative resources by government, thus challenging the ability of the community to adequately function as resource management entities. As a result of discordant resource distribution, communities must administer a large part of the fishery management program on their own. I investigated, therefore, community self-organization within, and prior to, the co-management program. I determined that communities exhibited stronger self-organization characteristics more often at BMUs which had pre-existing organizations, than those communities that did not. This was likely due to stronger social-cohesion of the community. Finally, I discovered that authorities not appointed for fishery management often conducted management activities, thus disrupting the operations of the BMU. These disruptions result in BMUs’ legitimacy being compromised, and thus unable to administer fishery management. Fishery co-management is a compelling approach for its inclusion of communities and cooperation with government; inefficiencies, however, must be addressed for more successful community-level management to occur. Government must contribute appropriate resources; informal self-organizational characteristics should be considered for their contribution to the formal co-management program; and roles of all stakeholders must be clear so community management efforts aren’t disrupted.PHDNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113613/1/tlawrenz_1.pd

An Exploratory Examination of Burnout in NCAA Division II Athletes

The purpose of this study was to assess the causes of burnout among student-athletes in Division II institutions. The authors distributed the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ) to 125 undergraduate student-athletes enrolled at three Division II colleges and universities. The athletes competed in various sports. A 2 (Gender) × 2 (Type of Scholarship) × 2 (School Status) analysis of variance revealed that women and men reported different levels of burnout dependent upon type of scholarship. Men with no scholarship reported the lowest levels of burnout among the three types (None/Academic/Athletic), whereas women with no type of scholarship reported the highest levels of burnout. The authors discuss the results and offer implications, limitations, and future directions

Effects of flanking sequences and cellular context on subcellular behavior and pathology of mutant HTT

Huntington’s disease (HD) is caused by an expansion of a poly glutamine (polyQ) stretch in the huntingtin protein (HTT) that is necessary to cause pathology and formation of HTT aggregates. Here we ask whether expanded polyQ is sufficient to cause pathology and aggregate formation. By addressing the sufficiency question, one can identify cellular processes and structural parameters that influence HD pathology and HTT subcellular behavior (i.e. aggregation state and subcellular location). Using Drosophila, we compare the effects of expressing mutant full-length human HTT (fl-mHTT) to the effects of mutant human HTTexon1 and to two commonly used synthetic fragments, HTT171 and shortstop (HTT118). Expanded polyQ alone is not sufficient to cause inclusion formation since full-length HTT and HTTex1 with expanded polyQ are both toxic although full-length HTT remains diffuse while HTTex1 forms inclusions. Further, inclusions are not sufficient to cause pathology since HTT171-120Q forms inclusions but is benign and co-expression of HTT171-120Q with non-aggregating pathogenic fl-mHTT recruits fl-mHTT to aggregates and rescues its pathogenicity. Additionally, the influence of sequences outside the expanded polyQ domain is revealed by finding that small modifications to the HTT118 or HTT171 fragments can dramatically alter their subcellular behavior and pathogenicity. Finally, mutant HTT subcellular behavior is strongly modified by different cell and tissue environments (e.g. fl-mHTT appears as diffuse nuclear in one tissue and diffuse cytoplasmic in another but toxic in both). These observations underscore the importance of cellular and structural context for the interpretation and comparison of experiments using different fragments and tissues to report the effects of expanded polyQ

Neoadjuvant stereotactic body radiation therapy, capecitabine, and liver transplantation for unresectable hilar cholangiocarcinoma

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102207/1/lt23757.pd

Editorial: emerging issues in sociotechnical systems thinking and workplace safety

The burden of on-the-job accidents and fatalities and the harm of associated human suffering continue to present an important challenge for safety researchers and practitioners. While significant improvements have been achieved in recent decades, the workplace accident rate remains unacceptably high. This has spurred interest in the development of novel research approaches, with particular interest in the systemic influences of social/organisational and technological factors. In response, the Hopkinton Conference on Sociotechnical Systems and Safety was organised to assess the current state of knowledge in the area and to identify research priorities. Over the course of several months prior to the conference, leading international experts drafted collaborative, state-of-the-art reviews covering various aspects of sociotechnical systems and safety. These papers, presented in this special issue, cover topics ranging from the identification of key concepts and definitions to sociotechnical characteristics of safe and unsafe organisations. This paper provides an overview of the conference and introduces key themes and topics. Practitioner Summary: Sociotechnical approaches to workplace safety are intended to draw practitioners’ attention to the critical influence that systemic social/organisational and technological factors exert on safety-relevant outcomes. This paper introduces major themes addressed in the Hopkinton Conference within the context of current workplace safety research and practice challenge

Effects of flanking sequences and cellular context on subcellular behavior and pathology of mutant HTT

Huntington’s disease (HD) is caused by an expansion of a poly glutamine (polyQ) stretch in the huntingtin protein (HTT) that is necessary to cause pathology and formation of HTT aggregates. Here we ask whether expanded polyQ is sufficient to cause pathology and aggregate formation. By addressing the sufficiency question, one can identify cellular processes and structural parameters that influence HD pathology and HTT subcellular behavior (i.e. aggregation state and subcellular location). Using Drosophila, we compare the effects of expressing mutant full-length human HTT (fl-mHTT) to the effects of mutant human HTTexon1 and to two commonly used synthetic fragments, HTT171 and shortstop (HTT118). Expanded polyQ alone is not sufficient to cause inclusion formation since full-length HTT and HTTex1 with expanded polyQ are both toxic although full-length HTT remains diffuse while HTTex1 forms inclusions. Further, inclusions are not sufficient to cause pathology since HTT171-120Q forms inclusions but is benign and co-expression of HTT171-120Q with non-aggregating pathogenic fl-mHTT recruits fl-mHTT to aggregates and rescues its pathogenicity. Additionally, the influence of sequences outside the expanded polyQ domain is revealed by finding that small modifications to the HTT118 or HTT171 fragments can dramatically alter their subcellular behavior and pathogenicity. Finally, mutant HTT subcellular behavior is strongly modified by different cell and tissue environments (e.g. fl-mHTT appears as diffuse nuclear in one tissue and diffuse cytoplasmic in another but toxic in both). These observations underscore the importance of cellular and structural context for the interpretation and comparison of experiments using different fragments and tissues to report the effects of expanded polyQ