Socio-ecological context matters for wetland project outcomes

Restoration or creation of wetlands is used to counteract wetland loss in the United States. However, projects often fail to meet functional equivalence with natural wetlands, and the shortcomings increase with time since construction. Many restoration projects are located in suburban or urban areas and are highly influenced by human impacts. Lack of understanding of how human communities influence restoration outcomes, in ways both positive and negative, hinders the ability of restoration managers to produce favorable long-term outcomes. This thesis investigates relationships among ecological metrics of success and the biotic, abiotic and social context for 38 created and restored wetlands in New York State. Measures of ecological function include invasive species and hydrological regimes, among others, and socio-ecological factors include public access, proximity to residential areas or roads, management strategies, volunteer participation, ownership characteristics, and the initial motivation for the project. Plant diversity, floristic quality index, and metrics developed using the New York Rapid Assessment Method (RAM) for wetlands were used as response variables for ecological quality. Potential predictor variables were evaluated using both univariate and multivariate analyses. I further assessed the role of stakeholders at two sites using semi-structured interviews. These qualitative results were used to evaluate reciprocal interactions between restoration outcomes and stakeholder communities. I found that the social context associated with management, public use/awareness, volunteer participation, and ownership of a site impacted ecological outcomes, suggesting that these factors likely influenced the abiotic and biotic relationships that are key to wetland function. These are leverage points that drive ecological success and delivery of ecosystem services, and thus integrating them into projects at the outset may improve management and planning and long-term positive outcomes. I present a new framework for wetland management based on these results to improve long-term engagement and ensure future wetland health

Selling Sex in the Social Media Era

Platforms such as OnlyFans blur the lines between influencing and creating elicit content

Communities of Abundance: Sociality, Sustainability, and the Solidarity Economies of Local Food-Related Business Networks in Knoxville, Tennessee

This dissertation examines the socio-economic and eco-political dimensions of contemporary localist food movements in Knoxville, Tennessee. More specifically, it explores the implications of the mutualistic and networked socio-economies (solidarity and/or community economies) of such movement expressions as they are experienced, embodied, and understood among the small-scale, independent food-related business owners who often serve as the interpellators of such movements. This study is likewise concerned with ways in which movement actors are actively shaping/creating place (via the processes of emplacement), and relatedly, the way place—as an entity possessive of its own accretions of environmental, historical, cultural, economic, and political identities—shapes actors, therefore determining the textures of particular localisms in return. Such processes and expressions, while explicitly oriented toward the recovery and reassertion of the “local,” however, are also necessarily embedded in the structural matrix of neoliberal globalization. Indeed, it is precisely from the negotiation of such global/local dialectics that localist food movements draw their oppositional political value. Accordingly, the study is also preoccupied with the ways in which localist food movements, particularly in their contestational positioning vis-a-vis the global industrial food system, are also actively producing new, and perhaps critical-neoliberal subjectivities that bridge post-Fordist symbolic and cultural economies on the one hand, with affective solidarity economies on the other

Community Projects and the University Curriculum: Re-searching for a Civil Rights History Through Community Photographs

The following articles represent a collaborative process, as does the project that we will discuss. It is not within the scope of these articles to engage in an in depth examination of community photography. This practice and its relationship to high art, cultural production and representation has been the topic of other very interesting investigations. We will instead focus on a possible relationship between community photography and the higher education curriculum, wherein each project facilitates the other. The first article represents my view of the pedagogical foundations of this relationship as the instructor and a participant in this process. The second article will speak from a student/participant\u27s perspective, about the actual process and results of this particular class project

Adult Volunteer Development: Addressing the Effectiveness of Training New 4-H Leaders

4-H traditionally focuses on positive youth development, but adult volunteers are the mainstay of the programs. We evaluated the effectiveness of 4-H new leader education and its influence on the skill development of adult volunteer leaders. Using a retrospective pretest method, we found that participants in 4-H new leader training increased their knowledge and readiness to be 4-H leaders. Skills gained from new leader education were also being applied outside of the 4-H context. Planning and carrying out yearly club programs was identified as an area in which current training could be improved

Elementary concepts concerning the Lebesgue integral

Call number: LD2668 .R4 1967 V

Is it Art or is it Documentary?

Documentary photography has always held a precarious place in the history of the medium: on the one hand it is called into service to be a ‘document’ a recounting of a place or time, a record keeping device of extreme and minute criteria. On the other hand, whatever the original intent, the photograph speaks in a variety of ways. It can be lifted up to a status beyond the simple depiction of the subject matter, into a deeper delving of the cultural and iconic meanings of buildings, gestures, and ultimately, our personal histories. Or perhaps the photograph is considered for its formal qualities: light, form, mass, or line. A further dichotomy can be added to the mix. Contradictory thinking is explicit in the very nature and intent of the person behind the camera. There is the vehicle itself, which affords the ability to record even the cracks of the sidewalks, the weather and the time of day, forming a critical mix of intent and science. Each of these ‘titles’ presents its own set of criteria, rules and predicaments. As a documentary photographer with over thirty years’ experience, recording and displaying images of vintage American movie theaters, I have debated these questions and conversations from the very beginning. Is it Art or is it Documentary? And are there times when it is neither or both? What does it take to create these images that speak to both sides of this debate? What are the respective roles of subjectivity and intent? Is there a place for storytelling and the ability of the photographer to share in the historic and communal connections that are embodied in the buildings themselves? I seek to raise and discuss these questions within this paper

Retrospective Analysis: Most Common Diagnoses Seen in a Primary Care Clinic and Corresponding Occupational Therapy Interventions

Background: The literature supports occupational therapy (OT) on primary care (PC) interprofessional teams; however, due to uncertainty regarding the role of, and reimbursement for, OT in PC, few occupational therapists practice in PC. This study addressed the first barrier by identifying the 15 most common diagnoses in a specific PC practice and determining how many of them have evidence-based OT interventions appropriate for their treatments. Method: A retrospective analysis of the ICD-10 codes used by one physician during a 12-month period was completed. These codes were reviewed and categorized using a functional classification system to determine the 15 most frequently occurring diagnostic categories. These diagnostic categories were compared to evidence-based industry standard OT interventions. Results: We reviewed 1,769 distinct ICD-10 codes and condensed them into 58 thematically grouped diagnostic categories. The 15 most frequent categories comprised 64% of the codes used. Evidence-based OT interventions to treat conditions directly, or address related underlying issues and common comorbidities, were identified for 100% of these categories. Discussion: Evidence-based OT interventions exist to treat aspects of 100% of the 15 most common conditions seen in PC. The findings support the growing body of literature that demonstrate the use of occupational therapists as interprofessional PC team members

Oxidation of Zircaloy-4 in pressurized water reactor conditions

A study of the oxidation of zircaloy in reactor environments has been undertaken with the goal of characterizing of the Thermal Gradient Test Facility (TGTF) at Teledyne Wah Chang, Albany. A set of oxidation models is presented from the literature, as well as an extensive database of published oxidation test results. The question of the acceleration of zircaloy oxidation by aqueous lithium hydroxide is examined, with static autoclave test results compared to published models and results. Theories of the possible concentration of lithium hydroxide in operating reactor systems are presented. Large increases in the oxidation rate are investigated, with the possible use of lithium hydroxide accelerated oxidation in a shortterm, in situ examination of the corrosion of a simulated fuel rod under heated conditions. Finally, a manual for the use of the database is presented, for the continuing existence of the database at OSU for future researchers