Small Mammals of Quarry Park Stearns County, MN

This wilderness quarry area is in the process of being converted for public use by Stearns Co., and is an ideal area for ecological surveys. I assessed the small mammal distributions in the variety of habitat types within the park, from June to August 1994. The habitats included: grasslands, Oak, Aspen, and Red Pine forests, wetlands, rock tailing piles, natural rock outcroppings, and water-filled quarries. I conducted this survey using Sherman Live traps, scat boards, and pit traps. The grassland consisted exclusively of Microtus pennsylvanicus, except for a single Sorex cinereus. Peromyscus leucopis dominated in the forests within the park. They also had very high populations in the rock tailing piles, showing the importance of shelter in habitat selection. Other species that were found included: Blarina brevicauda, in the wetlands, and Tamius striatus and Clethrionomys gapperi in the forests. Each species appeared to be very habitat specific, and were never observed to venture outside of their respective habitats. The main danger to these populations in the upcoming development of the area will be the destruction of their habitat. The results from this survey will provide insight for park officials when devising a method of management for this park

Techno-Utopians, Scammers, and Bullshitters: The Promise and Peril of Web3 and Blockchain Technologies According to Operators and Venture Capital Investors

Proponents and developers of Web3 and blockchain argue that these technologies can revolutionize how people live and work by empowering individuals and distributing decision-making power. While technologists often have expansive hopes for what their technologies will accomplish over the long term, the practical challenges of developing, scaling, and maintaining systems amidst present-day constraints can compromise progress toward this vision. How technologists think about the technological future they hope to enable and how they navigate day-to-day issues impacts the form technologies take, their potential benefits, and their potential harms. In our current work, we aimed to explore the visions of Web3 and blockchain technologists and identify the immediate challenges that could threaten their visions. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 29 operators and professional investors in the Web3 and blockchain field. Our findings revealed that participants supported several ideological goals for their projects, with decentralization being a pivotal mechanism to enable user autonomy, distribute governance power, and promote financial inclusion. However, participants acknowledged the practical difficulties in fulfilling these promises, including the need for rapid technology development, conflicts of interest among stakeholders due to platform financing dynamics, and the challenge of expanding to mainstream users who may not share the "Web3 ethos." If negotiated ineffectively, these challenges could lead to negative outcomes, such as corrupt governance, increased inequality, and increased prevalence of scams and dubious investment schemes. While participants thought education, regulation, and a renewed commitment to the original blockchain ideals could alleviate some problems, they expressed skepticism about the potential of these solutions

Pick your poison: banking regulations, macroeconomic management, and moral hazard in OECD economies

This paper argues that banks operating in systems where monetary and regulatory authority are unified in a central bank expect and receive preferential policies, and so act less prudently than do banks in other systems. This moral hazard arises when the natural tension between counter-cyclical monetary policy and pro-cyclical regulatory policy is relaxed. I test the hypothesis using a time series cross-sectional econometric analysis of OECD countries from 1990-2007. The results strongly support the claim that there is a relationship between prudential behaviors of banks and the location of regulatory authority, and provides evidence that moral hazard exists when regulatory and monetary authority are unified. I conclude by discussing the implications of the analysis for governance at the domestic and international levels

A Complex Political Economy of the Global Banking System

The global financial crisis which began in 2007 is the most severe economic event since the 1930s. The profound political and economic consequences of the crisis have clarified the need to better understand the financial system at both micro and macro levels. This dissertation advances research on both fronts. First, it utilizes network prominence measures to look at the pre- and post-crisis organization of the global banking system, finding that American prestige has increased as a result of the crisis. Second, it employs complex network theory and inferential statistical models to explain why the global banking system is organized as it is, finding that endogenous processes interact with monadic and dyadic political economy variables to produce a global structure. Third, it examines bank behaviors at the firm level, demonstrates that representative agent models are insufficient for explaining the patterns observed, proposes an alternative approach drawing from ecological finance theory, tests the model using Bayesian regression, and finds support for the new approach. In sum, this dissertation demonstrates the need for further quantitative political economy work at both the micro and macro levels of the global financial system and provides several possible pathways forward.Doctor of Philosoph

Examining the Role of Transcriptional Interference in HIV Latency

The establishment of a latent reservoir after infection by Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 1 (HIV-1) is a significant obstacle to an HIV cure. Antiretroviral therapies (ART) effectively target actively replicating virus, but are ineffective at targeting latently infected cells. Thus, an area of key interest lies in developing methods to induce expression of these latent proviruses. As such, an understanding of the molecular mechanisms which govern HIV transcription is of interest to identify new targets to mediate latency reversal. The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of transcriptional interference on HIV latency in cell models with characterized integration sites. In the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast), regulation of transcription involves a complex set of proteins that creates heterochromatin in regions after they have been transcribed to prevent cryptic transcription—transcription initiation in non-promoter regions. Evidence suggests this mechanism works in a similar capacity in humans, and we hypothesized this may contribute to HIV latency. Using CRISPR-Interference, we targeted a nuclease-deactivated Cas9 protein (dCas9) fused to the KRAB transcriptional repression domain to promoter regions of known genes of HIV integration to silence host gene transcription and examine the role of transcriptional interference in HIV latency. Cell lines expressing dCas9-KRAB and both single and multiple gRNAs targeted to host gene promoters showed moderate to high reduction of mRNA expression of the host gene of HIV integration but did not fully ablate transcription. In these systems, we did not observe an altered response in latency reversal. If transcriptional interference does indeed have an effect on latency, then it appears that merely diminishing transcription is not sufficient to alter reactivation, or that transcriptional interference plays a minor overall role in maintenance of latency.Bachelor of Scienc

North Carolina community colleges provide for Latino student success

The purpose of this study was to describe implemented and planned Latino student success activities in North Carolina community colleges and to examine variations in these activities based on the degree of Latino settlement in the college service area. This study was designed to answer the following research questions: (1) What Latino student success provisions, programs, and processes have been implemented in North Carolina community colleges? (2) What Latino student success provisions, programs, and processes have been planned in North Carolina community colleges? and (3) Are there variations among North Carolina community colleges’ Latino student success provisions, programs, and processes based on the degree of Latino settlement in the college service area? Leaders from 44 North Carolina community colleges, representing a variety of institutional areas, participated in this descriptive, quantitative research, conducted through electronic surveys. The survey sample was identified by recommendations from chief academic officers serving North Carolina community colleges. Participants were recommended based on their knowledge of implemented and planned Latino student success activities at their institutions. The response rate for the survey was 75.9%. The most frequently reported implemented Latino student success 10 activities were from the areas of academic and student services. These activities were related to providing welcoming and safe campuses for Latinos, making an overt commitment to global diversity in institutional goals, listening to Latinos to determine their needs, and encouraging Latinos to be active on campus. The least reported Latino student success activity was using Spanish portals of communication for recruiting Latino students. The most reported planned activities for Latino student success were increasing Latino student recruiting, increasing recruiting of diverse staff and faculty, increasing awareness of Latinos as an asset to the campus, making an overt commitment to Latino student success, and faculty workshops on Latino student success strategies. The least reported planned activities were a campus news service in Spanish, translation/interpretation services, faculty-student mentoring for Latino students, a Latino college readiness program, and advertising in Spanish. Three Latino density measures were identified and used in the study to determine if variations in Latino student success activities were related to the degree of Latino settlement density in the college service area. The density measures were: percent of Latino population in the college service area, perceived significance of Latinos in the college service area, and percent of Latino settlement change since 1990. Overall study findings did not support settlement density as a key force for implementing or planning of Latino student success activities in North Carolina community colleges