Links between outdoor recreation and environmental concern among Utahns

Research has shown that the processes which drive the way that people experience and perceive the environment around them are complex and dynamic. This extends to the perceptions that people have regarding environmental and natural resource concerns. Outdoor recreational activity allows for people to have varying types of tactile experience with bodies of water, as well as providing a social space in which distinct subcultures may develop. This study explores the possibility that recreation specialization, or type and frequency of water-based activities may influence the perceptions of Utahns regarding water quality. Investigating the ways in which social processes intersect and interact with environmental and natural resource issues can be useful. It adds to a body of knowledge that may be used to facilitate better education, smarter public policy and decision-making and more sensible management practices

Toward a More Holistic Understanding of Uranium-Related Views and Experiences of Residents in the Four Corners Region of the United States

Research on rural Four Corners Region (FCR) residents’ views about uranium production has focused mainly on predominately-White communities in the northern portion of the region. Meanwhile, residents in the southern part of the region, which includes the Navajo Nation and other tribal nations and communities, have dealt with the worst environmental and health effects of the uranium boom. Through a series of three studies in the southern part of the FCR, I explore the uranium-related views and experiences of racially diverse FCR residents. In the first paper of this dissertation, I used 53 interviews to explore how sociodemographic factors (e.g., age, race, gender) were associated with attitudes about new uranium production among residents of the Grants Mining District, part of the FCR that was the epicenter of uranium activity during the uranium boom. I found that some sociodemographic groups (i.e., Native Americans, women, those with higher levels of formal education, and new residents) were more anti-uranium. In contrast, other groups (Hispanics, those with less formal education, and those with uranium industry ties) were more pro-uranium. In the second paper, I applied a recently-developed framework that considers community responses to environmental injustice as a spectrum with at least four distinct pathways to a series of interviews with residents in Blanding (n = 19)—a community located six miles away from the last operating uranium mill in the US, and 10 miles from the uranium-rich Bears Ears National Monument. I found that Blanding was situated near the middle of the spectrum and that many residents held ambivalent (complex and conflicted views) views about uranium production. In the third paper, I applied TribalCrit—a perspective focused on the experience of Indigenous peoples in American society—to better understand the uranium-related views and experiences of Indigenous FCR residents (n = 22). Participants frequently discussed distrust of the uranium industry and the US government regarding uranium issues. Some participants discussed their efforts to resist the siting of new uranium mines near their community. Taken together, the three papers in this dissertation contribute to a fuller understanding of the uranium-related views and experiences of FCR residents

Interaction with Water: Water-Based Outdoor Recreation and Water Quality Perception and Concern Among Residents of Utah

There are a large number of impaired water bodies in Utah, and population trends indicate that water quality impairment will become an increasingly important issue in the future. Because of education and management implications, an understanding of the social processes that drive water quality perception and concern is a matter of interest and importance. Sociodemographic characteristics and outdoor recreational activity have both been associated with environmental concern in the past. Using a Generalized Linear Modeling approach, this study explores the relationship between water-based outdoor recreation and water quality perception and concern. It is found that participation in water-based outdoor recreation increases the odds that a person will perceive the water around them positively, but also makes it more likely they will be concerned about poor water quality. Disaggregation of the recreation categories (boating, fishing, snowsports, and walking or hiking near water) reveals that different recreational specializations are associated with concern of different strengths and directionalities. Those most engaged in boating have lower levels of concern about water quality, while those who often go hiking or fishing are more concerned

The simplest demonstrations of quantum nonlocality

We investigate the complexity cost of demonstrating the key types of nonclassical correlations-Bell inequality violation, Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen (EPR)-steering, and entanglement-with independent agents, theoretically and in a photonic experiment. We show that the complexity cost exhibits a hierarchy among these three tasks, mirroring the recently discovered hierarchy for how robust they are to noise. For Bell inequality violations, the simplest test is the well-known Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt test, but for EPR-steering and entanglement the tests that involve the fewest number of detection patterns require nonprojective measurements. The simplest EPR-steering test requires a choice of projective measurement for one agent and a single nonprojective measurement for the other, while the simplest entanglement test uses just a single nonprojective measurement for each agent. In both of these cases, we derive our inequalities using the concept of circular two-designs. This leads to the interesting feature that in our photonic demonstrations, the correlation of interest is independent of the angle between the linear polarizers used by the two parties, which thus require no alignment

Adaptive foveated single-pixel imaging with dynamic super-sampling

As an alternative to conventional multi-pixel cameras, single-pixel cameras enable images to be recorded using a single detector that measures the correlations between the scene and a set of patterns. However, to fully sample a scene in this way requires at least the same number of correlation measurements as there are pixels in the reconstructed image. Therefore single-pixel imaging systems typically exhibit low frame-rates. To mitigate this, a range of compressive sensing techniques have been developed which rely on a priori knowledge of the scene to reconstruct images from an under-sampled set of measurements. In this work we take a different approach and adopt a strategy inspired by the foveated vision systems found in the animal kingdom - a framework that exploits the spatio-temporal redundancy present in many dynamic scenes. In our single-pixel imaging system a high-resolution foveal region follows motion within the scene, but unlike a simple zoom, every frame delivers new spatial information from across the entire field-of-view. Using this approach we demonstrate a four-fold reduction in the time taken to record the detail of rapidly evolving features, whilst simultaneously accumulating detail of more slowly evolving regions over several consecutive frames. This tiered super-sampling technique enables the reconstruction of video streams in which both the resolution and the effective exposure-time spatially vary and adapt dynamically in response to the evolution of the scene. The methods described here can complement existing compressive sensing approaches and may be applied to enhance a variety of computational imagers that rely on sequential correlation measurements.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

‘Back to Life’—Using knowledge exchange processes to enhance lifestyle interventions for liver transplant recipients: A qualitative study

Interventions to prevent excessive weight gain after liver transplant are needed. The purpose of the present study was to enhance a specialist post-transplant well-being program through knowledge exchange with end-users.The study used an interactive process of knowledge exchange between researchers, clinicians and health system users. Data were collected as focus groups or telephone interviews and underwent applied thematic analysis.There were 28 participants (age 24-68 years; 64% male). The results identified experiences that may influence decisions around health behaviours during the course of transplant recovery. Three over-arching themes were identified that impact on liver transplant recipients post-transplant health behaviours. These include (i) Finding a coping mechanism which highlighted the need to acknowledge the significant emotional burden of transplant prior to addressing long-term physical wellness; (ii) Back to Life encompassing the desire to return to employment and prioritise family, while co-ordinating the burden of ongoing medical monitoring and self-management and (iii) Tailored, Personalised Care with a preference for health care delivery by transplant specialists via a range of flexible eHealth modalities.This person-centred process of knowledge exchange incorporated experiences of recipients into service design and identified life priorities most likely to influence health behaviours post-transplant. Patient co-creation of services has the potential to improve the integration of knowledge into health systems and future directions will require evaluation of effectiveness and sustainability of patient-centred multidisciplinary service development