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

Clinical Aspects of Feline Retroviruses: A Review

Feline leukemia virus (FeLV) and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) are retroviruses with global impact on the health of domestic cats. The two viruses differ in their potential to cause disease. FeLV is more pathogenic, and was long considered to be responsible for more clinical syndromes than any other agent in cats. FeLV can cause tumors (mainly lymphoma), bone marrow suppression syndromes (mainly anemia), and lead to secondary infectious diseases caused by suppressive effects of the virus on bone marrow and the immune system. Today, FeLV is less commonly diagnosed than in the previous 20 years; prevalence has been decreasing in most countries. However, FeLV importance may be underestimated as it has been shown that regressively infected cats (that are negative in routinely used FeLV tests) also can develop clinical signs. FIV can cause an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome that increases the risk of opportunistic infections, neurological diseases, and tumors. In most naturally infected cats, however, FIV itself does not cause severe clinical signs, and FIV-infected cats may live many years without any health problems. This article provides a review of clinical syndromes in progressively and regressively FeLV-infected cats as well as in FIV-infected cats

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

Assessing undergraduate nursing students\u27 attitude toward the dying using an ACE-S case study in simulation

A mixed-methods, multimodal approach was used to assess an undergraduate nursing students\u27 attitude towards the dying using a specifically designed lecture developed using the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) competencies and an NLN ACE-s unfolding case study in simulation