Our objective was to quantify if macroinvertebrate assemblages in Indiana streams were better predicted from co-occurring fish assemblages or environmental variables. We used Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) with forward-selection of variables to identify significant environmental predictor variables for macroinvertebrate and fish assemblages. A partial Mantel test was used to determine if fish assemblage composition and macroinvertebrate assemblage composition significantly co-vary while controlling for environmental effects. The CCAs resulted in two significant predictors of macroinvertebrate distribution and relative abundance, and four significant predictors of fish distribution and relative abundance. Similarity matrices of fish and macroinvertebrates were significantly correlated in the Mantel (r = 0.22, p = 0.019) and partial Mantel tests (r = 0.23, p = 0.013). Our results suggest that macroinvertebrates respond to local and regional environmental variation, and less to local presence of fishes. / Department of Biology

Access to abstract restricted until 05/2015. / Access to thesis restricted until 05/2015. / Department of Biology

This thesis explores the effects of ludic structure—defined as the elements of game play not considered content—on video game communities. Counter to the focus on video game content and its effects by other scholars, this study argues the importance of the study of game structure and its influences on player interactions. Two games, League of Legends and Puzzle Pirates were examined. I played both games for 20 hours, as well as interviewing four players from each game. Using Laura Ellingson’s (2009) crystallization as a guiding approach, I analyzed the games using both a traditional thematic analysis and personal narratives in an attempt to create a richer dataset from which to draw conclusions. I discovered that one game was more competitively structured (League of Legends), which resulted in more aggressive and negative interactions among players in the community. Puzzle Pirates, on the other hand was more cooperatively structured, which resulted in an open and friendly community of people who were wanting to help each other. I argue that ludic structure does have a significant impact on player interactions, and that game companies should strive for more cooperatively structured games to encourage a positive community of gamers. / Literature review -- Methodology -- Close analysis of League of legends -- Close analysis of Puzzle pirates -- Conclusions, flaws and future research. / Department of Communication Studies

Several factors affect sports and recreation participation in human communities. Such factors include sports and recreation knowledge and skills of people, availability of time, interest and disposable income etc. Through expressing their various social needs, community residents are able to show the adequacy and or the inadequacy in the factors influencing sports and recreation participation in their communities. Several studies have indicated that inadequacy in the factors influencing sports and recreation participation such as inadequate programmes, lack of interest, lack of disposable income, lack of facilities result in low participation in sports and recreation activities. Low participation in sports and recreational pursuits could result in increased hypokinetic morbidity and other social and economic problems such as: crime, substance and drug abuse, juvenile delinquency, alienated anti-social behaviours, work absenteeism, medical and social justice costs in communities. The main purpose of the study was to find different sports and recreation needs of three communities in Botswana. Five hundred (500) residents of the three communities aged 18-40 years were randomly selected in the three communities in Botswana to participate in the study. The questionnaire that was prepared and administered on the randomly selected residents of the three communities attempted to gather the following information: general sports and recreation participation profile of the respondents of the three communities, participation in sports and recreation activities in the three communities' recently constructed integrated sports facilities, problems responsible for low participation in sports and recreation activities and finally to identify which of the five barrier categories; aptitude, socio-economic, socio-cultural, awareness of community integrated sports facilities and facility constraints constrained sports and recreation in the three communities. Descriptive statistics and frequency, T-test and ANOVA were used to analyse data. The results showed low participation that ranged from 0.0% to 47.4% in sports activities in the three communities, participation in few recreational activities, low participation in the three communities' integrated sports facilities accounted by 29.5% in Molepolole, 26.1% in Serowe and 53.4% in Masunga for both men and women. The results showed problems perceived to constrain sports and recreation participation in the three communities. Descriptive data analysis also showed that out of the five barrier categories (aptitude, socio-cultural, awareness of facilities and facility constraints) respondents of the three communities were mainly constrained by the socio-economic barriers. Facility constraints were only found to constrain participation in Masunga. T-test analysis showed no significant differences between males and females of each of the three communities in the five barrier categories. The ANOVA test of variance showed significance difference between females of the three communities in four of the five barrier categories and a no significant difference in one of the five barrier categories. No significant difference was found between males of the three communities in four barrier categories and a significant difference was only found in one barrier category. These results led to the acceptance of the hypothesis that 'the three communities in Botswana have similar sports and recreation needs' and the partial acceptance of the hypothesis that 'there is no significant difference between respondents of the three communities in the way they experienced the five barrier categories. / Thesis (M.A. (Recreation Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

In Online Social Networks (OSNs), users are often overwhelmed with a huge amount of social data, most of which are irrelevant to their interest. Filtering of the social data stream is the common way to deal with this problem, and it has already been applied by OSNs, such as Facebook and Google+. Unfortunately, personalized filtering leads to “the filter bubble” problem where the user is trapped inside a world within the limited boundaries of her interests and cannot be exposed to any surprising, desirable information. Moreover, these OSNs are black boxes, providing no transparency for the user about how the filtering mechanism decides what is to be shown in the activity stream. As a result, the user trust in the system can decline. This thesis presents an interactive method to visualize the personalized stream filtering in OSNs. The proposed visualization helps to create awareness, explanation, and control of personalized stream filtering to alleviate “the filter bubble” problem and increase the users’ trust in the system. The visualization is implemented in MADMICA – a new privacy-aware decentralized OSN, based on the Friendica P2P protocol, which filters the social updates stream of users based on their interests. The results of three user evaluations are presented in this thesis: small-scale pilot study, qualitative study and large-scale quantitative study with 326 participants. The results of the small-scale study show that the filter bubble visualization makes the users aware of the filtering mechanism, engages them in actions to correct and change it, and as a result, increases the users’ trust in the system. The qualitative study reveals a generally higher proportion of desirable user perceptions for the awareness, explanation and control of the filter bubble provided by the visualization. Moreover, the results of the quantitative study demonstrate that the visualization leads to increased users’ awareness of the filter bubble, understandability of the filtering mechanism and to a feeling of control over the data stream they are seeing.

The emergence of the zoonotic disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Canada resulted in a severe agricultural crisis. However, little is known about the ways in which farmers and rural communities were affected. The overall objective of this study is to characterize and better understand the impacts on and responses of farmers and rural communities as they relate to this crisis. Research was undertaken in strata throughout the diverse three Canadian prairie provinces – Alberta, Saskatchewan and Alberta – by employing surveys and focus groups. Results indicated there were numerous direct and ‘spillover’ impacts on farmers and rural communities resulting from the BSE crisis. Declines in cattle prices, herd equity and cash flow, often resulting in the need for bank loans, farm credit or off farm employment, as well as emotional and psychological stress were all experienced by farmers as a result of BSE. Importantly, many additional factors such as adverse weather and market volatility compounded the impacts related to BSE, adding to what was already a crisis situation for many farmers. These impacts were not restricted to farms but, rather, extended into the surrounding community fabric in the form of financial and social stress. Results further indicated government policies contributed to the impacts and the effectiveness of farmer responses related to BSE. A longer-term policy shift that has embraced agro-industrialization and entrenchment into the global marketplace has resulted in clear disparities between the biggest and smallest players in the beef industry and agriculture as a whole. This was illustrated in the ways in which governments responded to the BSE crisis, favouring the needs of the largest farmers and agri-businesses over those of smaller-scale, cow-calf producers. This policy shift and response has left the Canadian beef industry, family farmers and rural communities more susceptible to the emergence of similar future risks. A more inclusive approach to risk research and policymaking that meaningfully involved farmers and their rich, longer-term local knowledge might help mitigate similar risks that will inevitably confront agriculture in the future.

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to understand how crucial of importance is e-WOM within the French tourism industry with a focus on trip retailers – travel agencies and tour-operators – by observing and analyzing how they encourage and manage e-WOM.   Methodology The paper uses deductive approach with a triangulation method based on a qualitative research through 24 semi-structured telephone interviews and a quantitative research through the behavior analysis of 112 trip retailers on online communities. Findings It was found that the French trip retailers encourage e-WOM by primarily joining and using online communities via posting pictures and special offers at least twice a week on social networks. Besides, among those that collect and manage positive and negative comments, they mainly do it on Facebook by rather adopting a non-defensive attitude. Managerial implications The authors suggest trip retailers not use as many online communities they can but regularly be active on the one(s) they choose to use. Moreover, responding not only to negative but also to positive e-WOM may be a strategy that paid off since few trip retailers take it into consideration. Regarding the management of negative e-WOM, the authors recommend against deleting non-eulogistic comments and reply publicly within 24 hours.   Limitations This study was limited to French trip retailers and cannot consequently be generalised for all international trip retailers. Additionally, the specific sector trip retailers work with has not been taken into consideration. Moreover, even if trip retailers have been classified within four categories, no deeply correlation has been studied between the size and their online activity.   Further research suggestions Future research is needed to possibly confirm and subsequently generalise the findings of this paper to the overall tourism industry in France. Moreover, it is necessary to compare what trip retailers think to do and what they really do on the web and determine a degree of relevance. Furthermore, due to the constantly growing interest for online communities by tourism professionals, an updated study of that one should be conducted during the next five years and results compared. It would be finally also interesting to measure the impact of e-WOM on online communication strategies   Article classification Qualitative and quantitative studies

The Greater Victoria School District has undergone a reconfiguration to include middle schools in their public education system. This reconfiguration has students from grades six to eight learning in a new setting. Cedar Hill Middle school is an example of one of the middle schools that is now in its eighth year of existence. The school is the centre of the learning community that is made up of students, staff and parents. As part of an ongoing review and reflection, this research used an Appreciative Inquiry methodology to try to identify the strengths found within the learning community. Through a dialogic interview process, a sample of staff, parents and most importantly students were interviewed to collect the best experiences that they had experienced as a part of the learning community. The data was open coded to identify best experiences, categorize them, and then identify the themes or relationships between the experiences of the different members of the learning community. These relationships were then used to create a set of powerful propositions that can be used to potentially guide the growth of the Cedar Hill learning community. Through this process two main themes emerged. The first was the importance of connections within the system and the second was the need for diversity within the system. This supported the assumption that the learning community was indeed a complex system and reinforced the idea that Appreciative Inquiry is a tool that can be used to support and develop complex systems. / Graduate

This research examines the concept of identity of place using the town centre of Kuantan, Malaysia as a case study. Identity in this research is defined as the qualities of a place that are recognised or recalled as being distinct from other places by the people. The aim is to investigate the elements and qualities associated with the identity of the town centre as perceived by its residents. The objectives of the research is to identify the elements associated with identity of the town centre as perceived by the residents. Secondly is to establish the qualities that are associated with identity of the town centre. The third objective is to examine the variation in residents' perception of elements and the qualities associated with identity according to their socio-cultural background. Finally, is to examine the variation in residents' perception of elements and qualities associated with identity between different parts of the town centre. The research adopted a mixed methodology using both the quantitative and qualitative method in data collection and analysis. The quantitative approach adopted a survey using a questionnaire on a sample of the town centre's residents. A total of 330 residents from the residential areas located within the town centre boundaries were involved in the sample survey. The data collected by the survey are the resident's perception of the town centre's environment and the profile of its residents. The survey data was processed using the SPSS Pc+ and analysed using descriptive statistics, namely frequencies and percentages. A cross-tabulation table was also used to identify the elements perceived by the different ethnic groups, gender and age groups that make up the composition of the respondents. The qualitative approach adopted four techniques that is focused interview, sketch map task, photo recognition interview and visual survey (field observations and recording). A total of thirty residents were involved in the interview. The data collected from this second phase was analysed qualitatively. The focused interview and photo recognition interview were taped recorded and transcribed. Analysis of the interview were based on the recurrent themes and categories that appeared in the transcripts. The findings of the research is a culmination of the cross analysis between the two different approaches. There are four main findings of the research. Firstly, there are three types of physical elements that are distinctive to the residents, that is physical structures (namely buildings, urban spaces (such as streets) and landscape features. Secondly, the characteristics of distinctive physical elements are influenced by the physical appearance, activities and the meanings and associations attached to the elements. The third finding is that there is no significant variation between the socio cultural groups in terms of elements perceived to be distinctive and that the slight variation is on the level of details observed. Of the three socio cultural factors observed, it is found that age group have more variation in perception of distinctive elements than the other two factors, especially between the youngest and the oldest group of residents. Finally, there is some variation in residents' perception of identity between different parts of the town centre. The variation observed is that residents perceived the older town centre as having a stronger identity than the newer town centre. From the research findings, several urban design and planning implications were suggested that influenced the distinctiveness of the town centre. The implications are with regards to decisions on the enhancement of path networks, development of landmarks, enhancement of nodes and entrances and conservation of the old town centre. Suggestions for further research and the implications for existing theories were also discussed. It is implied from this research that such guidelines would increased the distinctiveness of elements and places in the town centre. This consequently enhances the identity of the town centre to its residents.

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