The period between 1880 and 1920 was one of the most dynamic in the history of medicine. Morbidity and mortality rates for infectious diseases dropped quickly. Concurrently, miasmatic theory gave way to germ theory. Many of these dynamic changes occurred in the urban centers of North America, which were also entering into a period of dramatic growth and change. Following the 1905 completion of infrastructure improvements intended to improve public health in Washington, D.C., typhoid fever rates unexpectedly increased. Previously, for mitigation purposes, Dr. George Kober investigated a typhoid epidemic in 1895, and as a result of the 1906 increase in typhoid morbidity the United States Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service conducted investigations between 1906 and 1909 to better understand the origins of typhoid in the city. These studies include dot maps of typhoid case locations for the entire 1895 epidemic, at two-week intervals for 1906, 1907, and 1908, and monthly intervals for 1909. These point locations are used to construct a geographic information system (GIS) displaying the spatial distribution of individual typhoid cases. The creation of this GIS allows for the investigation of urban typhoid at a localized geographic scale. The temporal resolution of the data and supplementary data included in the reports provides an opportunity to explore urban typhoid within years, between years, to compare morbidity to mortality, and to compare the spatial pattern of multiple diseases. This dissertation describes the creation of this GIS and the results of the spatial analyses using Ripleys K-function and the G_i* statistic to evaluate spatial clustering patterns. The G_i* statistic identified localized hotspots that refute the conclusions of the original reports. Typhoid clusters varied in size and location, and lacked temporal stability. The findings of this dissertation indicate that typhoid in early twentieth century Washington, D.C. originated from multiple sources whose impact decreased over time. Studies of this type make use of geospatial approaches unavailable when the original data were collected, in order to investigate potential patterns of typhoid fever invisible a century ago. This research helps to provide a better understanding of the historical geography of urban health in general.

Facial tissue depth measurements are used to create forensic facial reconstructions to aid in human remains identification. Collection of such measurements began in the late nineteenth century with anatomists His, Kollman, and Welcker. Their results were used to bring the rich and famous back to life. In the 1970s, the technique of facial reconstruction was revitalized and incorporated into the forensic science field to aid in human identification. However, certain populations are extremely under-represented. This study collected facial tissue depth information from the adult Chinese-American population in New York City. The study sample included 101 adult Chinese-Americans of varying weights and ages residing in New York City. Following the procedure outlined in Manhein et al. (2000), ultrasonic measurements were taken at 19 landmarks on the face. Previously used datasets to represent Chinese-American facial tissue depth (especially Miyasaka 1998; Ogawa 1960; Suzuki 1948) are compared to these data. This thesis examines how the Chinese-American facial tissue depth data compare with other Mongoloid, Manhein et al.'s (2000), and Kollman and Buchly's datasets. As expected, this dataset showed that facial tissue depths in Chinese-Americans were thicker than those of their Japanese counterparts (as represented in Suzuki 1948). In this dataset, statistical tests show that Body Mass Index (BMI) was the strongest determinant of facial tissue depth, while sex and age were the weakest. The results of this study provide valuable facial tissue depth information for a previously under-represented population. Forensic facial reconstructions for Chinese-Americans using this dataset will be more accurate and will increase the chances of positive identification. Further studies would need to be conducted in order to understand the relationship between age, sex, BMI, and facial tissue depth.

This dissertation explores issues and concepts underlying the creation of Louisianas rural-industrial petrochemical complex as they relate to environmental equity and industrial developments deleterious consequences. Cumulative hazards models examine the distribution of technological hazards associated with petroleum extraction and processing and explores how this varies among different socioeconomic groups in three coastal Louisiana parishes. Considerable onshore oil extraction occurs in Jefferson Parish. Lafourche Parish is the primary land-based supply center for the majority of the offshore oil activity in the Gulf of Mexico. The refineries of Saint Bernard Parish represent the endpoint of the flow of raw product and the staging point from which the refined product is transported to the wider market. Transportation infrastructure and a web of oil and gas pipelines connect these three parishes to each other and the areas beyond. The hazards models found a range of potential impacts affecting a wide swath of communities. Chalmette, for example, faces the greatest immediate risk from Saint Bernard Parishs two large refineries and has the lowest proportion of minority residents within the study area. Conversely, Houma Indians residing on the wetland fringe stand at risk from the petroleum industry, both directly, through potential residential exposure, and indirectly, through potentially impacted hunting and fishing grounds. These results highlight the importance of using a fine grained localized environmental equity model. Historic process-based analyses examined the development of environmental inequity in communities identified by the hazards models. The historical development of environmental inequity is an extremely dynamic process. Generally, industry arrived first followed by population. After the initial siting, industry and population grew concomitantly. Industry growth continued even after the communities became predominantly minority or low-income. This research examined regional migration patterns over the last decade to explore why people move into potentially hazardous areas. Statistical analysis reveals that historic segregation patterns are a primary factor in most population movement. Additionally, populations are moving into neighborhoods proximate to their place of employment. Finally, this dissertation describes how the results achieved compare to those of other environmental equity studies and identifies six tenets of a practical, attainable, place-specific model of environmental equity.

The purpose of this study is to examine temporal and spatial trends in surface global horizontal solar radiation in Louisiana using a 30-year dataset (1961-1990) of the four stations in Louisiana from the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRD) and a 6-year dataset (2001-2006) of the 25 stations in the Louisiana Agriclimatic Information System (LAIS). Three of the four NSRD stations exhibit a downward linear trend in surface solar radiation over the 30-year period of record, similar to the global trends uncovered in previous studies. Only one station exhibits a slightly upward trend. Surface solar radiation exhibits a positive correlation with maximum temperature but a negative correlation with minimum temperature. A higher solar radiation transmissivity in summer is found in Shreveport than at the three sites in southern Louisiana, despite a more direct sun angle in the south. Southeastern Louisiana (represented by New Orleans) is found to have lower transmissivity values than southwestern Louisiana (represented by Lake Charles), probably because of the stronger influence of large water bodies in the southeast. A summertime slump in transmissivity is found at all NSRD stations for a normal averaged year. Data from the NSRD were used to validate data values from each LAIS station. While most LAIS stations have inadequate data, at least in some sections of the six-year time series, some stations appear adequate for future research applications.

Pensacola evolved through the second Spanish period (1781-1821) from a fledgling military outpost to an increasingly complex urban center. Local and regional demographic trends and environmental conditions prompted Pensacola to grow in a manner that differed from other Spanish colonial urban centers and created in Pensacola an unusual class structure and residential patterning. The primary goal of this dissertation is to show that Pensacolas residential and landowning patterns never experienced the degree of socioeconomic residential clustering noted in other Spanish colonial urban centers. Social residential clustering was unusual in Spanish Pensacola, and socioeconomic classes and land values varied from lot to lot. Middle-class whites made up the overwhelming majority of landowners and owned property in every section of town, while elites and lower-class families bought less land in Pensacola and lived interspersed throughout the residential section. The second goal of this dissertation is to illuminate three phases of urban development from a small colonial military town and scant landowning class congregated near the central fort before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, to a more traditional Spanish administrative regional center with increased population after the Purchase, to a town threatened by American influence and speculation after 1816. The third goal of this dissertation reveals the towns socioeconomic class structure, a necessary step that provides context regarding Pensacolas residents. Unlike other Spanish colonial urban centers, administrators and retired military officers dominated Pensacolas small elite class. The middle class was approximately three times as populous as the elite class, and included a variety of Peninsulars and Creole professionals, high-status artisans, and landowners. Most residents were among the lower class, and consisted of Creoles, mulattos, and Blacks whose labors catered to the local military and administrative needs.

This thesis will display how the use of a GIS is an important tool in understanding geographic patterns of Chagas' disease vector risk in a rural community in Guatemala. This is an important topic of investigation as Chagas' disease is the leading cause of heart failure in rural Latin America, and yet study has been limited due to a prioritization of national resources to urban diseases. Obviously this can have a severe impact on rural areas, especially if they already lack adequate health care provision. As a response to this deficiency, a collaboration between the Laboratory of Entomology and Applied Parasitology (LENAP) of the University of San Carlos in Guatemala and the World Health Organization Collaboration Center (WHOCC) for Remote Sensing and GIS for Public Health at Louisiana State University has been established. This thesis presents research from that collaboration. This thesis has relied on cartographic and analytical approaches made possible in the GIS environment to display the geographical distribution of Chagas' disease vectors, including infestation and re-infestation in the community. Although triatomines were mostly found inside the houses, they were also found in larger numbers in chicken coops outside the domicile. Four hotspot locations were identified by selecting the house locations that contained the highest 10 percent of the triatomines counts. Then a buffer analysis was incorporated to extract and manipulate epidemiological information at each hotspot. This project also incorporates anthropological risk factors such as the construction materials of choice for house construction, and local attitudes to domesticated animals, in the creation of risk patterns. Although construction materials have an effect on the presence of triatomines, there are other approaches such as the incorporation of community disease surveillance programs which appears to have an educational legacy effect. Also, clean houses seem to have less to no presence of Chagas' disease vectors in rural environment. Although the results of this thesis have implication for the community under investigation, the larger contribution is in showing how GIS flexibility can be used to gain insight from data not originally collected with spatial analysis as its primary focus.

Surveillance data are an important part of medical geography. These data are used to produce much of the analyses that define the subdiscipline. It is understood that surveillance data may contain biases, but there have only been limited studies devoted to determining in what ways the data are not representative of actual disease prevalence. New York was selected for this research for several reasons. First, it has a strong rabies data set. Second, it has a centralized system of licensing animal and dog control officers. Third, it is well-represented in terms of local media. This dissertation attempts to better understand the New York rabies epizootic, using not only rabies surveillance data, but also data collected from animal control officers and media reports, particularly newspaper articles. These data can help provide a fuller picture of the function of a rabies epizootic within a state, particularly in terms of the relationship of the disease to the society at large. The generation of surveillance data itself is not often the subject of investigation. One part of that system that receives little attention from researchers is the part that physically collects animals- animal and dog control officers. As the lowest level in the surveillance system, control officers are often overlooked in terms of their contribution to the system. The media presentation of the rabies epizootic is the other subject of this work. The relationship between a disease and media reports of a disease are often not clear. In New York, reporting of rabies in local newspapers often reflected the submissions of suspicious animals for rabies testing. This research found that the levels of training found in animal and dog control officers in New York were low considering that this was a state with epizootic rabies. The attitudes of the control officers revealed that as a group they considered themselves part of the public health system, but they were often not treated as such. The media investigation revealed that articles about rabies in small, local newspapers can reflect rabies submissions in the adjacent area. This was not true for larger newspapers.

Paleotempestology is a young field in the science community, aimed at discovering evidence of past catastrophic hurricanes by analyzing geological proxy records, mostly overwash sand layers derived from barrier beach inundation. Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores, Alabama, is an ideal location to study this emerging science due to its unique geography of having three coastal lakes just north of a long beach system. Hurricane Ivan, a Category 3 storm, made landfall at Gulf Shores, Alabama, on 16 September 2004, with 130 mph winds. It was expected that the overwash fan created by the storm surge was sufficient to reach the lakes and create a storm signature which could be useful as a modern analog. A vegetation survey was done to examine Ivan's ecological damage to the forest around the Shelby Lakes. The results suggest quantitatively that elevation was a major factor in tree mortality. This study establishes that most damage to the forest was from storm surge and not high winds, as the latter would have led to a more continuous spatial pattern of destruction. Remote sensing work with Landsat 5 images was performed to reveal the spatial pattern of ecological damage to the forest at the landscape scale. Cores taken near the center of Lake Shelby do not contain a sand layer at the top attributable to Ivan, primarily due to the lake's large size. Cores from Middle Lake do show visible sand layers at the top (ML-10, ML-06, ML-01, and ML-TV2). Little Lake, the easternmost lake, had two cores with a visible Ivan layer (LL-06 and LL-08). Loss-on ignition data and radiocarbon dating results from core ML-TV2 indicate a minimum return period of 213 years. This estimate is comparable to results in Liu et al. (2003), who reported a return period of 180 years for Little Lake. The fact that Ivan left a sedimentary signature in both Middle Lake and Little Lake supports the interpretation that sand layers in cores taken from the southern ends of both lakes represent direct hits by major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher intensity according to the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale.

The goal of forensic anthropology is the analysis and identification of human skeletal remains in a medicolegal context (Byers 2005:1-2). A forensic anthropologist can determine the age of subadult remains by various means, including dentition, centers of ossification, cranial suture closure, and epiphyseal union. Epiphyseal union is when all bones have completed their growth and fused, which happens for all bones by early adulthood. In this way, a forensic anthropologist can analyze the extent of epiphyseal union to determine the age of a deceased individual. This is done by comparing the skeletal remains to age-specific x-ray images of bones featured in various atlases. The only such atlas for the hand and wrist is Greulich and Pyle's Atlas of Skeletal Development of the Hand and Wrist (1959). By using this atlas forensic anthropologists can estimate the age of the decedent at his or her death and thereby assign an age range to the remains that will help law enforcement authorities to make a positive identification. Greulich and Pyle's atlas is nearly 50 years old and some researchers suggest it has become less accurate in its representation of growth and development stages in the hand and wrist. The onset of puberty as measured by the age at menarche is now earlier than in the past, and puberty coincides with specific changes in bone growth (Eveleth and Tanner 1990:207). To determine the extent of potential error in Greulich and Pyle's Atlas of Skeletal Development of the Hand and Wrist, I studied the current x-rays of the hand and wrist in subadults of known ages and sex. My study revealed that the epiphyseal union of the hand and wrist of contemporary subadults is not significantly different than the data represented in the Atlas of Skeletal Development of the Hand and Wrist. This suggests that there has not been a substantial increase in the rate of development as a result of secular change. As such, the standards created by Greulich and Pyle remain accurate and should continue to be used for the identification of age in subadult remains.

Structure and morphology of bone tissue are variable by species. The influence of different factors on structure and morphology is still debated. Qualifying and quantifying these differences are necessary in the evaluation of fragmentary bones in order to identify specific species. To understand the influence of species of origin on the microscopic structure of bone tissue, the influence of developmental and biomechanical forces specific to a skeletal element must also be assessed. This research is a preliminary analysis of the histological bone structures in terms of their area, density and spatial organization. To achieve this research goal, the cross-section of three major skeletal structures of three common quadrupeds ubiquitous across North America and commonly found in association with human remains were compared. The study analyzed the mid-shaft cross-section of six femora, five humeri, and six mid-thoracic ribs of the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus); six femora, six humeri, and six mid-thoracic ribs of the domestic dog (Canis familiaris); and five femora, four humeri, and six mid-thoracic ribs of the domestic pig (Sus scrofa domesticus). The cross-section of each skeletal element was divided into eight sections along anatomically recognized body planes. All histomorphometric measurements and observations were taken within these sections to explore the spatial organization of the microscopic structures across the mid-shaft cross-section. Plexiform bone observations suggest not only species-specific presence and absence of this bone structure but a relation to the skeletal element. There was an almost complete absence of plexiform bone in the mid-thoracic rib and reduced presence in the humerus of all three species. Secondary osteon area isolated pig from the other two species, in all three skeletal elements, suggesting a species-specific difference in osteon development. On the other hand, though similar in area, deer and dog showed interspecies, parallel patterns between like elements (humerus and humerus, femur and femur). Secondary osteon density followed an expected trend of increasing density associated with older animals. The implications for this study are two-fold. First, the results suggest future avenues of research for histologically differentiating species in both forensic and archaeological contexts. Second, the results support the hypothesis that it is important to incorporate a spatial analysis of microscopic structure distribution as an additional source of information about species and bone element differences in microscopic arrangements of the bone tissue.