Understanding regulation of wild animal populations is important in ecological investigations and applied wildlife management. Progress in understanding regulatory processes has been hindered by a long-running debate over the role of density-dependent and density-independent variables in population regulation. Population regulation of exploited species is of particular interest because harvest theory is predicated on assumptions of density-dependent feedback. However, for many exploited species, the functional relationships and mechanisms of population regulation via density dependence are not quantified (e.g., Northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus). Compounding this task is the lack of a mechanistic understanding of the influence of density-independent factors in population regulation. The overall goal of this dissertation is to investigate the roles of density-dependent and density-independent processes in bobwhite populations. Bobwhites are an excellent species to investigate the role and influence of density-dependent and density-independent factors due to their unique life history, wherein they can exhibit density dependence in survival, reproduction, or both. I provide support for the concomitant influence of density-dependent and density-independent processes operating to regulate bobwhite populations. My results support the importance of food and cover and the additive influence of density-dependent and density-independent factors on bobwhite annual survival. I also report evidence for the differential effects of covariates on survival phases. My results represent the first evidence of support for the Tub and Tap hypotheses on bobwhite survival. I also quantify a density-dependent effect on bobwhite recruitment. Collectively, these results provide new evidence for understanding the role of internal and external factors in bobwhite populations.

Egg masses of Epitheca cynosura were collected from Bays Mountain Park, Tennessee, USA, in June, 1999. Newly hatched individuals were placed into enclosures and sampled at scheduled time intervals throughout the summer. Enclosures were exposed to combinations of high and low densities and presence/absence of a second-year class E. cynosura predator. Survivorship, mean head widths, and mean dry masses were compared across treatments. Due to poor recovery of early-instar larvae, survivorship showed no significant differences in mortality among treatments. The predator present treatment caused significantly smaller head widths and dry masses only on days 42 and 55. The density treatment had a significant effect on larval growth from day 28 through day 86 (end of the experiment). Larvae from low density treatments had larger head widths and dry masses. The effects observed within the density treatments were likely to have resulted in a cohort split. Those individuals in the low density treatment followed a univoltine life history, and high density individuals followed a semivoltine life history. Density is probably a very important factor influencing the voltinism of E. cynosura at Bays Mounain Lake.

Fentanyl is a potent synthetic opioid that has been shown to produce sleep disturbances, and the deterioration of sleep quality is associated with drug abuse and relapse in humans. The hypocretin/orexin neuropeptide system is a plausible pharmacological target, and dual-hypocretin antagonists such as lemborexant may mitigate sleep disturbances associated with fentanyl dependence. The current study characterizes sleep macroarchitecture (time spent asleep or awake) and microarchitecture (the number of bouts, and NREM sleep spindle characterization) prior to fentanyl vapor exposure (baseline), following one week of drug abstinence, and four weeks of drug abstinence in female and male rats. Females and males showed a reduction in the amount of time spent in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep following one week of abstinence. The pre-treatment of lemborexant the following day increased the amount of time spent in REM, compared to vehicle at both one and four weeks of abstinence. While there was no effect of fentanyl abstinence on the amount of time spent in non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and wakefulness, lemborexant increased the amount time spent in NREM and decreased the amount of time spent awake. Examination of microarchitecture demonstrated a decrease in the number of NREM bouts at one week of abstinence, which lemborexant subsequently brought back to baseline levels at weeks one and four. Abstinence from fentanyl did not impact the number of NREM sleep spindles, but indicated a trend showing a decrease in intra-spindle frequency at one week of abstinence. Lemborexant, however, increased the number of spindles at weeks one and four of abstinence. Presently, findings indicate that fentanyl abstinence produces changes in sleep macroarchitecture, particularly REM sleep disruptions, which may be alleviated by lemborexant. This highlights the need for further examination of the relationship between sleep disturbances and drug abstinence, and the use of dual-hypocretin antagonists as therapeutic intervention.

The present study investigated whether participants with a high propensity for alcoholism demonstrate the same linguistic pattern previously established for depression in response to a personal essay. It was hypothesized that students with a higher propensity for alcoholism would display a similar linguistic style when compared to those with symptoms of depression; specifically students with a higher propensity for alcohol abuse or dependence would use more first person singular pronouns and less first person plural pronouns. They were also hypothesized to use more negative emotion words similar to those with symptoms of depression. Participants completed a writing exercise that was analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count software (Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2007). The data was analyzed using Pearson Bivariate Correlations. The participants completed a writing exercise, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, the Beck Depression Inventory, Marlowe-Crowne Short Form, and a short demographic survey, respectively. The correlation between s propensity for alcoholism and symptoms of depression was not significant and the linguistic patterns varied substantially from the hypotheses. Even though the hypotheses were not supported, there were significant correlations between propensity for alcoholism and linguistic choices. The potential for linguistic analysis to be developed into an indirect assessment of alcohol dependence is discussed as a way to minimize the difficulties surrounding self-report methods.

Short-lived rodents are sensitive to changes in environmental conditions and exhibit annual fluctuations under seasonal environments in northern temperate regions. I analyzed 34 years of monthly live-trapping data on whiteooted mice (Peromyscus leucopus) collected in Carter Woods, Ohio. I used a theoretic-information approach to select the best approximating models and analysis of deviance to infer effects of climate and density on survival of mice. I tested for a cost of reproduction to females and found no difference in survival between reproductive states. Directions and magnitudes of effects of climate and density varied over time. Increased variability in temperature reduced effects of density on survival. I detected an Allee effect and density dependent effects on survival. Long-term trapping data are needed to study temporal effects of climate and density on the demography of rodents. Recruitment had a greater impact on population growth rate than survival

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Multiple testing is playing an important role in analyzing data from modern scientific investigations. Some fundamentally important theoretical and methodological issues related to multiple testing still remain to be fully investigated. Often the correlation structure among test statistics involved in multiple testing is known a priori or it can be estimated from the data, yet this structure is not often properly taken into consideration while developing multiple testing procedures, even though not doing so might result in a less powerful method than one would like to have or lead to irrelevant or misleading conclusions. This dissertation focuses on research related to improving some of the commonly used multiple testing procedures by incorporating correlations into them. We propose several new results in this dissertation and present some ideas to carry out further research. / Statistics

<p> A well characterized titanate system, Nd1_xTi03, has been studied by temperature dependent reflectance spectroscopy between 50 and 40 000 cm-1 at three different doping levels, x = 0.019, 0.046, and 0.095, which yield a Matt-Hubbard insulator, a semiconductor and a correlated metal, respectively. Two main issues are discussed regarding the optical properties of the current system. The first is the variation of the low-lying electronic structure with hole concentration. The doping-dependent optical conductivity of Nd1_xTi03 shows several obvious differences when compared to the superconducting cuprates. We observed mid-infrared absorption bands in the doped samples, suggesting that mid-gap states develop inside the Hubbard gap with hole doping in the context of a two-component model. A quantitative analysis of the spectral weight below 1.2 e V as a function of doping indicates that the evolution rate of the optical excitations below 1.2 eV is related to the electron correlation strength of the parent insulator, which has been observed in other titanates as well. The second issue addressed in this thesis is the temperature-dependent optical features of the correlated metallic sample with x = 0.095, a composition close to the metal-insulator transition at x '"'-~ 0.08. The optical conductivity shows an anomalous enhancement of spectral weight below leV, in both the Drude and midinfrared part, that develops with decreasing temperature. The dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) may explain this feature. Meanwhile, the metallic sample displays a Fermi-liquid like behavior in the low-frequency limit, which can be established from the spectra of the scattering rate as a function of both frequency and temperature. We found a good agreement between the experimental results extracted from the scattering rate and the Fermi-liquid theory. </p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Throughout history, the human race has been characterized by the use of physical and emotional aggression by individuals, particularly males, in their intimate relationships. Intimate abusiveness is particularly common among substance dependent males. As a result of male intimate abusiveness, victims suffer a variety of problems ranging from emotional trauma to death due to physical injury. Despite increased attention to this problem, our understanding of the process leading to intimate abusiveness is far from comprehensive. The primary purpose of the present study was to expand our understanding of intimate abusiveness through the application of a social-cognitive model of intimate abusiveness among substance dependent males. Fifty-seven males from an inpatient substance abuse treatment program participated. Subjects completed questionnaires indicating their level of intimate abusiveness. In addition, they completed partner-related attribution measures as well as coping response measures indicating how they would interpret and handle five ambiguous vignettes involving their partner. It was hypothesized that violent men would attribute greater negative intent and responsibility to their partner and that they would choose to handle the ambiguous vignettes in less competent ways compared with non-violent men. Further, it was predicted that the association between intimate abusiveness and competency of coping responses would be mediated by attributions made about the partner. Results of the study generally supported predictions. The implications of the results are discussed as well as suggestions for future research. / Ph. D.