Master of Science / Department of Horticulture and Natural Resources / Adam A. Ahlers / The Flint Hills ecoregion in Kansas, USA, represents the largest remaining tract of native tallgrass prairie in North America. Anthropogenic landscape change (e.g., urbanization, agricultural production) is affecting native biodiversity in this threatened ecosystem. Our understanding of how landscape change affects spatial distributions of carnivores (i.e., species included in the Order ‘Carnivora’) in this ecosystem is limited. I investigated the influence of landscape structure and composition on site occupancy dynamics of 3 native carnivores (coyote [Canis latrans]; bobcat [Lynx rufus]; and striped skunk [Mephitis mephitis]) and 1 nonnative carnivore (domestic cat, [Felis catus]) across an urbanization gradient in the Flint Hills during 2016-2017. I also examined how the relative influence of various landscape factors affected native carnivore species richness and diversity. I positioned 74 camera traps across 8 urban-rural transects in the 2 largest cities in the Flint Hills (Manhattan, pop. > 55,000; Junction City, pop. > 31,000) to assess presence/absence of carnivores. Cameras were activated for 28 days in each of 3 seasons (Summer 2016, Fall 2016, Winter 2017) and I used multisession occupancy models and an information-theoretic approach to assess the importance of various landscape factors on carnivore site occupancy dynamics. Based on previous research in other ecosystems, I expected a negative relationship between both coyote and bobcat occurrence with increasing urban development but a positive relationship for domestic cat and skunk occurrence with increasing urban landcover. I also predicted grassland landcover to positively influence site occupancy for all carnivores except domestic cats. I expected that coyotes, the apex predator in this ecoregion, may limit domestic cat distributions through intraguild competition. Thus, I predicted a negative relationship between site occupancy of domestic cats and coyote occupancy probabilities. Because urban development results in habitat loss and fragmentation, I expected native species richness and diversity to decline with increased urban development. Coyotes had lower occupancy and colonization rates in areas with increased urban landcover. Bobcat occupancy was insensitive to urban landcover and colonization rates were greater in grassland landcover and row-crop agriculture fields. Site occupancy of bobcats was highly influence by forested areas and greater edge densities. Contrary to my hypothesis, striped skunk occupancy and colonization rates were negatively related to urban landcover. As expected, domestic cats were more likely to occur in and colonize sites with increased urban development and less likely to occur at sites with high coyote occupancy probabilities. Native carnivore species diversity and richness were negatively related to urban landcover. Occupancy dynamics of carnivores were shown to be influenced by landscape structure and composition as well as intraguild interactions. My results show urban landcover has a strong influence on the spatial distributions of carnivores in the northern extent of the Flint Hills.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Thesis (PhD (New Testament Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / New Testament Studies / unrestricted

This thesis examines three contestations involving human remains which have arisen in the Eastern Cape over the past fifteen years. It shows that the value or meaning attached to human remains is constructed through the socio-historical dynamics out of which these contestations arise. The meaning and value of human remains is neither inherent nor neutral. In Ndancama's case, the need for housing in Fingo Village led hundreds of poor residents to settle on the township's Old Cemetery in 1972. Basic material needs trumped concerns for those buried in the cemetery. When the post-apartheid municipality sought to provide sewerage and housing infrastructure for Ndancama in 2003, its development plans were constrained by new heritage legislation which protects historic cemeteries. Residents insisted that their infrastructural needs were of primary importance. In 1993, the unearthing of human remains at the Old Military Cemetery in King William's Town created a thirteen year long saga which was only resolved with the reburial of the remains in 2006. The presence of the remains proved problematic for a number of reasons. Local authorities failed to rebury the remains speedily. The burden to store them fell on the Kaffrarian Museum which came under fire because this was considered unethical in the postapartheid era. The identity of the remains became a bone of contention in 2006 when the new Amathole District Municipality concluded that the remains were those of victims who died in the 1856-57 Great Cattle Killing. The remains and their reburial became symbols of past injustice and present restoration of African heritage. The 1996 quest by 'Nicholas Gcaleka', a 'self-styled' chief and traditional healer, to search for King Hintsa's skull in the United Kingdom provoked unprecedented public engagement with the incomplete narrative on the fate of Hintsa's body. The power to represent history, and the methods through which historical truth is discovered were at the heart of the contestation. Elites such as the Xhosa Royal and the white scientific establishment were considered neither credible nor authoritative on this historical matter. Public support for Gcaleka revealed that many South Africans sought just recompense for colonial injustices.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Dissertation (MSc (Anatomy))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Anatomy / unrestricted

This exploratory descriptive study examined the factors that influence Registered Nurses (RNs) to return to school to pursue a Baccalaureate of Science in Nursing degree (BSN) and the factors that contribute to the decision to remain in school to complete the degree. Students (N=226) enrolled in RN-BSN programs in three different universities in southeast Florida participated in the study by completing researcher developed questionnaires. The study group included 140 students who were newly enrolled in an RN-BSN program and 86 students who were preparing to graduate from an RN-BSN program. The instruments used in this study were two researcher developed questionnaires, the Corbett Nursing Educational Motivational Inventory - Form A (CNEMI-A), administered to the newly enrolled students, and the Corbett Nursing Educational Motivational Inventory - Form B (CNEMI-B), administered to the graduating students. The questionnaires included researcher-developed items in addition to items derived from a modified form of the Educational Participation Scale used by other researchers. Demographic data were also collected. Findings indicated that changes in health care, career goals, personal satisfaction, and flexible curriculum patterns are the major reasons why RNs return to school for the BSN. Less significant factors were social support, salary increase, and employer expectations. The factors considered most significant in the decision to remain in school to complete the degree were ranked in the following order: personal achievement, changes in health care, career change/advancement, enrollment options, faculty support, social support, and employer support. Implications for nurse educators related to the changing roles of RNs and the need to continue to assist RNs to adapt to new roles in health care. Recommendations for future research on RN-BSN nursing education included studies to identify the courses considered most useful by RN-BSN students as compared to courses considered repetitive of basic nursing programs. Studies were also recommended to examine the differences between the needs of RNs related to experience as an RN and recency of education. Additional studies were recommended to determine the feasibility of dual-enrollment ADN/BSN programs for last semester ADN students.

Since the early 1970s the issue of teen pregnancy and parenthood has been the subject of vigorous public policy debate. Literature reports that becoming a teen parent increases the risk of abbreviated education, poverty, isolation, low self-esteem and economic dependency. Discourses within the health care system conceive of these adolescents as presenting health risk to themselves and their future child by choosing to proceed with their pregnancies. These stated risks include greater frequency of pre and post-natal complications, poor maternal diet resulting in foetal underdevelopment and increased risk of child maltreatment. While there is very little literature that solicits the experiences of teen mothers, research attests to the fact that they are reluctant to access the health care system because of the judgement and stigmatization they experience in these interactions. The ways in which the identities of teen mothers are constituted within the health care system, through the discourse of health promotion and the attitudes and practices of some health care providers, negatively impact upon health outcomes for this population. To further explore this issue engaged in discursive analysis of texts which centralized a discussion of teen pregnancy and motherhood in health care. My approach to research was grounded in a feminist, post-structural approach to discourse analysis, paying particular attention to power, authority in the process of creating subject positions for young mothers. I found that, despite relatively progressive government health policy regarding youth and sexuality, stigmatizing stereotypes of teen mothers continued to inform the ways that health care providers and researchers spoke about the teen pregnancy and motherhood. I argue that this is due to an interplay between the encroachment of American media representations of teen mothers, the presence of neo-liberal political ideologies and the lack of mandate for local sites to implement national policy. There was a strong tendency, within public health interventions, to de-contextualize teen mothers from social locations of class, race and gender in discussions about so-called risky lifestyles. Health interventions concentrated on improving diet, substance abuse and social practices, without consideration of the complexities behind these issues. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

El Rayo is an archaeological site in Pacific Nicaragua that spans two time periods the Bagaces (AD 300-800) and Sapoa (AD 800-1350). In addition to the domestic assemblage of the site, El Rayo also contains burials from both time periods. El Rayo is one of the most well documented archaeological sites in Nicaragua and the presence of both Bagaces and Sapoa material makes it a valuable archaeological site. In comparing the burial assemblage, the patterns which appear in the archaeological record are distinct in the different time periods. These patterns, including the change in the location of burials from within domestic areas to specific mortuary contexts, a transition from single to multiple burials, and the inclusion of burial goods with the burials that appear to represent significant changes in the rituals associated with the burial of the dead. By exploring the mortuary program at El Rayo I argue that the changes represent the negotiation of a single community through changing cultural circumstances that mark and in some ways define the transition from the Bagaces Period to the Sapoa Period. The mortuary program shows continuity which supports the notion of cultural interactions without the complete replacement of one group by another. I focus on the burial area and the nature of the remains to interpret a changing mortuary program rather than focusing on the mortuary goods recovered with specific individuals. Based on Arthur Saxe’s Hypothesis 8 that argues for the connection between the use and maintenance of formal cemeteries and control of critical resources (1970:119). I suggest that the changing mortuary program is the result of increased population pressures and the desire to create public markers of identity and ownership of local resources. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

Tuberculosis (TB) has killed millions of people throughout history and still isone of the leading causes of death. Since the early 1990s, ancient DNA(aDNA) research has made considerable contributions to the study of thisinfectious disease in the past. While early studies used polymerase chainreactions (PCRs) solely to identify the TB-causing organisms, namely theMycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC), later approaches extended thefocus to assign the actual disease-causing species or strains of the MTBCbut were either directed at single or few individuals or only provided few data. This research project has screened a large set of European skeletaland dental samples from individuals of the 1st–19th centuries AD for IS6110,an insertion sequence believed to be specific to the MTBC, and has identifieda number of individuals that may indeed have suffered from TB. Reports ofIS6110-like elements in other mycobacteria, however, challenge thesuitability of IS6110 for detecting MTBC. Two sequences similar but notidentical to IS6110 were revealed from several of the samples analysed,supporting the proposal that IS6110 should not serve as the sole target foridentifying MTBC from archaeological material. It cannot be establishedwhere these sequences derive from, but application of a MycobacteriumspecificPCR and targeting of genomic regions of the MTBC that containsingle nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) indicate that at least some of thesamples contain a range of unknown, most likely environmental, bacterialand/or mycobacterial species. Yet, screening for IS6110 together with thedetection of large sequence polymorphisms (LSPs) and SNPs in othergenomic regions has identified eight individuals to unambiguously containMycobacterium tuberculosis aDNA. Apart from one individual which wasrecovered from Northern France, these skeletons derived from Britisharchaeological excavation sites. The SNP and LSP results enabled theallocation of infecting MTBC strains into various classification systemsreported in clinical literature and revealed that M. tuberculosis strains variedthroughout different time periods, thereby mainly confirming evolutionarypathways suggested in previous studies. Additionally, it was found thatdistinct strains co-existed temporally, and maybe even spatially, in Britainand that at least one individual harboured two different MTBC strains,suggesting a mixed infection. Application of next generation sequencingenabled one of the 19th century strains from Britain to be characterised ineven more detail, revealing closest similarity to a M. tuberculosis strainisolated at the beginning of the 20th century in North America.

Tuberculosis has been an important disease throughout human history, shaping countless past populations. The archaeological study of the causative agents of tuberculosis, members of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex (MTBC), is hindered by the non-diagnostic nature of tuberculosis-associated skeletal changes. As such, ancient DNA (aDNA) or palaeogenetic analyses have become an important tool for identifying tuberculosis in past populations. However, due to the age and variable preservation of aDNA, there are often issues with sporadic results and false negatives. The overall aim of the work presented here was to use different methods, including traditional target-specific PCR, to identify and detect tuberculosis aDNA in archaeological remains. The main objectives within this overarching aim were to first test a method called whole genome amplification (WGA), used to non-specifically amplify all the DNA within a sample, and its potential to improve the yield of aDNA from skeletal remains (Chapters 3 and 4). To determine the extent of its impact, WGA was used in a comparative context, where each archaeological sample analysed was separately subjected to two methods of MTBC detection - the traditional targeted PCR method and the same method assisted by the initial application of WGA. The results show that applying WGA before the traditional targeted PCR methodology to detect the presence of MTBC pathogens in skeletal remains is only useful and viable in some cases, likely depending on the age and preservation of the sample. The second objective was to use next generation sequencing to obtain more information on the aDNA composition of certain archaeological samples and answer questions beyond the scope of traditional target-specific PCR techniques (Chapter 5). Although most of the sequencing runs were variably unsuccessful, the composition of two samples, both known to probably contain tuberculosis aDNA, could be analysed. The samples both contained similar amounts of mycobacterial aDNA and varying amounts of both human and even potentially human intestinal flora DNA. Finally, the third objective was to determine if MTBC aDNA could be detected in a rib sample from Private William Braine of the lost Franklin Expedition using standard target-specific PCR (Chapter 6). In this case study, no evidence of tuberculosis ancient DNA was found. The work done through-out highlights the difficulties of ancient DNA research and, in Chapter 4, shows the importance of using more than a single sample to evaluate methods for application in palaeogenetic contexts.