Zugl.: Heidelberg, Univ., Magisterarbeit, 2007.

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No description available.

The present study was undertaken to acquire additional management information for both the North and South Cache units. It was recognized that effectiveness of elk management could be increased if such information were available as population data, age composition figures, effectiveness of the winter feeding program, herd productivity and mortality, summer and winter distribution, and the inter-specific role of deer and domestic livestock with the elk. The present study was commenced during late fall of 1951. Formal field work continued through the spring of 1953, though limited field work extended through the early 1954 winter. The study has been dedicated to the procurement of elk management information on both the North and South Cache units.

Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-66).

American elk, by virtue of their distribution, were the most cosmopolitan members of the cervid family at the time of white settlement of North America. At this early date elk were present in every major region of what is now continental United States, as well as in northern Mexico. they likewise were abundant in upper and lower Canada, though records do Lot corroborate their presence too far north on the Atlantic coast. Although generally existent throughout the western states, elk were sparsely distributed in Nevada, southern Utah, and most of Arizona and New Mexico. Paucity of elk was also noted in eastern portions of Washington and Oregon.

Elk, because of their wide ranging habit and frequently inaccessible habitat, are among our least known big game animals, As a result the management of elk herds has been handicapped by a lack of essential information, Population numbers remain unknown, ranges undefined, and decimating factors unevaluated to cite but three conditions which hamper efficient management on a long range basis.

As online shopping continues to grow rapidly, research indicates its massive uptake can be the result of the integration of social media technologies within the e-commerce interface. This has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic which has led to an acceleration in the use of e-commerce. However, despite the growing popularity of e-commerce, shopping online is characterized by high levels of uncertainty given the spatial and temporal separation between consumer and vendor. This presents a dire impact on a consumer’s decision-making process and can specifically impact a consumer’s decision confidence. Decision confidence is an important construct that has been shown to be central in influencing a consumer’s behaviour, specifically in regards to purchase-related activities. Few studies have shed light on the factors influencing a consumer’s decision confidence in the e-commerce context. Online shopping platforms fitted with social data markers are able to gauge and track the activities and attributes of online consumers, providing convenient heuristics on various measures such as the total number of recommendations for a product, or the degree of similarity between consumers. These markers may facilitate group identification through the development of herd behaviour. Herd behaviour arises in situations of uncertainty and motivates individuals to identify with a group (herd), and conform to its actions. Various aspects of a herd can influence group identification. This research focuses on two aspects of herd behaviour in e-commerce environments: homophily and herd size. Homophily is the degree to which individuals are similar, and in this study, we examine homophily from the perspective of an individual and the herd to which they may be exposed to. Herd size is the number of individuals in a group taking a specific action such as an online purchase decision. Drawing on the social identity approach and uncertainty identity theory, this investigation hones in on how homophily and herd size arise in the e-commerce context, and examines how group identification through homophily and herd size may reduce uncertainty and build decision confidence through the formation of trust, entitativity, sense of community and information helpfulness. A research model is developed along with a set of supported hypotheses. An online experiment utilizing a hypothetical e-commerce website was conducted with 400 participants. The results were analyzed using structural equation modeling and choice-based conjoint analysis. The results suggest that while homophily significantly impacts trust, sense of community, entitativity and information helpfulness, herd size does not. The results also suggest that whereas trust, sense of community and information helpfulness positively impact decision confidence, entitativity does not. It was also empirically demonstrated that participants preferred measures of homophily in the e-commerce interface more than measures of herd size. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that participants preferred measures indicating homophily in interests and demographics more than information on either alone, and that information on homophily in interests was more preferred than information on homophily in demographics. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Despite the rapid uptake in e-commerce, shopping online continues to be characterized by high levels of uncertainty given the spatial and temporal separation between consumer and vendor. This uncertainty negatively impacts a consumer’s decision confidence, which is a key driver in influencing consumer behaviour. Drawing on the social identity approach and uncertainty identity theory, this study investigates how elements of the e-commerce interface can facilitate group identification, a process which has been empirically demonstrated to reduce uncertainty and thereby increase decision confidence. Findings of this study suggest that measures of homophily embedded within an e-commerce platform can work through various mediators to facilitate group membership which can positively impact a consumer’s decision confidence. Theoretical and practical contributions of this study are discussed for researchers, academics, and practitioners wishing to explore those aspects of online shopping that an aid the decision-making process through group-related processes.

Veterinary activities at VPI between 1872 and 1959 established the Blacksburg institution as the center of Virginia's veterinary education long before the opening of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine in 1980. This thesis traces the lineage of VPI's veterinary medicine program back to the inception of the institution, locates VPI's contribution to veterinary medicine within the State of Virginia and nationally, and puts all these developments within the general historical context of the role of land-grant agricultural colleges in the development of veterinary medicine. The organization of veterinary activities of the state of Virginia took the form of a veterinary complex, its four main components of education, research, dissemination of veterinary knowledge, and prevention and control of livestock disease located in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on the VPI campus in Blacksburg. This complex--taken as a whole--functioned as the primary actor in the veterinary network in Virginia--along with other veterinary institutions and offices that existed off- campus. The neglected history of early veterinary research and education in Virginia is important, because it clearly establishes these early veterinary activities at VPI as laying the groundwork for the establishment of the VMRCVM in 1980 and it shows why the VMRCVM was established at VPI (now referred to as Virginia Tech). / Master of Science

As Elizabeth Burns’s paradoxical phrase ‘the thin universe’ suggests, the home is a place of both limitations and possibilities. Domestic life has been regarded by some as a spirit-sapping hindrance to creativity, recalling Cyril Connolly’s famous declaration that: ‘There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.’ This thesis examines the ways in which Burns, Herd and Jamie demonstrate how domestic life, for all its restrictions, can prove to be the ally of art. The home is a repository for childhood memories – shown in my analysis of Burns’s ‘Rummers and Ladels’ and Jamie’s ‘Forget It’ – and it is during this formative period that our ambivalent relationship with the home begins. The desire for comfort and safety can be felt alongside the tug towards the outdoor world of adventure and independence, a push-pull longing found in Herd’s ‘Big Girls’. Herd carries this longing into adulthood in ‘A Letter From Anna’, as does Burns in ‘Woman Reading a Letter, 1662’, and Jamie in ‘Royal Family Doulton’. Section one is my examination of this complicated sensation. The darkness that can make the home a hell features in Burns’s ‘Poem of the Alcoholic’s Wife’, Herd’s ‘Soap Queen’ and Jamie’s ‘Wee Wifey’. Contrastingly, the blissful events that take place there are evoked in Burns’s ‘The Curtain’, Herd’s ‘Rosery’ and Jamie’s ‘Thaw’. In section two I seek to prove that such extreme events, from the abuse suffered at the hands of an unfeeling mother to the delights of new parenthood, prove that the home cannot be dismissed as sequestered or mundane. And yet, dismissed it has been. Why bother depicting one’s ‘wretched vegetable home existence’, as Wyndham Lewis wrote, when one could ‘give expression to the more energetic part of that City man’s life’? Burns bemoans this attitude in ‘Work and Art/We are building a civilization’, and the idea that ‘home crafts’ like embroidery cannot be miraculous in themselves is dispelled by Herd’s ‘The Siege’ and Jamie’s ‘St Bride’s’. The celebration of the domestic interior found in paintings by, for example, David Hockney and Gwen John is similarly seen in the poetry of Burns (‘Annunciation’), Herd (‘Memoirs’) and Jamie (‘Song of Sunday’). Section three aims to show how the Bugaboo in the hall can be the ally of art, and – ‘thin’ though it may sometimes feel – the home is a universe in which infinite poetic possibilities exist.