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The tension between conservation objectives and local people’s need for visible livelihoods is complex and often difficult to resolve.  In 2000, the Knuckles Conservation Area was established to include a protected area and a buffer zone to be used for management and restoration.  Prior to this decree, small tracts of land in the buffer zone were used for vegetable cultivation by villagers to supplement production from their titled agricultural plots.  An ethnographic approach was used in seven villages to explore how households have adapted their livelihoods in response to the change in land, and to examine the factors that may help understand the differences in the livelihood activities chosen.  The fundamental needs of the local people in their use of natural resources were not addressed when cultivation in the buffer zones was banned in 1990, creating shortfalls in production for some households, but stimulating others to diversify and invest in higher value crops in their own plots.  Physical, financial, human, and natural assets other than land were important to households as they responded to and coped with change.  Long-term livelihood strategies are dependent on more than just access to assets; the variability of farm and non-farm livelihood activities observed between households is explained by social and cultural factors.  Power relations within the community, personal characteristics of actors such as motivation and risk taking, and local laws and modes of governance all influence, to varying degrees and in complex and multiple ways, how households transform and utilise their assets.  The ability to transform assets is also dependent on the dynamics of the household: age and gender, status, social standing, and caste.  When conservation initiatives are implemented, programmes need to cater for variability among households in terms of their capacity to adapt to reductions in access to land, and in terms of their aspirations for diversifying their livelihood.

The fall out from the Quincentennial anniversary of the "discovery" of the Americas has yet to settle. One of the key issues still in need of address concerns the nature of the social and environmental change wrought by colonialism. Until recently, research in this field has been determined by a series of antiquated myths, largely creations of Eurocentric Renaissance and Romantic philosophies. This study aims to provide a more objective insight into the degree of regional Colonial impact by focusing on an archival reconstruction of post-Conquest social and environmental change in the highlands ofMichoacan, west central Mexico. Archival evidence suggests that the Spanish encountered an already degraded landscape in this region, reflective of several centuries of pre-Hispanic settlement and exploitation. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, little evidence emerges to suggest that there was an immediate and deleterious environmental impact following European contact, despite the introduction of livestock and plough technology to an area where they had hitherto been absent. Indeed, tangible evidence of ecological disturbance in the area does not emerge until the 18th century - a period recognised to have been one of population recovery and resource monopolisation. A detailed survey of litigation documents suggests that this period witnessed an acceleration in the number of indigenous claims for land reinstatement, concomitant with a marked increase in the number of references to infertile and degraded territory and apparent heightened concern over water sources. It is here argued that de-intensification of land use in the wake of indigenous depopulation and the imposition of conservative land use practices accounts for the negligible environmental impact in the early post-Conquest period. By the later 17th and 18th centuries, progressive climatic drying, population expansion, resource monopolisation and social inequality had combined to create a period of acute resource stress and landscape instability and consequent civil unrest. It was this untenable situation that was to play itself out in the Wars of Independence that characterised the first two decades of the 19th century.

ABSTRACT ASSOCIATION BETWEEN SEDENTARY BEHAVIORS AND BMI IN US ADOLESCENTS: ANALYSIS OF THE 2015 YOUTH RISK BEHAVIOR SURVEY By SARAH SADRUDDIN KABANI April 27, 2017 INTRODUCTION: Research has shown a strong link between sedentary behaviors and obesity among adolescents. AIM: This study aims: 1) To determine sedentary behaviors in US high school adolescent nationally 2) To determine the association between sedentary behaviors and BMI after controlling for demographics, recreational behaviors, diet, and physical activity 3) To examine the association between engaging in more than one sedentary behavior and BMI after controlling for demographics, recreational behaviors, diet, and physical activity METHODS: The Youth Risk Behavioral Survey (YRBS) 2015 data was utilized in this study by using weighted percentages to determine the association between sedentary behaviors and BMI while controlling for demographics such as age, sex, race, and grade, recreational behaviors such as smoking and alcohol consumption, diet such as fruit, vegetable, and soda consumption, and physical activity. Univariate logistic regressions and multivariate logistic regressions were conducted to determine the association between sedentary behaviors and BMI. Adjusted and unadjusted odds ratio, 95% confidence intervals, and p-values were calculated. RESULTS: 81.6% of adolescents watched TV during a school day, while 18.4% did not watch TV during a school day. For video games/computer usage/social media (PG) usage, 82.6% engaged in PG usage during a school day, while 17.4% did not engage in PG usage during a school day. When stratifying by BMI, overweight adolescents and obese adolescents have significantly different sex distribution (p=<0.0001), race/ethnicity distribution (p=0.047), TV usage during a school day (p=0.04), PG usage during a school day (p=0.047), and TV & PG usage during a school day (p=<0.02). For TV & PG usage during the school days, adolescents who watch TV and PG, were at higher odds of being obese [AOR =1.3 (1.04, 1.6), p = 0.02] when comparing to adolescents who did not watch TV and PG. DISCUSSION: This study concludes that there is an association between obesity and adolescents who watch TV and use video games/computer/social media during a school day. Sociodemographic factors such as some races, age, and gender are also responsible for obesity among adolescents.

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Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone Project / Rapid urbanization has profoundly reshaped societies, economies, and the natural environment. Urban populations currently sit around 80% and 40% for developed and developing countries respectively with cities accounting for nearly all future population growth. The impacts of urbanization are vast lending to low density areas, traffic congestion, automobile reliance, pollution, and biodiversity loss. Sustainable development is essential to maintaining the integrity of the world with current and future anticipated levels of urbanization. Mixed-use developments or those which combine three or more integrated revenue producing uses are a form of sustainable development which can help mitigate the negative effects of urbanization. Benefits of mixed-use include pedestrian and bicycle friendly areas, place-making, increased revenue, and reduced automobile reliance and pollution. This research attempts to determine the most successful form of mixed-use development in downtown Tucson, Arizona. This study boundary was chosen because downtown Tucson is in a state of revitalization and it is important to analyze how developers and the City of Tucson are making use of land. For the purpose of this research a case study analysis was performed on three mixed-use developments, the Cadence at Congress Street and 4th Avenue, One East Broadway at Broadway Boulevard and Stone Avenue, and the Mercado San Agustin at Congress Avenue and Avenida del Convento. Each development was examined and rated based on economic, social, and environmental success. All three developments scored fairly similarly but the Cadence scored the highest with low operating costs, the creation of a high volume jobs, and a location near transit and pedestrian and bicycle friendly areas.

Teachers sometimes assume that their students are more skillful in the use of the dictionary than they actually are. Today's student needs thorough, formal training that is cumulative over his school years and that is based on the same linguistic principles that have raised the art of lexicography to its present high level. It is the purpose of this thesis to provide a plan for attaining these ends.