As human development occurs in forested areas, forests become fragmented into small islands in a matrix of urban land uses. This study examined the effect of surrounding urban land uses on the native and exotic plant species found on the edges of forest fragments in the Portland, OR metropolitan region.

National trends in nurse education have changed from the Nightingale system of on-the-job training to a professional preparation in institutions of higher learning. Western Australia was one of the first States in Australia to commence a professional preparation of nurses at an institution of higher education in 1975. Graduates of the program were presented with their Bachelor of Applied Science from the Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University of Technology), in March 1979. This thesis seeks to answer the question concerning the genesis of such an event. The focus of the study is primarily to follow the progress of general nurse education in Western Australia and to highlight the accompanying influences that shaped its development. The purpose of this study was to explore, analyse, interpret and describe the history of nurse education in Western Australia from 1962-1975. The study used a pluralistic approach employing a variety of historical methods. The research commenced with broad questions and ideas developed from documents and people. The process of data collection, historical criticism and analysis took place simultaneously. The synthesis was written as a chronological narrative. The material of the study thus 'spoke' for itself by providing answers to questions raised during the investigation. The history of nurse education from 1962 to 1975 revealed visible milestones that represented nurse education reform. Beginning from the antecedents of the study these were the sanctioning of a review of nurse training in 1960 together with the commencement of the Western Australian Nursing Survey and the appointment of the Nurses Registration Board Education Officer. In 1962 the survey was completed. / It exposed the deficits of nurse training which led to the development of a new Hospital Based Diploma curriculum and an Associate Diploma in Nursing in 1966. The establishment of the College of Nursing Australia Western Australian Branch in 1966 paved the way to solve the shortage of tutors to implement the Hospital Based Diploma. The Nurses Act in 1970 enhanced the plans for implementing the Hospital Based Diploma and conferred autonomy to the Nurses Registration Board. In 1973 the first independent school of nursing came into being. The Western Australian School of Nursing carried the hopes of a continuation of hospital nurse training. In 1974, however, the entry of students to the Western Australian Institute of Technology School of Nursing saw a turn of events that led to a degree for nurses in 1975 and a decision for the transfer of all nurse education in Western Australia to the Western Australian Institute of Technology. These milestones did not emerge as an accident of history. There were forces that facilitated and impeded the perceptibility of the reform landmarks. These were crucial in the shaping the history of nurse education in Western Australia from 1962-1975.

This exegesis describes and interprets a body of work produced by the writer from 1991 until 2001. This work includes three State Government reports and a commentary on the Workers Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 1981 (WA) contained in a Loose-leaf service published by Butterworths. In addition four refereed journal articles are included to complement the final report completed in 200l.This work shows the progressive development of a framework to describe the Western Australian compensation system. The first report, completed in 1991, explores the links between the resolution of disputed compensation claims and other elements of the compensation system. The second report, completed in 1999, is concerned with the issue of cost containment within the compensation system and the final report, completed in 2001, combines the insights of the previous two reports with the work of other commentators to develop a broad holistic framework for a compensation system in Western Australia. Underpinning the compilation of the three government reports is the legal analysis contained in the Workers Compensation Western Australia Loose-leaf service. These works, taken together with the four journal articles, evidence a link between theory and practice which provides the framework for a holistic approach to workers compensation in Western Australia.

This thesis posits that throughout history, the Western city has been made and understood according to a shared image of the cosmos. It argues that though the contours of this cosmos have changed over time and place, collectively held understandings of the city endure to the present day. Drawing on literary and cultural theory, this way of understanding the city may be conceptualised as ??magical??, that is incorporating knowledge which is hermeneutic and mythical, as well as empirical. The specific example of places of the dead, understood as cemeteries, memorials and other locations at which the dead are actually or symbolically interred, is used in this thesis to test the notion that that the city may continue to be understood as a reflection of world view. Places of the dead provide an appropriate test case for this task, as their forms and locations have clear associations with temporally and culturally specific understandings of the city. This thesis applies textual analysis and discourse analysis to seven case studies of contemporary places of the dead in order to examine the way in which the magic of the city may operate in one typology of place. It considers the representation of these case studies in a large array of texts, with particular emphasis on fictional, and thus potentially ??magical??, texts such as novels, television series and architectural drawings, as well as postcards, movies, cartoons, photographs, songs and paintings. The results of the case studies are used to argue not only that the city continues to be understood using a wide variety of ways of knowing, but also that these alternative epistemologies offer insights into contemporary cities which are not gained through the use of conventional methodologies.

Male bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.) in Shark Bay, WA, form several levels of alliances. Determining the relationship between paternity, relatedness and alliance membership is crucial in seeking evolutionary adaptive explanations for alliance formation. Previous behavioural data have revealed a social system whose complexity is unparalleled outside humans. Pairs or trios of male dolphins cooperate as stable first-order (1? alliances to sequester and control reproductive females. Two 1?alliances sometimes cooperate as small second-order (2? alliances to attack other 1?alliances or defend against attacks. Some males choose a different strategy by forming large superalliances of approximately fourteen individuals to attack 1?and 2?alliances. Kinship appears to play a role in the structuring of male alliances, but its importance differs with the alliance type. Relatedness analyses showed that on average, males in 1?and 2?alliances are strongly related, while members of the superalliance are not. Further, the strength of the association of partners within the superalliance was not correlated with their genetic relatedness. Thus, within one sex, it appears that there may be more than one simultaneous mode of group formation and its evolution. There was also an association between alliance behaviour and reproductive success as predicted by some theories of group formation. I assigned nine paternities to six out of 107 mature males. Males with alliance partners were significantly more successful in fathering offspring than males without partners. Compared to non-allied males, the chance of obtaining a paternity was significantly higher for members of 1?alliances, and reproductive success was significantly skewed among 1?alliance members. Assessment of kinship and relatedness required a number of technical developments and some preliminary data. I first refined a biopsy system in order to obtain tissue samples from free-ranging dolphins with minimum behavioural effects irrespective of age-group or gender. Then I carried out population genetics analyses, which demonstrated that there was only weak population structure within Shark Bay. Microsatellites showed a weak pattern of isolation by distance, and eight haplotypes of the mitochondrial DNA control region suggested weak female philopatry. The high number of migrants between locations allowed all samples from East Shark Bay to be pooled for subsequent analyses.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 1971. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the World Wide Web.

Great western development is a regional and preferential reform which began in the mid-1990s, and which intends to promote China's western economy. In this study, I statistically measure the effects of agricultural input growth, technological improvements and most importantly the improvement in institutional efficiency, which is attributed to great western development. This measurement is pursued by first discussing general aspects of Chinese agriculture, including a brief history of China's agricultural economy and politics as well as agricultural policy changes after the reforms. In order to estimate the effects of great western development on the Chinese agricultural production, I use the stochastic frontier production function. This approach is used widely in the field of economics in areas of measuring technical efficiency and policy effects in an industry with random shocks. I accompany this approach with several economic theories such as maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), measurement of technical inefficiency and estimation of technical change in the production function. An important contribution of this thesis is empirical estimation of stochastic frontier production function for great western development and a hypothesis test using the Monte-Carlo method. By maximum likelihood estimation with respect to the stochastic frontier production function, the measurement of the efficiency improvement is produced for the west and the east of China before and after great western development, respectively. A conclusion, made after the empirical analysis, is that great western development has positive effects on agricultural production and productivity in the western China.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 266-276). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Iowa, 1975. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 627-631).

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2003. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-141). Also available via the World Wide Web.