Closer to Earth explores a Black midwestern family's generational spiritual connection to nature through the power of spiritual archiving, ancestral veneration, and oral storytelling.

Conservation corridors, areas of land connecting patches of natural land cover, are frequently cited and implemented as a restorative strategy to counteract fragmentation. Current corridor ecology focuses on experimental corridor systems or designed and built conservation corridors to assess functionality. Such systems and designs are typically short, straight swaths of homogenous land cover with unambiguous transitions between patches. Quantifying the degree to which amorphous landscape configurations, tortuosity, and heterogeneity of land cover and land uses within the corridor has on functional connectedness is a crucial yet overlooked component of corridor efficacy studies. Corridor literature lacks a robust and repeatable methodology for delineating existing landscape elements, recognizing arbitrary edges, and identifying the start and end of ambiguous transitions between the patches and corridor. Using a set of landscapes being studied as part of a global assessment of corridor efficacy, I designed a workflow that standardizes the boundary of corridor-patch interfaces. The proposed method is a quantitative and repeatable approach that minimizes the subjectivity in corridor delineations. This research investigates the degree to which the existence of a corridor modifies the structural and functional connectivity between patches connected by a corridor compared to an intact reference area.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of hypoxia responses during moderate- and severe-intensity exercise performed to exhaustion. Nine healthy university students, five men, and four women (mean ± SD, age, 23 ± 1 y; height 167 ± 8 cm; weight 73 ± 7 kg) performed a cycle ergometer test in normoxia and hypoxia conditions. Cardiorespiratory, metabolic, and perceptual responses were measured during moderate-intensity and during severe-intensity exercise. During moderate-intensity exercise, hypoxia exaggerates the cardiorespiratory and ventilatory responses and delays the attainment of the steady state VO2 kinetics. However, during severe-intensity exercise, compensatory responses were not adequate, oxygen demand was slightly increased and VO2 max was reduced in hypoxia affecting the overall performance. Therefore, the greater reliance on the anaerobic pathways could have a serious implication on the performance of the exercise over a wide range of intensities.

My thesis focuses on the conservation consequences of the hybridization of Lesser Prairie-Chickens in Kansas. Specifically, examining how past land management practices altering the species ranges impact the distinctiveness of Lesser Prairie-Chickens. Each chapter is an individual publication that addresses if the Greater and Lesser Prairie-Chicken are distinct when applying the morphological and biological species concepts. Chapter 2 compares the evolutionary history and morphological construct of Lesser Prairie-Chickens and other Galliformes using morphometric analysis. Chapter 3 uses low-resolution microsatellite data to reflect recent changes at the population level. This study aims to observe the Greater and Lesser Prairie-Chicken using the morphological and biological species concepts, two of the many species concepts, to determine the distinctiveness and rate of hybridization for these closely related species.

Texas is the leading producer of renewable energy in the U.S, and Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) is the largest metropolitan area in the state. Texas has a deregulated energy market, with three types of providers: privatized, public-owned, and co-operatives. Privatized providers compete in the deregulated market, and consumers choose between hundreds of electricity retailers. Public-owned providers are owned by the municipality, and electricity consumers that live within the city limits must use the municipal provider. Electric co-operatives operate similarly where customers within the region must use the co-operative, but instead of being owned by the city, co-ops are owned by the members (customers). To date, the availability, cost, accessibility, and outreach of renewable electricity among these provider types remains unclear. For this reason, my research examines the renewable energy market in DFW by asking: (1) Who has access to renewable energy and how do they understand it? (2) How do electricity retailers distribute and make renewable energy available? and (3) If consumers can choose their provider, why do they select certain electricity plans over others? My findings suggest that while many consumers want or are open to using renewable energy, uncertainties surrounding how to find or choose a provider, price, and …

Nobel laureate and economist Elinor Ostrom earned a Nobel prize in economic sciences in 2009 for her research on a community's ability to self-govern a common pool resource with the use of eight design principles. While Ostrom's accumulated efforts to analyze these principles and apply them to community resources have earned widespread recognition, these principles have yet to take off on a grand scale as a blueprint for self-governance systems globally. There is also a lack of empirical evidence that supports these principles as empirical investigations have yet to manipulate the principles individually or as an intervention package as independent variables. The purpose of the present study is to empirically test Ostrom's eight design principles in a tabletop game model of a community utilizing a common pool resource (CPR) by implementing as well as removing the principles within an adapted version of the board game Catan. In three groups, the CPR almost always fully crashed in baseline but not when Ostrom's principles were in place as game rules. Results indicated that Ostrom's design principles may organize participant responses and maintain resource levels over time more effectively than without Ostrom's rules applied.

Family functioning has long been a focus of research in psychopathology. Decades of research has shown that family factors are associated with symptom severity, relapse, functional outcomes, and conversion to psychosis among at-risk individuals. Previous studies suggest family functioning varies across cultures, which raises the possibility that associations between family factors and psychopathology may also differ by culture. Furthermore, family functioning assessment generally involves instruments that have not been systematically validated for use with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. The current study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study (N = 11,138) to: (1) evaluate three family functioning scales (i.e., Family Environment Scale, Child's Report of Parental Behavior Inventory, Parental Monitoring Survey) and the Prodromal Questionnaire – Brief Child version for measurement invariance across racial/ethnic groups; (2) investigate the relations between family factors and psychosis; and (3) compare relations derived from Step 2 between racial/ethnic groups. Full scalar invariance was tenable for the CRPBI and the PQ-BC, providing statistical support for mean comparisons across groups. The FES and the PMQ lacked scalar invariance, which suggests mean comparisons across groups may not be appropriate. The CRPBI and the PMQ are significantly associated with the PQ-BC, and all three family …

This thesis investigates the influence of organizational culture on customer experience through a comprehensive study of a global supplier of home repair products. By combining organizational analysis and consumer research, this research draws on anthropological principles to explore the nuances of family governance and their effects on behavior, customer experience, and product design. The results of this study present insightful information on product perception and actionable strategies to improve product design, branding, and messaging in order to enhance customer experience and drive sales. Drawing on organizational anthropology and the utilization of critical reflexivity, this thesis provides a deeper understanding of how family-owned businesses can leverage research to challenge their cultural assumptions about products, consumers, and their organization, in order to effectively implement customer-centric solutions and drive organizational behavior, customer experience, and product development.

Environmental monitoring is becoming increasingly important, primarily in urban areas due to the concentrated levels of human activities. The air sampling device presented is a novel method to sample air which harnesses the power of paper spray ionization paired with the intrinsic advantages of mass spectrometry such as high sensitivity, high selectivity, high throughput, and the ability to monitor multiple compounds at once.

The aim of behavior analysis has always been to apply technologies rooted in basic behavioral principles to problems of societal importance (e.g., Skinner, 1948; 1953; 1987). One such problem is the Tragedy of the Commons - a phenomenon arising from systemic failures among a community, leading to the total collapse of a critical resource (Hardin, 1968). Elinor Ostrom's Eight Design Principles were developed to provide a framework for the self-management of common pool resources (CPRs; Ostrom, 1990/2015). When applied as an independently manipulated variable, Ostrom's design principles have shown strong effects in the management of CPRs within the context of a tabletop board game Catan® (Smith & Becker, 2023). This preparation included both rewards (i.e., positive reinforcement) and sanctions (i.e., positive punishment) as a feature of the independent variable. However, it has been well documented that punishing and coercive contingencies can lead to problematic outcomes for individuals and societies (e.g., Sidman, 2001; Skinner, 1976). This study evaluated the effects of utilizing only rewarding consequences in lieu of sanctions in an effort to produce the previously observed control over self-management of a CPR, utilizing the previously adapted rules of the Catan® board game.