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Impact of Forest Management on Ozark Big-Eared Bat (Corynorhinus townsendii ingens) Prey and Foraging Ecology
Get PDFOzark big-eared bats (Corynorhinus townsendii ingens) are an endangered species of bat found only in Oklahoma and Arkansas. I conducted a study on the impact of forest management treatments, such as prescribed fire and mechanical thinning, in White Rock Mountain Wildlife Management Area, which is home to a maternity colony of Ozark big-eared bats. My goal was to understand how prescribed fire and mechanical thinning influence Ozark big-eared bat prey and foraging, and therefore be able to provide management recommendations for the habitat of this endangered species. My results indicated that bat prey availability was influenced by forest structure, and was higher in areas that had higher percentages of woody and herbaceous groundcover and more open canopies. Prioritizing these areas through a combination of burning and thinning could be beneficial for bat prey and influence foraging ecology of Ozark big-eared bats. I found that bats were using burned areas less than expected and areas that had not been managed more than expected, but were using thinned areas in proportion to their availability. These results indicate that forest management in this area is not having detrimental effects to bat foraging. I conducted a Hot Spot Analysis to determine potential insect prey availability hot spots, but found that these hot spots were not influencing where bats were foraging. This study provided insight to how the forest has responded to disturbance in this area and information to use in further studies relating to foraging ecology and management for this bat colony
Corpse Politics and the Traveling Bones of Jamaluddin al-Afghani
No full textForty-seven years after his death, Jamaluddin al-Afghani was reburied in Kabul. Amid the chaos of World War II, Afghanistan had enlisted the governments of British India, Turkey, and Iraq in a scheme to bring the bones of this nineteenth-century intellectual and Pan-Islamist out of exile in Istanbul, where they had lain buried since 1897. The subsequent exhumation, transnational corpse transfer, and reinterment in Kabul provoked the ire of the Iranian state, which contested Afghanistan\u27s claim to be Jamaluddin\u27s natal state. The significance of Jamaluddin\u27s corpse was inseparable from certain aspects of his self-curated hagiography as a consummate wanderer and anti-imperial Pan-Islamist. Consequently, the two states competed for custody of his remains. This transregional case study engages multidisciplinary scholarship on commemoration of the dead and remaking nationalist spaces. The article proposes that the physical location of the dead conjoined with individual hagiographies is key to disrupting or reifying nationalist narratives
Student Willingness to Report Weapons and School Violence at a Rural Secondary School in Arkansas: A Quantitative Study
Get PDFSchool safety continues to be a concerning and vital topic in education. This quantitative study examines the willingness of students from a rural Arkansas school district to report weapons being brought to school or violent occurrences happening at school and analyzes the behavior associated with students reporting or not reporting. The study examines barriers that exist to help to explain why students would not report weapons or violent incidents to staff members or adults in the school district. The study surveyed 52 students from a secondary school with Likert-style survey questions. The questions were grouped into different variables such as demographics, academic success, relationship to the perpetrator, reporting frequencies, and knowledge of available school resources. This allowed the researcher to analyze any data trends from students who were willing to report violent occurrences or weapons being brought to school versus those who would not. The relationship between the victim/perpetrator and the potential reporting student was a statistically significant indicator of reporting behaviors. The fear of retaliation was also a statistically significant variable in students’ willingness to report. Lastly, the knowledge of available resources at school to report and whom to report to was statistically significant in comparing the groups of students who were willing to report versus those who were not. The findings of this study allow the school district to revisit or implement its school safety plans and procedures to add emphasis to educating students and staff about the importance of reporting. A suggested recommendation from the findings would also be to increase reporting methods and opportunities for students and to have continuous education on how to report within the school
Examining the Perceptions of African American Students in Regards to Disciplinary Policies and Procedures
Get PDFThis qualitative study aimed to examine African American students\u27 perceptions regarding their school’s disciplinary policies and procedures. This study was an attempt to answer the following central questions: What are the perceptions of African American students regarding their high school’s disciplinary policies and procedures? What is the experience of African American students suspended one or more times? Other questions to consider were: According to African American high school students, what conditions are perceived as barriers to effective discipline practices?
To find answers to the above questions, African American students who have been suspended or recommended for expulsion one or more times were asked to participate in an interview. From the dialog, five themes emerged. The themes were the excessive length of suspensions, the subjectivity of the discipline policy, the issue with teacher absenteeism, awareness of the discipline policy, intrinsic motivation, and cultural differences. In conducting this study, the researcher arrived at three conclusions. They included creating policies and procedures, culturally relevant training for teachers, and implementing alternative discipline practices
A Study of Deep Neural Networks in the Application of Distracted Driving Detection
No full textAs the world continues to become more technologically advanced, distracted driving will continue to be a growing danger to the public. Convolutional neural networks can be used to monitor driving and differentiate distracted driving from safe driving. A popular distracted driving dataset created by State Farm called the Distracted Driver Dataset can be trained with the Auto-Keras model API. Auto-Keras is a system that taylors a machine learning model to fit a given dataset. While experienced neural network designers can create neural networks to produce incredibly accurate results, Auto-Keras gives those with less expertise a method of designing a network in a time-efficient manner. The resulting network created through Auto-Keras achieved an accuracy of 95.5
The Collapse of Lehman Brothers and the Economic Fallout
No full textThis research paper analyzes the causes and effects of the bankruptcy of the investment banking company, Lehman Brothers. We examined the economic and financial conditions of the business leading up to the collapse, what they truly were and how that differed from what investors were misled to believe. We will also explain the falsified financial statements and show how they deceived investors, along with the accounting ethics and rules that were violated. We also discussed the economy after the collapse and how it affected not only investors, but others outside the company as well
Societal Structure and Stability in Low-Income Families in Arkansas
Get PDFSocietal structure is not built to support a single-parent household positively. This can be shown by research measuring children’s development in poverty, the median household income of single parents, and food insecurities and obesity of children in poverty. The first goal of this research is to investigate the patterns of struggle that single-parent families experience in low-income households. These patterns of struggle in low-income households will include poverty, race/ethnicity, and child development (e.g., education). The second goal is to investigate the policies in place to help single-parent families and why they are inefficient in assisting them. These goals helped narrow down previous research findings that brought to the surface the disadvantages single-parent families experience, why stability is critical for child development, and how poverty can impact upbringing (e.g., food insecurities)
The Health Benefits of Canoeing and Kayaking.
No full textThe health benefits of kayaking or canoeing are both mental and physical. It is a low impact cardiovascular workout. Throughout the years more and more information has surfaced because different circumstances are providing different beneficial results
The Effects of Covid-19 on Business and Marketing
Get PDFThe coronavirus pandemic had produced many unprecedented challenges in terms of marketing, but it has not all been negative. The world crisis caused a major shift to online which produced new and innovative marketing strategies. Marketing was able to become somewhat better resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. However, the shift towards an online world also initiated a flooded marketplace where competition was high. Marketing had to find methods to combat supply chain issues, remote work, and learn to communicate well to keep consumers informed and happy while being competitive. Their communication efforts should build customer loyalty as this is difficult to come by. Social media aids these efforts by keeping the consumer informed while building upon the relationship. Marketing played a prominent role in presenting the value and need for items in an extremely unstable economy consisting of unsure consumers
Environmental Factors Affecting Coleoptera Biomass in the Ozark Mountain Range in Arkansas
No full textAbstract:
Terrestrial invertebrates including species of Coleoptera (beetles) play an important role in many ecosystem services including soil formation and fertility, pollination, decomposition and nutrient turnover, population regulation of other organisms through predation. Coleoptera are often vital in determining biodiversity and conservation techniques. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the knowledge of how environmental factors and different management practices are affecting Coleoptera populations and further assist ecologists in improving management techniques in the future. The insect data in this study was collected over the course of two weeks in the Arkansas portion of the Boston Mountain range. Four black light traps were set to turn on nightly and were moved to a new site and reset each day for the following night for a total of 61 sites. Habitat and vegetation assessments were also taken and recorded at each sight as well as various environmental factors including temperature (degrees Celsius), humidity (%), wind speed (km/h), and atmospheric pressure (hPa). All known management practices and the times they were performed in that study sight were also recorded including fire, regenerative harvest commercial thinning, and understory thinning. Out of 61 sites, Coleoptera had a total biomass of 488.133g with an average of 8.002g per site. Statistical tests showed that there was significantly greater biomass at sites where there was a greater percentage of humidity (P=0.0326) and greater total coleoptera biomass on days with higher temperatures (t59= 2.94 ± 0.19, p