216 research outputs found
Belonging: natural histories of place, identity and home
No full textCanongate's synopsis:
"Reflecting on family, identity and nature, Belonging is a personal memoir about what it is to have and make a home. It is a love letter to nature, especially the northern landscapes of Scotland and the Scots pinewoods of Abernethy – home to standing dead trees known as snags, which support the overall health of the forest.
Belonging is a book about how we are held in thrall to elements of our past. It speaks to the importance of attention and reflection, and will encourage us all to look and observe and ask questions of ourselves.
Beautifully written and featuring Amanda Thomson’s artwork and photography throughout, it explores how place, language and family shape us and make us who we are."
Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize, 2023
Some of the reviews...
Outstanding - ROBERT MACFARLANE
Amanda Thomson’s new book manages to carve out a distinctive niche for itself . . . This is a passionate book and infused with a sense of rootedness - STUART KELLY, The Scotsman
In recent years rural landscapes have turned into battlegrounds, and nature writing has become increasingly polemical. Belonging is a quiet book of questions in a genre full of answers, but it is all the more powerful and beautiful for this - PATRICK GALBRAITH, TLS
One of the best things I have read in ages . . . Quiet and beautiful and powerful - ALYS FOWLER
Thomson writes of the natural in a way I have yet to encounter before. There is no real hoo-haa, no flowery description of which to speak yet somehow, I came away with that ache inside me — that renewed obsession with the world that is only borne of a very particular kind of writing — poetic, loving, raw . . . Like no other - KERRI Ní DOCHARTAIGH, Caught by the River
In strikingly original takes on Scottish history, environmentalism, Black feminist theory, artmaking, list-making, memory, and memoir, Thomson crafts a cadence that is as wise as it is vitally alive. - MARGOT DOUAIHY, author of Scorched Grac
DOES INITIAL TEACHER EDUCATION AFFECT TEACHER CANDIDATE BELIEFS ABOUT EQUITY AND DIVERSITY?: DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF THE TEACHER CANDIDATE BELIEFS ABOUT EQUITY AND DIVERSITY MEASURE
No full textAbstract
What teacher candidates believe â and whether those beliefs change during their initial
teacher education â has important implications for their future students. In this three paper
dissertation, the first two papers describe the development, refinement, and psychometric
properties testing of the Teacher Candidate Beliefs about Equity and Diversity (TCBED)
measure. The TCBED was designed to answer the main research question â does initial
teacher education (ITE) affect teacher candidate beliefs about equity and diversity? The third
paper presents the findings from administering the TCBED at the beginning and ending of an
initial teacher education (ITE) program. More than 150 teacher candidates attending a large
one-year consecutive ITE program in 2012-2013 answered the TCBED measure at both the
beginning and end of the program. Most teacher candidates had moderately to very positive
beliefs about teaching for social justice, their equity and diversity beliefs, and their sense of selfefficacy regarding teaching for social justice, and showed little change in their beliefs. To better
understand the teacher candidates who did not fit this pattern, several who had consistently low
scores across parts of the TCBED measure and across time or who varied in their scores were
selected for closer analysis of their responses to open-ended items on the TCBED measure. In
general, the ideas teacher candidates wrote about did not change over time except to show
some development of already expressed beliefs. Implications of the findings and usefulness of
the TCBED measure are discussed.Ph.D
DOES INITIAL TEACHER EDUCATION AFFECT TEACHER CANDIDATE BELIEFS ABOUT EQUITY AND DIVERSITY?: DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF THE TEACHER CANDIDATE BELIEFS ABOUT EQUITY AND DIVERSITY MEASURE
No full textAbstract
What teacher candidates believe â and whether those beliefs change during their initial
teacher education â has important implications for their future students. In this three paper
dissertation, the first two papers describe the development, refinement, and psychometric
properties testing of the Teacher Candidate Beliefs about Equity and Diversity (TCBED)
measure. The TCBED was designed to answer the main research question â does initial
teacher education (ITE) affect teacher candidate beliefs about equity and diversity? The third
paper presents the findings from administering the TCBED at the beginning and ending of an
initial teacher education (ITE) program. More than 150 teacher candidates attending a large
one-year consecutive ITE program in 2012-2013 answered the TCBED measure at both the
beginning and end of the program. Most teacher candidates had moderately to very positive
beliefs about teaching for social justice, their equity and diversity beliefs, and their sense of selfefficacy regarding teaching for social justice, and showed little change in their beliefs. To better
understand the teacher candidates who did not fit this pattern, several who had consistently low
scores across parts of the TCBED measure and across time or who varied in their scores were
selected for closer analysis of their responses to open-ended items on the TCBED measure. In
general, the ideas teacher candidates wrote about did not change over time except to show
some development of already expressed beliefs. Implications of the findings and usefulness of
the TCBED measure are discussed.Ph.D
Sumatran tigres monitoring during ZSL London zoo events (panthera tigris Sumatrae)
No full textThe main focus of this research is to investigate the response of five Sumatran tigers in the zoo
environment, during evening events. Animal response is behavioural as well as physiological and the
zoo environment includes climatic, intraspecific and interspecific contact factors that can vary
significantly from the in-situ habitat where the species evolved. Monitoring these responses is
essential to animal welfare and offer insight of the species’ behaviour and ex-situ adaptability,
producing valuable data relevant for their husbandry. For this project, we monitored a group of five
Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae) comparing their behaviour during evening social events
(Zoo late Nights and Sunset Safari) and control evening during Summer 2014 and 2015. Tiger
behaviour was monitored using focal animal sampling technique, crowd level around tiger enclosure
recorded every minute, flash photography as it occurred, and noise levels (maximum and minimum
levels) every five minutes using a portable decibel reader. In order to evaluate the potential
disturbance of the aforementioned factors on tigers, the probability of changing a zone of a subject in
the 9-minute period of observation was analysed by a logistic regression model. Direct observations
indicate that the behaviour of these species was not significantly altered on Zoo Lates while the
logistic model applied underlined the significance impact of several variables on the displacement of
subjects. In particular, the total camera flashes and the maximum decibels resulted statistically
significant, whereas the minimum decibels were borderline for significance. Qualitative variables
(subject, crowd, and year) did not influence the displacement, although a slight difference between
subjects was observed. The distribution of the subjects on the zones for the three degrees of crowd
was analysed by the chi-square test. This study outlines the importance of monitoring animal
behaviour during potential stressing events and individual response to environment stimuli
Putting practice into words: Fieldwork methodology in grammatical descriptions
No full textLanguage documentation and description are closely related tasks, often performed as part of the same fieldwork project on an un(der)-studied language. However, since Himmelmann (1998) we have been encouraged to consider that documentation and description are methodologically different, and that data collected with documentary methods can enable verification of descriptive claims based upon them. The last decade has seen a surge in the literature on good fieldwork methodology, including Gippert, Himmelmann & Mosel (2006), Crowley (2007), Bowern (2008), Chelliah & De Reuse (2011) and Thieberger (2012). The result is that linguists are more aware of good methodological practices for data collection than ever. These include attention to metadata about speaker demographics, setting, linguistic and discourse types; information about tools, equipment, and stimuli; a description of the fieldwork conditions including time spent among speakers; and a description of archiving practices and locatability of data.
However, it is not clear that linguists' awareness of the importance of robust data-collection methods is translating into transparency about those methods in resultant publications. Clear methodological description is a hallmark of reproducible and reliable scientific research (Author 2014, Authors In Prep), but documentary and descriptive linguists rarely receive clear advice on how to discuss the methods they use.
In this paper we present a survey of 50 published grammars, 50 grammar-based dissertations and 200+ journal articles with regard to how explicitly authors discuss their data collection methods, and what kinds of information they include. The publications surveyed were selected from a ten-year period beginning five years after Himmelmann 1998 encouraged the use of language documentation to provide verification for language description; journal articles come from nine journals selected for breadth of geography, linguistic subfield, and theoretical approach. We find that while there are some examples of strong methodologically-driven writing, the majority of authors do not include key documentary metadata or methodological information. The result is that it is often difficult or impossible to verify or reproduce descriptive linguistic claims, making descriptive linguistics one of the few social sciences to not require researchers to back up claims with an explicit statement of methodology.
We acknowledge that descriptive linguists often practice good methodology in data collection, but need encouragement to make this clear in their writing. Thus we conclude with clear benchmarks for the kind of information we believe is vital for creating a rich and useful research methodology in both long and short format descriptive research writing.
References
Author. 2014. [Title omitted for anonymity]. In Amanda Harris, Nick Thieberger & Linda Barwick (eds.), Research, records, and responsibility: Ten years of the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures. Sydney: University of Sydney Press.
Authors. In prep. Citation and transparency in descriptive linguistics.
Bowern, Claire. 2008. Linguistic fieldwork: a practical guide. Basingstoke [England] ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chelliah, Shobhana L., and Willem J. De Reuse. 2011. Handbook of descriptive linguistic fieldwork. London: Springer.
Crowley, Terry. 2007. Field linguistics: a beginner's guide. Edited by Nicholas Thieberger, Oxford linguistics. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
Gippert, Jost, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, & Ulrike Mosel. 2006. Essentials of language documentation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 1998. "Documentary and descriptive linguistics." Linguistics no. 36:161–195.
Thieberger, Nicholas. 2012. The Oxford handbook of linguistic fieldwork. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Avocado meal: A novel dietary fiber source in feline and canine diets
No full textWith the increasing competition between the human food and the pet food industries for ingredient procurement and availability, the pet food industry is looking for new ingredients that do not compete directly with the human food supply chain. Many by-products from the human food processing industry are under-utilized or destroyed and may be suitable ingredients for the pet food industry. Avocado meal, the ground and dried defatted pulp, seed, and skin after avocado oil processing, has not been used in feline and canine diets, but limited research in rats, sheep, and broiler chickens has shown that avocado meal may be an adequate fiber source.
The overall objective of this research was to assess the use of avocado meal as a novel dietary fiber source for feline and canine extruded diets in terms of processing, extrusion characteristics, and nutritional adequacy. Three diets containing either avocado meal (AMD), beet pulp (BPD), or cellulose (CD) as the dietary fiber source were formulated to meet the AAFCO (2016) nutrient requirements for adult cats and dogs and processed using a single screw extruder. Samples of each diet were taken at each processing stage (raw avocado meal, raw dry ingredient mixes, preconditioner, extruder, dryer, first coating, and second coating). Diets were fed to 8 neutered male cats for 21 days (d) and 9 intact female Beagles for 14 d. Periods consisted of 17 d or 10 d of diet adaptation, respectively, with 4 d of total fecal and urine collection. One fresh fecal sample was collected per animal per treatment within 15 minutes of defecation. The avocado meal ingredient, diets (including processing stages), feces, and urine were analyzed for macronutrient concentrations and apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD). Fresh fecal samples were analyzed for phenols, indoles, ammonia, short-chain fatty acids [SCFA (acetate, propionate, and butyrate)], and branched-chain fatty acids [BCFA (isobutyrate, isovalerate, and valerate)]. Extrudate samples for all three diets from the extruder (E), dryer (D), and first coater (CO) were analyzed for expansion and texture changes.
Our first goal was to characterize the chemical composition of avocado meal and compare the processing of AMD to BPD and CD. The avocado meal ingredient contained moderately low levels of acid-hydrolyzed fat (AHF) (9.1%) and crude protein (CP) (11.5%) with higher levels of total dietary fiber (TDF) (37.4%) [values expressed on a dry matter basis (DM basis)]. Soluble dietary fiber (SDF) and insoluble dietary fiber (IDF) were 27.0% and 10.4%, respectively. We expected chemical composition of the diets to be unaffected by processing, which was observed except for DM, AHF, and fiber fractions. Dry matter decreased with the addition of water and steam at the preconditioner and extruder and increased at the dryer when moisture was removed. Acid-hydrolyzed fat increased at the preconditioner for BPD and CD and at the coater for all three diets due to the addition of choice white grease. In general, TDF and IDF concentrations decreased after extrusion and were diluted with the addition of fat at the coater. Extrudates of AMD and BPD tended to have greater expansion and lower hardness compared to CD.
Our second goal was to assess avocado meal as a novel dietary fiber for feline diets. In most cases, AMD performed similarly to BPD in terms of macronutrient apparent total tract digestibility and fecal fermentative end-product concentrations. While total and daily fecal output, daily DM intake, and ATTD of DM, organic matter (OM), and gross energy (GE) were not affected, CD had lower (P 0.05) from either, and lower (P 0.05). Fecal SCFA, acetate, and isobutyrate concentrations were greater (P 0.05) from either. Cats remained healthy on all treatments except for creatinine concentration, which are historically above reference ranges in this colony. A monadic acceptability test for AMD with only one coating (14.2% AHF, DM basis) resulted in poor and variable food intake, supporting our findings that an additional coating (16.7% AHF, DM basis) was needed to increase palatability.
Our third goal was to determine if avocado meal could be a dietary fiber source for canines. More often than not, AMD performed similarly to CD. As-is daily fecal output and fecal scores were greater (P < 0.05) for BPD than for AMD and CD. Cellulose diet had the greatest (P < 0.05) fecal DM, followed by AMD (P < 0.05), then BPD (P < 0.05). Fecal pH was lower (P < 0.05) for BPD and AMD than for CD. As with the feline study, only CP, AHF, and TDF ATTD were affected by the treatments. Avocado meal diet and CD had greater (P < 0.05) CP ATTD than did the BPD. In contrast, cats fed CD had greater (P < 0.05) AHF ATTD and lower (P < 0.05) TDF ATTD than cats fed AMD or BPD. In terms of fecal fermentative end-products, BPD resulted in greater (P < 0.05) concentrations of total SCFA, acetate, and propionate than did AMD and CD. Beet pulp diet also had lower (P < 0.05) levels of isovalerate, ammonia, and total phenols and indoles than AMD and CD. Fecal butyrate concentration was lower (P < 0.05) for CD than for AMD and BPD, but BPD had a greater (P < 0.05) concentration of valerate than did CD and AMD. Dogs remained healthy during the study and serum metabolites were within reference ranges for adult dogs among all dietary treatments, even though statistical differences were detected for a few serum metabolites. As with the feline study, monadic food acceptability tests resulted in low consumption, indicating that additional fat and palatant were needed to increase acceptability of AMD (14.2% AHF, DM basis vs. 17.8% AHF, DM basis).
Based on the research in this study, avocado meal appears to be an acceptable dietary fiber source for canines and felines. It processes well within standard extrusion conditions of commercial pet foods and resulted in physiological effects similar to standard fiber sources for the pet food industry. Although acceptability of AMD was low prior to the second coating, a commercial pet food would likely not contain as much avocado meal as the diets tested herein (18.67%, as-is basis), possibly minimizing the less favorable food acceptability outcomes observed in our studies. More importantly, no detrimental effects on health status of the cats and dogs fed the AMD were observed, which does not support current safety concerns related to the consumption of avocado by domestic dogs and cats due to acute persin toxicity, at least not during a feeding period of 14-21 d evaluated herein.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2020-05-01The student, Amanda Dainton, accepted the attached license on 2018-04-22 at 23:46.The student, Amanda Dainton, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2018-04-22 at 23:47.This Thesis was approved for publication on 2018-04-26 at 16:21.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #12417 on 2018-08-31 at 17:30:15Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-04T20:47:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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Lunar Surface Studies: Multi-Wavelength Analysis and Methods
No full textThe author has granted permission for their work to be available to the general public.The Moon remains the one of the most scientifically valuable sites in our solar system. As we start a new age in lunar exploration, we must examine lunar surface through multiple lenses, and collaborate across scientific disciplines to do new and robust science. Using far-ultraviolet (57-197 nm) data provided by The Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, this work improves data pipelines, while also creating new far ultraviolet (far-UV) data products for the planetary science community. LAMP far-UV data identified Aristarchus crater as having a high Off-band (155-184 nm) to On-band (130-155 nm) albedo (Off/On) ratio, providing new insight to the mineral composition of the area. We investigate four well characterized regions of interest around Aristarchus crater, and we compare Off/On band ratios at Aristarchus crater to laboratory-derived ratios of several endmembers such as anorthite and olivine. We further analyze LAMP far-UV spectra alongside near-infrared (near-IR) spectra from the Moon Mineral Mapper (M3) onboard Chandrayaan-1 to characterize the mineralogy in several regions of interest. We find that LAMP Off/On band ratios are able to distinguish between plagioclase feldspars and minerals such as quartz and mafic dominated compositions. The LAMP Off/On band ratios at Aristarchus are higher than previously reported ratios for plagioclase rich regions, suggesting the composition is unique to Aristarchus. Building off of this work, we will examine pyroclastic dark mantling deposits (DMDs) at J. Herschel crater with LAMP observations and further our understanding of the volcanic history of the area and the Moon.Physics and Astronom
The discovery of Phocaean Red Slip Ware (PRSW) Form 3 and Bii ware (LR1 amphorae) on sites in Ireland - an analysis within a broader framework
No full text'Phocaean Red Slip Ware' and Bii amphorae sherds have been identifi ed, by the present author, at the site of Collierstown 1, Co. Meath. One of the advantages of discovering Phocaean Red Slip Ware Form 3 on sites in Ireland is that it is instantly datable—to the late fi fth and early sixth century AD—a valuable asset in an early medieval context; however, the main benefi t in identifying this ware in Ireland is that its manufacture can be accurately and exclusively attributed to a centre in Asia Minor (modern Turkey); a provenance that has major implications for long-distance connectivity in the early medieval period. Similarly, the Bii amphorae discovered in Ireland, manufactured in the wider Cyprio–Syrian catchment area, have never been published as a group before and the present study attempts to redress this in presenting sixteen fi nd-spots of Bii amphorae in Ireland; a marked increase on the two sites included in Thomas’ 1959 catalogue refl ective of Ireland’s recent intensive road building schemes. This paper addresses the complexity of the trade network between north-western Europe and the eastern Mediterranean (and, more locally, between Ireland, Britain and France) in the early medieval period, thereby presenting hypothetical intermeshing trading models
The discovery of phocaean red slip ware (prsw) form 3 and bii ware (lr1 amphorae) on sites in ireland—an analysis within a broader framework
No full text'Phocaean Red Slip Ware' and Bii amphorae sherds have been identified, by the present author, at the site of Collierstown 1, Co. Meath. One of the advantages of discovering Phocaean Red Slip Ware Form 3 on sites in Ireland is that it is instantly datable-to the late fifth and early sixth century AD-a valuable asset in an early medieval context; however, the main benefit in identifying this ware in Ireland is that its manufacture can be accurately and exclusively attributed to a centre in Asia Minor (modern Turkey); a provenance that has major implications for long-distance connectivity in the early medieval period. Similarly, the Bii amphorae discovered in Ireland, manufactured in the wider Cyprio-Syrian catchment area, have never been published as a group before and the present study attempts to redress this in presenting sixteen find-spots of Bii amphorae in Ireland; a marked increase on the two sites included in Thomas' 1959 catalogue reflective of Ireland's recent intensive road building schemes. This paper addresses the complexity of the trade network between north-western Europe and the eastern Mediterranean (and, more locally, between Ireland, Britain and France) in the early medieval period, thereby presenting hypothetical intermeshing trading models.peer-reviewe
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