Browsing by Subject "Geography"
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Item Open Access Adoption of direct-acting antiviral medications for hepatitis C: a retrospective observational study.(BMC health services research, 2019-07-25) Zullig, Leah L; Bhatia, Haresh L; Gellad, Ziad F; Eatherly, Mark; Henderson, Rochelle; Bosworth, Hayden BBackground
Approximately 3.5 million Americans are infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Although many patients with HCV are asymptomatic, HCV is the leading cause of infection-related death in the U.S. With advances in curative medication therapy for HCV, many of these deaths are preventable. Access to innovative therapies may be unevenly distributed. Our objective was to describe medication prescribers' adoption of innovative HCV pharmacotherapy across prescriber, geographical location, and time.Methods
This is a retrospective, secondary data analysis among a national cohort of patients prescribed direct-acting antiviral HCV medications with curative intent. We assessed prescriptions by time, geographic location, and provider type.Results
The peak of the adoption rate occurred within 45 days; nearly one-sixth of all prescribers had already prescribed one of the new drugs. Geographical regions (Midwest, South, and West all p ≥ 0.05) nor gender (p = 0.455) of a prescriber impacted adoption. Similarly, patient income did not influence the likelihood of a prescriber to adopt the new drugs earlier (p = 0.175). Gastroenterologists or hepatologists were more likely earlier adopters compared to primary care physicians (p = 0.01).Conclusions
Because of the relative advantage of newer therapies, we anticipated that there would be an initial surge as early adopters prescribed the new medications and use would dwindle over time as the initial HCV cohort was cured. The data demonstrate that our hypothesis is essentially supported. There is a reduction in prescriptions at approximately 5 months post-approval and treatment is typically required for 3 months. There has been a surge in clinicians' adoption of innovative HCV treatments. As patients are cured of their infection, we anticipate a decreased need for chronic management of HCV.Trial registration
Not applicable.Item Open Access Architecture and the Performance of Citizenship in a Global City: Singapore, 1965-2015(2019) Bullock, Nathan FosterIn this dissertation, I present the ways in which architecture was used to perform citizenship in post-colonial Singapore from 1965-2015. During the first fifty years of independence, architects, alongside other artists and activists, contested the restrictions and exclusions of de facto and de iure citizenship through alternative proposals for the urban built environment. I make the case for an alternative architectural history based on those buildings which are excluded from the canon by virtue of their being unbuilt and rejected projects. Through archival research and interviews, I provide an historical narrative and visual analysis of these alternative proposals for architecture and politics. I argue for an understanding of both citizenship and architecture’s agency as performative. I begin with the Singapore Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) Group’s proposals and continue with examples its co-leaders’—Tay Kheng Soon and William Lim—alternative unbuilt projects. The rejection of these architectural projects by the state reveals the rejection of the postcolonial social democratic politics on which they were based. This evidence demonstrates the continuity between British colonial control and one-party planning. I conclude that these architects were the forefront of envisioning and advocating for an alternative democratic ideal. Their contributions paved the way for visual and performing artists as well as civil society organizations to continue contesting the state’s oppressive politics.
Item Open Access Are the native giant tortoises from the Seychelles really extinct? A genetic perspective based on mtDNA and microsatellite data.(Mol Ecol, 2003-06) Palkovacs, EP; Marschner, M; Ciofi, C; Gerlach, J; Caccone, AThe extinction of the giant tortoises of the Seychelles Archipelago has long been suspected but is not beyond doubt. A recent morphological study of the giant tortoises of the western Indian Ocean concluded that specimens of two native Seychelles species survive in captivity today alongside giant tortoises of Aldabra, which are numerous in zoos as well as in the wild. This claim has been controversial because some of the morphological characters used to identify these species, several measures of carapace morphology, are reputed to be quite sensitive to captive conditions. Nonetheless, the potential survival of giant tortoise species previously thought extinct presents an exciting scenario for conservation. We used mitochondrial DNA sequences and nuclear microsatellites to examine the validity of the rediscovered species of Seychelles giant tortoises. Our results indicate that the morphotypes suspected to represent Seychelles species do not show levels of variation and genetic structuring consistent with long periods of reproductive isolation. We found no variation in the mitochondrial control region among 55 individuals examined and no genetic structuring in eight microsatellite loci, pointing to the survival of just a single lineage of Indian Ocean tortoises.Item Open Access Challenges facing translational research organizations in China: a qualitative multiple case study.(Journal of translational medicine, 2013-10) Zhou, Laixin; Li, Ying; Bosworth, Hayden B; Ehiri, John; Luo, ChangkunBackground
Translational medicine is attracting much attention worldwide and many translational research organizations (TROs) have been established. In China, translational medicine has developed rapidly, but faces many challenges. This study was aimed at exploring these challenges faced by emerging TROs in China.Method
A qualitative, multiple case study approach was used to assess the challenges faced by TROs in China. Data were collected between May and August 2012.Results
Eight cases were identified. Overall, four themes that characterized TROs in China emerged from analyses: 1. objectives, organizer, and funding resources, 2. participating partners and research teams, 3. management, and 4. achievements. All TROs had objectives related to translating basic discovery to clinic treatment and cultivating translational researchers. In terms of organizer and funding resources, 7 out of 8 TROs were launched only by universities and/or hospitals, and funded mostly through research grants. As for participating partners and multidisciplinary research teams, all but one of the TROs only involved biomedical research institutions who were interested in translational research, and characterized as clinical research centers; 7 out of 8 TROs involved only researchers from biomedicine and clinical disciplines and none involved disciplines related to education, ethnicity, and sociology, or engaged the community. Current management of the TROs were generally nested within the traditional research management paradigms, and failed to adapt to the tenets of translational research. Half of the TROs were at developmental stages defined as infrastructure construction and recruitment of translational researchers.Conclusions
TROs in China face the challenge of attracting sustainable funding sources, widening multidisciplinary cooperation, cultivating multi-disciplinary translational researchers and adapting current research management to translational research. Greater emphasis should be placed on increasing multidisciplinary cooperation, and innovating in education programs to cultivate of translational researchers. Efforts should be made to reform research management in TROs, and establish sustainable funding resources.Item Open Access ‘Christ the Redeemer Turns His Back on Us:’ Urban Black Struggle in Rio’s Baixada Fluminense(2018) Reist, Stephanie V“Even Christ the Redeemer has turned his back to us” a young, Black female resident of the Baixada Fluminense told me. The 13 municipalities that make up this suburban periphery of Rio de Janeiro have suffered for decades from stigmatizing media narratives that cast the region as pathologically violent and culturally devoid due to its Blacker, poorer inhabitants. This has helped perpetuate government neglect, exacerbated by Rio’s hosting of the 2016 Olympic Games, through clientelist politics that thrive off the lack of jobs and basic public services in the region. My dissertation is an auto-ethnographic analysis of my three years of participatory action research with Black and brown youth in Rio de Janeiro’s stigmatized Baixada Fluminense. I argue that the music, films, social media driven journalism, and scholarly production of these youth contest the ways in which race, class, and place of origin often overlap through segregationist practices that attempt to maintain racial, socio-geographic hierarchies by relegating Black, brown, and poor bodies to the social and geographic periphery of a country than once proclaimed itself a “racial democracy.” Through transnational partnerships, these youth employ diasporic cultural forms and digital media to re-configure the Baixada and its 13 municipalities as a “Black place” that is inherently intersectional in its claims to collective access to urban and social mobility within this urban periphery.
Item Open Access Climate drives the geography of marine consumption by changing predator communities.(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020-11) Whalen, Matthew A; Whippo, Ross DB; Stachowicz, John J; York, Paul H; Aiello, Erin; Alcoverro, Teresa; Altieri, Andrew H; Benedetti-Cecchi, Lisandro; Bertolini, Camilla; Bresch, Midoli; Bulleri, Fabio; Carnell, Paul E; Cimon, Stéphanie; Connolly, Rod M; Cusson, Mathieu; Diskin, Meredith S; D’Souza, Elrika; Flores, Augusto AV; Fodrie, F Joel; Galloway, Aaron WE; Gaskins, Leo C; Graham, Olivia J; Hanley, Torrance C; Henderson, Christopher J; Hereu, Clara M; Hessing-Lewis, Margot; Hovel, Kevin A; Hughes, Brent B; Hughes, A Randall; Hultgren, Kristin M; Jänes, Holger; Janiak, Dean S; Johnston, Lane N; Jorgensen, Pablo; Kelaher, Brendan P; Kruschel, Claudia; Lanham, Brendan S; Lee, Kun-Seop; Lefcheck, Jonathan S; Lozano-Álvarez, Enrique; Macreadie, Peter I; Monteith, Zachary L; O’Connor, Nessa E; Olds, Andrew D; O’Leary, Jennifer K; Patrick, Christopher J; Pino, Oscar; Poore, Alistair GB; Rasheed, Michael A; Raymond, Wendel W; Reiss, Katrin; Rhoades, O Kennedy; Robinson, Max T; Ross, Paige G; Rossi, Francesca; Schlacher, Thomas A; Seemann, Janina; Silliman, Brian R; Smee, Delbert L; Thiel, Martin; Unsworth, Richard KF; van Tussenbroek, Brigitta I; Vergés, Adriana; Yeager, Mallarie E; Yednock, Bree K; Ziegler, Shelby L; Duffy, J EmmettThe global distribution of primary production and consumption by humans (fisheries) is well-documented, but we have no map linking the central ecological process of consumption within food webs to temperature and other ecological drivers. Using standardized assays that span 105° of latitude on four continents, we show that rates of bait consumption by generalist predators in shallow marine ecosystems are tightly linked to both temperature and the composition of consumer assemblages. Unexpectedly, rates of consumption peaked at midlatitudes (25 to 35°) in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres across both seagrass and unvegetated sediment habitats. This pattern contrasts with terrestrial systems, where biotic interactions reportedly weaken away from the equator, but it parallels an emerging pattern of a subtropical peak in marine biodiversity. The higher consumption at midlatitudes was closely related to the type of consumers present, which explained rates of consumption better than consumer density, biomass, species diversity, or habitat. Indeed, the apparent effect of temperature on consumption was mostly driven by temperature-associated turnover in consumer community composition. Our findings reinforce the key influence of climate warming on altered species composition and highlight its implications for the functioning of Earth's ecosystems.Item Open Access Comparative analyses of clinical and environmental populations of Cryptococcus neoformans in Botswana.(Mol Ecol, 2015-07) Chen, Yuan; Litvintseva, Anastasia P; Frazzitta, Aubrey E; Haverkamp, Miriam R; Wang, Liuyang; Fang, Charles; Muthoga, Charles; Mitchell, Thomas G; Perfect, John RCryptococcus neoformans var. grubii (Cng) is the most common cause of fungal meningitis, and its prevalence is highest in sub-Saharan Africa. Patients become infected by inhaling airborne spores or desiccated yeast cells from the environment, where the fungus thrives in avian droppings, trees and soil. To investigate the prevalence and population structure of Cng in southern Africa, we analysed isolates from 77 environmental samples and 64 patients. We detected significant genetic diversity among isolates and strong evidence of geographic structure at the local level. High proportions of isolates with the rare MATa allele were observed in both clinical and environmental isolates; however, the mating-type alleles were unevenly distributed among different subpopulations. Nearly equal proportions of the MATa and MATα mating types were observed among all clinical isolates and in one environmental subpopulation from the eastern part of Botswana. As previously reported, there was evidence of both clonality and recombination in different geographic areas. These results provide a foundation for subsequent genomewide association studies to identify genes and genotypes linked to pathogenicity in humans.Item Open Access Comparing habitat suitability and connectivity modeling methods for conserving pronghorn migrations.(PloS one, 2012-01) Poor, Erin E; Loucks, Colby; Jakes, Andrew; Urban, Dean LTerrestrial long-distance migrations are declining globally: in North America, nearly 75% have been lost. Yet there has been limited research comparing habitat suitability and connectivity models to identify migration corridors across increasingly fragmented landscapes. Here we use pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) migrations in prairie habitat to compare two types of models that identify habitat suitability: maximum entropy (Maxent) and expert-based (Analytic Hierarchy Process). We used distance to wells, distance to water, NDVI, land cover, distance to roads, terrain shape and fence presence to parameterize the models. We then used the output of these models as cost surfaces to compare two common connectivity models, least-cost modeling (LCM) and circuit theory. Using pronghorn movement data from spring and fall migrations, we identified potential migration corridors by combining each habitat suitability model with each connectivity model. The best performing model combination was Maxent with LCM corridors across both seasons. Maxent out-performed expert-based habitat suitability models for both spring and fall migrations. However, expert-based corridors can perform relatively well and are a cost-effective alternative if species location data are unavailable. Corridors created using LCM out-performed circuit theory, as measured by the number of pronghorn GPS locations present within the corridors. We suggest the use of a tiered approach using different corridor widths for prioritizing conservation and mitigation actions, such as fence removal or conservation easements.Item Open Access Culture, Capture, and Disease: Shrimp Production in the Age of Industrial Aquaculture(2019) Dubik, Bradford AThis dissertation focuses on the relationship of industrial shrimp aquaculture and shrimp diseases, with an emphasis on the agency of disease in shaping the history of shrimp production. Shrimp aquaculture is concentrated in developing tropical economies, with the significant majority of shrimp exported to consumers in the Global North. The rise of shrimp aquaculture has been accompanied by the development of new technologies and practices, designed to facilitate and govern the growth of the industry. While successful in making aquaculture the single largest production method for shrimp, these innovations also created ideal environments for the emergence and spread of shrimp diseases, which have caused significant and persistent production losses. Disease has brought volatility and risk to producer livelihoods, while also necessitating further technological modernization and development interventions to curb disease outbreaks.
This research draws on qualitative interviews and contextual economic analyses to explore the role of disease at multiple scales. Chapter 2 examines how disease has shaped industry discourses and he practice of shrimp aquaculture across contexts. The role of the concept of biosecurity is examined to highlight the territorial nature of disease prevention. Chapter 3 explores the context of shrimp aquaculture development in Aceh, Indonesia. This chapter applies the general ideas explored in Chapter 2, to a real-world case, highlighting how the pairing of shrimp and disease is managed as a single commodity. Chapter 4 explores the reach of disease globally, and across methods of production. The economic effects of disease on U.S. wild shrimping are explored, along with the role of disease as a narrative element in resisting global aquaculture.
It is argued that shrimp disease shapes commodity relationships, influencing production decisions, and development priorities at multiple scales. The unsympathetic quality of disease makes disease prevention an ideal project for enrolling broad coalitions of human and non-human actors, and negating the politics embedded in the relationship of disease prevention with commodification more broadly.
Item Restricted Delimiting species without nuclear monophyly in Madagascar's mouse lemurs.(PLoS One, 2010-03-31) Weisrock, David W; Rasoloarison, Rodin M; Fiorentino, Isabella; Ralison, José M; Goodman, Steven M; Kappeler, Peter M; Yoder, Anne DBACKGROUND: Speciation begins when populations become genetically separated through a substantial reduction in gene flow, and it is at this point that a genetically cohesive set of populations attain the sole property of species: the independent evolution of a population-level lineage. The comprehensive delimitation of species within biodiversity hotspots, regardless of their level of divergence, is important for understanding the factors that drive the diversification of biota and for identifying them as targets for conservation. However, delimiting recently diverged species is challenging due to insufficient time for the differential evolution of characters--including morphological differences, reproductive isolation, and gene tree monophyly--that are typically used as evidence for separately evolving lineages. METHODOLOGY: In this study, we assembled multiple lines of evidence from the analysis of mtDNA and nDNA sequence data for the delimitation of a high diversity of cryptically diverged population-level mouse lemur lineages across the island of Madagascar. Our study uses a multi-faceted approach that applies phylogenetic, population genetic, and genealogical analysis for recognizing lineage diversity and presents the most thoroughly sampled species delimitation of mouse lemur ever performed. CONCLUSIONS: The resolution of a large number of geographically defined clades in the mtDNA gene tree provides strong initial evidence for recognizing a high diversity of population-level lineages in mouse lemurs. We find additional support for lineage recognition in the striking concordance between mtDNA clades and patterns of nuclear population structure. Lineages identified using these two sources of evidence also exhibit patterns of population divergence according to genealogical exclusivity estimates. Mouse lemur lineage diversity is reflected in both a geographically fine-scaled pattern of population divergence within established and geographically widespread taxa, as well as newly resolved patterns of micro-endemism revealed through expanded field sampling into previously poorly and well-sampled regions.Item Open Access Empiric antibiotic treatment of erythema migrans-like skin lesions as a function of geography: a clinical and cost effectiveness modeling study.(Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis, 2013-12) Lantos, Paul M; Brinkerhoff, R Jory; Wormser, Gary P; Clemen, RobertThe skin lesion of early Lyme disease, erythema migrans (EM), is so characteristic that routine practice is to treat all such patients with antibiotics. Because other skin lesions may resemble EM, it is not known whether presumptive treatment of EM is appropriate in regions where Lyme disease is rare. We constructed a decision model to compare the cost and clinical effectiveness of three strategies for the management of EM: Treat All, Observe, and Serology as a function of the probability that an EM-like lesion is Lyme disease. Treat All was found to be the preferred strategy in regions that are endemic for Lyme disease. Where Lyme disease is rare, Observe is the preferred strategy, as presumptive treatment would be expected to produce excessive harm and increased costs. Where Lyme disease is rare, clinicians and public health officials should consider observing patients with EM-like lesions who lack travel to Lyme disease-endemic areas.Item Open Access (En)gendering Change in Small-Scale Fisheries Science and Policy(2021) Smith, Hillary SuzanneIncreasingly the challenges of environmental governance are understood as global in nature and scope. Within fisheries, industrial fisheries have long been the global priority in fisheries science, policy instruments, and management techniques. Meanwhile, small-scale fisheries (SSF) have historically been relegated to the margins, framed as local, place-based, static practices from the past rather than global priorities. This dissertation examines the conditions and consequences of transformation in SSF governance, as SSF are becoming a global concern. The passage of a recent internationally negotiated policy for the small-scale sector signifies this monumental shift underway in global fisheries governance priorities: The Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines).By ‘following the policy,’ this research examines the dynamics of policy mobility (e.g., who and what came together to make and implement this policy) across multiple sites and scales of policymaking and implementation as the SSF guidelines are mobilized at global, regional, and national levels. The movement to transform fisheries governance is examined against past patterns in fisheries science and policy, including through analysis of a large-N dataset. The mixed methods used provide needed insights into how different actors (e.g., scientists, policymakers, civil society organizations) have grappled with the questions “governance of what, by whom, to what ends” in SSF through time. While the passage of the SSF Guidelines in 2014 was considered a landmark moment for the SSF sector, attention has now shifted to what they will become; whether and how this policy will ‘scale down’ and to what effects. Studying policy implementation is critical to understanding how transformative change happens in fisheries governance and environmental governance more broadly. Developed with ongoing input from civil society organizations, the SSF Guidelines are the first global policy designed explicitly for SSF. Endorsing gender equality, decent work, and human rights as necessary tenets of sustainability, this policy’s core principles stand in stark contrast to the status quo in fisheries governance. But what these principles will become is uncertain because policy implementation was left intentionally open-ended in the text of the SSF Guidelines which were written without pre-determined implementation targets or definitions of success. This dissertation addresses the central question: How is such an unconventional and unlikely policy mobilized in practice, and how are the ideas within translated in place? To this end, this research engages with the literature on global environmental governance, theories of scale from human geography and common-pool resource scholarship, and the emergent field of critical policy studies, extending these insights to the dynamics SSF governance, an understudied common-pool resource system undergoing transformation here and now. Amidst the wider movement to transform fisheries governance to be more equitable, this research focuses on the principle of gender equality within the SSF Guidelines. Emphasis is placed on how the principle of gender equality came to be part of a global policy instrument in the first place, and later, articulated as the focus of national policy implementation. While this is a multi-sited and multi-scaled story, the dynamics of national-level implementation are followed in the context of Tanzania, one country working to implement this policy in their vast inland and marine fisheries with a chosen focus on gender. Tracing the multi-stakeholder process of developing a national ‘roadmap’ to implement the SSF Guidelines there, this dissertation reveals how the goal of gender equality was translated into specific strategies determined in place, including through a collaborative effort to ‘map’ existing women’s fishing organizations and networks among them. Conclusions demonstrate that flexibility intentionally built into the design of global policies can create room for new understandings of what small-scale fisheries are, how they should be governed, and what a sustainable and desirable future for fisheries looks like—making space to imagine and enact alternatives that are more just and inclusive. Following the indeterminate arc of policy mobility then is critical to determining who steps into the space created by policy change. In the story of creating and implementing the SSF Guidelines, civil society organizations played an outsized role in affecting multi-scalar policy transformation.
Item Open Access Encounters with Conservation and Development in Suriname: How Indigenous Peoples Are Trying to Make Things 'Right' through Scalar Politics, Identity Framing, and Hybrid Governance Arrangements(2009) Haalboom, Bethany JannaThis dissertation research explored how indigenous peoples have responded to increasing conservation and development pressures in Suriname using two case study communities. One, in West Suriname, faced a proposed protected area and large-scale mining operation on the communities' traditional lands. The other community, in East Suriname, has been involved in a long-term co-management arrangement over an existing protected area. Community responses to these protected areas and development projects were considered through the important influence of a national indigenous rights organization and its multi-scalar networks. A total of 68 in-depth interviews with indigenous community leaders, indigenous rights organization leaders, conservation NGO personnel, company, and government representatives were conducted over a period of 9 months. In addition, 13 documents including conference proceedings, editorials, letters, and presentations were collected and analyzed. Results showed that strategies in the form of scalar politics, information politics, accountability politics, and cultural politics that drew from international legal instruments, guidelines, and the larger indigenous rights movement were used. These strategies enhanced the power, knowledge, and negotiating ability of the communities and NGOs, leading to the eventual rejection of a protected area and a stronger role in the mining project. However, the larger goal of land rights for indigenous peoples in Suriname has not yet been realized, and remains the focal point of indigenous struggles there.
Item Open Access Evaluating interactions of forest conservation policies on avoided deforestation.(PLoS One, 2015) Robalino, Juan; Sandoval, Catalina; Barton, David N; Chacon, Adriana; Pfaff, AlexanderWe estimate the effects on deforestation that have resulted from policy interactions between parks and payments and between park buffers and payments in Costa Rica between 2000 and 2005. We show that the characteristics of the areas where protected and unprotected lands are located differ significantly. Additionally, we find that land characteristics of each of the policies and of the places where they interact also differ significantly. To adequately estimate the effects of the policies and their interactions, we use matching methods. Matching is implemented not only to define adequate control groups, as in previous research, but also to define those groups of locations under the influence of policies that are comparable to each other. We find that it is more effective to locate parks and payments away from each other, rather than in the same location or near each other. The high levels of enforcement inside both parks and lands with payments, and the presence of conservation spillovers that reduce deforestation near parks, significantly reduce the potential impact of combining these two policies.Item Open Access Geographic information system-based screening for TB, HIV, and syphilis (GIS-THIS): a cross-sectional study.(PLoS One, 2012) Goswami, Neela D; Hecker, Emily J; Vickery, Carter; Ahearn, Marshall A; Cox, Gary M; Holland, David P; Naggie, Susanna; Piedrahita, Carla; Mosher, Ann; Torres, Yvonne; Norton, Brianna L; Suchindran, Sujit; Park, Paul H; Turner, Debbie; Stout, Jason EOBJECTIVE: To determine the feasibility and case detection rate of a geographic information systems (GIS)-based integrated community screening strategy for tuberculosis, syphilis, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). DESIGN: Prospective cross-sectional study of all participants presenting to geographic hot spot screenings in Wake County, North Carolina. METHODS: The residences of tuberculosis, HIV, and syphilis cases incident between 1/1/05-12/31/07 were mapped. Areas with high densities of all 3 diseases were designated "hot spots." Combined screening for tuberculosis, HIV, and syphilis were conducted at the hot spots; participants with positive tests were referred to the health department. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Participants (N = 247) reported high-risk characteristics: 67% previously incarcerated, 40% had lived in a homeless shelter, and 29% had a history of crack cocaine use. However, 34% reported never having been tested for HIV, and 41% did not recall prior tuberculin skin testing. Screening identified 3% (8/240) of participants with HIV infection, 1% (3/239) with untreated syphilis, and 15% (36/234) with latent tuberculosis infection. Of the eight persons with HIV, one was newly diagnosed and co-infected with latent tuberculosis; he was treated for latent TB and linked to an HIV provider. Two other HIV-positive persons had fallen out of care, and as a result of the study were linked back into HIV clinics. Of 27 persons with latent tuberculosis offered therapy, nine initiated and three completed treatment. GIS-based screening can effectively penetrate populations with high disease burden and poor healthcare access. Linkage to care remains challenging and will require creative interventions to impact morbidity.Item Open Access Global protected area impacts.(Proc Biol Sci, 2011-06-07) Joppa, Lucas N; Pfaff, AlexanderProtected areas (PAs) dominate conservation efforts. They will probably play a role in future climate policies too, as global payments may reward local reductions of loss of natural land cover. We estimate the impact of PAs on natural land cover within each of 147 countries by comparing outcomes inside PAs with outcomes outside. We use 'matching' (or 'apples to apples') for land characteristics to control for the fact that PAs very often are non-randomly distributed across their national landscapes. Protection tends towards land that, if unprotected, is less likely than average to be cleared. For 75 per cent of countries, we find protection does reduce conversion of natural land cover. However, for approximately 80 per cent of countries, our global results also confirm (following smaller-scale studies) that controlling for land characteristics reduces estimated impact by half or more. This shows the importance of controlling for at least a few key land characteristics. Further, we show that impacts vary considerably within a country (i.e. across a landscape): protection achieves less on lands far from roads, far from cities and on steeper slopes. Thus, while planners are, of course, constrained by other conservation priorities and costs, they could target higher impacts to earn more global payments for reduced deforestation.Item Restricted Gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon: global prices, deforestation, and mercury imports.(PLoS One, 2011-04-19) Swenson, Jennifer J; Carter, Catherine E; Domec, Jean-Christophe; Delgado, Cesar IMany factors such as poverty, ineffective institutions and environmental regulations may prevent developing countries from managing how natural resources are extracted to meet a strong market demand. Extraction for some resources has reached such proportions that evidence is measurable from space. We present recent evidence of the global demand for a single commodity and the ecosystem destruction resulting from commodity extraction, recorded by satellites for one of the most biodiverse areas of the world. We find that since 2003, recent mining deforestation in Madre de Dios, Peru is increasing nonlinearly alongside a constant annual rate of increase in international gold price (∼18%/yr). We detect that the new pattern of mining deforestation (1915 ha/year, 2006-2009) is outpacing that of nearby settlement deforestation. We show that gold price is linked with exponential increases in Peruvian national mercury imports over time (R(2) = 0.93, p = 0.04, 2003-2009). Given the past rates of increase we predict that mercury imports may more than double for 2011 (∼500 t/year). Virtually all of Peru's mercury imports are used in artisanal gold mining. Much of the mining increase is unregulated/artisanal in nature, lacking environmental impact analysis or miner education. As a result, large quantities of mercury are being released into the atmosphere, sediments and waterways. Other developing countries endowed with gold deposits are likely experiencing similar environmental destruction in response to recent record high gold prices. The increasing availability of satellite imagery ought to evoke further studies linking economic variables with land use and cover changes on the ground.Item Open Access Habitats of Abandonment: Subjectivity and the Aesthetics of Dispossession from the Industrial Revolution to the Great Depression(2016) Callahan, ClareThis dissertation draws on American literature from the Industrial Revolution to the Great Depression to fashion a theory of abandonment, a term that designates both a material reality and a conceptual framework; abandonment names what remains unincorporated into the governing economic, political, gender and racial logic. This study examines, therefore, literary representations of poverty, homelessness, forms of working-class labor, and the work that race and gender do within these conditions of existence. It arises from the intersection of the Marxist, feminist, poststructuralist, and queer theory that has sought not only to account for the inequitable economic distribution of goods but also to confront the deeper problem of injurious power structures and hierarchies.
The literature of abandonment discounts the practice of seeking recognition within a dominant structure of power; rather, abandonment brings to light the spatial practice of the subject’s struggle for re-signification of such structures. Thus, one can begin to conceive of the abandoned subject by asking what one produces when one inhabits a space typically deemed uninhabitable—by discovering forms of being where one’s being is impossible or illicit—because it is in this act that subjectivity for the otherwise abject becomes possible. This study asks more specifically how literature as an aesthetic practice imagines the production of an abandoned subjectivity and, by extension, alternative social, economic and political structures.
The driving question of this dissertation is, how can a concept such as abandonment allow one to address without interpellating its subject? That is, can one value the abandoned as such, without incorporating it into an injurious system of evaluation or the prevailing neoliberal discourse of recognition? This entails asking how these processes are represented as being deeply aesthetic and what the relationship is between literary form and “habitat.” That the fact of abandonment is not quite available for representation, at least not without recovering it from itself, but is available for inhabitation, is illustrated in each of the texts this dissertation examines. In bridging socioeconomic material and thematic readings with a study of literary form, this dissertation argues that literature itself performs the very calling into being and inhabitation of this spectral space; which is to say, literary form lays bare the spatial underpinnings of narrative, allowing one to enter into the currents of dispossession rather than their fixed social positions.
Item Open Access How to protect half of Earth to ensure it protects sufficient biodiversity.(Science advances, 2018-08-29) Pimm, Stuart L; Jenkins, Clinton N; Li, Binbin VIt is theoretically possible to protect large fractions of species in relatively small regions. For plants, 85% of species occur entirely within just over a third of the Earth's land surface, carefully optimized to maximize the species captured. Well-known vertebrate taxa show similar patterns. Protecting half of Earth might not be necessary, but would it be sufficient given the current trends of protection? The predilection of national governments is to protect areas that are "wild," that is, typically remote, cold, or arid. Unfortunately, those areas often hold relatively few species. Wild places likely afford the easier opportunities for the future expansion of protected areas, with the expansion into human-dominated landscapes the greater challenge. We identify regions that are not currently protected, but that are wild, and consider which of them hold substantial numbers of especially small-ranged vertebrate species. We assess how successful the strategy of protecting the wilder half of Earth might be in conserving biodiversity. It is far from sufficient. (Protecting large wild places for reasons other than biodiversity protection, such as carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services, might still have importance.) Unexpectedly, we also show that, despite the bias in establishing large protected areas in wild places to date, numerous small protected areas are in biodiverse places. They at least partially protect significant fractions of especially small-ranged species. So, while a preoccupation with protecting large areas for the sake of getting half of Earth might achieve little for biodiversity, there is more progress in protecting high-biodiversity areas than currently appreciated. Continuing to prioritize the right parts of Earth, not just the total area protected, is what matters for biodiversity.Item Open Access Identifying multiple origins of polyploid taxa: a multilocus study of the hybrid cloak fern (Astrolepis integerrima; Pteridaceae).(American journal of botany, 2012-11) Beck, James B; Allison, James R; Pryer, Kathleen M; Windham, Michael DPREMISE OF THE STUDY: Molecular studies have shown that multiple origins of polyploid taxa are the rule rather than the exception. To understand the distribution and ecology of polyploid species and the evolutionary significance of polyploidy in general, it is important to delineate these independently derived lineages as accurately as possible. Although gene flow among polyploid lineages and backcrossing to their diploid parents often confound this process, such post origin gene flow is very infrequent in asexual polyploids. In this study, we estimate the number of independent origins of the apomictic allopolyploid fern Astrolepis integerrima, a morphologically heterogeneous species most common in the southwestern United States and Mexico, with outlying populations in the southeastern United States and the Caribbean. METHODS: Plastid DNA sequence and AFLP data were obtained from 33 A. integerrima individuals. Phylogenetic analysis of the sequence data and multidimensional clustering of the AFLP data were used to identify independently derived lineages. KEY RESULTS: Analysis of the two datasets identified 10 genetic groups within the 33 analyzed samples. These groups suggest a minimum of 10 origins of A. integerrima in the northern portion of its range, with both putative parents functioning as maternal donors, both supplying unreduced gametes, and both contributing a significant portion of their genetic diversity to the hybrids. CONCLUSIONS: Our results highlight the extreme cryptic genetic diversity and systematic complexity that can underlie a single polyploid taxon.
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