The Biogeography of Plant Domestication

Ranging between 11,000 and 4,000 years ago, several independent origins of agriculture appeared, though scholars disagree on exactly how many. This period, known as the “Neolithic Revolution” or the “Origins of Agriculture,” marks the initial emergence of food production economies. Archaeologists and biologists have worked alongside one another, often using a biogeographical approach, to investigate the origins of useful species, their range expansion, and genetic evolution through analyzing remains found at excavation sites around the world. Plant communities influence patterns in human behaviors and by understanding trends in biogeography we can begin to answer questions such as: Why did plant domestication occur where and when it did? Or, what sorts of evolution and dispersal of domesticates occurred? Understanding patterns of plant domestication is important in understanding distribution patterns in today’s society because it marks the beginning of the most significant developments in human history. Factors such as warmer climates, emergence of seasonality, and physical geography shaped the differences in threatened food security at the turn of the Pleistocene- Holocene. Hunter-gatherer societies turned to crop domestication in order to control their food supplies in a variety of ways. Regional differences in physical geography, soil fertility and local climate variations explain the emergence of different origins around the globe. This paper is a broad review of current and past literature that has shaped our understanding of plant domestication. The research I focus on attempts to answer the question of why agriculture emerged where and when it did, and how plant domesticates subsequently evolved and dispersed. I will discuss the significance of this type of research, review some methodologies, explore incongruities in the field with regard to conceptualizations, outline the biogeography of the independent origins of agriculture, and finally the discuss the human ecology of agricultural societies

A User Identity Management System for Cybercrime Control

The rapid growth in the number of online services has lead to an increasing number of different identities managed by each user that makes people feel overloaded and suffer from password fatigue. This poses a serious problem and makes people unable to control and protect their digital identities against identity theft. As organizations grow and adds services such as ecommerce and global remote access of services, controlling who is accessing what kind of information is also becoming a difficult task. This research therefore, presents the development of a user identity management system for cybercrime control. The four stages of an identity management life cycle were developed using some mathematical tools. A two-factor authentication technique was used in developing the system, the traditional username and password was also included with biometric features for robustness. A simulation was run on the model for users ranging from 10 to 1000 using life wild dataset, and accuracy was found to be 98.01%

Conquering the chimaera: an insight into the need to redefine the complex form of child abuse, Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston UniversityMunchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP) is a term given to a situation which presents criteria for both Pediatric Condition Falsification (PCF) and factitious disorder by proxy (FDP). According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV text revision (DSM-IV-TR), in child abuse cases where FDP is a result of PCF, then the nomenclature, MSBP, can be used interchangeably to describe such an event. Currently, in a situation that is diagnosed as Factitious Disorder by Proxy, the perpetrator of such an event is diagnosed as having Factitious Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (FD-NOS). An obvious issue stemming from this is the confusion over what should be diagnosed and remedied, i.e., the situation, the perpetrator, and/or the victim. Due to the convoluted and often controversial definition of such an event, as well as the criteria for diagnosis, it is proposed here that a new definition be adopted to explain this form of child abuse. With this novel definition, the symptoms of this psychological disorder of the perpetrator are observed in the victim. Under this new definition, the psychiatric term "Factitious Disorder by Proxy" would be used as a mental diagnosis of the caregiver, wherein the symptoms manifest in that of the victim. Additionally, an addendum to the type of symptoms exhibited in the child is proposed to include that of the exacerbation of symptoms in children with valid pre-existing conditions. An extensive literature review was performed to support the proposal for changing the criteria and diagnosis of FDP in the DSM. The implications of this change would greatly benefit not only the psychiatric, medical, and legal realm, but the forensic community as well

MARITIME DOMAIN AWARENESS THROUGH THE CHARACTERIZATION OF SHIP BEHAVIOR WITH AIS DATA

Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA), as defined in the 2005 National Strategy for Maritime Security, is the “effective understanding of anything associated with the global maritime domain that could impact the security, safety, economy, or environment of the United States.” Thus, it is imperative for the U.S. Navy to develop approaches that enhance understanding of the maritime domain in order to maintain operational effectiveness. One such way to enhance this understanding is to develop approaches that automate the analysis of Automatic Identification System (AIS) data to characterize the behavior of ships in the maritime domain. By the sheer amount of AIS data available, it quickly becomes challenging for a human operator to identify ship behaviors throughout the world. When timeliness is important for decision makers, it becomes even more important that the characterization of ship behavior is done quickly and accurately to identify potential issues or threats. Thus, a major contribution of this thesis is the development of an autonomous machine learning system that characterizes ship behavior quickly and accurately in order to achieve MDA in a particular environment. This includes an autonomous system for the identification of ship tracks in a region. Two major contributions of this work are the development of a taxonomy of ship behaviors, which is currently lacking in the literature, and a report on the characterization of such behaviors through machine learning methods.Ensign, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

News Media Framing of Gay Teen Suicide and Bullying

This study examined patterns of framing in newspaper articles that mention gay teen suicide, gay bullying, and the It Gets Better campaign. A content analysis of randomly selected newspaper articles from 2009-2011 was performed. After presenting the frequency of content themes, emergent patterns are discussed. The most consistent theme--an evasive frame-- occurred with regard to homophobia, heterosexism, and meaningful solutions to anti-gay bullying. The day-to-day discrimination that LGBTQ people face was rarely addressed; instead, hot-button political topics such as same-sex marriage and Don\u27t Ask, Don\u27t Tell were presented as signs of social progress. This research shows the importance of media framing, particularly the news media, in stories that report on gay bullying, suicide, and homophobia

Effects of Laughter on Self-Report and Psychophysiological Measures of Stress

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between laughter and stress reduction. Past research indicates that humor is related to stress reduction, but little is known about the specific role of laughter. It was hypothesized that laughter would have a similar effect. Stress was elicited through a mental arithmetic task, which was followed by a viewing of either a laughter-inducing video or a control (nature) video. Stress levels were assessed with both self-report and psychophysiological measures, including heart rate and respiration rate. Data was analyzed using one-within and one-between repeated measures ANOVAs. It was found that there were no significant between-group differences in physiological measures of stress. In both conditions, heart rate significantly increased during the arithmetic task, and significantly decreased during the video. Self-reported ratings of stress were significantly higher after the arithmetic task than they were following the video. The laughter group reported significantly lower feelings of self-reported stress, however, the laughter group also had significantly lower baseline measures of self-reported stress. As such, it was concluded that there were no significant effects of laughter on stress reduction