Myths about the Second World War, grounded within stores of knowledge, often act as narrative templates to be drawn upon by collective memory. These myths and memories are transformed and commodified in a reductive manner into a brand encompassing simplistic narratives, easily recognized visual signifiers (including logo, colors, and associated symbols), and emotional cues that connect with the audience. This posits a theory that what most individuals today interact with is not a fragment of memory related to World War Two but rather a reductive representation sold as BrandWW2.

The branding of experience, which works to strengthen consumption practices by tying them into social and group behavior, is an extension of previous efforts that likewise attempt to brand traditionally non-commodified societal institutions including education (Twitchell, 2004), religion (Banet-Weiser, 2012; Twitchell, 2004), and our everyday lives (Moor, 2007). The logic of branding has crept into areas of our lives that previously were not branded – into large institutions like schools and museums and into micro-level everyday experiences and social relationships. This is possible today, in part, due to the rise of networked, social-media-based, smart phone technology that transforms our communication and looking into labor. This communication is increasingly visual; photos, gifs, video, and emoticons, for example, mirror the basic components of a brand.

American shad (Alosa sapidissima) are native to the east coast of North America from the St. Johns River, Florida, to the St. Lawrence River region in Canada. Since the 1800s, dams have reduced access to spawning habitat. To assess the impact of dams, we estimated the historically accessed spawning habitat in coastal rivers (485,618 river segments with 21,113 current dams) based on (i) width, (ii) distance from seawater, and (iii) slope (to exclude natural barriers to migration) combined with local knowledge. Estimated habitat available prior to dam construction (2,752 km2) was 41% greater than current fully accessible habitat (1,639 km2). River-specific population models were developed using habitat estimates and latitudinally appropriate life history parameters (e.g., size at age, maturity, iteroparity). Estimated coast-wide annual production potential was 69.1 million spawners compared with a dammed scenario (41.8 million spawners). Even with optimistic fish passage performance assumed for all dams (even if passage is completely absent), the dam-imposed deficit was alleviated by fewer than 3 million spawners. We estimate that in rivers modeled without dams, 98,000 metric tons of marine sourced biomass and nutrients were annually delivered, 60% of which was retained through carcasses, gametes and metabolic waste. Damming is estimated to have reduced this by more than one third. Based on our results, dams represent a significant and acute constraint to the population and, with other human impacts, reduce the fishery potential and ecological services attributed to the species.

Fisheries managers and ecologists use statistical models to estimate population-level relations and demographic rates (e.g., length-maturity curves, growth curves, and mortality rates). These relations and rates provide insight into populations and inputs for other models. For example, growth curves may vary across lakes showing fish populations differ due to management actions or underlying environmental conditions. A fisheries manager could use this information to set lake-specific harvest limits or an ecologist could use this information to test scientific hypotheses about fish populations. The above example also demonstrates how populations exist within hierarchical structures where sub-populations may be nested within a meta-population. More generally, these hierarchical structures may be both biological (e.g., different lakes or river pools) and statistical (e.g., correlated error structures). Currently, limited options exist for fitting these hierarchical models and people seeking to use them often must program their own implementations. Furthermore, many fisheries managers and researchers may not have Bayesian programming skills, but many can use interactive languages such as R. Additionally, programs such as JAGS often require long run times (e.g., hours if not days) to fit hierarchical models and programs such as Stan can be more difficult to program because it is a compiled language. We created fishStan to share hierarchical models for fisheries and ecology in an easy-to-use R package.

This study is a result of extensive fish parasite survey work in North America with a heavy emphasis on water bodies in New York state. One objective was to assess the diversity of acanthocephalans which are also known as thorny-headed worms. My study specifically branched out of the bigger study when Dr. Reyda, other students and I encountered a new species of acanthocephalan from two localities in New York, Oneida Lake and Sandy Creek, an eastern tributary of Lake Ontario. This new species appears to be rare since it was only seen in a few white suckers out of over 150 examined in total. Permanent slides were made of the parasite which was then examined and measured using a light microscope. This made it possible to distinguish the new species from the many other species of Neoechinorhynchus in North America that parasitize fishes. This worm was distinguished from other species of Neoechinorhynchus in white sucker in its possession of an unusually large cement gland in males. Other comparisons are currently underway in the laboratory. The unique nature of this species is further supported by DNA sequence data of the large ribosomal subunit that was obtained in a separate, ongoing study. This project is still underway as further work is needed and more samples of the parasite are needed for it to be formally described as a new species. The significance of this work is to show that there are still new species of organisms waiting to be discovered throughout the United States.

Background: The tobacco epidemic in Bangladesh is pervasive. Expenditures on tobacco may reduce money available for food in a country with a high malnutrition rate. Objectives: The aims of the study are to quantify the opportunity costs of tobacco expenditure in terms of nutrition (i.e., food energy) forgone and the potential improvements in the household level food-energy status if the money spent on tobacco were diverted for food consumption. Method: We analyzed data from the 2010 Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey, a nationally representative survey conducted among 12,240 households. We present 2 analytical scenarios: (1) the lower-bound gain scenario entailing money spent on tobacco partially diverted to acquiring food according to households' food consumption share in total expenditures; and (2) the upper-bound gain scenario entailing money spent on tobacco diverted to acquiring food only. Age- and gender-based energy norms were used to identify food-energy deficient households. Data were analyzed by mutually exclusive smoking-only, smokeless-only, and dual-tobacco user households. Findings: On average, a smoking-only household could gain 269-497 kilocalories (kcal) daily under the lower-bound and upper-bound scenarios, respectively. The potential energy gains for smokeless-only and dual-tobacco user households ranged from 148-268 kcal and 508-924 kcal, respectively. Under these lower- and upper-bound estimates, the percentage of smoking-only user households that are malnourished declined significantly from the baseline rate of 38% to 33% and 29%, respectively. For the smokeless-only and dual-tobacco user households, there were 2-3 and 6-9 percentage point drops in the malnutrition prevalence rates. The tobacco expenditure shift could translate to an additional 4.6-7.7 million food-energy malnourished persons meeting their caloric requirements. Conclusions: The findings suggest that tobacco use reduction could facilitate concomitant improvements in population-level nutrition status and may inform the development and refinement of tobacco prevention and control efforts in Bangladesh.

Objectives: Differences in messaging from healthcare and wellness practitioners can lead to consumer confusion and mistrust in nutrition. The regular use of evidence-based nutrition resources by practitioners could improve consistency in patient education. The confidence registered dietitians (RDNs) and non-RDN practitioners have in providing nutrition education and the use of evidence-based nutrition resources in patient education is not known. Objectives: 1) To evaluate how confident RDN and non-RDN practitioners are in providing nutrition education, and 2) to evaluate RDN and non-RDN use of evidence-based nutrition resources.

This paper provides a survey of asset price bubbles. I focus on the theoretical model for pricing assets from both a classical rational expectations model as well as some of the theories from newer behavioral models. A review of empirical methods used to estimate bubbles is presented along with an examination of the difficulties of empirically identifying bubbles in asset prices. I provide a discussion of the role of central banks and whether a response to asset-price bubbles is appropriate on their part and conclude with a summary of some of the more famous bubbles throughout history.

Students across the nation struggle to build a conceptual understanding of scientific phenomena. The complexity of scientific concepts is difficult for students to understand, and students struggle to visualize the processes that are taught in science. New approaches that incorporate digital simulations can be used to enhance student learning of biological processes. However, more research is needed to understand how digital simulations can be used in the classroom to improve student engagement, and ultimately improve student learning. This qualitative study invited secondary teachers at rural high school who use Explore Learning’s digital simulations to teach math and science concepts. The teacher participants completed an online questionnaire which asked them to share their perspectives and opinions of Explore Learning’s simulations and how it effects student engagement. Findings suggest that Explore Learning Math and Science Gizmos increases student engagement. Based on these findings, the student researcher suggests that further research be conducted to test the effect Explore Learning's digital simulations on students' engagement when learning in math and science.

This performative text is a study of relationships at multiple levels. I ask readers to (re)consider the desire and possibility for connection in various types of relationships—romantic and intertextual as well as relationships between mothers and children, mothers and others, readers and writers, presence and absence. In relating my experiences of single motherhood, I raise questions about the possibility for creative communication scholarship—performative writing in particular—to perform the relational work of connecting us to others with whom we do not share similar life experiences or situations.