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Item Impact of cattle feeding-style on beef and human postprandial inflammation(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Education, Health & Human Development, 2024) Spears, Meghan Leigh; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mary P. Miles; This is a manuscript style paper that includes co-authored chapters.Purpose: Various cattle-feeding styles have arisen in recent years, impacting the sustainability and environmental practices of many producers. While these changes are known to have an impact on the environment, little is known about the direct impact cattle raised using different feeding styles has on human health. Acute response focused studies, like this, are a glimpse into the expected impact of a certain food on the diet over time. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of cattle-feeding style on postprandial inflammation. Methods: A randomized, double blind, crossover study design was used to compare grass-fed (GRA) and conventional (CON) beef. Subjects (n=10) were comprised of men and women with a healthy body mass index (BMI) and no preexisting metabolic conditions. Blood samples were collected fasted and postprandially for four hours. Blood samples were analyzed for inflammation markers (TNF-alpha, IL-23, IL-17, IL-10, IL-1beta, IL-6, IFN-gamma and GM-CSF) at hourly timepoints. To observe postprandial changes with and without consideration for cattle feeding style, the net area under the curve (AUC) was calculated. Maxchange and CMAXtime were calculated by finding the maximum value of each cytokine between hours one and hour postprandially and subtracting that from the fasting value. CMAXtime represents the time at which the maximum value of each cytokine was reached in hours. Maxchange and AUC responses were compared to zero using a one-sample t-test to determine if response was greater than fasting. Results: In response to beef, maxchange of all measured markers and IFNgamma AUC were significantly greater than zero (p< 0.05). No differences were shown between GRA and CON in inflammation AUC (p> 0.05). Conclusion: This demonstrates that beef consumption does increase postprandial inflammation, but cattle-feeding style does not significantly impact this response.Item Using gastrointestestinal organoids to study infectious diseases in humans and bats(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2021) Hashimi, Marziah; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Diane Bimczok; This is a manuscript style paper that includes co-authored chapters.The gastrointestinal epithelium plays a critical role in protecting the gastrointestinal mucosa from invading microorganism such as bacteria or a viruses. Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection of human gastric epithelium causes gastric cancer, which is the third leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide. Dendritic cells (DCs)--which are antigen presenting cells--are responsible for the activation of T cells. However, the mechanism by which DCs are recruited to the gastric epithelium is still unknown. We hypothesized that the DCs are recruited to the gastric epithelium in a chemokine- dependent manner. For my thesis work, I utilized human primary gastric epithelial organoids cells to test this hypothesis and evaluate the recruitment of DCs to the epithelium under normal conditions and upon H. pylori infection. Using monocyte-derived DCs in a chemotaxis assay, I showed that these cells are recruited to H. pylori-infected organoid supernatant. I showed that this recruitment is chemokine- dependent, as it was significantly decreased when a chemokine receptor inhibitor was included in the chemotaxis assay. COVID-19 is caused by severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). In addition to respiratory symptoms, COVID-19 patients can also have diarrhea and vomiting, indicating that SARS-CoV-2 may infect the gastrointestinal tract. Bats are thought to be the natural reservoirs for SARS-CoV-2, however there is no known bat gastrointestinal model to study SARS-CoV-2 infection. In the second part of my thesis, I developed Jamaican fruit bat (JFB), Artibeus jamaicensis) gastrointestinal organoids (JFB organoids). I successfully developed organoids from JFB stomach, proximal and distal intestine. I showed via histology and gene expression that developed organoids do indeed recapitulate their corresponding tissues from which they were derived. I also tested whether the JFB distal intestinal organoids were susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection. While they do not support the active replication of SARS-CoV-2 infection, they did show antiviral and pro-inflammatory responses. My results also showed that SARS-CoV-2 does not induce programmed cell death in the organoids.Item Porosity: the space between identities(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2021) McKay, Laurel Brooke; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Gesine JanzenPorosity' investigates the abstraction of bodies as a way to free people from the visual constraints and societal markers of 'difference' or 'otherness', as tied to class, gender, sexuality and race, that are used to marginalize individuals in our society. I in no way want to remove people's individual experiences, however, these narrow and rigid categories of socially constructed identities support hierarchies that are based in capitalism and systemic oppression, which I think should ultimately be dismantled. Within my monoprints, I use this abstraction of human form to allow for endless possibilities of shifting identity and individual freedom of expression that is not defined by the labels constructed by others. This abstraction of human form also, allows the body to become a sight of resistance and defiance to controls or 'disciplines' placed upon one's existence through bio-political or state structures. I argue that these works of art will allow contemplation on the structures, expectations and invisible manipulations that are tied to how we form and embody our identities in society, while still imparting feeling and emotion as tethered to a shared human existence. I also, hope that they will represent the future possibilities of our fluid identities and a utopian universal that is a shared human experience.Item Towards a more-than-human geography of the Yellowstone River(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Bergmann, Nicolas Timothy; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Jamie McEvoy; Jamie McEvoy, Elizabeth A. Shanahan, Eric D. Raile, Anne Marie Reinhold, Geoffrey C. Poole and Clemente Izurieta were co-authors of the article, 'Thinking through levees: how political agency extends beyond the human mind' in the journal 'Annals of the American Association of Geographers' which is contained within this thesis.This dissertation conceptualizes the Yellowstone River, flowing more than 670 miles from its headwaters in the mountains of northwestern Wyoming to its confluence with the Missouri River in western North Dakota, as a more-than-human assemblage. Specifically, this dissertation asks the following overarching research question: How does a more-than-human approach to understanding the Yellowstone River further geographical conceptualizations of human-environment relationships? In order to answer this question, this dissertation investigates the more-than-human aspects of both historical and contemporary environmental conflicts within Montana's portion of the Yellowstone River Basin. Chapter 2 examines the relationship between instream flow water law, Montana Fish and Game, and the Yellowstone River Basin. Drawing from both critical legal geography and political ecology, it furthers understandings of instream flow water law as relationally co-constituted through both human and nonhuman forces. Chapter 2 also traces the influence of Montana Fish and Game's more-than-anthropocentric ethical position on interpretations of the 1973 Montana Water Use Act. Chapter 3 uses a morethan- human approach to examine the relationship between myth and the Yellowstone River. Specifically, this chapter combines existing geographical understandings of myth with theories of assemblage and affect in order to historicize and denaturalize mythic belief in the Yellowstone as the longest undammed or free-flowing river remaining in the United States. Chapter 4 advances more-than-human understandings of political agency through a reframing of human thought as a co-constitutional assemblage of human and nonhuman elements. Relying on a comparative case study approach and qualitative interview data from two Montana communities located along the lower Yellowstone River, this chapter supports its theoretical claims through an embodied and affective analysis of the communities' divergent flood risk perceptions. Chapter 5 closes this dissertation with reflections on the value of using a more-than-human geographical approach.Item The role of land use change and land management in the global carbon cycle: simulation as a test of process understanding(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2019) Calle, Leonardo; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: David Roberts and Benjamin Poulter (co-chair); Josep G. Canadell, Prabir Patra, Philippe Ciais, Kazuhito Ichii, Hanqin Tian, Masayuki Kondo, Shilong Piao, Almut Arneth, Anna B. Harper, Akihiko Ito, Etsushi Kato, Charlie Koven, Stephen Sitch, Benjamin D. Stocker, Nicolas Vivoy, Andy Wiltshire, Sonke Zaehle and Benjamin Poulter were co-authors of the article, 'Regional carbon fluxes from land use and land cover change in Asia, 1980-2009' in the journal 'Environmental research letters' which is contained within this dissertation.; Prabir Patra and Benjamin Poulter were co-authors of the article, 'A segmentation algorithm for characterizing rise and fall segments in seasonal cycles: an application to XCO 2 to estimate benchmarks and assess model bias' in the journal 'Atmospheric measurement techniques discussions' which is contained within this dissertation.Humans have left their mark on Earth's ecosystems for centuries. Since 1900, the human population has grown more than 400%. Land conversion and land management have helped meet an ever-increasing demand for natural resources. Forests have been cleared for agriculture, grasslands have been used for grazing by farmed animals, and extensive logging activity has provided fuelwood for energy and raw materials for building. But a long history of land management has also led to a change in forest production, leaving century-old legacies of human activity on Earth's ecosystems. As land is deforested, wood can be used for building or other products. Unused biomass can be burned for fuel or naturally broken down by microbes into soils, ultimately being converted to carbon dioxide. This phase conversion of carbon, from solid to gas, is a natural process but humans have sped up this process, leading to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than would otherwise occur naturally. Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a direct cause of increasing global temperatures and changes to regional climates. For these reasons, the focus of research in this Dissertation has been to track each and every process during land use change and land management, to provide a better accounting of where and how much carbon gets transferred from solid to gas during land use activities, and to identify any alteration to the productivity of ecosystems long after timber harvest has removed wood for products or agricultural lands have been abandoned and the forest allowed to regrow. The research papers in Chapter Two and Three have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and Chapter Four is prepared for submission for publication. Each chapter focuses on a very specific problem, but the thread connecting all these works is carbon -- How much carbon is transferred to a gas when natural lands are modified and resources extracted to meet human demand? Does deforestation leave a unique and long-lasting signal in the atmosphere? Land management creates more young, fast-growing forests, but can models represent forests of different ages at global scales?Item Disentangling anthropogenic and natural drivers of change in vegetation and fire history along the forest-grassland ecotones of the central United States and Patagonia(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Nanavati, William Parashar; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Cathy Whitlock; Eric C. Grimm was a co-author of the article, 'Humans, fire, and ecology in the southern Missouri Ozarks' in the journal 'The holocene' which is contained within this dissertation.; Cathy Whitlock, Valeria Outes and Gustavo Villarosa were co-authors of the article, 'A holocene history of Araucaria araucana in northernmost Patagonia' submitted to the journal 'Journal of biogeography' which is contained within this dissertation.; Cathy Whitlock, Virginia Iglesias and Maria Eugenia de Porras were co-authors of the article, 'Postglacial vegetation, fire, and climate history along the eastern Andes, Argentina and Chile (lat. 41-55°S)' in the journal 'Quaternary science reviews' which is contained within this dissertation.Disentangling anthropogenic and natural drivers of vegetation and fire history at different spatiotemporal scales is a fundamental challenge in Earth Systems science. To better understand the role of past human ignition in altering long-term ecosystem dynamics, we rely on the anthropogenic fire regime conceptual model proposed by Guyette et al. (2002) in the central U.S. Ozarks. The synthesis of new and existing pollen and charcoal records, and their integration with archaeological, ethnographic, and independent paleoclimate records is used to test the anthropogenic fire regime conceptual model at a longer time scale in the central U.S. Ozarks. Following its validation, this conceptual model is applied to the forest-steppe ecotone east of the Patagonian Andes (38-55°S) for the first time. Although it is well established that Patagonian vegetation and fire history for most of the postglacial period was governed by the strength and position of the Southern Westerly Wind (SWW) storm tracks, the influence of land use since the arrival of American Indians to the region ~12,000 years ago remains unclear. From the late glacial to early Holocene, region-wide increases in fire were associated with aridity while the SWW were weakened and south of their present position. Between ~7000-4000 cal yr BP, increased arboreal taxa and decreased fire throughout Patagonia suggest wet conditions as the SWW moved northward to their present position. After ~4000 cal yr BP, a combination of increased land use and greater climate variability, led to spatially heterogeneous but generally rising fire activity along the forest-steppe ecotone. When trends in the vegetation and fire history of individual sites are compared to each other and to the archaeological record, however, it becomes apparent that American Indians may have served as an important source of ignition, locally increasing landscape heterogeneity since their arrival. During the last 100 years, increased Euro-American settlement and land clearance in Patagonia led to native forest loss, more disturbance, and the spread of introduced taxa along the eastern flanks of the Andes. These ecological changes in the recent century far outweigh thousands of years of American Indian influence on fire and vegetation history.Item A turbulent upriver flow: steamboat narratives of nature, technology, and humans in Montana Territory(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2019) Kelly, Evan Graham; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mark FiegeFor a 25 year period in the second half of the 19th century, steamboat travel was a critically important transportation technology which influenced the material, social, and cultural existence of people and landscapes in the Montana region. Building on methodological approaches developed in New Western History and Environmental History, this study argues that steamboats in Montana played a significant role in shaping cultural, demographic, and environmental changes in the area. Steamboats and their crews shaped the dynamic exchange of cultures, materials, and energy between people, landscapes, and technologies. This project stresses that the changes in human-environment relationships in the region influenced people in different ways depending on their race, class, gender, and ethnicity. This thesis argues that steamboats and their crews tapped-into and altered existing systems of material and energy exchange, reshaping energy regimes and augmenting environmental realities in the region. At the same time, steamboats influenced human actions and perceptions of the world around them. The layout of this project begins with an introduction chapter articulating methodological approaches and frameworks used in this analysis. The second chapter provides background on the changing natural and human geographies of the region, while the third chapter provides a history of steamboat technology as well as an overview of the labor, materials, and auxiliary technologies required to operate steamboats. Chapters four through seven present four chronologically organized case-studies and these narratives are used as lenses through which the broader implications of steamboat transportation in the region are examined. The final chapter briefly examines the steamboat Montana and the decline of steamboat travel in the early 1880s before offering a summary and conclusion of findings.Item Othering Montana's T. Rex and the consequences of Mumpsimus(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2016) Smith, Matt Bradly; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert RydellThe term Othering has its origin in human to human contact; it is based on the perception of differences, creating an in-group and an out-group. Othering can also be projected on to other animals, plants, or the natural environment, living or dead, extant or extinct. To help comprehend the consequences of Othering, Montana’s T. rex, displayed at the Museum of the Rockies, on the campus of Montana State University, is examined through the lens of the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, specifically Gadamer’s hermeneutic circle. The hermeneutic circle proposes that: “one cannot understand the whole until one understands the parts, and one cannot understand the parts until one understands the whole” (Wikswo and Porter 3). The literal relationship humans share with the T. rex is surveyed through multiple methods including osteology, morphology, taphonomy, and forensics. Time, place and space of the paleo-habitat of the T. rex is calculated and compared to the modern equivalent. Concepts of biophilia, attraction to the natural environment, and biophobia, aversion to the natural environment, are examined. Americans historical association with “wilderness and the western regeneration myth is explored. Americans have defined themselves through the naturalization of their nation, while simultaneously objectifying nature as a place to conquer, seeing nature as a resource both physically and metaphorically. By separating themselves from the natural environment a cognitive dissonance, or mumpsimus, becomes engrained. Mumpsimus is an obstinate continuation of an unreasonable behavior. This behavior has created a detrimental relationship with the biosphere and its inhabitants through environmental modifications, the foundation of which is the consumption of fossil fuels. Mumpsimus is examined by investigating cognitive and neurological studies. These studies identify the roots of this behavior and why it continues. Methods for addressing the situation are discussed. These methods can help Americans obtain a deep understanding of their relationship to the biosphere past, present and the future.Item Movement and energy(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1983) Ackerley, Lawrence MichaelMovement and energy are the heart of my work. Movement is created by the manipulation of form, line, and color. These three elements are essential and create the energy of the work. The form, line, and color of the work express movement by the fluid qualities they exhibit. Form and line occur as a spontaneous flow of action and awareness while creating the work on the potter's wheel. The color is added by allowing both my input and the input of the firing process. By carefully arranging the work with organic materials and allowing the fire to integrate them, earth colors are produced. These colors are subtle, yet they are a vital part of the works' movement and energy. It is then that form, line, and color interact with each other and vary as they move around the work, thus creating the feeling of movement when the viewer is looking at them. Originally the forms came from the idea of the hat. This idea gradually became more a symbol of man in combination with landscape. As the work progressed the forms became just a subtle symbol of landscape. Upon reflection, I can see better the relationship of man and landscape in the work. The natural materials in the making of the work - clay, water, straw and fire - are certainly parts of the earth and the simple handling of the materials allow them to be known. In addition the forms give the impression of landscape because of their organic qualities, their flow and uneven nature. This is very much like the earth. Man's relationship shown in the objects, can be seen in several ways. The first relationship is that of the hat, which I see as a symbol of man; second is the creation of lines and finger impressions that indicate man's presence; and third is the fact that they are made by man on one of man's inventions, the potter's wheel. This helps reveal the fact that they were manipulated by man. Making this work brings about an energy and excitement, that is very important to me. It is that movement and energy in the work that gives them spirit and life. And life with spirit is the most important thing to me.Item Line, layer, and form(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1983) Toland, Phoebe Rush; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Richard HelzerI see my work as direct expressions of my feelings rather than as preconceived illustrations based on themes. I have progressed from working in a predetermined, fixed way, toward a more spontaneous and intuitive approach. Although my work begins with specific ideas, the paintings evolve as each phase suggests the next. Part of that, evolutionary process involves painting over areas in an effort to strengthen and support the whole. In the same way, the collaged fabric in my work is either exposed to make use of existing pattern or covered. By working with actual and illusionistic layers, pictorial activity and complexity result. Through layering a kind of depth occurs which is intended to suggest endless space. A duality between rounded organic shapes and hard-edged structural forms takes place as the images are layered. While there is a physical contrast between the wall pieces and the double-sided painting, it is my intent that they all suggest moods rather than depict specific scenes. Due to its structural division the free-standing painting allows for sharply contrasting moods. The imagery of both sides makes use of the screenlike construction, which serves to create a sense of movement. This piece redefines the gallery space and promotes physical interaction with the viewer. The theater work I have done here provided the motivation for making a piece that would integrate my work with human action. The painting functions as a backdrop, while the viewer acts as a player. In these works, it is my hope that the viewer can react on an emotional level to the color, which is both muted and vibrant, the momentum of the gesture and the forms and images.