This thesis has been read by each member of the thesis committee and has been found to be satisfactory regarding content, English usage, format, citation, bibliographic style, and consistency and is ready for submission to the Division of Graduate Education. In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master's degree at Montana State University, I agree that the L...

Despite the notorious invisibility of toxicity, an aesthetic narrative has developed around threat e-waste. In reports about toxicity in New Delhi, India, dirt, grime and discarded remnants electronics are presented a particular visual manner to instil horror among readers viewers. Such representation far-reaching influences on policy. The seven pictures accompanying text this article seek chal...

1 The theories of Grime and Tilman are ambitious attempts to unify disparate theories regarding the construction of plants, their interaction with the environment and the assembly of communities. After over two decades of parallel research, their ideas have not been reconciled, hindering progress in understanding the functioning of ecosystems. 2 Grime’s theories do not adequately incorporate th...

After its investigation of cross-contamination from arthroscopic shavers, the US Food and Drug Administration issued an alert to hospitals about medical device reprocessing methods. In response to this, a team of risk management and instrument room personnel at a university hospital undertook a project that tested the manufacturer's recommended cleaning methods for surgical instruments with the...

Competition is ubiquitous in plant communities with various effects on fitness and community structure. A long-standing debate about different approaches to explain competition the controversy between David Tilman Philip Grime. Grime stated that importance of relative impact environment increases along a productivity gradient, while argued intensity independent productivity. To revisit this con...

Ideas about how plant competition varies with productivity are rooted in classic theories that predict either increasing (Grime) or invariant (Tilman) competition with increasing productivity. Both predictions have received experimental support, although a decade-old meta-analysis supports neither. Attempts to reconcile the conflicting predictions and evidence include: expanding the theory to i...