Michigan Technological University

About: Michigan Technological University is a education organization based out in Houghton, Michigan, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Volcano. The organization has 8023 authors who have published 17422 publications receiving 481780 citations. The organization is also known as: MTU & Michigan Tech.

Women and games: technologies of the gendered self:

Abstract: This study examines how individual differences in the consumption of computer games intersect with gender and how games and gender mutually constitute each other. The study focused on adult women with particular attention to differences in level of play, as well as genre preferences. Three levels of game consumption were identified. For power gamers, technology and gender are most highly integrated. These women enjoy multiple pleasures from the gaming experience, including mastery of game-based skills and competition. Moderate gamers play games in order to cope with their real lives. These women reported taking pleasure in controlling the gaming environment, or alternately that games provide a needed distraction from the pressures of their daily lives. Finally, the non-gamers who participated in the study expressed strong criticisms about game-playing and gaming culture. For these women, games are a waste of time, a limited commodity better spent on other activities.

A new approach to historical reconstruction: Combining descriptive and experimental paleolimnology

Abstract: Here we introduce a combined experimental and descriptive approach (termed resurrection ecology) to reconstructing historical perturbations, pointing out how direct tests with sediments and hatched resting eggs complement the traditional descriptive calculation of microfossil fluxes. In the Keweenaw Waterway, a freshwater estuary off Lake Superior, turn-of-the-century copper mining impacted the resident biota. Remain fluxes document that diatom, rhizopod, and Bosmina production all declined during stamp sand discharges but recovered rapidly after World War II, moving above background levels due to developing eutrophication. In addition to biogenic silica, we discovered that bromine flux holds promise as an indicator of diatom production and confirmed that this element is present in several genera. Fluxes of Daphnia resting eggs also increased dramatically since the 1940s, dominated by a hybrid apparently produced from crosses between offshore and interior Waterway species, after channeling promoted greater mixing of water masses. Toxicity studies with sediments and Daphnia clones directly tested recovery of environments after cessation of mining activities. The studies document that increased concentrations and fluxes of copper in the Waterway during mining discharges were toxic to invertebrates. Once stamp sand discharges ceased, the biota recovered rapidly due to a combination of decreased copper cycling and organic complexation. Although sedimentation has returned to near-background conditions and surficial sediments in much of Portage Lake are no longer toxic, eutrophication and faunal exchange with Lake Superior make it unlikely that the original zooplankton community composition will return to the Waterway system. Because they are strongly coupled to biotic production, fluxes of certain pelagic microfossils (diatom frustrules, cladoceran exuviae, and resting eggs) offer insights into the magnitude of historic environmental perturbations and the time scales of population responses to ecosystem recovery. A recent attempt to improve the ecological relevance of paleolimnological reconstructions includes comparing expect1

The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project

Abstract: The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date; it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity.