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Since large-scale excavations began in the mid-19th century, scholarly studies of houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum have emphasized the “social” nature of their design. Most Campanian domūs are viewed as spaces with high levels of transparency and permeability to which non-residents were afforded a certain degree of unregulated access. This theoretical paradigm has developed, however, without consideration for doors, partitions, and other closure systems that controlled visual and physical contact between various parts of the residence. That these structures have largely been ignored by students of Campanian archaeology is surprising, given that boundaries were an incredibly influential element in the ancient cultural landscape, delimiting the social, political, and spatial domains that comprised the Roman world. Indeed, the Latin literary sources reveal that boundaries, both inside the house and out, were often afforded special status—they were attended by their own deities and were regularly the focus of ceremonies and rituals. This thesis addresses this oversight by presenting the results of the Doors of Pompeii and Herculaneum Project, a survey of closure systems and their archaeological vestiges in 31 Campanian dwellings. This evidence is complemented by the findings of comparative surveys conducted in houses elsewhere in the Mediterranean world. Analysis of these data reveals that permeable boundaries, in their manifold forms, played a crucial role in structuring ancient domestic space. By repopulating the houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum with doors, partitions, and other bounding mechanisms, this research challenges the concept of the “social house,” demonstrating that access to and movement within the house was, in fact, heavily regulated by the inhabitants. This represents a fundamental reinterpretation of the relationship between house and society in the Vesuvian cities.

The General Medical Council now requires that all new medical graduates in the United Kingdom should be able to ‘function effectively as a teacher’. This thesis explores multiple perspectives on what this means, and the implications for medical student learning in relation to teaching. There is a lack of existing literature exploring how those involved in the undergraduate medical curriculum conceptualise teaching or what it means to function effectively as a teacher. There is also a lack of literature on what teaching recent medical graduates undertake, and what, if any, learning outcomes in teaching they and other key stakeholders think should be core for the undergraduate medical curriculum. To address these gaps in the literature, original data were gathered using 1) a Delphi study with eighteen experts in medical education, 2) semi-structured interviews with nineteen recent medical graduates, and 3) focus group interviews with twelve final year medical students. The three data sets were analysed individually, compared, then synthesised with the existing literature. All three participant groups articulated a wide range of conceptions of teaching, with considerable variation both within and between groups. The great majority thought that all medical students should learn about teaching as part of the undergraduate medical curriculum. Almost all of the recent graduates and medical students viewed teaching as part of the role of junior doctors working in the UK, although only two thirds of the recent graduates said they saw themselves as teachers. The recent graduates reported having delivered a wide range of teaching in their first year of work as junior doctors, and this correlated well with the range of teaching medical students reported having received from junior doctors. Teaching undertaken by recent medical graduates could be grouped into three broad categories: informal opportunistic teaching, semi-formal pre-arranged teaching, and formal organised teaching. A total of 153 learning outcomes in teaching were suggested and rated by the expert Delphi panel in terms of how appropriate they were for UK undergraduate medical curricula. Many of the graduates and students also suggested some learning outcomes in teaching before rating the 153 learning outcomes arising from the Delphi. All three groups indicated that they thought most of the 153 learning outcomes in teaching should be core for all UK undergraduate medical curricula, although there was some variation within and between groups. The majority of these learning outcomes have not been previously suggested in the literature for UK undergraduate medical curricula, but are consistent with literature on teaching competencies expected of more senior doctors. This thesis offers new insights on what teaching means to experts in medical education, recent medical graduates and current students, comparing these between groups and with the educational literature. It also offers multiple perspectives on core learning outcomes in teaching for UK undergraduate medical curricula, and greater understanding of the teaching undertaken by UK medical graduates. This thesis could help those responsible for undergraduate medical curricula to prioritise, refine and exemplify detailed learning outcomes in teaching, ensuring their graduates are more prepared for practice. It will also be of interest to policy-makers, programme directors, teachers, students, junior doctors, administrators and academics involved in medical and allied healthcare education. It is hoped that this thesis will encourage stakeholders to reflect on what teaching means to them, the role of junior doctors as teachers and the implications of learning about teaching as part of the undergraduate medical curriculum, leading to greater engagement, scholarly debate and research in this area. This in turn may lead to doctors delivering better quality teaching, to students and trainees in medicine and other disciplines receiving better teaching, and consequently to patients experiencing better healthcare.

School board training is promoted throughout the United States as a means whereby school board member can become more effective in the performance of their roles and responsibilities. This study examines whether correlations exist school board members participation in training or continuous education and their overall perceptions of effectiveness in governance and leadership. Participants from three, contiguous mid-west states were randomly selected to participate, totaling 232 participants from 75, P-12 school boards. The results of this quantitative research, using Pearson "r" correlations with a p less than 0.05 for a 95% confidence interval, reveals correlations between a school board's aggregate training and the performance of individual school board members who completed a validated self-assessment instrument measuring perceptions of performance in six dimensional competencies of leadership and governance, contextual, educational, interpersonal, analytical, political, and strategic. Additionally, state comparisons of individual participant correlations are provided, using One-way ANOVA and Tukey "HSD" statistical comparisons. The research results indicate positive correlations between board members' perceptions of performance in specific competencies measured by the validated self-assessment instrument and the aggregate training of their respective boards. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Freshwater aquatic ecosystems, including lakes and wetlands, provide habitat for abundant and diverse animal communities, which can have large impacts on nutrient (nitrogen [N] and phosphorus [P]) biogeochemistry. Animals play an important role in nutrient recycling in freshwater ecosystems but are infrequently considered in nutrient management. It is broadly known that animals provide nutrients via excretion and egestion, however, less is known about how animals indirectly influence nutrient retention and release through interacting with aquatic sediments, and how their nutrient contributions shape aquatic communities and ecosystem functions such as primary production. Waterbirds (i.e., ducks, geese, wading birds, cormorants) and benthic invertebrates (i.e., benthic dwelling oligochaete worms, insect larvae such as mayfly and chironomid taxa) are common in Great Lakes aquatic ecosystems, yet their roles in shaping nutrient budgets and loading are often overlooked. The overall focus of this dissertation was to understand how sediment-surface water nutrient dynamics and ecosystem processes are shaped by aquatic animals and different water oxygen conditions in a variety of Great Lakes freshwater aquatic ecosystems. We demonstrate that multiple animal groups can measurably shape nutrient dynamics with implications on other ecosystem functions. In the first study, we investigated multiple internal load contributions, including net ambient and bioturbator-mediated sediment-surface water nutrient exchange, in Sandusky Bay, Lake Erie. We found that invertebrate bioturbation supplied P and N and made up a significant component of net internal fluxes, and internal sources made up a significant proportion of the total P load in this shallow, freshwater embayment. In the second study, we examined how the late-summer hypoxic event in Lake Erie shapes sediment oxygen and redox-sensitive indicators to better understand how hypoxia stressors affect sediment conditions and processes that are important in determining internal nutrient loading. We found that hypoxic conditions alone had little impact on sediment oxygen availability and redox-sensitive measures (e.g., phosphorus sorption), suggesting that sediment conditions are resistant to changes from temporary hypoxic events. In the third study, we experimentally manipulated benthic bioturbating invertebrate densities in a managed Lake Erie coastal wetland to elucidate how invertebrate bioturbators alter sediment nutrient retention and release in real environmental conditions. We found that increasing bioturbator densities were positively associated with P and N fluxes (release of nutrients from sediments into surface waters) and may help shape nutrient fluxes in-situ. In our fourth study, we investigated how waterbirds shape nutrient budgets via guano inputs and how waterbird guano can be taken up by wetland sediments and can shape algal communities in Great Lakes coastal wetlands. We found that waterbirds provide substantial nutrient fluxes, however, wetland sediments retain most of the guano-derived P but only about half of the guano-derived N. Overall, guano-derived nutrient fluxes make up a negligible component of the external nutrient loads from the surrounding agricultural landscape. We found that algal communities shift in response to different waterbird guano, but all maintain diverse assemblages without high numbers of toxin-producing cyanobacteria. Overall, animals may not provide a substantial contribution of nutrients at the whole-ecosystem scale when compared to external loading sources in agricultural landscapes. However, nutrients recycled by animals may be important locally, in areas or during times when nutrient conditions are limiting to primary producers, and may help shape ecosystem functions at small spatial and temporal scales. Considering animal effects at the ecosystem level will be important for determining management goals in a landscape that prioritizes both animal habitat and nutrient reduction.

Invertebrate activities at the sediment-water interface can facilitate nutrient retention, release, and transformation by changing the nature of oxygen penetration into anoxic sediments, influencing geochemical and microbial-mediated processes. By reworking sediment and conveying oxygenated surface water into deeper anoxic sediment through burrowing activities, bioturbating invertebrates influence nutrient cycling in wetlands sediments. To test the effects of bioturbators on oxygen introduction and nutrient fluxes, we investigated the impacts of two functionally different bioturbators at a range of four densities using a microcosm study. We measured sediment oxygen penetration depth at small-scale resolution using microelectrode sensors and analyzed surface water nutrients weekly over four weeks. Results indicate increased oxygen penetration in regions of normally anoxic sediment with the presence of each of the two bioturbation modes. In general, we observed negative phosphorus fluxes (i.e., into the sediment) with increasing bioturbator densities, indicating retention in the sediment due to bioturbation activities. These activities caused enough retention of phosphorus to counteract the phosphorus released by bioturbator excretion alone. There was a flux of nitrate into the surface water, likely driven by invertebrate excretion of ammonia followed by an oxidative process such as nitrification. This investigation contributes to the growing understanding of how organisms influence nutrient cycling in wetlands, which are hotspots for biogeochemical processing.

Research associated with long-distance interaction often focuses on the dominating influence of large complex societies on communities in outlying regions. In contrast, this dissertation explores how intermediate societies with different types of sociopolitical organization locally integrated foreign ideas. As a case study, I examine the interaction between the U.S. Southwest/northwest Mexico (SW/NW) and Mesoamerica by conducting an iconographical analysis of Mesoamerican symbols found on pottery that was produced during the late prehistoric period (A.D. 1200-1450) in the Salado and Casas Grandes regions.