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Richard Serra completed Afangar, a sculpture sharing the name of Jon Helgason's poem, in 1990. Serra was invited to complete this work for the Reykjavik Arts Festival and was granted special permission to build the site-specific sculpture on the treeless landscape of Vesturey, the Northern landmass of Viðey, an island northeast of Reykjavik, Iceland. It is composed of nine pairs of columnar basalt stones mined from Hreppholar and transported to Vesturey. The locations of the stone pairs were selected by Serra in order to frame specific features in the surrounding landscape and were placed in a way so that a visitor can measure the changes in the land as he moves. After the sculpture was completed, Serra created numerous drawings (select drawings from the National Gallery of Iceland are discussed in this thesis) that provided him with a way to interpret what he saw. The drawings are linked to the location and underline the importance of walking and looking in Serra’s work.

This practicum involved creating a map, interpretive signage, and outreach materials for Edge of the Farm Conservation Area (EFCA) in Oxford, Ohio. EFCA is a natural gem amid farmland whose goal is to educate people of all ages about today’s environmental issues. In order to accomplish this, EFCA needed an accurate map that is easy to navigate as well as interpretive signage. This interdisciplinary practicum connects Ohio’s Revised Science Content Standards with art by utilizing original artwork created with pen and colored pencil and gives ideas for making connections to other subjects such as History, English, and Math as well as Girl and Boy Scout badge requirements. To encourage visitors from the general public to visit, the signs discuss topics relevant to each location at EFCA as well as Ohio and contain whimsical imagery that is visually stimulating and includes questions that promote inquiry and further study.

According to the socioecological model of female sociality, females living in environments with clumped resources should exhibit strong, linear dominance hierarchies and females in the upper part of these hierarchies should receive less aggression, gain better access to food and receive more grooming than their lower ranked counterparts. This dissertation investigates the predictions of this model using females in a group of bonnet macaques (Macaca radiata). It also investigates the effects of three food distributions (0.25 m², 1 m², and 4 m²) on female aggression. This group had a moderately linear dominance hierarchy (0.63 Modified Landau Index). Although aggressive behavior increased during the feeding experiments, the overall strength of the dominance hierarchy was not significantly affected by an increase in food clumping. Higher ranked females did not receive more grooming than lower ranked females. Females engaged in both reciprocal (12.6%) and non-reciprocal bouts (87.4 %) of grooming and reciprocal grooming was time matched. Although most grooming was not immediately reciprocated, females did not appear to be trading grooming for another commodity, except, potentially, for coalitionary support. Grooming was more reciprocal across bouts than within bouts showing increased grooming reciprocity between partners over time. This long-term reciprocity suggests that bonnet macaque females reciprocate grooming over long spans of time effectively increasing the proportion of reciprocal grooming and decreasing the amount traded in a biological market. Females showed different types of competition as the experimental food distribution was decreased. High ranking females consumed more than low ranking females in each distribution. The greatest rank asymmetry in feeding was found in the highly clumped condition due to the ability of dominant individuals to monopolize the feeding platform. However, the number of aggressive acts among females was significantly lower in both clumped distributions than in the dispersed condition. Usurpation, as measured by agonistic acts, was higher in the dispersed condition, but competition through monopolization was greatest in the highly clumped condition as expected by the socioecological model. Competition in the highly clumped condition could not be measured by quantity of agonistic behavior illustrating the importance of distinguishing between monopolizability and usurpability when analyzing levels of competition

Protein-coding genes account for ~3% of the human genome, and a typical gene resides permanently at a discrete chromosomal address. The human genome, however, is not simply a static catalogue of genes; in many ways, it is an ever-changing entity. One dynamic component of the human genome is transposable elements (TEs), or “jumping genes”. Long Interspersed Element-1 (LINE-1 or L1) is a TE whose sequences make up ~17% of human DNA. Although most L1s are inactive, a few retain the ability to mobilize by a process called retrotransposition. L1 is often regarded as a molecular parasite that can be damaging to the host. In fact, ~95 cases of human disease have been attributed to L1-mediated retrotransposition events, and it stands to reason that humans have evolved ways to curtail L1 mobility. The human APOBEC3 (A3) family of cytidine deaminases represents a component of innate immunity hypothesized to have evolved to restrict TE mobility, yet mechanisms by which A3 proteins combat exogenous and endogenous threats are the subject of ongoing study. The focus of my thesis has been a mechanistic examination of A3-mediated L1 inhibition. I have elucidated a mechanism of L1 inhibition by APOBEC3A (A3A), in which A3A deaminates cytidines to uracil in transiently exposed single-stranded DNA during L1 target-site primed reverse transcription (TPRT). In concert with the action of cellular DNA repair factors, which recognize uracil in DNA as damage and degrade deaminated TPRT intermediates, this editing is at least partially responsible for A3A-mediated L1 inhibition. My thesis work represents the first mechanistic explanation for inhibition of an autonomous retroelement by an A3 cytidine deaminase, providing new insight into the dynamic interplay between endogenous retrotransposons and host genomes.