Forest in southern California has been evaluating and mitigating the effects of roads and road crossings on this species. To date, we have closed five miles of roads within toad habitat and have constructed seven crossings to reduce or eliminate the effect of the crossings on toads. Prior to this effort, most of the stream crossings in toad habitat were unimproved and vehicles drove directly through the stream. This caused several problems for toads: 1. While crossing the stream, vehicles would often proceed to drive up and down the stream, causing considerable disturbance of the stream bed and increasing turbidity in the stream. 2. Vehicles would often become stuck in the stream or hit a rock while attempting to cross the stream, which could result in spillage of oil or other toxic substances into the stream. 3. Tadpoles present in the stream could be crushed by vehicles driving through the crossing. Two different types of stream crossings were constructed to separate vehicle traffic from contact with the streams. The first type was an “Arizona” crossing, which is a raised concrete ford with culverts. This type of crossing was constructed with adjacent partially buried k-rail or fencing to ensure that vehicles stayed on the road surface. The second type of crossing was a precast concrete 93 feet span designed to accommodate a 50-year flood and to eliminate vehicles from driving 400 feet up of the stream. Our poster will illustrate these two types of crossings. Since 1999, the Cleveland National Forest has been monitoring Forest roads/road crossings after rainfall events and we have not observed any arroyo toads killed or injured by vehicle traffic.

Despite the fact that ecofeminist theory and the writings of Walt Whitman are separated by over a century of radical literary and social change, I suggest that the style, content, and philosophy behind Whitman’s poetry represent a catalyst of change in the manner in which nature and women are viewed in America. His defiant approach to literature initiated a compositional and philosophical revisioning that took the door of tradition off of its hinges, allowing women and their alternative styles of literary expression to walk through. In the detailed study from which this presentation is sourced, I reveal how Whitman’s poetry aligns with the basic tenets of ecofeminism by means of a careful examination of his writings. Thus, I take part in re-evaluating the canon in American literature, challenging its worth in light of a society less acquiescent of male-dominated hierarchies in art and culture. In the case of Walt Whitman, I argue that he continues to belong.

Tobah Aukland-Peck’s essay offers a fascinating inquiry into empire through posters and seashells, seemingly mundane objects tied to a complex history of travel, advertising, oil, and empire. No longer solely the domain of Romantic painting wistfully imagining the expanses of empire under the guise of a serene landscape, this paper focuses on an aspect of material culture not often studied. Aukland-Peck argues that the “bucolic” domestic landscapes pictured throughout a number of posters advertising Shell’s enterprises neglected to depict the ravages wrought on the landscape by empire and capital in an effort to achieve material and corporate gain at a moment of Britain’s anxiety about its own status. Focusing on posters with their catchy phrases designed to foster interest in Britain, Aukland-Peck shifts our way of thinking about the proliferation of empire towards the innocuous nature of cost-effective, reproducible media. The “visual responses to war within the pastoral nostalgia”, as so poignantly articulated by the author, point towards the dialectical constructions laden within the imperial geography of empire and its visual culture. The presence of a peaceful landscape reveals a dialect of destruction; through visions of the countryside, the absence of imperial geography becomes present; and the relationship between the metropole and colony, as well as urban and rural, continue to be co-constitutive.

My dissertation focuses on issues of French sound and style in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century French violin repertoire. As a violinist who studied at the Paris Conservatory, I have long been puzzled as to why so little had been written about something that everyone seems to take for granted--so called French style.

I attacked this elusive issue from three perspectives: 1) a detailed look at performance directions; 2) comparisons among recordings by artists close to this period (Jacques Thibaud, Zino Francescatti, as well as contemporary French artists such as Philippe Graffin and Guillaume Sutre); and 3) interviews with three living French violinists (Olivier Charlier, Régis Pasquier, and Gérard Poulet) with strong ties to this tradition. After listening to countless historical recordings, I settled on three pivotal works that illustrate the emergence and full flowering of the French style: César Franck's Violin Sonata (1886), Claude Debussy's Violin Sonata (1917), and Maurice Ravel's Tzigane: Rapsodie de Concert pour Violon et Piano (1924). Each of them presents specific challenges: notational and stylistic issues in Franck's Violin Sonata, Debussy's performance directions in his Violin Sonata, and notational and interpretive issues in Ravel's Tzigane that led to a separate, orally-transmitted French tradition.

While a detailed survey of three iconic works cannot speak for an entire era, my study is the first to address in depth issues that any violinist contemplating a performance of these works must face. At the same time I believe that the focus on performance--the ultimate goal of all music making--will be of interest to many serious music lovers.

Stage anxiety has existed as long as humans have performed for one another. The fifteen self-help books surveyed for this study contain a wealth of practical on-site tips and strategies,most centered around the time of the performance. But for the upwards of fifty percent of stage anxiety sufferers for whom this condition is chronic, these books offer little relief.

Chapter 1 frames the discussion of stage anxiety around personality development, which enables a more comprehensive definition of stage anxiety while also introducing the concept of emotional memory.

Chapter 2 links the learned suppression and control of emotions to the detailed scheme of personal psychosocial evolution proposed by the German-born developmental psychologist Erik Erikson.This sets the stage for a discussion in

Chapter 3 of a dozen current therapies used by the medical community to treat anxiety disorders, ranging from Alexander Technique to Cognitive Therapy (CT). To these I add the only current anxiety therapy that actually looks into a patient's background--the eighteen schemas identified in the 1990s by Dr. Jeffrey Young. I argue that the "characterological" issues addressed by Dr. Young have a powerful connection (one that Young does not make) to stage anxiety. Emotional deprivation, fear of abandonment, defensiveness, vulnerability, etc. are all certain to accompany every affected performer onto the stage.

Chapter 4--the heart of the thesis--synthesizes the many scientific advances over the last forty years in our understanding of how anxiety works at the brain, neurological, and even cellular levels. Current science teaches us that the "information" in a memory is stored right along with the "emotion" associated with that memory. Whenever a particular memory is triggered, our entire body "remembers" both the emotion and the information virtually seamlessly. This is why on-site interventions have little chance of succeeding.

Chapter 5 describes the circumstances of my growing up first in the old Soviet system of music education, and then being switched abruptly in my mid-adolescence to the post-1989. Russia in which self-preservation was often conflated with naked self-interest. When I traveled to America the traumas I experienced in these two worlds boarded the plane with me. I conclude the chapter with a detailed account of the potential land mines in a sample piano recital program.

The Epilogue offers the broad outlines of an original treatment program that has the real potential of helping chronic sufferers gradually replace chronic fear of stage performance with enduring joy.

The marine sediment-derived Streptomyces spp. CNQ-525 and CNQ-766 were recently characterized by the Fenical laboratory as a new group of marine sediment-derived actinomycetes, tentatively named the MAR4s. These bacteria are prolific producers of hybrid isoprenoids, including the meroterpenoid (polyketide-terpene) antibiotics that are rarely encountered from bacteria. Structural inspection of the meroterpenoid antibiotics belonging to the napyradiomycin family of chlorinated dihydroquinones suggests that the biosynthetic cyclization of their terpenoid subunits is initiated via a chloronium ion, which exists as hypochlorous acid. The vanadium-dependent haloperoxidases that are known to catalyze such reactions are distributed in fungi and marine algae and have yet to be characterized from bacteria.

The MAR4 strain Streptomyces sp. CNQ-525 was used as a source for identifying novel halogenating enzymes. The cloning and sequence analysis of the 43-kb napyradiomycin biosynthetic cluster yielded an unprecedented arrangement of biosynthetic genes including a FADH₂-dependent halogenase and three putative vanadium-dependent chloroperoxidases. Heterologous expression of the CNQ-525-based nap biosynthetic cluster in a surrogate host produced at least seven napyradiomycins, including the new analog 2-deschloro- 2-hydroxy-A80915C. These data revealed the molecular basis behind the biosynthesis of these novel meroterpenoid natural products, and also resulted in the first identification of vanadium-dependent haloperoxidases from a prokaryote. Preliminary biochemical data suggests both NapH1 and NapH3 from the napyradiomycin biosynthetic cluster are vanadium-dependent chloroperoxidases and inactivation of the napH1 gene resulted in the first in vivo verification of a vanadium-dependent haloperoxidase.

The phthalazinone meroterpenoid azamerone was isolated by the Fenical- Jensen lab from the marine sediment-derived bacterium Streptomyces sp. CNQ- 766. Given the structural novelty of azamerone and its relation to the chlorinated meroterpenoids, a variety of feeding experiments with ¹³C and ¹⁵N-labeled molecules were used to explore the formation of its phthalazinone core. These experiments confirmed that azamerone’s phthalazinone core is derived from a naphthoquinone precursor such as in the chlorinated dihydroquinones and progresses through a diazo intermediate.