The average level of sexual knowledge and attitudes about sexual situations among surveyed high school seniors in Gregg County, Texas are presented in this thesis.

Observed and expected heterozygosity (H) levels for ten electrophoretic blood marker loci and expected H for seven red blood cell (RBC) anitgen/antibody loci were examined for 20 years in American Standardbred and 30 years in American Saddlebred horses. Standardbreds were classed by gait, Trotter and Pacer, and evaluated separately in most analyses. 4,404 Trotters and 12,271 Pacers were found to have statistically highly significant losses of mean total observed H through time for the ten electrophoretic loci (P<0.005), although in Trotters the loss was more extreme (P<<0.001). Loss of H in 5984 Saddlebreds was not significant (P=0.259). Correlations of RBC expected H through time showed decreases in all three groups.

The purpose of this study is to gather information related to some factors which are considered to be characteristic of science teaching; to attempt to identify some elements of permanency in science teaching; and to analyze some relationships between the results of the above two criteria with the view of establishing some factors which may be useful as predictors of permanency, or indicative of patterns of permanency, in science teaching.

Genetics is becoming increasingly integrated into peoples' lives. Different measures have been taken to try and better genetics education. This thesis examined undergraduate students at the University of North Texas not majoring in the life sciences interest in genetic concepts through the means of a Likert style survey. ANOVA analysis showed there was variation amongst the interest level in different genetic concepts. In addition age and lecture were also analyzed as contributing factors to students' interest. Both age and lecture were evaluated to see if they contributed to the interest of students in genetic concepts and neither showed statistical significance. The Genetic Interest Assessment (GIA) serves to help mediate the gap between genetic curriculum and students' interest.

Postmortem interval (PMI) estimation is a necessary but often difficult task that must completed during a death investigation. The level of difficulty rises as time since death increases, especially with the case of skeletonized remains (long PMI). While challenging, a reliable PMI estimate may be of great importance for investigative direction and cost-savings (e.g. suspect identification, tailoring missing persons searches, non-forensic remains exclusion). Long PMI can be estimated by assessing changes in the organic content of bone (i.e. collagen), which degrades and is lost as the PMI lengthens. Visible-near infrared (VNIR) spectroscopy is one method that can be used for analyzing organic constituents, including proteins, in solid specimens. A 2013 preliminary investigation using a limited number of human cortical bone samples suggested that VNIR spectroscopy could provide a fast, reliable technique for assessing PMI in human skeletal remains. Clear separation was noted between "forensic" and "archaeological" specimen spectra within the near-infrared (NIR) bands. The goal of this research was to develop reliable multivariate classification models that could assign skeletal remains to appropriate PMI classes (e.g. "forensic" and "non-forensic"), based on NIR spectra collected from human cortical bone. Working with a large set of cortical samples (n=341), absorbance spectra were collected …