In September 2007, California Fish and Game (CAFG) plans to eradicate the northern pike from Lake Davis. As a result of the eradication treatment, local residents have concerns that the treatment might impact the local groundwater quality. To address the concerns of the residents, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) recommended measuring the naturally occurring stable oxygen isotopes in local groundwater wells, Lake Davis, and the Lake Davis tributaries. The purpose of these measurements is to determine if the source of the local groundwater is either rain/snowmelt, Lake Davis/Big Grizzly Creek water or a mixture of Lake Davis/Big Grizzly Creek and rain/snowmelt. As a result of natural evaporation, Lake Davis and the water flowing into Big Grizzly Creek are naturally enriched in {sup 18}oxygen ({sup 18}O), and if a source of a well's water is Lake Davis or Big Grizzly Creek, the well water will contain a much higher concentration of {sup 18}O. This survey will allow for the identification of groundwater wells whose water source is Lake Davis or Big Grizzly Creek. The results of this survey will be useful in the development of a water-quality monitoring program for the upcoming Lake Davis treatment. LLNL analyzed 167 groundwater wells (Table …

Weekly newspaper from Clifton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Goldthwaite, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Lexington, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

One of the important branches of government and vital to the community, police agencies are organizations that have high usage rates of information technology systems since they are in the intelligence sector and thus have information incentives. Not only can information technologies develop intra- and inter-relationships of law enforcement agencies, but they also improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the police officers and agencies without adding additional costs. Thus, identifying the factors that influence the police officers' adoption of information technology can help predict and determine how information technology will contribute to the social organization of policing in terms of effectiveness and efficiency gains. A research framework was developed by integrating three different models, theory of planned behavior (TPB), technology acceptance theory (TAM), and diffusion of innovation theory (DOI) while adding two other factors, facility and voluntariness, to better determine the factors affecting the implementation and adoption of the POLNET software system used by the Turkish National Police (TNP). The integrated model used in this study covers not only basic technology acceptance factors, but also the factors related to policing. It also attempts to account for the factors of cultural differences by considering the important aspects of Turkish culture. A …

Innovative educators seek technologies to facilitate or enhance the learning experience while taking nothing away from the message of instruction. Simulations have been shown to meet this requirement. While simulations cannot replace the teacher or the message of instruction, they can provide a deeper and more cognitively engaging learning experience. Classroom use of simulations has been ongoing since the 1960's. However, substantive research on their efficacy remains limited. What research has been conducted indicates that simulations possess great potential as aids to instruction. The author of this dissertation pursued this question focusing on whether simulations contribute to instruction by facilitating transfer, improved motivation and increased engagement. This dissertation documents a study in which instructional simulations were used in undergraduate science courses to promote engagement, transfer and knowledge-seeking behavior. The study took place at Midwestern State University (MSU), a public university located in north-central Texas with a student population of approximately 5,500. The study ran during the fall 2006 and spring 2007 terms. Samples consisted of students enrolled in GNSC 1104 Life / Earth Science during the fall term and GNSC 1204 Physical Science during the spring term. Both courses were offered through the Department of Science and Mathematics at MSU. …

Weekly newspaper from Rusk, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Research has shown that parents of children with disabilities, such as autism, experience significantly higher stress levels than parents of typically developing children. It has been suggested that parent education programs, in particular naturalistic communication training, will reduce parental stress. Most of the literature in this area has relied on parental reports and has only focused on decreasing stress and has not directly addressed increasing alternate feelings, such as happiness. In different but related areas of behavior analysis, an emphasis has been placed on the importance of happiness as a quality of life indicator and that the development of multileveled assessment is sorely needed. This study was designed to analyze one set of measures within a data-based intervention program for parents of toddlers with autism. The Family Connections Project (FCP) is a parent training project designed to enhance the quality of relationships for families who have toddlers with autism. Within this project parents are taught to identify and arrange opportunities to interact with their children in ways that will increase motivation and social responsivity. This study looked at the collateral effects of this training program and investigated if FCP affected the relationship between parents and their toddlers; of particular interest …

Weekly newspaper from Wynnewood, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Tulia, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Rusk, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

This report summarizes how the effects of the sedimentary interbedded basalt stratigraphy were modeled in the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Drill holes indicate the bedrock beneath INL facilities is composed of about 1.1 km of alternating layers of basalt rock and loosely consolidated sediments. Alternating layers of hard rock and “soft” loose sediments tend to attenuate seismic energy greater than uniform rock due to scattering and damping. The INL PSHA incorporated the effects of the sedimentary interbedded basalt stratigraphy by developing site-specific shear (S) wave velocity profiles. The profiles were used in the PSHA to model the near-surface site response by developing site-specific stochastic attenuation relationships.

This study explores distinct levels of meaning from images of picture books perceived by 3- to 5-year-old children and investigates how the certain visual perception factors influence children's meaning making and if these factors are correlated. The literature review supports associations among visual perception, information, picture books, meaning, and children. Visual perception serves as the first channel that filters and interprets visual information, and picture books provide visual and verbal experience for children, who constantly search for meaning. Children age 3 to 5 years are potential users of picture books because pictorial information is considered useful to children's learning tasks. Previous research reveals that various factors influence visual perception, and meaning has been mostly associated with its semantic significance in information retrieval. In information science, little research has focused on young children's own way of categorizing information, especially visual information. In order to investigate the distinct levels of meaning perceived by children, the investigation employed both qualitative and quantitative methods including unobtrusive and participant observation, factor analysis, content analysis, and case study. The result of this study contributes to understanding the cognitive process of children related to visual literacy and their interpreting visual information in a digital environment.

Despite the amount of scholarship on the Stamp Act Crisis, no study has used advertisements as a main source. This study attempts to show that a valuable, objective source has been overlooked, through the quantitative analysis of 5,810 advertisements before, during and after the Stamp Act Crisis from five port cities: Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, and Portsmouth. The findings reveal the colonists' strong connection to imported British luxury goods, and a lack of interest in American-made goods, especially before and after the boycott. Advertisements also demonstrate that the decision of many merchants to place the needs and expectations of their community before their own personal gain offered a rare economic opportunity for others. The colonists' devotion to imports tested the strength of the boycott, especially among Boston merchants, who continued to advertise imported goods a good deal more than any other city. This lack of dedication to the boycott on the part of the Boston merchants shows disunity among the colonies, at a time when many argue was the first instance of colonial nationalism. Capitalism challenged and undermined a commitment to communal sentiments such as nationalism. Moreover, if Americans did share a sense of nationhood during the Stamp Act …

Weekly newspaper from Rusk, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Yucca Mountain has been proposed by the U.S. Department of Energy as the nation’s long-term, permanent geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste. The potential repository would be located in Yucca Mountain’s unsaturated zone (UZ), which acts as a critical natural barrier delaying arrival of radionuclides to the water table. Since radionuclide transport in groundwater can pose serious threats to human health and the environment, it is important to understand how much and how fast water and radionuclides travel through the UZ to groundwater. The UZ system consists of multiple hydrogeologic units whose hydraulic and geochemical properties exhibit systematic and random spatial variation, or heterogeneity, at multiple scales. Predictions of radionuclide transport under such complicated conditions are uncertain, and the uncertainty complicates decision making and risk analysis. This project aims at using geostatistical and stochastic methods to assess uncertainty of unsaturated flow and radionuclide transport in the UZ at Yucca Mountain. Focus of this study is parameter uncertainty of hydraulic and transport properties of the UZ. The parametric uncertainty arises since limited parameter measurements are unable to deterministically describe spatial variability of the parameters. In this project, matrix porosity, permeability and sorption coefficient of the reactive tracer …

Weekly newspaper from Holliday, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Tri-weekly student newspaper from Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

This qualitative case study research examined how constructivist problem-based learning facilitated higher level thinking, increased interest in art, and affected attitude toward on-line courses in an undergraduate philosophical aesthetics and interpretation of art criticism course. The research conducted for this study suggests that constructivist problem-based learning does facilitate higher level thinking and increases student interest in art and in on-line classes. Active learning assignments, along with the constructivist collaborative class atmosphere, encouraged students to think more deeply about their personal values concerning art and to consider alternative views. Problem-based learning in this class acted as a scaffold to aid in understanding the material and then in applying the material to unique and real-life situations. Each subject came to the course with certain thinking skills and left with increased knowledge about art but also with increased critical thinking skills for critically examining and discussing art. Participants completed the course with more confidence in their critical thinking ability and in dealing with visual art images. Data was gathered from seven study participants in the form of highly-structured interviews, an early and final critical writing analysis, a major problem assignment and its reflection journal, a beginning survey, and two final surveys. The final …

Weekly newspaper from Tulia, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Odem, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

New product ideation is the transformation of a raw idea into a robust concept with consideration of fit and feasibility of technologies, customer benefits, and market opportunity. Although the ideation process often involves ambiguous processes, it is the most critical activity in new product development (NPD). As a creativity task, the ideation process is considered heuristic rather than algorithmic. However, managing the ideation process as either a completely heuristic or an entirely algorithmic procedure leads to just conventional outcomes. Rooted in cognitive psychology, this study proposes that ideation activities in NPD should be pursued as Simonton's "constrained stochastic behavior." An ideation task not only needs good componential factors but also requires constraint to frame the task by precluding unwieldy ideas while promoting high variability of ideas. Focusing on the inputs and attempting to strike a balance between algorithmic and heuristic ideation process may provide the mechanisms to manage the psychological perceptions with an aim to stimulate and orchestrate the ideation staff's cognitive efforts to generate the creative idea. To achieve this goal, new product idea creativity is considered as the ideas that could turn out to be products that are novel to and useful for customers, and appropriate to firms' …

The gas permeability and adhesion strength of laminated green ceramic tapes were determined for samples comprised of barium titanate as the dielectric, and poly(vinyl butyral) and dioctyl phthalate as the main components of the binder mixture. The green tapes were laminated for times of 2-10 min, pressures of 1.8-7 MPa, and temperatures of 35-85C. The adhesion strength, which was measured by a peel test, increased with increasing lamination time, temperature, and pressure. The permeability, which was determined from gas flux measurements, decreased with increasing lamination time, temperature, and pressure. The dependence of the permeability and adhesion strength on lamination time, temperature, and pressure is qualitatively consistent with a mechanistic description of the lamination process as one of binder flow in porous media