Questions concerning the ethics of terraforming Mars have received some attention from both philosophers and scientists during recent decades. A variety of theoretical approaches have been supplied by a number of authors, however research pursuant to this thesis has indicated at least two major blindspots in the published literature on the topic. First, a broad category of human considerations involving risks, dangers, and social, political, and economic inequalities that would likely be associated with efforts to terraform Mars have been woefully overlooked in the published literature to date. I attempt to rectify that oversight by employing the interpretive lens of environmental justice to address questions of environmental colonialism, equality in terms of political participation and inclusion in decision making structures, risks associated with technological progressivism, and responses to anthropogenic climate change. Only by including the historically marginalized and politically disenfranchised "voices," of both humans and nonhumans, can any future plan to terraform Mars be deemed ethical, moral or just according to the framework provided by environmental justice. Furthermore, broader political inclusion of this sort conforms to what ecofeminist author Val Plumwood calls the "intentional recognition stance" and provides an avenue through which globally societies can include nonanthropocentric considerations in decision …

The thesis studies the relations of Communist China's foreign policy and its military offensives in the battlefield in Korean Peninsula in late 1950 and early 1951, an important topic that has yet received little academic attention. As original research, this thesis cites extensively from newly declassified Soviet and Chinese archives, as well as American and UN sources. This paper finds that an adventurism dominated the thinking and decision-making of Communist leaders in Beijing and Moscow, who seriously underestimated the military capabilities and diplomatic leverages of the US-led West. The origin of this adventurism, this paper argues, lays in the CCP's civil war experience with their Nationalist adversaries, which featured a preference of mobile warfare over positional warfare, and an opportunist attitude on cease-fire. This adventurism ended only when Communist front line came to the verge of collapse in June 1951.

Terroir combines the physical landscape of the vineyard with the grapevines and the methods and techniques used to produce wine from the grapes. This study used a GIS to identify the characteristics of the physical landscape in Pottawattamie, Mills, Montgomery, Fremont, and Page counties in southwestern Iowa. The components were combined in the GIS using a weighted linear index to identify areas suitable for vineyard development and to identify the general characteristics of the area. Vineyard owners were interviewed to help determine the weighting system to use in the GIS and to determine their perceptions of how the physical landscape impacts their vineyards, as well as to determine what grape varieties they plant in their vineyards and their decisions on making wine from these grapes. This information was collected to identify whether the vineyard owners had developed a sense of place for their vineyards and how this sense might aid them in the development of a terroir for their wines. The resulting perceptions about the individual wineries were then considered in conjunction with the results from the GIS modeling to understand how the physical landscape influences the concepts of sense of place and terroir in southwest Iowa. The physical landscape …

Valley development through erosional processes typically tends to create symmetrical valleys. Over time, water cuts through the substrate to create valleys, gorges, and canyons for which the sides are the valley are evenly sloped. However, there are anomalies to this process. Asymmetrical valleys have been well-documented even in areas of uniform substrate or little tectonic uplift. One proposed explanation for the asymmetry of these valleys is differential insolation. This may lead to different microclimates from one slope to another which alter the rate and extent of erosion. Since the differences in received insolation vary with latitude (especially in streams that flow along an east/west axis), it follows that the degree of asymmetry should also vary with latitude if differential insolation is a primary driving factor in the development of these valleys. To evaluate if insolation plays a role in the development of asymmetrical valleys, this study examines variability in asymmetry across 447 valleys in nine study areas located at different latitudes. The degree of asymmetry for each valley was measured by using 30 meter resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) to determine the slope angle of each side of the valley. Asymmetry was measured by computing a ratio of the average …

This study reviews U.S. Spanish-language broadcast networks' prime time programming content targeted to the Latino youth audience. It explores the relationship between the Latino youth and prime time programming by Spanish-language broadcast networks and how they seek to attract this market as is reflected in the characteristics and quantity of their content and preferred formats by using the strategic management theory. This study identifies the amount and type of prime time programming that was catered to the Latino youth audience between 2003 and 2012 by the three major Spanish-language networks: Univision, Telemundo, and Telefutura. An observed pattern reveals that prime time programming targeting Latino teenagers is relatively smaller and older in comparison to programming delivered through the general programming.

Few studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of phytoremediation of pharmaceutical compounds, although the persistent and non-acutely toxic nature of many of these compounds in today's water bodies may yield an ideal application for this practice. To quantify the potential effectiveness of plant uptake, kinetic and proportional bioconcentration factors (BCFk, and BCFp, respectively) in nanograms (ng) carbamazepine and amiodarone per gram (g) wet weight plant tissue for Lemna spp. were determined utilizing a 14-day continuous flow-through study. Samples were analyzed using isotope dilution liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (ID-LC-MS/MS) running in positive ion mode. Kinetic BCF was estimated at 0.538, while proportional BCF was estimated at 0.485. Kinetic BCF for the amiodarone study was estimated at 23.033, whereas proportional BCF was estimated at 41.340. Possible contamination of the C18 column and peristaltic pump failure may have impacted uptake results. In light of variability and current lack of research in the field, this work should be considered exploratory rather than conclusive.

The American musical team John Kander and Fred Ebb created many celebrated works, yet musicologists have carried out little research on those works. This study examines the role of music in the parodic narration of Kander and Ebb's final collaboration, The Scottsboro Boys. Kander and Ebb use minstrelsy to tell the story of the historic Scottsboro Boys trials with actors portraying the Scottsboro Boys as minstrels; at the same time, they employ a number of devices to subvert minstrelsy stereotypes and thereby comment on racism. Drawing on African American literary theory, sociolinguistics, and Bakhtin's dialogism, this study illuminates how Signifyin(g), a rhetorical tradition used to encode messages in some African American communities, is the primary way the actors playing the Scottsboro Boys subvert through minstrelsy. This study not only contributes to the discussion of Signifyin(g) in African American musicals and theatre as a tool of subversion, but also provides an example of non-African American creators—Kander and Ebb—using Signifyin(g) devices. They use these in the music and the book; in particular, Kander and Ebb do some Signifyin(g) on Stephen Foster's plantation melodies.

Demand of automobiles are significantly growing despite various factors, steadily increasing the average number of vehicles on the road. Increase in the number of vehicles, subsequently increases the risk of collisions, characterized by the driving behavior. Driving behavior is influenced by factors like class of vehicle, road condition and vehicle maneuvering by the driver. Rapidly growing mobile technology and use of smartphones embedded with in-built sensors, provides scope of constant development of assistance systems considering the safety of the driver by integrating with the information obtained from the vehicle on-board sensors. Our research aims at learning a vehicle system comprising of vehicle, human and road by employing driving patterns obtained from the sensor data to develop better systems of safety and alerts altogether. The thesis focusses on utilizing together various data recorded by the in-built embedded sensors in a smartphone to understand the vehicle motion and dynamics, followed by studying various impacts of collision events, types and signatures which can potentially be integrated in a prototype framework to detect variations, alert drivers and emergency responders in an event of collision.

Since its invention, phased array has been extensively applied in both military and civil areas. The applications include target detecting and tracking, space probe communication, broadcasting, human-machine interfaces, and remote sensing. Although the phased array applications show a broad range of potential market, there are some limitations of phased array's development: high cost, complex structure, narrow bandwidth, and high power consumption. Therefore, novel ideas are needed to reduce these constraints. In this thesis, several new approaches about the design and application of phased array are presents. First, the principle of phased array and fundamental design equations are introduced. Second, a new application of phased array antenna for radar respiration measurement is presented. By integrating a 4×4 Butler matrix with four-element antenna array, there will be four distinct main beams in radiation pattern. This new approach can improve the measurement accuracy and realize a high detecting rate. Third, a compact phased array antenna system based on dual-band operations is introduced. Dual-band function can make N-antenna system obtain 2N unique radiation beams (N is an integer) and achieve a significant size reduction compared to the conventional single-band system. To verify the design concept, a four-element phased array antenna working at 5GHz and …

La Malinche is one of the most controversial figures in Mexican and Chicano literature. The historical facts about her life before and after the Spanish Conquest are largely speculative. What is reliably known is that she had a significant role as translator, which developed into something of mythic proportions. The ideological appropriation of her image by three authors, Octavio Paz, Laura Esquivel and Cherríe Moraga, are explored in this thesis. The full extent of the proposed rendition of La Malinche by Octavio Paz is the basis of the second chapter. The conclusion drawn by Paz, in The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950) is that La Malinche is what he calls la chingada [the raped/violated one] and proposes that all women are always open to conquest, sexually and otherwise. Laura Esquivel's novel Malinche (2006) is a re-interpretation that focuses on the tongue as the source of power and language as the ultimate source of autonomy for La Malinche. This aspect of La Malinche and the contrast of Paz's understanding are the basis of the third chapter of this thesis. Cherríe Moraga, in Loving in the War Years (1983), proposes that if women are to be traitors, it is not each other that …

Traditional methods like pruning and breeding have historically been used in crop production to divert photoassimilates to harvested organs, but molecular biotechnology is now poised to significantly increase yield by manipulating resource partitioning. It was hypothesized that metabolic engineering in targeted sink tissues can favor resource partitioning to increase harvest. Raffinose Family Oligosaccharides (RFOs) are naturally occurring oligosaccharides that are widespread in plants and are responsible for carbon transport, storage and protection against cold and drought stress. Transgenic plants (GRS47, GRS63) were engineered to generate and transport more RFOs through the phloem than the wild type plants. The transgenic lines produced more RFOs and the RFOs were also detected in their phloem exudates. But the 14CO2 labeling and subsequent thin layer chromatography analysis showed that the RFOs were most likely sequestered in an inactive pool and accumulate over time. Crossing GRS47 and GRS63 lines with MIPS1 plants (that produces more myo-inositol, a substrate in the RFO biosynthetic pathway) did not significantly increase the RFOs in the crossed lines. For future manipulation of RFO degradation in sink organs, the roles of the endogenous α-galactosidases were analyzed. The alkaline α-galactosidases (AtSIP1 and AtSIP2 in Arabidopsis) are most likely responsible for digesting RFOs …

Metastable b-Ti alloys are titanium alloys with sufficient b stabilizer alloying additions such that it's possible to retain single b phase at room temperature. These alloys are of great advantage compared to a/b alloys since they are easily cold rolled, strip produced and can attain excellent mechanical properties upon age hardening. Beta 21S, a relatively new b titanium alloy in addition to these general advantages is known to possess excellent oxidation and corrosion resistance at elevated temperatures. A homogeneous distribution of fine sized a precipitates in the parent b matrix is known to provide good combination of strength, ductility and fracture toughness. The current work focuses on a study of different mechanisms to engineer homogeneously distributed fine sized a precipitates in the b matrix. The precipitation of metastable phases upon low temperature aging and their influence on a precipitation is studied in detail. The precipitation sequence on direct aging above the w solvus temperature is also assessed. The structural and compositional evolution of precipitate phase is determined using multiple characterization tools. The possibility of occurrence of other non-classical precipitation mechanisms that do not require heterogeneous nucleation sites are also analyzed. Lastly, the influence of interstitial element, oxygen on a precipitation …

The current study focuses on improving the wear resistance of femoral head component and enhancing the osseo-integration properties of femoral stem component of a hip implant made of a new generation low modulus alloy, Ti-35Nb-7Zr-5Ta or TNZT. Different techniques that were adopted to improve the wear resistance of low-modulus TNZT alloy included; (a) fabrication of graded TNZT-xB (x= 0, 1, 2 wt%) samples using LENS, (b) oxidation, and (c) LASER nitriding of TNZT. TNZT-1B and TNZT-O samples have shown improved wear resistance when tested against UHMWPE ball in SBF medium. A new class of bio-ceramic coatings based on calcium phosphate (CaP), was applied on the TNZT sample surface and was further laser processed with the objective of enhancing their osseo-integration properties. With optimized LASER parameters, TNZT-CaP samples have shown improved corrosion resistance, surface wettability and cellular response when compared to the base TNZT sample.

Coastal marshes and wetlands are vital natural resources that offer habitats for plants and animals, serve as ecological filtration for soil and water pollutants, and act as protection for coastlines. Fishing, both commercial and sport, has a large economic impact in the study area – the Gulf Coast between Galveston Bay, TX and Oak Grove, LA. The objective of this research was to determine the contribution of Hurricane Ike storm surge sedimentation to long-term marsh aggradation in Texas and Louisiana coastal marshes. The research hypothesized that Hurricane Ike’s storm surge deposit would be equal to decades and possibly even a century’s worth of the average annual non-storm sedimentation. A quantitative field study was performed. The storm surge deposit was examined in a series of 15 transects covering approximately 180 km east of Hurricane Ike’s landfall. Nine of the 15 transects were re-surveyed a year after the initial measurement to assess preservation of the deposit. The results demonstrate that Hurricane Ike contributed between 10 to 135 years’ worth of sediment to coastal marshes along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, and the sediment deposits have been preserved for over two years.

This thesis presents the results of geoarchaeological investigations of several archaeological sites along the Elm Fork of the Trinity River in north central Texas. Archaeological data recorded from mitigation excavations in Denton and Cooke counties were analyzed to understand the geologic impacts on faunal preservation resulting from site formation processes. The faunal assemblages are highly fragmented, even in settings known for good preservation. A combined approach using geoarchaeological and taphonomic techniques was implemented to examine how fragmentation, evidence of soil weathering, and differential preservation were impacted by differing geologic conditions throughout the river basin. Intrasite and intersite results of the sites show that a great deal of variability of faunal preservation is present at difference scales of analysis.

Natural history collections house immense amounts of data, but the majority of data is only accessible by locating the collection label, which is usually attached to the physical specimen. This method of data retrieval is time consuming and can be very damaging to fragile specimens. Digitizing the collections is the one way to reduce the time and potential damage related to finding the collection objects. The Elm Fork Natural Heritage Museum is a natural history museum located at the University of North Texas and contains collections of both vertebrate and invertebrate taxa, as well as plants. This project designed a collection digitization workflow for Elm Fork by working through digitizing the Benjamin B. Harris Herbarium. The collection was cataloged in Specify 6, a database program designed for natural history collection management. By working through one of the museum’s collections, the project was able to identify and address challenges related to digitizing the museum’s holdings in order to create robust workflows. The project also produced a series of documents explaining common processes in Specify and a data management plan.

Strong size effects in plastic deformation of thin films have been experimentally observed, indicating non-traditional deformation mechanisms. These observations require improved understanding of the behavior of dislocation in small size materials, as they are the primary plastic deformation carrier. Dislocation dynamics (DD) is a computational method that is capable of directly simulating the motion and interaction of dislocations in crystalline materials. This provides a convenient approach to study micro plasticity in thin films. While two-dimensional dislocation dynamics simulation in thin film proved that the size effect fits Hall-Petch equation very well, there are issues related to three-dimensional size effects. In this work, three-dimensional dislocation dynamics simulations are used to study model cooper thin film deformation. Grain boundary is modeled as impenetrable obstacle to dislocation motion in this work. Both tension and cyclic loadings are applied and a wide range of size and geometry of thin films are studied. The results not only compare well with experimentally observed size effects on thin film strength, but also provide many details on dislocation processes in thin films, which could greatly help formulate new mechanisms of dislocation-based plasticity.

Animal trainers use shaping to teach many behaviors. However, during shaping, the organism may engage in behaviors other than the target behavior or approximations to the target behavior. If the animal is engaged in other behaviors, the rate of reinforcement may decrease and the trainer may resort to what is sometimes referred to as a “desperation click.” That is, the trainer delivers one reinforcer for a behavior that is not a successive approximation to the target response. Anecdotal reports from trainers suggest that sometimes the animal continues to repeat this other behavior that received only one reinforcer, even in the absence of further reinforcement for that behavior. This study compared whether, during a one minute extinction period, participants spent more time engaged in a behavior that had been reinforced only once after a brief period of no reinforcement or in a behavior that had been reinforced multiple times. Participants, who were university students, played a tabletop game that involved touching and manipulating small objects. Five conditions were repeated twice for each participant: reinforcement for interacting with a training object alone, reinforcement for interacting with a training object with other objects present, reinforcement for interacting with a target object, one reinforcer …

Although the “self” has generally been conceptualized as relatively stable in sport-specific research, events such as deselection, injury, and career termination have been found to negatively affect athletes’ levels of identification with the athlete role. Additionally, there has been limited research regarding competitive failure and its ability to negatively affect athletes’ levels of identification with the athlete role. The purpose of the present investigation was to provide additional evidence regarding the influence poor competitive seasons have on the malleability of athletes’ self-identity. Athletes were followed throughout the course of their season to determine whether athletes who encountered a poor competitive season reported lowered levels of athletic identity. Specifically, male and female NCAA Division I track and field athletes completed pre-indoor, post-indoor, and post-outdoor assessments of athletic identity. Contrary to previous research, the current study’s results indicated no identifiable relationship between male and female athletes’ season performance satisfaction and their level of post-indoor and post-outdoor athletic identity. Thus, the greatest predictor of athletes’ post-season level of athletic identity was their pre-season level of athletic identity, regardless of season performance. Given these results, future research should assess self-esteem as well as other potential coping strategies athletes might use in order to gain …

Service-oriented architecture enables web services to operate in a loosely-coupled setting and provides an environment for dynamic discovery and use of services over a network using standards such as WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI. Web service has both functional and non-functional characteristics. This thesis work proposes to add QoS descriptions (non-functional properties) to WSDL and compose various services to form a business process. This composition of web services also considers QoS properties along with functional properties and the composed services can again be published as a new Web Service and can be part of any other composition using Composed WSDL.

Personalized instruction has long been a goal of behavior analysis in the education of typically developing populations, one important element of which is the delivery of lectures in new formats. This study tested feasibility of online lecture delivery by comparing online and in-class delivery of lectures using an adapted alternating treatments design. Each week, the lecture component of a unit of an introductory behavior analysis course was presented either online or in-class, alternating week to week. The alternation was counterbalanced between two sections, where one section saw the lecture for a given unit -online while the other did it in-class, allowing for comparison between lectures of a given unit as well as across units within a section. First attempt quiz scores were measured. No significant difference in the trend of quiz scores between conditions was detected, averaging 73.1% (range, 50.4% to 83.4%) for online and 72.8% (range, 54.8 to 84%) for in-class conditions. This suggests that online lectures are a feasible alternative lecture delivery in this introductory behavior analysis course. This experimental methodology may also be used to test other instructional techniques as well. The ability to place lectures online, opens the door to further, more refined, experimentation with modern …

Due to the wide spread occurrence of medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), a pharmaceutical compound, in wastewater effluent and surface waters, the objectives of this work were to determine the tissue specific uptake and bioconcentration factor (BCF) for MPA in common carp. BCFs were experimentally determined for MPA in fish using a 14-day laboratory test whereby carp where exposed to 100 μg/L of MPA for a 7-day period followed by a depuration phase in which fish were maintained in dechlorinated tap water for an additional 7 days. MPA concentrations in muscle, brain, liver and plasma were determined by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS). The results from the experiment indicate that MPA can accumulate in fish, however, MPA is not considered to be bioaccumulative based on regulatory standards (BCF ≥ 1000). Although MPA has a low BCF value in common carp, this compound may cause reproductive effects in fish at environmentally relevant concentrations.

In 1908 Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world. His reign would be rife with controversy, leading to widespread racial violence and draconian government intervention. Lester Walton, theater critic for the New York Age, became obsessed with Johnson; his extensive writing on the boxer powerfully reveals not just Walton’s own struggle with issues of race in America, but sheds light on the difficulties the black community at large faced in trying to make sense of a figure who simultaneously represented hope for the positive change Reconstruction failed to produce and, ironically, also threatened to intensify the hardships of Jim Crow era oppression.

Glyphosate based herbicides are among the most widely used herbicides in the world. The purpose of this study was to determine developmental toxicity of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the common herbicide Roundup, on developing chicken embryos. Few studies have examined toxic effects of glyphosate alone versus the full compound formulations of Roundup, which include adjuvants and surfactants. Adjutants and surfactants are added to aid in solubility and absorption of glyphosate. In this study chicken embryos were exposed at the air cell on embryonic day 6 to 19.8 or 9.9 mg / Kg egg mass of glyphosate in Roundup or glyphosate only. Chickens treated with 19.8 and 9.9 mg / Kg glyphosate in Roundup showed significant reduction in survivability compared to glyphosate alone treatments and controls. On embryonic day 18, embryos were sacrificed for evaluation of developmental toxicity using wet embryo mass, dry embryo mass, and yolk mass as indicators. Morphology measurements were taken on liver mass, heart mass, tibiotarsus length and beak length. Embryos treated with 19.8 mg / Kg glyphosate and 9.9 mg / Kg glyphosate in Roundup showed significant reductions in wet and dry embryo mass and yolk mass. Tibiotarsus length in 9.9 mg / Kg glyphosate …