Solutions journalism, rigorous reporting on responses to social problems, has gained great traction in the last decade. Using positive psychology theory, also known as the theory of well-being, this qualitative study examines the impact of reporting while using solutions journalism techniques. Applying the five pillars of positive psychology theory: positive emotion, engagement, positive relationships, meaning and accomplishment (PERMA), this study used interviews and content analysis to investigate how journalists are applying the tools of solutions journalism as well as what they hope to accomplish in the process. Findings revealed that the application of solutions journalism techniques produces hope and community engagement resulting in flourishing and positive change for individuals, communities and all involved in the reporting process.

This thesis investigates the Spanish identity crisis through structural, political and representational intersectionality by means of the Law of Historic Memory, also known as LEY 52/2007 del 26 de diciembre. This work, written in Spanish, explores relational aspects of various contemporary themes within four post-Franco novels and four Spanish films: Réquiem por un campesino español by Ramón J. Sender and its corresponding film directed by Francesc Betriu; Soldados de Salamina by Javier Cercas and its corresponding film directed by David Trueba; La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón and its corresponding film directed by Benito Zambrano; and Los girasoles ciegos by Alberto Méndez and its corresponding film directed by José Luis Cuerda. Linked by a variety of human elements that affect the individual as much as the collective, the works explore sacrifice, betrayal, indifference and injustice. Each novel and movie pair offers a glimpse of individual memory that, at the same time, belongs to collective memory. Delving into the effects of LEY, this thesis considers the role of the Catholic Church, the general atrocities of war, the role of women in the Spanish Civil War, and the fractured family unit. Lastly, this thesis delineates how these effects apply to the healing …

The U.S. citizenship application process is a legal and symbolic journey shaped by many cultural processes. This research project aims to bring to light the experiences of immigrants and citizenship applicants living in Dallas, Texas, to promote a better understanding of Dallas' increasingly diverse population. In addition, the purpose of this project is to provide insights to a specific client, the office of Dallas Welcoming Communities and Immigrant Affairs, about Dallas' lawful permanent residents who are eligible for citizenship and their reasons for pursuing citizenship status. The data for this project was collected through observation at various citizenship workshops and community events, as well as through semi-structured interviews with 14 U.S. citizenship applicants. Reasons for applying for U.S. citizenship discussed in this project include a desire for membership in U.S. society, access to better educational and economic opportunities, improved ease of travel and the desire to vote. Barriers to the citizenship process discussed in this project include the amount of time one must dedicate to the application, lack of clear knowledge about the process and the financial cost of the application. Other themes include the effects of capital on applicant's experience with the citizenship process, symbolic meanings of citizenship, transnationalism …

This research work is focused on a conceptual combination of membrane-based energy recovery ventilator (ERV) and phase change material (PCM) to provide energy savings in building heating, ventilation & air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. An ERV can recover thermal energy and moisture between the outside fresh air (OFA) entering into the building and the exhaust air (EA) leaving from the building thus reducing the energy consumption of the HVAC system for cooling and heating the spaces inside the building. The membranes were stacked parallel to each other forming adjacent channels in a counter-flow arrangement for OFA and EA streams. Heat and moisture is diffused through the membrane core. Flat-plate encapsulated PCM is arranged in OFA duct upstream/downstream of the ERV thereby allowing for further reduction in temperature by virtue of free cooling. Paraffin-based PCMs with a melting point of 24°C and 31°C is used in two different configurations where the PCM is added either before or after the ERV. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and heat and mass transfer modeling is employed using COMSOL Multiphysics v5.3 to perform the heat and mass transfer analysis for the membrane-based ERV and flat-plate PCMs. An 8-story office building was considered to perform building energy simulation using …

Charon's Garden Wilderness Area within the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma is a landscape that is granted federal protection through the Wilderness Act of 1964. The discourse of wilderness management is influenced by governmental policies and practice which organize knowledge surrounding the natural landscape, like with the formation and semantics of the Wilderness Act. The Wilderness Act establishes characteristics that are designed to monitor and control the landscape and serve as a baseline and criterion for further wilderness preservation. These characteristics render the wilderness space as governable. Conservation management alternatives are identified which bypass the duality of nature from western society suggested by the discourse of environmental policy. These alternatives are understood under two notions of behaviors and perceptions. The project's goal is to uncover wilderness users' recreation behaviors and perceptions of wilderness as a designated space. Through understanding and assessing user's behaviors and perception of wilderness, alternative policies and practices that offer sustainable management practices and recreation opportunities can be developed.

The goal of this study was to build on the historic use of the avian model of development and also to further the knowledge of autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation of cardiovascular function in vertebrates. Vasoactive drugs sodium nitroprusside, a vasodilator and phenylephrine, a vasoconstrictor were used to study the correlation of cardiovascular function relationship with nerve activity, both sympathetic and parasympathetic (vagal). Additionally, ANG II was used to assess its effects on vagal inhibition. The present study shows that pharmacologically-induced hypertension is associated with a fall in mSNA, indicating that the capacity for sympathetic autonomic cardiovascular regulation is established by late incubation however, late-stage embryonic chickens did not show a significant increase in mSNA during hypotension. The hypotensive response of the embryo was not accompanied by the expected inhibition of vagal discharge; however a slight but insignificant reduction in vagal discharge was noted. When vagal efferent output was isolated, a significant drop in vagal efferent activity was noted in response to hypotension. The present study showed late-stage embryonic chickens lack a vagal response to hypertension in both efferent and sensory limbs. In this study, vagal discharge was reduced from baseline levels in response to Ang II. Collectively, the present …

The token economy is a widely used and versatile motivational system within applied behavior analysis. Moreover, token reinforcement procedures have been shown to be highly effective in the treatment of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the experimental analysis of behavior, token reinforcement contingencies are conceptualized as three interconnected schedule components: (1) the token-production schedule, (2) the exchange-production schedule, and (3) the token-exchange schedule. Basic work with nonhuman subjects has demonstrated that the exchange-production schedule is the primary driver of performance in these arrangements, and that variable-ratio exchange-production results in reduced pre-ratio pausing and greater overall rates of responding relative to fixed-ratio exchange-production schedules. However, little applied research has been conducted to assess the generality of these findings within applied settings. The purpose of this study was to determine if fixed- and variable-ratio token exchange-production schedules would exert differential effects on pre-ratio pausing and overall rates of responding for three children with ASD during a free-operant sorting task. The results showed that pre-ratio pausing and overall rates of responding were not differentially effected by the fixed- and variable-ratio exchange-production schedules. Discrepancies between the experimental work and the current study are discussed along with additional limitations.

Through a combination of stringent and deceptive corporate control of sources, as well as an academic blind spot on certain low-brow subcultures, there has been a lack of serious study of the various regional professional wrestling traditions that crossed the United States until the end of the 1980s. An in-depth examination of a wide range of books, newsletters, and interviews shows a rich history with a deep economic, social, and creative diversity that has been largely ignored as the industry has moved towards monopolization under Vincent Kennedy McMahon. The various regions are divided into three groups: those that closed on their own, those that fell in competition with McMahon, and those that survived into the era of national corporate pro wrestling. This organization challenges the narrative that regional pro wrestling came to an end solely due to the business power of McMahon. The first group looks at Northern California, Southern California, Georgia, and North Texas. The second group examines the independent wrestling companies Mid-South Wrestling and the American Wrestling Association, and their attempts to compete with McMahon on a national level. The group also explores how the intense local fan bases in Portland and Memphis buoyed the local pro wrestling …

The Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, 2010, off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. Following the spill, British Petroleum, leaser of the rig, set up a funding institution known as the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) to support research and understanding of the spill on the environments and peoples of the gulf. This outreach project was created alongside research of the RECOVER consortium, funded by GoMRI, to communicate what is happening within research labs around the country to understand the effect that the spill had on fish in pelagic and coastal regions of the gulf. The outreach project is composed of a short film (Deepwaters: The Science of a Spill, 18 min) and related outreach materials posted to Instagram (@FishandOilSpills).

Falk's pivotal 1961 study showed that rats would drink excessive amounts of water when exposed to a time based schedule of reinforcement. Since then, schedule-induced drinking or polydipsia, has been demonstrated with several species and with a variety of different behaviors. Rats, the most commonly used animal, have been shown to drink excessive amounts of water under a variety of different time based schedules of reinforcement; exclusively during a free operant procedure. The current study shows that water drinking can be induced during a discrete trial procedure, and instead of using a time-based schedule of reinforcement, this study used a variable-ratio schedule of reinforcement. The results showed that excessive water drinking was induced under these conditions with a canine.

An environmentally friendly, and contamination free process for etching and cleaning semiconductors is critical to future of the IC industry. Under the right conditions, water has the ability to meet these requirements. Water becomes more reactive as a function of temperature in part because the number of hydronium and hydroxyl ions increase. As water approaches its boiling point, the concentration of these species increases over seven times their concentrations at room temperature. At 150 °C, when the liquid state is maintained, these concentrations increase 15 times over room temperature. Due to its enhanced reactivity, high temperature water (HTW) has been studied as an etch and clean of thermally grown SiO2, Si3N4, and low-k films. High temperature deuterium oxide (HT-D2O) behaves similarly to HTW; however, it dissociates an order of magnitude less than HTW resulting in an equivalent reduction in reactive species. This allowed for the effects of reactive specie concentration on etch rate to be studied, providing valuable insight into how HTW compares to other high temperature wet etching processes such as hot phosphoric acid (HPA). Characterization was conducted using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to determine chemical changes due to etching, spectroscopic ellipsometry to determine film thickness, profilometry to …

This thesis aims to increase photovoltaic (PV) panel power efficiency by employing a cooling system based on water circulation, which represents an improved version of water flow based active cooling systems. Theoretical calculations involved finding the heat produced by the PV panel and the circulation water flow required to remove this heat. A data logger and a cooling system for a test panel of 20W was designed and employed to study the relationship between the PV panel surface temperature and its output power. This logging and cooling system includes an Arduino microcontroller extended with a data logging shield, temperature sensing probes, current sensors, and a DC water pump. Real-time measurements were logged every minute for one or two day periods under various irradiance and air temperature conditions. For these experiments, a load resistance was chosen to operate the test panel at its maximum power point. Results indicate that the cooling system can yield an improvement of 10% in power production. Based on the observations from the test panel experiments, a cooling system was devised for a PV panel array of 640 W equipped with a commercial charge controller. The test data logger was repurposed for this larger system. An identical …

We evaluated the effects of an instructional package on the emergence of novel intraverbals in children diagnosed with autism. Participants were two boys with a diagnosis of autism who had tact and listener repertoires for common objects and events, some intraverbal responses, and showed an ability to learn new intraverbal responses through direct instruction prior to participating in the study. Tact training, listener training, sorting training, and mixed training (listener and tact training) were conducted with each participant, with a probe to test for emergent intraverbals following each training step. If some emergence was seen during a probe following a training step, probes were conducted with the remaining sets to test for emergence in those sets as well. Multiple-exemplar training was conducted following the training steps if all targets within a set did not meet the criterion for emergence during probes. Results showed that for one participant, all four training steps, in addition to multiple-exemplar training, were needed to see emergence in all targets during probes for two sets, with the last two sets requiring only tact training before all targets had emerged during probes. The second participant required only tact training during three sets, with listener training required for …

The efficiency and mechanism of electron- and energy transfer events occurring in both in natural and synthetic donor-acceptor systems depend on their distance, relative orientation, and the nature of the surrounding media. Fundamental knowledge gained from model studies is key in building efficient energy harvesting and optoelectronic devices. Faster charge separation and slower charge recombination in donor-acceptor systems is often sought out. In our continued effort to build donor-acceptor systems using near-IR sensitizers, in the present study, we report ground and excited state charge transfer in newly synthesized, directly linked, tetrads featuring bisdonor (donor = phenothiazine and ferrocene), BF2-chelated azadipyrromethane (azaBODIPY) and C60 entities. The tetrads synthesized using multi-step synthetic procedure revealed strong charge transfer interactions in the ground state involving the donor and azaBODIPY entities. The near-IR emitting azaBODIPY acted as a photosensitizing electron acceptor along with fullerene while the phenothiazine and ferrocene entities acted as electron donors. The triads (bisdonor-azaBODIPY) and tetrads revealed ultrafast photoinduced charge separation leading to D•+-azaBODIPY•–-C60 and D•+-azaBODIPY-C60•– (D = phenothiazine or ferrocene) charge separated states from the femtosecond transient absorption spectral studies in both polar and nonpolar solvent media. The charge separated states populated the triplet excited state of azaBODIPY prior returning to …

The world is getting busier and more crowded each year. Due to this fact resources such as public transport, available energy, and usable space are becoming congested and require vast amounts of logistical support. As of February 2018, nearly 95% of Americans own a mobile cell phone according to the Pew Research Center. These devices are consistently broadcasting their presents to other devices. By leveraging this data to provide occupational awareness of high traffic areas such as public transit stops, buildings, etc logistic efforts can be streamline to best suit the dynamics of the population. With the rise of The Internet of Things, a scalable low-cost occupancy monitoring system can be deployed to collect this broadcasted data and present it to logistics in real time. Simple IoT devices such as the Raspberry Pi, wireless cards capable of passive monitoring, and the utilization of specialized software can provide this capability. Additionally, this combination of hardware and software can be integrated in a way to be as simple as a typical plug and play set up making system deployment quick and easy. This effort details the development and integration work done to deliver a working product acting as a foundation to build …

Research has shown that well-trained staff within early and intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) provide more effective treatment. An important part of training is learning the vocabulary and concepts of treatment. This aids in conceptual understanding of the principles and procedures. The process of learning behavioral concepts also develops the necessary verbal repertoire needed to communicate among members of a community of practice; a group of people who have common reinforcers and are working toward a common goal. Learning to tact a series of sequential descriptions, or verbally narrate, exemplary teaching interactions should be a goal when teaching behavior analysis because it is how we, as a community, interact and establish an understanding of behavior analysis. The purpose of the current study is to train novice behavior analysts to narrate exemplary intervention sequences that are responsive, flexible, and effective teaching interactions. The effects of the training were evaluated using a multiple baseline design across training conditions, replicated across 3 participants. The results suggest that the training was effective in increasing the number of narrative statements as well as the number of narrative statements related to five critical features of a teaching interaction and the relations between those features. The results are …

Silicon nitride on steel sliding contacts may provide advantageous tribological properties over traditional self-mated pairs, however the friction and wear behavior at high sliding speeds (>1 m/s) is not well understood. Previous studies at low sliding speeds (< 1 m/s) have found that the wear mechanisms change as a function of the operating parameters, e.g. atmosphere, sliding speed, load, and temperature, due to the formation of transition metal oxides such as Fe2O3 and Fe3O4. This study detected transient effects of the dry silicon nitride on steel contact over a range of sliding speeds to understand their relation to tribochemical reactions and the resulting tribological behavior. Two sets of dry silicon nitride on steel experiments were conducted at 1.45 GPa maximum Hertzian pressure. The first set were low sliding speed reciprocating experiments, conducted at an average of 0.06 m/s, conducted at variable operating temperature, ranging from 23 °C to 1000 °C. In the low sliding speed experiments, transitions of the wear mechanism from adhesive wear, to abrasive wear, then to oxidative wear was observed when the operating temperature increased. The second set were high sliding speed experiments, conducted at variable sliding speeds, ranging from 1 m/s to 16 m/s. In the …

This thesis analyzes the training and perceptions on mental health of a particular population. Through the use of previous research and literature, a survey was generated and distributed to the population. The findings were used to generate policy implications for the specific population that was analyzed.

The quality of care of residents in nursing homes receive is an important issue facing our society, and reliable methods to assess and measure important indicators of quality of care are necessary to ensure that nursing homes are providing adequate services. Previous researchers have developed methodologies to evaluate indicators of quality of care, including environmental conditions, resident conditions, resident activities, and staff activities using momentary-time sampling procedures across a variety of settings and populations. The purpose of the present study was to replicate and extend the time-sampling methodology used in previous research in two units in a nursing home.

This work addresses hurricane preparedness in Escambia County, Florida. It explores preparing for hurricanes as an informal learning process occurring within personal networks and embedded in beliefs, values, and attitudes. Findings reveal that participants learned to prepare from their parents in childhood and improved upon that knowledge through direct experience in adulthood. Later, they passed this knowledge on to their children as well as co-workers. These preparations are embedded in beliefs of self-determination and attitudes of endurance. However, this body of knowledge and their respective practices are not equally accessible to all. Recommendations are provided so local organizations can incorporate local knowledge and practices with preparedness improvement efforts and foster social cohesion as well.

A brief reading assessment and preference assessment were conducted with three participants with developmental and learning disabilities (i.e., two participants were diagnosed with Autism, the third participant was diagnosed with intellectual disability) who did not acquire fluent reading in previous individualized instruction. The results of the brief reading assessment were analyzed in an alternating treatment design and a preference assessment was conducted to determine the participants' preferred reading intervention. Following the results of the two assessments, a reading intervention that matched effectiveness with preference when possible or favored effectiveness when a match was not possible. The selected interventions (and later combined interventions) were implemented for each participant using an A-B-A-C or an A-B-A-C-D design. The results suggest that the four reading strategies are effective options for improving reading fluency. Also, a brief reading assessment can help identify an effective reading strategy. The results are discussed in the context of fluency gains, limitations, and implications for future research.

Modern power generation aims to utilize renewable energy sources such as solar power and wind to supply customers with power. This approach avoids exhaustion of fossil fuels as well as provides clean energy. Microgrids have become popular over the years, as they contain multiple renewable power sources and battery storage systems to supply power to the entities within the network. These microgrids can share power with the main grid or operate islanded from the grid. During an islanded scenario, self-sustainability is crucial to ensure balance between supply and demand within the microgrid. This can be accomplished by a smart microgrid that can monitor system conditions and respond to power imbalance by shedding loads based on priority. Such a method ensures security of the most important loads in the system and manages energy by automatically disconnecting lower priority loads until system conditions have improved. This thesis introduces a prioritized load shedding algorithm for the microgrid at the University of North Texas Discovery Park and highlight how such an energy management algorithm can add reliability to an islanded microgrid.

In the first part of this thesis, we propose a distributed consensus algorithm under multi-layer multi-group structure with communication time delays. It is proven that the consensus will be achieved in both time-varying and fixed communication delays. In the second part, we study the distributed optimization problem with a finite-time mechanism. It is shown that our distributed proportional-integral algorithm can exponentially converge to the unique global minimizer when the gain parameters satisfy the sufficient conditions. Moreover, we equip the proposed algorithm with a decentralized algorithm, which enables an arbitrarily chosen agent to compute the exact global minimizer within a finite number of time steps, using its own states observed over a successive time steps. In the third part, it is shown the implementation of accelerated distributed energy management for microgrids is achieved. The results presented in the thesis are corroborated by simulations or experiments.

The Chief Security Officer Problem (CSO) consists of a CSO, a group of agents trying to communicate with the CSO and a group of eavesdroppers trying to listen to the conversations between the CSO and its agents. Through Lemmas and Theorems, several Information Theoretic questions are answered.