Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree

Spain underwent drastic social and political changes in the last decades of the twentieth century which also affected the nation’s patterns of emigration. Contemporary Spanish literature and film that portray these decades reflect the country’s fluctuating characteristics of migration. ¡Vente a Alemania, Pepe! (1971) by Pedro Lazaga, Coto vedado (1985) by Juan Goytisolo, El hijo del acordeonista (2003) by Bernardo Atxaga, and Yoyes (2000) by Helena Taberna demonstrate Spain’s migration trends during the last years of Franco’s dictatorship and the transition to democracy. The nation’s highly increased socioeconomic development in the 1970s and 1980s which eventually led to a first-world status also affected emigration, which can be seen in Carlota Fainberg (1999) by Antonio Muñoz Molina, Kasbah (2000) by Mariano Barroso, Restos de carmine (1999) by Juan Madrid, and Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009) by Isabel Coixet.

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of history and culture on the passage of the comic book to the animated film. Although the comic book has both historical and cultural components, the latter often undergoes a cultural shift in the animation process. Using the Smurfs as a case study, this investigation first reviews existing literature pertaining to the comic book as an art form, the influence of history and culture on Smurf story plots, and the translation of the comic book into a moving picture. This study then utilizes authentic documents and interviews to analyze the perceptions of success and failure in the transformation of the Smurf comic book into animation: concluding that original meaning is often altered in the translation to meet the criteria of cultural relevance for the new audiences.

This project seeks to serve two purposes: first, to investigate various semantic and grammatical aspects of mixed conceptual metaphors in reference to anger; and secondly, to explore the potential of a corpus-based, TARGET DOMAIN-oriented method termed metaphor pattern analysis to the study of mixed metaphor. This research shows that mixed metaphors do not pattern in a manner consistent with statements made within conceptual metaphor theory. These metaphors prove highly dynamic in their combinability and resist resonance between SOURCE DOMAINS used. Also shown is the viability of metaphor pattern analysis as a methodology to approach mixed metaphor research.

This thesis is a reception study that examines potential reasons why the adolescent to college aged demographic of youth culture is embracing communicative and informational mobility. The project attests that the move to mobility is motivated by two major factors, the attraction of being an early adopter of technology and the way social behaviors are made attractive in mobile marketing. Chapter 1 explores the importance of these social behaviors, as they are very much intertwined and contribute to how youth acclimate into society. Chapter 2 demonstrates that creating social distinction and cultural capital is linked to being an early adopter of technology. The remaining portion of the document examines recent mobile advertisements and why youth would be attracted to the aesthetic and thematic elements contained in the advertisements. Chapter 3 examines how Blackberry utilizes the behavior of creating and expressing identity in their advertisements. Chapter 4 focuses on how Apple has worked to create a community centered around their brand. Finally, Chapter 5 looks at how Google/Android has highlighted the acquisition, sharing, and utilization of content through the phenomenon of applications. With this project, I hope to illustrate the rationale why youth would be attracted to communicative and informational mobility.

In the avian training community, a procedure has been utilized to maintain food reinforcer efficacy at high body weights. Elements of this procedure include limited holds and closed economies. To test this procedure, a baseline performance of keypecking on an FR 15 schedule at 80% ad lib weight for two pigeons was established. By imposing limited holds and a closed economy, rates of responding were increased compared to baseline, even while the pigeons were over 90% of their ad-lib body weights.

This collection consists of a critical preface exploring the similarities between serialized comic books, realist fiction and the author’s own writing. The principle discussion concerns continuity, the connecting tissue between ancillary works of fiction, chronology, the function of time in the narrative of related stories, and the function of characters beyond the stories they inhabit. The stories within the collection revolve around an eccentric ensemble of suburban youth whose demoralized and violent actions are heavily influenced by defining moments of their past.

This study examined whether religious coping moderated the effects of thin-ideal images on body satisfaction among college women. Religious (N = 178) participants met for a pre-test to complete religiosity measures. A week later, the participants reconvened and were assigned to one of two conditions: before (n = 83) or after (n = 95). Within each of these two groups, participants were randomly assigned to read a list of statements: positive religious statements, positive nonreligious statements, negative religious statements, positive body neutral religious statements, and neutral statements. Each participant was exposed to a task that included 10 images of thin-ideal models, read her list of statements, and completed the Body Dissatisfaction Scale of the EDI-3. The results revealed no significant main effect of placement, type of statement and no significant Placement X Statement Type interaction. However, when religious statements were collapsed and a subsequent 2 (Placement) X 3 (Statement type) analysis was conducted the results indicated a significant main effect for type of statement. Reading religious statements resulted in less body dissatisfaction than non-religious statements. There was no main effect for placement and no Placement X Statement Type interaction. Ethnic differences in religiosity were noted (all p’s <.05). Implications and …

This study analyzes how the Art-Union, a British journal interested only in the fine arts, approached photography between 1839 and 1854. It is informed by Karl Marx’s materialism-informed commodity fetishism, Gerry Beegan’s conception of knowingness, Benedict Anderson’s imagined community, and an art critical discourse that was defined by Roger de Piles and Joshua Reynolds. The individual chapters are each sites in which to examine these multiple theoretical approaches to the journal’s and photography’s association in separate, yet sometimes overlapping, periods. One particular focus of this study concerns the method through which the journal viewed photography—as an artistic or scientific enterprise. A second important focus of this study is the commodification of both the journal and photography in Britain. Also, it determines how the journal’s critical engagement with photography fits into the structure and development of a nineteenth-century British social collectivity focused on art and the photographic enterprise.

Noise-induced hearing loss is a serious problem common to musical environments. Current dosimetry technology is primarily designed for industrial environments and not suited for musical settings. At present, there are no government regulations that apply to the educational music environment as it relates to monitoring and prevention of hearing loss. Also, no system exists than can serve as a proactive tool in observation and reporting of sound exposure levels with the goal of hearing conservation. Newly proposed system takes a software based approach in designing a proactive dosimetry system that can assess the risk of sound noise exposure. It provides real-time feedback trough a graphical user interface that is capable of database storage for further study.

The interjection of a new and dynamically different reading of Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is imperative, if scholars want to clearly see many of the hidden facets of the novel that have gone unexamined because of out-dated scholarship. Ian Watt’s assumption that Sterne “would probably have been the supreme figure among eighteenth-century novelists” (291) if he had not tried to be so odd, and the conclusion that he draws, that “Tristram Shandy is not so much a novel as a parody of a novel” (291), is incorrect. Throughout the thesis, I argue that Sterne was not burlesquing other novelists, but instead, was engaging with themes that are now being examined by postmodern theories of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean François Lyotard: themes like the impenetrability of identity (“Don’t puzzle me” (TS 7.33.633)), the insufficiency of language (“Well might Locke write a chapter upon the imperfections of words” (5.6.429)), and the unavailability of permanence (“Time wastes too fast” (9.8.754)). I actively engage with their theories to deconstruct unexamined themes inside Tristram Shandy, and illuminate postmodern elements inside the novel. However, I do not argue that Tristram Shandy is postmodern. Instead, I argue that if the reader examines the novel outside …

This study evaluated the effects of public postings on energy conservation behavior at a public university, using a multiple baseline design across three settings; bathrooms break rooms, and conference rooms. The behavior of building occupants was recorded to assess the frequency at which those individuals would turn lights off upon exiting an unoccupied room. The independent variables implemented by experimenters (light-switch plate stickers and laminated signs) had little to no effects on cumulative instances of lights turned off however, the installation of motion sensor lights produced better results. Across all conditions, lights were turned off most frequently in conference rooms (65% of observations) followed by break rooms (9% of observations), and bathrooms (3% of observations).

Due to the increasing healthcare costs and reduced length of hospital stay it is becoming increasingly important to identify individuals who are ‘at risk’ of experiencing long-term health issues. The purpose of the study was to: (1) determine if resilience, self efficacy and depression changed from inpatient to 3-month follow up; (2) examine the relationship between resilience, self efficacy, depression, and quality of life (social roles/activity limitations) at inpatient and 3-month follow up; and (3) identify if resilience at inpatient is related to change scores in selfefficacy and depression at 3-month follow up. Results from the paired sample t-test indicated that participants did not experience a significant change from inpatient to 3-month follow up in resilience or self-efficacy, but a significant decrease in depression was observed. Findings also indicated significant correlations between resilience, self-efficacy, and depression during inpatient stay and resilience, self-efficacy, depression, and quality of life at 3-month follow up. However, there was no relationship found between resilience and change scores in self-efficacy and depression. Future resilience research should continue to identify the variables that are most strongly related to resilience so effective interventions can be developed that improve rehabilitation outcomes, decrease secondary and chronic conditions as well as …

Recent studies have begun to redefine the idea of accuracy in second language acquisition to include not only grammatical correctness, but also native-like selection. This is an exploratory study aimed at identifying areas of nonnative-like selection of adverbs, such as sentence position, semantic category preferences, frequency of use and breadth of word choice. Using corpus-linguistic methods it compares the writing of nonnative English speakers at an intermediate and advanced level to both American college students’ writing and published academic writing. It also conducts in-depth case studies of three of the most commonly used adverbs. It finds that while advanced students are grammatically accurate, there are still several ways in which their use of adverbs differs from that of native speakers.

This study examines race differences and the relationship between religiosity/ spirituality and social support on quality of life (QOL) among people living with HIV/AIDS in Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX. The data were obtained from the Project VOICES research study conducted by the Center of Psychosocial Health Research at University of North Texas in 2003. This study explores the hypotheses that religiosity/spirituality and social support positively influences quality of life among people living with HIV/AIDS. The current study uses a diverse, gender-balanced sample consisting of African Americans (n = 156), aged 20-68, 47% male, 52% female and 1% transgendered) and Non-African Americans (n = 131), aged 19-65, 50% male, 46% female and 3% transgendered) (Caucasian, Latino, & others) to evaluate the relationship among variables of interest. Multiple regression analyses revealed that social support was a significant factor explaining quality of life (QOL) for African Americans when controlling for medical variables but did not for non-African Americans. Religiosity/spirituality was not found to be significant in this study. The implications of the findings are discussed.

The present experiment compared two methods of training a simple arm position using auditory feedback: capture and search. The participants were four right-handed female college students. During capture, auditory feedback was delivered by the experimenter after the participant moved along a single axis into the target position. During search, auditory feedback was produced by the computer after the participant left clicked a mouse inside the target location. The results of a multi-element design showed that participants performed more accurately during capture training than search training. Pre-training and post-training probes, during which no auditory feedback was provided, showed similar fluctuations in accuracy across probe types. A retention check, performed seven days after the final training session, showed higher accuracy scores for search than capture, across all four participants. These findings suggest that TAGteach should incorporate an approach similar to search training to improve training outcomes.

This analysis of faunal remains from Goodman Point Pueblo (5MT604), a large village occupied just before the ancestral Puebloans permanently left southwestern Colorado at the end of the thirteenth century, explores the effect of dietary stress during abandonment in the Four Corners region. As archaeologists, we interpret what these former cultures were like and what resources they used through what they left behind. By specifically looking at faunal remains, or remains from food resources, environmental change and dietary stress can be assessed. Identifications of taxa identified at Goodman Point are made explicit via a systematic paleontology. This is followed by site-level taxonomic abundances and spatial analysis. Then, effects of technological innovations, environmental change, and sample quality are examined as alternate explanations of shifts in foraging efficiency, particularly related to animal hunting. Analyzing why and if the availability of faunal resources changes over time helps to clarify why the ancestral Puebloans left southwestern Colorado.

The ground water quality of the Trinity Aquifer for wells sampled between 2000 and 2009 was examined using multivariate and spatial statistical techniques. A Kruskal-Wallis test revealed that all of the water quality parameters with the exception of nitrate vary with land use. A Spearman’s rho analysis illustrates that every water quality parameter with the exception of silica correlated with well depth. Factor analysis identified four factors contributable to hydrochemical processes, electrical conductivity, alkalinity, and the dissolution of parent rock material into the ground water. The cluster analysis generated seven clusters. A chi-squared analysis shows that Clusters 1, 2, 5, and 6 are reflective of the distribution of the entire dataset when looking specifically at land use categories. The nearest neighbor analysis revealed clustered, dispersed, and random patterns depending upon the entity being examined. The spatial autocorrelation technique used on the water quality parameters for the entire dataset identified that all of the parameters are random with the exception of pH which was found to be spatially clustered. The combination of the multivariate and spatial techniques together identified influences on the Trinity Aquifer including hydrochemical processes, agricultural activities, recharge, and land use. In addition, the techniques aided in identifying areas …

Psychologists interested in the study of language find that people are faster at making decisions about words that are related than they are at making decisions about words that are not related – an effect called semantic priming. This phenomenon has largely only been document in laboratory settings using natural languages as contest and real words as stimuli. The current study explores the relation between the semantic priming effect and a laboratory procedure designed to give rise to performances that can be described as linguistic. Six adult participants learned to partition a collection of eight stimuli into two sets of four stimuli. Following this, the subjects showed the semantic priming effect within a set of stimuli but not across sets. These data suggest that it may be possible to study linguistic phenomenon in laboratory-based procedures allowing better control and the ability to ask very precise questions about linguistic functioning.

Brain injury (i.e., traumatic brain injury, stroke) is a considerable public health issue due to complicated outcomes of the injury, increasing incidence, and high costs linked with medical treatment. Rehabilitation centers are challenged to help individuals manage the resultant associated conditions and prevent secondary and chronic conditions. Research has shown that health promotion programs (HPP) that incorporate education about physical activity (PA) are one mode of rehabilitation that can improve the health of individuals with disabilities. However, PA is not included in the rehabilitation program for individuals with a brain injury, indicating a gap in the services provided. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to create and implement a physical activity centered education (PACE) program within an outpatient rehabilitation program. PACE consisted of an 8-week (16 session) program which aimed to (1) increase PA self-efficacy, (2) increase intention to change PA behaviors, (3) increase amount of PA completed regularly, and (4) promote positive rehabilitation outcomes. Based on previous research it was hypothesized that participation in PACE would result in (1) increased PA self-efficacy, (2) forward progression in intention to change PA behaviors, (3) increased amount of PA completed, and (4) improved rehabilitation outcomes (i.e., abilities, adjustment, participation). The PACE …

Fluidization of biomass particles is an important process in the gasification, pyrolysis and combustion in order to extract energy from biomass. Studies on the fluidization of biomass particles (corn cob and walnut shell), inert particles (sand, glass bead, and alumina), which are added to facilitate fluidization of biomass, and biomass/sand mixture were performed. Experiments were carried out in a 14.5 cm internal diameter cold flow fluidization bed to determine minimum fluidization velocities with air as fluidizing medium. On the of basis of experimental data from both present work and those found in the literature, new correlations were developed to predict minimum fluidization velocity for inert particles as well as biomass particles. It was found that the proposed correlations satisfactorily predict minimum fluidization velocities and was in well agreement with experimental data. Furthermore, effect of weight percentage of biomass in the biomass/sand mixtures was studied. The weight fraction of biomass particles in the mixture was chosen in the range of 0 ~ 100 wt. %. The results show that minimum fluidization velocity of the mixtures increases with an increase in biomass content. Using the present experimental data, a new correlation was developed in terms of mass ratio for predicting values of …

Gentrification applies not only to the largest and oldest cities; it is a multi-scalar phenomenon playing out in smaller and less prominent settings as well. This study examines temporal changes in property values, demographic characteristics, and types of businesses in the central Oklahoma City area. A major urban revitalization project which began in 1993 created strong gentrification characteristics near the renewal's epicenter, the Bricktown entertainment district. Data suggest that several specific neighborhoods in the surrounding area exhibited rising property values, improving educational attainment rates, decreasing household sizes, and a shift toward cosmopolitan retail activity. While it is evident that Bricktown has been transformed, the socio-economic traits of surrounding neighborhoods have been altered by the ripple effects of urban renewal.

The thesis deals with the design and implementation of broadband and narrowband antennas and their applications in practical environment. In this thesis, a new concept for designing the UWB antenna is proposed based on the CRLH metamaterials and this UWB antenna covers a frequency range from 2.45 GHz to 11.6 GHz. Based on the design of the UWB antenna, another antenna is developed that can cover a very wide bandwidth i.e from 0.66 GHz to 120 GHz. This antenna can not only be used for UWB applications but also for other communication systems working below the UWB spectrum such as GSM, GPS, PCS and Bluetooth. The proposed antenna covering the bandwidth from 0.66 GHz to 120 GHz is by far the largest bandwidth antenna developed based on metamaterials. Wide band antennas are not preferred for sensing purpose as it is difficult to differentiate the received signals. A multiband antenna which can be used as a strain sensor for structural health monitoring is proposed. The idea is to correlate the strain applied along the length or width with the multiple resonant frequencies. This gives the advantage of detecting the strain applied along any direction (either length or width), thus increasing the …