In recent years, a large part of the erhu's repertoire has been arranged for performance on the violin and vice versa. Given the difficulties involved in transcribing the music of plucked or woodwind instruments for the violin, the erhu has been the most popular choice for transcribing Chinese music for the violin. However, the erhu and violin are radically dissimilar instruments based on different principles. Pipa music is an essential part of traditional Chinese music from as early as 202 BCE, and the instrument's repertoire represents a large portion of East Asian music aesthetics, and this context should be considered to successfully transcribe pipa music for violin. This dissertation talks briefly about Chinese music history and its categories and also focuses on the history and development of the pipa as well as its repertoire categories to provide context for the following musical examples. I use existing transcription examples from different categories of pipa music as an avenue to discuss how to transcribe pipa music for the violin. Even though the violin has some limitations for use as a plucked instrument, the instrument can still make use of several different kinds of techniques in order to play the music in a …

The purpose of this study was to specify and test a model detailing (a) gender, (b) previous elective music experience, (c) school, (d) music self-concept, and (e) music values as predictors of music enrollment and the initial juncture of school-sponsored elective music participation. In the event that a model with adequate fit was retained, a further purpose of this study was to calculate the direct, indirect, and total effects of each predictor, thereby determining each predictor's relative contribution towards explaining variance in elective music enrollment. Participants included fifth-grade students (N = 148) from two elementary schools. Data were gathered via administration of the Motivators of Elective Music Participation Questionnaire, and by accessing middle school elective enrollment records. The proposed expectancy-value model of elective music participation demonstrated excellent fit and was retained for interpretation. Overall, the model accounted for 34.4% of the variance in elective music participation. The greatest total predictor of elective music participation was previous elective music experience, followed closely by music values. Music self-concept, gender, and school played negligible roles in predicting whether students opted in or out of sixth-grade music electives.

Gender and sexual minorities (GSM) experience considerably worse health outcomes than heterosexual and cisgender people, yet no comprehensive understanding of GSM health exists due to a dearth of research. GSM leaders in Dallas expressed need for a community needs assessment of GSM health. In response to this call, the Center for Psychosocial Health Research conducted a needs assessment of gender and sexual minority health in Dallas (35 interviews, 6 focus groups). Competency was one area highlighted and shared across existing research. Thus, the current study explored how competency impacts gender and sexual minorities' experience of health care in Dallas. We utilized a consensual qualitative research approach to analyze competency-related contents. The meaning and implications of emerging core ideas were explored. These findings were also used to develop a survey instrument.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death for people of most ethnicities on a global scale, and countless research efforts on the pathology of CVD has been well-characterized over the years. However, advancement in modern technologies, such as nanotechnology, has generated environmental and occupational health concerns within the scientific community. Current investigation of nanotoxicity calls into question the negative effects nanomaterials may invoke from their environmental, commercial, and therapeutic usage. As a result, further research is needed to investigate and characterize the toxicological implications associated with nanomaterial-exposure and CVD. We investigated the toxicity of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) and titanium dioxide (TiO2), which are two prominently used nanomaterials that have been previously linked to upregulation of inflammatory and atherogenic factors. However, the mechanistic pathways involved in these nanomaterials mediating detrimental effects on the heart and/or coronary vasculature have not yet been fully determined. Thus, we utilized two different routes of exposure in rodent models to assess alterations in proinflammatory and proatherogenic signaling pathways, which are represented in contrast throughout the dissertation. In our MWCNT study, we used C57Bl/6 mice exposed to MWCNTs (1 mg/m3) or filtered air (FA-Controls), via inhalation, for 6 hr/d for 14d. Conversely, intravenous TiO2 …

There is an extensive amount of research on academic success and career development, but most of the literature has focused on the process of White participants. While some of the studies have examined samples from ethnic minority populations, the majority of studies use these populations as comparison groups, studying between-group differences as opposed to within-group differences. The literature is especially lacking in the area Latino academic success and career development. The current study examined how family and culture, specifically socioeconomic status, acculturation, and the quality of the parent-emerging adult relationship, influence the academic success and career development of Latino emerging adults. Eighty-three Latino undergraduate students ages 18 – 24 were recruited for participation in this study. Results indicated that valuing the role of work (career salience) significantly predicted the maturity and positivity of attitudes toward work (career maturity) in Latino emerging adults. Additionally, while family demographic and cultural variables did not seem to have a significant impact on academic success and career development, first-generation college student status, career salience, and conflict in the parent-emerging adult relationship lent some insight into the variation of levels of career maturity in a Latino sample. Furthermore, first-generation student status also impacted the relationship between …

Horizontal gene transfer enables acquisition and dissemination of novel traits including antibiotic resistance and virulence among bacteria. Frequently such traits are gained through the acquisition of clusters of functionally related genes, often referred to as genomic islands (GIs). Quantifying horizontal flow of GIs and assessing their contributions to the emergence and evolution of novel metabolic traits in bacterial organisms are central to understanding the evolution of bacteria in general and the evolution of pathogenicity and antibiotic resistance in particular, a focus of this dissertation study. Methods for GI detection have also evolved with advances in sequencing and bioinformatics, however, comprehensive assessment of these methods has been lacking. This motivated us to assess the performance of current methods for identifying islands on broad datasets of well-characterized bacterial genomes and synthetic genomes, and leverage this information to develop a novel approach that circumvents the limitations of the current state-of-the-art in GI detection. The main findings from our assessment studies were 1) the methods have complementary strengths, 2) a gene-clustering method utilizing codon usage bias as the discriminant criterion, namely, JS-CB, is most efficient in localizing genomic islands, specifically the well-studied SCCmec resistance island in methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) genomes, and 3) …

Upward Bound is a federally funded program designed to help low-income and first-generation high school students become college graduates by providing them with academic enrichment, financial aid information, and relevant educational experiences. Many Upward Bound programs throughout the country include a 6-week summer program when participants stay in residence halls on a university campus. The Upward Bound program at the University of North Texas is one such program. The goals of this research project are to understand how the residential component of the summer program affects the experience of participants in Upward Bound and the possible benefits it may have towards meeting the overall goals of the program. Participant observation during the 2016 UNT Upward Bound summer program and interviews with participants, RAs, program alumni, and organizational leaders uncovered the ways in which the residential component benefits and enriches the experience of participation in Upward Bound.

Disabled veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) exist in a category separate from many civilians and soldiers. Their experiences land them in a category distinctly marked as atypical. The standard protocol to manage this atypical subject position is prescription drugs- a mark of the ill. In a distorted, post-war American society, what happens when veterans with PTSD refuse to be labeled as ‘sick,' ‘different,' or even ‘disabled'? This thesis explores the actions and intricacies of a community of veterans who advocate for medical cannabis to manage associated symptoms of PTSD. This group of veterans campaigns for individuality, both in medical treatment and in personal experience. Collaboratively, their experiential evidence indicates that none can be treated in the same fashion. After a year of participant observation and field work, it becomes apparent that their work both individualizes and unifies the veterans. This thesis details their experiences and the results of their activist campaign to demarcate themselves.

Web archiving is the practice of preserving websites as a historical record. It is a technologically-challenging endeavor that has as its goal the creation of a high-quality archived website that looks and behaves exactly like the original website. Despite the importance of the notion of quality, comprehensive definitions of Information Quality (IQ) in a web archive have yet to be developed. Currently, the field has no single, comprehensive theory that describes what is a high-quality or low-quality archived website. Furthermore, most of the research that has been conducted on web archives has been system-centered and not user-centered, leading to a dearth of information on how humans perceive web archives. This dissertation seeks to remedy this problem by presenting a user-centered grounded theory of IQ for web archives. It answers two research questions: 1) What is the definition of information quality (IQ) for web archives? and 2) How can IQ in a web archive be measured? The theory presented is grounded on data obtained from users of the Internet Archive's Archive-It system, the largest web-archiving subscription service in the United States. Also presented are mathematical definitions for each dimension of IQ, which can then be applied to measure the quality of …

The purpose of this study was to understand the process of music teacher large-scale conference professional development (PD) implementation (i.e., the integration of conference-derived learnings into classroom practice). The context of this investigation was two national music conferences, the Midwest Clinic and the National Association for Music Education National In-Service Conference, and one state music conference, the Texas Music Educators Association Clinic/Convention. Using purposive maximum variation sampling, active music teachers (n = 32) who each attended one of these conferences were recruited. Data collection occurred in a series of three participant interview phases, staggered according to which conference participants attended and when each conference was held. Twenty-eight participants were interviewed twice, and four participants were interviewed once, yielding a total of 60 interview transcripts, which were then openly, axially, and selectively coded in accordance to grounded theory method. The principal finding, the cycle of music teacher large scale conference professional development implementation (C-MTPDI), revealed an implementation process in three phases. First, the consideration phase (before/during conference) entailed needs assessment, direct engagement, change articulation, and, for some participants, deterrent factors/contingencies. Second, the realization phase (immediate post-conference) included translation, integration, and recalibration. Third, and finally, the decision phase (3-5 weeks post-conference) included …

For a dynamical system on a metric space a shrinking-target set consists of those points whose orbit hit a given ball of shrinking radius infinitely often. Historically such sets originate in Diophantine approximation, in which case they describe the set of well-approximable numbers. One aspect of such sets that is often studied is their Hausdorff dimension. We will show that an analogue of Bowen's dimension formula holds for such sets when they are generated by conformal non-autonomous iterated function systems satisfying some natural assumptions.

The primary focus of the current study was to identify health disparities between sexual minority subgroups by examining differences of health indicators in lesbians, gay men, and bisexual individuals, and compare these to their heterosexual counterparts. Data was drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), and variables examined in sexual minorities were related to health care access and utilization, risky health behaviors, and overall disease prevalence and outcomes. Findings suggest there are still some current health disparities in terms of insurance coverage, access to medical care, substance use, and prevalence of certain health conditions. However, a trend analysis conducted to examine three NHANES panels, suggests a mild improvement in some of these areas. Further findings, discussion, limitations of the study, current implications, and future directions are addressed.

In this study, the thermal properties of low dimensional materials such as graphene and boron nitride nanotube were investigated. As one of important heat transfer characteristics, interfacial thermal resistance (ITR) between graphene and Cu film was estimated by both experiment and simulation. In order to characterize ITR, the micropipette sensing technique was utilized to measure the temperature profile of suspended and supported graphene on Cu substrate that is subjected to continuous wave laser as a point source heating. By measuring the temperature of suspended graphene, the intrinsic thermal conductivity of suspended graphene was measured and it was used for estimating interfacial thermal resistance between graphene and Cu film. For simulation, a finite element method and a multiparameter fitting technique were employed to find the best fitting parameters. A temperature profile on a supported graphene on Cu was extracted by a finite element method using COMSOL Multiphysics. Then, a multiparameter fitting method using MATLAB software was used to find the best fitting parameters and ITR by comparing experimentally measured temperature profile with simulation one. In order to understand thermal transport between graphene and Cu substrate with different interface distances, the phonon density of states at the interface between graphene and Cu …

Her Name Was is an examination of the oppression of transgender people in a society that is built on the nominalization of cisgender people, those who gender matchers their sex assigned at birth, and how this oppression lends itself to violence. In the summer of 2015, the body of Shade Schuler, an African American transgender woman, was found in a field outside of Dallas, Texas. Ms. Shade is part of an alarming epidemic of escalating levels of targeted violence against the transgender community. This documentary pulls back the curtain as it captures the feelings and struggles of the transgender community as they attempt to navigate and survive in a cis dominating society.

Molecular engineering of donor-acceptor dyads and multimodular systems to control the yield and lifetime of charge separation is one of the key goals of artificial photosynthesis for harvesting sustainably solar energy. The design of the donor-acceptor systems mimic a part of green plants and bacterial photosynthetic processes. The photochemical events in natural photosynthesis involve the capturing and funneling of solar energy by a group of well-organized chromophores referred to as an ‘antenna' system causing an electron transfer into the ‘reaction center,' where an electron transfer processes occur resulting a long-lived charge separated state. Over the last two to three decades, many efforts have been directed by the scientific community designing of multi-modular systems that are capable of capturing most of the useful sunlight and generating charge separated states of prolonged lifetimes with adequate amounts of energy. In this dissertation, we report on the design and synthesis of donor–acceptor conjugates with the goal of modulating the yield and lifetime of their charge separated states and hence, improving the conversion of light energy into chemical potential. In simple donor-acceptor systems, generally, the energy and electron transfer events originate from the singlet excited state of the donor or acceptor and can store the …

The Hoboken War Bride is a work of historical fiction set in Hoboken, New Jersey during World War II. A young soldier named Daniel and an aspiring actress named Hildy marry days after meeting, though the marriage is doomed to fail. This young couple is not compatible. Daniel ships out to basic training the day after their hasty marriage, leaving Hildy behind with his family, the Anellos, who she quickly becomes attached to. Hildy is exposed to family in a way she had never lived with her own, embracing them even though she doubts she'll ever have a future with Daniel. When Daniel returns after the end of the war, the young couple try to make their marriage work, but it fails almost immediately. Both Hildy and Daniel struggle to pick themselves up after their divorce, finding themselves making choices they never thought they would when they were younger.

The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between adult attachment style, humility, and relationship satisfaction in college student couples. Attachment style--given its significant role in predicting how individuals feel, think, and behave in relationships--was expected to be an important predictor of humility, although this possibility has rarely been studied empirically. The current study found that: (a) attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance were significant, negative predictors of total humility, (b) attachment anxiety (but not attachment avoidance) was a significant, negative predictor of both intrapersonal and interpersonal humility, (c) a romantic partner's attachment avoidance (but not attachment anxiety) was a significant, negative predictor of a target person's relationship satisfaction, and (d) a romantic partner's perceived level of humility was a significant, positive predictor of a target person's relationship satisfaction.

Superhydrophobic coatings (SHC) with excellent self-cleaning and corrosion resistance property is developed on magnetite coated AISI SAE 1020 steel by using a simple immersion method. Roughness measurement, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), contact angle measurement (CAM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), potentiodynamic polarization test, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and qualitative characterization of self-cleaning behavior, antifouling property and durability of the coatings are assessed. A water contact angle as high as 152o on the coated surface with excellent self-cleaning and resistivity to corrosion and good longevity in atmospheric air is obtained. Self-cleaning test results prove that these surfaces can find applications in large scale production of engineering materials. Potentiodynamic polarization tests and EIS tests confirm that the superhydrophobic low carbon steel surfaces have better resistance to corrosion compared to bare steel and magnetite coated steel in 3.5% NaCl solution. But the longevity of the coated steel surfaces in 3.5% salt solution is limited, which is revealed by the immersion durability test. However, hydrophobic coatings (HC) have better stability in normal tap water, and it can stay unharmed up to 15 days. Finally, hydrophobic coatings on low carbon steel surface retains hydrophobic …

The purpose of this study determined if a significant relationship existed between the amount of professional development that teachers participated in and the impact on the classroom instruction that followed. The goal was to study the effect that this had on student achievement in the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) for English 1 and Algebra 1 for students at a large north Texas high school. Testing years for the study included the school years 2013-14, 2014-15, and 2015-16. Additional variables included the work in three areas of teacher professional development over the three-year period. Fourteen teachers, in two subjects, were studied in their implementation of classroom instruction. Particular attention was given to the instructional changes, and the number of hours of professional development in the areas of instruction, technology, and differentiation. Teachers were given opportunities to participate in 18 hours of professional development in all three areas in each of the three years. Teachers were then asked to incorporate the work that they completed each year into their day to day classroom instruction. The goal of the implementation of the professional development in addition to the curricular specifics regarding instruction of state standards was expected to produce …

The present study sought to more rigourously explore outcomes of psychological well-being immediately following a psychotherapeutic yoga class. Specifically, the study hypothesized improvements in state anxiety and subjective well-being as well as an observable relationship between state and trait mindfulness following a yoga intervention, all while controlling for differences between yoga instructors, prior yoga experience, and participant endorsements of psychological symptoms. Previous yoga experience was not found to be a significant factor in any of the tested hypotheses. Findings revealed that psychotherapeutic yoga decreased anxiety and increased subjective well-being, even after controlling for therapist variability, prior yoga experience, and client diagnosis. Results also indicate differential impacts on decreased anxiety and increased subjective well-being by class instructor. This is the first study to examine outcomes of an ongoing yoga based-practices in the naturalistic setting of an outpatient counseling center while rigorously controlling for confounding factors (e.g. therapist variability). Methodological and statistical limitations are discussed in depth, and future directions to improve on this study and clarify the present findings are emphasized.

It is well established that continual consumption of a diet high in fat leads to the development of chronic conditions such as obesity, cardio metabolic syndrome, and atherosclerosis that are associated with high incidence of cardiovascular disease. Recent studies have identified endotoxin-derived inflammation as a major diving force for the development of these conditions. Our laboratory has recently demonstrated that consumption of a single high-fat meal results in acute postprandial endotoxemia and alters monocyte cell surface adhesion molecule expression and scavenger receptor CD36 expression. These collective projects describe our efforts to understand the physiological significance of these postprandial changes and if supplementation with spore-based probiotics are able to provide any form of protection against these responses that are associated with the onset of atherogenesis.

In the operations management research, the inconsistent use of the same term for different concepts and the use of the similar concepts for different constructs potentially causes theoretical and statistical problems. This research addresses the importance of construct definitions and specification methodologically within the context of quality and sustainability management. It involves three essays using multiple quantitative methods such as partial least squares structural equation modeling and multiple regression in different consumer decision-making models in the automobile industry. In the first two essays, a comprehensive literature review results in definition and contextualization of the quality and sustainability constructs as applied to operations management and marketing research. The relationships of these constructs with consumer behavior are empirically tested. Building upon the first two essays, the third essay addresses the methodological issues on formative and reflective measurements by summarizing a procedure of validating formative measurements. The quality construct was used to illustrate the methodology. This research contributes to the literature, theory, and practices in the area of quality and sustainability management.

We prove the existence and nonexistence of solutions for the semilinear problem ∆u + K(r)f(u) = 0 with various boundary conditions on the exterior of the ball in R^N such that lim r→∞u(r) = 0. Here f : R → R is an odd locally lipschitz non-linear function such that there exists a β > 0 with f < 0 on (0, β), f > 0 on (β, ∞), and K(r) \equiv r^−α for some α > 0.

The purpose of this study was to explore characteristics that influence Latino male students' enrollment in four-year colleges. This study utilized a mixed-methods approach and acquired information specifically pertaining to the high school Latino male population. Participants for the study included Latino male high school students in Grades 9-12, parents of Latino male high school students in Grades 9-12, and counselors of high school students in Grades 9-12. The study was conducted across two campuses. Data for student and parent participants were obtained through an online survey questionnaire and counselor data was obtained through face-to-face semi-structured interviews. The results of this study reveal that there are influential characteristics that contribute to Latino males' potential enrollment in college. Of the data obtained from student participants, 70.2% of participants on Campus 1 and 90.5% of participants on Campus 2 planned on attending college. Responses from parent surveys found that 85.8% of parents had expectations for their Latino male student to attend college. Through the semi-structured focus group interviews, it was found that the school district and campuses in which the study was conducted had several procedures or processes in place to positively encourage Latino male student enrollment in four-year colleges. Results of …