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Resource Intensification of Small Game Use at Goodman Point, Southwestern Colorado (open access)

Resource Intensification of Small Game Use at Goodman Point, Southwestern Colorado

This analysis of faunal remains from eleven archaeological sites in the northern San Juan region, extensively occupied by the Ancestral Pueblo people until they leave the region by AD 1300, explores the effects of resource intensification of small wild and domestic resources leading up to this regional depopulation. By examining multiple lines of evidence, in addition to faunal abundance, causal factors are identified to address changes in abundances through time. In particular, age- and sex-based mortality are examined for lagomorphs (jackrabbits and cottontails) and domesticated turkey, respectively, to test hypotheses generated using the prey and patch choice models. Analyses of these resources follow a systematic paleontology which provides explicit identifications made of five sites from a large study area, Goodman Point Pueblo Unit. These data are integrated with those from large village sites from the encompassing central Mesa Verde region. The results of both analyses help clarify why the Ancestral Pueblo people left southwestern Colorado. During the final twenty-year occupation period, the results of this study support a shift from reliance on turkey husbandry to intense exploitation of locally available garden resources (i.e. cottontails).
Date: December 2014
Creator: Ellyson, Laura Jean
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Resource Utilization of Salespeople and Prospecting Performance (open access)

Resource Utilization of Salespeople and Prospecting Performance

Every day, salespeople span boundaries, coordinate internal and external expertise, leverage social capital, mobilize the tangible and intangible resources of their firm, and try to create value for all stakeholders. Recognizing the important roles of salespeople, Evans et al. (2012) and Lassk et al. (2012) call for more research on the usage of skills, knowledge, people, strategies, expertise, and other resources of salespeople to produce the desired outcomes. Responding to their calls, this study specifically focuses on how salespeople utilize their available and finite resources across four types of customers (new customers, short term customers, long term customers, and win-back customers) to identify and qualify new sales opportunities during the prospecting stage. The dissertation focuses on seven types of resources (capturing both internal and firm related resources) available for salespeople: (1) firm tangible, (2) firm intangible, (3) firm market based, (4) present resources, (5) skills, (6) knowledge, and (7) accumulated successes. The study further explores the moderating roles of organizational identification, competitive intensity, and customer dependence on the relationship between resources utilized and performance during the prospecting stage. The resource utilization scale is developed and tested for robustness. Next, using a final dataset of 346 responses from salespeople, the results …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Nguyen, Thuy D.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Southwest Retort, Volume 67, Number 4, December 2014 (open access)

Southwest Retort, Volume 67, Number 4, December 2014

This publication of the Dallas-Fort Worth Section of the American Chemical Society includes information about research, prominent scientist, organizational business, and various other stories of interest to the community.
Date: December 2014
Creator: American Chemical Society. Dallas/Fort Worth Section.
Object Type: Journal/Magazine/Newsletter
System: The UNT Digital Library
Rhythmic Consonance and Dissonance in Eckhard Kopetzki’s Works for Solo Percussion: Topf-tanz and Canned Heat (open access)

Rhythmic Consonance and Dissonance in Eckhard Kopetzki’s Works for Solo Percussion: Topf-tanz and Canned Heat

This study examines the compositional devices Eckhard Kopetzki used to create consonance and dissonance throughout his two works for solo percussion, Topf-Tanz and Canned Heat. By manipulating meter, ostinato, syncopation, polyrhythm, note values and overlapping figures, Kopetzki creates high levels of musical tension and release that shape phrase structure and large-scale form. After a discussion of rhythmic consonance and dissonance, and specific rhythmic devices, both works are considered in detail, illuminating the composer’s compositional language. Topf-Tanz is an exploration of contrasting ideas: the rhythmic and the lyrical, the call and the response, the loud and the soft. It is manifested first in the opposition of antecedent and consequent phrases and second in the overlapping of contrasting metric ideas, which creates prolonged rhythmic dissonance. Canned Heat, on the other hand, is composed through a process of continuing melodic variation. Throughout the piece, melodic motives are prolonged and abridged, creating both delay and acceleration to cadential figures. In contrast to these melodic ideas, each phrase is concluded with stark and syncopated rhythmic punctuations. Topf-Tanz and Canned Heat share Kopetzki’s creation of rhythmic consonance and dissonance. Most notably is the overlapping of contrasting metric ideas between the two hands, and highlighting this contrast …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Hampton, Walter Ellis
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Russian Taffanel: the Significance of Vladimir Tsybin and His Concert Allegro No3 (open access)

The Russian Taffanel: the Significance of Vladimir Tsybin and His Concert Allegro No3

The purpose of this critical essay is to introduce Vladimir Nikolaevich Tsybin to English-speaking readers and flutists, specifically to demonstrate how his Russian identity informed his career, affected his posthumous legacy, and influenced his compositions. The essay is divided into three parts: an outline of his career, a discussion of the pedagogical lineage and techniques he founded, and an analysis of "Russian" elements in one exemplary composition for solo flute, his Concert Allegro No. 3.
Date: December 2014
Creator: Staneva, Inna
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Selected Operas of Isabelle Aboulker As Repertoire for the University Opera Studio (open access)

Selected Operas of Isabelle Aboulker As Repertoire for the University Opera Studio

Aboulker’s operatic works present an opportunity for opera workshop programs in the United States to perform contemporary operatic works in a foreign language, revitalizing the operatic repertoire and giving students the opportunity to prepare and perform roles without the weight and influence of significant performance history. Aboulker’s style, which has been called “effectively simple,” allows developing students to work on new French language repertoire without the burden of excessively difficult or atonal vocal lines. Aboulker’s works are tuneful and humorous and her longest operatic work lasts a mere hour and a half. These qualities also serve to mitigate the challenge presented to the student by the French language. Many of Aboulker’s works are conceived specifically to be performed with piano only, or have already been published in piano reduction. Most of her operatic works are very short or divide easily into scenes that could be performed separately where the performance of a longer work is either not feasible or not desired. All of these characteristics combine to make the operas of Isabelle Aboulker a viable repertoire option for the university opera studio.
Date: December 2014
Creator: O'Keefe, Patricia Beatrice
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Sexual Orientation and the Advanced Placement Art History Survey (open access)

Sexual Orientation and the Advanced Placement Art History Survey

This two-part study included a content analysis of an AP art history text and a survey together with interviews with AP art history teachers that embraced both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. The first phase of the study examined one of the more popular art history survey texts in the AP art history program, Gardner’s Art through the Ages, in terms of how inclusive it is in addressing issues of sexual orientation and, particularly, same-sex perspectives. In addition, the text was examined for evidence of sexual orientation ignored – particularly same-sex perspectives ignored and for heteronormative hegemonies. The second phase investigated the understandings and opinions of AP art history teachers toward the inclusion of sexual orientation and same-sex perspectives in their curriculums and classrooms. Recent recognition of gay, lesbian, and same-sex perspectives in the study of art history has challenged art educators and art historians to begin to consider opening up their curriculums and writings to include these perspectives. These ignored perspectives produce important understandings that enrich and deepen the discourse of art history. The inclusion of gay and lesbian content and same-sex perspectives to the study of AP art history, not only effectively serves the needs of AP art …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Bond, Richard P.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Silver Tantalate: a High Temperature Tribological Investigation (open access)

Silver Tantalate: a High Temperature Tribological Investigation

As technology advances, mechanical and electrical systems are subjugated to intense temperature fluctuations through their service life. Designing coatings that operate in extreme temperatures is, therefore, a continuing challenge within the tribology community. Silver tantalate was chosen for investigation at the atomic level, the physical and chemical properties that influence the thermal, mechanical, and tribological behavior for moving assemblies in high temperature tribological applications. By correlating behavior of internal physical processes to the macro tribological behavior, the tribological community will potentially gain improved predicative performance of solid lubricants in future investigations. Three different approaches were explored for the creation of such materials on Inconel substrates: (1) powders produced using a solid state which were burnished on the surface; (2) monolithic silver tantalate thin films deposited by magnetron sputtering; and, (3) an adaptive tantalum nitride/silver nanocomposite sputter-deposited coating that forms a lubricious silver tantalate oxide on its surface when operated at elevated temperatures. Dry sliding wear tests of the coatings against Si3N4 counterfaces revealed friction coefficients in the 0.06 - 0.15 range at T ~ 750 °C. Reduced friction coefficients were found in nanocomposite materials that contained primarily a AgTaO3 phase with a small amount of segregated Ag phase, as suggested …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Stone, D’Arcy S.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Smartphone-based Household Travel Survey - a Literature Review, an App, and a Pilot Survey (open access)

Smartphone-based Household Travel Survey - a Literature Review, an App, and a Pilot Survey

High precision data from household travel survey (HTS) is extremely important for the transportation research, traffic models and policy formulation. Traditional methods of data collection were imprecise because they relied on people’s memories of trip information, such as date and location, and the remainder data had to be obtained by certain supplemental tools. The traditional methods suffered from intensive labor, large time consumption, and unsatisfactory data precision. Recent research trends to employ smartphone apps to collect HTS data. In this study, there are two goals to be addressed. First, a smartphone app is developed to realize a smartphone-based method only for data collection. Second, the researcher evaluates whether this method can supply or replace the traditional tools of HTS. Based on this premise, the smartphone app, TravelSurvey, is specially developed and used for this study. TravelSurvey is currently compatible with iPhone 4 or higher and iPhone Operating System (iOS) 6 or higher, except iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 plus and iOS 8. To evaluate the feasibility, eight individuals are recruited to participate in a pilot HTS. Afterwards, seven of them are involved in a semi-structured interview. The interview is designed to collect interviewees’ feedback directly, so the interview mainly concerns …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Wang, Qian (Computer scientist)
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
South Texas Catholic (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 49, No. 11, Ed. 1, December 2014 (open access)

South Texas Catholic (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 49, No. 11, Ed. 1, December 2014

Monthly newspaper from Corpus Christi, Texas published by the Diocese of Corpus Christi that includes news of interest to Diocese members along with advertising.
Date: December 2014
Creator: Cardenas, Alfredo E.
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
Sputtering of Bi and Preferential Sputtering of an Inhomogeneous Alloy (open access)

Sputtering of Bi and Preferential Sputtering of an Inhomogeneous Alloy

Angular distributions and total yields of atoms sputtered from bismuth targets by normally incident 10 keV -50 keV Ne+ and Ar+ ions have been measured both experimentally and by computer simulation. Polycrystalline Bi targets were used for experimental measurements. The sputtered atoms were collected on high purity aluminum foils under ultra-high vacuum conditions, and were subsequently analyzed using Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy. The Monte-Carlo based SRIM code was employed to simulate angular distributions of sputtered Bi atoms and total sputtering yields of Bi to compare with experiment. The measured sputtering yields were found to increase with increasing projectile energy for normally incident 10 keV - 50 keV Ne+ and Ar+ ions. The shapes of the angular distributions of sputtered Bi atoms demonstrated good agreement between experiment and simulation in the present study. The measured and simulated angular distributions of sputtered Bi exhibited an over-cosine tendency. The measured value of the degree of this over-cosine nature was observed to increase with increasing incident Ne+ ion energy, but was not strongly dependent on incident Ar+ ion energy. The differential angular sputtering yield and partial sputtering yields due to Ar ion bombardment of an inhomogeneous liquid Bi:Ga alloy have been investigated, both experimentally and …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Deoli, Naresh T.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
"Stealing Dreams" and Other Stories (open access)

"Stealing Dreams" and Other Stories

The critical preface, "Learning to Break the Rules" discusses workshop rules as guidelines, as well as how and why I learned to break them. The creative portion of this thesis is made up of eight short stories: "The Many Incarnations of Blazer Chief," "Anna's Monsters," "The Pecan Tree's Daughter," "When the Seas Emptied," "The Umbrella Thief," "How to Forget," "Fracture," and "Stealing Dreams."
Date: December 2014
Creator: Matthews, Elise
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Still on the Sidelines: the Female Experience in Sports Media (open access)

Still on the Sidelines: the Female Experience in Sports Media

This qualitative study aims to analyze the lived reality of women working in sports media today. Through systematic analysis of 12 in-depth interviews, the findings of this study suggest that the adoption of technological advancements in news media and all associated outlets have created a leveling effect for women due to the demand for highly skilled individuals who can handle the digital demand of modern news production. This study suggests that longtime gender disparities in sports media are experiencing a bit of a reprieve due to the massive digital audience and the need for professionals who can deliver information quickly and efficiently and with accuracy. However, the persistent symbolic annihilation of women as well as hegemonic hiring practices that emphasize aesthetic appeal have created a difficult path for women to move off the sidelines and into roles with more creative and analytical breadth, even with a rapidly increasing demand for jobs in the media industry.
Date: December 2014
Creator: Blankenship, Sara K.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Structural, Thermal and Acoustic Performance of Polyurethane Foams for Green Buildings (open access)

Structural, Thermal and Acoustic Performance of Polyurethane Foams for Green Buildings

Decreasing the carbon footprint through use of renewable materials has environmental and societal impact. Foams are a valuable constituent in buildings by themselves or as a core in sandwich composites. Kenaf is a Southeast USA plant that provides renewable filler. The core of the kenaf is porous with a cell size in a 5-10 micrometer range. The use of kenaf core in foams represents a novel multiscalar cellular structural composite. Rigid polyurethane foams were made using free foaming expansion with kenaf core as filler with loadings of 5, 10 and 15 %. Free foaming was found to negatively affect the mechanical properties. An innovative process was developed to introduce a constraint to expansion during foaming. Two expansion ratios were examined: 40 and 60 % (decreasing expansion ratio). MicroCT and SEM analysis showed a varying structure of open and closed cell pores. The mechanical, thermal insulation, acoustic properties were measured. Pure PU foam showed improved cell size uniformity. Introducing kenaf core resulted in decreasing the PU performance in the free expansion case. This was reversed by introducing constraints. To understand the combined impact of having a mixed close cell and open cell architecture, finite element modeling was done using ANSYS. Models …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Nar, Mangesh
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Studies of Charged Particle Dynamics for Antihydrogen Synthesis (open access)

Studies of Charged Particle Dynamics for Antihydrogen Synthesis

Synthesis and capture of antihydrogen in controlled laboratory conditions will enable precise studies of neutral antimatter. The work presented deals with some of the physics pertinent to manipulating charged antiparticles in order to create neutral antimatter, and may be applicable to other scenarios of plasma confinement and charged particle interaction. The topics covered include the electrostatic confinement of a reflecting ion beam and the transverse confinement of an ion beam in a purely electrostatic configuration; the charge sign effect on the Coulomb logarithm for a two component (e.g., antihydrogen) plasma in a Penning trap as well as the collisional scattering for binary Coulomb interactions that are cut off at a distance different than the Debye length; and the formation of magnetobound positronium and protonium.
Date: December 2014
Creator: Correa, Jose Ricardo
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Surface Topography and Aesthetics of Recycled Cross-Linked Polyethylene Wire and Cable Coatings (open access)

Surface Topography and Aesthetics of Recycled Cross-Linked Polyethylene Wire and Cable Coatings

Our research focuses on re-using a waste a material, cross-linked polyethylene abbreviated XLPE, which is a widely used coating for wires. XLPE is strong and has excellent thermal properties due to its chemical structure - what leads to the significance of recycling this valuable polymer. Properties of XLPE include good resistance to heat, resistance to chemical corrosion, and high impact strength. A wire is usually composed of a metal core conductor and polymeric coating layers. One creates a new coating, including little pieces of recycled XLPE in the lower layer adjacent to the wire, and virgin XLPE only in the upper layer. Industries are often wasting materials which might be useful. Mostly, some returned or excess products could be recycled to create a new type of product or enable the original use. This method helps cleaning the waste, lowers the costs, and enhances the income of the manufacturing company. With the changing of the thickness of the outer layer, the roughness changes significantly. Moreover, different processing methods result in surfaces that look differently.
Date: December 2014
Creator: Xie, Wa
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Synthesis of Novel Organic Chromophores and Their Characterization (open access)

Synthesis of Novel Organic Chromophores and Their Characterization

Nonlinear organic liquids that exhibit two-photon absorption (TPA) function as good optical limiters for sensor protection from laser pulses. L34 (4-butyl-4'-propyl-diphenylethyne) is a liquid organic compound exhibiting nonlinear optical absorption. A thiol- derivatized analog of L34 (“thiol-L34”) was prepared to bind the molecules to the surface of gold nanoparticles. Surface binding is necessary to investigate synergy between nonlinear optical absorption of gold nanoparticles and thiol-L34. Thiol-L34 was prepared in a six-step organic synthesis starting from 3-(4-bromophenyl) propionic acid. Au nanoparticles with <15 nm diameter have been prepared and sensitized with the thiol-L34 compound for assessment of their nonlinear optical behavior. Diazolylmethenes a class of metal-coordinating dyes that are similar to dipyrrins with some substitutions of nitrogen atoms in place of carbon atoms. Modification in the framework of dipyrrinoid dyes via this replacement of nitrogen for carbon atoms may lead to compounds that serve as effective agents for bioimaging and/or photodynamic therapy. Several routes to the synthesis of di-(1,2,3)-triazolylmethenes, di-(1,2,4)-triazolylmethenes, and ditetrazolylmethenes are presented.
Date: December 2014
Creator: Pokharel, Sundari D.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Textual Analysis of News Framing in the Sri Lankan Conflict (open access)

A Textual Analysis of News Framing in the Sri Lankan Conflict

The purpose of this study is to investigate how local and foreign newspapers used the war journalism and peace journalism frames when covering the Sri Lankan civil war, and to uncover subframes specific to the conflict. The first part of the thesis provides an in- depth literature review that addresses the history of the conflict and media freedom in Sri Lanka. The newspaper articles for the textual analysis were selected from mainstream Sri Lankan and U.S newspapers: the Daily News (a state sponsored newspaper) and Daily Mirror from Sri Lanka, and the New York Times and Washington Post from the U.S. A total of 185 articles were analyzed and categorized into war journalism and peace journalism. Next, subframes specific to the Sri Lankan conflict were identified. The overall coverage is dominated by the peace journalism frame, and the strongest war journalism frame is visible in local newspaper articles. Furthermore, two subframes specific to the Sri Lanka conflict were identified: war justification subframe and humanitarian crisis subframe. In conclusion, the study reveals that in the selected newspapers, the peace journalism frame dominated the coverage of the Sri Lankan civil war. All in all, while adding to the growing scholarship of media …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Ratnam, Cheran
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Trajectories As a Unifying Cross Domain Feature for Surveillance Systems (open access)

Trajectories As a Unifying Cross Domain Feature for Surveillance Systems

Manual video analysis is apparently a tedious task. An efficient solution is of highly importance to automate the process and to assist operators. A major goal of video analysis is understanding and recognizing human activities captured by surveillance cameras, a very challenging problem; the activities can be either individual or interactional among multiple objects. It involves extraction of relevant spatial and temporal information from visual images. Most video analytics systems are constrained by specific environmental situations. Different domains may require different specific knowledge to express characteristics of interesting events. Spatial-temporal trajectories have been utilized to capture motion characteristics of activities. The focus of this dissertation is on how trajectories are utilized in assist in developing video analytic system in the context of surveillance. The research as reported in this dissertation begins real-time highway traffic monitoring and dynamic traffic pattern analysis and in the end generalize the knowledge to event and activity analysis in a broader context. The main contributions are: the use of the graph-theoretic dominant set approach to the classification of traffic trajectories; the ability to first partition the trajectory clusters using entry and exit point awareness to significantly improve the clustering effectiveness and to reduce the computational time …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Wan, Yiwen
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Uncertainty Evaluation in Large-scale Dynamical Systems: Theory and Applications (open access)

Uncertainty Evaluation in Large-scale Dynamical Systems: Theory and Applications

Significant research efforts have been devoted to large-scale dynamical systems, with the aim of understanding their complicated behaviors and managing their responses in real-time. One pivotal technological obstacle in this process is the existence of uncertainty. Although many of these large-scale dynamical systems function well in the design stage, they may easily fail when operating in realistic environment, where environmental uncertainties modulate system dynamics and complicate real-time predication and management tasks. This dissertation aims to develop systematic methodologies to evaluate the performance of large-scale dynamical systems under uncertainty, as a step toward real-time decision support. Two uncertainty evaluation approaches are pursued: the analytical approach and the effective simulation approach. The analytical approach abstracts the dynamics of original stochastic systems, and develops tractable analysis (e.g., jump-linear analysis) for the approximated systems. Despite the potential bias introduced in the approximation process, the analytical approach provides rich insights valuable for evaluating and managing the performance of large-scale dynamical systems under uncertainty. When a system’s complexity and scale are beyond tractable analysis, the effective simulation approach becomes very useful. The effective simulation approach aims to use a few smartly selected simulations to quickly evaluate a complex system’s statistical performance. This approach was originally developed …
Date: December 2014
Creator: Zhou, Yi (Software engineer)
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Under the Influence of Marc Blitzstein: Examining Leonard J Lehrman’s Uses of Serial Techniques for Dramatic Purposes in Karla (open access)

Under the Influence of Marc Blitzstein: Examining Leonard J Lehrman’s Uses of Serial Techniques for Dramatic Purposes in Karla

American composer, author and conductor Leonard J. Lehrman (b. 1949) has spent a majority of his lifetime devoted to the scholarship on the music of Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964). Lehrman completed Blitzstein’s Idiots First in 1973, and finished his own one-act opera Karla in 1974. In an effort to honor Blitzstein, Lehrman included Karla along with Idiots First to begin the set of one-act operas to be titled Tales of Malamud. Lehrman coined the term “selective serialism” in reference to Blitzstein’s use of serial techniques representing something associated with death or something diabolical. Lehrman applies a similar technique in that he uses serialism to reference the presence of a handwritten notes that are tied to the dramatic context of the opera. This study examines Lehrman's use of serialism in Karla as it was directly influenced by Blitzstein’s use of serialism in Idiots First.
Date: December 2014
Creator: Blackwood, Jeremy B
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Using Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicators to Predict High School Student Performance in an Educational Video Game (open access)

Using Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicators to Predict High School Student Performance in an Educational Video Game

Educational video games have proven a useful tool for educators, offering experiential pedagogy in a variety of fields. Predicting the success of a video game in engaging students and motivating them to work with relevant material is problematic. One approach was attempted through administering the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator to 42 high school students and observing subsequent voluntary performance on a popular mathematics video game throughout one semester. Game dynamics matching certain personality elements of the students generally correlated between learning preferences in the classroom and in the online gaming environment. Students who enjoyed group dynamics in classroom settings likewise indicated enthusiasm for the group dynamics in game play. Those students preferring structured learning environments may prefer less open ended virtual learning gaming environments. Since the game incorporated multiple choice questions and rewarded correct choices made quickly, those students with personality styles in which questions are carefully considered before answering suffered in points scored compared to those used to making fast intuitive choices in exam settings. Additional studies, including those with larger populations and different types of video games, are needed for more definite conclusions.
Date: December 2014
Creator: Rice, John W., 1967-
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Vickery Meadow Community Needs Assessment (open access)

Vickery Meadow Community Needs Assessment

This study represents a community needs assessment conducted for Trans.lation Vickery Meadow, a community-based organization in a North Dallas community, Vickery Meadow. Vickery Meadow is a community where refugee resettlement agencies place incoming clients, and therefore, there is a focus on immigrants and refugees in this study. Using theoretical conceptions of development, immigration policy, and the refugee resettlement process, this project measured residential perceptions of Vickery Meadow, the operations of Trans.lation Vickery Meadow, and overall community needs. Also included are perceptions of Trans.lation Vickery Meadow members concerning community needs and the operations of Trans.lation. Recommendations are made based upon research and conclusions from fieldwork.
Date: December 2014
Creator: Jay, Sarah, 1986-
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Violetting Through August’s End (Or the Sunset in Water, the Carillon-chime in Square): an Original Chamber Opera and a Critical Essay on the Trajectory of American Minimalist Opera (open access)

Violetting Through August’s End (Or the Sunset in Water, the Carillon-chime in Square): an Original Chamber Opera and a Critical Essay on the Trajectory of American Minimalist Opera

When the dust settles, John Adams’s Nixon in China and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach may stand as the most important operas of the latter twentieth century. The critical essay portion of this thesis examines the trajectory of minimalist opera, from its beginnings with Glass’s Einstein on the Beach through the more romantic operas of John Adams, Steve Reich’s multimedia opera The Cave, David Lang’s musical-influenced The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, and finally the post-minimalist operas currently being staged by young composer Nico Muhly. It examines the differences between the more abstract trajectory established by the early Glass operas and the plot driven trajectory established by operas more commonly associated with John Adams, most significantly Nixon in China. Additionally, the aforementioned pieces are compared and contrasted with the author’s newly composed chamber opera Violetting through August’s End (or the sunset in water, the carillon-chime in square).
Date: December 2014
Creator: Doyle, James Joseph
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library