"Off Main Street" is a collection of short stories concerned, primarily, with the expression of womanhood in the American Midwest.

Wireless sensor networks are an indispensable tool in this highly connected world. WSNs have been the focus of research efforts in areas of communication, electronics and control for many years. Advancements in the fields of MEMS, RF and digital circuit technology has led to the development of low cost and extremely power efficient smart sensors. This has led to the need of a fast, reliable and inexpensive method of consensus building for these sensor networks. Basic concepts of graph theory and consensus building are explained in this thesis. This thesis reviews the models and strategies for consensus building present in the literature. The shortcomings of these models are explained through examples and a leader-follower model based consensus building strategy is presented. Algorithm to convert any graph into a bipartite graph by edge removal and a strategy to select effective leaders based on a weighted combination of node centrality, ratio of leaders to the total number of nodes and presence of leaf nodes in the group is presented in this thesis. Proposed leader-follower model is compared against classic models for consensus building are compared and proven to be better. Mobility is studied using deterministic and random mobility models to show the …

This thesis proposes a design of a rapidly deployable cellular network prototype that provides voice and data communications and it is interoperable with legacy devices and the existing network infrastructure. The prototype is based on software defined radio and makes use of IEEE 802.11 unlicensed wireless radio frequency (RF) band for backhaul link and an open source GSM implementation software. The prototype is also evaluated in environments where there is limited control of the radio frequency landscape, and using Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) performance metrics to measure the quality of service. It is observed that in environments where the IEEE 802.11 band is not heavily utilized, a large number of calls are supported with good quality of service. However, when this band is heavily utilized only a few calls can be supported as the quality of service rapidly degrades with increasing number of calls, which is due to interference. It is concluded that in order to achieve tolerable voice quality, unused licensed spectrum is needed for backhaul communication between base stations.

Employing the research approach known as portraiture, this study investigated the varying ways in which three secondary English language arts teachers at a visual and performing arts high school conceptualized and designed multimodal literacy learning. Also studied were the ways in which their students responded to these designs; and in keeping with portraiture, attention went to the changes in the researcher's own understandings. This multi-case study and cross-case analysis built on prior multimodal literacy research in secondary education, but unlike previous studies, gave major attention to how teachers' conceptualization of multimodality and their own roles related to the designs that they produced. Since the school emphasized arts as well as academics, particular attention went to teachers' conceptions of, and designs for, arts-related multimodalities. Data for the portraits came from observations, teacher and student interviews, artifacts, and a researcher journal. Recursive analysis focused on repetitive refrains, resonant metaphors, and emergent themes, which provided data for "painting" the teachers' portraits in prose. Findings show the connections among teachers' beliefs, values, and the multimodal designs, which included images, movement, sound, classroom displays, and room arrangements. The three teachers took dramatically different approaches to multimodal designs as they created their productions of English language …

This qualitative study addresses how the Dallas Morning News and Al Día reporters and editors determine what type of news related to the Dallas Latino and Hispanic communities gets covered. It also looks into how and why each newspaper tackles the coverage of these communities. Through a systematic analysis of 8 in-depth interviews and a 6-month ethnography, the findings of this study suggest that Latino and Hispanic journalists in Dallas feel the Latino and Hispanic communities are regarded as the "other." This study suggests the newsroom's hegemony and its news production routines influence the way Latino and Hispanic communities are covered in Dallas, and the way Latino and Hispanic reporters and editors who primarily cover these communities are treated. Though the newsrooms have made an effort to diversity its staff, reporters and editors claim they still have a long way to go before the staff accurately represents the large Hispanic and Latino population in the city.

This study was an examination of 20 North Texas high school teachers' perceptions about the effects of bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives on instructional planning and classroom environment. The BYOD initiative at two high school campuses was studied through a qualitative approach, i.e. a collective case study. Data were collected through interviews, classroom observations, and reviews of participants' lesson planning documents. The findings indicated teachers had to plan for inequitable technology access, technology support, effective classroom management, and relevant content to support student learning effectively. Teachers participated in professional development focused on planning for student devices, effective use of instructional technology, and classroom management during this type of instruction. Results revealed that, during instruction that included students' devices, teachers believed student engagement and content retention were greater. Observation data also indicated that students were more engaged in the instruction. The interviews and classroom observations indicated that students assumed a more active role in their learning during these lessons, and teachers facilitated and provided more support as needed. Effective planning and classroom management were identified as key components in the success of this type of initiative. Overall, the study supports the necessity for relevant professional development for teachers and campus …

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of three relationships on academic achievement in mathematics in students of poverty. The three factors that were examined included: teacher-student relationships, parent-student relationships and peer- student relationships. The driving question for the research was as follows: Do external factors such as teacher-student relationships, parent-student relationships and peer-student relationships lead to academic success for students of poverty? The study employed a non-experimental, quantitative approach and utilized longitudinal data from a national database High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS) used a sample of 944 public and private high schools across the USA. A total 0f 28,240 were represented in the survey. Of these 28,240 students, 2641 were used in this study as identified by parental income below the poverty threshold. The outcome of the study indicated that there was little or no correlation between the three relationships and mathematics achievement (academic success). Correlations between the dependent variable (math achievement) and the independent variables even though some were statistically significant their weights had no concrete significance. The study recommends that several initiatives can be instated in schools to support and enhance academic achievement in students of poverty.

The purpose of this two-phase, explanatory mixed methods study was to understand the benefits of teaching grammar from three different learning methods: face-to-face, online personalized learning lab and a blended learning method. The study obtained quantitative results from a pre and post-tests, a general survey and writing assignment rubrics from three English 1301 classes and then follow-up interviews with focus groups from each class to explore those results in more depth. In the first phase, quantitative research questions addressed the relationship of grammar teaching methods and grammar acquisition with students at a two-year technical and academic college. In the second phase, used focus groups to perform qualitative interviews to better explore the quantitative results.

During the modern era, the urbanization of water has been facilitated by various privileged discourses, which valorize major engineering interventions for the sake of continued urban growth. This research examines discourse surrounding the 2-th Century proposal and construction of a reservoir near the then-tiny farming community of Grapevine, Texas, for the benefit of urban interests. I argue that urban interests produced Grapevine space as nothing more than a container for city water, by rendering meaningless any conception of space that was not directly articulated with urban economic networks. Modern discourse collapsed Denton Creek space from a watershed and landscape into a dimensionless node in the urban space of flows. In return, rural inhabitants were encouraged to progress and to modernize their own spaces: to become urban. Whereas urban discourse entails an implicit spatial imaginary of networks, I deploy the conceptual framework of settler colonialism to show that a core-periphery relationship remains relevant, and is not reducible to a network spatial ontology.

In game based learning, motivating the players to learn by providing them a desirable gameplay experience is extremely important. However, it's not an easy task considering the quality of today's commercial non-educational games. Throughout the gameplay, the player should neither get overwhelmed nor under-challenged. The best way to do so is to monitor the player's actions in the game because these actions can tell the reason behind the player's performance. They can also tell about the player's lacking competencies or knowledge. Based on this information, in-game educational interventions in the form of hints can be provided to the player. The success of such games depends on their interactivity, motivational outlook and thus player retention. UNTANGLED is an online mapping game based on crowd-sourcing, developed by Reconfigurable Computing Lab, UNT for the mapping problem of CGRAs. It is also an educational game for teaching the concepts of reconfigurable computing. This thesis performs qualitative comparative analysis on gameplays of low performing players of UNTANGLED. And the implications of this analysis are used to provide recommendations for improving the gameplay experience for these players by guiding them. The recommendations include strategies to reach a high score and a compact solution, hints in the …

The problem this study addressed is the relationship between Clery Act crime data and student recruitment at private colleges and universities. For this quantitative study, I used secondary data from the Department of Education and the Delta Cost Project (2013) to conduct ordinary least squares regression analyses to determine the predictive ability of institutional characteristics, specifically the total number of crime incidents reported in compliance with the Clery Act, on the variance in number of applications and applicant yield rate at private four-year institutions in the United States. Findings showed that the total number of reported incidents was a significant positive predictor of the total number of applications. Conversely, findings also showed that the total number of incidents had a significant negative impact on institutional yield rates. An implication of this study is that although crime statistics required by the Clery Act may not serve as variables used in the student application process, they are part of numerous variables used in the student's decision to enroll at a particular school. The findings highlight the importance of prioritizing and investing in safety and security measures designed to reduce rates of crime; especially for private, enrollment-driven institutions of higher education.

The increase of mass shootings in the U.S. has amplified news reporting on mental illness as a possible factor in the shootings despite no evidence linking the two issues. Sources used to explain mental illness in stories that explore the motivations of mass shooters affect audience perception. Through a qualitative content analysis of local newspaper coverage of five U.S. mass shootings in 2015, journalists linked mental illness as a possible motive through sources who were not qualified to treat or diagnose mental illness. Journalists also ignored professional guidance from the Associated Press on mental illness reporting in the context of mass shootings. Additionally, journalists assumed the audience was knowledgeable of mental illness in general terms and specific diagnoses. These findings indicate coverage of mass shootings includes inaccurate information about shooters' motives, and it also continues to frame mental illness as dangerous.

In the current study, the relation of the frequency of sport participation and gender to CRF, muscular strength and flexibility, body composition, physical activity self-efficacy, and physical self-concept in a sample of 629 sixth graders were examined. Because both physical activity and sport participation have been related to similar outcomes, activity through physical education was controlled by including only 6th graders who were part of a required school class. MANCOVA analyses demonstrated that sport involvement was significantly related to improvements in physical fitness (i.e., CRF and muscular strength), physical activity self-efficacy, and physical self-concept (CRF and muscular strength). The interaction between sport involvement and gender was not significant, suggesting these relationships existed equally for the boys and girls.

My dissertation consists of two essays on CFOs' promotion-based tournament incentives and performance-based equity incentives. The first essay examines the joint implications of CFOs' tournament incentives and equity incentives for firms' risk-taking. With the pay gap between the CEO and the CFO as the proxy for the CFO's tournament incentives, I find that the relationship between a firm's risk taking and the CFO's tournament incentives is non-monotonic. In particular, I show that below a certain level, increase in pay gap is associated with increase in firm risk taking (e.g., higher leverage, lower cash holding balance and higher R&D intensity). However, after reaching a certain level, the CEO-CFO pay gap negatively impacts risk-taking, as increase in pay gap is associated with lower leverage, higher cash holding balance and lower R&D intensity. With the CFO's pay-performance sensitivity as the proxy for the CFO's equity incentives, I find that the CFO's equity incentives negatively impact firm's R&D intensity, but have no significant impact on broader financial decisions such as capital structure and cash policy. Collectively, my findings indicate that CFO incentives play an important role in firm's risk-taking behaviors, and the effect of the CFO's tournament incentives is more pronounced. The second essay …

The relationship between judicial independence and the levels of ethnic conflicts in developing countries has remained a significant research area due to increased cases of the conflicts with lack of judicial independence in the countries. Judicial independence is seen as an essential element of democracy in that an independent judiciary can act as an arbiter between different groups and institutions. The main aim of this study was to examine the relationship between judicial independence and ethnic conflicts empirically. Greater judicial independence should be associated with less ethnic conflict, because an independent court can serve as an arbiter for disputants, and thus lessen the likelihood of conflict. The study involved 128 developing countries over a 30-year period from 1981 to 2010 using secondary data sources and employing statistical methods to test the relationship between judicial independence and the levels of ethnic conflicts. Findings indicate that judicial independence has a statistically significant negative association with the levels of ethnic conflict. Therefore, this study recommends that the governments of developing countries should promote judicial independence as part of solutions for ethnic conflicts .

In recent years, social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have emerged as effective tools for broadcasting messages worldwide during disaster events. With millions of messages posted through these services during such events, it has become imperative to identify valuable information that can help the emergency responders to develop effective relief efforts and aid victims. Many studies implied that the role of social media during disasters is invaluable and can be incorporated into emergency decision-making process. However, due to the "big data" nature of social media, it is very labor-intensive to employ human resources to sift through social media posts and categorize/classify them as useful information. Hence, there is a growing need for machine intelligence to automate the process of extracting useful information from the social media data during disaster events. This dissertation addresses the following questions: In a social media stream of messages, what is the useful information to be extracted that can help emergency response organizations to become more situationally aware during and following a disaster? What are the features (or patterns) that can contribute to automatically identifying messages that are useful during disasters? We explored a wide variety of features in conjunction with supervised learning algorithms …

Ethnic and religious conflict, and the deepening of capitalism have led to global diaspora at unprecedented levels. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that as of 2015, 1 in every 122 persons worldwide were either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. The U.S. currently admits the largest number of refugees worldwide. However, policies fail to reflect the multitude of elements that constitute successful resettlement. Moreover, many refugees come from farming backgrounds and are forced to migrate to a landless urban environment, where their skill sets may not be utilized and farm land is not available. I argue that existing resettlement processes are embedded in logics and practices that alienate humans from nature and from each other through competition, isolation, and placeless environments. Through an exploration in concepts of urban agriculture, place-making, identity, and otherness, and illuminating the experiences of resettled refugees involved in a community gardening project in Fort Worth, Texas, show how the urban refugee garden provides the individual a space to narrate an identity, and to resist industrial agriculture and labor outside their industry. Exploring best practices in resettlement should be a priority to governments, politicians, and communities involved in the process and highlight the …

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how LGB college students created meaning out of their coming out process to their parents. I recruited LGB college students who perceived support from their parents during their coming out process and asked the following research question: What are the lived experiences of LGB college students who have experienced support from their parents during the coming out process? Seven White (n = 4), African American (n = 2), and Hispanic (n = 1) college students, three men and four women aged 18-24 years, shared narratives that included time periods before, during, and after their coming out disclosures to their parents. Using an adapted phenomenological analysis, I identified nine major themes: awareness of feeling different, positive relationship with parents prior to coming out, college impacting the coming out process, feeling unsure of how parents would respond to disclosure, parents assuring continued loved and acceptance, parents affirming LGB identity, increased relational depth with parents, increased sense of authenticity, and an appreciation for family's response and support. The findings provide insight into how counselors might work most beneficially with LGB college students and their parents around the coming out process. Opportunities for future research …

In this work, we concern ourselves with particular topics in Polish space theory. We first consider the space A(U) of complex-analytic functions on an open set U endowed with the usual topology of uniform convergence on compact subsets. With the operations of point-wise addition and point-wise multiplication, A(U) is a Polish ring. Inspired by L. Bers' algebraic characterization of the relation of conformality, we show that the topology on A(U) is the only Polish topology for which A(U) is a Polish ring for a large class of U. This class of U includes simply connected regions, simply connected regions excluding a relatively discrete set of points, and other domains of usual interest. One thing that we deduce from this is that, even though C has many different Polish field topologies, as long as it sits inside another Polish ring with enough complex-analytic functions, it must have its usual topology. In a different direction, we show that the bounded complex-analytic functions on the unit disk admits no Polish topology for which it is a Polish ring. We also study the Lie ring structure on A(U) which turns out to be a Polish Lie ring with the usual topology. In this case, …

Utilizing the theory of planned behavior, I examined the variables that affect Chinese individuals' help-seeking intention. A total of 251 Chinese individuals participated in this study. Results showed that the variables in the theory of planned behavior accounted for 16% of the variance in help-seeking intention. Specifically, attitude (r = .22, p < .001) and perceived behavioral control (r = .22, p < .001) were found to be significant predictors of help-seeking intention. Based on these results, mental health professionals can design outreach interventions, such as psychoeducational programs, to improve Chinese individuals' help-seeking attitude and perceived behavioral control in an attempt to increase mental health service utilization. Additionally, counselors can discuss with clients' their attitude and perceived behavioral control regarding seeking counseling in an attempt to assist clients in being committed to the counseling process.

Previous research on workplace bullying primarily focuses on two main actors – the bully and the victim – while neglecting a third actor: the bystander of the bullying. The prevalence of workplace bullying is increasing across organizations, resulting in more employees becoming subjected to the effects of workplace bullying. Furthermore, witnessing coworker-on-coworker bullying is likely to influence the relationships that the bystander has with the two coworkers involved in the bullying episode. Two areas are proposed to investigate their effect on the coworker bystander: coworker interpersonal justice and personal identification with coworkers. Coworker interpersonal justice involves the perceived fairness between coworkers, while personal identification refers to how these bystanders identify with the specific actors of the bullying event. In addition to work-related outcomes, bystanders are affected at a personal level. That is, being exposed to bullying situations causes these bystanders to alter their anxiety levels and their core affect, with core affect being a precursor to moods and emotions. In addition to the aforementioned outcomes of witnessing a coworker bullying incident, there are also contextual aspects which may influence these relationships. Personal-level factors, such as a bystander's empathy and sense of coherence (i.e., coping mechanisms), may influence the effect of …

Mobile wireless sensor networks are not widely implemented in the real world, even after years of research carried out in this field. One reason is the lack of understanding of the impact that mobility has on network performance. The simulation and emulation of mobile wireless sensor networks is necessary before they are deployed for the real-world applications. This thesis presents a simulation-based study of different mobility models. The total area coverage that depends on the pattern of node movements is observed through simulations. The spatial distribution of node locations is also studied. Various synthetic mobility models available are explored based on their theoretical descriptions. ‘BonnMotion' is used as the network simulator for investigating different mobility scenarios. The results obtained after simulations are imported to MATLAB and the analysis of node movements is done through various plots and inferences from the data. The comparison of mobility models is also discussed based on their spatial node distribution in the simulated scenarios.

Walter Benjamin warned in 1940 of a certain inconspicuous threat to political thinking, not least of all to materialism, that takes progress as an historical norm. Implicit in this conception is what he describes as an empty continuum of time along which the prevailing tradition chronicles its own mythic development and drains everyday life of genuine historical experience. The myth of progressive history advances insidiously today in consumeristic and technocratic attempts at reconciling cultural imagery with organic nature. In this dissertation, I pursue the contradictions of such images as they crystallize around the natural history of twenty-first century commodity society, where promises of ecological remediation, sustainable urban development, and climate change mitigation have yet to introduce a true crisis of historical experience to the ongoing environmental crisis of capitalism. A more radical way of seeing the cultural representation of nature would, I argue, penetrate its mythic determination by market forces and bear witness to the natural-historical ruins and traces that constitute, in Benjamin's terms, a single "catastrophe" where others perceive historical continuity. I argue that Benjamin's critique of progress is instructive to interpreting those utopian dreams, ablaze in consumer life and technological fantasy, that recent decades of growing environmental concern …

Pre-tenured faculty in higher education and as well as mothers have reportedly struggled with low wellness levels, high demands, little social support, and an imbalance of work and home life. Mothers in higher education and in counselor education have reported struggling with work-life balance, high scholarly productivity, and long hours as well as the emotional and physical energy demands of working with counselors-in-training. A search of the professional literature revealed a paucity of quantitative research regarding demographic characteristics, wellness levels, and social support levels of mothers among counselor education faculty (MCEs). Participants for this study were faculties of counselor education programs recruited from the Holland List of Counseling Programs and from the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs online directory. A total of 180 MCEs participated (aged 29-63, with mean age 40.6 years; 83% Caucasian, 8% other, 5% African American, 3% Hispanic, <1% Asian). Results showed that faculty rank did not account for a significant difference among wellness scores of MCEs and that reported social support, tenure or non-tenure track, number of children in the care of MCEs, number of children under age 8, number of publications, and teaching workload accounted for 14% of the variance in …