When I was first introduced to photography, I was mainly drawn to landscape imagery. I enjoyed being a solitary spectator. Over time, inclusions of figurative elements became more and more apparent in my work. I purposefully began to incorporate a figure into my landscapes, ascribing to it a certain nostalgia and a sense of isolation I was experiencing on many levels at that time. Before long, I felt disconnected from these images because of their ambiguity and generalization. I found myself craving more content and personal commitment in my photography. At the end 2003, I started experimenting with a 4" x 5" format camera, which forced me, to some extent, to change my way of photographing and seeing. That is how the beginning of this new body of work was born. I was accustomed to shooting with a 35 mm camera, which allowed me to be spontaneous, quick and immediate. I permanently switched to a large format. I could see myself benefiting from this change. I lost some of the spontaneity that a 35 mm format offers but I gained the beauty of working with larger negatives and the endless possibilities of view camera movements. Thanks to this technical transformation, …

This problem in lieu of thesis is a discussion of two topics: Brownian movement and quantum computers. Brownian movement is a physical phenomenon in which the particle velocity is constantly undergoing random fluctuations. Chapters 2, 3 and 4, describe Brownian motion from three different perspectives. The next four chapters are devoted to the subject of quantum computers, which are the signal of a new era of technology and science combined together. In the first chapter I present to a reader the two topics of my problem in lieu of thesis. In the second chapter I explain the idea of Brownian motion, its interpretation as a stochastic process and I find its distribution function. The next chapter illustrates the probabilistic picture of Brownian motion, where the statistical averages over trajectories are related to the probability distribution function. Chapter 4 shows how to derive the Langevin equation, introduced in chapter 1, using a Hamiltonian picture of a bath with infinite number of harmonic oscillators. The chapter 5 explains how the idea of quantum computers was developed and how step-by-step all the puzzles for the field of quantum computers were created. The next chapter, chapter 6, discus the basic quantum unit of information …

In this research, a security architecture based on the feedback control theory has been proposed. The first loop has been designed, developed and tested. The architecture proposes a feedback model with many controllers located at different stages of network. The controller at each stage gives feedback to the one at higher level and a decision about network security is taken. The first loop implemented in this thesis detects one important anomaly of virus attack, rate of outgoing connection. Though there are other anomalies of a virus attack, rate of outgoing connection is an important one to contain the spread. Based on the feedback model, this symptom is fed back and a state model using queuing theory is developed to delay the connections and slow down the rate of outgoing connections. Upon implementation of this model, whenever an infected machine tries to make connections at a speed not considered safe, the controller kicks in and sends those connections to a delay queue. Because of delaying connections, rate of outgoing connections decrease. Also because of delaying, many connections timeout and get dropped, reducing the spread. PID controller is implemented to decide the number of connections going to safe or suspected queue. Multiple …

Spontaneously active frontal cortex and spinal cord networks grown on microelectrode arrays were used to study effects of D-methylphenidate. These central nervous system tissues have relatively low concentrations of dopaminergic and noradrenergic neurons compared to the richly populated loci, yet exhibit similar neurophysiological responses to methylphenidate. The spontaneous spike activity of both tissues was inhibited in a concentration-dependent manner by serial additions of 1-500 µM methylphenidate. Methylphenidate is non-toxic as spike inhibition was recovered following washes. The average concentrations for 50% spike rate inhibition (IC50 ± SD) were 118 ± 52 (n= 6) and 57 ± 43 (n = 11) for frontal cortex and spinal cord networks, respectively. A 3 hour exposure of a network to 1 mM methylphenidate was nontoxic. The effective concentrations described in this study are within the therapeutic dosage range. Therefore, the platform may be used for further investigations of drug mechanisms.

In this thesis I rethink the materiality of rhetoric in a minor key. I review poststructural and psychoanalytic endeavors to position rhetoric from within the postmodern and poststructural critique of the subject. I move beyond the logic of influence (dependent on a flawed conception of object) and hermeneutics (the correspondingly flawed methodology). In this endeavor, I primarily enlist Deleuze and Guattari (1987) for a conceptual apparatus that enlivens the "thinness" of rhetoric's (neo)Aristotelian conceptual design (cf. Gaonkar, 1997a, 1997b). I offer Monster (2003) as a case study, analyzing the discursive expression of nondiscursive abstract machines to draw out the reterritorializations of the latter. Recognizing the impossibility of complete reterritorialization I map one artifact that reinvests difference in itself, Dancer in the Dark (2000). Finally, in the epilogue I provide a brief recapitulation of minor politics, and offer a summarization of the utility of rhetoric.

This thesis explores the conditions under which mass rapes are more likely to be incorporated into the strategy of military or paramilitary groups during periods of conflict. I examine three societies, Rwanda , the former Yugoslavia , and Cambodia in a comparative analysis. To determine what characteristics make societies more likely to engage in rape as a military tool, I look at the status of women in the society, the religious cultures, the degree of female integration into the military institutions, the cause of the conflicts, the history of the conflict, and finally, the status of minority ethnic groups in each of these societies.

Commonly used amines in power industry, including morpholine, DBU (1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene), and DMA (dimethylallylamine) were evaluated for their effect on AISI 1018 steel at 250oF. Samples were exposed to an autoclave containing amine added aqueous solution at pH of 9.5 for 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 12 hours. Morphology studies were carried using scanning electron microscope (SEM), phase analysis was done utilizing Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and weight loss was performed to assess kinetics of oxidation. Control samples showed the highest metal dissolution rate. DBU showed the best performance in metal protection and SEM indicated the presence of a free-crack layer formed by fine particles in that set. FTIR showed that DBU apparently favored the formation of magnetite. It is believed that fine particles impede intrusion of aggressive ions into the metal surface by forming a barrier layer. FTIR demonstrated that DMA formed more oxyhydroxides, whereas morpholine presented magnetite to hematite transformation as early as 2 hours. SEM revealed that control and DMA produced acicular particles characteristic of oxyhydroxides while morpholine and DBU presented more equiaxed particles.

This study investigates the effectiveness of response preclusion on stereotypic behavior (climbing and licking) and on play for a child with autism. Data were collected on stereotypic responses, play behavior, and the types of play materials the participant contacted. Implementation of response preclusion was followed by both a decrease in stereotypic behavior as well as an increase in play behavior. Play behavior did not return to baseline levels of responding during reversals to baseline, and stereotypic behavior decreased across reversals. These results suggest the current antecedent manipulation not only reduces stereotypic behavior, but also can establish an environment that is more conducive to learning new, desired behavior.

This study investigated the effects of instructional cues on varied and stereotyped play responses of one typically developing 5-year-old child. Responses were observed across four sets of play materials: blocks, DUPLO® blocks, markers and paints. Training included praise contingent upon forms consistent with the instruction. Two instructions were each trained with corresponding instruction signs, "Try something different" (on blue paper) and "Do the same thing" (on yellow paper) for block and DUPLO block forms. Results show differentiated novel responding during the experimental phase. The same differential effect in marker forms occurred in the sign alone phase. When the sign plus instruction was introduced for painting sessions, novel forms in the same condition discontinued and began to occur in the different condition. These findings suggest stimulus control of behavioral variation and behavioral consistency. The implications for both science and society are discussed.

This study examined college undergraduates' intercultural experiences and attitudes at the beginning and the end of a semester-long course on multicultural issues. Participants were 290 undergraduate college students at the University of North Texas , 202 of whom were enrolled in one of the university's core global studies, cross-cultural, or diversity courses for the fall 2001 semester, and 88 of whom were enrolled in courses outside the core. It was hypothesized that the multicultural group's Positive Inventory of the Consequences of Multicultural Experiences scores would increase and Social Dominance Orientation Scale scores would decrease more than they would for the control group. Findings did not support these hypotheses.

Children with autism show deficits in communication skills, including joint attention, a component of which is following the line of regard. Two experiments were conducted. The first experiment examined how prompting and fading procedures effected following the line of regard in a child with autism. The second experiment examined this effect on the child's learning the names of novel objects. One 10-year-old boy, with a primary diagnosis of autism, participated. A changing criterion design was used in Experiment I. Experiment II used a succession of interventions to assess incidental learning of novel object names. Results indicate that prompting and fading with reinforcement was an effective training procedure for teaching this child to follow the line of regard. However, this skill did not automatically lead to the child's learning the names of novel objects.

Advances in integrated circuit technology continue to provide more and more transistors on a chip. Computer architects are faced with the challenge of finding the best way to translate these resources into high performance. The challenge in the design of next generation CPU (central processing unit) lies not on trying to use up the silicon area, but on finding smart ways to make use of the wealth of transistors now available. In addition, the next generation architecture should offer high throughout performance, scalability, modularity, and low energy consumption, instead of an architecture that is suitable for only one class of applications or users, or only emphasize faster clock rate. A program exhibits different types of parallelism: instruction level parallelism (ILP), thread level parallelism (TLP), or data level parallelism (DLP). Likewise, architectures can be designed to exploit one or more of these types of parallelism. It is generally not possible to design architectures that can take advantage of all three types of parallelism without using very complex hardware structures and complex compiler optimizations. We present the state-of-art architecture SDF (scheduled data flowed) which explores the TLP parallelism as much as that is supplied by that application. We implement a SDF single-chip …

To examine if a rhythm can be entrained in either heart rate or oxygen consumption in late stage embryos (days 17-19.5) with light as a zeitgeber, chicken embryos were incubated in complete darkness (D:D) and 12:12 light:dark cycle (L:D). Light had no impact on oxygen consumption (390 µL O2∙min-1∙egg-1) but increased heart rate for non-internally pipped embryos (260 to 270 beats∙min-1 during light cycle). Oxygen consumption increased independent of pipping while heart rate increased (255 to 265 beats∙min-1) in D:D embryos due to pipping. A light-induced rhythm or effect occurred in heart rate but not oxygen consumption, suggesting heart rate and oxygen consumption may be uncoupled.

Travel is now the largest online business-to-consumer product in the United States. Online hotel bookings are the second largest segment of online travel. Leisure travelers online spending will increase dramatically from 2002 to 2007. However, a majority of hospitality companies do not currently take advantage of the Internet as the cheapest and most efficient distribution medium. The purpose of this study examined leisure travelers' demographic and psychographic characteristics, online booking and travel frequency that influence travelers' desired hotel Website features and functions. The results found out that demographics (gender, occupation, and ethnicity), and psychographics (travel benefit sought), number of leisure travel trips per year, and number of online hotel bookings per year have impact on hotel Website attribute preferences.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of an intervention designed to eliminate damage notification failures in a customer-specific standard operating procedure used by a global logistics company. Process maps identified locations in the process where damage notification failures could most likely occur. A revised process was designed overnight to eliminate as many notification failure points as possible. In addition, a job aid was included to help facilitate the process change for the drivers. The results of the intervention showed a rapid and profound decrease in damage notification failures leading to the retention of a large, profitable account with a minimal initial investment of time and money.

Childhood obesity and resulting secondary complications in youth with disabilities are occurring in epidemic proportions, due in part to a trend of physical inactivity. The purpose of this study is to report the prevalence of overweight, the leisure time activity patterns, and the association between frequency of physically active leisure participation and body mass index for age, in a sample of 50 youth with spina bifida, ages 4.5 to 17.9 years. Results indicate that 52% of the sample are classified as at risk of overweight or overweight; 36% were male and 16% were female. The top five leisure time activities and team sport participation are identified. Subjects who did not use a wheelchair for ambulation participated significantly more in physically active leisure than subjects who used a wheelchair. Future research and rationale for physically active leisure as an intervention for youth with spina bifida are discussed.

Archaeologically site catchment analysis produces valuable information regarding prehistoric subsistence strategies and social organization. Incorporating archaeological data into catchment analyses is an effective strategy to develop regional models of prehistoric site selection and settlement patterns. Digital access to data permits the incorporation of multiple layers of information into the process of synthesizing regional archaeology and interpreting corresponding spatial patterning. GIS software provides a means to integrate digital environmental and archaeological data into an effective tool. Resultant environmental archaeology maps facilitate interpretive analysis. To fulfill the objectives of this thesis, GIS software is employed to construct site catchment areas for archaeological sites and to implement multivariate statistical analyses of physical and biological attributes of catchments in correlation with assemblage data from sites. Guided by ecological, anthropological and geographical theories hypotheses testing evaluates patterns of prehistoric socio-economic behavior. Analytical results are summarized in a model of prehistoric settlement patterns in North Central Texas.

The pyrimidine biosynthetic pathway is an essential pathway for most organisms. Previous research on the pyrimidine pathway in Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PAO1) has shown that a block in the third step of the pathway resulted in both a requirement for exogenous pyrimidines and decreased ability to produce virulence factors. In this work an organism with a mutation in the second step of the pathway, aspartate transcarbamoylase (ATCase), was created. Assays for pyrimidine intermediates, and virulence factors were performed. Results showed that the production of pigments, haemolysin, and rhamnolipids were significantly decreased from PAO1. Elastase and casein protease production were also moderately decreased. In the Caenorhabditis elegans infection model the nematodes fed the ATCase mutant had increased mortality, as compared to nematodes fed wild type bacteria. These findings lend support to the hypothesis that changes in the pyrimidine biosynthetic pathway contribute to the organism's ability to effect pathogenicity.

An NMR spectroscopy study of trimethylsilylmethyllilthium, TMSM-Li, indicates that TMSM-Li exists as two different aggregates in cyclopentane solution. Using previously reported colligative properties of TMSM-Li in different solutions in connection with new 13C and 6Li NMR data collected in this study, aggregation states were assigned as octamer and hexamer. Low temperature 13C and 6Li NMR peak intensities indicated an equilibrium exists between the two aggregates that shifts toward the octamer as the temperature decreases. ΔH was calculated to be 5.23 + 0.15 kcal/mol and ΔS was calculated to be 17.9 + 0.6 eu for the hexamer/octamer equilibrium system. Samples of TMSM-Li were mixed with TMSM-OH in attempts to form mixed alkyllithium/lithium alkoxide aggregates. 13C NMR data for these mixtures gave inconclusive results whether or not these compounds formed, which is different from other primary alkyllithium compounds studied in the past. A study of neopentyllithium, NpLi, indicates only one aggregate in solution with the aggregation state unknown using low temperature 13C NMR spectroscopy.

Designing 802.11 wireless networks includes two major components: selection of access points (APs) in the demand areas and assignment of radio frequencies to each AP. Coverage and capacity are some key issues when placing APs in a demand area. APs need to cover all users. A user is considered covered if the power received from its corresponding AP is greater than a given threshold. Moreover, from a capacity standpoint, APs need to provide certain minimum bandwidth to users located in the coverage area. A major challenge in designing wireless networks is the frequency assignment problem. The 802.11 wireless LANs operate in the unlicensed ISM frequency, and all APs share the same frequency. As a result, as 802.11 APs become widely deployed, they start to interfere with each other and degrade network throughput. In consequence, efficient assignment of channels becomes necessary to avoid and minimize interference. In this work, an optimal AP selection was developed by balancing traffic load. An optimization problem was formulated that minimizes heavy congestion. As a result, APs in wireless LANs will have well distributed traffic loads, which maximize the throughput of the network. The channel assignment algorithm was designed by minimizing channel interference between APs. The …

This thesis will examine the iconography of late-thirteenth- through fifteenth-century images of St. Veronica's veil, also known as vernicles. In the late Middle Ages, vernicle iconography changed from iconic representations of Christ's face toward graphic imagery of Christ's suffering during his Passion. These passionate transformations, as I have called them, were affected by the Roman Sudarium relic, popular devotion to Christ's suffering and humanity during his Passion, and the Catholic ritual of Mass. This thesis will consider how the function of vernicle images during Mass was reflected in their iconography throughout Europe between 1250 and 1500.

This data study concentrates on the past tense marking in the interlanguage (IL) of Chinese speakers of English. Following the assumptions of Hawkins & Lizska, (2003), it is assumed that unlike native speakers of English, Chinese speakers of English have a higher level of optionality within the past tense marking of their grammars. It is claimed that the primary reason for this occurrence is the lack of the functional feature T(ense) [+/-past] in Mandarin Chinese. If a particular functional feature is missing in a learner's L1 grammar, it is thought that it will be absent in one's L2 grammar as well. Three advanced Chinese speakers of English were tested on the past tense marking in their IL production. Both spontaneous oral and reading speech were used for this data analysis.

Peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) was the first automated method for protein identification in proteomics, and it remains in common usage today because of its simplicity and the low equipment costs for generating fingerprints. However, one of the problems with PMF is its limited specificity and sensitivity in protein identification. Here I present a method that shows potential to significantly enhance the accuracy of peptide mass fingerprinting, using a machine learning approach based on a hidden Markov model (HMM). This method is applied to improve differentiation of real protein matches from those that occur by chance. The system was trained using 300 examples of combined real and false-positive protein identification results, and 10-fold cross-validation applied to assess model discrimination. The model can achieve 93% accuracy in distinguishing correct and real protein identification results versus false-positive matches. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve area for the best model was 0.833.

It has been shown repeatedly that many people hold personality stereotypes of stutterers. The attitudes of psychotherapists regarding stutterers have never been investigated. The present investigation assessed the degree to which psychotherapists-in-training hold stereotypes of stutterers as compared to normally fluent speakers. Two groups viewed a videotaped vignette of a male. In one, the male interviewee displayed stuttering behaviors. In the other, the same male spoke fluently. Participants then rated the male interviewee on several personality dimensions. Contrary to previous findings, the group viewing the stuttering interviewee rated him no differently than did the group viewing the fluent interviewee. Greater knowledge of stuttering was associated with more positive ratings of the person who stuttered. The clinical and research implications of these findings are then discussed.