In the new generation of artists emerging in South Africa, Alexander Johnson is considered the most prolific young composer of his day. In a recent review in the Pretoria News, Johnson has been praised by eminent critic Paul Boekkooi as a composer who has “an ear for the exotic and knows exactly how to bring it off....” He continued by noting that his music is “mentally engrossing, pleasurable to the senses and seems refreshingly free from dogmatic formulas." Johnson writes for musicians and the general public to equal satisfaction. His accessible compositions and catching use of melodic materials have made his writings very popular both in South Africa and abroad. During his residency in Belgrade in 1993-94, Johnson met Croatian pianist Dorian Leljak. Impressed with Johnson's compositional ideas and output, Leljak commissioned a work from Johnson for piano and orchestra. The result was the Niš Concerto, which Johnson completed in April 1994. The world premiere took place on June 23, 1994 with the Niš Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Anatoli Nowiestski with Dorian Leljak as soloist. The Niš Concerto received its South African premiere in 1995 during a simultaneous celebration for “Europe Day” and the new democracy of the Republic of …

By conducting sound research to understand the concepts surrounding rioting and efficient riot response tactics, professionals, especially whose main job is to ensure the tranquility in the society, will be better prepared to deal with all kinds of civil movements. The purpose of this study, consequently, is to meet the growing need for educational materials in this area and to provide riot response case studies, which demonstrate the numerous administrative challenges faced by law enforcement decision makers. In this study, seven major riots from throughout the United States are discussed including the Hay Market Riot of 1886, the Watts Riot of 1965, and Los Angeles Riots of 1992. Each riot case is studied in five different and independent stages: the setting and pre-disturbance situation, basic causes of the event, the disturbance situation, the response to the riot, and the aftermath of the incident. The study of all of these stages is intended to help police administrators acquire a general perspective on collective violence, and help them prevent future occurrences in their jurisdictions. In this thesis a special reference is given to the deficiencies of American riot policing and some recommendations were formed accordingly. Therefore, the study concludes with a list …

Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall were published more than forty years before the appearance of the feminist type that the Victorians called the “New Woman;” yet, both novels contain characteristics of New Woman fiction. By considering how Brontë's novels foreshadow New Woman fiction, the reader of these novels can re-enact the “gentlest” Brontë as an influential feminist whose ideology informed the construction of the radical New Woman. Brontë, like the New Woman writers, incorporated autobiographical dilemmas into her fiction. By using her own experiences as a governess, Brontë constructs Agnes Grey's incongruent social status and a morally corrupt gentry and aristocracy through her depiction of not only Agnes's second employers, the Murrays, but also the morally debauched world that Helen enters upon her marriage to Arthur Huntingdon in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Moreover, Brontë incorporates her observations of Branwell's alcoholism and her own religious beliefs into The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Although Brontë's novels contain autobiographical material, her heroines are fictional constructions that she uses to engage her readers with the woman question. Brontë accomplishes this engagement through her heroines' narrative re-enactments of fictional autobiographical dilemmas. Helen's diary and Agnes's diary-based narrative produce the …

This study examines barriers limiting access to hospice care for elderly African Americans. Ethnic background plays a critical role in the development of attitudes, beliefs and expectations related to death and issues surrounding hospice care. The purpose of this study was to identify barriers that may limit access to hospice care for African Americans. A questionnaire was administered to 56 elderly African Americans in three religious settings and an African American senior citizens center. The questionnaire was designed to obtain information concerning African Americans' attitudes toward death and dying; religious beliefs; health beliefs; familiarity with hospice and prospective use of hospice. The results of the study indicate a number of barriers in access to hospice care for African Americans including: hospice knowledge barriers; education/outreach barriers; cultural knowledge barriers related to death/dying values; family/social support barriers; hospice organizational/provider barriers; health care organizational/provider barriers; and reimbursement barriers.

The purpose of this study was to determine the level of burnout among student affairs professionals at the 52 U.S. member institutions of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities. Packets containing the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), the Moos Work Environment Scale (WES), and a demographic survey were mailed to 371 senior student affairs administrators at the member institutions, with a completed response rate of 58.22%. The senior student affairs administrators surveyed included the chief student affairs officers and the professional staff who reported to them. The research design employed t-tests, analyses of variance, and Pearson's Product Moment correlations. The scores obtained from the MBI and WES subscales were compared overall and along 9 independent variablestitle of position, size of institution, appointment, salary, years in current position, years in profession, age, gender, and highest degree attained. Average levels of burnout were found on each of the MBI subscores. Contrary to earlier studies, women did not suffer from statistically significant higher levels of burnout than men, and burnout levels decreased with age and years in the profession for both sexes. Lower scores on the MBI depersonalization subscale were found in employees in mid-career and in professionals from smaller schools. Emotional exhaustion …

Change in government has characterized the development of most nations. Sometimes this change has been marked by continued evolution, in a peaceful attempt to move forward. Other times, change has been fraught with violent revolution and terrorism. This process has been the subject of much debate by political scientists and economic philosophers. Today, Turkey suffers from continued threats to its government through violent acts of terrorism conducted by various groups, expressing ideologies of leftist and rightist organizations, as well as ethnic and religious extremists. This thesis examines DHKP/C as the primary leftist revolutionary group effecting Turkey, exploring its historical background in Europe and the Middle East, as well as its philosophical link to Marxism. Further, this treatise discusses the implication of revolution and terrorism expressed by DHKP/C; and explores innovative and peaceful solutions, strategies, and techniques to be used by the police forces of Turkey in combating this group

A Monte Carlo simulation was used to generate data for a comparison of five robust regression estimation methods with ordinary least squares (OLS) under 36 different outlier data configurations. Two of the robust estimators, Least Absolute Value (LAV) estimation and MM estimation, are commercially available. Three authormodified variations on MM were also included (MM1, MM2, and MM3). Design parameters that were varied include sample size (n=60 and n=180), number of independent predictor variables (2, 3 and 6), outlier density (0%, 5% and 15%) and outlier location (2x,2y s, 8x8y s, 4x,8y s and 8x,4y s). Criteria on which the regression methods were measured are relative efficiency, bias and a test of the null hypothesis. Results indicated that MM2 was the best performing robust estimator on relative efficiency. The best performing estimator on bias was MM1. The best performing regression method on the test of the null hypothesis was MM2. Overall, the MM-type robust regression methods outperformed OLS and LAV on relative efficiency, bias, and the test of the null hypothesis.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) regulates fill of jurisdictional waters of the United States including wetlands. Recent USACE regulations set a threshold of impacts to wetlands at one-half acre. Impact area can be determined by Global Positioning System (GPS) measurement of wetland boundary and Geographic Information System (GIS) calculation of impact area. GPS point selection methods include (1) equal time interval, (2) transect and (3) intuition. Four two-acre shapes were measured with each GPS method and brought into GIS for area calculation. Analysis of variance and Root Mean Square Error analyses determine that the transect method is an inferior point selection method in terms of accuracy and efficiency.

With the spread of the Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus and sexually transmitted diseases, it is extremely important for sexually active individuals to protect themselves properly if they decide to engage in sexual intercourse. Knowledge of HIV and the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome has been associated with safer sexual practices, but knowledge alone does not totally explain risky sexual practices. This study examined how 154 college students' knowledge of HIV/AIDS, relationship status, perceptions of condom use, and perceptions of personal risk affect condom use during sexual intercourse. The impact of trust and love justifications along with the approval of peers were also examined. Perceptions of condom use and perceptions of personal risk were compared by gender and ethnicity; how perception of personal risk is related to condom use and condom use intentions was also examined. Condom use intention was found to be a significant predictor of condom use, and a significant difference of means for condom use intentions was reported between individuals who used condoms during their last experience with sexual intercourse and those who did not use condoms during their last sexual experience

Temperature effects on the development of the zebrafish embryos and larvae and adults were examined. It was found that the earlier in development a temperature change was performed on an embryo, the more significant the change in survival and/or subsequent development. Thus, viable temperature ranges for zebrafish widened significantly as development proceeded. Adults reared and bred at 25oC produced embryos that were significantly more successful at the lower range of rearing temperatures compared to embryos produced from adults reared at 28oC. The majority of this study focused on the physiological effects of swim training during development in the zebrafish. The earlier in development the zebrafish larvae were trained, the greater the mortality. Trained free swimming larvae had a significantly higher routine oxygen consumption after 11 days of training, and a higher mass specific routine metabolic rate after 8 and 11 days of training. Trained free swimming larvae consumed significantly less oxygen during swimming and were more efficient at locomotion, compared to control larvae. Training enhanced survival during exposure to extreme hypoxia in all age groups. Performance aspects of training were investigated in attempt to quantify training effects and in most cases, trained fish performed significantly better than controls. As blood …

Since the founding of "New China" in 1949, the musical culture has undergone numerous periods of identity crisis, particularly during the ten-year "Cultural Revolution," due to the fact that music had always been used to serve the needs of political propaganda. Even the development of a "National Style" encouraged by the central government was a political "brainchild" under the socialist ideology. Nevertheless, professional musicians struggled to create a new path in musical composition while walking on the thin ice of harsh political climate. Isolated from the rest of the world for almost two decades, China's musical development had not been able to keep pace with the world until the late 1970s, when the central government reevaluated its agenda on how to lead the country. This change of political environment eventually led to a more open society. The newly established contact with the outside world in the musical scene lent great opportunities for Chinese musicians to study the newest thinking about music, which ultimately, in the early 1980s, fostered the emergence of a new "National Style"- the so-called "New Wave." The style of "New Wave" differs drastically from the earlier "National Style" in that it employs primarily twentieth-century compositional techniques in …

This qualitative study seeks to assess the effectiveness of homeschool collegiate preparation through the eyes of homeschool alumni. Four alumni who are current college students participated in the study. A triangulation of methods, which included surveys, open-ended questionnaires, and interviews, ensured reliability and validity. Although the students represented a wide range of varied homeschool experiences, the perceptions of all the students were that their environments prepared them for collegiate-level work at levels that are above average.

This paper explores the characterization of a riparian bottomland forest in north central Texas in two ways: field study, and computer simulation with the model ZELIG. First, context is provided in Chapter One with a brief description of a southern bottomland forest, the ecological services it provides, and a history of bottomland forests in Texas from the nineteenth century to the present. A report on a characterization study of the Lake Ray Roberts Greenbelt forest comprises Chapter Two. The final chapter reviews a phytosocial study of a remnant bottomland forest within the Greenbelt. Details of the ZELIG calibration process follow, with a discussion of ways to improve ZELIG's simulation of bottomland forests.

Five Seasons is a musical work for flute and percussion. The flutist alternately performs on the C flute with a B foot, alto flute, piccolo, and bass flute in each movement. The percussionist also plays different instruments in each movement: the vibraphone for Mid-Summer; the xylophone for Fall; the woodblock, temple block, and cowbells for Spring; the glockenspiel for Summer; and the marimba for Winter. The five movements of this work - Mid-Summer, Fall, Spring, Summer, and Winter - are based on a combination of Eastern performing practices with Western instruments. The musical characteristics are based on the techniques of fifteenth-century (e.g., isorhythmic technique) and twentieth-century Western music.

The nature of clay's physical attributes and the application of these characteristics to an expression of gestural movement in utilitarian ceramics.

Home: A Memoir, a creative non-fiction thesis, is a memoir in the form of personal essays, each exploring some aspect of the meaning of home, how my sense of self has been formed by my relationship to home, and the inevitability of leaving home. Chapter I explores the nature of memory and of memoir, their relationship to each other and to truth, and how a writer's voice shapes memoir. Chapter II, “Paternity,” is an attempt to remember my father, resulting in renewed interest in his past and renewed awareness of his legacy. Chapter III, “Home,” is on the surface about my grandparents' house, but is really about my grandmother. Chapter IV, “Dixie,” is about my contradictory feelings for the South, and my eventual acceptance of the South's complexities.

The last decade has witnessed the rise of a new movement called “community policing.” Basic philosophical principles, which focus on improved services to the public through decentralization, better communication and decision-making processes, and more police discretion highlight the community policing movement. Essentially, community policing is the quality movement in American policing. This thesis will explore the impact of community policing on the structure and administration of police agencies. Since this movement is centered in local police agencies, the focus will also be at that level. Considerable effort will be devoted to providing an accurate description of law enforcement in the United States; however, the crux of this treatise will be on the discussion of organizational problems developed at the local level as a result of implementing community policing concepts.

A creative nonfiction thesis, Luke's Mama is a memoir of personal essays that explore how the birth of my son has affected the ways that I relate within and interpret different areas of my life. Chapter I, Introduction, identifies personal and ethical concerns involved in telling my story and explores how others have handled similar issues. Chapter II, Family, illustrates how my relationship with my family of origin has changed since I've become a parent and also how my new family and I interact with society. Chapter III, Calling, depicts my struggle in finding a balance between work and family priorities. Chapter IV, Partner, presents a contrast between my relationship with my partner before and after my son's birth. Chapter V, Parent, displays the beginning of my ever-growing relationship with my son and sense of parenthood.

Implementing a Prolog Runtime System in a language like Java which provides its own automatic memory management and safety features such as built--in index checking and array initialization requires a consistent approach to memory management based on a simple ultimate goal: minimizing total memory management time and extra space involved. The total memory management time for Jinni is made up of garbage collection time both for Java and Jinni itself. Extra space is usually requested at Jinni's garbage collection. This goal motivates us to find a simple and practical garbage collection algorithm and implementation for our Prolog engine. In this thesis we survey various algorithms already proposed and offer our own contribution to the study of garbage collection by improvements and optimizations for some classic algorithms. We implemented these algorithms based on the dynamic array algorithm for an all--dynamic Prolog engine (JINNI 2000). The comparisons of our implementations versus the originally proposed algorithm allow us to draw informative conclusions on their theoretical complexity model and their empirical effectiveness.

With the proliferation of Schenkerian theory in the US, Great Britain, and mainland Europe in the past quarter century, the pedagogy of Schenkerian analysis has become an important issue. Schenker himself was suspicious of textbooks with their tendency for artificial codification and over-simplification; rather, he recognized that his “New Teaching” (“Die neue Lehre”) – as he called it – required a different, more “organic” pedagogical approach that was both personal and yet accessible to a wide audience. New digital technologies and the Internet now have made it possible to disseminate Schenker’s pedagogical approach by adapting interactive techniques of Web-based instruction. Schenker’s “new teaching” was as organic as his theory itself – and as novel in the connections it sought to draw between the individualed disciplines of theory, musicology, composition, and performance. The interactive and multi-media components of Web-based instruction enable us to realize Schenker’s own pedagogical approach to Schenkerian analysis instruction.

The purpose was to examine actual force (AF) productions of males for accuracy during leg extensions when given a random desired force (DF) ranging from 10-90% of maximal force (MF). Thirty males ranging from 18 to 30 years of age (M = 21.99 + 3.04), who had no previous experience with the test equipment, went through 9 randomly ordered submaximal efforts followed by a maximal effort. Correlations between AF and DF were high (r > .79) and test-retest was consistent between AF (r = .87) and MF (r = .90). Participants consistently undershot DF on both test and retest from 20-90% and overshot DF only at 10%. Power functions revealed exponents of less than 1, indicating that AF grows slower then DF for both test .70 (.95 CI = .63 - .77) and retest .66 (.95 CI = .60 - .73). The results replicate a prior study by Jackson, Martin, Koziris, Ludtke, and Dishman (2001) that used incremental rather than random increases in DF.

Let (Ω, Σ, µ) be a finite measure space and X, a Banach space with continuous dual X*. A scalarly measurable function f: Ω→X is Dunford integrable if for each x* X*, x*f L1(µ). Define the operator Tf. X* → L1(µ) by T(x*) = x*f. Then f is Pettis integrable if and only if this operator is weak*-to-weak continuous. This paper begins with an overview of this function. Work by Robert Huff and Gunnar Stefansson on the operator Tf motivates much of this paper. Conditions that make Tf weak*-to-weak continuous are generalized to weak*-to­weak continuous operators on dual spaces. For instance, if Tf is weakly compact and if there exists a separable subspace D X such that for each x* X*, x*f = x*fχDµ-a.e, then f is Pettis integrable. This nation is generalized to bounded operators T: X* → Y. To say that T is determined by D means that if x*| D = 0, then T (x*) = 0. Determining subspaces are used to help prove certain facts about operators on dual spaces. Attention is given to finding determining subspaces far a given T: X* → Y. The kernel of T and the adjoint T* of T are used …

his study compared auditory behavioral and physiological measures among three subject groups: 1) Normal control subjects, 2) subjects who were on a prescribed SSRI for depression, and 3) subjects who were prescribed an SSRI for depression, but were not medicated at the time of testing. Test measures included: Standard audiological tests (audiometry and tympanometry), electrophysiological procedures for analysis of auditory- evoked brainstem and late responses, and standardized behavioral speech tests (SCAN-A, SSI, and the low predictability sentence list of the R-SPIN). Analysis of results indicated a statistically significant increase of group mean amplitude of the ABR peak V, from 15dBnSL to 55dBnSL, in the non-medicated group compared to controls. Also, the non-medicated group scored significantly less favorably than controls on the most challenging listening condition (-20 MCR) of the SSI, in the left ear. Although other test measures indicated consistent differences between these two groups, they were not, however, significant.

Process and form have always been important to my work. I emphasize the soft qualities of clay while working with traditional forms that are altered for visual interest. Usability is very important, the forms have to function well according to their intended use. The relationship between form and manipulation relied on usability of the form. Functionality was paramount within this body of work. I consciously searched for balance between form and manipulation, form and glaze, form and function, and overall character. Though altered, the forms were traditional and dependent on function. Manipulations of the forms, surface treatment, and deep colorful glazes contributed to creating harmony between function and expression. Personal stylistic elements became refined through working on this project. The body of work that was made allocated personal expression and new variations on functional forms. This project provided an opportunity for exploration and evaluation of form and my working process.