The presence of deposits leading to corrosion of the steam generator (SG) systems is a major contributor to operation and maintenance cost of pressurized water reactor (PWR) plants. Formation and transport of corrosion products formed due to the presence of impurities, metallic oxides and cations in the secondary side of the SG units result in formation of deposits. This research deals with the characterization of deposit samples collected from the two SG units (unit 1 and unit 2) at Comanche Peak Steam Electric Station (CPSES). X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometry (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) techniques have been used for studying the compositional and structural properties of iron oxides formed in the secondary side of unit 1 and unit 2. Magnetite (Fe3O4) was found to be predominant in samples from unit 1 and maghemite (g-Fe2O3) was found to be the dominant phase in case of unit 2. An attempt has been made to customize FTIR technique for analyzing different iron oxide phases present in the deposits of PWR-SG systems.

Kurt Vonnegut's early science fiction novels depict societies and characters that, as in the real world, have become callous and downtrodden. These works use supercomputers, aliens, and space travel, often in a comical manner, to demonstrate that the future, unless people change their concepts of humanity, will not be the paradise of advanced technology and human harmony that some may expect. In fact, Vonnegut suggests that the human condition may gradually worsen if people continue to look further and further into the universe for happiness and purpose. To Vonnegut, the key to happiness is dignity, and this key is to be found within ourselves, not without.

Divine and the Everyday Devil contains a scholarly preface that discusses the experiences and literary works that influenced the author's writing with special attention in regards to spirituality and sexuality. The preface is followed by six original short stories. "Evil" is a work addressing a modern conception of evil. "Eschatology" concerns a man facing his own mortality. "The Gospel of Peter" tells the story of a husband grappling with his wife's religious beliefs. "The Mechanics of Projects" relates the experiences of a woman looking for love in Mexico. "The Rocky Normal Show" involves a husband growing apart from his wife and "Mutant: An Origin Story" is about a teenager trying to find his own unique identity.

The purpose of this experiment was to evaluate the effects of alternative contingencies on instruction following by an ABA design. Three college students consistently pressed keys 1-5-3 and 4-8-6 in the presence of the written instruction "Press 153" or "Press 486." During condition A, the contingencies for following and not following the instruction were the same: CON FR5 FR5 and CON FR20 FR20. During condition B, the contingencies for following and not following the instruction were different: CON FR20 FR5. For one participant, the schedule of reinforcement was then changed to FR30. The results showed that subjects followed instructions when the schedule of reinforcement was the same for instruction following and not following.

A major concern many counselor trainees face when preparing to see their first couple-client is that of confidence because they have had little to no experience in interacting in a professional capacity with couples. Many beginning counselors experience anxiety, which can inhibit their effectiveness with clients (Scanlon & Baille, 1994). Introducing counselor trainees to a relatively non-threatening interaction with couples might reduce the initial anxiety that characterizes the neophyte counselor venturing into new clinical territory. The interaction may also enhance feelings of warmth and closeness of the couples. John Gottman's Oral History Interview (Gottman, 1999) was the protocol used in the interaction between trainee and couple. An instrument developed for this study to measure couple counseling confidence, the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, 1983), and the Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships (Schaefer & Olson, 1981) were used to assess levels of counselor confidence, counselor anxiety, and couple intimacy, respectively. The confidence instrument and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were administered to 37 students who were enrolled in four graduate level introductory couple counseling classes and who interviewed couples, as well as to 34 counselor-trainees who were enrolled in five graduate level counseling courses other than couple counseling and who did not …

This study examined the effects of response restriction (blocking and protective equipment) on subsequent durations of self-injury with two female participants with developmental disabilities. First, a functional analysis was conducted with each participant to identify potential maintaining variables of the self-injury. Second, access to the response was systematically restricted in a multiple schedule restriction paradigm. A baseline extended alone was conducted without the restriction component in place as a control condition. For one participant the results suggested that response restriction may have increased subsequent durations of responding once the restriction element was removed. For a second participant responding did not appear to be affected by the restriction component.

The intent of this study is to identify correlations that might exist between Web-based instruction and higher assessment scores in secondary education. The study framework was held within the confines of a public high school chemistry classroom. Within this population there were students identified as gifted and talented (GT) as well as those without this designation. These two classifications were examined for statistically higher assessment scores using a two-tailed t-test. Results indicated that females outperformed males on pre- and post- instructional unit tests. All subgroups improved their logical-thinking skills and exhibited positive attitudes towards Web-based instruction. In general, Web-based instruction proved beneficial to improving classroom performance of all GT and non-GT groups as compared to traditional classroom instruction.

As the United States faces a critical teacher shortage, it is important to examine all factors that may contribute to the revolving door of teacher attrition. This study explored the climate of elementary schools to determine if there was a correlation between teacher attrition and school organizational climate. Three basic research questions were addressed: 1) Is there a relationship between school organizational climate and teacher attrition? 2) Is a change in campus leadership related to school organizational climate? 3) Is there a relationship between a change in campus leadership and teacher attrition? Thirty-seven elementary schools were examined in terms of their individual teacher attrition rates and their climate survey scores. The data utilized in this study came from one school district's climate survey and teacher attrition rates for the 2000-2001 school year. The findings of this study indicate that factors of organizational climate may predict teacher attrition rates. Specifically, instructiona support may be related to teacher attrition. Major components of instructional support include principal behaviors, respect for teaching and learning, and communication with administrators. Teacher attrition was not related to principal experience. Also, principal experience was not related to factors of school organizational climate.

Data warehousing (DW) in the last decade has become the technology of choice for building data management infrastructures to provide organizations the decision-making capabilities needed to effectively carry out its activities. Despite its phenomenal growth and importance to organizations the rate of DW implementation success has been less than stellar. Many DW implementation projects fail due to technical or organizational reasons. There has been limited research on organizational factors and their role in DW implementations. It is important to understand the role and impact of both technical but organizational factors in DW implementations and their relative importance to implementation performance. A research model was developed to test the significance of technical and organizational factors in the three phases of implementation with DW implementation performance. The independent variables were technical (data, technology, and expertise) and organizational (management, goals, users, organization). The dependent variable was performance (content, accuracy, format, ease of use, and timeliness). The data collection method was a Web based survey of DW implementers and DW users sampled (26) from a population of 108 identified DW implementations. Regression was used as the multivariate statistical technique to analyze the data. The results show that organization factors are significantly related to performance. …

Recent developments in the Internet have inspired a wide range of business and consumer applications. The deployment of multimedia-based services has driven the demand for increased and guaranteed bandwidth requirements over the network. The diverse requirements of the wide range of users demand differentiated classes of service and quality assurance. The new technology of Multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) has emerged as a high performance and reliable option to address these challenges apart from the additional features that were not addressed before. This problem in lieu of thesis describes how the new paradigm of MPLS is advantageous over the conventional architecture. The motivation for this paradigm is discussed in the first part, followed by a detailed description of this new architecture. The information flow, the underlying protocols and the MPLS extensions to some of the traditional protocols are then discussed followed by the description of the simulation. The simulation results are used to show the advantages of the proposed technology.

As one of the most remarkable of the Scottish Covenanters, George Gillespie had a reputation in England and Scotland as an orthodox Puritan theologian and apologist for Scottish Presbyterianism. He was well known for his controversial works attacking the ceremonies of the Church of England, defending Presbyterianism, opposing religious toleration, and combating Erastianism. He is best remembered as one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly in London, which sought to reform the English Church and establish a uniform religion for the two kingdoms. This study assesses his life, ideas, and legacy. In Gillespie's estimation revelation and reason played complementary roles in the Christian life. While the Fall had affected man's reasoning abilities, man could rely upon natural law and scholarship as long as one kept them within the limits of God's truth revealed in Scripture. Moreover, he insisted that the church structure its worship ceremonies, government, and discipline according to the pattern set forth in the Bible. In addition, he emphasized the central role of God's Word and the sacraments in the worship of God and stressed the importance of cultivating personal piety. At the heart of Gillespie's political thought lay the Melvillian theory of the two kingdoms, …

Many children in the United States cannot read on level by fourth grade. Traditionally, teachers have delayed reading instruction until first grade. However, involving children sooner in literary activities may provide skills needed to enable them to read on grade level. The purpose for this study was to determine the extent to which daily writing in kindergarten influences the development of invented spelling and learning to read. Five teachers modeled writing with 78 kindergarten children who wrote every day or almost every day for 20 weeks. There were 51 children in an experimental group, and 27 in a control group who were given a pretest and a posttest using the Observation Study (Clay, 1993). Results from a mixed model ANOVA indicated a significant difference between the control group and the experimental group on the Dictation Task F (1, 76) = 11.76, P≤ .001 and the Writing Test F (1, 76) = 4.33, P≤ .01. Results from a z-Test of dependent proportions indicated there were significant differences in the reading levels of the control group from the pretest to the posttest (z = 7.51, P ≥ .05) because (z = 7.51, Zcv = 1.96). The experimental group results from pretest to …

The objective of this study was to determine how a new experimental methodology for measuring Total-Harmonic-Distortion (THD) of operational amplifiers functioned when compared with two standard methodologies, and whether the new methodology offers any improvement in noise floor and dynamic range along with distortion canceling of the sine-wave source used in the testing. The new methodology (THD) is being tested against two standard methodologies: Spectral Analysis using a tuned receiver type Spectrum Analyzer with Notch Filter pre-processing, and a digitized Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) using Notch Filter pre-processing. The THD results appear to agree across all methodologies, and across all items of the sample within all methodologies, to within a percent or less. The distortion and noise canceling feature of the new methodology appeared to function as expected and in accordance with theory. The sample tested in the study consisted of thirty-five NE5534 operational amplifiers produced by Texas Instruments, Inc. and purchased from a local store. The NE5534 is a low-noise, low-distortion, operational amplifier that is widely used in industry and is representative of today's best audio amplifiers.

An extremely facile and novel method called spontaneous deposition, to deposit noble metal nanoparticles on a most stable form of carbon (C) i.e. diamond is presented. Nanometer sized particles of such metals as platinum (Pt), palladium (Pd), gold (Au), copper (Cu) and silver (Ag) could be deposited on boron-doped (B-doped) polycrystalline diamond films grown on silicon (Si) substrates, by simply immersing the diamond/Si sample in hydrofluoric acid (HF) solution containing ions of the corresponding metal. The electrons for the reduction of metal ions came from the Si back substrate. The diamond/Si interfacial ohmic contact was of paramount importance to the observation of the spontaneous deposition process. The metal/diamond (M/C) surfaces were investigated using Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and x-ray diffractometry (XRD). The morphology (i.e. size and distribution) of metal nanoparticles deposits could be controlled by adjusting the metal ion concentration, HF concentration and deposition time. XRD data indicate the presence of textured and strained crystal lattices of Pd for different Pd/C morphologies, which seem to influence the electrocatalytic oxidation of formaldehyde (HCHO). The sensitivity of electrocatalytic reactions to surface crystal structure implies that M/C could be fabricated for specific electrocatalytic applications. The research also …

Human auditory perception is suited to receiving and interpreting information from the environment but this knowledge has not been used extensively in designing computer-based information exploration tools. It is not known which aspects of sound are useful for accurately conveying information in an auditory display. An auditory display was created using PD, a graphical programming language used primarily to manipulate digital sound. The interface for the auditory display was a blank window. When the cursor is moved around in this window, the sound generated would changed based on the underlying data value at any given point. An experiment was conducted to determine which attribute of sound most accurately represents data values in an auditory display. The four attributes of sound tested were frequency-sine waveform, frequency-sawtooth waveform, loudness and tempo. 24 subjects were given the task of finding the highest data point using sound alone using each of the four sound treatments. Three dependent variables were measured: distance accuracy, numeric accuracy, and time on task. Repeated measures ANOVA procedures conducted on these variables did not rise to the level of statistical significance (α=.05). None of the sound treatments was more accurate than the other as representing the underlying data values. 52% …

This thesis surveys a variety of songs and arias for high soprano which feature the nightingale; examines the musical elements that symbolize, refer to, or imitate the nightingale; and compares these musical elements with transcriptions of the nightingale's song. The first chapter reviews the symbolic development of the nightingale and its role in poetry and literature. The interior chapters address a selection of musical compositions that feature the nightingale and its song. The final chapter establishes a relationship between the sound of the actual sound of the nightingale and the musical gestures created by composers to imitate the nightingale.

On-road remote sensing has the ability to operate in real-time, and under real world conditions, making it an ideal candidate for detecting gross polluters on major freeways and thoroughfares. In this study, remote sensing was employed to detect carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC), and nitrogen oxide (NO). On-road remote sensing data taken from measurements performed in six states, (Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Texas, and Utah) were cleaned and analyzed. Data mining and exploration were first undertaken in order to search for relationships among variables such as make, year, engine type, vehicle weight, and location. Descriptive statistics were obtained for the three pollutants of interest. The data were found to have non-normal distributions. Applied transformations were ineffective, and nonparametric tests were applied. Due to the extremely large sample size of the dataset (508,617 records), nonparametric tests resulted in "p" values that demonstrated "significance." The general linear model was selected due to its ability to handle data with non-normal distributions. The general linear model was run on each pollutant with output producing descriptive statistics, profile plots, between-subjects effects, and estimated marginal means. Due to insufficient data within certain cells, results were not obtained for gross vehicle weight and engine type. The "year" …

Recently my creative process has led to a new area of investigation and exploration. I have discovered that I enjoy the unexpected occurrences that happen while painting. I have an appreciation for the parts of my works that do not follow the preliminary sketch and are produced more subconsciously. While usually this aspect has been restricted by the adherence to a preliminary sketch and narrative, the new works explore these occurrences more fully. In the new works, I worked in a more spontaneous manner to create work that does not focus strictly on narrative but reveals itself more as a journey or exploration.

The immediate and subsequent effects of different durations of response restriction were evaluated in a multiple schedule design. Response restriction components of 15, 30, and 60 minutes were conducted between 15 minute alone components. Levels of responding subsequent to the termination of response restriction procedures were compared to free operant levels prior to the implementation of response restriction. Responding during response restriction components reduced to near zero levels. Subsequent levels of responding were similar to or exceeded free operant baseline levels. Results are discussed in terms of potential operant mechanisms responsible for levels of responding subsequent to response restriction.

Research indicates the existence of an eating disorder continuum. The two-component model of disordered eating suggests that certain personality traits may increase an individual's vulnerability to develop more severe variants of disordered eating symptomatology. The present study investigates pre-clinical elevations on a measure of personality based on the Five-Factor Model (FFM) and pre-clinical elevations on a measure of eating disorder symptomatology in a sample of nonclinical undergraduates. The personality dimensions Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Agreeableness accounted for 7% of the variability in Body Dissatisfaction. Subcomponents comprising the personality dimensions of the FFM as determined by Saucier (1998) (see Appendix A) were analyzed. The Self-Reproach and Intellectual Interests subcomponents were the strongest predictors of Drive for Thinness and Body Dissatisfaction. The subcomponent Sociability was the strongest predictor of Bulimia. Findings present implications for prevention and treatment interventions. Longitudinal studies are needed to determine the temporal directionality of personality and disturbed eating.

The well-being of the American steel industry is vital to the overall health of the United States (U.S.) economy. This belief is, in part, the impetus for the enactment of protective tariffs and quotas. This paper examines the impact of the announcement of the 2001 tariffs. Numerous forces have buffeted the U.S. steel industry over the last decade. Domestic steel firms operate in a highly global, fiercely competitive, and capital-intensive industry. This environment has proven inhospitable to the U.S. steel industry, widely criticized for inefficiency and overcapacity. A regression analysis finds that the announcement of the 2001 tariffs had no statistically significant impact on U.S. domestic raw steel production. Supporting theories are reexamined, and the implications of this finding for trade policy are explored.

The purpose of this study was to examine how male and female leaders view their own effectiveness as compared to their objective performance. This study also examined sex and gender differences in subordinate's views of male and female leaders. Forty-two mixed-sex groups led by appointed male and female leaders were observed to assess objective and perceived leader effectiveness. Gender role of participants was assessed using the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). No sex or gender differences were found in objective leadership effectiveness. An unexpected finding was that male and female leaders perceived themselves accurately as leaders. Significant differences were found in the way male subordinates rated men and women leaders when taking into account gender role. Results indicated that the study of gender bias in leadership is complex and should be examined in conjunction with gender role. Social role theory helps to explain this bias.

The objective of the survey is to observe students' perceptions of videoconference courses offered by the University of North Texas (UNT). The perceptions of 348 students enrolled in videoconferencing (VC) courses in the fall 2002 semester were obtained through a 29-item course evaluation questionnaire. From this study, I conclude generally that UNT students perceive videoconference courses as a positive stride in providing classes. While it was expected that students at remote sites would experience greater technological problems and lower levels of student/teacher interaction, evaluations from remote sites indicate higher degrees of student satisfaction than those students taking VC courses at the main campus location.

Security is one of the main concerns of users who need to connect to a remote computer for various purposes, such as checking e-mails or viewing files. However in today's computer networks, privacy, transmission to intended client is not guaranteed. If data is transmitted over the Internet or a local network as plain text it may be captured and viewed by anyone with little technical knowledge. This may include sensitive data such as passwords. Big businesses use firewalls, virtual private networks and encrypt their transmissions to counter this at high costs. Secure shell protocol (SSH) provides an answer to this. SSH is a software protocol for secure communication over an insecure network. SSH not only offers authentication of hosts but also encrypts the sessions between the client and the server and is transparent to the end user. This Problem in Lieu of Thesis makes a study of SSH and creates a sample secure client and server which follows SSH and examines its performance.