Intention for this study is driven by finding patterns that may be shown to reveal primary factors of influence for the abundance and diversity of wetland birds. These correlations may be used to promote wetland management strategies for the benefit of waterbird species, and help illuminate current local wetland conditions for waterbirds, respectively. The idea is to help enliven individuals to become a more conscious steward and manipulator of our environment through incorporating structural and biological components into wetland development and management strategies, and broadly speaking, urban development practices.

Atmospheric theming is the use of the sensory experience in connection to a theme. The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of atmospherics with theming and their effects on customer behavior in food and beverage operations of a theme park. The official research questions developed for this study include: Does the impact of the authenticity of atmospheric theming influence an effect on revisit intention? Does the type of theme (land's theme or venue's theme) influence the effect of visitor revisit intention? These questions guided the current research in previously non-evaluated fields of study. This study used the Mehrabian–Russel (M-R) model to create a new research model. In the current study, atmospheric theming was the stimuli, emotional value was the emotional response, and visitor revisit intentions was the behavioral intention. Restaurant image was added to the model to obtain a cognitive reason.The results from the multiple regression indicated that all hypotheses were accepted. Restaurant image had a positive influence on both authenticity variables, and both authenticity variables had a positive influence on emotional value. Finally, emotional value was found to have a positive influence on revisit intention. These results indicated that atmospheric theming influenced revisit intention through emotional …

An in-depth study of Al2W3O12 negative thermal expansion (NTE) ceramic was performed, focused on synthesis, phase mappings, and the underlying mechanisms shown to be responsible for NTE. Review of the literature has shown inconsistencies in reported values of the dilatometry measured coefficients of thermal expansion, and the temperature for the known monoclinic to orthorhombic phase transition. Two synthesis techniques are introduced: an ionic-liquid non-hydrolytic sol-gel synthesis route; and a low temperature solid state reaction synthesis for Al2W3O12. X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and attenuated total reflectance Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) were used to verify the techniques. Two differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) experiments (high and low temperature) were performed on the material showing the transition between -5 and -20 °C and no other phase changes until a reported degradation above 1100 °C. Extensive dilatometry on the material led to the discovery of elastic transitions occurring in the polycrystalline sample capable of explaining the inconsistencies in reported dilatometry results. This is further developed into a proposed model defining the regions between these transitions. Each region has a different thermal expansion as well as a direct effect on the reaction of the material upon cooling. This proposed model may allow more consistent reporting of …

Extensive research has been conducted demonstrating the utility of differential reinforcement as an effective intervention for self-injurious behavior. However, the majority of this literature requires teaching an alternative response to access reinforcement. Further evaluation of treating self-injurious behavior in individuals that already possess the repertories to contact reinforcement appropriately. Prior to initiating the study, functional assessments were completed for both participant that demonstrated high-rate bursts of mands served as a reliable precursor to self-injurious behavior. In the present study, we evaluated a waiting period and differential reinforcement of low rate behavior on reducing mands while keeping self-injurious behavior at or near zero levels. Results indicated that shorter waiting periods and DRL values were effective at reducing mands and maintaining near zero levels of self-injurious behavior.

United Through Reading (UTR) is a non-profit organization that provides the tools for military service members to take videos of themselves reading books so that when they must leave their family for training, deployment, temporary duty (TDY), or other military induced separations, their family gets a copy of the video recording and a copy of the book. Although UTR developed their program supported by research about the academic benefits of being read aloud to as a child, the importance of developing a love of reading, the impacts of deployment on military youth, and the impacts of service on children's academics before this research began, they had not yet conducted an evaluation of their specific program. To this end, this research sought to understand how participation in UTR impacts 1) a child's love of reading, 2) child behavior, 3) morale and stress levels for service members and caregivers, and 4) service members' retention or re-enlistment in the military. To address these questions this study utilized a mixed methodological approach, combining participant observation at UTR recording events, interviews (n = 19), and surveys (n = 58). UTR was found to improve and reinforce children's love of reading, improve child behavior, increase morale …

Improving growth, lowering mortality rates, and having a faster turnaround to harvest is essential for the future of commercial aquaculture. The primary goal of this study was to determine if introducing a single strain probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus IMC 501 into the feed regimen of a commercially important aquaculture freshwater fish, Mozambique tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus), would decrease mortality; change metabolic rates; and increase tissue wet mass (MW), standard length, growth rate and feed conversion rate (FCRs). IMC501 was added to the fishmeal in four increasing concentrations and compared to a control without probiotics. Results from two-way ANOVAs showed that both treatment levels and elapsed time had a significant effect on both mean standard length and wet mass; in the latter case, time points and treatments interacted with one another, showing that tilapia grew best with a moderate level of probiotics present. The growth benefits of probiotics continued for months after the initial treatments. Oxygen consumption (metabolic rate) was measured using closed respirometry and resulted in recording the first values for juvenile tilapia treated with probiotics. For oxygen consumption, there were significant treatment and time effects with significant interactions, indicating that metabolism increased with probiotics once the dosage exceeded three times the …

Cloud-based collaborative editors enable real-time document processing via remote connections. Their common application is to allow Internet users to collaboratively work on their documents stored in the cloud, even if these users are physically a world apart. However, this convenience comes at a cost in terms of user privacy. Hence, the growth of popularity of cloud computing application stipulates the growth in importance of cloud security. A major concern with the cloud is who has access to user data. In order to address this issue, various third-party services offer encryption mechanisms for protection of the user data in the case of insider attacks or data leakage. However, these services often only encrypt data-at-rest, leaving the data which is being processed potentially vulnerable. The purpose of this study is to propose a prototype software system that encrypts collaboratively edited data in real-time, preserving the user experience similar to that of, e.g., Google Docs.

There is a lack of anxiety relief methods used in the hospitality workplace. This study examines the effectiveness of two forms of anxiety relief through four different methods. The data collection took place in classroom environments at the University of North Texas and the University of New Orleans, both of which are located in southern USA. The independent variables are the recovery method, the mediator variables are restorativeness and emotional improvement, and the dependent variables are negative job affects, positive job affects, turnover intention, and job commitment. Professors were asked for some time during their lecture to conduct the experiment in a classroom environment during the students' class time. Eight classes were visited, with each class being exposed to a designated anxiety relief method. The anxiety relief methods consisted of using a virtual reality headset with sound, virtual reality headset without sound, nature pictures with sound, and nature pictures without sound. Results of 206 usable surveys indicated virtual reality recovery method evoked higher levels of restorativeness than picture recovery method. Restorativeness partially mediated the effects of positive job affects and job commitment. lastly, emotional improvement partially mediated the effects of negative job affects, positive job affects, and turnover intention.

Complimentary and alternate medicine, especially Ayurveda is gaining popularity in United States. However, there are various barriers that people face in adopting Ayurvedic practices into their lives and making cultural, familial and societal changes to better their health. This research explores these relationships and barriers behind why some people adopt and are able/unable to sustain Ayurvedic practices in the presence of traditional bio-medicine.

With the rapid development of wireless communication technology, the demands for higher communication rates are increasing. Higher communication rate corresponds to higher DoF. Interference alignment, which is an emerging interference management technique, is able to substantially increase the DoF of wireless communication systems. This thesis mainly studies the delay-based interference alignment technique. The key problem lies in the design of the transmission scheme and the appropriate allocation of the propagation delay, so as to achieve the desired DoF of different wireless networks. In addition, through delay-based interference alignment, the achievability of extreme points of the DoF region of different wireless networks can be proved.

The aim of this thesis is to narrate and analyze lynching and atypical violence in Denton County, Texas, between 1920 and 1926. Through this intensive study of a rural county in north Texas, the role of law enforcement in typical and systemic violence is observed and the relationship between Denton County Officials and the Ku Klux Klan is analyzed. Chapter 1 discusses the root of the word lynching and submits a call for academic attention to violence that is unable to be categorized as lynching due to its restrictive definition. Chapter 2 chronicles known instances of lynching in Denton County from its founding through the 1920s including two lynchings perpetrated by Klavern 136, the Denton County Klan. Chapter 3 examines the relationship between Denton County Law Enforcement and the Klan. In Chapter 4, seasons of violence are identified and applied to available historical records. Chapter 5 concludes that non-lynching violence, termed "disappearances," occurred and argues on behalf of its inclusion within the historiography of Jim Crow Era criminal actions against Black Americans. In the Prologue and Epilogue, the development and dissolution of the St. John's Community in Pilot Point, Texas, is narrated.

A collection of short fiction stories that fixate on the role of the strange and the imagined.

Extant research suggests that some of the potential harms to social bonds during the incarceration experience may be mitigated by visitation. In particular, previous studies have found visitation from family and friends to be significantly related to decreased recidivism rates among adult prisoners. Little is known about the impact of visitation on recidivism among juvenile populations, which this study sought to address. Utilizing data from the Pathways to Desistance study, a series of negative binomial regressions were carried out to observe the potential relationship between maternal and paternal caregiver visitation and post-release self-reported offending among serious juvenile offenders. No significant relationship was found between caregiver visitation and recidivism, contrary to expected results. This held true for both maternal and paternal caregiver visitation as well as both dichotomous and visit count measures. Further research is needed to determine why visitation studies among adult populations do not appear to generalize to juveniles. Visitation quality and nature of the relationship with caregivers should be observed in future studies.

Over the past 25 years, research on the effectiveness of new technologies in teaching has been constantly evolving as teachers try to keep up with educational trends. With the current evolution of technology, it is important to find out how students feel about the use of technologies in both the classroom setting and the non-traditional learning environment. The objective of this project is to determine which applications the students of French 1010 (first semester of college-level French) at the University of North Texas use for language learning to supplement and reinforce the concepts learned in class. Two questions guided this project: (1) what are the new technologies that students in French 1010 use? and (2) if UNT were to implement hybrid classes, would students be interested in taking them? In order to answer these questions, a survey was distributed to 184 students of French 1010 at UNT during the fall 2019 semester. From these surveys, 100 were selected for analysis in the present study, and three students were interviewed as a way to collect additional data. The results of the survey showed that Duolingo was the most used application for language learning purposes, while the interviews showed that the students …

An event is something that happens at a time and location. Events include major life events such as graduating college or getting married, and also simple day-to-day activities such as commuting to work or eating lunch. Most work on event extraction detects events and the entities involved in events. For example, cooking events will usually involve a cook, some utensils and appliances, and a final product. In this work, we target the task of determining whether events result in their expected outcomes. Specifically, we target cooking and baking events, and characterize event outcomes into two categories. First, we distinguish whether something edible resulted from the event. Second, if something edible resulted, we distinguish between perfect, partial and alternative outcomes. The main contributions of this thesis are a corpus of 4,000 tweets annotated with event outcome information and experimental results showing that the task can be automated. The corpus includes tweets that have only text as well as tweets that have text and an image.

Ways of understanding, living, and communicating with non-human species, and more specifically endangered species, have been thought of dualistically and hierarchically in Western cultures. This type of thinking is harmful when examining environmental issues that involve more than just humans, which is arguably all environmental issues. By enforcing a nature/culture dichotomy, humans are seen as separate from nature and therefore they can ethically excuse themselves from dealing with environmental issues that happen "out there" in nature. This thesis explores two manifestations of this nature/culture separation as it continues to threaten wild orca populations in Puget Sound. The first is because of an anthropocentric culture and the second is because of the capitalist socio-economic system. The anthropocentric part of this type of thinking raises humans up on a pedestal, above all non-human species. It gives humans the excuse to only care about issues that affect them directly. The capitalistic part of this type of thinking enforces human's exploitation and commodification of nature. I argue that anthropocentrism and capitalism together create a human/nature relationship that harms nature and benefits humans. This relationship is illustrated by a small population of orcas, called the Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW), off the coast of Washington …

The Texas High Plains produces the most substantial amount of cotton in Texas. The region is a semi-arid area with limited precipitation, and it is, therefore, susceptible to climate change. Cotton production in the Texas High Plains is mostly dependent on irrigation to increase yield. The overall goal of this research was to study the interrelationships between climate change and cotton yield using correlation analysis and also to study how climate has changed in the region using trend analysis. A three-decade data (1987-2017) was analyzed to establish the relationship between climate change and cotton and also to determine how climate has changed in the area over the last 30 years. The research used precipitation and temperature data to assess climate change.The results of this research showed that annual mean temperature has lesser impacts on cotton yield, and the correlation between annual precipitation and cotton yield is insignificant. It also found out that high rates of temperature at the boll opening stage of cotton growth results in decreased cotton yield and that at the boll development and boll opening stages, precipitation is needed. Again, the research indicated that, on average, there had been a significant increase in temperature, but precipitation trends …

A wearable body temperature sensor would allow for early detection of fever or infection, as well as frequent and accurate hassle-free recording. This thesis explores the design of a body-temperature-sensing device inkjet-printed on a flexible substrate. All structures were first modeled by first-principles, theoretical calculations, and then simulated in HFSS. A variety of planar square inductor geometries were studied before selecting an optimal design. The designs were fabricated using multiple techniques and compared to the simulation results. It was determined that inductance must be carefully measured and documented to ensure good functionality. The same is true for parallel-plate and interdigitated capacitors. While inductance remains relatively constant with temperature, the capacitance of the device with a temperature-sensitive dielectric layer will result in a shift in the resonant frequency as environmental or ambient temperature changes. This resonant frequency can be wirelessly detected, with no battery required for the sensing device, from which the temperature can be deduced. From this work, the optimized version of the design comprises of conductive silver in with a temperature-sensitive graphene oxide layer, intended for inkjet-printing on flexible polyimide substrates. Graphene oxide demonstrates a high dielectric permittivity with good sensing capabilities and high accuracy. This work pushes the …

The Pueblo III period marks a critical shift in settlement location of Ancestral Puebloan people within the Mesa Verde region. Community centers during the Pueblo I and Pueblo II periods were built on mesa tops, whereas canyon-rims and alcoves became the preferred settlement location during the Pueblo III period. Beginning in the Pueblo I period, community centers consisted of linear roomblock villages. By the late Pueblo II period great house community centers influenced by the Chaco culture system spanned the Mesa Verde region. The Pueblo III period hallmarks the transition to canyon-rim villages and cliff dwellings. The location of these Pueblo III centers is thought to be related to the need for a defensive position on the landscape, and access to water sources. This shift in settlement locations undoubtedly led to change in the access to resources, such as water, arable farmland, and wild food plants and game. This study aims to evaluate whether the change in community center location impacted the accessibility to arable farmland and water sources immediately available to Ancestral Puebloan people throughout time. Specifically, several variables related to farming potential and hydrologic potential, including soil type, soil moisture, elevation, cropland suitability, distance to water sources, drainage …

Rome was among the largest cities in Europe during the Republic era, with a population that was diverse in social status and ethnicity. To maintain public order and social control of such a large, continually growing and shifting population that encompassed mixed cultures and Roman citizens, the Roman elites had to use various methods to keep the peace and maintain social stability. As religion was so deeply ingrained into every aspect of Roman life, it is worth taking a deeper look into how those in charge used it to maintain peace and relative control in Rome and its territories. Chapter 1 offers a brief look at the history of Roman religion, its terms and definitions, and the idea of social control as it pertains to this thesis. Chapter 2 shows the motivations of the Roman elite classes in their use of religion to maintain public order and enforce social control of the mass population. Couched in the need to uphold the Pax Deorum or Peace of the Gods, religious piety and order was cultivated as a means to protect the Republic from harm. Chapter 3 explains how the Patrician and Plebeian classes directed the attention of the residents of Rome …

The purpose of this study is to revisit the question of whether welfare benefit levels influence female headship, and whether the effect differs between the two main eras of welfare policy relevant to female headship, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). This study adds to the existing literature by including more up to date data allowing for a comparison between the AFDC and TANF eras. Results show that the effect of welfare benefits on female headship rates changes from negative to positive after welfare reform occurred among blacks, while no change occured among whites.

Sport psychology professionals (SPPs), like psychologists in general, may cross therapeutic boundaries (e.g., hug a client) and even become sexually attracted to their athlete-clients (ACs). I examined the prevalence of these issues, as well as SPPs' ethical training and use of supervision in relation to them. Participants were 181 SPPs; 92 (50.8%) reported being sexually attracted to one or more of their ACs. In regards to specific behaviors, approximately half (49.4%) reported discussing personal matters unrelated to their (n = 87), whereas far fewer had engaged in sexual behaviors with their ACs, such as discussing sexual matters unrelated to their work (n = 4), and caressing or intimately touching an AC (n = 1). No SPP reported kissing, dating, having sexual intercourse, or engaging in other sexual activities with their ACs. The three most common nonsexual boundary crossings were (a) consulting with an AC in public places (e.g., hotel lobby or practice field; 87.8%), (b) working with an AC at practice (86.2%), (c) working with an AC at a competition (75.0%). Interestingly, few SPPs sought supervision/consultation regarding the attraction, though 83.7% said they would do so if they were attracted in the future. I also examined differences across gender, mental …

Most horse training methods heavily rely on negative reinforcement and punishment. However, there is a movement in the horse community to utilize positive reinforcement to meet training goals. Although food has been used effective as a reinforcer with horses, social interaction has also been demonstrated to function as a positive reinforcer for animals. Utilizing social interaction as a reinforcer may lead to several benefits for both the trainer and animal. Some of the benefits can be improved relationships between animals and their caretakers and improved animal welfare. The purpose of this study was to apply Owens and Owens et al. previous research protocols to three equines to assess if social interaction, in the form of petting and gentle scratching, would function as a reinforcer. Using a changing criterion design, this study demonstrated that petting and gentle scratching could function as a reinforcer to teach three equines to stay and come in their natural environment.

Concussions are a common type of traumatic brain injury resulting in a series of physical, emotional, and psychosocial symptoms. Following a concussion, emotional processing is thought to be altered through small functional and structural disruptions that impact information processing pathways, which may eventually manifest as behavioral impairments. Thus, the use of both behavioral and functional outcomes may be effective for assessing the changes in emotional processing that may occur following a concussion. The primary purpose of this study was to examine behavioral and neurocognitive differences in response to emotional face images between individuals with and without a history of concussion. Fifty participants (18 female; 32 male) were recruited and assigned to either the concussed (n = 23; Mage = 24.1 ± 1.0) or non-concussed (n = 27; Mage = 23.2 ± 0.6) group based on medical and self-reported concussion history. Participants completed a modified emotional oddball paradigm where representative positive (smiling), negative (frowning), and neutral faces from the Radboud Faces Database were displayed. Neuroelectric measures of P3 amplitude and latency, as well as behavioral measures of response accuracy and reaction time were assessed during the experiment. The concussion group showed significant reductions in accuracy, but no difference in reaction time …