Web-based homework systems are becoming more common in general chemistry as instructors face ever-increasing enrollment. Yet providing meaningful feedback on assignments remains of the utmost importance. Chemistry instructors consider completion of homework integral to students' success in chemistry, yet only a few studies have compared the use of Web-based systems to the traditional paper-and-pencil homework within general chemistry. This study compares the traditional homework system to four different Web-based systems. Data from eight, semester classes consisting of a diagnostic pre-test, final semester grades, and the number of successful and unsuccessful students are analyzed. Statistically significant results suggest a chemistry instructor should carefully consider options when selecting a homework system.

Despite having produced an impressive body of work and having been well-received in his lifetime, the career of nineteenth-century American expatriate artist Walter MacEwen has received virtually no scholarly attention. Assimilating primary-source materials, this thesis provides the first serious examination of MacEwen's life and career, thereby providing insight into a forgotten episode in American art.

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) has been used with children with autism and other developmental disabilities as an alternative to vocal communication. Some researchers have reported rapid acquisition of picture-exchange requesting as well as increased vocal speech and increased spontaneous social interactions following PECS training. Earlier research has found that although 3 children with autism learned to exchange pictures for preferred items during PECS training, requesting topographies did not change and vocal speech did not increase after PECS training. The present study evaluated the effects of PECS training on requesting topographies, especially vocal speech, with 3 participants with autism and mental retardation. Only one participant maintained picture-exchange requesting, and none of the participants showed an increase in vocal speech during probe sessions conducted after each PECS training phase.

Blair sent British troops to join U.S. forces in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 at great political cost to himself. What motivated him to take this step? Sources for this work include: autobiographies and biographies of individuals close to Blair; journal and newspaper articles and monographs on this topic; Prime Minister's speeches and press conferences. Part one is comprised of five chapters including the Introduction; Blair's years at school; Blair's early political career; and From Parliament to Prime Minister. Part two includes four chapters that analyze motivating factors such as, Anglo-American Relations; Blair's personality, faith, and his relationship with Gordon Brown; and finally, Blair's perception of Britain's Manifest Destiny. All of these factors played a role in Blair's decision.

Electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes was largely unregulated prior to 1978. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (hereinafter "FISA") was enacted to implement a judicial authorization process for foreign intelligence electronic surveillance that would effectively balance competing needs for national security and civil liberty under the Fourth Amendment. This study examines the evolution of FISA and its effectiveness under the Fourth Amendment, as assessed by federal reviewing courts and scholars since the statute's enactment. The study concludes that the FISA electronic surveillance authorization process has been effective in providing a constitutional mechanism to obtain foreign intelligence information.

American artist James Rosenquist is best known for his Pop Art paintings, which existing scholarship has studied in regard to its formal features and social and cultural significance. Rosenquist's manner of working, specifically his process, remains understudied. Focusing on three paintings and three corresponding collages, President Elect (1960-61, 1964), Star Thief (1980), and The Stowaway Peers Out at the Speed of Light (2000), this thesis considers features of Rosenquist's studio practice to propose a new interpretation involving the representational status and significance of the artist's collages and paintings that is elucidated by French theorist Jean Baudrillard's concept of the simulacrum. Additionally, the thesis addresses the treatment of Rosenquist's collages and paintings in publications and exhibitions since 1992 by suggesting how Baudrillard's ideas about the simulacrum clarify the museological narrativizing and consumption of the artist's work.

This study examined the effects of premarital counseling on newlywed communication. It was predicted that individuals who had participated in premarital counseling would have lower levels of demand/withdrawal communication and higher levels of spousal support. The effects of the format of the counseling were also examined. Individuals who had been married less than two years completed a survey measuring their marital satisfaction, levels of demand/withdraw, and perceived spousal support. Social learning theory was used as a theoretical lens. Results suggested that participating in premarital counseling has no affect on newlywed communication. Newlyweds who had been exposed to a group format during their counseling had higher marital satisfaction than those who had just participated in a one-on-one format with a counselor.

Using the concept of the build-up cavity for second harmonic generation to produce 243nm laser light, an innovative cavity is theoretically explored using a 15mm length CLBO crystal. In order to limit the losses of the cavity, the number of effective optical surfaces is kept to only four and the use of a MgF2 crystal is adopted to separate the harmonic and fundamental laser beam from each other. The cavity is shown to have an expected round trip loss of five tenths of a percent or better, resulting in a conversion efficiency greater than 65%.

Skinner (1957) suggested that different verbal operants are acquired independently of each other and establishing a verbal operant as a mand will not necessarily result in the appearance of a tact having the same response form and vice versa. Recent empirical research has found that newly acquired mands and tacts can be transferred to different relations without direct training. The present study investigated 1) how verbal responses taught as pure mands affect untrained tact relations; 2) how verbal responses taught as pure tacts affect untrained mand relations; 3) how the size of mand and tact repertoires relate to speed of acquisition of new mands and tacts; and 4) how size of entering repertoires affect the transfer of mand topographies to tacts and vice versa. Two vocal-verbal children with autism were taught three novel responses as mands and three other responses as tacts. Mand topographies transferred to tact relations and tact topographies transferred to mand relations for both participants. Overall acquisition as well as transfer of mands and tacts was faster for the participant with a higher entering repertoire.

The purposes of the study were to: 1) identify Indian tourists' demographics and travel patterns; 2) examine Indian tourists' motivation to take the Bangkok area trip; 3) examine the level of importance of information sources; 4) identify the level of satisfaction of Indian tourists on their travel experience on the Bangkok area attributes; and 5) examine the intention to return and willingness to recommend the Bangkok area and Thailand. The findings showed that Indian tourists were motivated to visit the Bangkok area by both push and pull factors. Family and/or friends and the Internet were considered as important sources in trip decision making. Indian tourists were generally satisfied with the Bangkok area's attributes. They also showed the desire to revisit and recommend Bangkok and Thailand as travel destinations.

With a growing concern of an infectious diseases spreading in a population, epidemiology is becoming more important for the future of public health. In the past epidemiologist used existing data of an outbreak to help them determine how an infectious disease might spread in the future. Now with computational models, they able to analysis data produced by these models to help with prevention and intervention plans. This paper looks at the design, implementation, and analysis of a computational model based on the interactions of the population between individuals. The design of the working contact model looks closely at the SEIR model used as the foundation and the two timelines of a disease. The implementation of the contact model is reviewed while looking closely at data structures. The analysis of the experiments provide evidence this contact model can be used to help epidemiologist study the spread of an infectious disease based on the contact rate of individuals.

This thesis examines the representation of Mormon men in American film and television, with particular regard for sexual identity and the cultural association of Mormonism with sexuality. The history of Mormonism's unique marital practices and doctrinal approaches to gender and sexuality have developed three common stereotypes for Mormon male characters: the purposeful heterosexual, the monstrous polygamist, and the self-destructive homosexual. Depending upon the sexual stereotype in the narrative, the Mormon Church can function as a proponent for nineteenth-century views of sexuality, a symbol for society's repressed sexuality, or a metaphor for the oppressive effects of performing gender and sexuality according to ideological constraints. These ideas are presented in Mormon films such as Saturday's Warrior (1989) as well as mainstream films such as A Mormon Maid (1917) and Advise and Consent (1962).

Learning relationships between intergenerational students in an after school art program provided mutual benefits for participants in Denton, Texas. This qualitative case study of older, active adults and elementary students involved in visual art experiences gives insight to a contextual learning environment that fosters lifelong learning and addresses the interpersonal issues of an aging society.

This study explored the state of art education in Turkey as revealed by pre-service art education university instructors, and the potential of incorporating visual culture studies in pre-service art education in Turkey. The instructors' ideas about visual culture, and popular culture, the impact it might have, the content (objects), and the practices within the context of Turkey were examined. Visual culture was examined from an art education perspective that focuses on a pedagogical approach that emphasizes the perception and critique of popular culture and everyday cultural experiences, and the analysis of media including television programs, computer games, Internet sites, and advertisements. A phenomenological human science approach was employed in order to develop a description of the perception of visual culture in pre-service art education in Turkey as lived by the participants. In-person interviews were used to collect the data from a purposive sample of 8 faculty members who offered undergraduate and graduate art education pedagogy, art history, and studio courses within four-year public universities. This empirical approach sought to obtain comprehensive descriptions of an experience through semi-structural interviews. These interviews employed open-ended questions to gather information about the following: their educational and professional background; their definitions of art education and …

Research has consistently shown that intimate partner homicide (IPH) rates have been on a steady downward decline over the past two decades. A relatively recent movement in IPH research, however, has emphasized the need for further dissecting the aggregate trends by factors such as gender, race, and victim-offender relationship. In response to these issues, this study looks at the relationship between IPHs and factors such as gender, race, and age. The present study explores officially reported IPH cases in Dallas, Texas between the years 1990-1997. Specific attention will be paid to the victim's and suspect's age, race, and gender. The findings of the study will assist in identifying significant characteristics of these IPH incidents which may lead to a greater understanding of the types of relationships in which IPH is more likely to occur. Studying the relationship between IPHs and these factors, as this research aims to do, is important to understanding what IPH incident characteristics need more attention to help prevent future incidents from occurring. As a result of this research, a better understanding of whether IPH may occur in certain types of relationships will be reached and then can be further utilized to educate.

A child's ability to learn in school and school performance are affected by various factors. Variables that affect learning and academic performance in 46 children, 4 - 7 years old, were examined. Children, parents, and teachers completed questionnaires rating children's attitudes and behavior toward school. Children completed a computerized matching-to-sample (MTS) task. The MTS trained the children to form 3 stimulus classes. One stimulus class included three arbitrary stimuli, the others contained a positively or negatively valenced stimulus, a school-related stimulus, and an arbitrary stimulus. Class formation performance was assessed. Rate of learning predicted attitudes toward school, school attitudes predicted academic performance; however a hypothesized mediation effect of attitudes was not demonstrated. No significant differences in rate of forming stimulus classes containing emotionally valenced and school stimuli were found. Future directions for intervention in the early education of students who have poor attitudes toward school are discussed.

Early and intensive behavioral intervention outcome research includes descriptions of intervention variables that may increase treatment success. This study was designed to develop an observation system that incorporates and expands on some of these variables. Measures include the number of interventionist teaching units, types of skills addressed during instruction, consequences programmed by interventionists, and engagement with teaching materials. This system allowed for a view of the differences in teaching behaviors among the participants. It is proposed that this observation system is a start toward standardized intervention measures that can be applied to evaluate varied treatment models. Such standardization can help in ensuring that all children have access to evidence-based services.

The goal of this research was to determine if there are significant differences in the attribution styles for positive and negative events between students of differing ability and the correlation of these attribution styles to hopefulness. The study examined twelfth grade advanced placement (AP N = 45) students and twelfth grade students with documented learning differences enrolled in college preparatory classes (CP-LD N = 14). Both groups of students came from high socioeconomic backgrounds. The students' internal attributions related to hopefulness were measured with the Hope Scale (Snyder, 1994) which assesses the constructs of agency (will), pathway (way), and produces an overall hopefulness score. Results indicate that AP and CP-LD students had similar measures of internal attribution for positive events, but significantly distinct measures of internal attribution for negative events. However, the AP students show no statistically significant difference from CP-LD students in their measures of agency, pathway, or overall hopefulness.

As more toddlers are being diagnosed with autism there is an increased need for very early intervention. Preliminary research on interventions suggests toddlers can make important developmental progress and that parents can be part of the intervention process. The purpose of this study was to systematically replicate a parent training program reported by Alai-Rosales et al. (2009). Specifically, the present study taught parents a set of teaching strategies that included arranging the environment, setting up learning opportunities, and using positive reinforcement. Baseline-intervention conditions were replicated across four parent-toddler dyads in order to assess the effects of training on parent and child behaviors. Results indicated increases in parent teaching behaviors, the child targeted behavior (facial orientation), as well as a non-targeted skill, joint attention. Findings are discussed in relation to the challenges of intervention and considerations for future research.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of a treatment package to teach a child with autism to willingly accept skin care products conducive to health and normal everyday living. The current study uses graduated exposure, modeling and contingent social attention to teach the child to accept the application of skin care products previously avoided. Results of the study showed that the participant tolerated criterion amounts of all target stimuli with both experimenter and parent. Follow-up probes revealed maintenance of the behaviors with only two out of the three target skin care products.

A longitudinal study of infants and their mothers was conducted to explore the development of imitation and approximations to imitation. During a 10-minute unstructured play session, researchers observed two mother-infant dyads once per week for twelve weeks, while they played at home. The data presented represents infants between the ages 5 and 34 weeks. The methodology employed was based on the methods described by Hart and Rilsey (1999). Observations were coded based on the topography of the mother's and infant's behavior and included vocalizations, facial movements, motor movements, and object manipulation. The data are analyzed and discussed in terms of its relevance to autism intervention.

This study is a comparative analysis of the personality characteristics of a sample of World of Warcraft players (n = 147) and a large normative sample (n = 20,993). The 120-item International Personality Item Pool, based on the five factor model, is used. Independent t-tests were conducted and statistical significance was found for some factors; however, the effect sizes were small, indicating a limited practical difference between the two groups.

This study evaluated whether picture exchange communication system (PECS) training would result in the development of conditional relations among corresponding pictures, objects (reinforcers) and spoken words used in PECS training with learners with developmental disabilities. Three participants with autism and mental retardation were trained to use PECS. Match-to-sample procedures were used to assess all possible conditional relations among stimuli before, during, and after PECS training. None of the three participants in this study acquired conditional discriminations involving the pictures, reinforcers, and spoken words used in their PECS training.

Wildlife tracking is an essential task to gain better understanding of the migration pattern and use of space of the wildlife. Advances in computer technology and global positioning systems (GPS) have lowered costs, reduced processing time, and improved accuracy for tracking wild animals. In this thesis, a wildlife tracking extension is developed for ArcGIS 9.x, which allows biologists and ecologists to effectively track, visualize and analyze the movement patterns of wild animals. The extension has four major components: (1) data import; (2) tracking; (3) spatial and temporal analysis; and (4) data export. Compared with existing software tools for wildlife tracking, the major features of the extension include: (1) wildlife tracking capabilities using a dynamic data layer supported by a file geodatabase with 1 TB storage limit; (2) spatial clustering of wildlife locations; (3) lacunarity analysis of one-dimensional individual animal trajectories and two-dimensional animal locations for better understanding of animal movement patterns; and (4) herds evolvement modeling and graphic representation. The application of the extension is demonstrated using simulated data, test data collected by a GPS collar, and a real dataset collected by ARGOS satellite telemetry for albatrosses in the Pacific Ocean.