This thesis details my applied thesis project and experience in the evaluation of a workforce development through sustainable construction program. It describes the need of my client, Sweet Grass Consulting and their contractual partner, the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, in the evaluation of Thunder Valley CDC's Workforce Development through Sustainable Construction Program. My role involved the development of an extensive evaluation package for this program and data analysis of evaluation materials to support Thunder Valley CDC's grant-funded Workforce Development Program. I place the efforts of Thunder Valley CDC in the context of their community, the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Lakota People, and within an historical and contemporary context to highlight the implications of the efforts of Thunder Valley CDC. Using the theoretical frameworks of cultural revitalization and community economic development, I attempt to highlight two important components of Thunder Valley CDC's community development efforts - cultural revitalization for social healing, and development that emphasizes social, community and individual well-being. Thunder Valley CDC's Workforce Development through Sustainable Construction Program is still in its early stages, and so this first year of implementation very much represented a pilot phase. However, while specific successes are difficult to measure at this point, …

Shape memory alloys (SMAs) are a new generation material which exhibits unique nonlinear deformations due to a phase transformation which allows it to return to its original shape after removal of stress or a change in temperature. It shows a shape memory effect (martensitic condition) and pseudoelasticity (austenitic condition) properties depends on various heat treatment conditions. The reason for these properties depends on phase transformation through temperature changes or applied stress. Many technological applications of austenite SMAs involve cyclical mechanical loading and unloading in order to take advantage of pseudoelasticity, but are limited due to poor fatigue life. In this thesis, I investigated two important mechanical feature to fatigue behavior in pseudoelastic NiTi SMA wires using high energy synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction (SR-XRD). The first of these involved simple bending and the second of these involved relaxation during compression loading. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was performed to identify the phase transformation temperatures. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images were collected for the initial condition of the NiTi SMA wires and during simple bending, SEM revealed that micro-cracks in compression regions of the wire propagate with increasing bend angle, while tensile regions tend to not exhibit crack propagation. SR-XRD patterns were analyzed …

This thesis argues that Irish can and should be revitalized. Conducted as an observational study, this thesis focuses on interviews with 72 participants during the summer of 2013. All participants live in the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland. This thesis investigates what has caused the Irish language to lose power and prestige over the centuries, and which Irish language revitalization efforts have been successful. Findings show that although, all-Irish schools have had a substantial growth rate since 1972, when the schools were founded, the majority of Irish students still get their education through English-medium schools. This study concludes that Irish will survive and grow in the numbers of fluent Irish speakers; however, the government will need to further support the growth of the all-Irish schools. In conclusion, the Irish communities must take control of the promotion of the Irish language, and intergenerational transmission must take place between parents and their children.

Community exercise can offer many benefits for children, including the opportunity to engage in physical activity and interact with peers in a social setting. Children with autism do not engage in as many community activities as their typical peers. This study examines conditions to teach young children to complete yoga poses to mastery. The effects of prompting, programmed reinforcers, and a chaining criteria were evaluated using a comparison design with two baselines and one intervention condition, replicated across two children with autism. Both children mastered performance of all four targeted yoga poses. The findings are discussed in the context of previous research on the benefits of yoga.

Sidman's (2000) theory of stimulus equivalence states that all positive elements in a reinforcement contingency enter an equivalence class. The theory also states that if an element from an equivalence class conflicts with a programmed reinforcement contingency, the conflicting element will drop out of the equivalence class. Minster et al. (2006) found evidence suggesting that a conflicting element does not drop out of an equivalence class. In an effort to explain maintained accuracy on programmed reinforcement contingencies, the authors seem to suggest that participants will behave in accordance with a particular partitioning of the equivalence class which continues to include the conflicting element. This hypothesis seems to explain their data well, but their particular procedures are not a good test of the notion of "dropping out" due to the pre-establishment of equivalence classes before the conflicting member entered the class. The current experiment first developed unpartitioned equivalence classes and only later exposed participants to reinforcement contingencies that conflicted with pre-established equivalence classes. The results are consistent with the notion that a partition developed such that the conflicting element had dropped out of certain subclasses of the original equivalence class. The notion of a partitioning of an equivalence class seems to …

This thesis examines the descriptions of Royalist and Parliamentarian masculinity in English Civil War memoirs by women through a close reading of three biographical memoirs written by Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle; Lady Ann Fanshawe; and Lucy Hutchinson. Descriptions of masculinity are evaluated through the lens of Raewyn Connell's theory of hegemonic masculinity to understand the impact two competing models of masculinity had on the social and political culture of the period. The prevailing Parliamentarian hegemonic masculinity in English Civil War memoirs is traced to its origins before the English Civil War to demonstrate how hegemonic masculinity changes over time. The thesis argues that these memoirs provide evidence of two competing models of Royalist and Parliamentarian masculinities during the Civil War that date back to changes in the Puritan meaning of the phrase “man of merit”, which influenced the development of a Parliamentarian model of masculinity.

This thesis focuses on three fashion industry themed female friendship films: Pret-a-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994) by Robert Altman, The Devil Wears Prada (2006) by David Frankel, and The September Issue (2009) by R.J. Cutler. Female interpersonal relationships are complex – women often work to motivate, encourage and transform one another but can just as easily use tactics like intimidation, manipulation, and exploitation in order to save their own jobs and reputations. Through the lens of post-feminist theory, this thesis examines significant female interpersonal relationships in each film to illustrate how femininity is constructed and driven by consumer culture in the fashion industry themed films.

The Bonton and Ideal neighborhoods in Dallas Texas, developed in the early 1900s, experienced physical and social decay throughout the 1980s. Neighborhood organizations and resident activism were vital to the rebirth of the community in the 1990s. Current revitalization efforts taking place there have been a source of contention as the neighborhood continues to overcome inequalities created by decades of racialized city planning initiatives. This thesis focuses on how the structuring structure of whiteness has historically affected, and continues to affect, the neighborhoods of Ideal and Bonton, as well as acts to identify how black residents have navigated their landscape and increased their collective capital through neighborhood activism.

This study aims to experimentally investigate the spray cooling characteristics for active two-phase cooling of automotive power electronics. Tests are conducted on a small-scale, closed loop spray cooling system featuring a pressure atomized spray nozzle. Two types of refrigerants, HFC-134a (R-134a) and HFO-1234yf, are selected as the working fluids. The test section (heater), made out of oxygen-free copper, has a 1-cm2 plain, smooth surface prepared following a consistent procedure, and would serve as a baseline case. Matching size thick film resistors, attached onto the copper heaters, generate heat and simulate high heat flux power electronics devices. The tests are conducted by controlling the heat flux in increasing steps, and recording the corresponding steady-state temperatures to obtain cooling curves. The working fluid is kept at room temperature level (22oC). Performance comparisons are made based on heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and critical heat flux (CHF) values. Effects of spray characteristics and liquid flow rates on the cooling performance are investigated with the selected coolants. Three types of commercially available nozzles that generate full-cone sprays with fine droplets are utilized in the tests. Effect of liquid flow rate is evaluated varying flow rates at 2, 3, 4 ml/s. The experimental results obtained from …

A sexual minority is someone who identifies as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB). According to the Minority Stress Model (Meyer, 2003), sexual minorities encounter significant levels of stress due to their minority group status, thus they are more likely to experience perceived stress. Our cross-sectional, correlational study aimed to explore the relationships between forgiveness, mindfulness and anger and how they are related to perceived stress in a convenience sample of ethnically diverse LGB adults. We hypothesized that: 1) anger is positively associated with perceived stress; 2) forgiveness is negatively associated with perceived stress; 3) mindfulness is negatively associated with perceived stress; and 4) anger, forgiveness and mindfulness account for a significant proportion of the variance in perceived stress. 5) The relationship between anger and perceived stress is moderated by forgiveness. 6) The relationship between anger and perceived stress is moderated by mindfulness. Among LGB adults, the extant literature does not address these four variables in conjunction and the relationships between anger, forgiveness, mindfulness and stress has yet to be explored. Various statistical analyses were conducted, including a hierarchical linear regression to test our model. We found that our overall model accounted for 36% of the total variance in perceived stress …

This thesis consists of a collection of poems. By virtue of its content and arrangement, the collection ruminates on and attempts to work through the problem of corporeality and bodily experience: the anxieties surrounding illness, mortality, and the physicality of contemporary life. This collection explores the tension inherent in the mind/body duality and, rather than prescribing solutions, offers multiple avenues and perspectives through which to view bodily experience, as well as how that experience affects an individual’s identity, agency, and sense of self.

This thesis introduces the study of inmate marginalia as a method for understanding inmates’ uses of texts in prison libraries and for understanding the motivations for these uses. Marginalia are the notes, drawings, underlining, and other markings left by readers in the texts with which they interact. I use the examples of the Talmudic projects to set a precedent for the integration of marginal discourses into the central discourse of society. Next, I discuss the arguments surrounding the use of texts in prison libraries, including an outline for an ideal study of inmate marginalia. Finally, I discuss the findings of my on-site research at four prison libraries in Washington State. After scanning evidence of marginalia from forty-eight texts, a relatively small sample, I divided the marginalia by gender of facility, genre of text, address of the marginalia, and type of marginalia and found statistically significant correlations (p < 0.05) between gender and genre, gender and address, gender and type, and genre and type. However, while these correlations are statistically weak and require further investigation, the statistically significant correlations indicate the potential for integrating inmate marginalia studies into the scholarly discussions regarding inmates’ interactions with texts in prison.

This thesis focuses on developing a high data rate wireless sensor network framework that could be integrated with hardware prototypes to monitor structural health of buildings. In order to better understand the wireless sensor network architecture and its consideration in structural health monitoring, a detailed literature review on wireless sensor networks has been carried out. Through research, it was found that there are numerous simulation software packages available for wireless sensor network simulation. One suitable software was selected for modelling the framework. Research showed that Matlab/Simulink was the most suitable environment, and as a result, a wireless sensor network framework was designed in Matlab/Simulink. Further, the thesis illustrates modeling of a simple accelerometer sensor, such as those used in wireless sensor networks in Matlab/Simulink using a mathematical description. Finally, the framework operation is demonstrated with 10 nodes, and data integrity is analyzed with cyclic redundancy check and transmission error rate calculations.

The goal is to perform heat measurements examine of selected roofing material samples. Those roofing materials are asphalt shingles, ceramics, and cedar. It’s important to understand the concept of heat transfer, which consists of conduction, convection, and radiation. Research work was reviewed on different infrared devices to see which one would be suitable for conducting my experiment. In this experiment, the main focus was on a specific property of radiation. That property is the emissivity, which is the amount of heat a material is able to radiate compared to a blackbody. An infrared measuring device, such as the infrared camera was used to determine the emissivity of each sample by using a measurement formula consisting of certain equations. These equations account for the emissivity, transmittance of heat through the atmosphere and temperatures of the samples, atmosphere and background. The experiment verifies how reasonable the data is compared to values in the emissivity table. A blackbody method such as electrical black tape was applied to help generate the correct data. With this data obtained, the emissivity was examined to understand what factors and parameters affect this property of the materials. This experiment was conducted using a suitable heat source to heat …

The main objective of this research is to extend the “Direct strength method” for determining the web crippling strength of cold-formed steel C and Z sections subjected to End one flange loading and Interior one flange loading conditions. Direct strength method is applied for designing the columns and beams earlier. The existing specifications equation for calculating the web crippling strength of cold-formed steels designed by American Institute of Iron and Steel is very old method and it is based on the extensive experimental investigations conducted at different universities. Calculating the web crippling strength of cold-formed steels using direct strength method is a new technique. In the present research the web crippling strength of cold-formed steels were calculated using Direct Strength Method. The experimental data is collected from the tests that were conducted at different universities. The critical buckling strength of the members were calculated using Abaqus. Microsoft excel is used to generate the equations. The safety and resistance factors for the designed equations were calculated using “Load and resistance factor design” and “Allowable strength design” from North American Cold-Formed Steel Specification, 2012 edition book.

During the mid-nineteenth century, the citizens of Texas were forced to keep their mentally disturbed family members at home which caused stress on the caregivers and the further debilitation of the afflicted. To remedy this situation, mental health experts and Texas politicians began to create a system of healing known as state asylums. The purpose of this study is to determine how Texas mental health care came into being, the research and theories behind the prevention and treatment programs that asylum physicians employed to overcome mental illness, in addition to the victories and shortcomings of the system. Through this work, it will be shown that during the 1850s until the 1920s institutions faced difficulty in achieving success from many adverse conditions including, but not limited to, overcrowding, large geographical conditions, poor health practices, faulty construction, insufficient funding, ineffective prevention and treatment methods, disorganization, cases of patient abuse, incompetent employees, prejudice, and legal improprieties. As a result, by 1930, these asylums were merely places to detain the mentally ill in order to rid them from society. This thesis will also confirm that while both Texas politicians and mental health experts desired to address and overcome mental illness in Texas, they were …

This collection of essays includes a preference that investigates the role and importance of setting and character in a nonfiction narrative. The preface assesses the writings of four great authors, examining how each author use setting and characterization to further the purpose of their story. This collection focuses on four different issues that the author has wrestled with for two decades. While “Desperado” is an investigation into the problems within her own family, “Being Black Me” highlights the authors struggle against the racial inequality her hometown. “Voices In The Dark”, the author analyze how the abuse she suffered as a child has influenced her life and contributed to a drinking problem that is explored in a later essay “Alors On Danse”.

The purpose of this thesis document is to explain the process of making the documentary film, No Quarter: The Story of the New Orleans Greys. The document is organized by having the prospectus and the film proposal at the beginning, with the body describing how the film was made based on the prospectus. The purpose of the film is to tell the history of a unit of volunteers in the Texas Revolution, the New Orleans Greys. The document describes the methods used to make the film and how it will be distributed to the intended audience. As the thesis explains, the film changed slightly from the prospectus, however the resulting film was successful in telling the history of the little-known New Orleans Greys.

Metal pipes are sometimes swaged by a metal cone to enlarge them, which increases the strain in the material. The amount of strain is important because it affects the burst and collapse strength. Burst strength is the amount of internal pressure that a pipe can withstand before failure, while collapse strength is the amount of external pressure that a pipe can withstand before failure. If the burst or collapse strengths are exceeded, the pipe may fracture, causing critical failure. Such an event could cost the owners and their customers millions of dollars in clean up, repair, and lost time, in addition to the potential environmental damage. Therefore, a reliable way of estimating the burst and collapse strength of strained pipe is desired and valuable. The sponsor currently rates strained pipes using the properties of raw steel, because those properties are easily measured (for example, yield strength). In the past, the engineers assumed that the metal would be work-hardened when swaged, so that yield strength would increase. However, swaging introduces anisotropic strain, which may decrease the yield strength. This study measured the yield strength of strained material in the transverse and axial direction and compared them to raw material, to determine …

Alberto Ginastera completed his ballet Panambí in 1937. The ballet was arranged as a symphonic suite, and was performed the same year at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, conducted by Juan José Castro. Panambí marked the beginning of Alberto Ginastera’s long and successful career as an Argentine composer. Chapter I of this document provides a brief introduction into the history behind Alberto Ginastera’s Panambí suite, and includes a review of the research that is exclusively devoted to the suite, as well as documents that do not provide direct analyses of Panambí, but contain information that aid in a better understanding of the suite’s composition. Chapter II includes analyses of the suite that illustrate important elements that contribute to the structure and sound of the Panambí suite. These components include Ginastera’s construction of the La Noche theme found in the first movement and its use as a master set, his use of diatonic collections and pitch centricity, the importance of unordered pitch class intervals IC1 and IC6, his use of aggregate completion as a compositional method, and his use of local motives over larger spans of temporal space. Chapter III explores the possibility that many of these compositional methods are …

Texas Pararnormalists mixes participatory and observational styles in an effort to portray a small community of paranormal practitioners who live and work in and around North Texas. These practitioners include psychics, ghost investigators, and other enthusiasts and seekers of the spirit world. Through the documentation of their combined perspectives, Texas Paranormalists renders a portrait of a community of outsiders with a shared belief system and an unshakeable passion for reaching out into the unknown.

Research suggests that female athletes, in particular, experience “sport-environment” pressures such as: weight, performance, and body image demands from their coaches, teammates, and judges. These influences in tandem with society’s portrayal of the thin ideal are thought to considerably increase the risk of developing disordered eating problems in this population. Although numerous studies have been conducted over the past decade on the prevalence of eating disorders and pathogenic weight control behaviors among female athletes, few have examined in detail the weight pressures that exist within the sport environment, such as whether or not (and how often) athletes are weighed by their coaches, and how athletes respond to those pressures in terms of weight management practices. In the proposed study, we will examine the weigh-in environment, weight satisfaction, weight management practices, menstrual health, and reported source of nutritional guidance. The sample includes 414 NCAA Division I female collegiate swimmers/divers and gymnasts drawn from 26 universities across the U.S. Participants anonymously completed a series of questionnaires as part of a larger study on student-athlete health and well-being. This study found that 41% of athletes were weighed, and most often by an athletic trainer in private. Despite most weigh-ins were reportedly conducted in …

Sexual minorities experience higher levels of stress than heterosexuals, which in turn affects coping and psychological quality of life (PQOL). Although many sexual minorities remain mentally healthy, a higher prevalence of mental disorders among members of the lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) communities exists; thus, LGB PQOL becomes an important area to examine. Several key factors are related to PQOL: shame due to heterosexism, self-esteem and perceived stress. Using minority stress model, I hypothesized that shame due to heterosexism and perceived stress are negatively correlated with PQOL, while self-esteem is positively correlated with PQOL. I hypothesized that collectively shame due to heterosexism, self-esteem and perceived stress account for a significant proportion of the variance in PQOL, that self-esteem moderates the relationship between perceived stress and PQOL and that age moderates the relationship between shame due to heterosexism and PQOL. I calculated Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient and found shame due to heterosexism was negatively correlated with PQOL (r(146) = -.21, p = .009), perceived stress was negatively correlated with PQOL (r (146) = -.69, p < .001) and self-esteem was positively correlated with PQOL (r(146) = .72, p < .001). I conducted a regression analysis and found our model accounted for …

GPR17, a uracil nucleotide cysteinyl leukotriene receptor, belongs to the GPCR (G protein coupled receptor) family. It has been shown recently that inhibiting this protein in the nervous system in mice can lead to blockage of oligodendrocyte maturation, which supports myelin repair. Interestingly, our laboratory found GPR17 in thrombocytes. However, we do not know whether it has any function in thrombocyte aggregation or the nature of the ligand. In this paper, we studied the role of GPR17 in hemostasis, which is a fundamental defense mechanism in the event of injury. Using zebrafish as a model system, our laboratory has studied specifically thrombocytes, which play a significant role in hemostasis. The major reasons to use zebrafish as a model system are that their thrombocytes are functionally equivalent to human platelets, the adult fish are amenable to knockdown experiments, and they are readily available in the market. This study was performed by using a piggy back knockdown method where we used a chemical hybrid of control morpholino and an antisense oligonucleotide sequence leads to the degradation the mRNA for GPR17. After knockdown GPR17 in thrombocytes, the percent difference of the thrombocytes aggregation between the control and knockdown blood samples was measured by …