Existing studies of people who are homeless provide descriptive information about the heterogeneity of the population. Families who are homeless are the fastest growing subset of this population. This study examined the variability in psychological and social functioning among homeless mothers and attempted to identify risk factors that predict level of adult functioning. Data was collected from 76 homeless mothers with minor aged children receiving services at area shelters. The sample was divided between highly structured and unstructured shelter environments. Each participant completed an extensive interview which included measures of personal and family history, risk factors and current psychological and social functioning. Social functioning was able to be predicted by a number of these risk factors.

Sixty-two mothers of childhood cancer patients completed questionnaires on family demographics, parental stress, sense of parenting competence, self esteem, health locus of control, attitudes toward cancer, life events, social support, and psychological symptomatology. Correlation and regression procedures were used. Time since diagnosis and the severity rate of a child's illness did not predict the mother's sense of parenting competence, but a negative correlation at the $p<.01$ level between mothers' report of self esteem and their distress was revealed. Social support was negatively correlated at the $p<.01$ level with psychological distress, but life events were positively correlated at the $p<.01$ level. Internal locus of control was positively correlated with psychological distress, but attitudes toward cancer did not correlate with psychological distress.

This paper examines the learning rate of the two different hemispheres of the brain and compares them through a study. Lance Hoffmeyer explains the findings derived from a test conducted through having subjects complete a random polygon task.

This paper discusses the results of a study to examine how "crisis points" throughout the progression of HIV in HIV+ women contributes to stress responses of avoidant behavior, hyperarousal, and intrusive thoughts. Deborah Jones explains how stress levels were determined and stressors were analyzed throughout the course of the study.

This paper examines visual field asymmetries and their relationship with learning through a study of three groups of 309 people. Richard Herrington discusses the results of subjects performing two visual half-field advantage reaction time tasks, a bar graph task and a word task, as well as both tasks, with extended practice.

This paper presents a study of the anxiety symptoms of first-time and multiple time incarcerates and the differences in number of symptoms. Vianey Reinhardt discusses the findings of the study conduced with 129 male offenders who were assessed through a series of tests.

The objective of this study was to obtain an aesthetically pleasing surface, by altering the surface to enhance a particular form. I incorporated plant and landscape imagery from my past experiences.

I plan to investigate the fusion of predominantly linear marks with solidly rendered forms to create a sense of space, depth, and texture within a series of paintings. The investigation will seek to answer a four part problem related to the creation of a series of paintings. The four part problem will explore whether or not the combined use of line, textural surface information, and buried images will have the potential to operate as an expressive agent in painting. This investigation will also address the series as a whole by evaluating the evolutionary process which may occur when color and solidly rendered forms are re-introduced to the canvas and combined with the primarily linear marks.

The esthetic issue of the metamorphosis of forms is the basis for my work. In parallel configurations natural form, abstract form, and the extrasensory world of light energy forms move together to form a field of force. The unfolding of the destiny of forms against such an energy field makes a resolution of forms bounded by rhythm and organic shape. The energy field that is the product of forms captures the relationship among natural form, abstract form and light forms of the spirit. The radiation of meaning is the focus of the combination of these forms in a field of force. The problem becomes then the definition of meaning in the multiple declaration of three forms of representation with the treatment of the extrasensory world of light energy as the articulation of an element of perception.

With this project I explored pottery forms of Bernard Leach and his apprentices. By exploring this work, it was my intention to expand my forms and address the following questions: 1. What Leach pottery forms were most compatible with my work methods and decoration? 2. What significant changes could I make to these Leach forms to adapt them to my own style of working character? 3. Would producing these adapted forms in two different clay bodies and using different methods to reflect landscape imagery lead to a style that I could call my own?

The purpose of the study was to investigate freshman music students' identification with expected tasks in music theory class including aural, written, and performance requirements. The second research problem compared students' descriptions with actions in class to determine the presence of role taking (the conscious adherence to a set of behaviors) or role playing (the unconscious assumption of a set of behaviors).

This study examines the recovery process of businesses in Homestead, Florida after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The goal of this study was to determine which organizational characteristics were useful in predicting the level of physical damage and the length of time to reopen for affected businesses. The organizational characteristics examined were age, size, pre-disaster gross sales, ownership of the business location, membership in the Chamber of Commerce, and property insurance. Three-hundred and fifty businesses in the area were surveyed. Because of the complexity of the recovery process, the disaster experiences of businesses were examined using three paradigms, organizational ecology, contingency theory, and configuration theory. Models were developed and tested for each paradigm. The models used the contextual variables to explain the outcome variables; level of physical damage and length of time to reopen. The SIC was modified so that it could form the framework for a taxonomic examination of the businesses. The organizations were examined at the level of division, class, subclass, and order. While the taxa and consistent levels of physical damage, the length of time needed to reopen varied greatly. The homogeneous level of damage within the groups is linked to similarity in assets and transformation processes. When …

Asparate transcarbamoylase catalyzes the first committed step in the de novo synthesis of pyrmidine nucleotides UMP, UDP, UTP, and CTP. The archetype enzyme found in Escherichia coli (310 kDa) exhibits sigmodial substrate binding kinetics with positive control by ATP and negative control with CTP and UTP. The ATCase characterized in this study is from the extreme thermophilic Archaebacterium, Methanococcus jannaschii. The enzyme was very stable at elevated temperatures and possessed activity from 20 degrees Celsius to 90 degrees Celsius. M. Jannaschii ATCase retained 75% of its activity after incubation at 100 degrees Celsius for a period of 90 minutes. No sigmodial allosteric response to substrate for the enzyme was observed. Velocity substrate plots gave Michaelis-Menten (hyperbolic) kinetics. The Km for aspartate was 7 mM at 30 degrees Celsius and the KM for carbamoylphosphate was .125 mM. The enzyme from M. jannaschii had a broad pH response with an optimum above pH 9. Kinetic measurements were significantly affected by changes in pH and temperature. The enzyme catalyzed reaction had an energy of activation of 10,300 calories per mole. ATCase from M. jannaschii was partially purified. The enzyme was shown to have a molecular weight of 110,000 Da., with a subunit molecular …

None

None

This doctoral dissertation is presented as three self-contained papers. An introductory chapter considers traditional spatio-temporal statistical methods used in the atmospheric sciences from a statistical perspective. Although this section is primarily a review, many of the statistical issues considered have not been considered in the context of these methods and several open questions are posed. The first paper attempts to determine a means of characterizing the semiannual oscillation (SAO) spatial variation in the northern hemisphere extratropical height field. It was discovered that the midlatitude SAO in 500hPa geopotential height could be explained almost entirely as a result of spatial and temporal asymmetries in the annual variation of stationary eddies. It was concluded that the mechanism for the SAO in the northern hemisphere is a result of land-sea contrasts. The second paper examines the seasonal variability of mixed Rossby-gravity waves (MRGW) in lower stratospheric over the equatorial Pacific. Advanced cyclostationary time series techniques were used for analysis. It was found that there are significant twice-yearly peaks in MRGW activity. Analyses also suggested a convergence of horizontal momentum flux associated with these waves. In the third paper, a new spatio-temporal statistical model is proposed that attempts to consider the influence of both …

Quantum mechanical methods are developed to describe the dynamics of bimolecular chemical reactions. We focus on developing approaches for directly calculating the desired quantity of interest. Methods for the calculation of single matrix elements of the scattering matrix (S-matrix) and initial state-selected reaction probabilities are presented. This is accomplished by the use of absorbing boundary conditions (ABC) to obtain a localized (L{sup 2}) representation of the outgoing wave scattering Green`s function. This approach enables the efficient calculation of only a single column of the S-matrix with a proportionate savings in effort over the calculation of the entire S-matrix. Applying this method to the calculation of the initial (or final) state-selected reaction probability, a more averaged quantity, requires even less effort than the state-to-state S-matrix elements. It is shown how the same representation of the Green`s function can be effectively applied to the calculation of negative ion photodetachment intensities. Photodetachment spectroscopy of the anion ABC{sup -} can be a very useful method for obtaining detailed information about the neutral ABC potential energy surface, particularly if the ABC{sup -} geometry is similar to the transition state of the neutral ABC. Total and arrangement-selected photodetachment spectra are calculated for the H{sub 3}O{sup -} …

The photodissociation spectroscopy and dynamics of free radicals is studied by the technique of fast beam photofragment translational spectroscopy. Photodetachment of internally cold, mass-selected negative ions produces a clean source of radicals, which are subsequently dissociated and detected. The photofragment yield as a function of photon energy is obtained, mapping out the dissociative and predissociative electronic states of the radical. In addition, the photodissociation dynamics, product branching ratios, and bond energies are probed at fixed photon energies by measuring the translational energy, P(E{sub T}), and angular distribution of the recoiling fragments using a time- and position-sensitive detector. Ab initio calculations are combined with dynamical and statistical models to interpret the observed data. The photodissociation of three prototypical hydrocarbon combustion intermediates forms the core of this work.

The beam impedance and wakefield are quantities which describe the stability of charged particles in their trajectory within an accelerator. The stretched wire measurement technique is a method which estimates the beam impedance and wakefield. Definitions for the beam impedance, the wakefield, and the stretched wire measurement are presented. A pillbox resonator with circular beampipes is studied for its relatively simple profile and mode structure. Theoretical predictions and measurement data are presented for the interaction of various charged particle beams and center conductor geometries between the cavity and beampipe. Time domain predictions for the stretched wire measurement and wakefield are presented and are shown to be a linear interaction.

X-ray spectroscopy has long been used to elucidate electronic and structural information of molecules. One of the weaknesses of x-ray absorption is its sensitivity to all of the atoms of a particular element in a sample. Through out this thesis, a new technique for enhancing the site- and spin-selectivity of the x-ray absorption has been developed. By high resolution fluorescence detection, the chemical sensitivity of K emission spectra can be used to identify oxidation and spin states; it can also be used to facilitate site-selective X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES) and site-selective Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS). The spin polarization in K fluorescence could be used to generate spin selective XANES or spin-polarized EXAFS, which provides a new measure of the spin density, or the nature of magnetic neighboring atoms. Finally, dramatic line-sharpening effects by the combination of absorption and emission processes allow observation of structure that is normally unobservable. All these unique characters can enormously simplify a complex x-ray spectrum. Applications of this novel technique have generated information from various transition-metal model compounds to metalloproteins. The absorption and emission spectra by high resolution fluorescence detection are interdependent. The ligand field multiplet model has been used for the …

Silicon-containing polymers have been a focus of synthesis and study in Dr. Barton`s group because of their chemistry and properties which are not offered by other systems or materials. For example, the polymer -[-SiMe{sub 2}C{triple_bond}C-]{sub n}-can be easily processed to films or fibers from melt or solution, and thermally converted to a SiC-containing ceramic in high yield at high temperature. In recent years, carbosilane dendritic polymers have been of great interests in many research groups. However, no synthesis of carbosilane dendrimers with functionalties both inside and outside the dendrimer has been reported. Functionality is very important in the synthesis of preceramic polymers. This thesis will be devoted to exploring several new organosilicon polymer systems.

The numerical stability and accuracy of the vortex method are studied. The effect of the ordinary differential equations (ODE) solver and of the time step on the numerical stability is analyzed. Various ODE solvers are compared and a best performer is chosen. A new constraint on the time step based on numerical stability is proposed and verified in numerical simulations. It is shown through numerical examples that empirical rules for selecting the spatial discretization obtained in simple test problems may not be extended to more general problems. The thin tube vortex filament method is applied to the problem of Widnall`s instability on vortex rings. Numerical results different from previous calculations are presented and the source of the discrepancies is explained. The long time behavior of the unstable mode on thin vortex rings is simulated and analyzed. The short wave instability on vortex filaments is investigated both theoretically and numerically. It is shown that the short wave instability always occurs on co-rotating vortex filaments of fixed core structure. Furthermore when they are close to each other, vortex filaments produce short wave unstable modes which lead to wild stretching and folding. However, when the inter-filament distance is large in comparison with the …

In this thesis we have developed a simplified spherical harmonic method (SP{sub N} method) and associated efficient solution techniques for 2-D multigroup electron-photon transport calculations. The SP{sub N} method has never before been applied to charged-particle transport. We have performed a first time Fourier analysis of the source iteration scheme and the P{sub 1} diffusion synthetic acceleration (DSA) scheme applied to the 2-D SP{sub N} equations. Our theoretical analyses indicate that the source iteration and P{sub 1} DSA schemes are as effective for the 2-D SP{sub N} equations as for the 1-D S{sub N} equations. Previous analyses have indicated that the P{sub 1} DSA scheme is unstable (with sufficiently forward-peaked scattering and sufficiently small absorption) for the 2-D S{sub N} equations, yet is very effective for the 1-D S{sub N} equations. In addition, we have applied an angular multigrid acceleration scheme, and computationally demonstrated that it performs as well for the 2-D SP{sub N} equations as for the 1-D S{sub N} equations. It has previously been shown for 1-D S{sub N} calculations that this scheme is much more effective than the DSA scheme when scattering is highly forward-peaked. We have investigated the applicability of the SP{sub N} approximation to two …

The rotational energy release in the dissociation of ketene (CH{sub 2}CO) along its singlet potential energy surface is observed and compared with several statistical and dynamical theories. Rotational distributions for the product, CO(X{sup 1}{Sigma}+)(v=1), are measured from the threshold for production of CH{sub 2}(a {sup 1}A{sub 1}) (0,0,0) + CO(X{sup 1}{Sigma}+)(v=1) to 1720 cm{sup -1} above. Near threshold (E{le} 200 cm{sup -1} over threshold), phase space theory (PST) matches the observed distributions. At 357 and 490 cm{sup -1}, PST constrained by the measured state distributions of the methylene fragment, provides a good fit to these CO(v=1) rotational distributions. For E > 490 cm{sup -1}, the constrained PST matches the average rotational energy observed but predicts distributions which are broader than observed. This contrasts to the rotational distributions of the {sup 1}CH{sub 2} fragment which become shifted to lower rotational states than PST as energy increases from 200 cm{sup -1} above threshold. Dynamical models, the impulsive model and Franck-Condon mapping, do not account for the product rotational state distributions. The CO(v=1) rotational distributions for E > 200 cm{sup -1} contain no measurable product from triplet channel fragmentation. Therefore, they can be compared with the previously determined CO(v=0) rotational distributions in order …