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Distribution Of R-Banded Chromosome Variants In A Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops Truncatus) Population, Kristine Anne Gunter

Dissertations and Theses

When combined with observational and behavioral data, chromosome variant analysis provides a means of assessing population structure in bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus. In this cytogenetic analysis of thirty-six bottlenose dolphins, a distribution of fluorescent R-band variants was catalogued and used as a way to characterize the genetic structure of a Tursiops population inhabiting the Matagorda Bay, Texas, area. Three different population genetic analytical techniques were evaluated for their usefulness in analyzing cytogenetic data. The chromosome variant data obtained from this study was then compared with cytogenetic data gathered from a resident dolphin population residing near Sarasota, Florida.

The purpose …

Equalization Of A Non-Linear Phase Of A Low-Pass Filter, Rabih Khodor

Dissertations and Theses

In practice, an IIR filter can distort the information content of the signal because of its inherent non-linear phase characteristics introduced through the design of the filter. If the the receiver of the signal is the human ear, e.g., when a speech or music signal is to be processed, phase distortion is quite tolerable. But, in other applications it can be rejected as phase characteristics is required to be fairly linear. Applications of this type include data transmission, where the signal is to be interpreted by digital hardware, and image processing, where the signal is used to reconstruct an image …

An Asic Power Analysis System For Digital Cmos Design, Du Van Nguyen

Dissertations and Theses

Consumers demand for products with ever-increasing functionality, performance, and longer battery life is making low power a critical factor in most system designs. Lower-power designs are less expensive to produce, more reliable, and cost less to operate - factors which create a real competitive advantage. As a result, ASIC designers are demanding better ways to analyze the power of their designs.

In this thesis, an ASIC Power Analysis System (APAS) is developed. APAS is an interactive simulation-based power analysis tool. Using a non-intrusive design technique, APAS can dynamically "snap on" to an existing simulation environment. APAS currently supports three ASIC …

Chemical Communication In House Mice (Mus Musculus): Can They Recognize Gender From The Anogenital, Harderian Gland Or Mouth/Nose Odor?, Dawn Michele Andrews

Dissertations and Theses

Identifying the sensory systems animals employ to communicate chemically and the function of the chemical signals facilitates further understanding of chemical communication. Increased knowledge of how animals use the olfactory and vomeronasal systems in order to interpret the meaning of body odors will aid in developing a more detailed organization of chemosensory pathways. The message that each body odor contains can change from species to species.

The purpose of this thesis was to study three previously untested body odors in house mice (M. musculus) for their role in gender recognition of conspecifics. These odors are the anogenital (feces, …

President Abelardo Rodriguez (1932-34): From Maximato To Cardenismo, Barbara Allen Kuzio

Dissertations and Theses

The 1920s and 1930s in Mexico were characterized by a period of social, political and economic reconstruction following the military phase of the Mexican Revolution from 191O to 1920. The Sonoran Dynasty, dominated by military generals Alvaro Obregon and Plutarco Elias Calles, ruled the Mexican government from 1920 to 1934. More specifically, during the period known as the Maximato (1928-34), Calles, the Jefe Maximo, attempted to contro1 three different presidents from behind the scenes. It was not until December 1934, when Lazaro Cardenas began his six year term as President of Mexico, that the Sonoran Dynasty officia11y ended. This thesis …

The Multiple Pool Migrating Worker Paradigm : A Distributed System Framework And Model, Cynthia Ann Stanley

Dissertations and Theses

A network of workstations (NOW) can provide an inexpensive and effective distributed processing platform. The purpose of this thesis is two-fold, providing a methodology for distributed computing on a NOW first, and providing a model to predict and monitor performance second. The Multiple Pool-Migrating Worker (MPMW) paradigm uses multiple job pools to divide up tasks and migrating workers to balance the work load. The MPMW paradigm is a quick and efficient way of implementing problems using distributed processing without extensive knowledge of parallel programming. A model describing the MPMW paradigm is developed using queuing theory and Mean Value Analysis techniques. …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Novel Sf5 Containing Fluoroalkyl Iodides And Derivatives, Julia Anne Renn

Dissertations and Theses

Preparation of four SF5-containing fluoroalkyl iodides and derivatives thereof was accomplished beginning with a simplified synthesis of ICF2CF2I. Characterization of the products followed using a variety of spectroscopic and physical methods. The simplified method for preparing ICF2CF2I from iodine and tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) involved a reaction temperature of approximately 54°C and pressures of less than two atmospheres for the TFE. The synthesized ICF2CF2I was reacted with S2F1o and tetrafluoroethylene to give SF5CF2CF2I. The subsequent synthesis of the SFs containing fluoroalkyl iodides and derivatives were carried out using SFsCF2CF2I as the starting material in a Carius tube reaction vessel. The synthesized SFs …

Analysis And Optimization Of A Banyan Based Atm Switch By Simulations, Syed Sohel Hussain

Dissertations and Theses

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is proposed technology to create a broadband (high speed) packet switching network capable of transporting wide variety of services including voice, video and data in an integrated manner. The main concern in designing the switching fabrics used in this technology are speed, throughput, delay and variance of delay. We analyze the performance by simulations of ATM switch based on Banyan network in the uniform traffic condition.

We compare the analytical results obtained from three-state model Yan and Jenq to the simulation results. Based on observation of simulation results, we propose non-blocking first stage (NBFS) to increase …

Some Possible Sources Of Oral Foreign Language Anxiety (Fla) Among Japanese Students In The United States, Sawako Yoshikawa

Dissertations and Theses

This study attempted to locate some possible sources of oral Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) among Japanese students in the United States. This study proposed that the following three factors were possible sources of FLA: 1) the subjects' traitlike anxiety, which is carried by individuals across all communication-bound contexts; 2) the subjects' self-perceived oral proficiency levels in English and 3) the subjects' gapsize (i.e., the distance between their self-perceived and their self-expected oral proficiency levels in English) . This research examined whether the above three independent variables and the dependent FLA variable were significantly correlated, and if so, which one had …

Demodulation Of Narrowband Radio Frequency Signals By Aliasing Sampling, Chun-Ching Lin

Dissertations and Theses

The objective of this thesis is to study the demodulation of narrowband radio frequency signals by aliasing sampling in order to reduce the sampling rate. The spectrum can be recreated at the lower frequency position by aliasing sampling. However, if the sampling rate is deviated from the desired one, error will occur. The sensitivity to the frequency error of aliasing sampling is studied.

One main reason of the deviation of the sampling rate is the frequency drifting of the local oscillator. Being able to compensate the oscillator drifting errors inexpensively, automatic frequency control (AFC) loops are important at receivers. Two …

A Preliminary Comparison Of Two Esl School Models For Newcomer Students, Elizabeth Carol Essex

Dissertations and Theses

Due to the ever growing numbers of immigrants entering this country, school districts are faced with ever greater challenges for educating newly arrived immigrant students. Often these students arrive with little to no English ability and little to no school experience. Several educational program models, including ESL and bilingual education, have been popularized in school districts experiencing immigrant population growth. Recently, a supplemental model, the newcomer center/program, has gained popularity. The newcomer model seeks to educate and nurture newly arrived immigrant students with little to no English ability in the social and school expectations of the United States. Due to …

Effects Of The Cardioprotective Drugs Dexrazoxane And Adr-925 On Doxorubicin Induced Ca2+-Release From The Sarcoplasmic Reticulum, Thomas Andreas Herzinger

Dissertations and Theses

The sarcoplasmic reticulum is the intramuscular organelle responsible for the regulation of cytoplasmic calcium levels in muscle. This thesis investigates the effects of the cardioprotective drug, dexrazoxane, and its metabolite ADR-925 on doxorubicin induced calcium release from skeletal sarcoplasmic reticulum. Doxorubicin is a widely used antineoplastic agent. One of the major side effects of doxorubicin usage is chronic cardiotoxicity. Doxorubicin is a potent activator of the calcium release mechanism from the SR. The interaction between doxorubicin and the calcium release channel has been proposed as the possible underlying mechanism behind cardiotoxicity. A short overview of different hypotheses describing doxorubicin induced …

Creating Collaborative Learning Environments: A Curriculum Proposal For Instructors, Carol Rae Chislett

Dissertations and Theses

Groups of students or employees working together to solve problems, gain conceptual understanding, or create new approaches are expected to yield results significantly better than when working individually. Classroom collaboration leads to increased learning and retention, improved interpersonal skills, and enhanced appreciation for and commitment to the educational process. With the increased discussion of its benefits, there is more emphasis on including collaboration in the classroom. The challenge for today's faculty and students is to learn what their roles and expectations are in the successful collaborative environment. The purpose of this study was to design a curriculum for instructors in …

No Boat, No Bridge, Gregory K. Coyle

Dissertations and Theses

In a world that devours one technological advance after another, the simple human questions persist. They endure despite the increased speed of the personal computer or the decreased size of the cellular phone. In a time ruled by measurements they remain elusive and undefined. The longing for love, the crisis of past versus present, the nagging hunger for meaning in the face of constant change--these questions manage to be both small and huge, both slow and fast, all at once. They are the inheritance of every generation; they are written on the very lining of our hearts. These stories are, …

Undergraduate Student Satisfaction With The Sociology Program At Portland State University, Katherine Sullivan

Dissertations and Theses

An examination of sociology student satisfaction levels is performed and an attempt is made to explain variations in degree program satisfaction. A comparison is made between current student and alumni regarding the coursework and experiences they feel should be offered in the undergraduate degree program in sociology at Portland State University (PSU). The study population consists of all PSU students who have obtained an undergraduate degree in sociology since the program's inception and all students currently attending PSU and majoring in sociology. The typical respondent is female (the ratio of females to males being higher for current students than for …

A Comparison Of Speech Intelligibility Measures Between Unsophisticated Listener Judgements And Orthographic Transcription, Carla J. Dukart

Dissertations and Theses

Intelligible speech is a primary component for successful communication. However, the speech of children with disordered phonologies is often unintelligible. Therefore, when assessing the speech intelligibility of children in order to determine whether they qualify for intervention services, speech-language pathologists need reliable evaluation tools.

The focus of this investigation was the measurement of speech intelligibility. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between two methods for measuring speech intelligibility. The first, identification method, involves the listener transcribing a speech sample from which the percentage of words understood is calculated. The second, scaling procedure, involves the listener estimating …

The Politics Of Nazi Art: The Portrayal Of Women In Nazi Painting, Jennifer Anne Miller

Dissertations and Theses

The study of Nazi art as an historical document provided an effective measure of Nazi political platform and social policy. Because the ideology of the Third Reich is represented within Nazi art itself, it is useful to have a good understanding of the politics and ideology, surrounding the German art world at the time. Women were used in this study as an exemplification of Nazi art. This study uses the subject of women in Nazi painting, to show how the ideology is represented within the art work itself. It was first necessary to understand the fervorent "cleansing" of the German …

A Pilot Study: Normative Data On The Intelligibility Of 3 1/2 Year Old Children, Karen Mary Ware

Dissertations and Theses

Most of the previous published research involving intelligibility has focused on persons with various disabilities or delays. Minimal research has been conducted on intelligibility in young children with no diagnosed speech and/ or language disorders. The result is a gap in normative data by which to set a standard to judge speech as being at an acceptable level of intelligibility for a particular age group. The focus of this pilot study was to collect normative data on the intelligibility of young children, ages 3:6 ±2 months, with no diagnosed speech and/or language disorder. ~ Thirteen subjects, ages 3:6 ±2 months, …

Anticlerical Sentiment In Castilian And Galician-Portuguese Medieval Literature, Kathryn L. Brooks

Dissertations and Theses

Clerical sexual incontinence was a prevalent satirical theme during the Middle Ages manifested by anticlerical sentiment towards reprobate clergymen and the laws that they disobeyed. This satirical genre of literature targeted not only the cleric of a small town, but bishops and cardinals who were also abusers of canon law.

The anticlerical theme originated in Western Europe in the time of Constantine when early Christianity was competing with many religions for dominance. In the fourth century, Constantine, through the Edict of Milan, granted religious tolerance to all, thus allowing Christianity to become a major religion. Clerical celibacy originated from the …

The Constraints Of A Typological Implicational Universal For Interrogatives On Second Language Acquisition, Dee Anne Bess

Dissertations and Theses

A typological implicational universal based on a diverse sample of the world's languages describes a hierarchy for interrogatives. The universal hierarchy states that in any given language, inversion in Yes-No questions (YNQs) implies inversion in information questions (WHQs in English), which, in turns implies the fronting of the information word pronoun to sentence-initial position.

Several researchers have proposed that typological implicational universals such as this one for interrogatives may constrain not only the primary languages on which they are based, but also the interlanguages of second language learners.

This study, a partial replication of one by Eckman, Moravcsik, and Wirth …

Spanish For Health Care Professionals: Language And Culture, Mytzi Maryanne Rudolph

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this investigation is to examine formal and informal resources available for teaching Spanish to health care professionals mainly in the Portland, Oregon area. Seventeen different Spanish-for-health-care-professionals texts are commented on by the author, some of which are the texts used in medical Spanish language classes. The majority of the texts contain little if any instruction on cultural aspects which affect the Latino patient population's health care behaviors and decision making. With the recent growth in the Latino population there is a greater demand for health care services by Spanish-speaking persons of the Latino community. The author discusses …

The Effects Of Feedback To Raters On Subsequent Performance Ratings, A. Cybelle Lyon

Dissertations and Theses

Performance evaluations are often of critical. importance in an organization's decisions concerning compensation, training, promotion, and termination. Although the area of performance appraisal has been researched extensively, a gap in the literature appears to remain. No published research has explored how the favorability of feedback individuals receive on their own performance will affect the favorability of subsequent ratings they give to others. This gap is critical considering that this type of feedback chain is common in the work place. The purpose of the present study was to assess the effects of feedback (positive, average, or negative) on the mean rating …

Effective And Appropriate Use Of Controlled Experimentation In Software Development Research, Mark Alan Johnson

Dissertations and Theses

Although there is a large body of research and publication on software development, only a limited amount of this work includes empirical demonstration of its effectiveness. Yet, it is this empirical understanding which will help move software development from a craft to an engineering discipline. Of the empirical methods for research, controlled experiments are the most commonly thought of in scientific studies, and yet the least used to study software development.

This thesis begins with a brief review of the different empirical methods commonly used to study software development. This review provides a quick introduction to each empirical method, compares …

Adaptive Color Correlation Of Knots In Wood Images And Weighted-Value Product Selection Methods In A Machine Vision System, John Robert Goulding

Dissertations and Theses

The biggest obstacle to robust color image processing of wood is in developing a color model that represents all possible defect colors. When the color model is too general or too specific, defect recognition fails because too many or too few non-defect pixels match the model, respectively. Because a color image of wood contains far more clear and clear-grain colored pixels than grain-knot and knot colored pixels, it is beneficial to first statistically identify and remove the clear and clear-grain colors and to use the accumulated data to simultaneously enhance and normalize the remaining grainknot and knot colored pixels. This …

La Relevancia De La Competencia Lexico-Cultural Del Lector En La Casa De Los Espiritus: Desde Un Acercamiento Hermeneutico, Gregory D. Lagos-Montoya

Dissertations and Theses

La competencia lexico-cultural del lector constituira los cirnientos para que este perciba o no la fuente de inspiraci6n de Isabel Allende en La casa de las espiritus. No cabe duda que ciertos lectores coincidiran con el aseverarniento de la propia autora: "que se ha basado su obra en Chile." Es un hecho que esta obra comprende una variedad de manifestaciones alusivas a este pafs: dialecto16gicas, socio-polfticas, e hist6ricas. Este estudio prueba que la competencia lexico-cultural de lector es vital para una comprensi6n mas fiel de la obra. La esencia de la obra literaria se manifiesta y complementa por medio de …

Design Of A Second-Order Filter Using The GM-C Technique, Girish Chandrasekaran

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis deals with the design, layout, fabrication, testing and characterization of a second-order filter (biquad) using the transconductance-C (g_m-C) technique. The biquad was designed to realize the four filter functions - lowpass, highpass, bandpass and notch - by appropriate choice of input and output terminals and element values. The tunable range of frequencies for the biquad was designed to be 18-59MHz. The quality factor of the biquad was designed to be tunable from approximately 1/3 to 3. The filter was designed in LEVEL2 SPICE, laid out using MAGIC, and the circuit was fabricated using MOSIS's …

Humor Recognition: A Comparative Analysis, William T. Argent

Dissertations and Theses

There are various approaches to the explanation of humor in the field of humor research. Some of these theories, while providing interesting insight into the phenomenon known as humor, remain limited in their ability to account for how humor is recognized. Others do not even address the issue. This thesis compares five different theories in humor research by analyzing the humorous short story "My Watch" by Mark Twain. These theories are: 1. a typological approach to humor, 2. a social- functional model, 3. incongruity theory, 4. Grice's Cooperative Principle taken from linguistic pragmatics, and 5. the General Theory of Verbal …

Positive Illusions And Winter Depression: Do Illusions Go The Way Of The Summer Sun?, Shannon M. Carey

Dissertations and Theses

Traditional psychology has held the view that mentally healthy people have a good grasp of reality. However, studies on self-concept, perceived control and optimism have shown that mentally healthy people have a tendency to distort reality in these areas in a positive, self-serving direction. These studies led Shelley Taylor to coin the term "positive illusions" to describe overly positive self-evaluations, exaggerated perceptions of control, and unrealistic optimism. Taylor also theorized that those who were depressed had fewer positive illusions than those who were not depressed. The current study attempted to extend the foundation of basic research on the concept of …

Temporal Characteristics Of Words Surrounding A Moment Of Stuttering In Preschool-Age Children, Gregory Keith Lilly

Dissertations and Theses

Until this time, few studies have examined differences in durational characteristics in words surrounding a moment of stuttering for untreated preschool children. It is important to determine whether or not untreated preschoolers' who stutter alter the duration of their speech when they stutter versus when they are fluent to determine what factors influence stuttering behaviors. The purpose of the present study was to examine the duration of words immediately before and after a stuttered word and the duration of the matched target word in the identical fluent utterance. The following questions were to be addressed: 1) Is there a significant …

Design Of A Two-Chamber-No₂-Fluorescence-Cell, Volker Schmid

Dissertations and Theses

Nitrogen oxides control the photochemical production of ozone O₃ in the lower atmosphere and influence the concentration of the hydroxyl radical HO in the troposphere. As an important member of the nitrogen oxide family, NO₂ plays a significant role in serving as the only known source of ozone (through photolysis) in the lower atmosphere and as sink for HO via formation of nitric acid. Therefore, accurate measurements of nitrogen dioxide are essential for the understanding of the processes that determine the distribution of tropospheric ozone and for assessing the impact of human activity on the troposphere.

Although reliable and …