Digital Commons Network^™

Morphology And Photocatalysis Of Titanium Dioxide Aerogels, Sean Kelly

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Pollution of our environment has become one of the most serious problems of this century. Titanium dioxide aerogels is composed of nanocrystallites of TiO2 close-packed in roughly spherical mesospheres, which are agglomerated to form a highly-porous sponge. Aerogel morphology produces porosities of around 80% and surface area that can be as large as 1000 m2/g. The aerogels efficiently adsorb organic materials from the environment and when illuminated with UV light, decompose or oxidize the organic pollutants, ultimately to safe by-products such as CO2 and H 2O.

In this work we modify the synthetic conditions to produce aerogels with different morphologies …

Redemption And Recovery: An Ethnographic Comparison Of Two Drug Rehabilitation Programs, A Faith Community And A Therapeutic Community, Daniel E. Hood

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This ethnography of long-term residential programs for drug users compares a therapeutic community (TC) with an evangelical Christian "training program." Using participant observation and life history interviews, it pursues three themes. The first is comparative and descriptive. It poses a basic similarity between the ideologically disparate programs. Parallels in program process and personal experience of "identity transformation" (conversion) are described. Despite the religious/secular divide, important similarities in anthropological assumptions are also identified. Contrary to earlier research, the singularity of the clientele is demonstrated. Other parallels include the ritual function of prayer and encounter, the centrality of selective biographical reconstruction, and …

Wittgenstein And The Grammar Of Physics: A Study Of Ludwig Wittgenstein's 1929-1930 Manuscripts And The Roots Of His Later Philosophy, Anton Alterman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1929 Wittgenstein began to work on the first philosophical manuscripts he had kept since completing the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) in 1918. The impetus for this was his conviction that the logic of the TLP was flawed: it was unable to account for the fact that a proposition that assigns a single value on a continuum to a simple object thereby excludes all assignments of different values to the object (the "color exclusion" problem). Consequently Wittgenstein's "atomic propositions" could not be logically independent of one another.

Initially he thought he could replace the "logically perfect language" of the TLP with …

Robert Henri And The American Southwest: His Work And Influence, Valerie Ann Leeds

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American artist Robert Henri (1865–1929) has most often been identified as the organizer of the 1908 landmark exhibition of The Eight and leader of the progressive movement; however, his relationship to the American Southwest has been largely neglected in scholarly discourse. This dissertation examines and reevaluates the work from and impact of Henri's extended visits to the Southwest in 1914, 1916, 1917, and 1922. During these stays he produced a distinguished body of work that is among the creative pinnacles of his career.

Henri painted more than three-hundred and twenty-five works while visiting the Southwest; his principal mode of expression …

Bilingual Sentence Processing: Relative Clause Attachment In English And Spanish, Eva M. Fernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Monolingual studies have shown that the relative clause attachment ambiguity, illustrated by the sample English sentence below, is ultimately interpreted in different ways by speakers of English and Spanish: (1) Someone shot the maid of the actress that was on the balcony. English speakers tend to attach the relative clause to the lower noun, actress, while in the comparable sentence in Spanish, Spanish speakers generally prefer the attachment to be to the higher noun, maid. This thesis compares the relative clause attachment preferences of monolingual and bilingual speakers of English and Spanish. Data were collected using a speeded self-paced reading …