Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Of Goal Focus To Physical Distance, Job Title And Years Served Within The University Of Arkansas Division Of Agriculture, Christina Miller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between physical distance from the headquarters, number of years working within the Division of Agriculture, and job title compared to mission statement and goal focus. The Division of Agriculture as part of the University of Arkansas System is a unique organization because many of its employees are not physically located at the headquarter locations of Little Rock and Fayetteville. The Cooperative Extension Service, part of the Division of Agriculture, has at least one office in each of Arkansas's 75 counties as well as faculty and staff members located at five …

You Can't Get There From Here: Movement Sf And The Picaresque, Robert Glen Wilson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the crisis of authenticity in postmodern culture and argues that contemporary science fiction, specifically the subgenre of Movement SF, has evolved a unique answer to this crisis by adopting, perhaps spontaneously, the picaresque narrative structure. Postmodern fiction has a tenuous relationship with the issue of authenticity, such that the average postmodern subject is utterly without true authenticity at all, alternately victim to the socioeconomic conditions of his or her culture and to the elision of the self as a result of the homogenizing effects of advertising, television, etc. Postmodern SF also carries this bleak perception of the …

Middle-Earth's War On Terror: A Post-9/11 Reception Study On The Works Of J.R.R. Tolkien, James William Peebles

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates how Americans can and do interpret Tolkien's works in light of 9/11 and its proximity to Peter Jackson's film adaptations hitting theaters.

Methane Emissions And Ammonia Volatilization From Drill-Seeded, Delayed-Flood Rice On A Silt-Loam Soil In Arkansas, Christopher Wade Rogers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently uses a single methane (CH4) emissions factor of 160 kg CH4-C ha-1 for a primary rice (Oryza sativa L.) crop. The emissions factor is based on studies that do not adequately represent current management practices in Arkansas. Another concern is pre-flood fertilizer nitrogen (N) management, as the common N source, urea, is prone to loss via ammonia (NH3) volatilization. Thus, the objective of this research was to investigate trace gas emissions from rice on a silt-loam soil, including CH4 emissions as influenced by nitrogen (N) fertilization (i.e., optimal N and no N) in 2011, …

Integrating Seismic Activity Into Land Use Management: A Case Study From Central Arkansas Using Hazus Software Application, Robert Dean Breashears

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Almost 20 years after a remarkable swarm of more than 30,000 micro-earthquakes, a new swarm revisited the same region of central Arkansas, less than 30 miles northeast of Conway, Arkansas. A main shock on May 4, 2001 of magnitude MR = 4.4 was followed by a large number of aftershocks in a small crustal volume about 2,500 events for about 2 months. Preliminary locations of aftershocks from the portable network together with the locations based on data from regional networks lead us to conclude that both swarms (2001 and 1982) occupy virtually the same crustal volume. In following years several …

Lobbying On Behalf Of The Faithful: Three Mainline Protestant Denominations And Their Advocacy Efforts On Capitol Hill During The 110th Congress, Julia Ann Summers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A number of mainline Protestant denominations engage in direct lobbying and grassroots advocacy efforts with Congress on behalf of the poor and other marginalized groups. This study explores the work of three specific denominations the Presbyterian Church [PC(USA)], the United Church of Christ (UCC), and the United Methodist Church (UMC), as religious special interests. Specifically, the study explores how they facilitated their policy agendas on Capitol Hill during the 110th Congress (2007-2008). This question is answered primarily through interviews with and surveys of the professional staff engaged in this work during that session. Results indicate that each denomination works extensively …

Hope, Faith And Trust: Conversations With Tibetans In Exile, William Lukas Gramlich

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of Hope, Faith and Trust: Conversations with Tibetans in Exile was to create a documentary to serve as a platform for Tibetan refugees living in India to tell, in their own words, the story of the Tibetan peoples' political struggles since the Chinese government occupied Tibet in the 1950s. To achieve this goal, this project utilized oral-history interviews with Tibetan exiles, gathered as part of the University of Arkansas TEXT Program. The TEXT Program, short for Tibetans in Exile Today, is a study abroad oral-history project in which undergraduate students conduct interviews with Tibetans living in India. The …

Assessment Of The Predictive Reliability Of A Swat Flow Model And The Evaluation Of Runoff Generation And Bmp Effectiveness In A Shale-Gas Impacted Watershed Using A Modeling Approach, Kwasi Asante

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In order to ensure a harmonious harness of shale-gas resources while ensuring minimal damage to the environment, it is imperative that studies to conduct to inform various aspects of managing the environment. This includes the development of reliable hydrologic models to inform in decisions concerning water and the environment.

The first objective of this study was to evaluate the predictive reliability of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model based on respective methods of LULC data classification and data type spatial resolution. Results showed that the high-resolution data classified with object-oriented image method does not provide any significant advantage …

Bacterially-Mediated Formation Of Rock Coatings In Kärkevagge, Swedish Lapland: A Mineralogical And Micro-Environmental Analog For Mars, Cassandra L. Marnocha

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The search for past or present life on Mars is, for now, limited to surface environments. An often neglected surface environment that could have served as an abode for life and could presently preserve evidence of that life is that of rock coatings. Rock coatings are mineral accretions on rock surfaces. On Earth, they are widespread and occur with considerable chemical diversity. There is growing evidence for a biotic role in their formation on Earth, particularly with respect to rock varnish. As a result, rock varnish has become a target of astrobiological interest on Mars, where varnish-like coatings have been …

Perceptions Of Equality And National Identity Amongst Young British South Asian Muslims In Bradford, England, Simon J. Reid

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the wake of urban riots and terror attacks in the United Kingdom, British public debate and policy have focused on the nation's immigrant communities. These debates have commonly called into question whether immigrant communities in Britain are sufficiently integrated into "mainstream" society and included in the nation. These questions have been particularly focused on the country's immigrant Muslim communities because they have, over the years, been accused of segregating themselves from, and within, British society. This study explored the local and national identities of young British South Asian Muslims in Bradford, which is one of the largest Muslim communities …

I Am Bedu: The Changing Bedouin In A Changing World, Nancy Allison Browning

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Change occurs throughout the world on a daily basis, and as a result, its inhabitants are encouraged to change as well. The population learns to adapt in various ways in order to survive, often times causing traditional practices to be forced aside in order to make way for more modern methods. Today, the Bedouin lifestyle is no longer limited to the classification of a pastoral nomad, located in the desert living in goat-hair tents, and herding camels. While there are several factors that could be taken into consideration in order to unpack what it means to be a Bedouin in …

Bedrock Geological Map Of The Rockhouse Quadrangle, Carroll And Madison Counties, Arkansas, Douglas Eben Jones

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A digital geologic map of the Rockhouse quadrangle, Carroll and Madison counties, Arkansas, was created on a 1:24,000 scale using ArcMap 10 and Photoshop CS4. The data obtained in the field are digitized onto the United States Geological Survey (USGS) digital raster graphic (DRG) of the Rockhouse quadrangle. The geology in the Rockhouse quadrangle consist entirely of sedimentary rocks that are Paleozoic ranging from Lower Ordovician to Mississippian in age. The Ordovician System is represented by the Cotter, Powell, Everton, and St. Peter Formations. The Cotter and Powell are the prominent bluff forming units throughout the quadrangle and along the …

Relationships Between Landscape Factors And Crayfish Density And The Interacting Effects Of Grazing And Increased Sedimentation On Algal Biomass, Katheryn Haley Rose

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years in the United States there has been a rapid expansion in anthropogenic sources of sediment in streams including construction, agriculture, and drilling for natural gas. Potential effects land disturbance associated with activities from natural gas development on aquatic biota in surrounding streams have not yet been well documented. An increase in inorganic sediment in streams can be detrimental to organisms through a variety of mechanisms including alteration of dominant substrate type, higher turbidity resulting in lower visibility, and burial of food resources such as algae and detritus. Increasing sedimentation in stream environments through anthropogenic disturbance is a …

Successful Marketing Strategies For Promoting Event Destinations, Evease Iniece Tucker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Travel and tourism has been recognized as being an important driver of jobs, growth and economic recovery in the United States. Meetings, events and incentive travel contribute $98.7 billion of the direct spending, $15.0 billion in taxes and 859,000 jobs. As a result, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) in the United States are taking advantage of this impact for growth in their destinations. As a destination marketing organization's main job responsibility is to promote their destination to attract visitors, which requires superior marketing strategies to achieve these goals.

This research investigates the marketing strategies of DMOs in the United States. The …

A Geomechanical Study Of The Mississippian Boone Formation, Karen Nicole Mason Buckland

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Boone Formation in northwest Arkansas is a chert-limestone sequence analogous to the subsurface Mississippi Lime reservoir in parts of Oklahoma and Kansas. It has low permeability and produces via horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. The response to stimulation by fracturing is dependent on the quantity of chert in the area. Chert nodules and laterally extensive chert layers in the sequence are variable. Locally, cm- to dm-scale chert bedding is continuous and comprises up to 50% of the outcrop. Elsewhere, the chert is nodular and intermittent.

Samples collected from representative outcrops spanning the thickness and aerial extent of the formation …

Essays In Economic Growth And Development, Zhen Zhu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three chapters exploring the Solow Residual of the Solow growth model. Two central components of the Solow Residual have been studied in my doctoral dissertation. The first is the structural transformation, an internal adjustment process that helps the economy attain the optimal points on its Production Possibility Frontier by reallocating resources from the low-productivity sectors to the high-productivity sectors. The second is the technology diffusion, a positive externality process that pushes forward the economy's Production Possibility Frontier if it adopts the newer technology.

The first chapter of my dissertation is devoted to a case study of …

Influences Of Music Genre And Components On Food Perception And Acceptance, Alexandra Jean Fiegel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Managers of consumer goods companies (i.e., restaurants, grocery stores, and bars) have the potential to effectively utilize environmental factors to stimulate desired consumer behaviors. Background music has been identified as one of the most readily manipulated and influential elements to which a shopper or consumer may be exposed to in a service setting. Nevertheless, little is known about the effect of background sound on food perception and acceptance. This research sought whether background music genre and musical components can alter food perception and acceptance, but also to determine how the effect can vary as a function of food type (i.e., …

Essays On The Economics Of Child Care And Child Custody, Jennifer Lee Hafer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In my first essay I use data from licensed child care centers in the state of Arkansas to examine the relationship between quality and price charged. To measure quality, I use Arkansas's Better Beginnings Quality Rating and Improvement System, a tier-structured voluntary certification program which can be viewed as a voluntary increase in regulations for licensed child care centers which allows them to send an observable signal of quality to consumers. Using an hedonic pricing estimation with controls for varying geographic markets, results indicate firms with Better Beginnings classification charge higher prices once the highest levels of certification are obtained. …

Cycle, Nichole Annette Howard

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cycle is the exhibition of a year-long project that experiments with growing food and medicinal herbs. Alongside an exploration of plant growth, I transfer iconic cultural objects of daily life from plastic to ceramics. Using material culture as a physical and conceptual platform, this re-contextualization of objects offers a radically different view of use and meaning. I transform the soda-filled, plastic Big Gulp cup into a terra planter filled with new life.

My working method involves making molds of Big Gulp plastic cups and transferring the form into a traditional plant growing material, terra cotta. I then germinate seeds inside …

Archaeological Prospecting Using Historic Aerial Imagery: Investigations In Northeast And Southwest Arkansas, Emily Jean Bitely

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates the potential of historic aerial photographs as a tool for archaeological site prospecting. Craighead and Mississippi Counties in northeast Arkansas and areas adjacent to the Red and Little Rivers in southwest Arkansas were chosen as study areas. These regions have undergone significant changes in the past few decades and were expected to yield visible types of archaeological sites. Historic aerial images of these areas were obtained through the U.S. Geological Survey's EarthExplorer database (http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/). These images were processed using Agisoft PhotoScan Professional to produce extensive regional orthoimages.

Using the Arkansas Archeological Survey's Automated Management of Archeological Site …

Foodways, Families, And Festivities: Ethnobiology And Cultural Conservation In A Rural Missouri Community, Ian Carter Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Food customs and traditions bind human groups together in many ways--Socially, geographically, temporally, and emotionally. This thesis describes the intricate relationships between food, ritual, and cultural identity in a rural German-Catholic community in Missouri. By drawing on the anthropological, cultural geographical and folkloric literature surrounding rural Missouri, a portrait of foodways emerges, which in turn illuminates valuable, often understated regional cultural traditions. Religion and ritual are understood as crucial to the continuity of regional identity--it is reinforced and made resilient through shared Social action. The dispersal of ritual feasts and fasts throughout the calendar year regulates collective behavior, interactions, conversations, …

Media Focus In Afghanistan News Coverage, Abdul Qahar Jawad

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the Media Focus in Afghanistan News Coverage to examine what categories of Afghanistan-related news received the largest amount of coverage during periods from 2010 to 2012. This study covered reports in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Daily Outlook Afghanistan, a national Afghan news outlet, as a sample within a period of three months over three years (June 2010, July 2011, and August 2012). The 147 news stories' headlines of the four news organizations were studied to find what categories (process: peace talks, negotiation, and economic development; conflict: violence and military action; …

Subtle Messages: An Examination Of Diversity In The Illustrations Of Secondary Level One French Textbooks, Stephen Richard Adamson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Textbooks in all content areas have been criticized for the hidden curriculum that subtly teaches messages, which elevate some cultural groups while diminishing the efforts and contributions of other cultural groups. Research into the hidden curriculum and inclusion of diversity in French textbooks has been limited. The present study focused on the inclusion of diversity in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, disability, and body size present in the illustrations of the three newest French One textbooks. Results indicate that diversity has increased but the diversity within the illustrations does not always mirror the actual demographics of the United States …

Landscape Epidemiology And Machine Learning: A Geospatial Approach To Modeling West Nile Virus Risk In The United States, Sean Gregory Young

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The complex interactions between human health and the physical landscape and environment have been recognized, if not fully understood, since the ancient Greeks. Landscape epidemiology, sometimes called spatial epidemiology, is a sub-discipline of medical geography that uses environmental conditions as explanatory variables in the study of disease or other health phenomena. This theory suggests that pathogenic organisms (whether germs or larger vector and host species) are subject to environmental conditions that can be observed on the landscape, and by identifying where such organisms are likely to exist, areas at greatest risk of the disease can be derived. Machine learning is …

Local Food And Agriculture Awareness: The Literacy Of Local Produce And Agriculture In Northwest Arkansas, Kyle Colton Flynn

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that adolescents and children, both male and female, are failing to meet the daily fruit and vegetable consumption requirements (Kim et al., 2011; Upton et al., 2012; Harris et al., 2012). Other studies have shown that with increased exposure and availability of produce, students (K-5) tend to consume more fruits and vegetables (Cullen et al., 2009; Evans et al., 2012). The purpose of this study is to identify whether Northwest Arkansas eleventh grade high school students possess experience and knowledge of local produce and agriculture. Out of 1054 students enrolled at …

The Effect Of Symmetry On The Riemann Map, Jeanine Louise Myers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Riemann mapping theorem guarantees the existence of a conformal mapping or Riemann map in the complex plane from the open unit disk onto an open simply-connected domain, which is not all of the complex plane. Although its existence is guaranteed, the Riemann map is rarely known except for special domains like half-planes, strips, etc. Therefore, any information we can determine about the Riemann map for any class of domains is interesting and useful.

This research investigates how symmetry affects the Riemann map. In particular, we define domains with symmetries called Rectangular Domains or RDs. The Riemann map of an …

A Conceptual Model Of Exploration Wayfinding: An Integrated Theoretical Framework And Computational Methodology, Matthew Lee Tenney

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an attempt to integrate contending cognitive approaches to modeling wayfinding behavior. The primary goal is to create a plausible model for exploration tasks within indoor environments. This conceptual model can be extended for practical applications in the design, planning, and Social sciences. Using empirical evidence a cognitive schema is designed that accounts for perceptual and behavioral preferences in pedestrian navigation. Using this created schema, as a guiding framework, the use of network analysis and space syntax act as a computational methods to simulate human exploration wayfinding in unfamiliar indoor environments. The conceptual model provided is then implemented …

Classification Of Satellite Time Series-Derived Land Surface Phenology Focused On The Northern Fertile Crescent, Brian Embree Bunker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Land surface phenology describes events in a seasonal vegetation cycle and can be used in a variety of applications from predicting onset of future drought conditions, to revealing potential limits of historical dry farming, to guiding more accurate dating of archeological sites. Traditional methods of monitoring vegetation phenology use data collected in situ. However, vegetation health indices derived from satellite remote sensor data, such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), have been used as proxy for vegetation phenology due to their repeated acquisition and broad area coverage. Land surface phenology is accessible in the NDVI satellite record when images …

Feet In The South, Eyes To The West: Fort Smith Enters The Sunbelt, Adam Morrison Carson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the political realignment of Fort Smith, Arkansas and argues that the standard historiographical argument about the process of realignment does not explain what occurred in this city. Much of the historiography of political realignment currently revolves around the belief in a white backlash against the federal government and the national Democratic Party for their support of African American civil rights. Though historians have moved toward a "suburban synthesis" that downplays the backlash thesis, historians still argues that many white southerners moved to the suburbs to avoid integration.

I argue that this process did not occur in the …

The History Of Nusayris ('Alawis) In Ottoman Syria, 1831-1876, Ali Capar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire experienced significant events, such as the Egyptian invasion, the Tanzimat Reforms and the increasing activities of Protestant missionaries between 1831 and 1876. In this thesis, I tried to analyze the course of the Ottoman-Nusayri relationship between 1831 and 1876, the treatment of the Ottoman government toward the Nusayris, outcomes of the Egyptians and the Ottoman reforms in the region and among the Nusayris, the reaction of the Nusayris to these reform policies, and the activities of the Protestant missionaries among the Nusayri community.