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2006

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Donning The White Agbada, Abayomi Animashaun Jan 2006

Donning The White Agbada, Abayomi Animashaun

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

No poet, Eliot says, makes art alone by himself; he works with the collection of the dead and living poets around him. It is with this in mind that I have put together this poetry collection, Donning the White Agbada, in honor of William Stafford. Although the collection is dedicated to Mr. Stafford, it is not limited to him; it draws freely and extensively from different writers, different materials, and different periods---from the Christian Bible, to Robert Frost, to Sophocles, to Nigerian History, and to Yoruba mythology, among others. So that what is created (in my ongoing exploration of Western …

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Lead Contamination In Candies Imported From Latin America, Heather R Fels Jan 2006

Lead Contamination In Candies Imported From Latin America, Heather R Fels

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The problem of lead in candies imported from Latin America is an important health disparities issue as it particularly affects the health of children living in Latino Diasporas in the United States. Our research team at the University of Nevada Las Vegas was the first to employ the X-ray florescence (XRF) machine in the screening of candies for lead. The XRF is a novel instrument that can quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively test for lead contamination. Once contaminated candies were identified, an exhaustive review of applicable laws and polices that can be utilized in the regulation of imported toxic candies was …

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Monitoring Of A Zero Energy House, Sandor Ferenc Rosta Jan 2006

Monitoring Of A Zero Energy House, Sandor Ferenc Rosta

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

A comparative study is conducted to measure the actual performance of a Zero Energy House design. Ideally, a zero energy house produces as much energy as it consumes in a year's time. Two identically-sized houses (1610 ft2), constructed side-by-side in southwest Las Vegas, Nevada, are equipped with a network of sensors that measure many aspects of energy usage in each home. One house serves as a baseline (standard comparison) house and was built using conventional construction techniques. The other house, the Zero Energy House, employs many energy saving features, solar power generation, and supplemental solar water heating. Both houses are …

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Paleoepidemiology Of Bacterial Infections Among Prehistoric Human Populations In Northern Chile: An Ancient Dna Approach, Luz-Andrea Pfister Jan 2006

Paleoepidemiology Of Bacterial Infections Among Prehistoric Human Populations In Northern Chile: An Ancient Dna Approach, Luz-Andrea Pfister

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Bacterial pathogens not primarily affecting the skeleton but causing sepsis and death, have not been systematically studied in prehistoric human populations, although increasing evidence support our species long co-evolution with many of them. With molecular methods we can identify bacteria at the species level and distinguish pathogenic from environmental and soil bacteria. Bone marrow of ancient people may provide valuable information about ancient pathogens causing sepsis and death. To test the hypothesis that PCR amplification using universal bacterial primers will identify prehistoric bacterial pathogens in bone marrow, 30 samples were aseptically obtained from partially mummified remains of three archaeological sites …

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Bioaccumulation Of Mercury In The Aquatic Food Chain Of Walleye (Stizostedion Vitreum) In Lake Siskiwit, Northern Wisconsin, United States, Beth Ellen Domowicz Jan 2006

Bioaccumulation Of Mercury In The Aquatic Food Chain Of Walleye (Stizostedion Vitreum) In Lake Siskiwit, Northern Wisconsin, United States, Beth Ellen Domowicz

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The Great Lakes fishery is highly utilized, despite known contamination. The Great Lakes Region has experienced elevated amounts of atmospheric deposition of mercury, with many of its water bodies having documented levels of mercury (ASTDR 1999, Dellinger 2004, Greib et al. 1990, Kleinert and Degurse 1971). The chemical characteristics of methylmercury contribute to high rates of absorption (highly lipophilic and readily crosses biological membranes) and low rates of elimination. As a result of the properties of methylmercury, 60-90% of the mercury in fish is methylmercury (O'Neill 1993). Methylmercury is taken in by fish from food sources, through the gills (Haydon …

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Habitat Selection By The Relict Leopard Frog (Rana Onca): Assessment Of Vegetation Use At Two Scales, Sean Moran Harris Jan 2006

Habitat Selection By The Relict Leopard Frog (Rana Onca): Assessment Of Vegetation Use At Two Scales, Sean Moran Harris

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

In recent years, two populations of the rare Relict Leopard Frog (Rana onca) have gone extinct. These population extinctions occurred concomitantly with the encroachment of native emergent vegetation into pools in which frogs were usually observed. In order to determine if adult Rana onca prefer more vegetatively open habitats, a radio-telemetry study was conducted. A total of 809 radio telemetry observations were made on 34 frogs from April 2 through December 7, 2004. Binary Logistic Regression was used with both macrohabitat and microhabitat data to compare habitat characteristics between low-use and high-use segments of the spring. A more traditional multiple …

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Permanent Record, Jonathan Bauch Jan 2006

Permanent Record, Jonathan Bauch

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Permanent Record is a collection of loosely connected short stories, told primarily in the first person (framed by a prologue and epilogue in other points of view), taking place on Staten Island; New York, during the 1980s. Tracing the character's development from his bar mitzvah through college, the stories deal primarily with a young man's attempt to reconcile his feelings of rebellion---against his parents, teachers, tradition, etc.---with his growing awareness of the Judaism instilled in him as a child. As much as the character tries to distance himself from his parents and their religious values, he becomes increasingly aware how …

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Molecular Phylogenetics Of Trogon: Exploring Patterns Of Diversification In A Widespread Neotropical Avian Genus, Jeffrey M Dacosta Jan 2006

Molecular Phylogenetics Of Trogon: Exploring Patterns Of Diversification In A Widespread Neotropical Avian Genus, Jeffrey M Dacosta

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Study of Neotropical avian biodiversity have generally been focused on South American taxa. As a result, the contribution of Central America to overall Neotropical diversity remains under-studied. The Great American Interchange (GAI) between North and South America is a biogeographic event known to impact biodiversity throughout the Neotropics, linking the evolutionary history of these land masses. Here I show that genetic diversity in the well-known and widespread Neotropical avian genus Trogon greatly exceeds previously recognized biodiversity in this group. Results also invoke a Central American center of origin for the genus, with multiple independent dispersals into and subsequent diversification within …

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Effects Of Global Change On Mojave Desert Annual Plant Communities, Stacy Marie Irvin Jan 2006

Effects Of Global Change On Mojave Desert Annual Plant Communities, Stacy Marie Irvin

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The objective of this research was to investigate the potential effects of global change on Mojave Desert annual plant communities. The predicted changes of increased summer precipitation, increased nitrogen deposition, and biological soil crust disturbance were simulated in a full factorial design, and the effects on species composition, plant density, plant size, and nitrogen content were measured. Added summer rain decreased community-level biomass and diversity the following spring, while increased nitrogen deposition and biological soil crust disturbance increased community-level biomass and diversity. However, biomass responses at the species level were highly variable and individualistic, consistent with the episodic nature of …

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Technetium And Rhenium In Volcanic Soils By Icpms, Clifton Lee Jones Jan 2006

Technetium And Rhenium In Volcanic Soils By Icpms, Clifton Lee Jones

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Technetium-99 (99Tc) and rhenium (Re) were determined in volcanic tuff muck rock, from the potential repository at Yucca Mountain and in nuclear bomb cavity samples from the Nevada Test Site (NTS). These analyses were performed in order to test the feasibility of using high resolution inductively couple plasma mass spectrometry (HR-ICPMS) for the determination of 99Tc. Six 20 gram tuff samples were analyzed in duplicate for 99Tc and Re following separation using an anion exchange resin to remove potential interferences. Four nuclear bomb cavity samples were analyzed using one gram samples. A 99Tc method detection limit (MDL) of 33 pg/kg …

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No Fine End For A Modern Day Alice In Transit, Lisa Brooks Markowitz Jan 2006

No Fine End For A Modern Day Alice In Transit, Lisa Brooks Markowitz

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

To the reader---; How I live is a giant writing thing, even when I'm not writing. There is always breath, both shallow and deep, and somewhere, wet jackets, sides of the same world. It is about the blob, mostly because all of this has been written and said but for the ghost that follows me around. What matters most finds us when we are open, the way a flower opens up for the Sun I write because I don't have a choice, the way Alice had to go through Wonderland before she could get out. What is left, having left …

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Robust Speaker Identification Using Artificial Neural Networks, Madhavan Sivathanu Pillai Jan 2006

Robust Speaker Identification Using Artificial Neural Networks, Madhavan Sivathanu Pillai

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This research mainly focuses on recognizing the speakers through their speech samples. Numerous "Text-Dependent" or "Text-Independent" algorithms have been developed by people so far, to recognize the speaker from his/her speech. In this thesis, we concentrate on the recognition of the speaker from the fixed text i.e. "Text-Dependent". Possibility of extending this method to variable text i.e. "Text-Independent" is also analyzed. Different feature extraction algorithms are employed and their performance with Artificial Neural Networks as a Data Classifier on a fixed training set is analyzed. We find a way to combine all these individual feature extraction algorithms by incorporating their …

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Security Protocol Based On Random Key Generation For An Rfid System, Karthik Raghavan Jan 2006

Security Protocol Based On Random Key Generation For An Rfid System, Karthik Raghavan

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a technology, which describes the transmission of unique information by a wireless device, over Radio waves, when prompted or read by a compatible reader; The basic components in implementing RFID are RFID tags which are small microchips attached to a radio antenna, mounted on a substrate, and a wireless transceiver/reader that queries the RFID tags; This thesis deals with research issues related to security aspects in the communication between an RFID tag and its reader. More precisely, it deals with a new, simple and efficient security protocol based on an encryption that uses the concept …

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Jesus' Shadow, Meredith Lee Stewart Jan 2006

Jesus' Shadow, Meredith Lee Stewart

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The poems in this collection are mainly drawn from personal experience, especially the experience of place as seen through the perspective of the "I." Many of the poems have overtly spiritual themes. I envision even those poems that aren't overtly spiritual as being prayer-like because both prayer and poetry require a connection to something outside the self as well as deep honesty about the self; There are some poems in this collection that are inspired mainly by research rather than personal experience. I focused much of this research on women's issues and bringing to light women who have been overlooked …

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Evaluating Educational Web Sites, Denber Rey S Cruz Jan 2006

Evaluating Educational Web Sites, Denber Rey S Cruz

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

A rubric was created to compare and contrast Web sites based on four criteria: (a) technical aspect, (b) types of content available, (c) authority and, (d) accessibility. The rubric was designed to compare sites to one another. The sites were also grouped into categories: (a) higher education sites, (b) content sites, (c) commercial sites, (d) school districts. The categories were also compared to each other; To compare the sites to each other, a percentage score was given for each of the four criteria. A total percentage score was also given to each site. The score for all of the sites …

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A Doctor's Conscience: Conventional And Reflective Morality In Clinical Decision Making, John Elliot Delap Jan 2006

A Doctor's Conscience: Conventional And Reflective Morality In Clinical Decision Making, John Elliot Delap

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This work examines ethical theories of deontology, teleology, internal and external morality as applied in conventional and reflective moral methods towards equilibrium among eight normative values for healthcare including: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, privacy, confidentiality, veracity and fidelity. Upon critical analysis of conventional and reflective moral praxis's both are found to be insufficient in accommodating value pluralism. This work concludes by outlining a hybrid model for ethical decision making complementing both theories by bringing together conventions and reflection to more effectively guide professional medical practice toward the teleological aim of medicine.

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Lead Contamination Risks From Imported Candies: Developing A Protocol To Test For Lead In Candy Products Using The X-Ray Flouresence Instrument, Tracy L Donnelly Jan 2006

Lead Contamination Risks From Imported Candies: Developing A Protocol To Test For Lead In Candy Products Using The X-Ray Flouresence Instrument, Tracy L Donnelly

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The problem of lead in candies imported from Latin America and or Thailand is an important public health issue. These candies come from a number of sources, with lead often being present when tamarind or chili pepper is used as an ingredient. Currently, it is expensive and time consuming for heath protection agencies to test candy that has entered the consumer market in the United States. Hence children may potentially be exposed to lead contamination. If community health agencies had access to XRF technology, health agencies could quickly determine if specific candies contain lead. To date, there has not been …

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"33", Caleb Brooks Jan 2006

"33", Caleb Brooks

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

"33" is a collection of poetry divided into three sections. The poems in the first section, Cycle, represent twelve "snapshots" of a year in a relationship. The names are Native American names for full moons within each of the twelve months. The initial poem in the series is a traditional invocation, this one to the god of Love The second section is less thematically grouped, however I feel that for the most part they do fit the tone and thematic intent of the work. That section is entitled Pompeii of Love after one of the poems contained therein. The final …

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The Other Country: Stories And A Novella, Vu Hoang Tran Jan 2006

The Other Country: Stories And A Novella, Vu Hoang Tran

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The Other Country is a collection of seven short stories and a novella, all of which take place in Saigon and the Saigon area and portray the lives of its citizens in contemporary Vietnam. Given the country's recent history, this setting inevitably evokes the Vietnam War, a connection that casts the book---especially from the American perspective---into the shadow of contemporary American fiction that focuses on the war both as a historical experience and as a cultural idea: important novels like Graham Greene's The Quiet American, Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Larry Heinemann's Paco's Story, and …

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Exploring The Effects Of Online Instructional Models On The Writing Achievement Of High School Students With And Without Disabilities, Bradley Jon Kaffar Jan 2006

Exploring The Effects Of Online Instructional Models On The Writing Achievement Of High School Students With And Without Disabilities, Bradley Jon Kaffar

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of three online models for teaching a paragraph writing strategy to students with and without disabilities. A learning strategist instructor implemented The Paragraph Writing Strategy (Schumaker & Lyerla, 1993) using three treatment groups that included the following online models: (a) Power Point media, (b) streaming video, and (c) multimedia (Power Point and video). Participants were 121 high school students in grades 9 through 12 enrolled in an online charter school program; there were 27 students with disabilities and 94 students without disabilities. Data were collected to answer five research questions …

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Social Skills Of Students With Emotional Disabilities: A Technology -Based Intervention, Therese M Cumming Jan 2006

Social Skills Of Students With Emotional Disabilities: A Technology -Based Intervention, Therese M Cumming

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Students with emotional and behavioral disabilities can be some of the most difficult students to keep in the regular school setting, let alone include in general education classes (Desbians & Royer, 2005). Often, higher percentages of students with emotional disabilities are placed in the most restrictive settings (e.g., homebound, hospitals, and residential settings) than students with any other disability (Nelson, Jordan, & Rodrigues-Walling, 2002). One of the keys to success for these students is consistent and systematic instruction in the areas of behavior and social skills (Williams & Reisberg, 2003); The use of multimedia, student-generated social skills lessons coupled with …

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A Poetic Canvas: Byron And Visual Culture, William Donati Jan 2006

A Poetic Canvas: Byron And Visual Culture, William Donati

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

A Poetic Canvas: Byron and Visual Culture argues for a reading of Byron's poems within the cultural context of the sister arts of poetry and painting. In addition, the theatre and sculpture were also influential as visual inspiration for Byron. This study reveals the poet's substantial knowledge of the visual arts; consequently, informed by images he knew, readings convey a richer context of significance. The influence of drawings, print caricature, and paintings is found to be substantial, and the research challenges Byron's own statements, often repeated, that he knew nothing of painting. Although Byron is regarded as a poet of …

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Youth At Risk For Anxiety: Evaluation Of A Brief Panic Prevention Program, Kelly Lynn Drake Jan 2006

Youth At Risk For Anxiety: Evaluation Of A Brief Panic Prevention Program, Kelly Lynn Drake

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This was the first pilot study to examine the effectiveness of a single-session panic prevention workshop for youth. Participants were recruited using various forms of mass media, advertisements, flyer distribution, and personal contacts. Following a brief screening, participants were assigned to a single-session panic prevention workshop (n = 9) or a waitlist control condition (n = 10). Youth in the workshop group completed pre-workshop assessments including self-report measures of anxiety sensitivity, general anxiety, panic attack symptomatology, and depression. In addition, a semi-structured diagnostic interview was used to assess panic attacks, panic disorder, and agoraphobia Also, during pre-workshop assessment, parents completed …

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Violent Women In Film And The Sociological Relevance Of The Contemporary Action Heroine, Kathryn A Gilpatric Jan 2006

Violent Women In Film And The Sociological Relevance Of The Contemporary Action Heroine, Kathryn A Gilpatric

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This research examines mainstream representations and imagery of violent women in American cinema in a broad sense, and looks more specifically at the sociological relevance of the contemporary filmic action heroine. This research is not interpretive in nature but instead draws upon original data gained from an extensive content analysis spanning a 15-year period from 1991 to 2005. In addition, the research includes secondary source data gathered from movie industry statistics and industry reports in order to provide an empirically descriptive analysis of violent female action characters in contemporary American film; While many feminist film theorists argue that female action …

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Glean: Poems, Joshua Peter Kryah Jan 2006

Glean: Poems, Joshua Peter Kryah

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Glean, a reference to the gathering of grain after harvest, explores the appalling trust implicit in any act of faith---that prayer may not elicit a response. Spare and evocative, the collection struggles with a language at odds with itself. How do we write about an absence that can never be fully possessed or known, an absence that may be all we ever glimpse of the divine? When does spirituality become more real than its pursuit? Moving between doubt and vulnerability, the body and its unresolved spiritual fate, Glean dedicates itself to the exploration of faith, simultaneously investigating the possibility of …

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Immune Function And Psychological Distress In Familial Dementia Caregivers: A Controlled Trial Of A Cognitive -Behavioral Intervention, Kevin Matthew Lancer Jan 2006

Immune Function And Psychological Distress In Familial Dementia Caregivers: A Controlled Trial Of A Cognitive -Behavioral Intervention, Kevin Matthew Lancer

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Recent data on the prevalence of Alzhiemer's disease estimate that sufferers could number as high as 4.78 million; that number is expected to quadruple by the year 2050. The vast majority of persons with dementia reside in the community, able to do so because of the care received from their families. The increase in the number of the elderly dependent on others for assistance will continue to increase, straining already limited individual and societal resources. The subjects of this study were Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD) familial caregivers, representing a portion of society needing assistance and that is growing …

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Influencing Factors On Plankton Populations In A Desert Man -Made Lake, Steven Weber Jan 2006

Influencing Factors On Plankton Populations In A Desert Man -Made Lake, Steven Weber

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine and identify the factors that have influenced changes in phytoplankton and zooplankton assemblages during the initial thirteen years of ecological development of Lake Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada. Univariate and multivariate statistical methods were used to determine the level of influence lake water chemistry, lake physical characteristics and planktonic groups will have on overall plankton community dynamics. Water quality and plankton population data have been collected since 1991 when the lake began filling through the period of study ending December, 2003; Results indicate the zooplankton biomass was most influenced by conductance, total …

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Democratic Writing Pedagogy And The Southern Nevada Writing Project, Thomas B Smith Jan 2006

Democratic Writing Pedagogy And The Southern Nevada Writing Project, Thomas B Smith

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how practicing teachers acted to incorporate a more democratic writing pedagogy in their classrooms after participation in the Southern Nevada Writing Project's Summer Institute. Democracy in this study refers to a critical view of democracy. This research is a multiple case study of five teachers' practice during the first half of the school year following their participation in the Institute. The participants teach in schools of varying grade levels, SES, and achievement. Data sources included classroom observations with follow-up interviews, a final group interview, and artifacts from the Institute. These data were …

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The Effects Of Computer-Assisted Language Learning On English Language Learners With And Without Disabilities In An Elementary School Setting, Christine Kay Beaird Jan 2006

The Effects Of Computer-Assisted Language Learning On English Language Learners With And Without Disabilities In An Elementary School Setting, Christine Kay Beaird

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of the English Language Learners Instructional System (ELLIS) on oral language, written language, and reading achievement among students who are English language learners with and without disabilities. Additionally, levels of teacher satisfaction with computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and the use of ELLIS were assessed. Participants were 78 third, fourth, and fifth grade students with and without disabilities enrolled in a public elementary school. All participants were of Hispanic descent and were identified as being Non- or Limited-English Proficient based on the Language Assessment Scales (LAS) (CTB Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, 1994). Twelve of …

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Wake Up The Family, Katherine Lien Chariott Jan 2006

Wake Up The Family, Katherine Lien Chariott

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

WAKE UP THE FAMILY is a collection of short stories, set in contemporary Las Vegas. These stories share more than a geographic setting; they share common concerns of loneliness, loss, alienation, and illness. The stories are further linked by the repetition (across multiple narratives) of plotlines, images, phrases, and key words. The links between these stories---thematic and otherwise---are meant to encourage a reading of the collection as one extended work of fiction, rather than as a group of separate works. It is hoped that these links will lead the reader to interpret each story in terms of the other (related) …

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