Digital Commons Network^™

A Review Of Dispersant Use In Response To The British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Bryant Turffs

Theses & ETDs

The British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil spill was an unprecedented event due to the depth at which it occurred and the amount of oil discharged. Chemical dispersants, which break oil into droplets and facilitate diffusion into the water column, were applied to the oil spill to mitigate the damage caused to shoreline environments and surface dwelling organisms. Dispersants may also increase the rate at which oil is consumed by microbes. Due to the location of the oil discharge in the deep ocean, dispersants were also applied at the sea floor to enhance efficacy. The biological effects of chemically dispersed oil …

La Perspectiva De Otra Ribdera The Grotesque Aethetic In Francisco De Goyas Los Capricnos And Ram�N Maria De Valle-Incians Esperpento, Zoe Mirziai

Theses & ETDs

This thesis explores the connection between the grotesque play, or esperpento, of Ram�n Mar�a de Valle-Incl�n (1866-1936) and the series of 80 aquatint etchings, Los Caprichos, made by Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) by comparing twenty-four of the eighty Caprichos in Goya's series to the three esperpentos, Divinas Palabras (1920), Luces de Bohemia (1920-1), and Los Cuernos de don Friolera (1924). In order to solidify the connection between these two artists' work, this thesis first offers a discussion of certain concepts, such as the artist as a Creator, and terminology, such as the capricho and the grotesque. While both artists lived …

The Self, Language Objects, And Psychedelic Perspectives, David Krane

Theses & ETDs

There is a stark contrast to be made between Daniel Dennett's conception of a self as a center of narrative gravity and a conception of a self that emerges from linguistic structures more deeply embedded in immediate experience. Daniel Dennett's model stands on a foundation of thought about stances of prediction toward various kinds of systems and carries assumptions laden in that thought too far into the most complex, mysterious and personal systems for their contradictions with direct experience to remain excused. After explaining Dennett's model, I will elaborate on specific problems with identifying as a center of narrative gravity, …

Multiple Draft Machines An Investigation Of The Implications Of Dennett's Multiple Drafts Model Of Consciousness For Artificial Intelligence Research, Niklaus Julius

Theses & ETDs

This thesis discusses Dennett's Multiple Drafts model of consciousness with regard to the implications for Artificial Intelligence research. The current state of AI research is discussed, and possible future questions are suggested. Possibilities for achieving an Artificial Consciousness are considered, and an attempt is made to precisely define consciousness as opposed to intelligence. Finally, the possibility of an Artificial Consciousness is established, and unanswered questions are aired for consideration.

Unamuno God, Immortality And The Tragic Sense, William Soto

Theses & ETDs

In this thesis, I examine the works of Miguel de Unamuno. I scrutinize both his proper philosophical writings and his literature in order to gain a better understanding of the positions he was putting forth. Specifically, I examine how his views on things such as God and religion were all structured around the notion of immortality. In order to better understand why the belief in immortality was such a major issue for Unamuno, I also examine Don Quixote � a work that had a major influence over him and his writings. At the outset, Unamuno�s writings appear to be scattered …

The Search For Micrornas Encoded By The Influenza A Virus, Kathleen Maxwell

Theses & ETDs

MicroRNAs are small non-coding regulatory RNA molecules. They regulate protein translation by binding to mRNAs preventing the mRNAs from being translated into proteins. MicroRNAs have been found in most eukaryotic cells and in DNA viruses such as the herpesviruses; they have not yet been found in RNA viruses. Influenza A is a RNA virus that causes a huge economic and health impact worldwide. This study identified one possible mature microRNA encoded by the 2009 Swine Flu strain of the Influenza A virus. Several pre-miRNA hairpins were predicted using a computational program designed to predict pre-miRNAs within viral genomes. Possible microRNAs …

This Is A Thesis Co-Creating Aletrnative Stand-Up Comedy, Jeremy Blackowiak

Theses & ETDs

This thesis examines questions of audience, gender, and comic persona in three recorded works of �alternative� stand-up comedy. After establishing a historical and literary context for the study of stand-up comedy, the project splits into three chapters. Chapter I examines Demetri Martin�s 2006 album These Are Jokes. This first chapter focuses on questions of the comic-audience relationship, in which Martin manipulates stage power dynamics. Muting himself with a second performer, Martin shifts creative opportunity onto the audience. Chapter II examines Maria Bamford�s 2007 album Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome. This chapter complicates the traditional power dynamic by appraising how the comic persona …

Geometric Geography Harmonizing With The Florida Keys, Lauren Parker

Theses & ETDs

This thesis is comprised of a series of paintings that investigate the landscape of the Florida Keys with an intention to convey ideas about mankind�s relationship to nature in the region. Throughout the body of work, non-naturalistic color and graphic brush mark are imposed on naturalistic compositions to create a theme that integrates organic and artificial forms in the landscape scene. This process juxtaposes styles of representation and abstraction, informed by 19th century American landscape painting and 20th century landscape painter Charles Burchfield, respectively. Ideas are symbolized by combining conventions from both periods, similar to the processes of contemporary painters …

"Feminist Fairy Tales" Female Agency And Subversive Message In Fairy Tales Of The Traditional European Canon, Marisa Reichert

Theses & ETDs

The thesis is situated in the context of previous feminist literary critique of fairy tales, attempting to answer common questions of whether fairy tales can be considered "feminist" or pro-woman. The author uses tale type AT 425A from the traditional European canon of fairy tales to examine this question and attempt to answer it. This tale type, The Search for the Lost Husband, is based on the plot structure and themes of Apuleius's second-century AD work, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, and is a story about arranged marriage from the wife's perspective. The thesis first discusses the history of …

Luke The Canonical Remnant Of A Marcionite Orthodoxy, Troy Konicki

Theses & ETDs

This thesis argues for a new narrative of Marcion�s life, exposing the inaccuracies of previous narratives and setting the scene for a Marcion that changed Christian history. Historians and theologians since the second century CE have depicted this man as insignificant and deranged, but this could not be further from the truth. Marcion was intelligent, creative and effective, penning a gospel that would serve as the cornerstone of the synoptic tradition, developing a theology and church structure that held a pervasive influence over the places and times of Christianity, and, in doing so, challenging the dominant forms of the fledgling …

Seeing Through The Grid, Sarah Newberry

Theses & ETDs

This thesis began as an investigation of three-dimensional space through pattern, repetition, modulation and transmutation of geometric forms. In response to the formalist aesthetic of the modernist grid[1] seen in the works of artists like Piet Mondrian, Sol Lewitt, and Josef Albers, a body of work was actualized. Works have evolved into a further exploration, one in which the aesthetic nature of the grid is subverted and its logical beginnings devolve into consistently warped, imprecise, and affected representations. This thesis utilizes this logical chaos to relate the dynamic qualities of specific spaces, their constant devolution, and the capacity of the …

Bais In The Courtroom The Effects Of Attorney Attractiveness And Gender On Juror Decisions, Keytin Palmer

Theses & ETDs

An experiment was conducted to investigate how attorney physical attractiveness and gender can bias juror decisions in an automobile accident trial. Participants (15 male, 45 female) were presented with a picture of an unattractive or attractive male or female attorney before reading a trial summary and a transcript of the attorney�s closing statement. Participants then rated the attorney�s persuasiveness, credibility, likability, trustworthiness, and knowledgeability; reported how guilty they deemed the defendant; and suggested an amount of money to be awarded to the plaintiff for damages if a jury found in his favor. Results showed that female attorneys were rated as …

The Child's Open Responsiveness To The Others, Matthew Polzin

Theses & ETDs

Through perceptual experiences, children embody a kaleidoscopic quantity of implicit understandings that influence and enable their capacity to learn new material. This thesis aims to illustrate how the incorporation of children�s working knowledges into lessons and activities in early education can foster a dialogic relation between both the child and new material and the child and teacher, enriching and expanding their understandings. This entails three tasks: first, using the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to articulate how the child embodies meaning through perceptual experience; second, contrasting this underlying learning process with conventional teaching practices; and third, exploring alternatives that engage the …

Pre-Restoration Ecological Assessment Of Bowman Creek, An Urban Tributary Of The St. Joseph River In South Bend, Indiana, Sarah A. Mcmanus

Theses & ETDs

Bowman Creek is one of the most ecologically impaired tributaries of the St. Joseph River, a large river in the Lake Michigan drainage system. It has been rerouted underground through pipes and culverts for more than half of its downstream length. The City of South Bend is planning to restore portions of the stream to a more natural aboveground condition, with goals of improving hydrological, ecological, education and aesthetic values. In this study, I investigated the effects of culverts on the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of the stream ecosystem. Deployable dataloggers were used to characterize diel respiration curves. Water …

Bioremediation Of Contaminated Effluent An Integrated Approach, Arielle Vicaria

Theses & ETDs

This thesis explores the use of constructed wetlands to bioremediate effluent from municipal wastewater treatment. An effluent is wastewater, which is released into natural bodies of water from a wide variety of industrial and municipal sources. Polluted effluent that joins fresh water can disturb the self-regulating process of downstream ecosystems. Bioremediation, the use of living organisms such as fungi, plants and bacteria, to degrade environmental pollutants is a promising method for detoxifying aquatic environments. Constructed wetlands provide a practical and environmentally friendly means of treating contaminated wastewaters before release into the environment.

Screaming For Change An Analysis Of Cross-Movement Participation In Florida Straight Edge, Kotu Bajaj

Theses & ETDs

This study explores patterns of cross-movement participation among Straight Edge activists. Straight Edge is a youth culture that emerged out of the hardcore punk scene in Washington DC in the early 1980s and rejects drugs, alcohol and tobacco. But Straight Edge is also an alterative movement that attempts to change society by altering particular behaviors in individuals. This thesis is concerned with how and why Straight Edge kids participate in movements other than Straight Edge, and considers how alterative movements might affect cross-movement participation differently than reformative movements, which dominate the literature on cross-movement participation.

"What Is This I Don't Even An Investigation Of Postmodern Fiction, Michael Marazzi

Theses & ETDs

This thesis explores the relationship between three American postmodernist texts: Thomas Pynchon�s The Crying of Lot 49, Don DeLillo�s White Noise, and Mark Danielewski�s House of Leaves. Using the theories of Ferdinand de Saussure and Brian McHale, I argue that each of these novels offers a different manifestation of the struggle to find �the real�, which can be understood as objective truth, meaning, or an existence external to physical reality. Furthermore, these novels progressively reflect an increasing concern with media and its ability to create, define, and manipulate diegetic relationships. I argue that these three works are milestones in a …

Fragmented Perspective, Megan Macgregor

Theses & ETDs

This thesis challenges stereotypes of dolphins by presenting them in a manner that is contradictory to mainstream representations of animals as graceful, joyous and free. Through experience volunteering at Mote Marine Laboratory and interning at Dolphins Plus in Key Largo, Florida, I have come to understand that stereotypes offer an incomplete idealized image of dolphins.The art for this thesis shows dolphins in a large-scale, fragmented format with an anthropomorphic gaze that confronts the viewer. The negative space delineated from the fragmentation creates a grid system of bars or windows which pushes the question, who is in captivity: the dolphin or …

Jomini In The Trenches The Origin Of Modern War In Confederate Doctrine, Eric Bolme

Theses & ETDs

This thesis analyzes the strategies and tactics of the armies involved in the American Civil War, with a particular focus on Confederate infantry tactics. The first two chapters focus on the first three years of the war, analyzing the goals of the Confederates, the origins of the offensive tactics they used on the battlefield to accomplish these goals and the results of those tactics. The second half of the thesis examines events in the last years of the war. It investigates the causes of the Confederate shift from the tactical offensive to the tactical defensive and the impact of that …

Scwds Briefs: Volume 26, Number 4 (January 2011), Gary L. Doster , Editor, Scwds Briefs, Michael J. Yabsley

Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study: Publications

Birds Falling From the Sky

CWD in Two New States

Update on Bat Fungus

World Equestrian Games

Cooperating to Regulate Live Animal Imports

Deer Parapoxvirus Infects Hunters

Woodchuck Victim of Raccoon Roundworm

Change in AFWA Health Committee Leadership

Advisory Committee on Animal Health

Safe Handling Of Raw Meats, Agnes Kilonzo-Nthenge, Sandria Godwin, Deborah Long

Extension Publications

No abstract provided.

Understanding And Selecting Herbicides, Fitzroy D. Bullock

Extension Publications

No abstract provided.

An Application Of A High-P Low-P Procedure To Improve Recall Memory In Elderly Patients With Mild To Moderate Cognitive Impairment, Dawn Amber Seefeldt

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Memory problems are a hallmark symptom of dementia. Although memory problems can take various forms, anomia is a common type of cognitive deficit that involves difficulty recalling names of people or objects. The purpose of the current study was to test the effectiveness of two interventions designed to improve the ability to recall the names of objects. Two elderly individuals with memory impairment participated in this study. Baseline involved identifying low and high probability images, with low-probability (low-p) items serving as the target images during the intervention phases. Two interventions were compared using an alternating treatments design. The first intervention, …

Nature, Domestic Labor, And Moral Community In Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours And Elinor Wyllys, Richard M. Magee

English Faculty Publications

Cooper's argument for a domestic ideal situated within a rural setting reinforces the importance of community connections through a shared sense of morality, as well as understanding of the natural world. Community alone—the human connections—never seems to be enough in Cooper's formulation, but must always exist with an awareness of the world outside the narrow confines of one's own domestic sphere. Concern for one's fellow-beings necessitates a concern for the world in which these beings live, and Cooper understands that when any bonds are broken—such as the bonds that connect us to the natural world—other bonds are threatened. Thus, when …

Compensatory Renal Hypertrophy, Mitochondria And Redox Status, Bavneet Benipal

Wayne State University Dissertations

A reduction in functional renal mass occurs in humans during aging and severe kidney damage from diseases, injuries, infections and congenital conditions and after nephrectomy. Nephrectomy, or surgical removal of a kidney or a section of a kidney, is performed for treatment of unilateral secondary renal cancer, infections and for kidney transplantation. As a result, the remaining renal tissue undergoes compensatory growth due primarily to hypertrophy, in which both the size and functional capacity of the remaining kidney are increased. Renal compensatory hypertrophy is associated with a series of physiological, morphological and biochemical changes that also have toxicological implications.

Previous …

Risd Fact Book 2011, Institutional Research

RISD Fact Books

The Office of Institutional Research is pleased to present the 2011 Rhode Island School of Design Fact Book; a paperless, accessible, consistent source of information about the RISD community, its resources, and its operations. It is a summary of institutional data gathered from many areas of the College, compiled to capture the 2010‐2011 Fiscal and Academic Year. Where appropriate, multiple years of data are provided for historical perspective. While not all‐encompassing, the Fact Book does provide pertinent facts and figures and is made available as reference to administrators, faculty, staff, and students.

A Journey Into The Bizarre/Bazaar: Time And Subjectivity In James Joyce's "Araby", Greg Bentley

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Evolution Of Complex Sperm Morphology, Dawn M. Higginson

Biology - Dissertations

Sperm form evolves rapidly and dramatically, particularly in taxa with internal fertilization. Post-copulatory sexual selection at the level of individual sperm has been suggested to explain the evolution of two enigmatic sperm phenotypes: sperm heteromorphism, where more than one type of sperm is produced by a male, and sperm conjugation, where multiple sperm join together for motility and transport through the female reproductive tract before dissociation prior to fertilization. I explore the taxonomic distribution of sperm heteromorphism and conjugation, speculate on the potential developmental origins and discuss functional hypotheses for evolutionary maintenance of these remarkable traits. I subsequently focus on …

Development Of Biomarkers For Endocrine Disrupting Compounds In The Fathead Minnow, Pimephales Promelas, Tara Frare

Undergraduate Review

Organic waste compounds (OWC’s) are an environmental concern that can have adverse effects on humans, animals, and the environment. Ethinyl estradiol (EE2) is one common OWC and is an active ingredient in oral birth control pills. The presence of EE2 in aquatic environments and drinking water can be linked to decreased fertility and altered physiology in fish. I am developing Q-PCR biomarkers to detect changes in fish at low concentrations before adverse effects occur at higher concentrations. RNA was extracted from twenty fathead minnows that had not been exposed to OWC’s and will be used to synthesize cDNA. Thus far …

Block And Bridle Annual 2011

Block and Bridle Annual (1933–2021)

Block & Bridle History & Emblem......................................................................................2

Animal Science Department Head’s Letter.........................................................................3

Block & Bridle President’s Letter..........................................................................................4

Historian Comments.............................................................................................................5

Calendar of Events.................................................................................................................6

2011 Honoree......................................................................................................................7-8

Animal Science Faculty....................................................................................................9-10

Block & Bridle Members and Officers..............................................................................11

Block & Bridle Initiates.......................................................................................................12

Senior Spotlight..............................................................................................................13-14

SecretaryReport...................................................................................................................15

Treasurer Report..................................................................................................................16

Programs...............................................................................................................................17

Socials....................................................................................................................................18

Big Red Welcome.................................................................................................................19

Beef Pit..................................................................................................................................19

Steak Fry...............................................................................................................................20

LittleAkSarBen...............................................................................................................21-22

Kids’ Day...............................................................................................................................23

State FFA..............................................................................................................................24

HolidayGathering................................................................................................................24

Big Red Beef Show.........................................................................................................25-26

Little MAEC.........................................................................................................................27

Nebraska Cattlemen’s Classic.......................................................................................27-28

Academic Quadrathlon.......................................................................................................29

Beef Merchandising Class...................................................................................................30

MAEC Team........................................................................................................................31

Horse Judging Team...........................................................................................................32

Equestrian Team............................................................................................................33-34

Livestock Judging Team................................................................................................35-37

Meats Judging Team......................................................................................................38-40

Advertisements...............................................................................................................41-43