American Studies Commons^™

Influence Of Evapotranspiration On Patterns Of Ground-Water Conductivity In Small Basins, Ana Jiménez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ground-water conductivity data were obtained from shallow wells in a 12 km2 stream-basin along a 400 m transect, extending from the divide to the stream. The stream, Pringle Branch, is a second-order perennial stream in Hillsborough County, Florida. The shallow stratigraphy consists of 2-3 m of fine sand over a layer of clayey silt and silty clay. Vegetation cover includes grasses on the upper and middle slope, and riparian woodlands on the foot slope and floodplain. Precipitation is about 1.3 m per year. Shallow ground-water conductivity is about 50 uS/cm at the divide. It increases moderately along the mid slope, …

Impact Of Area Social Predictors Of Health On Black-White Disparities In Stroke Mortality, Tyra Dark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigated the area social predictors of health (ASPoH) and Black-White disparities in stroke mortality relationship. Utilizing stroke mortality data obtained from the Florida Department of Health for years 1998-2002, and social and economic data obtained from the year 2000 Census of Population, this study examined the effect of resource availability at the census tract level on Black-White disparities in stroke mortality. The influence of social class on Black-White disparities in stroke mortality and effect modification by social class of the association between Black-White disparities and ASPoH variables was also investigated. Principal component analysis produced four ASPoH scores from …

Glyconanobiotics: Novel Carbohydrated Nanoparticle Polymers, Thotaha Wijayahewage Sampath Chrysantha Abeylath

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Carbohydrates on the cell surface conjugates to proteins and lipids and participates in biological processes as glycoconjugates. Carbohydrate functionalized nanoparticles (glyconanoparticles) constitute a good bio-mimetic model of carbohydrate presentation at the cell surface and are currently centered on many glycobiological and biomedical applications. The most of the applications have been reported using gold glyconanoparticles. A brief review of gold glyconanoparticles and some of their applications will be discussed in Chapter I. Although metallic, semiconductor and magnetic glyconanoparticles have been reported, no polyacrylate glyconanoparticles have yet to be described.

Chapter II describes the first preparation of carbohydrate functionalized polymer nanoparticles by …

The Effects Of Invasive Cogongrass (Imperata Cylindrica) On The Threatened Gopher Tortoise (Gopherus Polyphemus), Katherine A. Basiotis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) is critical to upland communities and considered a keystone species. A recent threat to gopher tortoise habitat is the invasive cogongrass (Imperata cylindrica), which spreads rapidly, eliminating native vegetation. This study consisted of three experiments to investigate the effects of the cogongrass on a population of gopher tortoises. A feeding experiment revealed that individuals readily ate native vegetation, but would not eat cogongrass. A tracking experiment showed that there was a significantly different mean angle of movement between individuals whose home ranges were outside cogongrass compared to those that overlapped cogongrass, …

Sexy Sensationalism Case Study: The Fascination With Celebrity News And Why Usa Today Caters To The Obsession, Grant Edward Boxleitner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the digital age where newspapers compete with the Internet, cable TV and other publications for an audience, USA Today strives to stay relevant in the media with a daily dose of celebrity news. Newspapers continue to lose circulation during a time when the fascination with celebrities shows no signs of dwindling. This study explores how much celebrity news coverage USA Today gives readers, how much competition from other outlets plays a factor and whether the nation's largest newspaper is making a sacrifice of traditional forms of newspaper content in favor of celebrity coverage. The methodology for this qualitative case …

I'M Not Who I Was Then, Now: Performing Identity In Girl Cams And Blogs, Katherine Bzura

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The task of documenting the evolution of the self over time has been attempted by women artists throughout history. The practice of this documentation has been greatly enhanced in the last several years by the progression of new technologies for the capture of digital images, the advent of the internet as a common textual and visual communication device, and the availability of free resources to publish and disseminate the resulting constructions. Women artists now have the tools needed to document the life of the self, and to publish it immediately to an audience.

Most of the women documenting their lives …

Danger Afoot: Sidewalks, Environmental Justice, And Pedestrian Safety In Pinellas County, Florida, Craig W. Harmak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Though often taken for granted, few everyday activities involve so much genuine danger as the hazards associated with motor vehicles. Urban areas are built, modified, and/or deconstructed with motoring in mind. Also true is that few are at as much risk, as are those pedestrians who dare to cross paths with motor vehicles. Unfortunately, all too often, pedestrians are casualties of encounters with the ubiquitous automobile. The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida metropolitan statistical area (MSA) has recently been deemed, by one study, to be the nation's second most dangerous MSA for pedestrians. Using information on pedestrian/motor vehicle accident sites, sidewalk location …

Fabrication And Analysis Of Poly(3-Hexylthiophene) Interfaces Using Electrospray Deposition And Photoemission Spectroscopy, John Lyon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

P3HT (Poly(3-hexylthiophene)) is an organic polymer that shows promise as an active material in semiconducting electronics. It is important to study the electronic properties of this material in order to determine its efficacy in such devices. However, many current studies of thiophene only examine the oligomer, since it is a simpler material to investigate.

In this study, several P3HT interfaces were analyzed to determine their electronic properties. The P3HT was deposited on Au, highly-ordered pyrolitic graphite (HOPG), and indium tin oxide (ITO) substrates via electrospray deposition. The depositions were performed in several steps, with x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) and ultraviolet …

On Comparison Of Indentation Models, John Louis Daly Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Thin films that are functionally gradient improve the mechanical properties

of film-substrate layered materials. Mechanical properties of such materials are

found by using indentation tests. In this study, finite element models are

developed to simulate the indentation test. The models are based on an

axisymmetric half space of a specimen subjected to spherical indentation. The

film layer through the thickness is modeled to have either homogeneous material

properties or nonhomogeneous material properties that vary linearly.

Maximum indenter displacement, and maximum normal and shear

stresses at the interface are compared between the homogeneous model and

the nonhomogeneous model for pragmatic contact …

Hurricane Forecasting, Warning And Response Systems: A Lake Wales Public Perception Study, April E. Raulerson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates the public perception of hurricane forecasting and warning systems with a view to improving response activities. The hazard literature shows that the effectiveness of such systems is contingent upon on the smooth operation of all components of the system and that warning recipients fully understand the implications of the warning message by taking appropriate action. It is argued that public perception of warning systems will vary depending on various socio-demographic factors, such as age, gender, level of education, socioeconomic status and area, factors that will ultimately influence overall effectiveness. To test this, a questionnaire survey was undertaken …

The Rise Of Clostridium Difficile In Florida, Owen Bendixsen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that causes diarrhea in hospitalized patients, is on the rise in the United States as well as in other countries. This study was done to determine the extent of the problem in Florida's acute care hospitals. The Agency for Healthcare Administration (AHCA) provided data for patients discharged from Florida's acute care hospitals for the years 1998 through 2004.

This study will focus on changes in the prevalence of Clostridium difficile associated disease (CDAD) over time. The mortality and morbidity of patients that have CDAD will also be examined to show if the disease is increasing …

Naming And Inhibition In Aphasia, Lori R. Bartels-Tobin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lexical retrieval models illustrate both activation and inhibition between concepts, words, and phonemes. When semantic activation spreads from one concept to its related concepts, inhibition is recruited so that competition between related concepts can be overcome and a target production achieved. Persons with aphasia often exhibit difficulty with producing the desired response, which could be the result of inadequate inhibitory processes to overcome response competition.

Inhibitory processing is typically measured using a negative priming task. Twenty participants with aphasia, twenty-five young participants, and twenty age-matched aphasia group controls were recruited for this study. Participants with aphasia completed a picture-naming task, …

The Influence Of Dialect On The Perception Of Final Consonant Voicing, Stacy Nicole Kile

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Children at risk for reading problems also have difficulty perceiving critical

differences in speech sounds (Breier et al., 2004; Edwards, Fox, & Rogers, 2003; de-

Gelder & Vroomen, 1998). These children rely more heavily on context than the acoustic

qualities of sound to facilitate word reading. Dialect use, such as African American

English (AAE) may influence literacy development in similar ways. Dialect use has been

shown to affect speech sound processing and can even result in spelling errors (Kohler, et

al., in press). The purpose of this study is to determine if children who speak AAE

process cues indicative of …

Making Sense Of Complex System Failure: The Case Of 9/11, Sandra M. Cooper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks attributed the September 11 attacks on the U.S. homeland to the terrorists' exploitation of "deep institutional failings." These findings are similar to the conclusions of the Presidential Commission investigating the 1986 Challenger accident and the Columbia Accident Investigative Board (2003). Generally Commissions aim to provide the fullest possible account of events contributing to the catastrophe under investigation and to identify lessons learned, but avoid specifying responsibility and accountability. For this reason, various commission reports have been criticized for being abstract and shallow. These criticisms make a valid point. How commissions make sense of failures …

American Odyssey, Bernadette Kafwimbi Cogswell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of the two opening chapters of American Odyssey, a nouveau plantation novel that has its roots in two American fiction traditions---the nineteenth-century plantation novel and the twentieth-century neo-slave narrative. It is 1855 and Charles DeCoeur's only motivation to remain Riverwood's owner and master is that his widowed mother and sickly sister rely on the profits of the estate. Charles chafes under the responsibility and physicality of plantation life, unable to reconcile himself to the role of master of a cotton estate in the forgotten heart of East Florida. Then a female Negro, Hellcat, wanders onto the …

Kauffman-Harary Conjecture For Virtual Knots, Mathew Williamson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, we examine Fox colorings of virtual knots, and moves called k-swap moves defined for virtual knot diagrams. The k-swap moves induce a one-to-one correspondence between colorings before and after the move, and can be used to reduce the number of virtual crossings. For the study of colorings, we characterize families of alternating virtual knots to generalize (2, n)-torus knots, alternating pretzel knots, and alternating 2-bridge knots. The k-swap moves are then applied to prove a "virtualization" of the Kauffman-Harary conjecture, originally stated for classical knot diagrams, for the above families of virtual pretzel knot diagrams.

Government Public Relations: A Quantitative Assessment Of Government Public Relations Practitioner Roles And Public Relations Model Usage, Joelle Wiley Castelli

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study attempts to identify how public relations are practiced in local governments. Traditional literature has stated that the public information model of public relations is the model of public relations practiced in local governments. This study also attempts to determine which roles are most common for lead communicators in municipal organizations governments. Based on Internet survey research methods, research findings indicated that while most practitioners stated they practiced a two-way communications model, they had the most expertise in the public information and press agentry models. The researcher also found that the role most often held by the highest ranking …

The John Muir Newsletter, Spring/Summer 2007, The John Muir Center For Environmental Studies

Muir Center Newsletters (1981-2015)

The John Muir University of the Pacific, Stocktoi, CA BER2/3 Sprint; Summer 2< John Muir's World Tour (part V) Lex Chalmers, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand Preface by W. R. Swagerty, Director, John Muir Center This past spring, I had the good fortune to travel to New Zealand and Australia through sponsorship of the J. William Fulbright Program of the U.S. State Department. At University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand on the North Island, Dean Daniel Zirker introduced me to Professor Lex Chalmers, a distinguished geographer and researcher on his faculty. It turns out that Professor Chalmers had plans to travel to the United States on family business. After learning my interest in following John Muir's trail from his 1904 visit to New Zealand, Lex agreed to help with this project. In May, Chalmers visited us in Stockton and spent time in the John Muir Papers, clarifying the route and obtaining pertinent transcripts and details from the manuscripts. The document that resulted is his excellent work, not mine. I am indebted to Chalmers and the University of Waikato for the time spent helping the world better understand Muir's unpublished travels in New Zealand from the difficult-to-read notebooks that he kept while traveling abroad, and from Linnie Marsh Wolfe's transcriptions from the 1940s or 1950s. We are planning a more extensive academic publication from this preliminary work and share with you the fifth of six segments in the piece that follows. WRS John Muir's remarkable 'World Tour' began on May 29, 1903 with his departure from New York, and ended almost exactly a year later when he arrived back in San Francisco on May 27,1904. For most of this time Muir maintained a detailed daily journal, commenting on the botany, geomorphology and the patterns of human occupance that he encountered. These journals, closely written in pencil and often illustrated, are held in the Holt-Atherton Collection at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Ca. The collection also holds some of Muir's correspondence written during his travels, and part of the Library collection he established. The journals have attracted scholarly attention, most notably in the transcription work undertaken by Linnie Marsh Wolfe to support her commentaries and 1946 biography of John Muir (Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir). Wolfe's biography, not without its critics, place her at the forefront of commentators on John Muir's contribution to conservation, and her work was recognised by the award of the Pulitzer Prize for biography. Her typescript records of John Muir's journals are an important contribution and they provide the best research source for (Continued on page 6) page 1

Jews John Muir in the New World Proposed Film Documentary with Director Catherine Tatge PRESS RELEASE Source: Global Village Media/PRNewswire/USNewswire New York, July 18, 2007 The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded a grant of $80,000 to Global Village Media in support of their new documentary, "John Muir in the New World." The grant will be used during the scripting phase of the project. John Muir is one of the tall trees in environmentalism and western ecological thinking. He was one of the first conservationists …

The Eastern Real Estate Company Of Portland, Maureen Elgersman - Lee (Ed.)

The Griot

No abstract provided.

Family Affairs Newsletter 2007-04-01, Jean Vermette

Family Affairs newsletter (2004-2016)

FAMILY AFFAIRS was a free, twice-a-month, social activities newsletter for the GLBTQI (gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans/queer/intersex) community, sent out around the 1st and 15th of each month. It covered the State of Maine only. The list was begun and maintained for many years by Jean Vermette in Bangor, and later operated by Zack Paakkonen of Portland. Over the years it evolved from a social activities newsletter into a business directory, classified ad service, and community bulletin board.

Equality News (Spring 2007), Matthew R. Dubois

Equality news / EqualityMaine (2004-2008)

No abstract provided.

Introduction: The Sexual Body, Shelly J. Eversley, Jennifer L. Morgan

Publications and Research

Introduction to the special issue, "The Sexual Body," edited by Shelly Eversley and Jennifer L. Morgan.

Entitles: Booker T. Washington's Signs Of Play, Susanna Ashton

Publications

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard & Pulp Studies

Articles:

Editorial Comments (The Dark Man V3n2),by Charles Allen Gramlich [as by Charles Gramlich]

The Influence of Joseph A. Altsheler’s “Young Trailers” Series on Howard’s Pictish Wilderness Fiction, by Robert M. McIlvaine

Mind-forg’d Manacles? Back to School with Robert E. Howard, by Steve Tompkins

Conan the Shakespearean / Hamlet the Barbarian, by Jeffrey Kahan

News (The Dark Man V3n2), by Paul Herman and S. T. Joshi

Letters to the Editor (The Dark Man V3n2), by Jeffrey Kahan

Letter (The Dark Man V3n2), by Mark Finn

Letter (The Dark Man V3n2), by Chris Gruber

Letter (The Dark Man V3n2), by Darrell …

Jazz On The River By William Howland Kenney (Book Review), Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

Jazz has not always been "America's classical music." In the first decades of the twentieth century it was regarded by much of the black and white Establishment as unsettling, provocative, even dangerous - attitudes exacerbated by the social upheaval of the Great Migration around the time of World War I. Enter black riverboat jazz bands to negotiate the color line: to help "white Americans approach in an oblique manner underlying social and cultural changes that were too deep and too heavily laden with pain, guilt, and fear for most citizens to discuss openly" (5). Such is the thesis of Jazz …

Women Of The New Walden: Gender In Sound Culture, Now And Then, Phylis Johnson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Sonic diversity in the midst of wilderness, as original and untamed, can confound and discomfort the novice listener who becomes overwhelmed by its plethora of mysterious languages. Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, author of Summer on the Lakes (1844), expressed sensory overload when she was confronted with the sights and sounds of Niagara Falls. Sound permeates our life, from conception, birth, and varied sonic spheres of influence that penetrate our physical space. Sound acknowledges its relevance as a cultural influence within the socialization of the individual. For instance, high-powered car stereos and subwoofers swimming in bass overtones have become associated with masculinity. …

Gestures Toward Cross-Species Reciprocal Relations In Contemporary Poetics, Mary Newell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In this essay, I explore some embodied bases of ethical attitudes toward human/ animal exchanges in the texts of three contemporary authors: Mary Oliver, Heller Levinson, and Adrienne Rich. Since other species share with humans varieties of agency, sentience, and purposive activity, I suggest that reciprocity is a fundamental aim in cross-species relations. Phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty depicts the correlation between embodied actions and attitudes, for example, between the hand movement of grasping and an appropriative attitude toward the natural world. His concept of reciprocity, grounded in the experience of one hand touching another, provides a reference for encounters that …

Questioning The Lives Of Kings: American Class Myths, Lana Cook

Inquiry Journal 2007

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Computer-Mediated Communication In Non-Native Speakers’ Acquisition Of Academic Literacy, Rui Cheng

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research shows that academic literacy is discipline specific. Students have to learning the ways of communication in order to gain access to the discourse community of the selected discipline through understanding and performing required genres and learning necessary disciplinary knowledge. Scaffolding is important in the process to help students internalize the disciplinary knowledge and improve students' performance on academic papers. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) provides good chances of scaffolding and mediation especially for non-native graduate students who may have lost many opportunities of class participation due to their limited language proficiency or other cultural issues.

In this dissertation, the researcher investigated …

Lynching The White Imagination: Changing The Dynamics Of Lynching And Rewriting The Cult Of True Womanhood In Grimke, Johnson, And Terrell, Melissa L. Antonucci

English Theses & Dissertations

Despite critics'ack and forth argument over the merits, or lack thereof, of a uniquely black theatre experience, black women playwrights, much like their male counterparts, were once wholly invisible to the white community. But what makes their invisibility unique is their absence in the black world and in literary scholarship. Unfortunately, modern scholarship has oftentimes dismissed these exceptionally powerful plays, cataloging them as poorly written and lacking stylistic and formal elements. It was only recently that they were included in a highly male-dominated history of African American theatre and art. The question of their use of sentimentality, however, remains unanswered. …