Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 330-341. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis ( Ph. D. ) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-192). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 330-341. Also available on the Internet.

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The North American summer monsoon is documented, using precipitation data together with gridded data for outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR), geopotential height and wind at various levels. The upper level divergence field is diagnosed and compared with the precipitation field. A simple wet-dry precipitation index is used to date the monsoon onset at stations with daily precipitation data. The analysis shows that the monsoon rains advance northward rapidly from late June to early July. The monsoon onset is accompanied by the development of a pronounced anticyclone at the jet stream level, by sea-level pressure rises over the southwestern United States, and by decreases in climatological mean rainfall over adjacent regions of the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. This coherent pattern of rainfall changes, that covers much of North and Central America, is shown to be dynamically consistent with the circulation changes aloft. Hence, the monsoon onset is embedded within a planetary-scale pattern of circulation changes. The demise of the monsoon and the associated upper level anticyclone, which takes place around September of the year, is more gradual than the onset, and it is accompanied by an increase in rainfall throughout much of the surrounding region. The monsoon exhibits substantial interannual variability with regard to intensity and onset date.

Through the use of ethnohistorical data, the Saponi and Nottoway Indians of seventeenth-century Virginia are analyzed in terms of basic, or group, personality and acculturation history. Through a reconstruction of the contrasting reactions of these communities to eighteenth-century English activity, a test for the motivating influence of personality and history on this behavior is made. It is determined that the Saponi and Nottoway shared similar basic personalities, but that they experienced different seventeenth-century histories. By the eighteenth century, the behavior patterns of each community were consistent with the different levels of acculturation attained by each community as a result of their different histories. It is concluded that in the case of the Nottoway and. Saponi, acculturation history served as the primary motivational factor in their different reactions to eighteenth-century English activity. Personality became a factor only as a result of the stress placed upon it by acculturation.

Prospective adoptive parents in British Columbia are required by provincial law to attend workshops on parenting. Key advice given to parents wishing to adopt transnationally, transracially, or both, suggests promoting a positive identity in their children; an identity founded on feelings of belonging within their own family, as well as an acknowledgment of their background. This advice is largely influenced by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, as well as Canada's national policy of multiculturalism. Bearing these external laws, policies, and ideologies in mind, this thesis explores how white Canadian parents who adopt black children from the United States respond to this advice. Within this thesis, I contextualize the adoption of black children from the United States by white Canadian parents in a local, national, international and global historical perspective. / Graduate