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This study sought to describe the emergent interaction system of letterboxing in North America. Letterboxing is a hobby that can trace its roots to treasure hunting and orienteering. A letterbox is a container holding a logbook and carved rubber stamp found by following clues. Participants use the stamp to make an imprint in their personal journal, and in turn, they record their personal stamp and a message in the letterbox's logbook. Letterboxing has been growing rapidly in North America since its start in 1998; currently 21,498 letterbox clues are listed on just one of the hobby's largest websites. I recruited 355 participants for this study through invitations on websites used by letterboxers. I conducted the research using a combination of descriptive qualitative methods and qualitative analysis of data from three open-ended questions gathered on an online survey instrument. I designed survey items to gather data that described the participants and their behaviors including demographics, participation activities, and communication activities. I then analyzed these data using frequencies, percentages, and cross tabulations. Participants in the study were predominantly white, female, under the age of 50 and educated. I used content analysis of survey data obtained through open-ended questions to identify impetus, motivation, and emergent behaviors. The impetus for participation varies from hearing about it from a friend or relative to publications and broadcasts. Others stumbled across letterboxing via Internet searches or by finding a letterbox in the woods unintentionally. The "thrill of the hunt," hiking, and a love of the outdoors are primary motivations for participation. Made possible by the interconnectivity of the Internet, an informal collective has emerged that embraces individual variants and claims it for its own in an online learning community. Community activities such as gatherings, web rings, talk lists, discussion boards, and postal letterboxing bring participants together, increase engagement, and build community around similar interests. Collaborative innovations, or emergent interactions of participants, create new forms of letterboxing and lead to experimentation, probing, learning, and enhancement of individual experience. A model of emergent interaction is presented in the conclusion section. / Department of Educational Studies

This thesis has explored the balanced management of a value-based, non-profit organization. The District operation of the Boy Scouts of America has been used as the basis of the study. The conflict between values, structure, and results has been discussed in relation to models of structural, scientific, human, and integrative approaches to management. A balanced, rational management system has been explored.The central problem was how to provide a value-based volunteer organization with an effective management system that will achieve program results. The value and significance of the problem arose from the increasing use of volunteers to meet social needs. The method used was a review of selected literature, documents, interviews, and the results of a survey of District-serving professionals in the Boy Scouts of America.

The eastern Miami Indians have been involved in an intense, dynamic process of cultural definition during the past fifteen years. Adding to the nucleus of retained culture, the Miami are selecting particular aspects from both their traditional ideological and material pasts while they are simultaneously incorporating new ideas and practices in order to define Miami identity. The eastern Miami process of cultural revitalization, currently characteristic of many Indian tribes, has manifested itself in various ways. There are many variables involved in determining the cultural revitalization process specific to the Miami. Of particular interest are the manifestations of cultural revitalization and its relationship to political processes. / Department of Anthropology

Changes in the physical properties of the atmosphere are caused by geographic influences and dynamic effects. The nature of the surface of the earth over which the air passes is usually the main factor in modifying the air in the lower levels of the troposphere. The ocean area of Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada presents an extensive surface for modification of air. Continental polar air crossing Hudson Bay and continuing into eastern Canada is modified not only by the underlying surface but also by the dynamic effects occurring in the atmosphere during its trajectory over these regions. The amount of modification is of major importance in the climate of the surrounding area, and in the meteorology of North American air masses. It was the purpose of this study: 1. To compute the changes in the physical properties that occur in continental polar air over Hudson Bay, Consequently, a project was undertaken to determine the amount of ice that forms on Hudson Bay in winter. The effect of the formation of ice in changing the modification of air was then studied. [...]

Gun control is a topic that has a variety of complex aspects. Creating a solution for gun violence has been a difficult task for the President and Congress in the last few years. The main reasons for this are the many different groups with a vested interest in the topic. There are also so a number of issues that contribute to gun violence in America that it becomes extremely difficult to pin point one exact problem. Trying to reduce the amount of guns that criminals and the mentally ill get ahold of is an important aspect when looking at the issue gun control. Removing flawed systems, inconsistent laws and other loopholes will result in fewer individuals that should not own guns from getting their hands on deadly weapons. These aspects are extremely difficult to solve all at one time, and require time and patients by Congress and the President for results to be seen. The most important part is fixing issues one at a time, and the ones that can cost innocent people’s lives. While there are many opinions towards gun control, one point both sides of this issue can agree on is that the murder of innocent individuals needs to stop immediately. Careful analysis, with accurate research will allow issues to be solved in an appropriate manner. Making it significantly difficult for criminals to access gun is a major step in the right direction for both the federal government and individual states.

The distribution of wealth occurs frequently in Mark Twain's novels, especially at the resolution. Indeed, Twain uses wealth as resolution in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. The repeated use of this formula in the author's approach to novel writing indicates the tremendous influence that capitalism had in shaping his worldview. In his early works, Twain appears to endorse capitalism in his use of wealth as resolution. Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and Huckleberry Finn each conclude with the distribution of capital as a reward to the protagonists and as an effective solution to conflicts presented throughout the texts. However, the tone of Pudd'nhead Wilson is decidedly different. This later novel ends with wealth as resolution, but the result is not the happiness granted to characters in Twain's previous works. Instead, the fates of Tom Driscoll, Chambers, and Roxy leave the reader with a sense of the inadequacy of capitalism. Twain's change in his approach reveals a rejection of bourgeois values. An examination at the resolution to all four novels reveals Twain's shifting Weltanschauung, culminating with a rejection of the dominant ideology in Pudd'nhead Wilson.

An improved method has been developed for carrying out 2-plate reconstructions, in which fracture zone locations are fitted to synthetic flowlines and magnetic anomaly picks are rotated and fitted to great circles representing other, not necessarily conjugate, anomaly isochrons. This enables the determination of finite rotation poles for regions with sparse data coverage, or where much of one or both plates has been subducted. Misfits and partial derivatives are calculated for each type of data, and combined in a single iterative inversion, allowing the direct calculation of confidence intervals. This method is then extended to a 3-plate reconstruction, taking closure into consideration. The South American - African - Antarctic plate system is then studied. Fracture zone locations are identified from a gravity map constructed from GEOSAT altimeter data, and magnetic anomalies are identified from ship profiles. Two-plate reconstructions are carried out for each plate pair, giving good fits to the observed data, and then all three datasets are combined in a 3-plate reconstruction. Comparison of the results reveals a discontinuity in spreading in the Weddell Sea, believed to be related to pseudo-asymmetric spreading caused by ridge re-organisation in the Paleocene and early Eocene. A revised 3-plate inversion, taking this discontinuity into account, produces an internally consistent set of poles, indicating a closed 3-plate system since anomaly 34 (83Ma), with no evidence for a Malvinas Plate extending into the Weddell Sea in the Late Cretaceous. Disruption to the system from anomaly 32 (71Ma) until anomaly 24 (52Ma), appears to be related to the collision of Africa with Eurasia. A study of the past motion, configuration and stability of the Bouvet Triple junction suggests that for the majority of the past 50Ma it has been in a RFF configuration, in theory considerably less stable than RRR, the other possible configuration.

Early Palaeocene floras from twenty seven sites within the Raton, southern Powder River and south-western Williston Basins of the western interior of North America were collected, and their leaf physiognomy, ecological character and depositional setting compared. Such a spread of samples enabled the study of spatial and temporal vegetational and climatic variations in the region, following the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary event. Climatic changes are observed across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Precipitation increased dramatically, and remained relatively high throughout the earliest Palaeocene. Temperatures were somewhat lower, compared to those of the Late Cretaceous, and seasonality in climate increased. Climatic and vegetation zones shifted southwards as latitudinal climatic equability decreased. Palaeotemperature and palaeoprecipitation were determined using CLAMP and leaf margin analysis. Experiments carried out to assess the robustness of CLAMP to loss of foliar physiognomic data revealed that this data loss did not drastically effect palaeoclimatic determinations but that information about leaf size and margin type had the most effect on results. Vegetation was of low diversity directly after the boundary event, but recovered to stable, but still relatively low levels, within a short time. Changes in diversity are difficult to interpret due to masking by taphonomic biases, which are important within the depositional environments analysed in this study. Climatic deterioration and the prevalence of disturbed environments ultimately facilitated expansion of the angiosperms, although their aspect was changed with a general increase in deciduous forms, in relation to increased seasonality and decreased equability. These trends cannot be related merely to the impact of a bolide at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, but reflect the more global and wide-ranging changes of the period, which were punctuated by this brief, deleterious event. Previous work has tended to concentrate on the North American continent but a more global perspective reveals that the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary event was not a world-wide catastrophe within terrestrial environments.

This thesis examines certain of the ways in which Americans perceived the German Empire between 1888 and 1917. A background is provided by considering the influence of America's relationship with Great Britain on perceptions of Germany and by examining official relations between the United States and Germany, in which context the views of Germany expressed by American diplomats are discussed. The ways in which Americans looked at Kaiser Wilhelm II, at German Socialism, at the German cities (with particular regard to the works of Frederic C. Howe), and at social reforms in Germany (especially as they influenced, or were interpreted by, American Progressives), are considered and related to American conditions. The picture of Germany in American literature of the period is examined, particularly Mark Twain's relationship with the country. In these ways the essential ambivalence of American views of Germany at this time is exposed, the country being both admired and feared.