The basic objectives of this thesis were to examine selected political, personality, and socio-economic characteristics of Virginia Tech Army ROTC cadets in an attempt to acquire a better understanding of "who" will be filling the future officer ranks of the U.S. Army. Although this study focuses on a specific population, it provides a substantial data base and starting point for an in depth inquiry into the social-psychological dimensions of Army ROTC cadets in general. Specifically, the study examined selected socio-economic and service related factors in relation to the officer career intentions of the cadets. Major differences were noted between the potential careerist and non-careerist groups with respect to the following variables: academic class status, size of city, class of neighborhood, family income, father's occupation, college major, expected level of education, cadet rank, ROTC scholarship, prestige in the military, military service of father, and selection of Army branch. Significant differences were also found between the cadets and a sample of male civilian students in the areas of political orientation, party identification, attitudes toward an All-Volunteer Army and U.S. military involvement overseas, and scores achieved on the personal competence and strongmindedness scales. This thesis also examined the perceived levels of importance the cadets place on selected intrinsic and extrinsic needs using Maslow's need taxonomy as a guide. The results showed that the rank ordering of the needs from most to least important was as follows: ego/self-esteem, ego/reputation, self-fulfillment, social, and safety/security. / M.A.

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-65). Also available via the Internet from the Humboldt eScholar web site.

This study of Ezra Pound's Cantos considers quotations in the poem which are clearly marked as such, not for their content, nor for the relationship between new and old contexts, but for the oral qualities of the quoted material, and for the rhetorical effects of the fact of quotation itself. After cataloguing the principal means by which quotation is marked, the thesis assesses the notion (most clearly formulated by Walter Benjamin) that the great power of quotation lies in its interruptive power rather than in its value as authority in argument (Chapter 3). Such interruptive power, drawing attention as it does to the multiplicity of voices available in the text, reinforces our sense of The Cantos as an oral text. This chapter and the one following — which traces the connections between The Cantos and oral traditions and traditional techniques — suggests that the neglect of the oral qualities of quotation has led critics to consider the poem as deeply and irretrievably fragmented. Situating The Cantos in relation to other oral works shows not only the ways in which Pound draws on the tension between the aural and the visual elements of the poem and of language (speech and song in contrast to the written) but also the pervasive omnipresence of the heard: the play of ear against eye is a play of melopoeia against phanopoeia, and the text of The Cantos is most fruitfully to be seen as a score for the speaking voice. Such orality enables Pound to draw directly upon the resources and techniques of the classical rhetorical tradition, thereby enabling him in quoting the words of others to lend their words the authority of his own voice. The poem thus achieves a strong sense of a multiplicity of voices and effects unified by the presence of the poet himself, without compromising Pound's conviction (shared with Yeats and Williams and others of his contemporaries) that rhetoric is utterly to be distinguished from poetry, and kept separate from it. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Michael Cusumano. / Bibliography: p. 55-60.

by Emmanouel A. Varvarigos and Dimitri P. Bertsekas. / Cover title. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-30). / Research supported by the NSF. NSF-ECS-8519058 Research supported by the ARO. DAAL03-86-K-0171

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The rate of convergence is a useful measure of the performance of an algorithm. Knowledge of the rate can help determine which algorithm is best suited for a given problem. This research is a study of the rate of convergence of a few algorithms used for nonlinear programming problems. The Newton-Raphson procedure and a higher order procedure used for the solution of nonlinear equations is studied. Both the convergence and the rate of convergence for the multivariate Newton-Raphson procedure is presented in the simple format of the Newton-Raphson procedure for scalar functions. A higher order procedure, which results directly from Taylor series expansion is presented. Its convergence is established and a measure for the rate of convergence is obtained. A multivariate generalization of this higher order procedure is seen to have little practical value. In analyzing the simplex algorithm, it was not possible to obtain an expression for its rate of convergence, however, an expression for the improvement in the objective function between successive iterations is obtained. This expression is entirely in terms of the original problem rather than intermediate computations. The bound, due to Kantorovich, for the rate of convergence of the optimal gradient method used in solution for a system of linear equations is shown to hold for the general unconstrained quadratic programming problem. The result is then extended for the general directional procedure. Rosen presented a bound for the rate of convergence of his algorithm. The bound was obtained under very strict assumptions of the computational procedure. It is seen that under the same assumptions, tighter bounds are available for Rosen's method and that these bounds are also applicable under less stringent assumptions about the computational procedure. / Ph. D.

The elastic deformation of a circular membrane subjected to an impulsively applied pressure of constant magnitude is investigated. The membrane is assumed to be clamped at the periphery after being subjected to a small radial extension. The differential equations of motion are derived and classified as completely hyperbolic. Results are obtained using the method of characteristics and the technique of numerical integration along the characteristic lines. Both strain waves and inertia waves propagate through the membrane as the deformation takes place. The numerical results show that while the membrane material is in the elastic range, the two types of waves propagate with constant, but unequal, velocities. It is pointed out that the phenomenon of constant wave velocities could possibly be used to simplify the equations of motion and obtain an approximate, closed form solution applicable to the elastic range. Although only the elastic case is considered, the analysis presented is applicable to material behavior obeying any finite constitutive relation. In particular, extension of the procedure to the study of plastic deformation is discussed. / Master of Science