Until recent years, Chaucer's "Tale of Melibee" was scorned by most critics as a boring conglomeration of proverbs. As a result, little attempt has been made to understand the tale's content and the reason for its popularity in the Middle Ages. However, D. W. Robertson, in his reevaluation of the headlink between "Sir Thopas" and "Melibee" concludes that Chaucer intended ''Melibee" to contain all the sententious meaning which underlies the other tales. Presupposing that the tale may prove to be the keystone of The Canterbury Tales, this thesis purposes to explicate "Melibee" in its medieval context and to show its vital tie with the thematics of the other tales. The first chapter summarizes relevant Chaucer criticism on ''Melibee" and introduces the Robertsonian analysis of the headlink. Chapter two correlates the text with St. Augustine's commentary on the seven steps to wisdom found in De doctrina Christiana. In chapter three, the tales surrounding ''Melibee" in Fragment VII are explicated in light of their relationship to "Melibee" in the seven part schema. Special emphasis is given to the analysis of "The Shipman's Tale" since until this time there has been no "patristic" analysis of the story. The fourth chapter briefly draws the correlation between the seven steps to wisdom within ''Melibee" and the seven-part progression followed in the overall thematic structure of the Tales. Thus, the ''Melibee" is shown to be the key to discovering the rationale for Chaucer's ordering of the tales and also the key to understanding the intended theological "sentence" of each individual story. / M.A.

The automation of continuous flow batch sampling analysis is discussed, and methods for data acquisition and analysis are developed. The application program which realizes the system objectives is outlined. The design includes extensive sample management capability, the use of peak shape recognition for detection, calibration, and a comprehensive interactive command capability. Discussion of system performance and recommendations for future improvements are included. / M.S.

Chicken heart mitochondrial malate dehydrogenase has been purified by an improved isolation method to give 56% of the initial mitochondrial enzyme. The purified enzyme has a specific activity of 340 U/mg. This homogeneous enzyme has been shown to be pure by several criteria. The enzyme has been shown to be a dimer with a molecular weight of 67,000 gm/mol. Upon exposure of MDH to pH 4.8, the enzyme dissociates into 33,000 gm/mol monomers. At pH 5.0, an apparent equilibrium. exists between the monomeric and dimeric states. If pyrophosphate or phosphate were present, stabilization of the enzyme occurred, causing an increase in the enzymatic activity and a decrease in the K_m,values for both substrate and coenzyme, probably by an induced conformational change. Iodoacetamide was found to modify two histidine residues, one group in each active site, per enzyme dimer at pH 7.0. Ellman's reagent reacted with enzyme at pH 5.0, possibly modifying most of the sulfhydryl groups. N-Ethyl maleimide modification of the enzyme's sulfhydryl groups at pH 4.8 was found to be slightly more specific in its modification than Ellman's reagent. The number of sulfhydryl groups modified by N-ethyl maleimide increased with either lowering of the pH or an increased reagent concentration. Six -SH groups were modified at pH 5.0, while eleven sulfhydryl groups reacted at pH 4.8. The presence of NADH was found to prevent modification entirely when either N-ethyl maleimide or iodoacetamide was present. A model of subunit interactions in the native and modified chicken isozyme is presented, and is compared with the model of the porcine and bovine isozymes. / M.S.

M.S.

The white room washed with its amorphous color faces & encloses & widens & is the interlocuter; on its floor are objects: a walnut the found pomegranate, the orange pepper divided & halved, are all cells Taken apart, they are spined seeds & needles are reeds of a dry chant that rotate until the figure is unrecognized leaving the first rippled shell jell in the orange flesh that turns bright & translucent and further, a strong magenta dye Conscious faces mouthe the old skin of the soft refrigerated fruit like the lines of a small city or the embossed design on the rim of a white plate. / Master of Architecture

Within the last two-and-a-half decades tremendous increases have occurred in the value and size of farm operations and in the amount of capital required. These increases and enactment of the 1976 Tax Reform Act have cast the estate planning problems of farmers in a new and more critical context. The farm owner-operator has certain objectives which he wishes to accomplish through estate planning, constrained by certain factors which influence his situation. The uninterrupted operation of the farm may be jeopardized during intergeneration transfer. If an heir wishes to continue operating the farm, he must raise enough capital to complement his equity in the farm so that he may purchase the assets of the farm. This problem is further compounded by administrative expenses, estate taxes and inheritance taxes. A survey was made of rural residents in Virginia in 1976 who attended estate planning meetings. The majority of the individuals surveyed had either no formal estate plan or a will only. Less than one-fourth had used life estates or trusts in their estate plans, and approximately only one-fifth had made gifts. According to a case study analysis of alternative estate plans based upon three actual cases, estate plans which utilize a will only resulted in the highest capital erosion from the estate of the alternatives considered. Estate plans which utilize a will, gifts, and trusts or life estates resulted in the least capital erosion. The plan which equates the present value of the marginal tax on the husband's and the wife's estates resulted in the minimum taxes and administrative expenses. The major implication drawn from the study is that an expanded educational effort is needed to provide farmers with an understanding of alternative estate plans which would aid them in making decisions concerning their own estate plans. / Master of Science

This paper presents a method for simultaneously optimizing the routes and schedules of certain commuter airlines. This method is specifically designed for those commuter airlines which primarily provide a feeder service from small communities into a single large community. The problem is that given a set of small communities, a single large community, a set of aircraft and the demand as a function of time of day, determine which communities each aircraft will serve, the order in which these communities will be served and the time(s) that the aircraft will stop at each community in order to minimize passenger inconvenience. These assignments are subject to service and economic constraints. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer quadratic programming problem. A computer program is developed to solve this problem. An example problem with an operating commuter airline is included to demonstrate the application of the solution procedure. / M. S.

The focus of this study was a comparison of seventh-grade students enrolled in a Clusters Approach to Career Orientation class and students not enrolled in this class in order to determine if the career class had any significant effect on the students' career aspirations, self-esteem enhancement, and locus of control (independent/responsible behavior). The school district from which the study was conducted was Carroll County, a basically agricultural county located in Southwest Virginia. The subjects consisted of an experimental group of academically accelerated seventh-grade students at Woodlawn Intermediate School who received a semester of a Clusters Approach to Career Orientation class, and a comparable group of accelerated students from Hillsville Intermediate School who did not receive the career class. The sample size was fifty. Both groups of students were administered three instruments on a pretest, posttest basis. These instruments, the Career Development Inventory, Coopersmith's Self-Esteem Inventory, and the Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale for Children were administered the first week of the second semester and again at the end of the semester. In addition to this investigation, an analysis of change in stated career choice was explored. The multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was the statistical treatment applied to the data. Significant differences did not exist at an alpha level of .05 on any of the three tests, dictating a failure to reject the null hypothesis which stated that there would be no significant difference in career maturity, self-esteem enhancement, or locus of control between the experimental and control groups of students. While self-esteem and locus of control are believed by many to be major variables associated with the individual's career decision-making process, the findings of this study implied that these variables were not principal objectives of the Clusters Approach to Career Orientation class. It was also believed that several intervening factors external to the CACO class could have served as a counter-influence on students' self-esteem enhancement and locus of control (independent/responsible behavior). It was recommended, however, that further investigation of this study be conducted, involving other and larger populations in different geographic settings, and including a longer period of time between pre and posttesting. / Ed. D.

A survey of a systematically selected sample of former community college students who had.withdrawn prior to obtaining a degree showed that 86 percent were satisfied with the programs and services of the community college, 46 percent had completed their objectives before withdrawing, 44 percent had both completed their objectives and were satisfied with the community college, and that 81 percent intended to continue their education at either the community college or some other college. The study was conducted because of an increasing volume of criticisms of the community college due to the low proportion of students that complete requirements for degrees in that institution. This criticism appears unwarranted inasmuch as Frank Newman and others have reported that the majority of persons enrolling in community colleges do not abide by the conventional academic format that results in a degree. K. Patricia Cross and others have observed that "drop-out, drop-in, drop-out" students realize their educational objectives without ever receiving a "degree" from the community college. This study supports their observations. Since the institution that participated in the study is probably typical of many community colleges, this study indicates that community colleges are doing a reasonably good job of meeting students' expectations. / Ed. D.

In an investigation of the nature of judgements of assertiveness, 20 university undergraduates, three clinical psychology graduate students, and two Ph.D. clinical psychologists observed a series of videotapes of actors engaging in assertive scenarios. Seven variables were rated; eye contact, facial expression, duration of reply, loudness of speech, compliance, requests for new behavior, and overall assertiveness. The ratings of overall assertiveness were designated criterion measures and the ratings of the remainder of the variables were designated predictor variables in a multiple regression analysis. This permitted the generation of individual models, for each judge, composed of those specific variables which accounted for the greatest percent of variance in overall assertiveness. This was felt to reflect the particular strategies or composition of each judge's observation of assertiveness. No two judges' models incorporated the same component variables in the same way. However, two and three variable models for most judges accounted for much of the variance in overall assertiveness (R² from .44 to .99). Thus, while quite idiosyncratic across judges, the limited models thus generated did seem to represent judgement strategies for each judge. Cluster analysis of models similar in ratings of overall assertiveness indicated variability in composition. Even those judges who rated overall assertiveness most similarly evidenced dissimilar models or strategies. With regard to model composition, Male judges' models employed eye contact significantly more frequently than did female judges' models, but accounted for no greater percent of the variance in overall assertiveness. Naive judges'and clinicians' models did not differ in composition, but the clinicians' models did account for significantly greater variance in overall assertiveness. The model generating approach to the investigation of judgements of assertiveness had several advantages over methodologies used previously in the literature. While only a limited number of specific components were presented, judges were still relatively unconstrained in that they essentially specified the compositions of their models. The influence of the investigator was limited in that judges were not trained to rate specific variables in specific ways. For each individual judge a behavioral definition of assertiveness emerged from the data, and was not determined a priori. This was felt to be more analogous to in vivo judgements of assertiveness than other methodologies in the literature. In addition, this approach suggested a potentially valuable clinical application in assertive training. / Ph. D.