Increasingly, teachers are encouraged to use data resources in their classrooms, which are becoming more widely available on the web through organizations such as Digital Library for Earth System Education, National Science Digital Library, Project Kaleidoscope, and the National Science Teachers Association. As "real" data becomes readily accessible, studies are needed to assess and describe how to effectively use data to convey both content material and the nature of scientific inquiry and discovery. In this study, we created two introductory undergraduate physical geology lab modules for calculating plate motion. One engages students with a model-driven approach using contrived data. Students are taught a descriptive model and work with a set of contrived data that supports the model. The other lab exercise uses a data-driven approach with real data. Students are given the real data and are asked to make sense of it. They must use the data to create a descriptive model. Student content knowledge and understanding of the nature of science were assessed in a pretest-posttest experimental design using a survey containing 11 Likert-like scale questions covering the nature of science and 9 modified true/false format questions covering content knowledge. Survey results indicated that students gained content knowledge and increased their understanding of the nature of science with both approaches. Lab observations and written interviews indicate these gains resulted from students experiencing different pedagogical approaches used in each of the two labs. / Master of Science

Phytoplankton productivity of Lake Texoma was measured for one year from August 1999 to August 2000 for four stations, using the oxygen change method and laboratory incubation. Mean values of the photosynthetic parameters, PBmax and alphaB ranged from 4.86 to 46.39 mg O2.mg Chl-1.hr-1 for PBmax and 20.06 to 98.96 mg O2.mg Chl-1.E-1.m2 for alphaB. These values were in the range to be expected for a highly turbid, temperate reservoir. Estimated gross annual areal productivity ranged from 594 g C.m2.yr-1 (P.Q. = 1.2), at a station in the Washita River Zone to 753 g C.m2.yr-1 at a station in the Red River Zone, of the reservoir. Gross annual areal productivity at Station 17, in the Main Lake Zone, was 708 g C.m2.yr-1. Gross areal and volumetric productivity showed distinct seasonal variation with Photosynthetically Available Radiation (PAR) and temperature. Trophic status estimated on a station-by-station basis, using net productivity values derived from gross productivity and respiration estimates, was mesotrophic for all the stations, though one station approached eutrophy. Net productivity values ranged from 0.74 to 0.91 g C. m-2.d-1. An algal bioassay conducted at two stations in August 2000, revealed that phosphorus was most likely the nutrient limiting photosynthesis at both these stations, although the more turbid riverine station was primarily light-limited.

The Greater Hindu Kush designates a mountainous area extending from Afghanistan over Pakistan, Tajikistan and India to the westernmost parts of China. It is home to over 50 lan- guages from six different phyla; Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Nuristani, Turkic, Tibeto-Burman and the language isolate Burushaski. Due to its unique geographical setting, it is characterised by language contact and isolation, which lays the perfect ground for research on linguistic diversity, language convergence and genealogical relations. The present study relies on data from the entire region and attempts to identify structural similarities based on lexical items from core vocabulary, numerals and kinship terms. The study reexamines the genealogical affiliation through lexical similarity and investigates areal patterns of vergence, i.e. the branching out or mergence of these patterns. Results reconfirm the established classification of the languages and indicate a certain level of structural simi- larity across language families for some features such as numeral bases, numeral composition and the terms for ‘parents’ and ‘parents-in-law’, yet it also shows great diversity for other features such as ‘grandchildren’ and one’s siblings’ partner. / Language contact and relatedness in the Hindukush region (421-2014-631)

La thèse présentée s'intéresse à la modélisation de l'aléa pluviométrique dans la région du Sud-Est de la France centrée sur les Cévennes. Cette région connait régulièrement des crues rapides et très localisées appelées crues éclair qui ont des impacts socio-économiques considérables. Une mesure statistique de l'aléa est la fréquence d'occurrence ou, de manière équivalente, la période de retour. La pluie étant un phénomène qui s'accumule non uniformément dans le temps et dans l'espace, l'aléa pluviométrique est une variable multi-échelle. Cette thèse vise à en proposer une modélisation intégrée pour la région du Sud-Est de la France, c'est à dire valide pour le continuum d'échelles spatio-temporelles.La première partie de ces travaux permet de comprendre quel cadre d'inférence est le plus adapté à cette modélisation. La seconde partie propose un modèle permettant d'exprimer l'aléa pluviométrique sur le continuum d'échelles spatio-temporelles. Enfin, le troisième partie propose un cadre de quantification multi-échelle (en temps et en espace) de fréquence d'occurrence d'un événement pluviométrique donné ainsi que la quantification des incertitudes associées / This thesis aims at modelling the rainfall hazard in a mountainous region of southeastern France centered on the Cévennes massif. This region undergoes intense rainfall events leading to flash floods, which have considerable socio-economics impacts. A statistical measure of hazard is the frequency of occurrence, or equivalently the return period. Since rainfall accumulates in both time and space, rainfall hazard in a multi-scale variable. This thesis propose a generic framework for rainfall hazard modelling over the continuum of spatio-temporal scales.The first part of this work allows to determine which is the most relevant statistical framework. The second part proposes a multi scale modelling of rainfall hazard for the region. Finally, the third part allows the multi-scale quantification of the frequency of occurrence of a given storm and of the related uncertainties.

Les villes sont des systèmes complexes que les modèles urbains peuvent aider à comprendre. Des modèles les plus simplistes aux modèles les plus sophistiqués, la modélisation urbaine a permis de mieux comprendre la question urbaine et ses implications sociétales. Dans ce contexte, les modèles peuvent avoir une valeur-ajoutée appréciable dans le processus de décision publique. Encore faut-il que ces modèles deviennent pratiques et répondent aux contraintes opérationnelles de la chaîne de décision. Dans ce sens, peu de recherches s’est intéressée à la question de praticité des modèles urbains et leur utilisation en situation opérationnelle. À ce jour, les modèles urbains standard qui reposent sur une description agrégée de l’espace sont parmi les approches de modélisation les plus opérationnelles et aussi les plus répandues. De par sa relative praticité, cette approche standard est attractive et simple à mettre en oeuvre. Toutefois, l’agrégation spatiale peut aussi être une source de biais statistiques préjudiciables à la qualité de la modélisation. C’est en particulier, le cas des modèles intégrés Transport-Urbanisme ou des modèles de transport à quatre étapes.La présente thèse a pour objectif d’étudier la question de l’agrégation spatiale dans les modèles transport et plus particulièrement dans les modèles d’affectation des déplacements. Les modèles d’affectation servent à calculer les temps de parcours et les conditions de déplacement sous congestion, présents et futurs, des personnes et des marchandises. Ils servent aussi à calculer les accessibilités nécessaires aux modèles d’usage des sols dont les modèles de choix de localisation des ménages et des entreprises. Toute erreur ou biais dans l’affectation des déplacements peut compromettre la validité et la qualité globales de la modélisation. Dans ce cadre, une attention particulière doit être allouée au problème d’agrégation spatiale dans les modèles d’affectation. Dans ces modèles, l’agrégation spatiale consiste à regrouper les observations individuelles enutilisant une description agrégée de l’espace, i.e. des zones. Par nature, l’utilisation d’une description agrégée à la place d’une représentation continue engendre une omission de l’information et de sa variabilité et donc un biais statistique dans la modélisation. C’est le cas par exemple avec l’utilisation des connecteurs de zones ou avec l’omission des trafics intrazones dans les modèles d’affectation.En reposant sur les zones comme unité spatiale de base, les modèles de transport recourent à l’utilisation des connecteurs de zones pour relier les centroïdes de zones au réseau de transport. Les connecteurs sont des liens fictifs qui modélisent les conditions moyennes d’entrée et de sortie du réseau de transport. Pour ce faire, la majorité des modèles de transport reposent sur une méthode simpliste sujette au problème d’agrégation spatiale. La présente thèse examine en détail l’impact de cette description simpliste sur les résultats et la qualité d’un modèle d’affectation des déplacements en transports en commun. Cette thèse propose aussi une nouvelle méthode de modélisation des connecteurs de zones afin de s’affranchir partiellement du biaisd’agrégation spatiale dans la modélisation des conditions d’accès au réseau des transports en commun.L’utilisation des zones comme unité spatiale de base a aussi pour conséquence l’omission des trafics intrazones de l’affectation des déplacements. Les trafics intrazones ont pour origine et pour destination la même zone et de ce fait ne sont pas pris en compte par les modèles standard d’affectation. Cette omission a souvent été ignorée et son impact sur la qualité de la modélisation demeure non évalué. Cette thèse développe une méthode stochastique pour l’évaluation de cet impact... / Cities are complex systems that urban models can help to comprehend. From simplistic models to more sophisticated ones, urban models have pushed forward our understanding the urban phenomenon and its intricacies. In this context, models can be of great value to policy makers providing that these tools become practical. In this regard, research has put little emphasis on the practicality of urban models and their use under operational conditions.To date, urban models which rely on spatial aggregation are the closest possibility to come to practical models. For this reason, the spatially aggregated modeling framework is widely used. This framework is relatively practical when compared to other modeling frameworks like microsimulation. Nevertheless, spatial aggregation is a serious source of bias in these models. This is especially the case of Land-Use and Transport Interaction (LUTI) models and more particularly of Four Step Models.The current PhD is committed to the study of spatial aggregation issues in traffic assignment models. Traffic assignment is responsable for the computation of travel times and travel conditions of present and future travel demand. Accessibility measurement, which is at the core of LUTI models, is tightly dependent on traffic assignment modeling and outcomes. Any bias in traffic assignment is likely to corrupt the overall modeling framework. In this context, a special attention is to be paid to spatial aggregation in traffic assignment models.In traffic assignment, spatial aggregation consists in grouping observations using zones or traffic analysis zones instead of using a continuous representation of space. By design, aggregation bears an implicit omission in data variability and thus a potential bias if this omission is not random. This is the case with the definition of centroid connectors and the omission of intrazonal demand in traffic assignment. With the use of zones as the basic spatial units, transport models require the use of centroid connectors to attach zones to the transportation network. Centroid connectors are introduced to model average access and egress conditions to and from the network. Nevertheless, average accessibility conditions are found to be too crude to render accurately accessibility conditions as encountered by trip makers. The current PhD explores the extent of the impact of this spatial aggregation bias in the case of transit models and suggests a new modeling strategy to overcome such modeling errors.The use of zones as spatial units induces a loss of intrazonal data. The omission of intrazonal trips in traffic assignment models is an example of such omission. This research introduces an uncertainty framework to study the statistical impact of ignoring intrazonal trips in traffic assignment models. Findings from this research are used to design new assignment strategies that are more robust towards the omission bias and more generally towards the spatial aggregation bias.

From the Proceedings of the 1976 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 29-May 1, 1976, Tucson, Arizona / A linear relationship between point precipitation and elevation in conjunction with a computer four-point interpolation technique was used to simulate areal rainfall over Sonoita Creek Basin, Arizona. The simulation's sensitivity and accuracy were checked against the official isohyetal map of Arizona (Univ. of Arizona, 1965) by changing the density of the interpolation nodes. The simulation was found to be in good agreement with the official map. The average areal-rainfall was calculated by integration. Cumulative rainfall amounts were assumed to be stochastically independent from one season to another. The seasonal precipitations of forty years (1932-1972) were subdivided into five groups. to check for binomial distribution. The binomial model fits the historical data adequately. The binomial model for cumulative seasonal areal-precipitation provides one way to compute the return period. This information will be necessary for decision-makers and hydrologists to predict the area's future water balance.

Beryllium-7 is a cosmogenic radionuclide produced in the atmosphere through the spallation of nitrogen and oxygen nuclei by cosmic-ray-produced neutrons and protons. It is carried in the atmosphere attached to aerosols and is deposited on land and ocean surfaces by wet and dry deposition processes. Beryllium-7 decays by electron capture to lithium-7 and has a half-life of approximately 53 days. It is a potentially useful radionuclide for studying different natural processes. This thesis presents a collection of scientific papers on the occurrence of beryllium-7 in the natural environment, particularly in the Southeast Queensland region of Australia. It shows the results of experimental measurements and discusses their implications. Overall, this thesis contributes to advancing our understanding of the distribution and behaviour of beryllium-7 in the natural environment and provides a foundation for the development of nuclear techniques for the evaluation of environmental problems.

In the mountainous area of the Greater Hindukush in northern Pakistan, north-western Afghanistan and Kashmir, some fifty languages from six different genera are spoken. The languages are at the same time innovative and archaic, and are of great interest for areal-typological research. This study investigates grammatical gender in a 12-language sample in the area from an areal-typological perspective. The results show some intriguing features, including unexpected loss of gender, languages that have developed a gender system based on the semantic category of animacy, and languages where this animacy distinction is present parallel to the inherited gender system based on a masculine/feminine distinction found in many Indo-Aryan languages. / I den här studien undersöks grammatiskt genus i ett antal språk som talas i ett bergsområde beläget i norra Pakistan, nordvästra Afghanistan och Kashmir. I området, här kallat Greater Hindukush, talas omkring 50 olika språk från sex olika språkfamiljer. Det stora antalet språk tillsammans med den otillgängliga terrängen har gjort att språken är arkaiska i vissa hänseenden och innovativa i andra, vilket gör det till ett intressant område för arealtypologisk forskning. Resultaten av den här undersökningen visar att en del språk i urvalet helt har tappat sitt grammatiska genus trots att det anses vara ett relativt stabilt språkdrag. Några språk har utvecklat ett nytt grammatiskt genus baserat på en animacitetsdistinktion, antingen som det enda kvarvarande systemet, eller parallellt med ett nedärvt indoariskt genussystem baserat på biologiskt kön. / Language contact and relatedness in the Hindukush region (421-2014-631)

Hindukush Indo-Aryan (HKIA) is a disputed subgroup of Indo-Aryan languages spoken within a linguistically diverse area stretching from northeastern Afghanistan, across northern Pakistan to northwestern India, principally covering the mountainous region of Hindukush–Karakoram–Western Himalaya. A noteworthy feature of some of these languages is a three-way demonstrative system, or three deictic terms used by speakers to direct one another’s attention to referents at different distances in their environment. It has been suggested that the distinguishing feature of one such demonstrative in HKIA is its referents’ remote distance from the interlocutors, or their absence from the environment altogether. The purpose of this study is two-fold: first, it is to more closely examine the demonstrative systems of a sample of HKIA languages on the basis of fieldwork data; secondly, it is to compare the data to previous accounts of the systems, as well as to the demonstrative systems of other languages spoken in the region. The results provide evidence that two demonstratives in HKIA are distance-contrastive, and one is invisibility-contrastive vis-à-vis the other two. Such a three-term system is moreover shown to be present in languages of the area that span across three other genealogical families, which suggests that the feature may be areally influenced. / Hindukush-indoariska (HKIA) är en omtvistad grupp av indoariska språk som talas i ett språkrikt område från nordöstra Afghanistan, genom norra Pakistan till nordvästra Indien, vilket främst täcker Hindukush-, Karakoram- och västra Himalaya-bergen. Ett anmärkningsvärt drag i ett antal sådana språk är demonstrativsystem med tre nivåer, eller tre deiktiska termer som talare använder för att rikta varandras uppmärksamhet åt referenter vid olika avstånd i deras omgivning. Det har föreslagits att det utmärkande draget för en av HKIA-språkens sådana demonstrativor är det stora avståndet mellan dess referenter och talarna, eller rentav referenternas frånvaro från omgivningen. Syftet med denna studie är dubbelt: i första hand att närmre undersöka demonstrativsystemen hos ett urval av HKIA-språken på basis av fältdata; i andra hand att jämföra dessa data med tidigare beskrivningar av systemen, samt med demonstrativsystem i andra språk som talas i regionen. Resultatet ger bevis för att två demonstrativor i HKIA är avståndskontrastiva, och att en kontrasterar osynlighet från de andra två. Det påvisas dessutom att ett likadant tredelat system finns i språk som talas i området från tre andra genealogiska familjer, vilket tyder på att draget kan vara arealt signifikant. / Language contact and relatedness in the Hindukush Region, Swedish Research Council, Project number: 421-2014-631

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T15:01:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 METODO PARA A DETERMINACAO DO FATOR.PDF: 2167463 bytes, checksum: 01a16749c59f2e7aa42c668adc5ce053 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-06-18 / The main objective of this work was to develop an empirical areal reduction factor - ARF - determination method for urban basins, which is a coefficient applied to average rainfall estimates for projects, given rainfall at a point. After a review about the subject, it was verified the needs of developing regional studies and the existence of some deficienes on current approaches. In this sense, it was tried to create an appropriate methodology given the spatial variability of extreme rainfall on urban basins. Therefore, the new suggested method, differently from the observed in others techniques, is primarily based on objective assessment of the ratio between extreme average rainfall calculated above several areas and the extreme point rainfall observed in gauges located in the center of those areas. After structuring it, the proposed method was tested in a pilot implementation with data obtained from a new raingauge network in the region of Córrego Botafogo Basin's, urban zone of Goiânia. The results were analyzed as to the dependence of ARF to area, duration and exceedance probability. It was found a strong relation with area, a minor with duration and the need of further studies about the exceedance probability influence. Lastly, the ARF values obtained with results fitting were compared with those indicated from other employed empirical models. From this study, it can be concluded that proposed methodology is appropriated to determine ARF, as its results are compatibles with assumptions established. However, new studies are needed, with a greater amounts of data, to obtain practical results. / O objetivo deste trabalho foi desenvolver um método empírico para determinação do fator de redução de área - FRA - em bacias urbanas, coeficiente empregado na estimativa de chuvas de projeto médias a partir de chuvas de projeto pontuais. Após uma revisão sobre o tema na literatura existente, foi verificada a necessidade do desenvolvimento de estudos regionais e a existência de lacunas nas atuais abordagens sobre o tema. Neste sentido, buscou-se elaborar uma metodologia adequada à variabilidade espacial dos eventos extremos usuais em bacias urbanas. Assim sendo a nova metodologia sugerida, diferentemente do observado nas demais técnicas, se baseia fundamentalmente na avaliação objetiva da razão entre as chuvas extremas calculadas sobre diversas áreas e as chuvas extremas observadas nos postos centrais à estas áreas. Após sua estruturação, o modelo proposto foi testado em uma implementação piloto com dados de uma rede pluviográfica recém instalada na região da Bacia do Córrego Botafogo, zona urbana de Goiânia. Os resultados obtidos da aplicação direta da metodologia foram então analisados quanto à dependência do FRA em relação às variáveis área, duração e período de retorno. Dos testes realizados, foi possível identificar uma forte dependência do comportamento estatístico dos resultados em relação à variação da área, uma dependência em relação à duração e a necessidade de estudos mais elaborados em relação ao período de retorno. Por fim, os valores de FRA obtidos após ajustes dos resultados foram comparados com os valores indicados por métodos empíricos mais difundidos. Dos estudos, concluí-se que a metodologia proposta é adequada para a obtenção do FRA, bem como seus resultados são compatíveis com os pressupostos pré-estabelecidos. Há no entanto a necessidade de novos estudos, com maior quantidade de dados, para a obtenção de resultados aplicáveis na prática.