Long before the writings of the New Testament gospels, where Jesus was being proclaimed as the Son of God, and Savior, the world existing under the influences of Hellenism resulting from the conquests by Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, had already been well acquaint ed with and expected to hear certain symbolic language in determining titles for their divine ruler the emperor. Living within a cosmological framework, i.e., a sacred cosmos, the citizens of the empire accepted the emperor as the manifestation of divinity in the world. This belief existed for centuries prior to Christianity as a reality that was taken for granted. In fact, this belief system was never questioned until the time of the emperor Constantine, during the middle of the fourth century C.E. (MacMullen, 85) The Julio-Claudian dynasty, beginning with the reign of Julius Caesar in the year 62 BCE, through the end of the Flavian Dynasty, beginning with the emperor Vepasian in 69 CE through the year 117 CE, will be the timeframe of this work. It represents the period of time when the writers of the Synoptic gospels were writing their accounts of the life of Jesus and also for those writing for and about the imperial court reporting on the lives of the emperors. The geographical location in this work will include the territories of the Mediterranean regions, since this was where the extant texts used in this study originated. This particular time period in and around the area of the Mediterranean was commonly referred to as the early Roman Empire. Within the empire, a worldview that influenced and shaped a belief that the emperor as understood in terms of divinity were already well-established beliefs in the minds of the people. Living within a worldview shaped by imperial theology,the writers of the Synoptic gospels would borrow the existing symbolic language already in use by the imperialistic writers in their legitimating of the emperor as a divine representative of the gods on earth, and then apply these same terms in legitimating Jesus as the Son of God. My purpose is not to ignore the Jewishness of the gospel texts, since it is quite obvious that Jewish symbols appear throughout all of the gospel, indicating that members of the existing community of Jews are presenting these writings. However, I am suggesting that the Jewish community living in the Mediterranean area during the period of empire building existed as a minority culture. Hellenism and a Roman imperialistic form of government, which was dominating and oppressing the majority of the membership of the community including the Jews, shaped the prevailing social milieu of the empire. In my thesis, I will support the work of these scholars by showing how Hellenistic and Roman traditions, alongside of Jewish traditions, shaped the way in which these writers attempted to legitimate Jesus as the Christ. Furthermore, I will argue that the existing symbols already established within a Roman imperial theology were used to legitimate the superiority of the emperor as ordained through the will of the gods, and as an object of favor by the gods. In other words, imperial theology would support a belief that the emperor and the gods were in special relationship. This ideology will develop through the Julio-Claudian and will also prevail in the minds of the believers through the early years of the Flavian Dynasty. By the middle of the Flavian period, the emperor will be perceived as the sole representative of a sovereign, father/god whose main function will be to unite the people as one community under one god. Meanwhile, the writers of the Synoptics will borrow these same symbols used under imperialism in their own search for meaning in a world oppressed by Roman authority. These writers will also assign power to Jesus, with the purpose of legitimating him as the sole representative of the one, sovereign god over all people. Writers such as Cassius Dio (40-110 CE), Suetonius (69-140 CE) and Tacitus (54-117 CE) historians reporting on the lives of the emperor from this period will be presented as examples of the view that existed within Roman imperialism. These writers and the writers of the Synoptics were, perhaps, writing in reaction to one another's claims in defining their heroes in terms of divinity. I am also suggesting that the symbols used by all of these writers understand the purpose of their hero-figures in terms of power. The writers of the gospels will claim to have the ultimate word, in their effort to override the old political/religious system found within imperial theology and replace it with a new form of power offered by their hero-figure, Jesus of Nazareth. This new ideology sought to legitimate not only Jesus in terms of power, but also assigned power to the marginal members of society. The terminology that the gospel writers used in legitimating Jesus as the Son of God is understood as the Christology of the gospels in this work.

This study is a quantitative content analysis of activist groups' use of dialogic tools on Web sites. The study was done in order to understand how activist groups use the Web to communicate with their publics in comparison to for-profit corporations. The Web is considered a powerful tool for activists and allows them to communicate better with their publics. Use of the Web should allow activist groups to level the field with corporations by enabling them to get their message out and interact better with their public. Dialogic communication is a necessity for activist groups. By measuring the use of dialogic communication by activists in comparison with corporations, this study uncovers how well activist groups are using the World Wide Web for purposes of dialogic communication with their publics.

An ammonia emissions inventory discovered that 90% of the ammonia emitted from Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Polk counties, originated from the latter two counties. This finding is significant and suggests that a substantial portion of the ammonia deposited to Tampa Bay is transported with easterly air masses. Ammonia and ammonium concentrations at the coastal Gandy Bridge site were seasonally and diurnally consistent, but the rural Sydney site showed greater variability. It was determined that wind direction was the most influential parameter affecting the Gandy Bridge site, which supports the hypothesis that an advection of ammonia from the east is a major source of ammonia to the estuary. Sequential sampling of ammonium in wet deposition at the Gandy Bridge site confirmed that between 35% and 60% of the ammonium (CNH4) in rainfall is deposited to Tampa Bay during the initial 20% of precipitation (D) according to a power law CNH4=aD-b. Ammonium concentrations were predicted with an aqueous-phase accumulation model and a relationship between I, rainfall intensity in mm min-1 and (beta), scavenging rate in min-1 was shown as (beta) = 0.08I0.66. This algorithm will facilitate future modeling studies that explore the relationship between the wet deposition of ammonium and ammonia reduction strategies in Tampa Bay. The NOAA Buoy model accurately predicts sensible heat flux, and is an effective tool for estimating the offshore air/water exchange rates of ammonia over Tampa Bay. If near-shore vs. offshore meteorological measurements are used, the model under-predicts flux parameters by as much as 30% in the summer season. The model was "calibrated" to correct this deficiency. Bi-directional ammonia flux measurements during the fall and winter seasons resulted in an average flux rate of 96.2 (mu)g-NH3 m-2 d-1, indicating a net transfer from air to water. During the 2003 summer season, an average ammonia flux rate of -117.9 (mu)g-NH3 m-2 d-1 and a 32% reduction in the annual ammonia dry deposition rate to Tampa Bay was calculated. Wet deposition likely contributes to ammonia reemission from the estuary. These results indicate that volatilization of ammonia reduces the nitrogen burden available for biological synthesis in Tampa Bay.

The goal of this research was to understand the role of the glass substrate and molybdenum (Mo) back contact on the performance of Copper Indium Gallium diselenide (CIGS) / Cadmium Sulphide (CdS) based photovoltaic devices, and to improve the performance of these devices. The CIGS absorber layer was fabricated in a 2 stage process. In this process the metal precursors were deposited at 275oC followed by a high temperature selenization step. The advantage of the 2 stage process is that it is manufacturing friendly. The first step in fabrication of solar cells is to clean the substrate which is necessary to obtain good device performance. A variety of environmentally friendly solvents were evaluated, to determine the optimal cleaning agent. At elevated temperatures of processing sodium tends to diffuse out of Soda lime glass (SLG) and enter the semiconductor. The presence of this sodium during CIGS fabrication is necessary to obtain high efficiency CIGS based solar cells. A silicon nitride barrier layer was sputtered onto the SLG substrates, and this substrate was used to make complete devices. The CIGS absorber layer was deposited by the Type I recipe in two different vacuum systems.These devices were compared with standard devices the Si3N4 barrier layer, to understand the role of sodium on the devices fabricated from both of the systems. Furthermore, the influence of molybdenum processing parameters, such as thickness and rate of sputtering, on device performance were studied. The Voc of devices fabricated using the Type I process was limited to 460mV. In order to improve the Voc's a new absorber recipe (Type IV) was developed. Voc's of upto 490mV, Jsc's of upto 37.4mA/cm² and FF of 64%, were obtained. This improvement in performance was due to incorporation of gallium in the space charge region. Techniques such as I-V measurements, spectral response, SEM and EDS measurements were used to characterize the devices.

Manual pavement condition surveys are gradually replaced by more comprehensive automated surveys conducted by multi-function highway evaluation vehicles. Highway evaluation vehicles are generally equipped with laser profiling, land navigation, and imaging sub-systems. The imaging system consists of three cameras; forward-view and side-view digital area-scan cameras for capturing images of traffic signs and right-of-way safety features, and a pavement digital line-scan or area-scan camera for capturing images of the pavement surface. In addition to the 3-laser and accelerometer-based profiling system, these vehicles are also equipped with differential global positioning equipment (DGPS) and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) for cross-slope, curvature and grade measurements. Digital imaging systems installed in automated highway evaluation vehicles are generally designed on modular basis where subsystems by different manufacturers are assembled to customize the system and fulfill the users' needs while minimizing the cost. In most such cases, manufacturers' specifications for a subsystem would not be reliable with respect to the eventual performance of that subsystem as part of the entire assembly. On the other hand, no guidelines are available for performance evaluation of imaging systems as assemblies of discrete subsystems. Moreover, images acquired by digital cameras can become contaminated by random noise affecting their quality and the ability of identifying important features. These issues have surfaced during the development and testing of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) highway evaluation vehicle. This first phase of the work involved in this dissertation research concerns the study of basic criteria for evaluation of image quality through measurement of well-defined properties of images such as color reproduction, tone reproduction, detail reproduction, as well as the levels of noise, and optical distortion. Standard and reliable methods that can be adopted for evaluation of the above properties are discussed first. Then, by applying the above evaluation criteria to the imaging systems of the FDOT highway evaluation vehicle, it is shown how the sources of images sub-quality can be recognized and the optimum settings achieved. The second phase of the dissertation research is focused on the investigation of the sources of noise that can affect the digital line-scan distress images. As a result of this study, a novel technique was developed to filter out noise present in pavement distress images by using intensity measurement obtained from a standard grayscale target. In addition, a detailed experimental study was conducted to investigate the effect of the speed of evaluation and lighting conditions on the accuracy and repeatability of digital line-scan images in representing the actual distress condition of a pavement. The conclusions drawn from the second phase can be used to minimize the effect of noise on digital images of pavement distress and to improve the accuracy of evaluation of pavement cracks based on digital images. Hence the results of this study will certainly enhance the overall efficiency of the automated evaluation of pavement distress and highway features.

Our interest in the red alga Delisea pulchra (=D.fimbriata) (Greville) Montagne 1844 (Rhodophyceae, Bonnemaisoniales, Bonnemaisoniaceace) was stimulated by its activity in the biosssays done at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Halogenated compounds from D. pulchra interfere with Gram-negative bacterial signaling systems, affect the growth of Gram-positive bacteria, inhibit quorum sensing and swarming motility of marine bacteria (inhibit bacterial communication). They also inhibit surface colonization in marine bacteria and exhibit antifouling properties against barnacle larvae and macroalgal gametes. Chemical investigation of D.pulchra collected near Palmer Station, Antarctica yielded three new dimeric halogenated furanones, pulchralide A-C (41-43), along with previously reported fimbrolide (21), acetoxyfimbrolide (22), hydroxyfimbrolide (23) and halogenated ketone 40. The reported Compounds were characterized by comparison of their 1H and 13C NMR data with that previously published. Pulchralide A-C were characterized by both 1D (1H NMR, 13C NMR, DEPT, 1H-1H COSY) and 2D (gHMQC, gHMBC) NMR techniques, supported by HREIMS/HRESIMS data. The absolute stereochemistry of Pulchralide A was determined by a single crystal X-ray analysis. Significant antimicrobial activity was observed in acetoxyfimbrolide (22) and hydroxyfimbrolide (23), where as pulcharlide A (41) and fimbrolide (21) were weakly active.

Present state-of-the-art hydrogen sensors are limited by a number of defects such as poisoning effects, slow response, and/or the range of concentrations that can be detected. Thus, hydrogen sensors are currently under investigation. In the search for the ultimate sensor, a variety of materials have been employed as the sensing layer. One of these materials is palladium. Palladium is widely used for hydrogen sensing due to its high selectivity and property of spontaneously absorbing hydrogen. Thin and thick film palladium hydrogen sensors have been reported, as well as palladium nanostructures. Specifically, palladium nanowires for hydrogen sensing have had improved results relative to other types of sensors; these have been reported with a response time down to 75ms and do not suffer from poisoning effects. Additionally, the fabrication of these nanostructures via electrodeposition is simple and cost efficient. For this reason, palladium nanostructures were chosen as the front-end for a novel hydrogen sensor. The nanostructures were to be employed as the sensing front-end of a Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) sensor. It was theorized that the response time would be vastly improved if these were used as opposed to a thin or thick palladium film due to the decreased hydrogen diffusion distance, which is a result of the structures being one-dimensional. Because it was theorized that the dimensions of the nanostructures play an integral role in the response time to hydrogen, control of the morphology was required. This control was achieved by varying the plating variables in the electrodeposition experiments. The plating variables investigated were deposition potential, time, and counter-electrode area. The dimensions of the resulting nanostructures were measured via Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and correlated to the conditions of the electrodeposition experiments. Nanowires under 40nm were successfully fabricated.

The goal of this project was to examine the visual system of the bonnethead shark (Sphyrna tiburo). The eyes of this shark are located at the extreme lateral ends of a broad, elongated cephalofoil. Better understanding of their visual system may aid in determining the adaptive benefits of their usual head shape. The proposed project examined one specific aspect of their visual system: the organization of retinal ganglion cells and identification of areas of increased resolution. Two experiments were conducted to realize these aims: (1) staining of retinal ganglion cells, to examine their distributional pattern, and (2) retrograde staining of retinal ganglion cells to determine morphology.

We apply the techniques of digital holography to obtain microscopic 3D images of biological cells. Both the amplitude and phase images are obtained from a single hologram, with approximately 1 [mu]m lateral and 10 nm longitudinal resolution. The results are combined with previous experiments resolving the 2 [pi] ambiguity to produce continuous phase images of the samples.

Mentoring programs often focus on assisting students with the transition to college life and encouraging academic success. This study consisted of a quantitative examination of faculty and peer mentoring and freshmen student athletes' perceived transitional stress and social support. Surveys that provided a numerical value to perceived stress and social support supplied a basis for comparison. In addition, a qualitative element, consisting of personal interviews, was used to assess the quality of the mentoring relationships that developed. Volunteer mentors were trained on mentoring strategies by the researcher. Sixty-one student-athlete volunteers from the sports of baseball, basketball, cheerleading, cross country, competitive dance, football, golf, rowing, soccer, track and field, and volleyball were divided into two groups with similar high school grade point averages. Thirty-one of these student athletes were then randomly assigned to peer mentors and 30 were assigned to faculty mentors. Stress and social support were measured three times during a 16-week semester and the data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance. No significant differences were found in the perceived stress levels of student athletes mentored by faculty versus peers. However, stress levels were found to significantly increase between the beginning and the end of the semester. Regarding social support derived from friends, no significant difference was found in the perceived level of social support received from friends. However, students mentored by faculty perceived significantly more social support from their mentor than that perceived in the peer-mentored group. No effects for race or gender were found with either perceived stress or social support levels. This research suggests the need to investigate specific stress sources and what assistance may be provided through mentoring. Academic advisors may wish to consider alternative ways to assuage the stresses experienced by first-semester student athletes, such as reduced course loads or reduced athletic demands. The results of this study provide additional insights regarding mentoring and its effects on perceived levels of stress and social support. In addition, this research provides the building blocks for a mentoring program to assist student athletes transitioning to college.