The number of manuscript theses presented for graduate degrees is increasing each year. Many of them record the results of important and useful projects. Knowledge of the existence and location of these contributions to scholarship is important to all research workers in order to prevent duplication of study, to bring salient facts into focus and otherwise to facilitate research.

This thesis critically examined gutkas – illuminated, pocket-sized anthologies of texts, hymns, and prayers that a Hindu would recite in a sacred place in the home, usually near an altar – produced in the Kashmir Valley during the mid-nineteenth century. Previously relegated to the periphery of scholarly discourse due to academic discriminations against “folk” culture, the goal here was to consider these objects and their paintings through the combined lenses of art history, cultural history, and religious studies in order to speak about gutkas in a deeper and more meaningful way. Here, gutkas from Utah State University, the Smithsonian Freer|Sackler Galleries, and the British Library were used as a tool to situate their makers within intricate familial webs of artistic practice, identify patterns of consumption and attitudes of ownership among a South Asian middle class, and reconstruct the objects’ function within Hindu devotional practice.

This study examined the effects of using graphing calculators with a numerical approach designed by the researcher on students learning of limits and derivatives in an Applied Calculus course at a community college. The purposes of this study were to investigate the following: (1) students achievement in solving limit problems (Skills, Concepts, and Applications) with a numerical approach compared to that of students who solved limit problems with a traditional approach (primarily an algebraic approach); and (2) students achievement in solving derivative problems (Skills, Concepts, and Applications) with a numerical approach compared to that of students who solved derivative problems with a traditional approach (primarily an algebraic approach). Students (n = 93) in all four daytime sections of an Applied Calculus course in a community college participated in the study during the spring 2005 semester. One of two MWF sections and one of two TR sections served as the treatment groups; the other two sections served as the control groups. Two instructors other than the researcher participated in the study. Instructor A taught one treatment group (a TR section) and one control group (a MWF section); instructor B taught one treatment group (a MWF section) and one control group (a TR section). Dependent variables were achievement to solve skill, concept, and application limit problems and skill, concept, and application derivative problems, measured by two teacher-made tests. A pretest administered on the first day of class determined that no significant difference existed between the groups on prerequisite algebra skills. Separate ANCOVA tests were conducted on the skill, concept, and application portions of each of the limit and derivative exams. Data analyses revealed the following: (1) there was no significant difference found on the skill portion of the limit topic (unit 1 exam) due to instruction or to instructor; (2) there was a significant difference found on the concept portion of the limit topic due to instruction and to instructor; (3) there was a significant difference found on the application portion of the limit topic due to instruction but not due to instructor; (4) the interaction effects between instructor and instruction were not significant on the skill, concept, and application portions of the limit topic; (5) there was a significant difference found on the skill portion of the derivative topic (unit 2 exam) due to instruction but not due to instructor; (6) there was a significant difference found on the concept portion of the derivative topic due to instruction and to instructor; (7) there was a significant difference found on the application portion of the derivative topic due to instruction but not due to instructor; and (8) the interaction effects between instructor and instruction were not significant on the skill, concept, and application portions of the derivative topic. All significant differences were in favor of the treatment group.

The procession is an exhibition of sculpture which expresses the birth and continuity of life. It uses mixed material such as cloting, balloon, latex, epoxy, nylon and oil paint. The writen project is part of the exhibition.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has initiated a process to develop a Federal information Processing Standard (FIPS) for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), specifying an Advanced Encryption Algorithm to replace the Data Encryption standard (DES) the Expired in 1998. NIST has solicited candidate algorithms for inclusion in AES, resulting in fifteen official candidate algorithms of which Rijndael was chosen as the Advanced Encryption Standard. The Advanced Encryption Standard can be programmed in software or built with pure hardware. However Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) offer a quicker, more customizable solution. This research investigates the AES algorithm with regard to FPGA and the Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description language (VHDL). Altera Max+plus II software is used for simulation and optimization of the synthesizable VHDL code. All the transformations of both Encryptions and Decryption are simulated using an iterative design approach in order to minimize the hardware consumption. Altera ACEX1K Family devices are utilized for hardware evaluation.

The increasing need for low-power computing devices has led to the efforts to optimize power in all the components of a system. It is possible to achieve significant power optimization at the software level through instruction reordering during the compilation phase. In this thesis, we have designed and implemented a novel instruction scheduling technique, called FD-ISLP, aimed at reducing the software power consumption. In the proposed approach for instruction scheduling, we modify the force-directed scheduling technique used in high-level synthesis of VLSI circuits to derive a latency-constrained algorithm that reorders the instructions in a basic block of assembly code in application software to reduce power consumption due to its execution. The scheduling algorithm takes the data dependency graph (DDG) for a given basic block and a power dissipation table (PDT), which is generated by characterizing the instruction set architecture. We model power, commonly referred to as software power in literature, as a force to be minimized by relating the inter-instruction power cost as the spring constant,k,and the change in instruction probability as the displacement,x, in the force equation f = k * x. The salient feature of our algorithm is that it accounts for the global effect of any tentative scheduling decision, which avoids a solution being trapped in a local minima. The power estimates are obtained through using a tool set, called Simple-Power. Experimental results indicate that our technique accounts for an average of 12.68 % savings in power consumption over the original source code for the selected benchmark programs.

It is well documented in the literature that bilingual speakers simultaneously activate both languages during spoken language processing (e.g., Marian & Spivey, 2003). However, parallel activation can lead to competition between the two languages (e.g., Blumenfield & Marian, 2013; Freeman, Shook, & Marian, 2016). The Unified Competition model (UCM) provides a theory as to how bilingual speakers navigate through two languages while different linguistic cues are competing (MacWhinney, 2005). The UCM proposes that cues are used to process language, based on cue validity (the product of how reliable and available a cue is), which is determined by cue strength (a measure based on conflict reliability; how reliable a cue is when it directly conflicts with others). Two likely cues bilingual speakers use while processing a novel spoken word are linguistic environment (the language being spoken around them) and phonotactic probability (the probability of the sounds making up a novel word). Applying the theory of the UCM this study sets to answer the following general question: How do Spanish/English bilingual adults assign language membership to nonwords when linguistic environment and phonotactic cues are competing? The current study consisted of twenty-two Spanish/English adults who listened to 96 nonwords that corresponded to three different groups based on phonotactic probability: Language Exclusive (the phonotactics of the nonwords designated them as either Spanish only or English only), High-Low (the nonwords had high phonotactic probability in one language and low probability in the other), and Ambiguous (the nonowords had similar phonotactic probability in both languages). The participants were tested in one of two linguistic environments (primarily English with some Spanish code-switching or primarily Spanish with some English code-switching) and partook in a two-alternative forced choice listening test (participants determined if each nonword was either Spanish or English). The language membership decision was measured via verbal response and eye-tracking using EyeLink 1000 Plus measuring eye gaze, number of fixations and switches. In general, results indicated that Spanish/English bilingual adults relied only on phonotactic probability when making language membership decisions, but not as strongly as may be suggested by the UCM. The results of this study suggest that environmental cues are not strong enough to impact spoken language processing in Spanish/English bilingual adults and that phonotactic probability is likely a more easily accessible (and therefore more commonly used) cue.

The performance of identity is an often studied subject matter. One identity, Geek, and the larger subculture to which it is attached (Geek culture) has become a growing field of study in since the turn of the millennium, mirroring the growth of the subculture itself. The question then is how do Geek's perform this identity and create an idea of what a Geek is? If there is a place to examine this performance then it is the growing event of comic book conventions. At these events thousands of individuals gather to celebrate, interact with, purchase and play with the commodities of Geek; comic books, video games, anime, manga and film. In this space, as I will discuss, the spectrum of performance as outline by Richard Schechner in Performance Theory occurs in simultaneous forms inside the convention. While there is ritual, there is also play, and theater, and all three may be occurring at any one time through any one individual. This is partially brought on by the presence of cosplayers, convention attendees who dress up as fictional characters, and perform a separate role that also speaks to their own identity. Furthermore, the presence of what Victor Turner terms social dramas in the space of the panel discussion complicate and re-form not only individual identities, but also Geek culture identity as well. Underlying the interaction of identity with space/place is the, as Marc Agé terms it, non-place nature of the convention center itself. That the convention center does not bear the trappings of a typical anthropological place (such as history or tradition) influences the impact of the performance and the identity created therein. Consequently, the identity held will be challenged by the temporary nature, not just of the event, but also the place which contains it. I attended two comic book conventions in the state of Florida to examine this phenomena using my own experience as part of the study, as well as interviewing other convention attendees and people within my group. I will move through the space of the conventions exploring my personal relation to the identity of Geek and how others perform the identity while trying to explore what does it mean to be Geek?

Griselda Gambaro’s work had been studied previously under the confrontation of victims and their oppressors where the oppressor’s role is played by male characters while women play the victim part. However, in Gambaro’s four monologues that were written in 1970 and 1974, just before the Argentinean military dictatorship that took place in 1976, there were no male characters. However Gambaro’s monologues, even without male characters, illustrate the violence, repression and stark violations of human rights in an “apparently” democratic time in Argentina. This is possible because the women characters plunder their passive feminine identity by acquiring male behaviors full of aggression which threatens their own elimination. The details of the role of women as victims and oppressors are described in this dissertation.

In the “Introduction,” I discuss how the works presented in this “creative” thesis draw upon traditions of both experimental fiction and realism. The novella makes up Volume I of a longer work. The episodes in the life of the protagonist are depicted in chronological order, but not as chapters in a seamless narrative. In constructing the novella in this way, I attempted to convey how an individual might, for reasons peculiar to himself, choose to view certain moments of his life as turning points. But I do not rely upon the first-person point of view. By using a third-person limited, a third-person omniscient and “second-person” narrative voice in several of the chapters, I hoped, in part, to give to the representation of the “the life of Donovan Jewell” the quality of the “case study.” Each of the “two stories” following the novella is meant to stand alone. Written in the present tense, they both offer intimations of a coming family crisis—or perhaps of a crisis that will be forever postponed.