During the Formula 1 auto racing season of 2010, team McLaren developed an aerodynamic device called an F-Duct. This device was an ingenious way of out-thinking the regulations of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) by providing a means of notably controlling car performance. More specifically, the F-Duct is a device that allows a driver to alter air flow over the car's rear wing in order to gain higher speed on long straight sections of the race track (up to 10 kmph). In general, Formula 1 teams do not share technological details about their cars in order to keep an advantage over other teams. Available public information is vague in nature and does not provide any technical details. This thesis studied the existing F-Duct system and its requirements, including the location of key components and their functions. First, a working concept was proposed, and a simplified model was prepared to test the concept. Wind tunnel testing was performed on a physical model and the data analyzed. Continuous improvements were made to achieve drag reduction through passive flow control. Finally, an improved model was prepared, drag reduction was observed, and wind tunnel data presented. / Thesis (M.S.)--Wichita State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering

With an increasingly bilingual population, children have more opportunities for dual language education. Literacy activities at home have been correlated with reading and writing success; however, helping a child learn in a language in which the parent is not fluent could create challenges. Parents of students who attend a K-8 dual language school completed a survey asking how they help their child obtain literacy skills in both languages. Over 200 surveys from both English and Spanish speaking households were analyzed to determine what strategies parents utilize. Follow up interviews were conducted by the investigator to ask additional questions about parent activities and learn if parents had special concerns about the dual language school environment. Reading books was widely chosen by parents when asked what activities they used to help facilitate literacy and language learning in both the home language and secondary language. English speaking families tended to rely more on school functions to help facilitate learning and literacy in Spanish. The Spanish speaking families reported a high usage of TV shows and movies as a tool to help their children develop their second language, English. Although some reported feeling concerned about their children learning two languages at once, the benefits that they saw from the experience outweighed any academic concerns. / Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Health Professionals, Dept. of Communication Sciences and Disorders

Amphibian populations have been declining globally since the 1980's. Threats putting the populations at risk include global warming, habitat or land-use changes (including increased nitrogen application), emerging infectious disease, invasive and exotic species, ultra-violet radiation, and toxicants such as those used in agricultural practices. The effect of these stressors on amphibian population include not only decline in abundance but also developmental deficiencies in growth rate, behavioral, and morphological abnormalities. The study presented in this paper, focuses on potential tissue level biomarkers of nitrogen exposure. The use of a chronic exposure during multiple critical developmental periods at ecologically relevant levels of nitrate will produce data that reflects the resilience or the susceptibility of the frog, Xenopus laevis. Measures of fluctuating asymmetry, hematocrit, body condition, and metamorphic data were collected and analyzed to determine the effect of nitrate on Xenopus laevis. The results of this study largely determined no significant difference between treatments for the bioindicators measured when Xenopus laevis were exposed to nitrate from hatching to two-months post metamorphosis. These suites of tests are important to literature for two primary reasons 1) substantiation of the water quality test reinforces the quality of the test and tight controls in place 2) the length of chronic exposure in a multi-factorial test. / Thesis (M.S.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Biological Sciences

Environmental heterogeneity is often cited as one of the driving mechanisms behind community species composition and diversity. However, its contribution to species composition in plant communities remains unclear because few experiments demonstrate a causal link between environmental heterogeneity and plant diversity. This is particularly true for soil manipulations despite that fact that soil is expected to provide the key resources necessary for plant growth. Here, I utilize a unique manipulation of the soil profile to create communities with spatially heterogeneous and homogeneous soil arrangements and examine the influence of soil heterogeneity on community structure, through species composition and flowering patterns, during community assembly. I employed an annual census of the assembling communities and recorded the identity and density of all species within the patches. After two years, I found that species richness was significantly higher in heterogeneous than in homogeneous plots. In the heterogeneous plots, thirteen species had higher greater establishment rates in a specific patch type representing one of the three soil strata. However, no species had greater association with the mixed stratum, comprising the homogeneous plots, than one of the heterogeneous strata. This pattern of species sorting between soil types suggests that the increased richness in heterogeneous plots is due to the increased variety of soil types comprising those communities. Alternatively, species richness in homogeneous plots, where species did not sort to distinct soils, was strongly associated with total plant density. This experiment is one of the first to provide clear, experimental evidence that fine-scale soil heterogeneity increases species richness through species sorting during community assembly. / Thesis (M.S.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Biological Sciences

Research evidence appears to point to a lack of consensus among teachers of varying age and experience on what behaviors may or may not be considered ethical when dealing with student assessment. This study was an attempt to better measure teacher's perceptions of ethical assessment behavior. A new instrument, the Educator's Perceptions of Ethical Assessment Practice (EPEAP) was developed. The EPEAP is a combination of 30 ethical and unethical assessment scenarios. Standards set by the Joint Committee for Ethical Evaluation Standards were used as the basis for denoting correct or incorrect participant answers. Participants were 133 in-service and pre-service teachers selected from an education program at an urban midwestern university. Chi-square analyses showed that on 10 items, statistically significant differences were found among; teaching levels, age, gender, school level, and school setting. No statistically significant differences were found between the above groups. On 12 items, participants scored below the mean score (M=69, SD=3) of the survey. Results show a need to further investigate ethical assessment in order to facilitate new ways to create educators better versed in ethical assessment practice. / Thesis (M.E.D.)--Wichita State University, College of Education, Dept. of Educational Psychology

A generic Bayesian framework using Laplace approximation for model-based remaining useful life prognosis is presented in this thesis. The developed generic Bayesian prognosis approach models and updates the remaining useful life distributions by incorporating timely evolving sensory data using a general Bayesian inference mechanism, and employs an efficient Bayesian updating approach using Laplace approximation (LA) method. The developed Bayesian prognosis approach eliminates the dependency of evolutionary updating process on a selection of distribution types for the parameters for a given system degradation model. Furthermore, with the developed LA method, the Bayesian updating process can be carried out efficiently which makes the proposed approach possible for real-time prognosis applications. The proposed Bayesian prognosis methodology is generally applicable for different degradation models without prior distribution constraints as faced by conjugate or semi-conjugate Bayesian inference models. Electric resistor prognosis application is employed in this study to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed prognosis methodology. / Thesis (M.S.)--Wichita State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

Carbon Nanofibers (CNFs) are high aspect ratio nanofillers that possess excellent mechanical and electrical properties. Hence, CNFs have been incorporated into polymer to fabricate nanocomposites with superior mechanical and electrical properties. Studies have shown that nanocomposites with superior mechanical and electrical properties can be fabricated with relatively low concentration of nanofillers by properly aligning them in polymer resins through AC electric field. In this work, functionalized CNFs have been incorporated into a high-strength epoxy-based resin and aligned into a preferential direction using AC electric field to tailor aligned carboxylic-functionalized CNFs (O-CNFs) and amine-functionalized CNFs (A-CNFs) reinforced polymeric nanocomposites. Both mechanical and electrical properties were quantified in order to examine the effect of addition and alignment of functionalized CNFs on the properties of final nanocomposites. Optical images revealed negligible agglomeration before and after curing of nanocomposites, at the same time, they showed alignment arrays of functionalized CNFs in the nanocomposites that were subjected to AC electric field. Additionally, the configuration of alignment for low concentration of aligned O-CNFs and A-CNFs filled nancomposites was slightly different compare to aligned nanocomposites with high concentration possibly due to elevated localized interaction of adjacent functionalized CNFs. An increase of 11.34% in compressive modulus and 8.36% in compressive strength were achieved when adding 3wt% and 4.5wt% of O-CNFs to the base resin system, respectively. By comparing different concentration of aligned and non-aligned A-CNFs reinforced nanocomposites correspondingly, it was found that the percentage change of compressive modulus for aligned A-CNFs filled samples was two to three times higher than nonaligned samples. Meanwhile, a four order magnitude of reduction in electrical resistivity to 10⁶ Ω.cm was obtained by aligning the functionalized CNFs in the epoxy resin. Furthermore, the electrical percolation threshold of aligned O-CNFs filled nanocomposites was estimated to be 0.75wt%. A possible trend of electrical resistivity of aligned A-CNFs filled nanocomposites was extrapolated up to 4.5wt% and suggested that the percolation threshold of electrical resistivity would occur at 0.75wt%, which is similar to aligned O-CNFs nanocomposites. Moreover, it is also suggested that the electrical resistivity of 4.5wt% aligned A-CNFs filled nanocomposites would reduce to 10⁴ Ohm.cm range. / Thesis (M.S.)--Wichita State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

In this work, several novel techniques to fabricate nano-engineered polymeric composites (or nanocomposites) containing functionalized carbon nanofibers (CNFs) were developed. The methodologies address current manufacturing issues of nano-engineered polymeric composites by effectively incorporating functionalized CNFs into polymer matrix and glass fiber layers. For polymeric nanocomposites, optical images of the nanocomposites revealed uniform distribution and alignment of the CNFs in the direction of the electric field. Due to the similarity in the alignment morphology, it was observed that alignment structure of the functionalized CNFs was independent of the functional groups grafted to the CNFs. Test results indicated that mechanical and electrical properties (measured parallel to the direction of the aligned CNFs) of nanocomposites containing aligned CNF network were improved in comparison to nanocomposites containing randomly distributed CNFs and neat epoxy sample. Discussion regarding the contribution of CNF type towards the mechanical and electrical properties is presented. In the first hierarchical composites study, functionalized CNFs were uniformly incorporated into glass fiber layers without inducing significant CNF agglomerate through a simple filtration process. Both in-plane and out-of-plane electrical conductivity of hierarchical composites were comparable to the conductivity of carbon fiber composites due to the formation of conductive path by CNFs. The second study presented the synthesis of functionalized CNF/glass fiber assembly demonstrating that functionalized CNF entangled network can be used to join glass fiber layers in the absence of polymer matrix. Test results showed that the peeling force required to separate the functionalized CNF/glass fiber assembly was significant due to the functionalized CNF entangled network. Possible explanations for both studies are provided in order to investigate the contribution of functionalized CNFs in each form of material. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

The purpose of this thesis is to explain why a professional writing curriculum would be an invaluable program to institute in American universities across the country. So many people think that because we all learn to read and write in our early years of education that anyone can do it, but the problem remains that not everyone will be good at it. We need good, strong writers in the world of business and the only way to achieve that is to provide students with an outlet for specializing and learning more about the discipline of professional writing. This thesis begins with a short history of writing instruction in American universities that will explain how liberal arts programs have evolved over the past two hundred years and how writing curriculums currently fit into that program. Once you have a better understanding of the history, I will enlighten you with my reasons for needing a specialized program in professional writing. In conclusion, I was able to develop a full-fledged plan for instituting a professional writing curriculum in the English department through a partnership between the departments of English and Communication in the college of Liberal Arts / Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English

This research traces the cultural significance of chairs. It examines the ways in which chairs are used to create and reinforce boundaries between individuals and/or groups of people within various social contexts. Gender, racial, and socio-economic factors were among the major chair-related divisions explored. Building from the cultural interpretation of chairs, the thesis moves towards a close reading of the chairs that are located in several literary texts, including Lady Audley's Secret, Invisible Man, and "The Human Chair", a short story by Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo. / Thesis (M.A.) - Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-51)