This thesis is the first study to examine the interaction between gods and giants in Old Norse mythology from the perspective of Iron Age halls. Its central aim is to contextualise Old Norse mythological narratives that describe the interactions between gods and giants in a hall environment, and to show how the mythological depictions can be compared to the norms and rules found in Iron Age hall culture, especially in connection with its warrior ideology. The relationships observed also apply to the Iron Age’s aristocratic sovereigns and their dynamic dealings – both peaceful and martial – found in the connection and rivalry between different halls and hall owners. The giants are related to the concept of “the Other”, and as hall-owners can thus be contextualised with real social relations in Iron Age society. The investigation centers arounds key topics from the perspective of a hall setting, departing from mythic traditions regarding Óðinn and Þórr as guests in the halls of giants. These topics include grið within the hall; the good and generous host; the dangerous and hostile guest; the hall as an arena for knowledge and mead; and finally the destruction of halls as an attack on the hall owner’s fame and honour. Similarities and differences between myths about Óðinn’s and Þórr’s interaction with hall-owning giants are examined in depth, and it is argued that Óðinn embodies wisdom and extracts knowledge or valuables from the giants by cunning tricks or manipulation, having (usually) travelled there alone and in disguise. Þórr, on the other hand, is argued to embody physical strength, honour, glory and courage, and his dealings with the giants revolve around these issues. He seldom seems to travel alone or under cover, and when his courage or honour is threatened, his response is to kill his host (and his retinue) and to destroy the giant’s hall. It is argued that the Old Norse conception of the world is to be understood as neither dualistic or monistic. Instead, it is proposed that the myths can be understood from a perspective of conflicts that are temporal and not permanent in nature.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role that a small sample of prep-schools play in meeting the academic and behavioral needs of students who are at risk for poor academic and social outcomes as they transition from middle school to high school. The study examined the perspectives of teachers, students and families about their experiences with prep schools. A qualitative case research design was used in this research to gain a deeper understanding about the role of prep schools in the Southeastern region of Turkey. Teachers, students, mentors and parents were selected purposefully for the study as participants. Interviews, observations, and document analysis were used as a source of data. Based on the revealed qualitative data, the role of Reading Halls was represented under five themes and three sections. It is found that there are four main concerns about students including security, economic, academic, and behavioral concerns. These prep school type programs are non-profit organizations and aim to provide a safe environment for the students and teacher-family collaboration and play an important role. The program is supported with academic courses and social activities to address the concerns about the students.

This thesis investigates how the interior of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center of Dallas accommodates the three groups which use the space: the patron, the musicians, and the administration. Following the Draft Brief of 1981 prepared by the Dallas Symphony Association's Concert Hall Building Committee, each area is discussed as to what was actually built and what concerns were met. The primary data were the symphony center and interviews with I.M. Pei, architect; Russell Johnson, acoustician of the concert hall; Charles Young, associate of Pei, Cobb, Freed & Associates, interior architect of the concert hall; Carolyn Miller, Trisha Wilson & Associates, designer of the Green Room, Richard Trimble, designer of the musicians' areas, and Joe Pereira, designer of the Administrative area.

Master of Science / Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology / S A. Leslie-Toogood / With the creation of Facebook in 2004, colleges and universities across the United States have been playing catch-up with students. This new technology carries much weight as a new medium for students to build social connections and grow as members of their institutions. However, this new technology also brings negative implications such as lowered GPAs with greater use. Research was conducted at four major institutions across the country exploring how residence hall students use online communities and the impact it has on their physical world experience on campus. Most students use Facebook as a tool for staying connected to friends from high school, but there is a small population of students who are using it as a tool to make social connections they could not find in person. This study explores the impacts Facebook has had on a college campus. University administrators are urged to use this data to take a proactive approach to using these technologies to enhance the overall campus experience.

This diploma thesis deals with the issue of energy requirements for operation of indoor ski slopes. The first part is dedicated to research of snow making, cooling and construction methods of ski halls along with the examples of specific projects. In the second part, the aim was to design a ski hall with specific geometry and insulation and then define energy losses of such building. Subsequently, all related energy flows were calculated, which led to the determination of the required cooling capacity. Based on this, the cooling cycle was calculated and the overall electricity demand for the operation of the ski hall during the year was set. In the third part, three options for covering electricity needs are evaluated and at the same time they are compared in terms of financial costs during the year.

The creation of learning outcomes inside and outside of the classroom on college campuses has been a growing trend based on a variety of publications which encouraged the fostering of diverse types learning and the measurement of student learning outside of the classroom (ACPA, 1994; Keeling, 2004). The creation of the learning outcomes is a positive step, however, assessment of the learning outcomes must be conducted to determine what students are learning and what areas are to be improved otherwise the learning outcomes are meaningless. This study was conducted at a large public research university where the Department of Housing and Residential Education had recently identified its Residential Learning Outcomes. Consequentially an assessment of the over attainment of the Residential Learning Outcomes, the impact the number of years a student resided on campus had on the attainment of the Residential Learning Outcomes and the impact the number of years a student was enrolled at the institution had on the attainment of the Residential Learning Outcomes may be useful to the university and the wider body of knowledge about residential education. Using targeted questions from the CSEQ the study found that there were significant levels of achievement for residential students for six of the seven Residential Learning Outcomes especially when isolating the Quality of Effort scales. When evaluating the number of years a student has been enrolled, however, no relationship was found.

Demand for potable water and energy is increasing with growing populations and economies and many fear that scarcity of such resources will become a significant worldwide problem in the future. As such, promoting water and energy conservation in residential building environments has become an important focal area for research. Providing feedback of water or energy consumption to residential building occupants has been demonstrated to be effective in promoting water and energy conservation separately. However, although water and energy are inexorably connected, we lack research that investigates the bridge between water and energy in the representation of feedback to promote water conservation. In this paper, we describe a study that was designed to investigate the impact of two different representations of water consumption feedback on water conservation. Water consumption was represented to consumers in one of two different ways: 1) gallons and 2) gallons along with the estimated embodied energy of water consumption. The study was conducted in 18 residential halls at Virginia Tech and lasted approximately six weeks. The outcome of the study suggests that representing water consumption in terms of gallons together with the embodied energy associated with water consumption can lead to a statistically significant reduction in water conservation while representing water consumption only in terms of gallons may not. This has significant implications for future water feedback designed to promote water conservation and the study indicates that non-monetary approach can be taken. / Master of Science

This thesis seeks to present an interpretation of late Iron Age Scandinavian hall buildings as charismatic. Hall buildings need to be both “killed” and “buried” through being burned down and covered by clay coats, instead of just cleaned up and abandoned. This is due to the idea that charismatic objects need to be “killed” and “buried” either through being interred in a burial or through being deposited in for example wetlands. As a result of the Christianization, hall buildings ceased to be regarded as charismatic since only objects and buildings related to God is regarded as Charismatic in the Christian fate. Thus ceases the “killing” and “burying” of hall buildings as well. As case studies four hall building, two “king’s halls” and two “garrison halls”, have been selected from the province of Uppland in the Mälaren region of Sweden: Gamla Uppsala, Fornsigtuna and the Garrison on Birka.

College students are at higher risk to develop problematic internet use (PIU) than the average person and that risk may negatively impact their college success. Since students with PIU are not violating policies, they are not being identified as having a problem through the student conduct process like other students with problems such as alcohol abuse. While research on PIU is still in its infancy, the research that has been conducted indicates that PIU is a growing problem with no agreed upon definition, diagnosis or treatment. The main purpose of this study was to determine the extent that PIU and PVP exists in residence halls on college campuses. The theoretical framework was the addiction syndrome theory (AST) and is the only current model that can be used to explain all addictions, including behavioral addictions which is the category of addiction the PIU falls under. The main measurement tool was the Young internet addiction test (IAT) which measures levels of online activity. The results of this study were inconclusive. There was a low correlation between online activity and academic performance as measured by academic probation. The weak relationship indicates that PIU may be an issue for college students and therefore may need to be considered when administrators are making policies. Whether the AST proves to be a valid conceptual framework for studying PIU and other addictions remains to be seen. The results here were inconclusive and therefore further research involving AST is needed before drawing any real conclusions.

With the world's population growing at a rate faster than the rate at which natural resources are being replenished, the challenge for governments and the world's citizens is how to conserve resources in order to provide a sustainable level of natural resources for the future. Conserving natural resources includes educating the citizens of the world on the connection between natural resource depletion and their levels of consumption of resources, such as energy and water. To help alleviate the increasing burden the world's growing population is placing on natural resources, sustainability should be a part of college students' education in their field of study and in preparing them to become good citizens. This education should take place in the classroom and other activities, including athletics, community organizations, and in their residence life. Teaching students living in on-campus residence halls conservation activities provides information that students can use in their private lives when setting up their own households. On-campus residence halls also provide an opportunity to evaluate any gender differences related to conservation activities since the demographics of the residence halls vary from all-female, to co-ed, to all-male students. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) was the location for a study on promoting environmentally-relevant behavior (ERB) among students residing in on-campus residence halls. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between the use of educational strategies and natural resource consumption by promoting ERB among students living in the residence halls during the spring and fall semesters of the 2009 calendar year. Using the literature on promoting ERB, five different strategies were designed for promoting water and electricity conservation. Each strategy involved different stimuli to promote student participation in ERB. The information provided the students included reasons why ERB was important and specific actions to take to conserve resources. In three of the strategies, students were provided the results of their conservation efforts monthly during the study period. The Virginia Tech Office of Residence Life provided detailed information for the 49 on-campus residence halls, including buildings' characteristics such as heating and cooling methods, age, construction, renovation history, square footage, if the buildings contained offices or classrooms, and student population figures. Variability among the buildings was eliminated by comparing these differences, and then a random numbers table was used to assign each of the buildings to one of the five different groups. The strategy for each group was applied to four residence halls -- two dormitories and two Greek Houses, for a total of twenty buildings. In each strategy more stimuli were applied in an effort to produce higher consumption reductions. The Virginia Tech Office of Facilities provided four-years historical electricity and seven-years historical water usage, and provided monthly usage for each building during the study period. Electricity consumption reduction was promoted in all twenty halls but water consumption reduction was promoted only in the dormitories, as the University was unable to track water consumption for any one individual Greek House. The historical data showed that water usage per student was higher in most of the female-occupied dormitories, but no statistical difference was seen with regards to historical electricity usage and gender. Percent change in per student usage — kilowatt hours for electricity and gallons for water — was the calculation used to determine change in ERB. The results of this research showed a general relationship between educational strategies and natural resource consumption reduction over both study periods. However, except for the Greek-House Spring semester results, no statistical significant difference was found between any of the different study groups. Electricity reductions were achieved in seventeen of twenty residence halls during the first semester and in all but one residence hall during the second semester. Water reductions were achieved in five of ten dormitories during the first semester and in six of nine dormitories in the second semester. However, the use of more strategies did not lead to a higher percentage of reductions. During the first semester, a statistically significant difference was found in water usage and gender and the difference did not support a female predisposition for ERB. Decreases were achieved in excess of 10% in the male-occupied dormitories, but only a minimal reduction or increases were achieved in any of the dormitories that included female residents. After the first month of the second semester, similar results were seen relative to gender, so additional posters and prompts were placed in the female-occupied dormitories. As a result, water reductions were achieved in six dormitories with only small increases in the other three, and the semester final results did not show a statistical significant difference between genders. The lack of statistical difference between the study groups could be a result of contamination, the active environmental organizations on campus, or an observational effect. The study was contaminated within the first two weeks of the study period when all residence halls across campus learned of the research and requested their inclusion in the study. Since, the residence halls in the control groups were advised of their inclusion in the study, the students may have demonstrated ERB because of the knowledge they were being observed. A survey sent to the students living in the study residence halls revealed that 94.6% of the students had knowledge of the study, and that 77% participated in ERB. Students showed a propensity for ERB when they were informed on their consumptive behaviors' effects on natural resource depletion, and by being provided with actions they could take to change their behaviors. This research did not show that adding strategies of feedback and group leaders to information increased the percentage of consumption reductions in college students residing on Virginia Tech's campus. / Master of Science