Ettore "Ted" De Grazia (1909-1982) spent his artistic life painting the Native American stories and peoples of the Arizona Southwest. His art was touted in the popular press and is still admired by tourists and newcomers to Arizona, but he was not taken seriously by academicians and art critics who refused to grant him artistic enfranchisement. Many labeled his work "kitsch," a term made popular by Clement Greenberg in his 1939 essay, " Avant-Garde and Kitsch." De Grazia's popular whimsical paintings of Native American children were considered too cute to have artistic merit.De Grazia, in spite of criticism to the contrary, did create serious paintings worthy of critical evaluation. The paintings are infused with complex layered meanings relating to Southwest hybridity ---a blending of beliefs and cultural practices as a result of Spanish and later, American colonization. De Grazia was part of the hybrid culture; born of Italian immigrants in the Territory of Arizona, he grew up speaking Italian, Spanish and English. Not only was he exposed to different languages, but also to corresponding cultural and religious practices. This thesis examines the social and economic changes in the United States during De Grazia's lifetime, along with the hybridity of the Southwest in relation to his artistic production. Changes in the world of art along with economic prosperity and the growing interest in tourism in the Southwest after World War II intersected with the art of Ted De Grazia. His relationship with Arizona Highways magazine, published by the Arizona Highway Department to entice travelers to visit Arizona, contributed to his success. De Grazia's contribution in the arena of Southwest hybridity can be seen in paintings that are in the formal collection of his work in his Gallery of the Sun in Tucson, Arizona. The blending of religions, or syncretism, that Arizona tribes practice demonstrates a deep mysticism, profoundly influenced by the Spanish, but uniquely practiced in tribal ceremony and tradition. De Grazia's work makes a unique artistic contribution by illustrating the religious syncretism that was, and remains, an integral part of the Native American tribes in the Southwest.

Operating speed is one of the best performance measures that can tell transportation agencies how well or how poorly the transportation system is functioning. Fluctuating operating speeds often mean there is a design flaw or something about the physical road design that violates drivers' expectations. A primary example of this is a horizontal curve on a highway that had a reduced recommended advisory speed. Traditionally, researchers and transportation agencies measure operating speeds along the approach tangent to a horizontal curve and at the midpoint of the curve. This thesis looks at the significance of alternate measuring locations within the curve. It also analyzes the difference between the 85th percentile maximum speed reduction and the more traditional measure of the reduction in 85th percentile speeds, which is used as an indicator of safety. / Graduation date: 2012

Recurrent congestion in urban traffic networks, especially on arterials, is a growing problem. Non-recurrent congestion, mainly due to incidents, only aggravates the problem. Any solution requires monitoring of the network, for which many developing countries, such as Turkey, do not have the traditional surveillance systems on arterials mainly due to high costs. An alternative solution is the utilization of Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, which is increasingly used in traffic monitoring. It is easy and cheap to obtain the GPS track information,even in real-time, from a probe-vehicle or a fleet of vehicles / and spatial variation of speed and travel time of the vehicle(s) in a network can be determined. GPS-based data, especially with only one probe-vehicle, would not provide information on the concurrent states of upstream and downstream traffic, needed to define the state of traffic in a network. To overcome this obstacle, a methodology based on statistical analysis of archival traffic conditions obtained through different sources is proposed to analyze traffic fluctuations and identify daily traffic pattern. As a result, bottleneck and resulting queues can be detected on a corridor. Thus, it enables detection of recurrent congestion and queues that may result from incidents. The proposed methodology is tested on a corridor the roadway between METU and Kizilay of in&ouml / n&uuml / Boulevard. The results show that the methodology can effectively identify bottleneck locations on the corridor and also an incident observed during the data collection is detected correctly by the proposed algorithm.

Work zones are visually and physically complex environments, requiring that drivers maintain control of their vehicle and comprehend atypical and often discontinuous traffic control devices to safely navigate appropriate paths. Freeway diverges represent particularly difficult work zones areas. This thesis investigates current methods of delineating diverges in freeway work zones to determine important characteristics of these methods for future research. A virtual environment was constructed with two ramp geometries: a freeway continuing straight and one curving left. Still images of work zones on these geometries were created using drums spaced 10 ft apart, drums spaced 40 ft apart, drums spaced 40 ± 2 ft apart, and portable concrete barriers. These alternatives were used to construct temporary ramps that were either open or closed. 39 participants were asked to identify whether the ramp was open or closed and their responses were recorded to evaluate the performance of each alternative. Results indicate the importance of the Gestalt principles of closure, proximity, and continuity in perception of temporary exit ramps in work zones. These results will be used to guide future research into methods of delineating diverges in freeway work zones.

Includes vita. / Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 139 pages. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of South Florida, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Non-recurring congestion caused by incidents is a major source of traffic delay in freeway systems. With the objective of reducing these traffic delays, traffic operation managers are focusing on detecting incident conditions and dispatching emergency management teams to the scene quickly. During the past few decades, a few number of conventional algorithms and artificial neural network models were proposed to automate the process of detecting incident conditions on freeways. These algorithms and models, known as automatic incident detection methods (AIDM), have experienced a varying degree of detection capability. Of these AIDMs, artificial neural network-based approaches have illustrated better detection performance than the conventional approaches such as filtering techniques, decision tree method, and catastrophe theory. So far, a few neural network model structures have been tested to detect freeway incidents. / ABSTRACT: Since the freeway incidents directly affect the freeway traffic flow, majority of these models have used only traffic flow variables as model inputs. However, changes in traffic flow may also be stimulated by the other features (e.g., freeway geometry) to a greater extent. Many AIDMs have also used a conventional detection rate as a performance measure to assess the detection capability. Yet the principle function of incident detection model, which is to identify whether an incident condition exists for a given traffic pattern, is not measured in its entirety by this conventional measure. In this study, new input feature sets, including freeway geometry information, were proposed for freeway incident detection. Sixteen different artificial neural network (ANN) models based on feed forward and recurrent architectures with a variety of input feature sets were developed. ANN models with single and double hidden layers were investigated for incident detection performance. / ABSTRACT: A modified form of a conventional detection rate was introduced to capture full capability of AIDMs in detecting incident patterns in the freeway traffic flow. Results of this study suggest that double hidden layer networks are better than single hidden layer networks. The study has demonstrated the potential of ANNs to improve the reliability using double layer networks when freeway geometric information is included in the model. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 300-324).

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 95 p. : ill., maps (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-95).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-139). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-139). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-197). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.