<div>This study analyzes eleven collections created, saved, and preserved by rural Iowa women, during the middle of the twentieth-century to interpret change in the experience of rural American women, and consider their role in the preservation of historical evidence. Analysis of privately-held and institutional collections of calendars, journals, scrapbooks, notebooks, and club meeting records provides details of farm life, rural communities in transition, and the way collection creators conceptualized and enacted the identity of rural womanhood. In making decisions about which events to write down in a journal or clip-and-save from the local newspaper, these women “performed archivalness” in preserving their experience for family and community members and scholars. </div><div>The women who created the collections considered in this study experienced a rural landscape altered by the continuation and aftermath of agricultural specialization, mechanization, and capital consolidation. These changes altered rural community systems, economies, and institutions reshaping the experience of rural womanhood, as women upheld and adjusted the norms and values that defined the rural way of life. This study takes a three-part approach to considering the eleven collections as case studies. Chapter two analyzes five of the collections as unconventional forms of autobiographical writing, finding that nowhere else were women truer to themselves and their experiences than in their daily writing. In journals or on calendars, these women wrote their life stories by recording the daily details of work, motherhood, and marriage, and occasionally providing subtle commentary on local and national events. Changes in women’s work, education, responsibilities in marriage and motherhood, and involvement in public life and civic affairs happened in gradual and rapid ways during the middle of the twentieth-century. The third chapter in this study analyzes the collections of three women who used their writing to document, prescribe, and promote notions of rural womanhood during this time of change. Chapter four provides a meditation on the relationship between evidence and history by examining the ways in which three women performed archivalness in creating their collections. Consideration of the means by which the collections have been saved, provides insight into the importance of everyday individuals in the preservation of historical evidence. </div><div><br></div>

The main motivation of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is to explore and to discover physics underlying electro-weak asymmetry breaking. Beside this, CMS detector provides an opportunity to do various experiments for detecting new physics signatures beyond the Standard Model (SM). Investigation of these signatures requires the identification and precise energy and moment measurement of electrons, muons, photons, and jets. The objective of this thesis is the calculation of the efficiencies for the measurement of W charge asymmetry in inclusive pp→W (μυ) production. The charge asymmetry is defined to be the difference between W^+ and W^- bosons, normalized to the sum. This asymmetry is sensitive to the u-quark and d-quark ratios in the proton and precise measurement of the W charge asymmetry can provides new insights to the proton structure functions. Therefore, to improve understanding of SM backgrounds in search for new physics, the moun trigger, isolation, reconstruction, identification efficiencies has been studied using partial data collected by the CMS detector during pp collisions at the LHC in 2011. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.31 fb-1. The efficiencies are measured as functions of the decay muon pseudo rapidity and transverse momentum based on "tag and probe" method. The efficiency measurements are compared to their estimated value from the Monte Carlo simulations so as to provide scaling factors to correct to the residual mis-modeling of the CMS muon performance. The comparison with simulations based on MC simulations opens a gate for validation of the detector simulation and optimization of selection strategies.

With the passage of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), Congress made changes to several important federal health programs. First, MACRA reformed the Sustainable Growth Rate, a mechanism created under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Second, MACRA instituted the framework for the QPP which solidifies efforts to shift payments to value-based arrangements and streamline several existing programs under a single policy. This thesis aims to better understand how providers are responding to this new policy in four parts. First, I explain how MACRA passed in Congress with nearly unanimous bipartisan support. Second, I review the QPP and the two tracks offered under the program. Third, I review the literature on value-based payment arrangements, including the response of providers and health systems to these arrangements. Finally, I present original research on how major health systems and provider groups in the state of Iowa are preparing for MACRA implementation. I find several characteristics among health systems and provider groups that are associated with efforts to align payments to value-based measures. Across the tracks laid out under the QPP, there is consistency in the types of investments and operational changes being made. Work on these changes has been occurring for several years, and continued investment and reforms are likely.

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Rivers in the U.S. Midwest are dynamic systems that can be natural laboratories for understanding the different modes of bank erosion, namely fluvial erosion, mass erosion, and mass failure. Fluvial and mass erosion are hydraulically driven and semicontinuous, whereas mass failure is episodic and often catastrophic. Being catastrophic, mass failure and its driving mechanisms have received considerable attention comparatively to mass and fluvial erosion. However, the linkage between hydraulically driven erosion and mass failure has not been examined fully. We hypothesize that fluvial and mass erosion affect the memory and response of the system by creating favorable hydrogeomorphic conditions for mass failure. This dissertation addresses three major shortcomings in the bank erosion literature, including the confusion surrounding critical erosional strength values for mass and fluvial erosion (τc,m and τc,f, respectively). The herein results clearly show that these two parameters are different, with τc,m being three to five times greater than τc,m. Therefore, excluding mass erosion estimates from sediment budgets or stability analyses can lead to significant errors in quantifying or predicting bank retreat and channel geometry. In addition, this study offered a methodological improvement for measuring the τc,m in-situ using Photo-Electric Erosion Pins, which semi-automatically measure mass erosion to generate erosional strength and erodibility values that are currently missing in the literature. This study also addressed the preconceived notion in morphodynamic modeling that bank soil profiles are homogeneous and universal strength/ cohesion parameters adequately represent the bank soil profile. This study shows that bank soil heterogeneity is present and significantly affects bank stability. Therefore, heterogeneity along a bank face must be assessed in at least three locations to provide adequate input data for bank erosion models. Finally, this study suggests that Factors of Safety for mass failure must be complemented with those for fluvial and mass erosion to avoid underestimating mass failure by as much as 30%. Hence, this study provides agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture key data regarding the total contributions from the different modes of bank erosion and channel, itself, to the stream sediment load for strategic targeting of Best Management Practices and in-streams stabilization structures.

This dissertation analyzes the institutionalization of avant-garde artistic practice within an American university, the University of Iowa between the years 1967 and 2000. In order to understand the development of the Intermedia program at Iowa, the institutional context of the "Iowa Idea" as it was developed on campus from the 1930s that emphasized the simultaneous instruction of art history and theory with instruction in the graphic and plastic arts. Following the success of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of Iowa received a major grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1970 to form the Center for New Performing Arts. Following the development from Happenings to Intermedia, and gradually into specific "disciplines" of performance art and video art, this dissertation demonstrates how the institution was inseparable from these avant-garde practices which required significant resources to develop. The importance of technology is traced through the digital revolution in the arts, and the role of "intermedia" is shown to be part of a process of changing consciousness as opposed to commonly accepted definitions of "multimedia" or Gesamtkunstwerk.

Physical based modeling was conducted to improve channel restoration efforts through direct comparison of submerged structures of various design and orientations. In-stream structure technologies studied are used to provide bank stabilization, flow control, scour and sediment control, as well as ecological enhancement through turbulent dispersion and vertical mass transport. Quantitative analysis evaluates flow effects induced by common channel restoration structures in their ability to provide mixing in our streams and rivers without significant impacts on flooding through excessive energy loss and backwater effect. Physical, fixed-bed flume experiments were performed under high-Reynolds number subcritical steady-state flow conditions. Theoretical energy loss relationships were developed, compared, and evaluated experimentally for stream barbs, spurs, submerged vanes, blocks and boulders. Extensive surface dye-trace experiments were performed to determine centerline mixing and vertical mass transport produced by stream barbs, vanes and boulders. The research presented in this thesis illustrates that the use of dispersion relationships to assess length of vertical mass transport based on the change in energy slope, and estimated shear velocity, of the channel does not properly correct for boundary layer formation and advection or angular motion produced by channel restoration structures. Submerged vanes were found to provide efficient vertical mixing with minimal energy loss or flood risk, as compared to stream barbs, spurs, blocks, and boulders. The deterioration of water quality and the need to provide bank stabilization with limited flood risk require updated NRCS and ASCE design standards and selection tools for vertical mass transport and energy loss relationships of channel restoration structures. The research conducted in these two studies have provided data for a select number of such structures.

I study art, and that is because I like to think about how it helps people learn. In particular I like to create insects as abstractions of nature to invite a different perspective on how the world works. I strive to create synergy through interdisciplinary projects so that people can learn through science, technology and art simultaneously. The point of intersection between these fields of study is where my work can be found. My artwork includes scientific photography of insect collections, 3-D scanning, rapid prototyping, molds and ceramic sculptures. All of these have specific processes and through them I have created abstractions of nature to invite a different perspective.

High frequency water quality monitoring presents unique and unlimited opportunities of exploring spatio-temporal variation in water quality. Knowledge gained from analyzing high frequency water quality data can provide more clarity regarding transportation and processing of water constituents over time and space and scale. This study analyzes high frequency discharge, nitrate load and concentration data for three watersheds of different sizes - Cedar River Watershed, North Raccoon and Middle Raccoon. Each of these sites were monitored for 2-3 calendar years. Sudden spikes in discharge, nitrate concentration and load data, also defined as "events" were analyzed in great detail to understand the patterns in event occurrence and event intensity. Smaller watersheds seemed to have sharper and "flashier" events compared to bigger watersheds. Nitrate concentration events were flatter in shape compared to discharge and nitrogen load events. The relationship between nitrogen concentration and discharge was found to be varying over time, unlike the relationship between nitrate load and discharge, which were almost perfectly correlated for most site-year combinations. Based on more than 40,000 simulations, it was determined that high frequency water quality sampling is not only efficient in capturing minute spatio-temporal variations but can also capture nitrate exceedances to a greater degree. High frequency sampling was also associated with higher yield ratio in nitrate load estimates, not only during high flow periods, but also during the non-high-flow period.