Historic buildings live a double life between climate-adapted largely-passive structures and draughty, poorly-maintained ones. Preservation professionals argue that preserving these structures is more resource effective than constructing new buildings, and that pre-electricity structures were built to take advantage of climate and geography, using passive technologies to perform efficiently. Modern technologies have also been adopted- electrical lights, air conditioning, fire alarms - as a natural progression of inhabitation. Yet in historic house museums, there is still the promise of historic representation, one unmarred by ‘inauthentic’ additions. If modern and past technological changes have been accepted and integrated, how is the historic house museum not a ‘living building culture’? And if house museums are indeed a living building culture, why not allow a more flexible representation of our historic properties if they are interpreted with integrity and honesty? The EPA estimates that buildings represent 65% of the U.S. electricity use, and predictions estimate 80% of the 2030 building stock exists today. If we truly plan to reduce our energy consumption, we must confront the reality that existing buildings are a significant contributor to our output. If, as curators, it is our hope for historic buildings to represent preservation, then we must admit that in preserving the past for the future, we must begin by preserving our future. This thesis analyses the opportunities and risks for historic house museums to respect their historic interpretation but adapt to changing conditions. Examples of energy efficiency strategies both historic and current, will be examined in historic structures, illustrating that caretakers of historic buildings are making value judgments about the future of their property, in terms of environmental, fiscal and historical sustainability. This thesis includes the analysis of a case study historic house museum in Austin, Texas, the French Legation Museum, which is used as a base model for estimating energy efficiency gains from the adoption of some low-energy technologies. Calculations based on this information indicate which integrations and additions could offer the greatest return on investment for this historic building to operate as or more efficiently than a modern code construction without visible or egregious alteration to the historic fabric. / text

Determining the genetic basis of reproductive isolation is a fundamental goal in evolutionary biology. Intrinsic reproductive isolation often arises due to epistasis between divergent interacting genes. The rapid evolution of hybrid male sterility is known to have several causes, including the exposure of recessive X-linked incompatibilities in males and the rapid evolution of male reproductive traits. Despite these insights, little is known about the genetics of reproductive isolation during the early stages of speciation. This deficiency inspired parallel studies on the molecular evolution of male reproduction in house mice and the genetic basis of hybrid male sterility between two mouse species, Mus domesticus and M. musculus. Evolutionary analysis of 946 genes showed that the intensity of positive selection varies across sperm development and acts primarily on phenotypes that develop late in spermatogenesis (Appendix A). Several reciprocal crosses between wild-derived strains of M. musculus and M. domesticus were used to examine F1 hybrid male sterility (Appendix B). These crosses revealed hybrid male sterility linked to the M. musculus X chromosome and a novel sterility polymorphism within M. musculus. A large introgression experiment was used to further dissect the genetic basis of X-linked incompatibilities between M. musculus and M. domesticus (Appendix C). Introgression of the M. musculus X chromosome into a M. domesticus genetic background produced male sterility and involved a minimum of four factors. No sterility factors were uncovered on the M. domesticus X chromosome. These data demonstrate the complex genetic basis of hybrid sterility in mice and provide numerous X-linked candidate sterility genes. The molecular evolution of five rapidly evolving candidate genes was examined using population and phylogenetic sampling in Mus (Appendix D). Four of these loci showed evidence of positive natural selection. One locus, 4933436I01Rik, showed divergent protein evolution between M. domesticus and M. musculus and was one of a handful of testis-expressed genes within a narrow interval involved in hybrid male sterility. In summary, these data demonstrate that hybrid male sterility has a complex genetic basis between two closely related species of house mice and provide a foundation for the identification of specific mutations that isolate these species.

This study examines the effects of educational submarkets -- schools and districts -- on house prices in the Tucson region. The supposition that homebuyers will pay more to live in a better school district or school attendance area is examined, with the quality of education measured by per-student expenditures and academic achievement. Traditional single-market modeling of the housing market finds that education submarkets have a small but significant effect on housing price. Further modeling, taking explicit account of the spatial nature of the housing market, suggests that in the single-market approach, education submarkets act as proxies for other neighborhood effects and variables omitted from the model. Incorporating the unique location coordinates of the properties and allowing marginal attribute- and location-effects to vary across geographic space in a trend surface approach produces more robust model results and allows the educational submarket effects to be isolated. The results suggest that school districts have a small but significant price effect even after a fluid price surface has been developed, but that intra-district variation remains. These price effects have some relationship with district quality as measured by academic achievement, but the housing market does not reward per-student expenditures. At the intra-district level, middle school quality does not appear to have a significant effect on housing price, at least in the Tucson Unified School District. However, the trend surface approach still proves to be a useful methodology for modeling small, local-scale variations. The use of polynomial expansion and spatial- attribute variable interactions is successful: problems of variable omission are diminished, spatially autocorrelated error terms are reduced and removed, effects of multicollinearity are minimized, and the effects of the educational submarkets may be examined in isolation.

No description available.

Class of 2010 Abstract / OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this project was to analyze the accuracy of season two, episodes 13-­‐24 of the popular medical drama, House, MD. METHODS: This study was a descriptive retrospective analysis of the second half of season two of House, MD. The accuracy of the presenting signs and symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment in each episode was rated on a scale of one to four. A rating of one described a correct and usual representation. A rating of two described a correct but somewhat unusual representation. A rating of three described a correct but extremely unusual representation. A rating of four described an incorrect representation. Each researcher independently rated the episodes, and then a collaborative rating was agreed upon by all researchers. RESULTS: Results of the ANOVA test demonstrated a statistically significant difference between the three dependent variables (p=0.003). The Tukey post-­‐hoc test confirmed a significant difference between the accuracy of treatment when compared with signs and symptoms (p=0.003), and with diagnosis (p=0.022). The average rating for the treatment variable was 1.50 (±0.707), whereas the average ratings for the signs and symptoms and diagnosis variables were 2.80 (±0.919) and 2.50 (±0.707), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The treatments presented in the last twelve episodes of season two of House, MD were more accurate than both the presenting signs and symptoms and the diagnosis.

No description available.

Class of 2009 Abstract / OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this work was to quantify the magnitude of factual inaccuracies in the first twelve episodes of the second season of the medical drama, House, MD. METHODS: This study was a descriptive retrospective evaluation of the first twelve episodes in the second season of the popular television show, House, MD. The degree of accuracy of the signs and symptoms (presentation), diagnosis, and treatment for the one major disease portrayed in each show was rated on a scale of one to four. Each researcher evaluated these ratings independently, and after subsequent collaborative discussion, a combined rating was determined for all the data. RESULTS: Both a three-way ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis data analyses found significance among the data. The Tukey HSD post hoc test revealed a significant difference between the accuracy of signs and symptoms to treatment variables (p = 0.045). Analysis by the Mann-Whitney U test also determined that a significant difference was evident between the accuracy of signs and symptoms when compared with treatment (p = 0.022). CONCLUSIONS: The treatments presented in the twelve episodes evaluated were determined to be more accurate than the show's description of the patient's presenting signs and symptoms.

No description available.

This study will discuss each of Shirley Jackson's six novels. The discussions will concentrate on plot, setting, theme, characterization, and style.

This thesis is an exploration of the way design facilitates people’s understanding of a place. Hermeneutic theorist Hans Georg Gadamer wrote that we belong to history in the “splendid magic of immediately mirroring the present in the past and the past in the present”. Hermeneutics is the study of how we interpret non-verbal communication. Researching the history of the site on multiple scales guided design decisions that will intuitively shape visitor’s comprehension of Pump House Park’s past, present and future relationship with the city.