Suburban encroachment is a growing concern for many National Guard training installations. The Ethan Allen. Firing Range and Camp Johnson, Vermont, are either experiencing or are completely enclosed by urban encroachment. The objective of this study was to analyze the trends of suburban growth within Chittenden County, Vermont, to evaluate growth and explore future training site viability of the Ethan Allen Firing Range and Camp Johnson. This study focused on historical data, recent real estate transactions, population projections, and county plans for growth. Using historical and contemporary data, I developed a predictive model of suburban encroachment on Camp Johnson and the Ethan Allen firing Range facilities by residential and commercial development. This model may assist land managers make decisions and illustrate the viability of these installations as National Guard training sites. This model may also be applied to other installations with similar concerns.

La première partie décrit une approche synthétique de la macrolactine A, molécule naturelle à l'activité antibiotique. La stratégie de synthèse est basée sur deux réactions originales pour construire les systèmes diéniques. Une séquence réactionnelle Johnson- Claisen / isomérisation sur alumine a permis de construire le motif diénique (E)-8,(Z)-11. L'isomérisation d'une cétone propargylique en présence de triphénylphosphine a permis d'obtenir le diène (E)-16,(Z)-19. Les centres asymétriques C-13 et C-23 ont été construits grâce à deux réductions énantiosélectives de Noyori, tandis qu'une allylation asymétrique a permis de former le centre C-7. Le fragment C7-C24 a ainsi été synthétisé en 21 étapes. La deuxième partie de la thèse concerne le développement d'une nouvelle application pour le complexe NaAuCl4.2H2O en catalyse. Dix huit exemples de substitution nucléophile d'alcools propargyliques sont décrits. Ce projet a donné lieu à une collaboration avec une équipe américaine sur la synthèse et le réarrrangement sigmatropique de 6-vinylbicyclo[3.1.0]-hex-2-ènes.

This dissertation investigates the effect of endogenous and exogenous events on firm behavior and performance. These are fundamental questions in economics. The contribution of this study is threefold. First, it provides estimates of the impact of mergers on railroad efficiency, which has important antitrust implications. Second, it provides new estimates of the effect of negative events on the market value of Johnson & Johnson, Bridgestone, and Toyota, which is important to the understanding of how markets punish corporate errors. Third, it develops better ways to estimate these effects. Chapter 2 uses the event study approach to determine how product recalls due to exogenous and endogenous shocks affect the value of the firm. Three recalls from Johnson & Johnson, Bridgestone, and Toyota have been studied in this chapter. The traditional event study method assumes that markets are efficient, a questionable assumption in the short run. Thus, the current stock value of a firm may not reflect its true market value. To address this potential problem, frontier based methods are used, including data envelopment analysis, corrected ordinary least squares, and stochastic frontier regression analysis. Stochastic frontier methods are shown to be more appropriate when market behavior is not fully rational. The evidence shows that endogenous events due to firm errors are more detrimental to firm value than exogenous negative events that are beyond the control of the firm. That is, the market is more forgiving of negative shocks that the company cannot control. Chapter 3 studies the effects of merger activity on the efficiency and productivity growth of U.S. Class I railroads from 1983 to 2008. In this chapter, I assess the effects of merger activity on efficiency, and identify the major factors associated with productivity growth. Unlike previous research, I use data envelopment analysis with an attribute-incorporated Malmquist productivity index. This approach allows firm specific measures of efficiency and productivity to be calculated for firms with differences in technology. The approach allows a decomposition of the attribute-incorporated Malmquist productivity index into technical, efficient and attribute components, the impacts of railroads mergers, and the real source and change of productivity. I find that (1) the technology efficiency performance of the seven survivor firms has grown through time; (2) mergers overall do not lead significant technology and scale efficiency gains, but there are differences across mergers; (3) mergers in the 1980s do not have significant different effect on efficiency change compared to those in the 1990s; and (4) the productivity gains are mostly attributed to the network and operation attributes change and industry technology improvement. Overall, the mergers have no direct impact on the efficiency gains or losses during our study period. The application of these techniques to product recalls and railroad merger models demonstrates how they can provide superior estimates over traditional estimation techniques. It is hoped that these applications will motivate the use of these techniques in other settings. / Graduation date: 2012

Belly Laughs: Body Humor in Contemporary American Literature and Film Scholars are more than happy to laugh at but seem somewhat reluctant to discuss body humor, which is perhaps the most neglected form of comedy in recent criticism. In this dissertation, I examine the ways in which contemporary American writers and filmmakers use body humor in their works, not only in moments of so-called "comic relief" but also as a valid way of exploring many of the same issues that postmodern artists typically interrogate in their more somber moments. The writers discussed in this project-Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Charles Johnson, and Woody Allen-were chosen for the divergent ways in which they present the body's comic predicament in psychological, metaphysical, and historical situations. The introduction explains the diverse traditions that these artists draw upon and considers how various theoretical approaches can affect our understanding of body humor. The first chapter examines Jewish-American novelist Philip Roth's use of absurd and grotesque body imagery as manifestations of his characters' moral dilemmas. The second chapter looks at how slapstick comedy informs a worldview dominated by paranioa and chaos in Thomas Pynchon's novels. Chapter Three looks at Woody Allen's early films, in which he parodies and revises the slapstick cinematic tradition of artists like Charlie Chaplin and The Marx Brothers. Chapter Four considers African-American writer and cartoonist Charles Johnson's depiction of the ways in which the body's desires and pitfalls complicate the quest for spiritual enlightenment.

"Elizabeth Carter's Legacy: Friendship and Ethics" examines the written evidence about the relationships between Elizabeth Carter and her father, Dr. Nocolas Carte; Catherine Talbot; Sir William Pulteney (Lord Bath); and Samuel Johnson to explain how intellectual and personal relationships may become the principal ethical sdource of human happiness. Based on their own set of moral values, such as intellectual and individual liberty and equality, the relationships between Carter and her friends challenged eighteenth-century traditional norms of human relationships. The primary source of this study, Carter's poetry and prose, including her letters, present the poet's experience of intellectual and individual friendship, reflecting Aristotle's ethics, specifically his moral teaching that views friendship as a human good contributing to human happiness--to the chief human good. Carter's poems devoted to her friends, such as Dr. Carter, Talbot, Montagu, Lord Bath, as well as her "A Dialogue" between Body and Mind, demonstrate her ethical legacy, her specific moral principles that elevated human relationships and human life. Carter's discussion of human relationships introduces the moral necessity of ethics in human life.

A numerical simulation is conducted using LS-DYNA to simulate hard projectile impact on a friction stir welded (FSW) plate. As the hard projectile has a wide range of velocity, mass and shape, when referring to AMC 25.963(e) of CS-25, ―Fuel Tank Access Cover‖, the hard projectile can be defined as 9.5 mm cubic-shaped steel engine debris with an initial impact velocity of 213.4 m/s (700 ft/s). This preliminary study was to evaluate whether the fuel tank adjacent skin panel joined by FSW would pass the regulation. First, the geometry and Johnson-Cook material model of the FSW joint were developed based on previous experimental research and validated by comparison with the tensile test on the FSW specimen. Then the impact on an Aluminium Alloy 2024 (AA 2024) plate without FSW was modelled. The minimum thickness of a homogeneous AA 2024 plate which could withstand the impact from engine debris is 3 mm. Finally the impact on 3 mm thick AA 2024 FSW plate was simulated. The welding induced residual stress was implemented in the plate model. The impact centre was changed from the nugget zone to the thermo-mechanically affected zone, heat-affected zone and base material zone of the FSW joint. Penetration only occurred in the model with impact centre on the nugget zone. Additional simulation indicated that increasing the thickness of the FSW plate to 3.6 mm could prevent the penetration.

Between Involvement and Detachment takes grasp with the Johnson administration's (1963-1969) perceptions of and responses to the Western European realignments. Arguing that the Johnson administration set out to maintain the American unilateralist position in the transatlantic relation, not just as a function of America's position as a superpower, but also as a function of certain historically based Euro-skepticism, the thesis suggests that America's Western European policy can be seen on a continuum of involvement and detachment. Based on archival research, the thesis concludes, that these policies, essentially, were detached as America rejected the European reason of state. The Western European realignments were recorded in the Johnson administration with de Gaulle's critique of US hegemony in Western Europe in the early 1960s. The thesis argues that the administration to a large extent had a traditional reading of de Gaulle's policies, and feared that if Gaullist thinking spread among the European allies, it would merit to a return to traditional European power politics. The analysis shows that, by 1964 the administration believed, according to this study, that NATO's principle of integration stood between the current 'balanced' Western Europe and the Europe of the pre-War period. In addition the administration held the opinion that the German problem and the Western European détente tampered with the US unilateralism in its relations with the Soviet Union, and its position as the leader of the Western world. De Gaulle's withdrawal from NATO's integrated command in 1966, and the subsequent British and Belgian calls for a reform of the alliance and a détente with East, contributed to the administration's fear of alliance disintegration and return to European power politics. The thesis argues that the Department of State attempted a 'political bargain', with which the allies would be given political consultation and a détente in return for re-commitment to integration, whereas the Acheson Committee proposed a détente and deterrence formula in NATO to the overcome this perceived alliance disintegration. Thus the US proposed the Harmel formula before Harmel. In general, the developments in Western Europe put the Johnson administration in a state of alarm, and the European allies therefore had a larger impact on America's policies, except in the essentially detached nuclear policy, which the administration maintained. Despite changed circumstances, the Nixon administration's relation with and perceptions of the European allies largely resemble the traditionalist view of the Johnson administration.

For a oriented genus g surface with one boundary component, S_g, the Torelli group is the group of orientation preserving homeomorphisms of S_g that induce the identity on homology. The Magnus representation of the Torelli group represents the action on F/F'' where F=π_1(S_g) and F'' is the second term of the derived series. I show that the kernel of the Magnus representation, Mag(S_g), is highly non-trivial and has a rich structure as a group. Specifically, I define an infinite filtration of Mag(S_g) by subgroups, called the higher order Magnus subgroups, M_k(S_g). I develop methods for generating nontrivial mapping classes in M_k(S_g) for all k and g≥2. I show that for each k the quotient M_k(S_g)/M_{k+1}(S_g) contains a subgroup isomorphic to a lower central series quotient of free groups E(g-1)_k/E(g-1)_{k+1}. Finally I show that for g≥3 the quotient M_k(S_g)/M_{k+1}(S_g) surjects onto an infinite rank torsion free abelian group. To do this, I define a Johnson-type homomorphism on each higher order Magnus subgroup quotient and show it has a highly non-trivial image.

Uppsatsen undersöker hur Olofs inre utveckling i Romanen om Olof från 1934-1937 av Eyvind Johnson kan läsas med hjälp av sagorna. I uppsatsens första del ges en beskrivning av syfte och frågeställning, metod och en översikt av tidigare tolkningar av sagorna i Romanen om Olof. Metoden utgår ifrån Jungs arketyp- och individuationsbegrepp. I uppsatsens andra del görs en tolkning utav sagorna med hjälp av Jungs arketyper, vilka sedan sätts i samband med Olofs individuationsprocess.

Impact of rain drops at relatively high velocities, which is known as rain erosion, causes severe damages on various materials. Every material can withstand the rain erosion up to a specific impact velocity. However, this damage is critical for optical windows which are very important components for Electro-Optical (EO) systems such as thermal camera. Even a small scratch may affect the transmission capability of the optical window adversely and leads to some functional problems in the device due to insufficient transmitted data. Since it has a vital effect on the EO systems, the rain erosion is needed to be investigated on the special optical windows, particularly for determining the velocity that a damage initiates. In this study, the rain erosion is investigated on germanium which is a kind of optical window, by means of numerical simulations in LS-DYNA. Damage Threshold Velocity (DTV) is examined for two different water shapes (which are spherical water drop and water jet) within a velocity range between 100 and 250 m/s. Both single and multiple impact cases are considered for both water shapes up to ten consecutive collisions. By using the results, the &ldquo / DTV versus number of impact curves&rdquo / are obtained in order to understand the amount of damage with respect to both single and multiple impacts. Results are compared with both literature and the experimental data within the scope of DTV and shape of the damage. In the numerical simulations, ALE (Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian) method is used for modelling water. &ldquo / JOHNSON-HOLMQUIST-CERAMICS (JH-2)&rdquo / which is recommended for both ceramics and glass applications is used as the material model for Germanium. JH-2 is a complete material model which contains damage effects, failure criteria, and Equation of State (EOS) all together. Among the material models available in the library of LS-DYNA, &ldquo / MAT-NULL + EOS-GRUNEISEN&rdquo / is used for water.