Local government in the United States have been collaborating across institutional boundaries, collaborating with other local government to share their resources in the delivery of goods and services in their communities. Although local governments have collaborated for a long time, mixed analysis resulted on which form of government is most effective in the delivery of goods and services based on structure and stability of their financial conditions. This dissertation introduces technology as a key component in the collaborative process in implementing smart initiatives among communities. This dissertation uses surveys conducted from ICMA and Smart City Council, 2016, and a case study comparing two smart cities to test the hypotheses; which structure of government is more effective and whether an increase in financial condition encourages more collaborative efforts. The data reveals that the council-manager form of government is more efficient, however, in contrast, to the case study which indicated that both forms of government were efficient in implementing smart initiatives, however, differences in collaborative efforts were seen based on structure. The results of this analysis provide significant new information for both scholars and practitioners.

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The purpose of this thesis is to make Syrian and Eritrean immigrant womens experiences of inclusion and exclusion visable in Lund. This in relation to their participation in the establishment program ”Etableringsprogrammet”, which is acquired by the Swedish National Employment Service ”Arbetsförmedlingen”. Several aspects will be highlighted by Pierre Bourdieu´s theory of cultural-, symbolic-, economic and social capital, which explains the immigrant women’s position on the labor market. This in relation to Goffman´s theory stigmatization. I have applied a qualitative method in the form of semi-structural interviews, which included six individuals. Furthermore, it has been shown that administrators treat female immigrants from Eritrea and Syria as a resource, in order to promote the political agenda of goal and performance management. It is also confirmed that “Etableringsprogrammet” reproduces a structural problem, which among other aspects, is based on an obedience and trust for the Swedish state.

Remarriage has gained special attention in the past couple of decades from clinicians, researchers, and educators because of the unique issues faced by individuals entering such a relationship. Recognition of these issues increased marriage practitioners' hope that a shift in the social climate had led individuals to prepare for remarriage through various means. This study sought to, one, gain a current perspective on remarriage preparation; two, learn how individuals rate the helpfulness of preparation; and three, note any differences in remarital quality (remarital satisfaction and adjustment) and perceptions of preparedness between individuals who did or did not participate in preparation. Data were analyzed from the Utah Newlywed Study. Results showed that most individuals prepared by talking to others or read ing written information, and most individuals who participated in some form of preparation found it helpful. Despite a high number of participants who reported remarriage preparation as helpful, nonparticipants were more plentiful than participants. The majority of those who did not participate reported preparation as unnecessary. Remari tal quality varied based on the preparation form considered. Based on the resu lts, it was suggested that marriage practitioners should do more to increase individuals' views that preparation is valuable, as those who participated generally found it to be helpful.

This project was concerned with study of Neriage, Zougan, and Raku techniques in search of a creative, individual expression of the Southern Utah landscape. To find ceramic forms which would reflect its history, and show appreciation for its aesthetic characteristics of color, vastness and endless variety of form. In the development of this artist's philosophy, a potter artist has to acquire certain qualities of form and concepts which are of basic importance in the execution of his work. These concepts which are a part of his philosophy are first; truth to material. Since clay is a very versatile material it can tempt the artist to go beyond its normal character. It can be made to look like almost any other material. In spite of these other possibilities, however valid, there are to this artist only certain qualities that are truly characteristic of the earthy, geological character of clay. Second; the search of form-knowledge. An understanding of the internal as well as external structure or form and application of that knowledge to his own work. Third; the development of a personal direction. The concepts involved in the artist's work provide the necessary order in his experiments with form. The primary concerns to this artist were a feeling of monumentality in each piece of work and the development of a personal form by forced searching into a specific direction. A variety of stoneware forms were created utilizing wheel throwing, hand building, plaster press mold methods and a combination of methods. The Neriage ware was made from specially formulated clay bodies. The colored clays were mixed intentionally with red sand, grey sand, and metalic oxides into the special formulated clay body. The choice of Neriage and Raku ware were a satisfactory solution in the attempt to symbolize the quality of Southern Utah landscape. Although indicating influences from traditional Neriage ceramic works of Japan and marble ware from England, the Neriage ceramics of this potter are his own spiritual expressions inspired by the natural rock formations of Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, Arches National Monument and Lake Powell.

Let K be an imaginary quadratic field, with associated quadratic character α. We construct an analytic p-adic L-function interpolating the special values L(1, ad(f) ⊗ α) as f varies in a Hida family; these values are non-critical in the sense of Deligne. Our approach is based on Greenberg--Stevens' idea of Λ-adic modular symbols. By considering cohomology with values in a space of p-adic measures, we construct a Λ-adic evaluation map that interpolates Hida's integral expression as the weight varies. The p-adic L-function is obtained by applying this map to a cohomology class corresponding to the given Hida family.

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Much of the information on the Web is stored in specialized searchable databases and can only be accessed by interacting with a form or a series of forms. As a result, enabling automated agents and Web crawlers to interact with form-based interfaces designed primarily for humans is of great value. This thesis describes a system that can fill out Web forms automatically according to a given user query against a global schema for an application domain and, to the extent possible, extract just the relevant data behind these Web forms. Experimental results on two application domains show that the approach is reasonable for HTML forms.

We study the analytic properties of the Eisenstein Series of $frac {1}{2}$-integral weight associated with the Hecke congruence subgroup $Gamma_0(4)$. Using these properties we obtain asymptotics for sums of certain Dirichlet $L$-series. We also obtain a formula reducing the study of Selberg's Eigenvalue Conjecture to the study of the nonvanishing of the Eisenstein Series $E(z,s)$ for Hecke congruence subgroups $Gamma_0(N)$ at $s=frac {1+i}{2}$.

Determining the homotopy type of one-dimensional Peano continua has been an open question of some interest. We give a complete invariant of the homotopy type of such continua, which consists of a pair of subspaces together with a relative homology group. Along the way, we describe reduced forms for one-dimensional Peano continua.