Title from PDF of submission page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 49 pages. / Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of South Florida, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Civilization seems barely able to keep up with the new information technology. Therefore, I propose a place where the technologies of the future may be interacted with like the comfortable knowledge of the past. I propose a place where technology may be interacted on as in the realm of the past with the doors of the future ahead. The Museum of Science and Industry, where the grasp of our technological history is displayed, would be an ideal site for the creation of a Prototypical Computer Museum. With its close proximity to the University of South Florida, resources and participants would be abundant. The Prototypical Computer Museum will be a place where the education and explanation of new technology is continued. / This would also provide an arena for the development and interaction of state-of-the-art computer technologies and will be considered the cultural centerpiece for the new millenium. Activities at this Multi-Media Center range from basic explanations of initial computer inventions to on-site research and development of future technologies. Permanent and traveling exhibitions would attract and expose people of all ages to the new waves of technological devices and inventions that engulf our daily activities. This simple ideal is blanketed with a variety of complicated sociological issues that will be addressed throughout the thesis research and its fruition. The fundamental paradox is the borderlessness of the technology, which is continually at odds with the structures housing and exhibiting such technologies. Another major concern is the development of virtual reality and its dwindling necessity for the development of the architecture that contains it. / This is a technology that is accessible anywhere but located nowhere. As Otto Riewoldt states, "By reacting to the digital dematerialization of the world, architecture becomes increasingly individualized."1 In the words of American architectural critic Herbert Muschamp, "subjectivity takes command. Like surrealists these architects seem determined to blur the border between waking reality and the dream state." / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 89 pages. / Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: The 1920s land boom in Florida produced a wide variety of characters. Among the most important, but lesser known, of those was David Paul Davis. Davis was born in November 1885 in Green Cove Springs, Florida. His family moved to Tampa in 1895, where he attended school and held a number of different jobs. He left Tampa in 1908 and reappeared in Jacksonville in 1915. That same year, in Jacksonville, he married Marjorie H. Merritt. The young couple moved to Miami in 1920, where Davis began to sell real estate. He became quite adept, developing a number of subdivisions in the Buena Vista section of the city. He made a considerable fortune in Miami, but lost his wife, who died while giving birth to their second child. Davis moved back to Tampa in 1924 and began work on the largest development on Florida's west coast. That development, Davis Islands, made him wildly rich and nationally famous. / ABSTRACT: He followed up Davis Islands with Davis Shores, a subdivision in St. Augustine that Davis envisioned as being twice the size of Davis Islands. The Florida land boom collapsed before Davis could complete Davis Shores. In an attempt to keep the St. Augustine project afloat, Davis sold his Tampa development in August 1926. The effort was in vain and Davis slipped further into debt. He died under mysterious circumstances while en route to Europe aboard a luxury liner on October 12, 1926. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Florida, 2004. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 7, 2005). Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-85).

This dissertation addresses the impact of urbanization and land use change on the availability and accessibility of two urban amenities that are often inequitably distributed: green space and water features. Diverse methodologies were utilized in order to gain a better understanding of the role of these amenities in improving urban quality of life and integrated water management. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this research provides a unique perspective within both a developed and developing world context by evaluating aspects of urbanization to emphasize more sustainable and integrated approaches to development. A preliminary analysis highlights potential drivers of green space revitalization in Santa Cruz, Bolivia by identifying perceived benefits of brownfields redevelopment projects between developed and developing countries. These include environmental benefits (creation of green space, reduced health risks), economic benefits (job creation, retention of residents and businesses), and social benefits (community enhancement, improved city services). Building on this analysis, an in-depth anthropological study then examines the preferences, perceptions, and barriers to accessing green spaces in Santa Cruz. Utilizing qualitative and quantifiable research methods, it was determined that although green spaces can help ensure greater equality in urban areas by providing access to public spaces, significant gender discrepancies were noted in Santa Cruz. Disparities in the distribution and accessibility of green space and water features were further assessed in Tampa, Florida. Using a Geographic Information System (GIS) and census data, access to these urban amenities was examined. The inner-city community of East Tampa was found to have greater inequalities, relative to other areas in Tampa, in terms of the quality, diversity, and size of green spaces within their community. The revitalization of urban water infrastructures, such as stormwater ponds, was evaluated as a way to address these environmental justice issues. Lastly, impacts of urbanization, land use change, and population growth on water resources were analyzed using a regional water balance model for the city of Santa Cruz. Development scenarios were examined based on historical and future spatial and temporal changes. Between 1970 and 2010, a decreasing trend was observed for the aridity index (potential evapotranspiration over precipitation) while future climate projections (2011-2050) indicate a trend reversal, with the IPCC's emission scenario A1B having the strongest increasing trend. The increasing trend in the aridity index suggests a long-term shift in the regional hydroclimatology towards less humid conditions. Each chapter of this research builds on the idea of green space as an indicator of urban quality of life (particularly for urban poor who rely more heavily on public spaces for leisure and recreation activities) as well as an important facilitator of urban hydrology due to their predominately permeable surfaces (including water features). Yet rapid change occurring in cities around the world has resulted in the under-valuation of both green space and water resources and thus these amenities have been degraded or destroyed through the urbanization process.

Gene Transfer Agents (GTAs) are phage-like pthesiss that are produced by many alpha proteobacteria in late stationary growth phase and are capable of transferring chromosomal genes (termed "constitutive transduction"). Examination of alpha proteobacterial genomic sequences indicated widespread occurrence of GTA-like elements. The goal of this study was to investigate gene transfer potential of GTAs of marine alpha proteobacteria in culture as well as in natural marine environments. Another goal was to determine the potential of bacterial symbionts from zooxanthellae and coral to genetically transfer beneficial properties between symbionts. Ruegeria mobilis (ID 45A6) was isolated from cultures of the coral endosymbiotic dinoflagellate, Symbiodinium spp. A goal of the research was to determine if GTAs from this isolate have the capability of transferring genes to environmental recipients and have an impact on settlement of coral larvae. Little is known about coral settlement cues, yet there may be contributions from the extensive symbiotic relationship of coral reef-associated bacteria. Several gene transfer experiments in different environments were performed using transformed isolates of Ruegeria mobilis containing a transposon marker gene. Experiments were also performed using GTAs from the Ruegeria mobilis isolate to observe any impact GTAs have on coral larval settlement, using larvae from the brooding coral, Porites astreoides, and from the reef building coral, Montastraea faveolata. Gene transfer frequencies from statistically significant gene transfer experiments resulted in an average of 2.92 × 10-1 (transfer recipients to total viable population). Coral settlement experiments resulted in a statistically significant increase in larval settlement with the addition of GTAs for 80% of the executed experiments. The entire study has demonstrated that GTA-mediated gene exchange is much higher than any other mode of horizontal gene transfer and it has been established that these genes can be exchanged between bacterial taxa. GTAs can also have an impact on coral larval settlement mechanisms that are not yet completely understood. GTA-mediated beneficial gene exchange may be an important driver in adaptation to an evolving planet.

A hierarchical and standardized environmental disturbance index, specifically designed for karst landscapes, was created by van Beynen and Townsend (2005). To assess the applicability of the index and provide recommendations for its refinement, the index was applied in four west-central Florida counties and interviews were conducted with local and state officials, community planners, and land resource managers. The karst disturbance index consists of 30 indicators contained within five broad categories: geomorphology, hydrology, atmosphere, biota, and culture. Data was readily available for most environmental indicators used to construct the index. Overall, levels of disturbance vary between the counties due to the level of urbanization, with the highly populated Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties having higher degrees of disturbance than less developed Pasco and Hernando Counties. While this result may seem obvious, the measure of disturbance using many indicators provides benchmarks of levels of disturbance that can be reassessed with time and highlights those aspects of the environment most in need of attention. Several minor issues arose during the testing: the need for broader indicator descriptions that encompass a variety of scenarios, a new water quality indicator, obsolete sinkhole data, and a lack of data for biota indicators. The lack of data for certain indicators suggests where future research efforts can be directed.

Street trees are an important component of the urban forest that can provide direct and indirect benefits to social and ecological sustainability in cities. Temporal and spatial interactions between human and non-human management agents determine the distribution and health of street tree populations in urban areas. This dissertation seeks to enhance our understanding of the spatial patterns and processes affecting street trees by investigating the agents and social-ecological determinants of changes to street tree distributions in urban residential neighborhoods. The research was guided by three primary questions: (1) Are recent changes to the spatial distribution of street trees influenced by socio-demographic household and neighborhood characteristics? (2) Which management agents are the strongest predictors of recent changes to street tree distributions and does the contribution of these agents vary in relationship to social-ecological patterns within a city? (3) To what extent are household street tree management decisions related to the built and bioecological material characteristics of the public right-of-way? These questions were investigated in a case study that examined street tree management and public right-of-way (PROW) canopy change associated with single-family residential areas in and near the City of Tampa, Florida. The methodological approach employed a multi-method design using a conceptual framework developed to capture the complexity of management within human ecosystems. Urban remote sensing and spatial analytical techniques were used to examine the geographic association between patterns of street tree change and socio-demographic characteristics. Household survey techniques were utilized to examine the determinants of street tree management; specifically planting, removal, and trimming. Interviews with key informants familiar with urban forest management provided additional insights to complement the location specific knowledge of household survey respondents. Street tree change was examined for the period of 2003 to 2006, and information about household management actions also included recent years (i.e., 2009-2011). A citywide pattern of street tree increases was disproportionately distributed with respect to socioeconomic status; with greater increases in affluent neighborhoods. Patterns of change within local portions of the study area revealed significant and spatially variable relationships with socioeconomic status, as well as race/ethnicity variables and indicators of lifestyle differences. The findings suggest that the citywide pattern of change associated with socioeconomic status may perpetuate an inequitable outcome in the distribution of street trees at the expense of less affluent neighborhoods. The local patterns of change indicate that the processes driving street tree distributions may also reflect differences in attitudes toward trees. The case study did not find sufficient evidence to link the actions of individual agents with street tree change. Street tree increases were more likely in areas where tree trimming had been reported and where property market values were greater, but less likely in PROW segments with overhead power lines. Households, public agencies and builders, but not neighborhoods, were the primary human street tree management agents. Past and ongoing land development and redevelopment decisions, including the configuration of PROW infrastructures, may be one of the most important factors affecting patterns of street tree change. Landscape decisions and practices influenced by household and neighborhood group dynamics also appear to be important factors affecting street tree change. Damages caused by storm event and differences in tree species lifecycle characteristics represent important non-human agents of street tree change. The findings indicated that public agencies are not the only managers of street trees and household tree management does not stop at the boundary of private property. There was no evidence of a relationship between household management actions and the material conditions of the PROW. However, there was a relationship between the presence of either power lines or sidewalks and household survey responses about who should bear responsibility for street tree management and the liability. Household respondents expressed an increased sense of personal responsibility for street tree management when a sidewalk was in front of their home. This dissertation addressed an important gap in understanding about the factors driving street tree change. Planting, removal, and trimming of street trees in Tampa is a shared responsibility with complex spatial patterns and multi-scalar drivers. An important conclusion is that the sustainability of street tree populations within the urban forest will require urban planners and managers to better understand how these management agents cooperate if they are to promote healthy, safe and beneficial street tree populations as a part of the urban forest.

The purposes of this research were to determine the efficacy of using the Ogawa® passive sampling device (PSD) to measure ammonia and to identify significant ammonia sources adjacent to Hillsborough and Tampa Bay. Ninety-four samplers were deployed over a 180-km2 area for two weeks in October 2001. Within the area sampled were located suburbs, an urban center, major highways, port activities, fertilizer manufacturing, wastewater treatment, coal-combustion power plants, warehousing and dairy farming. The sampled locations were arranged in a triangular grid pattern spaced 1.5 km apart. The pattern was designed to locate circular hot spots with a minimum radius of 0.75 km. The minimum, maximum, mean, and median ammonia concentrations were 0.06, 15, 2.0, and 1.5 mg/m3, respectively, and the estimated precision was 16%. Hot spots identified from kriged concentration data coincided with inventoried ammonia sources. The relative bias and precision of the PSD based on collocation with an annular denuder system were (plus or minus) 30 % and 20 %.

Several studies have found separation of biogeographic provinces on the West Florida Shelf (WFS), but the location of this separation differs depending on different organisms with faunal boundaries proposed at Apalachicola, Cedar Key, Anclote Key. Tampa Bay, Charlotte Harbor, Cape Romano, or Cape Sable. Biogeographic boundaries can be gradual over a given space and are often species-specific. Analyses of marine benthic mapping and community characterization of Florida’s West-central coast shallow water (depth) hardbottom habitats indicate a major shift in the benthos across Tampa Bay. Quantitative benthic surveys of 29 sites yielded a total of 4,079 individuals of nine stony coral species and 1,918 soft coral colonies. Populations were dominated by four species of corals: Siderastrea radians, Oculina robusta, Solenastrea hyades, and Cladacora arbuscula. Most corals were less than 10 cm in diameter. Cluster analyses of coral density and major functional group percent cover showed distinct differences in hard and soft coral densities and species demographics from south to north with clear spatial patterns between regions. These benthic hardbottom coral communities change over a relatively small spatial scale (10’s of km), indicating a biogeographical province or ecosystem region boundary in marine benthic communities at, or very near, the mouth of Tampa Bay. Broader studies are needed to identify the shifts in benthic community biogeography along the West Florida Shelf.

This thesis investigated the power of framing practices in the context of Australian refugee policies between 1999 and 2003. The analysis identified legal rationalism as an ideological projection by which the Howard government justified its refugee policies to the electorate. That is, legal rationalism manifested itself as an overriding concern with the rules and procedures of the law, without necessarily having concern for consistency or continuity. In its first form, legal rationalism emerged as a