Past events and present environmental conditions may alter vegetation cover and composition over decadal timescales by exerting persistent effects on modern vegetation patterns and consequently influencing species distribution and abundance. My aim was to reconstruct vegetation and analyze cover during early-European settlement in Brazos County using historical sources, mainly the surveyor’s files from the Original Texas Land Survey. The decoded trees from the surveyor’s notes resulted in 24 witness and bearing tree species being recorded, the most abundant species on the uplands was Post Oak (Quercus stellata) and for bottomlands was Pin Oak (Quercus phellos). Using the distances and directions given in the surveyor’s notes for witness and bearing trees, coordinates were calculated and species classified according to their National Wetland Indicator’ (NWI) status. Indicator kriging was performed to create a continuous vegetation cover of Brazos County by interpolating the point biogeographical data (i.e., witness trees, bearing trees and stake, mound and post locations) that had been spatially located and mapped onto the shapefile. The vegetation map showed 49% of vegetation in the county was covered by grassland during pre-European settlement. Most of these prairie areas were located in the northern portion of the county along the Old San Antonio Road. The bottomland forests covered 15% of Brazos County along the Navasota and Brazos Bottoms. Major expanses of bottomland hardwood occurred in the northwest of the county and at the confluence of the Navasota and Brazos rivers in the south. The Upland Oak Woodlands, mainly dominated by Post Oaks covered 36% of landscape, occurred mainly towards the western and eastern parts of the county and were interspersed with Grasslands. The vegetation map was verified using old photographs, traveler’s accounts and field checking for bottomland hardwoods. This research proves that the OTLS is a valid source for vegetation mapping during Pre-European settlement and for analyzing the tree species present at that time and helps in protecting and conserving our pristine environment at the present time.

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The Temperature Sensitivity Analysis of Power System Load Demand with Neural Networks Chih-Hung Chen* Chao-Shun Chen** Institute of Electrical Engineering National Sun Yat-Sen University Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C. ABSTRACT The analysis of customer load characteristic plays the fundamental role of power system operation. Based on the load survey study, the load pattern of each customer class is derived to achieve more effective load forecast for system planning to reduce the risk of system capacity shortage. For the load survey study, a stratified sampling method has been used to select the proper size of customers for meter installation to collect the customer power consumption. By the way, the customer load patterns derived can represent the load behavior of whole customer population. The standardized daily load pattern of each customer class has been solved with the mean per-unit method of customer load. According to the total power consumption by all customers within the same class and considering the corresponding daily load pattern, the daily load profile of the customer class is then determined. The standard daily load pattern of each customer class and total power consumption within the territory of service districts of Taipower system are integrated to construct Taipower system daily load profile. The temperature sensitivity analysis of customer power consumption is performed for each customer class by applying neural networks. The proposed method has been used to investigate the change of power consumption due to temperature rise for each district and Taipower system. For the districts with high ratio of the air conditioner loading, the increase of power consumption is in proportion to the temperature. It is concluded that the research of temperature sensitivity on power consumption can support power system operation and better capacity planning of power system in the future. *Author **Advisor

With the expanding population of Texas and the resulting increase in demand for water, the scarcity of water is becoming an increasingly urgent issue and research is being conducted to find ways to improve water yield, the amount of water that is used for aquifer recharge and riparian areas (lakes, streams, etc). Rangelands provide a major catchment for both surface reservoirs and aquifers. The Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone and the Twin Buttes Drainage Area were selected to determine the tradeoffs between brush management for increased water yield and wildlife habitat improvement. In April 2002, a mail survey of 300 randomly selected landowners was conducted in each of the two watersheds to gain information regarding their demographics, land cover, and willingness to enter into a cost-share brush removal program. A total of 131 usable questionnaires (43.7%) were returned by Edwards Aquifer area participants, and 141 usable questionnaires (47.0%) were returned by Twin Buttes area participants. Respondents were asked questions including attitudes towards brush amounts and management strategies, and certain constraints that may be included in a cost-share brush removal program. Most respondents indicated interest in enrolling at least part of their land in such a program. Reasoning behind interest varied in each study area. However, interest in various contractual agreements was neutral at best. Policy implications entail considering wildlife habitat mitigation, landowners' preferences, and potential for increasing water yield and determining if all can be managed, or if trade-offs must be considered.

This study was designed to integrate a mailing list-based survey with an internetbased presentation/response in order to take into account the trend toward selfadministration that is evident in everyday interactions with automated services that have taken the place of personal interactions. A random sample of 2,999 was taken from applicants for Triploid Grass Carp Permits from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. A forty-nine question survey was constructed containing five sections: general pond characteristics, physical pond characteristics, aquatic vegetation, fish and other wildlife, and management goals. The primary emphasis of this study was to determine what specific problems Texas pond owners faced, how widely these problems occurred, and where pond owners got the information they used to deal with pond management problems. A secondary emphasis of the project was to examine the potential presented by the Internet for use in this type of information gathering and distribution for Texas Cooperative Extension. An overall response rate of 21.3% (excluding non-deliverables and unusable submitted surveys) was obtained. Summary statistics for each question were calculated and then compared in order to gain a clearer picture of the pond management practices employed by Texas pond owners. These results indicated some initial discrepancies between pond owners?? management practices and current management recommendations, most dramatically where aquatic vegetation was concerned. The internet-based survey methodology worked effectively to lower the cost of distribution and the workload of data entry when compared to the mail survey. These benefits outweighed the disadvantages caused by survey error with the new methodology.

Since Texas contains less than 5% public land, private landowners are critical to the success of environmental management initiatives in the state. This has implications for resources that traverse property boundaries, such as wildlife and groundwater. Texas landowners are increasingly capitalizing on the income potential of fee-based hunting, and many have banded together to form Wildlife Management Associations (WMAs). Not only can such landowner associations enhance the coordination of resource management decisions, they also have the potential to increase social capital, which is reflected by interpersonal trust, reciprocity and civic participation. To improve the management of common-pool resources it is important to understand the relationship between social capital and coordinated resource management because long-term community stability and resource sustainability appear to be highly correlated. A 600-landowner mail survey (with 48.1% response) was conducted in the Edwards Plateau region of Texas to compare the land management characteristics and social capital of landowners who are members of WMAs with non-member landowners. The goal of this research was to determine how WMA membership, property size, and location affect levels of social capital and interest in cooperative resource management. It was hypothesized that members, large landowners, and northern landowners would be more interested in cooperative management and exhibit higher social capital. While WMA members and large-property owners were more involved in wildlife management than non-members and small-property owners, this interest in resource management did not carry over to groundwater. These groups were not more involved in groundwater management activities, and all survey groups were disinterested in joining private cooperatives for groundwater marketing. Social capital differences were more evident between large- and small-property owners than between WMA members and non-members. Members scored higher only on community involvement, while large owners scored higher on community involvement as well as trust. These results suggest that WMA membership per se does not significantly increase social capital among Edwards Plateau landowners, but do not necessarily refute the importance of social capital within WMAs. Differences in trust between members were positively correlated with increased communication and meeting frequency, suggesting ways WMAs can improve intra-association social capital.

An in-home evaluation of beef value cuts from the round was conducted to determine ways to improve palatability attributes for steaks prepared by consumers. The M. vastus lateralis, M. rectus femoris, M. semimembranosus, and M. adductor (n = 266) muscles were either blade tenderized, enhanced with a salt and phosphate solution, or served as a control. Consumers (n = 261) cooked these steaks as they normally would and were asked to document cooking method and degree of doneness, as well as palatability ratings for overall like, tenderness, juiciness, flavor intensity, and flavor desirability for each steak. Enhancing round muscles with a salt and phosphate solution improved most palatability traits compared to those that were blade tenderized or not treated. For M. semimembranosus and M. vastus lateralis, the enhanced steaks received higher (P < 0.05) ratings for all palatability traits. For the most part, cooking method and degree of doneness had little influence on consumer palatability ratings. Where differences occurred, they were muscle specific, which may allow limited recommendations for certain muscles with respect to the most appropriate cooking method and degree of doneness.

Innovation in services has arisen to be a hot topic of today and being innovative serve as a key in staying competitive in most business settings, the service sector is no exception.Although important, service innovation is difficult to measure and the service perspective has been noticeably absent in traditional approaches where innovation measurement has tended to focus mainly on products and production related systems. These measurement indicators fail to capture the diversity and intricacy of innovation processes emerging in service firms, where innovation rarely requires R&amp;D. Until now, a coherent instrument or tool for measuring innovation in a service company has not existed resulting in that research studies on service innovation lag behind those of product innovation. The need for an innovation measurement instrument is obvious as it would not only assist companies in understanding their current innovation practices or capabilities, but would also help clarify what the organization need to focus on to maximize its success. With basis in aforementioned, this study sets out to extend the knowledge regarding factors affecting innovation within the service sector. As a result, a developed and tested questionnaire, suitable for measuring innovation within a service firm is provided and a managerial and theoretical contribution has been made.

Schizophrenia is a chronic and debilitating disease that affects approximately one percent of the US population and exerts a disproportionately high financial burden on the society. The objective of this study was to estimate the direct and indirect costs of schizophrenia among community-dwelling US residents and identify patient characteristics associated with high schizophrenia-related direct costs. Patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia (ICD-9 code 295) or other non-organic psychoses (ICD-9 code 298) between January 1, 2005 and December 31, 2008 were identified from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). To estimate direct costs, the following cost categories were identified: inpatient hospitalizations, outpatient visits, emergency department visits, office-based physician visits, home healthcare visits, and prescription medications. The following cost categories were identified to estimate indirect costs: caregivers’ costs and cost of lost productivity due to missed work days, reduced employment, and suicide. Logistic regression was used to compare patients belonging to the high-cost group and to the low-cost group. All analyses were carried out using SAS version 9.2 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina). The weighted average number of patients with schizophrenia identified for each year was 757,893. The annual direct and indirect costs were estimated at $3.96 billion and $15.35 billion, respectively. The mean annual direct medical schizophrenia-related cost per patient was $5,586. For each one-year increase in age, patients were 5.7% less likely to be in the high-cost group. Patients with a spouse were 77.7% less likely than patients without a spouse to be in the high-cost group. Healthcare providers and policymakers can use these cost estimates to better understand the economic burden of schizophrenia and identify services and subgroups of patients associated with the highest costs. This would help in the provision of healthcare services to patients with schizophrenia and in the optimization of patient outcomes. / text