Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-268).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard University, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The purpose of this study was to examine adults’ perceptions of how extramusical knowledge and skills they learned in high school orchestra have transferred to their adult lives. Barnett and Ceci’s (2002) taxonomy served as a model for studying the perceived impact of orchestral participation on life skill development and transfer to adulthood. Eight former high school orchestra students participated in an in-depth, standardized, open-ended interview of approximately 90 minutes in length. Each participant reflected on their orchestral experience and responded to specific questions pertaining to what extramusical skills they might have developed and what knowledge and skills they perceived to have used as adults. Data analysis revealed that participants perceived participation in orchestra as valuable. In particular, participants’ perceptions suggested that involvement in high school orchestra helped them develop life skills that they employed as adults. Results were organized according to a life skills framework established by the World Health Organization (1994). The participants perceived that effective communication, interpersonal skills, coping with stress, and teamwork were skills that were developed through participation in orchestra. Several other skills, including leadership, multitasking abilities, and taking responsibility, found moderate support among the participants. The participants did not regard the skills of critical and creative thinking as being developed through participation. The majority of participants cited effective communication, interpersonal skills, teamwork, and coping with stress as the chief skills that transferred from participating in high school orchestra. These findings are discussed in light of the current literature and suggestions for further research are presented.

[pt] O duto estudado era composto por duas laterais arco cilíndricas convexas isotérmicas de mesmo raio por uma base plana adiabática. Obteve-se os coeficientes de transporte de calor para convecção forçada em regime laminar deste canal. Para tanto, optou-se pelo emprego do método da analogia de transparência de massa e calor. A técnica recorrida foi a de sublimação de naftaleno, cuja utilização exigiu instrumentos de precisão e condições ambientais controladas. A variação da massa, devido à sublimação, das laterais de naftaleno análogas às superfícies isotérmicas fornecia, juntamente com outros parâmetros, o conhecimento dos coeficientes médios de troca de massa. Estes eram adimensionados como número de sherwood. Apartir dos pontos experimentais encontrados determinou-se a equação do comportamento do número de Sherwood, para perfil não desenvolvido, em função do comprimento adimensional, definido como o inverso do número de Graetz. Aplicada à analogia, chegou-se aos coeficientes médios de transferência de calor, adimensionalizados como número de Nusselt. Em posse destes resultados, fez-se a análise teórico da performance de um coletor solar simulado utilizando o canal em estudo. / [en] The duct analyzed was made up of two cylindrical side walls and anadiabatic base plate. Heat transfer coefficients for forced convection in laminar flow were obtained. The heat and mass transfer analogy method was used by applying the naphtalene sublimation tecnique. The side walls mass change, due to sublimation, supplied the overall mass transfer coefficients. These were stated in dimensionless form as sherwood’s number. An equation giving Sh as a function of the dimensionless length was obtained from the experimental points. The profile was not fully developed. In accordance with the analogy the overall heat transfer coefficients were found. A theoretical study of a solar energy collector employing these duct was made.

The diploma thesis called A Contribution to the History of the Locality of Zátoň deals with mapping of the historical background of this Šumava village. The opening chapters of the thesis concern the description of the history of Šumava and Sudety in general. The study of the particularities of this region and its development in the history puts the occurence into the period-context. The thesis deals with the events of the 20th century, when the German population was transfered out of their homes. The region was changed significantly by this step. The technical literature and memories of the contemporary witnesses were used in the thesis.

A technique for decomposing the Optical Transfer Function (OTF) into a novel set of basis functions has been developed. The decomposition provides insight into the performance of optical systems containing both wavefront error and apodization, as well as the interactions between the various components of the pupil function. Previously, this technique has been applied to systems with circular pupils with both uniform illumination and Gaussian apodization. Here, systems with annular pupils are explored. In cases of annular pupil with simple defocus, analytic expressions for the OTF decomposition coefficients can be calculated. The annular case is not only applicable to optical systems with central obscurations, but the technique can be extended to systems with multiple ring structures. The ring structures can have constant area as is often found in zone plates and diffractive lenses or the rings can have arbitrary areas. Analytic expressions for the OTF decomposition coefficients again can be determined for ring structures with constant and quadratic phase variations. The OTF decomposition provides a general tool to analyze and compare a diverse set of optical systems.

With the increasing pressure of providing reliable potable water in a sustainable way, it is important to understand water phase change phenomena (condensation and evaporation) as the water phase change is involved in many processes such as membrane distillation and solar still which can be a feasible choice of supplementing the present potable water access. In the present thesis, we first elucidate the role of wettability of water condensation substrate by combining the droplet growth dynamics and droplet population evolution. The results show that wettability has a negligible effect on water condensation rate in an atmospheric environment. After confirming the role of substrate wettability, we provide a quantitative analysis of the effect of substrate geometry on water condensation in the atmospheric environment. The analysis can help to predict the efficiency of water condensation rate with a given substrate of a certain geometry with the aid of computational simulation tools. The results show that water condensation can be increased by 40% by rationally designing the geometry of the condensation surface. However, the condensation rate in the atmospheric environment is relatively slow due to the presence of non-condensable gas. In order to increase the condensation rate, a relatively pure vapor environment is desired, in which condensed water will be the major heat transfer barrier. Coalescence induced jumping of condensed droplets on superhydrophobic surfaces is an interesting phenomenon to help faster removal of condensed droplets. However, it is still not clear how to optimize the overall heat transfer efficiency by condensation on such surfaces. We observed an interesting phenomenon on a superhydrophobic nano-cones array, on which water preferentially condenses within larger cavities among the nanocones. Droplets growing form larger cavities have larger growth rate. This finding can possibly provide a solution to optimizing heat transfer efficiency. Finally, a nylon-carbon black composite is prepared by electrospinning to enhance water evaporation under solar radiation. The composite shows an interesting light absorption property. In a wet state, the composite can absorb around 94% of the incident sunlight. The composite also shows strong mechanical and chemical stability. Thus, the composite is considered to be a practical candidate to be applied in the solar distillation process.

Humans are constantly faced with learning motor tasks throughout their lifespan (e.g., children learning how to throw a ball overhand, elite athletes learning how to become more even more efficient at their sports performance, and an older adult relearning how to walk post-stroke recovery). With such variety in the types of motor tasks that humans try to learn across the lifespan, little is known about the impact of a learner’s previous motor skill experience. Thus, the purpose of this thesis was to investigate when motor learning generalizability or specificity are more likely to occur, respectively. An in-depth background of motor learning generalizability and specificity was provided in chapter one. The scope of the motor learning literature including generalizability and/or specificity was investigated in chapter two. At the end of chapter two, certain limitations of the motor learning literature are addressed and framed into a useable checklist for future motor learning experiments. Chapter three serves as a bridging chapter to connect the scoping review and checklist in chapter two, to the framework implemented in chapter four. In chapter four, the checklist was employed to assess its usefulness in future motor learning experiments. Collectively, this thesis provides organization to the previous motor learning generalizability and specificity literature, as well as recommendations for future motor learning researchers based on a tested framework protocol. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Our previous movement experiences can impact our capability to learn new motor tasks. These previous movement experiences can be either beneficial or detrimental (or have no effect) on our learning of that task depending on many different things with no real definitive answers to why the outcomes differ and when. The purpose of this thesis is to review how prior motor skill practice may be beneficial to future motor skill learning (generalizability), detrimental to learning, or no effect (specificity) and to organize these findings into a new ‘types of transfer’ taxonomy, create a framework to help guide future motor learning research and conduct an experiment that follows this framework. By considering and organizing this large motor learning literature into a review, creating this taxonomy and outlining an empirical investigative framework, this thesis will help us to better understand motor learning history and provide a pathway forward for future researchers.

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