Thesis (M.S.)--Louisiana State University, 1936. / HTML version of 1936 thesis. Last viewed 3/20/2009. Vita.

The skin on her arms was like leather, wrinkly, so thin you could see the blood flow underneath thesurface. Ruption´s that reminded me of small universes or spider-like flowers leapt up and downher arms. She liked listening to the radio, or so I think. She was lying on the bed in the middle ofthe little house surrounded by trees. The massive furn wood dining table was tilted up against thewall, a defeeted gigant.Empty, empty, empty. Silent, silent, silent. The room was a shell, singing of what wasbefore time; a vase stood in the heart of the house, alabaster, smooth, cold holding thestill, distilled essence of emptiness, silence.-Virginia WoolfThe history of materiality can be expected because we have seen it. We can understand how it candisappear or slowly decay because we have at one point in time understood its presence. In mywork I have investigated how material and sound can help to define each other. My thoughts arethat the vase in this aspect is corpus, a recorder of its environment. The vase i.e. corpus stands forintimacy, connecting people in a home where everyday life occurs through communication. The oldvase has a presence, that presence vibrates of life that you can hint but not fully understand.Sound talks about the proportions between things in a different way by travelling between statesand time. How can we understand and access history that is invisible to the eye? GuglielmoMarconi (a pioneer in long-distance radio transmitting) believed that acoustic phenomena continuedto hang in the air. He thought of sounds as bodies of vibration whos decay extended to infinity.Marconi used a concept he called dead air, to describe silence. All sound that ever existed isaccessible to us if we know how to tune into it. What would the silence of the alabaster vase soundlike? In my examination work I have focused on sound to try and understand how it is connected tothe traces of life that are not written in history books.

The vermicomposting of coffee grounds shows great promise for urban areas and university campuses. Several studies have examined using coffee grounds as a substrate for vermicomposting, however, little is known about its effect on plant growth, yield and quality. Therefore, two studies were conducted to assess these effects on greenhouse spinach and field grown bell peppers. Coffee vermicompost (VC) was utilized in a greenhouse spinach study over two spring growing seasons (2011 and 2012). Coffee VC was added to a 1:1:1 (peat, soil, sand) medium by volume (0, 25, 50 and 75%) in 4.5 L clay pots and seeded with `Bloomsdale Longstanding' spinach (Spinacia oleracea). Growth parameters evaluated were fresh leaf weight (FLW), leaf area (LA), spinach plant height, number of leaves, fresh leaf ascorbic acid (AA) and dry leaf nitrate (DLN). In 2011, the highest FLW, LA, number of leaves, AA and nitrate content were seen at the 75% VC application rate. Many parameters were correlated: The FLW and the VC application rate (r=0.41, P<0.0001); the AA content in leaves and the VC application rate (r=0.60, P<0.0001); and the AA and nitrate content in leaves (r=0.45, P=0.011). In 2012, the greatest FLW, height and number of leaves were observed at the 50% VC application rate; the highest nitrate content at 75% VC application rate, with no difference in AA content. A field study was conducted over three seasons (2009–-2011) to compare four treatments (coffee VC, dairy compost, standard fertility (SFT) and no treatment) for their effects on growth, yield, and AA content of bell peppers. Coffee VC and dairy compost were applied to beds at the rate of 22 t/ha and SFT was applied as 212 kg/ha 12:12:12 (N:P:K). Parameters evaluated were total number and weight of marketable and cull (unmarketable) pepper fruits, plant height, leaf chlorophyll index, and fresh fruit AA content. There were no differences detected for pepper fruit yields or AA content, however, plant height and chlorophyll index were greater for the VC and SFT treatments than for the compost and control treatments. These results indicated that coffee VC can improve the yield of greenhouse spinach and that the AA content does not decrease with higher VC application rates, even as nitrate content increases. Results of the bell pepper field study indicated that the coffee VC treatment produces similar growth, yield and AA content as SFT.

This thesis examines US-Guatemalan relations during the first half of the 1960s. At a critical juncture in Guatemalan history, a relatively inexperienced US ambassador, John Bell, subverted democratic systems in Guatemala and helped install a military dictatorship that ruled the country for more than three decades. Ambassador Bell's policies undermined the Kennedy administration's idealistic modernization drive for the region, the Alliance for Progress, and contributed to one of the longest civil wars in the Western Hemisphere.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T18:02:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo2379_1.pdf: 3057093 bytes, checksum: 296f8d7acc9fd1be515e5c4a4e412e9c (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Neste trabalho, analisamos a distribuição do emaranhamento sobre redes quânticas usando memórias quânticas para o armazenamento da informação em ensembles atômicos, através de um esquema conhecido como protocolo DLCZ, cujo objetivo é distribuir emaranhamento e efetuar Distribuição Quântica de Chaves sobre grandes distâncias, usando uma arquitetura de repetidores quânticos. Baseado nesta proposta, analisamos, no regime de variáveis discretas, a troca de emaranhamento em cascata entre N pares de ensembles. Nossa análise envolve o mapeamento dos estados na base de número de excitação, e uma restrição ao subespaço onde não mais que uma excitação é armazenada em cada ensemble. Com base nesta última restrição, fizemos análises de tomografia quântica dos campos gerados e as utilizamos para inferir teoricamente o impacto de várias imperfeições sobre os experimentos. Assim, calculamos a concorrência (medida de emaranhamento) do estado resultante depois de várias trocas de emaranhamento, e analisamos sua degradação com o aumento do número de trocas e com o aumento da probabilidade p de geração de uma única excitação nos ensembles atômicos. Também calculamos a violação da desigualdade de Bell CHSH, para estados de polarização dos campos obtidos a partir de pares de estados atômicos delocalizados com a degradação do emaranhamento. Obtemos então um valor máximo de p para os quais ainda podemos violar tal desigualdade após um certo número de trocas, indicando os recursos mínimos totais necessários para efetuar a distribuição quântica de chaves no sistema. Finalmente, através da análise da probabilidade de sucesso na geração de tais estados degradados após um certo tempo, estimamos o tempo de memória necessário para o protocolo suceder após um certo número de trocas de emaranhamento e analisamos como este tempo escala com o comprimento do canal de comunicação

In this thesis, a model of producer behavior for a regulated utility that fully takes into account the dynamic nature of the capital accumulation process of the firm is developed and empirically implemented using recent data on Bell Canada. On the basis of this model of producer behavior, loss formulae that approximate the value of foregone output due to imperfect regulation in a dynamic context are derived and estimates of the deadweight loss in the case of Bell are provided. The estimation results indicate the importance of dynamic elements, such as expectations and adjustment costs of investment, in modeling the behavior of Bell. They also suggest that rate of return regulation may have affected the investment decisions of the utility. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

High tunnels are used to modify the crop environment by trapping solar energy, providing protection from unfavorable weather events, and extending the growing season in temperate regions. This project assessed yield and quality in three independent cultivar trials of warm-season crops tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.), bell pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) and cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) grown under high tunnel production compared with an outdoor field in eastern and western North Dakota. Tomato yields in the high tunnel were increased by 1.4 times over the field trial yields. Yields from the pepper cultivar trials both inside the high tunnel and outside field were comparable to one another at 1.24 kg plant-1 and 1.06 kg plant-1, respectively. Cucumber yields in the high tunnel were increased by 1.7 times over the field trial yields. Results indicate that in North Dakota, high tunnels extended the growing season, and increased production relative to field conditions.

No description available.

Upper Triassic strata that lie between the Chinle Formation and Nugget Sandstone along the south flank of the Uinta Mountains in northeastern Utah are distinctive. In the past, these rocks have been lumped together with the overlying or underlying units. These strata are equivalent to the Bell Springs Member of the Nugget Sandstone as defined in Wyoming and perhaps to the Rock Point Formation of the Chinle Formation near the Four Corners region. In this study, these rocks will be called the Bell Springs Formation following the usage of Lucas (1993) in Wyoming. The unit is regionally mappable in northeastern Utah, and is the sedimentologic transition from the fluvial-lacustrine environment of the Chinle Formation to the eolian depositional environment of the Nugget Sandstone. The Bell Springs Formation is comprised of interbedded fine- to medium-grained sandstone and siltstone, as well as planar laminated mudstone. The unit varies from planar laminated sandstone with abundant ripple marks, to cross-bedded sandstone that contains scoured channels filled with mudstone or sandstone. The mudstone beds are commonly mottled and contain desiccation cracks while both the mudstone and sandstone beds have rip-up clasts, occasional bioturbation, and small salt crystal casts. The thinly bedded mudstone and siltstone beds are purple to red to brown, and the sandstone beds vary in color from red to brown to orange or tan with green and gray mottling. The ripple structures with mud drapes indicate fluctuating deposition in low energy water. The presence of desiccation cracks, plant root traces, small eolian sand dunes, gypsum casts, crinkly algal mat beds, and bioturbation indicate intermittent subaerial exposure. Fluvial deposits by meandering streams, including point bar, levee, and splay deposits comprise a large part of this formation. Rocks of the Bell Springs Formation have previously been interpreted as either tidal flat or fluvial/lacustrine deposits. A tidal flat environment certainly may produce some of the features found in these deposits, such as, alternating erosion and deposition of interfingering channels and scours with rip-up clasts, ripples, flaser bedding, desiccation cracks, and bioturbation; however, these rocks lack some of the most important characteristics of tidal flat deposits such as herringbone-cross-stratification, general fining upward successions, and regionally associated sediments that would typically be found in shallow marine environments. We conclude that the sedimentary characteristics and regional setting of these rocks fit best with a fluvial environment interpreted as a meandering system being deposited on a broad floodplain in an arid to semi-arid climate. This depositional environment existed between the expanding Nugget Sandstone erg and the shrinking Chinle Formation as desertification increased during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic in what is now the western United States. This study not only helps solidify the understanding of the depositional history of these strata, it also clarifies the nomenclature of these formations for future mapping and research.

In recent years, healthcare management has become fertile ground for the scheduling theory community. In addition to an extensive academic literature on this subject, there has also been a proliferation of healthcare scheduling software companies in the marketplace. Typical scheduling systems use rule-based analytics that give schedulers advisory information from programmable heuristics such as the Bailey-Welch rule cite{B,BW}, which recommends overbooking early in the day to fill-in potential no-shows later on. We propose a dynamic programming problem formulation to the scheduling problem that maximizes revenue. We formulate the problem and discuss the effectiveness of 3 different algorithms that solve the problem. We find that the 3rd algorithm, which has smallest amount of nodes in the decision tree, has an upper bound given by the Bell numbers. We then present an alternative problem formulation that includes stochastic appointment lengths and no shows.