There was a sea is the resultant piece of a creative research conducted about human relationships with the element water. The dance takes us on a trip through different states of the spectrum scarcity-abundance of water around the world.

The Five-Factor (FFM) and job characteristics models provide parsimonious frameworks to explain personal and situational influences on work behavior. However, the two are seldom studied in concert, despite theory and empirical evidence indicating that personality traits are more valid under some job conditions than others. The purpose of my dissertation is to address the lack of systematic knowledge regarding the joint influences of personality and job characteristics by testing and extending the major propositions of the theory of purposeful work behavior (TPWB; Barrick, Mount &Li, 2013). Because the TPWB focuses only on task and social characteristics of jobs, I propose a theoretical extension to the theory whereby I examine the way traits interact with contextual characteristics (e.g., physical demands, working conditions) of jobs to influence work outcomes. Further, I extend the TPWB by examining the occupational values from the theory of work adjustment (Dawis &Lofquist, 1975), which are broader and situated at a higher taxonomic level than jobs, moderate the FFM-criterion correlations. Using a meta-analytic design, I tested the extent to which job characteristics and occupational values moderate the relationships between the FFM and job performance, contextual performance, and job satisfaction. The overall results were mixed, with some findings indicating that personality trait validities are substantially higher under conditions of congruent job characteristics, and others indicating no such moderating effects, or moderating effects in contrast to what I proposed in my hypotheses. The mixed results may be due to gravitational processes that take place when individuals select jobs. I also examined the relative importance of the job characteristics and occupational values frameworks, and found that job characteristics were more important moderators of the FFM traits than occupational values across almost all trait-criterion combinations. I discuss significant implications and limitations, along with directions for future research along the lines of furthering the study of the joint influences of person and situation on work outcomes.

Tales of Old Grandmother, Op. 31 by Prokofiev is based on a fairy tale theme. It can be considered as both a most valuable pedagogical piece for young students and as a piece for the concert repertoire. However, this piece was under-appreciated by most piano performers and piano pedagogues for many years, even though it was praised by several well-known composers and was often played by other pianists and Prokofiev himself. The main aim of this study is to promote the Tales so that they will be performed and taught more often. All of the complex harmonic language, unique unforgettable lyricism and Prokofiev's typical compositional elements are presented in this score, allowing it to serve as a great concert repertoire choice. At the same time, the simple format setting, less demanding technique and the fairy tale theme can easily catch and hold a children's interest. Therefore, Tales of Old Grandmother contains both performance value and pedagogical value. This premise is achieved through a discussion of Prokofiev's unfailing interest in fairy tales and comparisons between Tales of Old Grandmother with Prokofiev's advanced piano works and with his Music for Children, Op. 65. Lastly, a performance guide is given suggesting different performance interpretations, various practice strategies and several efficient teaching methods regarding the Tales of Old Grandmother, Op. 31.

The vocal demands placed on actors are higher than those of the typical speaker. Actors' livelihood is predicated on their ability to consistently perform at peak levels, many times in conditions that are not optimal for vocal efficiency (e.g. theaters with poor acoustics). Further, many actors perform after spending the day at a second job to ensure they have a sufficient income to support themselves. Despite challenges, the hallmark of the strong actor is to strive for peak performance. To do so, many actors implement some form of theatre voice training. One popular method is Fitzmaurice Voicework®. Fitzmaurice Voicework® is comprised of two phases: Destructuring and Restructuring. Destructuring is based in decreasing tension through relaxation and tremoring. Restructuring focuses on maximizing voice function with the least amount of effort needed. This study specifically looked at the effect of Fitzmaurice Voicework® training on the voice, as it has little more than anecdotal evidence to support its effect. Six graduate student actors enrolled in a theatre voice course based on Fitzmaurice Voicework® completed pre and post training measures examining the changes in maximum phonation time, average loudness and loudness range, fundamental frequency and frequency range, jitter, shimmer, and noise to harmonic ratio, and perceptual measures of vocal quality (e.g. strain, breathiness, and roughness) on the CAPE-V. Despite no statistically significant findings due to the small sample size and noted variability between individual subjects, trends of more efficient performance post training were present for individuals without a history of voice problems.

Latinos are the fastest growing minority group in the Unites States (Fry, 2008). One in eight adult Latinos living in the United States has diabetes (CDC, 2011), and by the year 2020 diabetes is expected to increase by 107% in the Latino population (Caballero & Tenzer, 2007). Within the general diabetic population approximately 26% of the diabetic population requires the use of insulin in the management of their diabetes (DHHS: NDIC, 2011), making insulin-dependent diabetes a prevalent experience. The literature on how diabetes is experienced is divided. Clinical assessment literature strives to measure how people are coping with the illness and how one's experience with the disease impacts self-care. Literature on the diabetes experience is limited; however, the overall image that emerges is the negative expectation associated with having diabetes such as loss and suffering. Little is known about insulin-dependent diabetes as a lived experience, particularly among Latinos. The purpose of this research is to understand the experience of having insulin-dependent diabetes among adult Latinos, because focusing on this experience clarifies how daily nuances of living with the illness gives meaning to insulin-dependent diabetes. Increased understanding of how people interpret their illness can improve diabetes management, specifically within patient and social work interactions, and promote competent social work practice. The guiding research question for this research is, "what is the lived experience of insulin-dependent diabetes among Adult Latinos in a Primary Care Clinic in San Antonio?" This study uses van Manen's (1990) hermeneutic phenomenological approach to guide the research in capturing the nature of the phenomenon in order to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning Latinos attribute to daily experiences of having insulin-dependent diabetes. Utilizing a phenomenologically designed interview guide, this study includes interviews with 10 participants from a predominantly Latino, safety-net clinic in Texas with a 60% diabetes diagnosis rate. Five essential themes arose in exploring the lived experience of insulin-dependent diabetes among adult Latinos in a primary clinic in San Antonio. The themes include 1. diabetes goes against the natural state of the human body; 2. diabetes rules everything 3. insulin is the fast track to deterioration; 4. the relationships don't end, but they're not the same; and 5. managing diabetes with a broken system. The theme "diabetes goes against the natural state of the human body" is considered a core theme because it represents the other themes. Of those themes identified three support the current literature found on living with diabetes. The three themes insulin is the fast track to deterioration, managing diabetes with a broken system, and the subtheme love hate relationship with food are emerging themes identified by the study

CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, the essential mediators of cellular immune responses, are produced in the thymus following sequential maturation stages. Hematopoietic progenitors first seed the thymus and make T cell lineage specification and commitment decisions within the CD4−CD8− double negative (DN) compartment. Thymocytes then mature to the CD4+CD8+ double positive (DP) stage, followed by vigorous negative and positive selection processes. The positively selected DP thymocytes first give rise to CD4+CD8lo intermediate (IM) cells which then differentiate into MHC class II-restricted CD4+ and MHC class I-restricted CD8+ T cells, a crucial decision known as CD4+ vs. CD8+ lineage choice. The lineage choice decision is influenced by the timing, intensity, and duration of signals derived from the TCR and cytokines, and recent studies have identified a number of transcriptional factors that intrinsically regulate this critical fate decision. Among these, Th-POK (encoded by Zbtb7b, called Thpok here for simplicity and consistency with the literature) is specifically required for CD4+ differentiation while Runx factors promote CD8+ T cell production and repress Cd4 in CD8+ lineage committed cells. Upregulation of Thpok is most evident in the CD4+8lo IM cells and is required to antagonize Runx3 activity and expression to promote CD4+ lineage commitment. Collectively, the Th-POK-Runx3 axis appears to be a critical convergence point in the CD4+ vs. CD8+ lineage choice. After committing to either CD4+ or CD8+ thymocytes, lineage-inappropriate genes are silenced to ensure the distinct identity and functional divergence between these two cell types. Repression of the Cd4 gene on CD8+ lineage committed cells is mediated by a ~430 bp silencer sequence in its first intron. Likewise, Thpok is repressed in CD8+ T cells by a ~560 bp sequence upstream of the Thpok exon 1a, and both Cd4 and Thpok silencers contain consensus binding motifs for Runx factors, which are necessary for CD8+ lineage commitment. T cell factor 1 (TCF-1) and lymphoid enhancer binding factor 1 (LEF-1) are members of the TCF-LEF family transcription factors and abundantly expressed in T lineage cells, and known to be necessary for the maturation of DN T cells to the DP stage. However, because germline deletion of TCF-1 and LEF-1 causes severe early T cell developmental block and embryonic lethality, respectively, their roles beyond the DP stage are unknown. In my thesis work, I overcame these obstacles by conditionally ablating both TCF-1 and LEF-1 in DP thymocytes using CD4-Cre. We observed impaired differentiation of CD4+ T cells from the bipotent DP precursors in the absence of TCF-1 and LEF-1. Mechanistically, TCF-1 promotes CD4+ T cell development by positively regulating the expression of Thpok. TCF-1 and LEF-1 deficiency also results in derepression of the CD4 co-receptor in CD8+ lineage committed cells. In CD8+ T cells, TCF-1 interacts with Runx3 to repress expression of Cd4. These findings not only broaden the spectra of TCF-LEF-mediated regulatory activities in late stages of T cell development, but also reveal new paradigms in T cell fate decision and identity maintenance.

Power grid is an interconnected system of supplying electricity from the supplier to the consumer, consisting of electricity generating plant, high voltage transmission lines- to carry electricity from the generating plant to the load center, and distribution lines- to carry electricity from load centers to individual consumers. A lot of research is being pursued to develop technologies for improving the next generation of power grid called the Smart Power Grid. The Smart Power Grid will have sophisticated communication infrastructure to improve the efficiency of electricity generation using renewable energy sources like the sun, water, etc and also to inform consumers of their electricity usage pattern. Also, the electricity market is now divided into three sections- generation, transmission and distribution. Private companies are competing with each other to provide electricity at the most competitive market price. We have developed two algorithms to help generating companies achieve their goal of meeting the hourly electricity need of the consumers and to do so at a minimum total cost.

What consequences arise as a result of repeated control of the legislature by the same party or coalition? Are incumbent parties less likely to lose an election the longer they remain in power? Furthermore, as parties remain in power longer and longer, do the factors which electoral scholars have proposed influence elections have less of an impact on election outcomes? The purpose of this project is to examine the electoral impact of repeated control of the legislature by the same party or ruling coalition. In this project, I argue that the length of time an incumbent party or coalition has maintained control of the legislature is a critical consideration for scholars interested in studying elections. In doing so, I hope to develop a better understanding of elections, the factors which influence election, and the mechanisms by which these factors affect election outcomes. Central to this project is the phenomenon I call party duration. I define party duration as the number of years the incumbent party has maintained control of the legislature in unicameral legislatures or the lower house in bicameral legislatures. This is the party that has secured enough seats to control the legislature independently in cases where a single party controls the legislature, or the party that serves as the largest party in the ruling coalition that controls the legislature in cases where a single party does not control the legislature by itself. Using cross-sectional time-series analysis to study a novel dataset, I show that not only does increasing party duration decreases the likelihood that an incumbent party will lose an election, controlling for various other factors, but I find evidence that party duration also affects the effect of other variables which influence elections. Specifically, I focus on the impact that the length of party duration has on the effect of economic conditions on the incumbent party's performance in elections. These findings highlight the importance of party duration, a variable which has previously not received attention from electoral scholars

Classification is a data mining problem that arises in many real-world applications. A popular approach to tackle these classification problems is using an ensemble of classifiers that combines the collective knowledge of several classifiers. Most popular methods create a static ensemble, in which a single ensemble is constructed or chosen from a pool of classifiers and used for all new data instances. Two factors that have been frequently used to construct a static ensemble are the accuracy of and diversity among the individual classifiers. There have been many studies investigating how these factors should be combined and how much diversity is required to increase the ensemble's performance. These results have concluded that it is not trivial to build a static ensemble that generalizes well. Recently, a different approach has been undertaken: dynamic ensemble construction. Using a different set of classifiers for each new data instance rather than a single static ensemble of classifiers may increase performance since the dynamic ensemble is not required to generalize across the feature space. Most studies on dynamic ensembles focus on classifiers' competency in the local region in which a new data instance resides or agreement among the classifiers. In this thesis, we propose several other approaches for dynamic class prediction. Existing methods focus on assigned labels or their correctness. We hypothesize that using the class probability estimates returned by the classifiers can enhance our estimate of the competency of classifiers on the prediction. We focus on how to use class prediction probabilities (confidence) along with accuracy and diversity to create dynamic ensembles and analyze the contribution of confidence to the system. Our results show that confidence is a significant factor in the dynamic setting. However, it is still unclear how accurate, diverse, and confident ensemble can best be formed to increase the prediction capability of the system. Second, we propose a system for dynamic ensemble classification based on a new distance measure to evaluate the distance between data instances. We first map data instances into a space defined by the class probability estimates from a pool of two-class classifiers. We dynamically select classifiers (features) and the k-nearest neighbors of a new instance by minimizing the distance between the neighbors and the new instance in a two-step framework. Results of our experiments show that our measure is effective for finding similar instances and our framework helps making more accurate predictions. Classifiers' agreement in the region where a new data instance resides has been considered a major factor in dynamic ensembles. We postulate that the classifiers chosen for a dynamic ensemble should behave similarly in the region in which the new instance resides, but differently outside of this area. In other words, we hypothesize that high local accuracy, combined with high diversity in other regions, is desirable. To verify the validity of this hypothesis we propose two approaches. The first approach focuses on finding the k-nearest data instances to the new instance, which then defines a neighborhood, and maximizes simultaneously local accuracy and distant diversity, based on data instances outside of the neighborhood. The second method considers all data instances to be in the neighborhood, and assigns them weights depending on the distance to the new instance. We demonstrate through several experiments that weighted distant diversity and weighted local accuracy outperform all benchmark methods.

For the past two centuries deaf people in the United States have faced more or less intense skepticism about their marriages to each other, largely due to fears of inherited deafness. Theses fears, while always present, have waxed and waned over time, becoming most prominent during the eugenics era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At Gallaudet University, they were repeatedly expressed by the faculty and administration in a variety of forms and contexts, and echoed by many its students. This dissertation demonstrates the significant influence of these ideas at Gallaudet University on the wider deaf community over the last century; it traces how skepticism toward deaf marriage was framed in terms of hereditarian and, for a time, eugenic ideals; and it explored other more subtle but similarly effective attempts to influence marriage decisions by deaf people. The idea that deaf people should not marry one another was embraced by faculty in Gallaudet’s early decades, diffused from administration to faculty, from faculty to students (deaf undergraduates as well as hearing students studying deaf education), and ultimately carried to other deaf educational institutions via the alumni. While student responses to these ideas were fluid, their adoption by early administration and faculty had a profound and lasting impact. One result was that, during much of the early twentieth century, deaf people were less likely to marry, and when married less likely to have children.