900 archived FRM filters from 15 sites over the southeast during 2007 were analyzed for PM2.5 chemical composition and physical properties. Secondary components (i.e. sulfate aerosol and SOA) were the major contributors to the PM2.5 mass over the southeast, whereas the contribution from biomass burning varied with season and was negligible (2%) during summer. Excluding biomass burning influence, FRM WSOC was spatially homogeneous throughout the region, similar to sulfate, yet WSOC was moderately enhanced in locations of greater predicted isoprene emissions in summer. On smaller spatial scale, a substantial urban/rural gradient of WSOC was found through comparisons of online WSOC measurements at one urban/rural pair (Atlanta/Yorkville) in August 2008, indicating important contribution from anthropogenic emissions. A comparative study between Atlanta and LA reveals a number of contrasting features between two cities. WSOC gas-particle partitioning, investigated through the fraction of total WSOC in the particle phase, Fp, exhibited differing relationships with ambient RH and organic aerosols. In Atlanta, both particle water and organic aerosol (OA) can serve as an absorbing phase. In contrast, in LA the aerosol water was not an important absorbing phase, instead, Fp was correlated with OA mass. Fresh LA WSOC had a consistent brown color and a bulk absorption per soluble carbon mass at 365 nm that was 4 to 6 times higher than freshly-formed Atlanta soluble organic carbon. Interpreting soluble brown carbon as a property of freshly-formed anthropogenic SOA, the difference in absorption per carbon mass between the two cities suggests most WSOC formed within Atlanta is not from an anthropogenic process similar to LA.

Muslims of Middle Eastern and Turkish origin, whether longtime immigrants, recent refugees, or students living in America temporarily, are an important part of the changing ethnic and religious landscape in the Southeast U.S. In the aftermath of 9/11, much attention has been shifted upon Islam and the Middle East. Discrimination and a lack of mutual understanding and tolerance between the selected populations and native-born, non-Muslim Americans are persistent problems. The Knoxville Turkish Cultural Center and the Istanbul Center of Atlanta recognize and reflect the contemporary need for intercultural and interfaith awareness, education, and dialogue to promote tolerance. I argue that while these organizations serve to integrate incoming populations and encourage inter-group, inter-cultural, and inter-religious interaction, they also act as a pressure valve and site of intra-group identity formation. This case study reveals the many ways in which Muslims are contributing to American culture and society while simultaneously redefining, reconfirming and even solidifying their own cultural markers, social boundaries, beliefs, and identities through their community relations and through their involvement with KTCC and IC.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have demonstrated their utility in predictively modeling the location of archaeological sites, and providing a framework for cataloging sites eligible for heritage management status. The intent of this GIS-based study is to begin to create a geohistorically organized database of information culled from historic documents and archaeological excavation. In this case study of postbellum land tenure in Hillsborough County, Florida, a GIS-based approach is used to demonstrate the impacts of federal and state land ownership policy decisions during the Reconstruction Era and beyond. GIS data are also used to reveal information about how people use their allotted environment to non-verbally communicate their perceptions of the world and their place in it. Finally, GIS are shown to be ideally suited for allowing multi-scalar, diachronic comparisons of archaeological sites and materials. This research was conducted according to the concepts of Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), which assumes there is a generalized symmetry between the agency of human actors and non-human actants (i.e. it does not assume the primacy of human intentional action). ANT accepts that materials can carry non-verbal messages (e.g. colors, aromas, tactility), which affect how humans interact, communicate, and organize themselves in space. ANT allows for the use of scales based on human action, and analyses that are based standardized metrologies. Finally, ANT obviates being limited to strict categories of macro- and micro-, by accepting that networks may bridge both. This research shows that two rural communities have undergone similar growth trajectories, with a historically black community having experienced some setbacks in the early 20th century. However, the results show that the rural African American community was not more subdivided than the neighboring Euro-American community, contrary to initial expectations. Additionally, there is a suggestion that communities may move socially important buildings such as churches schools to the community center or periphery, depending on the intended recipient of the message. The study also documents the centralization, concentration, and clustering of the county's African American population through time.

My dissertation project utilizes a theoretical perspective derived from historical ecology to explore the trajectory in prehistoric subsistence that began with the initial colonization of the region and eventually led to the domestication of indigenous plants, such as goosefoot and maygrass, roughly 5,000 calendar years ago. Because a major handicap for exploring prehistoric subsistence in eastern North America is the rarity of sites with preserved flora and fauna, I apply formal models derived from behavioral ecology to stone tool assemblages and archaeological site distributions to evaluate models that have been proposed for the emergence of domesticated plants. Based on my results, I argue that the origins of plant domestication came about within the context of a boom/bust cycle that has its roots in the Late Pleistocene and culminated in the Mid-Holocene. More specifically, warming climate caused a significant peak in the availability of shellfish, oak, hickory, and deer, which generated a "tipping point" during the Middle Archaic period where hunter-gatherer groups narrowed their focus on these resources. After this "boom" ended, some groups shifted to other plant resources that they could intensively exploit in the same manner as oak and hickory, which included the suite of plants that were subsequently domesticated. This is likely due the combined effects of increasing population and declining returns from hunting, which is evident in my analysis of biface technological organization and site distributions from the lower Tennessee and Duck River Valleys. Consequently, these conclusions are an alternative to Smith's (2011) assertion that plant domestication in eastern North America came about as a result of gradual niche construction with no evidence for resource imbalance or population packing.

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of the South Eastern Anatolia Project (GAP) on the inter-regional inequality between the GAP region and the rest of Turkey. Cross-sectional analyses are carried out for the years of 1990 and 2000, that is, before the project is put into effect and 10 years after of its implementation. Although this thesis is ultimately concerned with the inter-regional inequality, the within and the total-region inequality are also discussed. Moreover, since not only the economic, infrastructure and service related variables, but also the sociodemographic variables are included in the analyses, it is a comprehensive evaluation, and the results provide current information about the success of the GAP. In this study, Theil&#039 / s inequality index is used as it provides the property of additive decomposability, which allows us to analyze the magnitudes and trends in inequality among regions and within regions as well as total inequality. The indicators include 17 socio-demographic, 12 economic, and 10 infrastructure and service related variables, i.e., total of 39 independent variables. Although the GAP region performed an improvement in absolute terms for most of the variables, the findings show that the inequality between the GAP region and the rest of Turkey increased for more than half of the variables during the last decade. These variables are mostly related to demography (i.e., infant mortality rate, fertility rate, etc.), health services, and GDP p.c.. On the other hand, the between-region inequality decreased for the variables related to infrastructure, urbanization, educational level (i.e., literacy and schooling ratios in primary education), and nonagricultural labor force.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--Indiana University, 2009. / Department of Earth Sciences, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Andrew P. Barth, Gabriel Filippelli, Jeffery Wilson. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-64).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Abilene Christian University, 2005 . / Includes abstract. "May 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-107).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Abilene Christian University, 2005 . / Includes abstract. "May 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-107).