Through proper irrigation scheduling and management of damaged cotton, sustainable agricultural withdrawal from the Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer can be achieved while maximizing net returns. This research was conducted to 1) develop a sensor based irrigation strategy that maximized cotton lint yield and quality, irrigation, and water use efficiency (IWUE) and 2) quantify the effects of timing of damage, intensity, and foliar N on cotton growth and development. Lint yield, fiber quality, and IWUE were optimized using a season-long irrigation threshold of -90 kPa and irrigation terminated 2-weeks before cracked boll. Regardless of cotton variety (early- or late-maturing) or timing of damage, plant height, number of nodes, and lint yield were negatively correlated with the intensity of damage. Moreover, the application of foliar nitrogen to damaged cotton had no effect on plant growth, lint yield, or fiber quality, regardless of N application timing. These data indicate that lint yield, and fiber quality are optimized when cotton varieties are selected based on yield potential, irrigated at -90 kPa threshold, and irrigations are terminated two weeks before cracked boll.

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Almost half of those who start therapy drop out early (Thalmayer, 2018). When therapists work to improve the therapeutic alliance, clients are more likely to stay in treatment and chances of recovery improve (D'Aniello et al., 2018; Escudero & Friedlander, 2017). However, the existing research comes almost entirely from client self-reports of the alliance. Little research has examined what occurs during the session. There has been no research to determine what specific therapeutic alliance behaviors are related to early termination. The current naturalistic study sought to discover if behaviors that strengthen or diminish the therapeutic alliance are related to early termination in therapy. Master's Students coded videos from thirty couples (fifteen matched pairs) who received therapy at the Brigham Young University Comprehensive Clinic (BYUCC) using the System for Observing Family Therapy Alliances (SOFTA-o). Four dimensions of the therapeutic alliance were examined: engagement in the therapeutic process, emotional connection to the therapist, safety within the therapeutic system, and shared sense of purpose within the family. Results from a one-sided t-test showed that the emotional connection was significant for both male and female partners and the therapist, as was the male partner's sense of safety and the shared sense of purpose. Several individual behaviors were also significant. Understanding which behavioral indicators of the alliance are associated with dropout may help therapists identify couples at risk of dropout and intervene to prevent early termination. Implications and limitations will be discussed.

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Due to increasing weight of electrical component and wiring harnesses in a vehicle contrary to the demand of light constructed vehicles as well as the constantly increasing and fluctuating price of copper compared to aluminium’s stable and far lower price, the use of aluminium conductors as an alternative have been promoted.  This thesis work lay theoretical research of the available methods used for electrical connection of aluminium conductors in order to increase the knowledge about the available termination techniques.  Due to aluminium’s characteristics such as lower conductivity and strength, tendency to form oxides and relax over time, differences in thermal expansion coefficient and high potential for galvanic corrosion, there is a risk of deterioration and degradation of the connection if the termination of aluminium conductors is not done correctly without being aware of the challenges when it comes to aluminium connection.  The founded solutions are different welding and soldering techniques such as friction welding, ultrasonic welding, resistance welding, plasma soldering and many other modifications of conventional crimp.  A robust termination system that faces all those challenges and ensure a reliable connection during the entire life length of the vehicle and in order to inhibit corrosion different type of sealing of the contact interface will be required.  In order to evaluate the performance of the founded connection method, testing with evaluation of, tensile strength of conductor to contact attachment, tightness demand, corrosion resistance, vibration and heat evolution at the contact attachment have to be conducted.

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by profound social and emotional changes. Counseling can serve as a protective factor for decreasing the long-term negative emotional effects. Despite this fact, counselors continue to struggle with high rates of attrition among adolescent clients. When examining trends of client persistence in counseling across the lifespan, researchers found a relationship between the presence of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Additionally, they found that high levels of familial stress predicted premature termination from counseling. The purpose of the current study was to create a predictive model of adolescent persistence in counseling. I examined both personal and environmental characteristics of adolescents who sought counseling services (N = 72) from an on-campus university counseling clinic that serves as a training facility for master’s and doctoral students at an accredited counselor education program in the southwestern United States. Participants were predominantly White (67.6%, n = 50), with a mean age of 14.23 (SD = 1.65). Nearly 60% (n = 44) of the clients were female, and 37.8% were male (n = 28). Beyond descriptive variables, eight predictor variables were examined: adolescent involvement in their intake, time spent on the wait list, four domains of parental stress, and parent perceptions of adolescent internalizing and externalizing behaviors. A multiple linear regression was conducted to understand how much of the variance in the number of counseling sessions attended by adolescent clients was explained by the predictor variables. The regression analysis was statistically significant (p = .008) and accounted for 29.1% (R2adj = .192) of the variance in sessions attended. Of the variables examined, externalizing behaviors (42.82%) accounted for the most variance in sessions attended, followed by whether the adolescent was involved in the intake (29.16%), internalizing behaviors (12.96%), and parent-focused stress (10.30%). An examination of the two strongest predictors in correlation to the number of sessions attended revealed a negative relationship with externalizing behaviors and a positive relationship with involvement in the intake, suggesting that adolescents who present with externalizing behaviors and who are not involved in their intake are likely to attend fewer counseling sessions. To understand the differences among adolescents who prematurely terminate from counseling and those who persist in counseling, I conducted a series of univariate and multivariate analyses. Comparing the means of the predictor variables revealed no significant differences between any of the predictor variables examined, although internalizing and externalizing behavior scores fell within the borderline clinical range for adolescents who persisted in counseling. Finally, a predictive discriminant analysis to assess to what degree identified variables predicted premature termination from or persistence in counseling yielded a 75% hit rate. Given this knowledge, counselors may be able to pro-actively identify adolescents who are at risk of prematurely terminating from counseling and implement retention strategies.

The effect of the electrical field enhancement at the junction discontinuities and its impact on the on-state resistance of power semiconductor devices was investigated. A systematic analysis of the mechanisms behind the techniques that can be used for the edge termination in power semiconductor devices was performed. The influence of the passivation layer properties, such as effective interface charge and dielectric permittivity, on the devices with different edge terminations was analyzed using numerical simulation. A compact analytical expression for the optimal JTE dose was proposed for the first time. This expression has been numerically evaluated for different targeted values of the blocking voltage and the maximum electric field, always resulting in the optimal field distribution that does not require further optimization with 2-D device simulator. A compact set of rules for the optimal design of super-junction power devices was developed. Compact analytical expressions for the optimal dopings and dimensions of the devices employed the field compensation technique are derived and validated with the results of numerical simulations on practical device structures. A comparative experimental study of several approaches used for the edge termination in SiC power diodes and transistors was performed. The investigated techniques included the mesa termination, high-k termination, JTE, and the combination of JTE and field plate edge termination. The mesa edge termination was found to be the most promising among the techniques investigated in this work. This stand-along technique satisfied all the imposed requirements for the ?ideal? edge termination: performance, reproducibility (scalability), and cost-efficiency. First of all, it resulted in the maximum one-dimensional electric field (E1DMAX) at the main device junction equal to 2.4 MV/cm or 93% of the theoretical value of critical electric field in 4H-SiC. Secondly, the measured E1DMAX was found to be independent of the voltage blocking layer parameters that demonstrate the scalability of this technique. Lastly, the implementation of this technique does not require expensive fabrication steps, and along with an efficient use of the die area results in the low cost and high yield.

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<p> Constraint Handling Rules ( CHRs) are a high level language extension to introduce user-defined constraints into a host language. Application of CHRs to reformulate functional dependencies (FDs) in the Haskell type system gives us a more precise definition of this concept, and a better understanding of FD behavior. But to preserve the confluence and termination properties of CHRs generated from FDs, some restrictions on the syntax of FDs and type class definitions have been imposed which confines the expressiveness power of Haskell type system. </p> <p> In this thesis we use this problem as a motivation to find a solution for the confluence and non-termination problem in CHRs. We build a formal framework for CHRs and model their different aspects mathematically to study how non-confluence and non-termination happens. Based on this formalization we introduce prioritized CHRs as a solution for the confluence problem. To solve the non-termination problem, we propose a method to detect non-termination in the constraint solver. We define a repetition candidate as a special type of derivation and prove that a derivation having this property can cause non-terminating rule applications in the system. Finally we define a deduction tree structure for a set of rules that can be used to find all the possible repetition candidates for a set of constraint rules. </p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)