Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 58 pages / Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: In this thesis I examine three models of justification for the epistemic authority of the principle of contradiction. Aristotle has deemed the principle "that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect" the most certain and most prior of all principles, both in the order of nature and in the order of knowledge, and as such it is indemonstrable. The principle of contradiction is involved in any act of rational discourse, and to deny it would be to reduce ourselves to a vegetative state, being incapable of uttering anything with meaning. The way we reach the principle of contradiction is by intuitive grasping (epagoge) from the experience of the particulars, by recognizing the universals in the particulars encountered, and it is different from simple induction, which, in Mill's view, is the process through which we construct a general statement on the basis of a limited sample of observed particulars. / ABSTRACT: Hence, the principle of contradiction, being a mere generalization from experience, through induction, loses its certainty and necessity. Even though it has a high degree of confirmation from experience, it is in principle possible to come across a counter-example which would refute it. Mill's account opens the path to the modern view of the principle of contradiction. In Principia Mathematica, Russell and Whitehead contend that the principle of contradiction is still a tautology, always true, but it is derived from other propositions, set forth as axioms. Its formulation, " (p & p)" is quite different from Aristotle's, and this is why we are faced with the bizarre situation of being able to derive the law of contradiction in a formal system which could not have been built without the very principle of which the law is an expression of. / ABSTRACT: This is perhaps because the principle of contradiction, as a principle, has a much larger range of application and is consequently more fundamental than what we call today the law of contradiction, with its formal function. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Professional research project (Au.D.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 24 pages. / Includes bibliographical references. / ABSTRACT: The incidence data provided by previous investigations of peripheral vestibulopathy in patients with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) are quite variable. This variability may be explained, in part, by the otologic history of the patients included in these studies. Specifically, patients with a prior history of other otologic disease and BPPV should be more likely to present with peripheral vestibulopathy than patients without no prior history of otologic disease and BPPV. The purpose of this study was to determine the incidence of peripheral vestibulopathy in these two groups of BPPV patients. Caloric responses were analyzed for two groups of patients with posterior canal BPPV, those with a positive history of otologic disease and those with a negative history of otologic disease. Data were analyzed retrospectively for 157 BPPV patients. Patients with a positive history of otologic disease exhibited a greater incidence of peripheral vestibulopathy than the negative history group. The positive history group, on average, also exhibited a larger unilateral weakness than those patients in the negative history group. We conclude that patients with BPPV and a prior history of otologic disease are more likely to present with peripheral vestibulopathy than patients with BPPV and no history of otologic disease. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Document formatted into pages; contains 78 pages. / Title from PDF of title page. / Thesis (M.S.P.H.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Malathion is a commonly used organophosphate pesticide on field crops, fruits, nut trees, vegetables, livestock, agricultural premises, and land. The approved uses also include mosquito and medfly control. These uses can result in human skin contact. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the human skin absorption of malathion for the purpose of assessing the risks associated with aqueous solution exposures following applications. Aerial applications can result in solubilized malathion in swimming pools and other waters that may be contacted. Human volunteers were selected and exposed to aqueous solutions of malathion at various concentrations. Participants submerged their arms and hands in twenty liters of dilute malathion solution in either a stagnant or stirred environment. The "disappearance method" was applied by measuring malathion concentrations in the water before and after human subject exposure to the water for various periods of time. Malathion was measured using Gas Chromatography. No measurable skin absorption was detected in 42% of the participants. Measurable skin absorption among the remaining 58% of participants resulted in doses that were more than an order of magnitude less than the minimal dose necessary to cause a measurable change in red blood cell acetylcholinesterase (RBC-AChE). Extrapolation of these results to a mathematical model for recreational swimmers and bathers exposed to contaminated swimming pools and surface waters typically detected after bait application again are an order of magnitude below the doses needed to cause a detectable change in RBC-AChE. These data indicate that exposure to aqueous malathion following usual aerial bait applications is not appreciably absorbed, and therefore, it is not a public health hazard. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 102 pages / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Traditionally direct 3D interaction has always been limited to true 3D devices whereas 2D devices have always been used to achieve indirect 3D interaction. Till date no proper research has been done to try and extend the use of mouse to direct 3D interaction. In this research we explore the issues involved with using the mouse to accommodate the additional degrees of freedom required for 3D interaction. We put forth a unique and innovative design to achieve this objective and show that even a device as simple as the mouse can be highly effective for 3D interaction when supported by an appropriate underlying design. We also discuss in detail a software prototype "Direct3D" that we have developed based on our design and hope to take a step towards making direct 3D interaction easy, inexpensive and available to all computer users. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; / Thesis (Ed.S.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine the meaning of the Loss of Voice experience in adolescent girls using an existential-phenomenological interview approach. An open-ended interview was conducted and participants were asked to "Please think of a specific time when you had something important to say, but did not say it. In as much detail as possible, describe that experience." / Each interview was tape-recorded, transcribed by the investigator, and then independently thematized (Jones, 1984) by the author and a doctoral colleague trained in Jones' (1984) analysis method. Interrater reliability of the themes reached 96% agreement for the overall sample. Individual transcription reliabilities ranged between 85-98%. Thematic analysis revealed six superordinate themes and four subthemes. The superordinate themes were Difficult Position, Feeling, Might Explode, Not Worth It, Who Am I?, and Nevermind. / The subthemes So Much To Lose and Strong were part of superordinate theme Difficult Position. The subthemes Emotion and Physical were part of the superordinate theme Feeling. Analysis of these themes in their totality suggested a complex meaning structure of co-researchers Loss of Voice experiences. This research supports and expands the current literature on Loss of Voice by providing a more in-depth study of the meaning contained in a Loss of Voice experience. Directions for future research efforts, intervention, and prevention education are discussed. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Includes vita. / Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: The primary purpose of this study was to examine the potential joint influence of need for cognition (NC), the dispositional preference for engaging in (or avoiding) effortful cognitive processing of information, and type of smoking risk message (i.e., factual and evaluative messages similar in message content and length) on the construction of smoking-relevant risk perceptions among college smokers. A secondary purpose was to examine potential mechanisms through which changes in risk perception might occur. 227 college smokers evaluated one of three pamphlets, (1) a factual (i.e., primarily fact-based) smoking risk pamphlet, (2) an evaluative (i.e., primarily emotion based) smoking risk pamphlet, or (3) a control pamphlet unrelated to smoking. Among occasional smokers, NC interacted with type of risk message to influence perceptions of post-pamphlet risk for several of the risk perception outcomes examined. / ABSTRACT: Specifically, smokers lower in NC reported higher levels of perceived risk in response to the evaluative pamphlet whereas smokers higher in NC reported greater perceived risk in response to the factual pamphlet. The interaction did not predict risk perception outcomes among daily smokers. Significant changes in the mechanisms examined were not observed. Findings provide evidence that NC interacts with type of smoking risk message to influence changes in smoking-related health risk perceptions among occasional college smokers. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 152 pages. / Thesis (M.S.C.E.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / Monson ABSTRACT The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been engaged in a viability study for a potential underground geological repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The repository is being designed for disposal of high level nuclear waste. A reference design for the repository has focused on the use of natural and manmade barriers to assure that radionucleide release will not be significant though an extended time period on the order of 10,000 years. The reference design utilizes manmade metallic components that are expected to last for this time period. / The specified metallic materials depend on a phenomenon known as metallic passivity to achieve their expected service lives. It is difficult to demonstrate this type of service life for these metallic materials as they have only been in commercial use for less than 100 years. There have been metal artifacts and metallic materials that have survived for long time periods, however, little is known about whether these artifacts have been exposed to conditions where they have been immune to corrosion, exhibiting passive behavior, or actively corroding at an extremely low rate. A demonstration of metallic passive behavior being maintained over many thousands of years would greatly increase confidence in the expectation that passive behavior could be maintained on the repository waste package / A demonstration of metallic passive behavior being maintained over many thousands of years would greatly increase confidence in the expectation that passive behavior could be maintained on the repository waste package materials. Long-lived metallic materials, such as iron, copper, nickel, and alloys based on these metals are materials that demonstrate passive behavior and have been identified in the literature as possible analogues, potentially useful to provide additional confidence in making projections of such long-term passive behavior.1, 4, 28, 45 This paper presents a study into some aspects of the corrosion behavior of Josephinite. / Josephinite is a naturally occurring assemblage of a metallic alloy of nickel and iron in conjunction with a host rock. The typical metallic composition is approximately 70% nickel and 30% iron. The material has been reported in association with geologic features with age into the millions of years. The study used corrosion measurement techniques to assess the behavior of the mineral immersed in aqueous solutions of various pH. Corrosion measurement techniques utilized included potentiodynamic polarization, open circuit corrosion potential, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. / Other techniques utilized in the study included visual and metallographic examinations with both optical and scanning electron microscopy. Test results from this study indicate that passive behavior characterizes Josephinite specimens immersed in naturally aerated buffered aqueous solutions in a range of pH from 6 to 9. This range has been reported for the geographic area where Josephinite materials are found in southwest Oregon. This suggests that passive behavior may be responsible for the material longevity as opposed to the material being immune or undergoing slow but active corrosion. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 97 pages. / Thesis (M.S.Cp.E.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: In this thesis, a new tool, named CHESS, is designed and developed for control and data-flow graph (CDFG) extraction and the high-level synthesis of VLSI systems. The tool consists of three individual modules for:(i) CDFG extraction, (ii) scheduling and allocation of the CDFG, and (iii) binding, which are integrated to form a comprehensive high-level synthesis system. The first module for CDFG extraction includes a new algorithm in which certain compiler-level transformations are applied first, followed by a series of behavioral-preserving transformations on the given VHDL description. Experimental results indicate that the proposed conversion tool is quite accurate and fast. The CDFG is fed to the second module which schedules it for resource optimization under a given set of time constraints. The scheduling algorithm is an improvement over the Tabu Search based algorithm described in [6] in terms of execution time. / ABSTRACT: The improvement is achieved by moving the step of identifying mutually exclusive operations to the CDFG extraction phase, which, otherwise, is normally done during scheduling. The last module of the proposed tool implements a new binding algorithm based on a game-theoretic approach. The problem of binding is formulated as a non-cooperative finite game, for which a Nash-Equilibrium function is applied to achieve a power-optimized binding solution. Experimental results for several high-level synthesis benchmarks are presented which establish the efficacy of the proposed synthesis tool. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 317 pages. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: If cosmetic surgery has become the cultural lens through which Americans look at issues of beauty and ugliness (Haiken 1997), then minor bodily stigma is the personal lens through which we scrutinize our bodies and self-diagnose our own flaws in the first place (Ellis 1998). In this dissertation, I interrogated the stories of eight women who struggled with two specific minor bodily stigmas--strabismus (crossed eyes) and micromastia (small breasts). Cosmetic surgery presents a potential "cure" for both of these conditions, however, as some of my interviewees could testify, the results are unpredictable. While some women reported being grateful that they could try to resculpt their bodies with surgery, others were too afraid to try, or annoyed that the option existed in the first place. / ABSTRACT: Using a Grounded Theory approach, I combined autoethographic techniques with interactive interviewing to collect and interpret my data about how individuals cope with, and talk about, minor bodily stigma in an age of cosmetic surgery. The two flaws I chose to examine carry a great deal of cultural significance because in the West, eyes are revered as "windows to the soul," while breasts are regarded as powerful symbols of sexuality. Consequently, I looked at each woman's exposure to culture at three levels--the mass media, the local culture, and the circle of family and friends. First, I wanted to find out how these women identified themselves as flawed in the first place, and what impact their perceived stigma had upon their lives. I wanted to know if, and how, they communicated to others about their minor bodily stigmas. Next, I delineated the eight coping strategies outlined by my interviewees and examined the efficacy of each. / ABSTRACT: Finally, I looked at how each woman made and communicated her decision regarding whether or not to pursue cosmetic surgery as a solution to her minor bodily stigma. I asked those who had surgery to elaborate on their decision and its outcome. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 65 pages. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Several traffic characterization studies have been performed on wireless LANs with the main objective of realizing good and accurate models of the errors in the wireless channel. These models have been extended to model the effect of errors on higher layer protocols, mainly at the data link layer. However, no prior work has been done to study the application level characteristics of MPEG-4 video traffic over 802.11b wireless networks. In this thesis a traffic characterization study of MPEG-4 video traffic over IEEE 802.11b wireless LANs with the main goal of building a tool for software testing is performed. Using two freely available tools to send and receive real-time streams and collect and analyze traces, MPEG-4 encoded video frames are sent over a 11 Mbps, 802.11b wireless LAN to characterize the errors in the channel and the effect of those errors on the quality of the movie. The results of this traffic characterization were modeled using ARTA (Auto Regressive-To-Anything) software. These modeled characteristics were then used to build a tool that generates synthetic traffic emulating real wireless network scenario. The tool emulates the error length and error free length characteristics of the wireless network for the MPEG-4 video traffic using the corresponding modeled characteristics generated by ARTA. The tool can be used by software developers to test their MPEG-4 streaming media applications without the need of the real infrastructure. The tool can also be trained and extended to support testing of any streaming media applications. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.