In this study, relationships between social networks and personality in a small liberal arts college were examined. Participants were asked to list members of their social networks, the activities in which they participated, and to complete the Sentence Completion Test (SCT), and the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). On the CPI, individuals with high scores on measures related to extraversion (particularaly the CPI Sociability scale) will have a greater network size and report a larger number of activities. In additon, the extent to which participants formed relationships with individuals with similar levels of ego development, and similar personality profiles, that is, the degree of homophily in relationships were evaluated. Finally, it was examined whether this homophily increased over time, that is, whether students increasingly gravitated towards others with similar personalities during the college years.

From the time of Peter the Great the dacha has fulfilled various roles in the environs of Russia's cities : in the 18th century it was the palatial mansions of the aristocratic elite outside of St. Petersburgand Moscow ; in the 19th century the dacha became a summer rental property for urbanites to escape the cramped and dirty cities ; in the Soviet dominated 20th century the dacha was organized into garden plot communities for subsistence farming. However, the privatization of land following the collapse of the Soviet Union signaled a shift in the dacha's existence. Lamp-lined streets and perfectly pruned lawns began to fill the territory beyond the belt of gray, generic apartment structures where the dacha was once king. In light of the dacha's decline, this thesis explores the origins and development of suburbanization in post-Soviet Russia and discusses its shared and dissenting characteristics with that of the West.

Druid Hills is a historic suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, that was initially designed by landscape architech Frederick Law Olmsted in 1893. As one of Atlanta's first suburbs, Druid Hills has faced the consequences of sprawl, particularly in the 1980s when the Georgia Department of Transportation proposed construction of the Presidential Parkway, an expressway that would have cut through the middle of the neighborhood. In opposition to the expressway, members of the surrounding communities organized Citizens Against Unnecessary Thoroughfares In Older Neighborhoods (CAUTION). The strategic rhetoric of CAUTION's campaign emphasized Druid Hills' significance as "Olmsted's Vision of Atlanta," yet their use of this iconic figure did not capture the complete cultural landscape of Druid Hills. Although Olmsted designed the initial layout of the suburb, the suburb's form departed from his design during its development. I argue that preserving the community requires a comprehensive portrait of its varied history.

Dynactin is a multisubunit protein complex that functions as a processivity cofactor to cytoplasmic dynein, assisting in vesicle transport and cell division. Independent of dynein,dynactin also serves to anchor microtubules to the centrosome. The functions of the majority of dynactin's subunits have been described to a certain degree ; however, the p24 subunit remains largely uncharacterized. Among the few things that are known about p24 are that it has a predicted molecular weight of about 20,822 Da, forms an a-helix, and binds directly to the p150[Glued] subunit. In order to explore its function further, we have performed shRNA-mediated knockdown, and fluorescent microscopy. We observe that microtubule disorganization is amplified due to the loss of p24. Our findings support the model that p24 serves as reinforcement to stabilize p150[Glued] at the centrosome.

Throughout the twentieth century, the Seminole Tribe of Florida has experienced unprecedented changes to their culture, independence, and economic position. They began the century as subsistence based people with few rights to the land, and they ended the century with substantial political power and economically prosperous enterprises while maintaining their tribal status and identity as Seminoles. In the twentieth century, the Seminoles confirmed their historical role from the nineteenth century as having never been defeated, but rather than achieving this image through war acts, as they did in the nineteenth century, they created a new role as being culturally and economically indomitable. This aspect of Seminole history has been largely ignored in the narrative of Florida's history.

Famous mathematician Paul Erdèos conjectured the existence of infinite sequences of symbols where no two adjacent subsequences are permutations of one another. It can easily be checked that no such sequence can be constructed using only three symbols, but as few as four symbols are sufficient. Here, we expand this concept to include sequences that may contain 'do not know'' characters, called holes. These holes make the undesired subsequences more common. We explore both finite and infinite sequences. For infinite sequences, we use iterating morphisms to construct the non-repetitive sequences with either a finite number of holes or infinitely many holes. We also discuss the problem of using the minimum number of different symbols.

Anecdotal accounts of manatees congregating in the Harbor Branch channel have been reported by staff scientists at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute for over three decades. The main goals of this study were to identify individual manatees using photo-identification techniques and collect baseline data on manatee abundance and environmental parameters. During the primary study period (summer 2009), I identified 31 distinct manatees at Harbor Branch. Four manatees were matched with the statewide Manatee Individual Photo-identification System database. I observed the highest abundance of manatees in the small boats marina, suggesting that this location is preferential manatee habitat. Water temperature at the two deepest depths measured (0.6 m and 1.50 m) were the only two significantly different environmental parameters influencing the number of manatees present. The results of this study provide evidence for the Harbor Branch channel as an important manatee habitat.

Entrepreneurship occupies a curious place in economic theory. On one hand, the importance of entrepreneurship is widely recognized, particularly as it pertains to economic growth. However, the entrepreneur lacks a broadly accepted economic theory, and suffers from a dearth of literature on the subject. We believe that this is due to economics' heavy reliance on linear mathematical theory. In this thesis, we use nonlinear mathematics to construct a model of the entrepreneur that captures the sudden destabilization of a steady state, the unpredictability of a creative action, the possibility of entrepreneurial failure, and sensitivity to small changes in environment.

PTFE (Teflon) tape has been reported as an alternative to liquid perfluoroalkanes in fluorous phase-vanishing (PV) reactions. Previous research on PV-PTFE reactions found that PTFE tape has unique characteristics compared to liquid flourous phase screens, including reagent permeabilities that are altered by exposure to certain organic solvents. This study investigates these characteristics by observing the effects of solvent adsorption on the diffusion of bromine and dimethyl phthalate. The directionality of solute diffusion in PV-PTFE chemiluminescence was also studied. Literature on Teflon films and on PV reactions is utilized to explain how the structural and chemical features of PTFE tape influence its permeability, and how solvents alter this permeability. We use structural arguments to explain why chemically-identical bulk PTFE behaves differently from PTFE tape. By better understanding how PTFE tape functions in PV reactions, the method may be improved and its use expanded.

One mechanism allowing ant species to successfully invade new areas at a rapid pace is unicoloniality, the formation of large networks connecting colonies over hundreds or even thousands of kilometers. These large networks of colonies, or "supercolonies" lack any form of intraspecific aggression, thus fighting between them is absent. I used aggression assays to study unicoloniality between colonies of the invasive difficult ant, Technomyrmex difficilis on the Florida Atlantic University Wilkes Honors College campus and a household located ~32 km northwest from the college. I found that for all trial combinations, no aggression took place among the ants. From these results, I conclude that T. difficilis does display unicoloniality in South Florida.