thesis

Researchers who study Brazilian immigrants in the United States have noted a lack of camaraderie and social networks among Brazilians. Based on recent research conducted in Broward County, Florida, Manuel Vâasquez argues that while there are clear structural impediments to community formation among Brazilian immigrants, Brazilians do form social networks. This thesis examines the survey and ethnographic data from Vâasquez's sample to test a series of hypotheses about which factors impact levels of social capital and the potential for network creation and mobilization among Brazilian immigrants. Analysis of the data suggests that religious participation and levels of perceived discrimination are correlated with higher levels of social capital in this sample. For a group of immigrants characterized by a lack of collective solidarity and facing an increasingly hostile economic and social climate, religious organizations may be essential locales for achieving sufficient social capital for social, economic, and political integration.

Willard Van Orman Quine and Charles Sanders Peirce each create systems in which counterfactual conditionals can be meaningful. A counterfactual conditional is a statement whose antecedent is known to be contrary to fact. Counterfactual conditionals are important in making predictions. It would be irresponsible to implement any major change in the current state of affairs without first assessing the consequences. Quine's work seems to undermine the use of counterfactual conditionals, but I show that his system does allow for certain types of counterfactual conditionals to be meaningful. I conclude that counterfactual conditionals are more meaningful in Peirce's system because the ability to make predictions is a primary concern for him. Although Peirce's system gets more meaning out of counterfactual conditionals than Quine's system, Quine's system aids in the understanding of science.

Identifying and classifying the complemented subspaces of L p , p > 2, has provided much insight into the geometric structure of Lp . In 1981, Bourgain, Rosenthal, and Schechtman proved the existence of uncountably many isomorphically distinct complemented subspaces of L p , p > 2. In 1999, Dale Alspach introduced a systematic method of studying the complemented subspaces of Lp , p > 2. In this thesis, the theory of Lp spaces is developed with a concentration on techniques used to study the complemented subspaces. We define the Alspach norm and show that the possible complemented subspaces of Lp , p > 2, generated by two compatible partitions and weights are £2, £p, £2 EB £p, and(2.:EfJ £2)ep ' We have not discovered any previously unknown complemented subspaces of Lp , but this method has reduced the study and classification of these subspaces to a study of partitions of N.

Kinesin motors bind to microtubules and function in mitosis and intracellular transport depending on the position of the motor domain within the primary sequence (Hirokawa and Noda 2008). KIF9 has recently been shown to be involved in MTOC positioning and mitotic entry in Dictyostelium (Tikhonenko et al. 2009). To determine if a similar role for KIF9 exists in mammalian cells, we are using siRNA-mediated knockdown of KIF9 in COS-7 cells. Analysis of unsynchronized and cell-cycle synchronized cells treated with siRNA to KIF9 reveal that the transition from G2 to M phase is delayed and that mitotic progression is also affected. Additionally, our data indicates that spindle pole function during anaphase may be abnormal in cells treated with siRNA, suggesting a role for KIF9 during that stage.

Past research has found that among traumatized undergraduate women, proactive coping style was independently negatively associated with posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity. It also shows that nurses experience many work-related traumas. The present study tests the PTSD symptom level in nursing students and measured whether proactive coping and other personality variables could successfully buffer the effects of trauma. This study found a surprisingly low PTSD symptom level among the nursing students though they reported several distressing traumas. Also surprising, participants reported more distress from traumas relating to verbal abuse than to traumas relating to death and/or severe injury. Proactive coping, optimism, and self-esteem were negatively related to PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Further research will be needed to support these findings.

In his book Rendering Unto Caesar, Anthony Gill suggests that in countries with repressive authoritarian governments, religious competition plays a crucial role in determining whether the dominant religious institution will support or oppose the regime. Gill's theory, however, assumes that religious institutions are unitary rational actors. While this assumption may be reasonable in Catholic countries of Latin America where Gill based his theory on the hierarchical National Bishops' Councils, it is not applicable to Sunni Islamic countries of North Africa because of the decentralized Sunni Islamic religious structure. This finding suggests that although religious actors behave rationally in the religious market to maximize the souls for their religion, not all religious actors necessarily view the same religion and its role in the politics of the society in the same manner: in some cases, intra-religious competition is a larger factor in church-state relations than inter-religious competition.

Atrazine is a popular herbicide used in over 80 countries to inhibit the growth of broadleaf and grassy weeds. Atrazine is a common pollutant in soil and groundwater, and high concentrations of atrazine cause developmental defects in fish, amphibians, and birds. The bacteria Pseudomonas sp. strain ADP (P.ADP) uses atrazine as a nitrogen source by transforming atrazine to ammonia through a number of enzymatic reactions. In this project I measured the growth and atrazine degradation of P.ADP in media with atrazine as the sole nitrogen source. A mutant strain isolated after mutagenesis with UV light showed faster growth and reached higher densities than the control strain. A series of mating experiments were performed to determine whether the growth mutation was on the atrazine degrading plasmid or in the chromosome. The limitations and potential of P.ADP for atrazine degradation are discussed.

The determinants of attendance at Australian Football League (AFL) games have become increasingly important due to a rise in international recognition of the sport and recent structural changes in the AFL. Scheduling has received little attention in the sports economics literature as a determinant of demand. This paper estimates the effect of day-of-the-week scheduling on attendance demand using OLS regressions on panel data gathered from the 1985 to 2008 AFL seasons. One implication of this study is that attendance, and thereby revenue, could be increased by scheduling certain fixtures on specific days and times.

We discuss piezoelectric and piezoceramic material as well as ultrasound transducers. We study the analytical methods for calculating the impedance of a simple bar of piezoceramic material and a simple ultrasound transducer, and discuss the methodology behind the numerical technique (Finite Element Method) to model a complex ultrasound transducer. With a simple ultrasound transducer model created in the software program PZex, we find out how the impedance is aected when the scale of the relative permittivity is varied. We then create a working model of a complex ultrasound transducer and learn how impedance is affected by varying the size of the electrode driven and adding a propagation layer. We saw that there was not a direct relationship between varying the relative permittivity and the change in impedance as we expected. We saw that varying the size of the electrode and adding a propagation layer created expected impedances.

Sherlock Holmes has been popular in Japan since the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912), but no critic has yet connected Holmes and the protagonist of the recent graphic novel Death Note (2003-2006). While American detective fiction has defined itself somewhat in opposition to Arthur Conan Doyle, Japan embraced Sherlock Holmes and created a series of detectives modeled on the English icon. These characters live and work in Japan, but they are never more than Japanese versions of an English original. Although Japan has a long history of adaptations and translations of Doyle's writings, no Japanese character has exemplified Holmes as fully as L, the protagonist of Death Note. While L is clearly similar to Holmes, he also blends English and Japanese characteristics in a way that no Japanese detective figure before him managed to do, and thus becomes the first quintessentially Japanese Sherlock Holmes.