Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science

Broomrapes, <i>Orobanche</i> spp., are holoparasites that affect the growth of a variety of broadleaf crops. One of the distinct characteristics of the family Orobanchaceae is the lack of chlorophyll, and hence inability to synthesize their own food. Broomrapes subsist on the roots of the host plant from which they derive the carbon, water, and nutrients needed for further growth. Parasitism as such leads to yield reductions, and in case of heavy infestations, complet...

Geography

Data from a Coarse Acquisition (C/A) Global Positing System(GPS) map-grade receiver were evaluated to assess theaccuracy of differentially corrected points. Many studieshave focused on the accuracy of GPS units under ideal datacollection conditions. Ideal conditions allow thecollection of data with four satellites (3D mode), yet fielddata conditions are often less than ideal. Four satellitesmay not always be in view because of mountainous topography,heavy forest cover, or other obstructions whic...

Teaching and Learning

The overall effectiveness of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) for higher order learning in technical education and training was determined through the meta-analysis approach. Studies that had investigated the effectiveness of CAI as compared to traditional instruction were selected from major databases in the civilian and military sectors. The selection criteria were: (a) instruction was in the area of technical education and training, (b) a comparison was made between a group of students tha...

Forest Products

The objectives of this research were twofold: a) to define the relationship between tooth withdrawal and specific gravity for southern pine lumber and four different plate-to-wood load orientations, and b) to demonstrate how these relationships could be applied to new lumber grades to predict tooth withdrawal performance so that additional testing would not be necessary. The four orientations investigated were: a.)LRAA - plate axis parallel to load and wood grain parallel to load. b.) LREA - pla...

Forestry

Physiological process models, productivity studies, andwildlife abundance studies all require accuraterepresentations of tree crowns. In the past, geometricshapes or flexible mathematical equations approximatinggeometric shapes were used to represent crown profiles.Crown profile of loblolly pine (<I>Pinus taeda</I> L.) wasdescribed using single-regressor, nonparametric regressionanalysis in an effort to improve crown representations.The resulting profiles were compare...

Materials Science and Engineering

MATERIALS FOR HIGH TEMPERATURE THIN FILMTHERMOCOUPLE APPLICATIONSRamakrishna Vedula(ABSTRACT)The thermocouple systems used for the measurement of surface temperature in high temperature applications such as advanced aerospace propulsion systems and diesel engine systems are expected to perform in rapidly fluctuating and extremely high heat fluxes corresponding to high temperatures (in excess of 1400 K) and high speed flows. Traditionally, Pt/Pt-Rh based thin film thermocouples have been used for...

Physics

Phase segregated states in a simple three-state stochastic lattice gasare investigated. A two dimensional finite lattice with periodic boundaryconditions is filled with one hole and two oppositely "charged" speciesof particles, subject to an excluded volume constraint. Starting from acompletely disordered initial configuration, a sufficiently large external"electric" field <I>E</I> induces the phase segregation, by separatingthe charges into two st...

Wood Science and Forest Products

The self-assembly blends of cellulose propionate (CP) and fluorine (F)-containing cellulose derivatives was examined on a model system of solvent cast films. The F-containing derivatives were either high molecular weight statistical cellulose esters with a number of F-containing substituent evenly distributed along the backbone (F-esters), or F-terminated CP-segments with exactly one F-containing endgroup. The F-esters were synthesized in a homogeneous phase and identified by 19F-NMR. Thermal an...

Biology

A biosystematic study of the rare plant<i>Paronychia virginica</i> Sprengel (Caryophyllaceae)employing morphometric and allozyme analyses<BR><BR>Wendy L. Rohrer<BR><BR>(ABSTRACT)<BR><BR><P>Paronychia virginica Spreng. (Caryophyllaceae) is a perennial evergreen herb of exposed,relatively xeric habitats. Approximately 10 mid-Appalachian populations remain inVirginia, West V...

Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences

Cotton (<i>Gossypium hirsutum</i> L.) is a low residue crop, that may not provide sufficient surface residue to reduce erosion and protect the soil. A winter annual cover crop could alleviate erosion between cotton crops. Field experiments were conducted to evaluate selected winter annual cover crops for biomass production, ground cover, and N assimilation. The cover crop treatments were monitored under no-till and conventional tillage systems for the effects on soil ...

Geological Sciences

Analyses of fluid inclusions and microstructures within the Papoose Flat pluton were used to investigate the chemistry and temperatures of fluids circulating with the pluton during cooling. Based on previous microstructural analyses, the interior of this late Cretaceous granitic to granodioritic pluton has been divided into three domains: i) a central core characterized by magmatic microstructures, ii) a middle domain of high temperature (>500

Chemistry

A successful supercritical fluid extraction method includesremoval of the analyte from the matrix into the bulk fluidas well as trapping or concentration of the analyte prior toanalysis. In the first phase of this research, the trappingcapacities of three solid-phase traps (glass beads,50/50 (w/w) glass beads/octadecylsilica), 50/50 (w/w)Porapak Q®/glass beads) were determined as a function oftrap composition for a mixture of components varying inpolarity and volatility. The Porapak Q&a...

Chemistry

<p>Polymer additives exemplify many classes of compounds which possess a wide variety of chemical (i.e., phenols, amides, esters) and physical (i.e., volatility, solubility) properties. They are incorporated into polyolefins and other such polymeric materials for a number reasons: (a) to prevent degradation by ultraviolet light, heat, and oxygen; (b) to aid in the processing of the polymer; and (c) to modify the physical properties of the polymer. Since the purity and amount of add...

Accounting

This dissertation is based on the Kida-Smith (1995) model of"The encoding and retrievability of numerical data." It isconcerned with the variable conditions under which a positiveaffective response (i.e., a decision or opinion that resultsin a positive valence) on previously viewed accountinginformation may and may not influence current decision-making.An affective response to accounting numbers may adverselyinfluence decisions made based on those numbers. Priorresearch has found that ...

Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences

Two soils from the Fernow Experimental Forest near Parsons, West Virginia were characterized and evaluated in terms of their susceptibility to enhanced soil acidification via acidic atmospheric inputs. After initial physical, chemical, and mineralogical characterization, the soils were analyzed for their ability to adsorb and retain sulfate (SO42-) through a series of batch adsorption and desorption experiments. Reconstructed soil profiles were then subjected to water leaching as the preliminary...

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The BETTER water quality model, created by TVA, was used to model the temperature and dissolved oxygen (DO) in Spring Hollow Reservoir. The water balance consisted of pump discharge from the Roanoke River, runoff, releases at the dam, leakage, and storage. The geometry of the reservoir was represented by four columns and a variable number of five-foot layers. Through a sensitivity analysis, the parameters that influenced temperature and DO the most were determined. Temperature was then calibrate...

Teaching and Learning

Community college transfer students may have to repeat one or more courses at the four-year institution or may have to take more than the required number of courses to obtain a baccalaureate degree. This uncertainty about the transfer of credits and the extra cost in higher education that goes along with it, has come about mainly due to the lack of a working definition for college-level course work.<p>Community colleges need to insure that every course designated as a transfer cour...

Philosophy

Situated Cognition, Dynamicism, and Explanation in Cognitive Science<BR><BR><BR>Christopher A. Greenlee<BR><BR><BR>(ABSTRACT)<BR><BR><BR>The majority of cognitive scientists today view the mind as a computer, instantiating some function mapping the inputs it gets from the environment to the gross behaviors of the organism. As a result, the emphasis in most ongoing researc...

Biology

Bacillus popilliae and B. lentimorbus, causative agents of milky disease in Japanese beetles and related scarab larvae, have been differentiated based upon a small number of phenotypic characteristics, but they have not previously been examined at the molecular level. Thirty-four isolates of these bacteria were examined for DNA similarity. Three distinct but related similarity groups were identified; the first contained strains of B. popilliae, the second contained strains of B. lentimorbus, and...

Biology

In addition to the antigen-specific receptors, the T and B cells also express a variety of adhesion molecules, which are known to participate in cell-cell interaction, migration, homing and signal transduction. CD44 is a widely distributed cell surface glycoprotein whose principal ligand has been identified as hyaluronic acid (HA), a major component of the extracellular matrix. In the current study, we investigated whether HA or mAbs against CD44 would induce a proliferative response in mouse ly...

Psychology

Throughout the social sciences, tests have been used for two primary - and different - purposes: a) to estimate where an examinee is located on an ability/trait continuum (e.g., intelligence tests), or b) to classify an examinee as either above or below a particular point on the ability continuum (e.g., criterion-referenced tests). From a psychometric perspective, the scoring procedure of the test should reflect the purpose for which the test is being used. From a practical perspective, the admi...

Chemistry

The flavin-containing monoamine oxidases (MAO) A and Bcatalyze the oxidative deamination of primary and secondaryamines. The overall process involves a two electronoxidation of the amine to the iminium with concomitantreduction of the flavin. Based on extensive studies with avariety of chemical probes, Silverman and colleagues haveproposed a catalytic pathway for the processing of aminesubstrates and inactivators by MAO-B that is initiated by asingle electron ...

Electrical Engineering

This thesis investigates and develops a direct method for transientstability analysis using the energy approach [1] and the Phasor MeasurementUnits (PMUs). The originality of this new method results from a combinationof a prediction of the post-fault trajectory based on the PMUs and theTransient Energy Function of a multimachine system. Thanks to the PMUs, theweakness of the direct methods, which is the over-simplification of thegenerator model, is overcome. This new method consists of fitting a...

Teaching and Learning

AbstractThe relationship between teachers participation in 4MAT learning styletraining and their perception of teacher efficacy was investigated three ways. Teachers who participated in 4MAT Fundamentals training were surveyed, observed, and interviewed. The Gusky and Passaro (1994) teacher efficacy scale was given to 120, K-12 teachers at 4MAT training sites. The survey was administered three times: before the workshop, immediately after the workshop and one month after the teachers had returne...

Family and Child Development

Both Judaism and feminism encompass a wide range of practices and beliefs. Both are often misunderstood in popular media and educational settings. Outcomes of these misrepresentations can vary from social slights to dangerous anti-semitic and sexist behaviors, all of which have potential of interfering with development among Jewish and feminist people.Because religion, culture, and ideology contribute to adult identity in important ways, and because Judaism and feminism are poorly understood wit...

Philosophy

In a 1982 paper, Gould and Vrba argue that a conflation of the two components of adaptation of a feature, historical development of the feature and present utility, has caused evolutionists to overlook a missing term in the science of form, which they call exaptation . In the present project, I show that evolutionary biology still contains a confusion in the use of adaptation due to an inappropriate perception of the interaction between the two components of adaptation. Because of the confusion,...

Chemistry

Laser-Ionization Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (LI-TOF-MS) is a sophisticated tool for the molecular-weight determination and structural characterization of a variety of molecules. Advances in instrumentation and ionization methods have recently expanded its role in the analysis of high-mass analytes. Large multimetallic complexes, which are efficient solar-energy converters, rely heavily on their chemical structure for optimum operation. Molecular mass determinations of these multimetallic c...

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

Factors Influencing The Tasks Performed By ParaprofessionalsIn Elementary Inclusive ClassroomsbyMargaret M. CramerDr. Harold McGrady and Dr. Christina M. Dawson, Co-ChairsAdministration and Supervision of Special Education(Abstract)Although there has been a phenomenal growth in theutilization of paraprofessionals in inclusive classrooms inrecent years, few researchers have addressed key issuessurrounding role changes. A review of the literatureindicated a need for additional research in the area...

EDRE

ESSENTIAL STANDARDS FOR INSTITUTIONAL SELF-EVALUATION OFTHE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACTbyVirginia J. ReillyCommittee Co-Chairs: Marilyn Lichtman and Jimmie FortuneEducational Research and Evaluation(Abstract)The purpose of this study was to identify standards related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that are desirable for colleges conducting a self-study regarding program accessibility. A Delphi technique was used to determine standards and reach agreement among a panel of profes...

Philosophy

Kant s Critical Attitude TowardsThe Only Possible ArgumentbyMark FisherChair: Eric WatkinsPhilosophy(Abstract)A great deal of attention has been paid to Kant s claim in the Critique of Pure Reason that all theoretical attempts to demonstrate the existence of God must necessarilly end in failure. What has received considerably less attention is the fact that throughout his pre-Critical period, i.e., the period prior to the 1781 publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant develops a unique ar...

Public Administration/Public Affairs

The Chaos of Convergence: A Study of Decay, Change, and Transformation Within the Telephone Policy Subsystem of the United States<p>Robert C. Ward<p>This dissertation was developed as two distinct themes within one final study. The first theme is located within Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. These two chapters examine the nature of both policy analysis and organizational theory in terms of their development within the American versions of Public Administration and Political...

Sociology

This study addresses the extent to which feminist jurisprudence literature has developed the potential to initiate a legal paradigm shift leading to legal and consequent social change that would alleviate gender inequality. Drawing upon Kuhn s (1970) and Stacey and Thorne s (1985) arguments, I theorized that for a paradigm shift centered upon women and women s experiences to occur, feminist jurisprudence, particularly second- and third-phase feminist jurisprudence, needs to be incorporated into,...

Agricultural and Applied Economics

Since Senegal s independence in 1960, groundnuts (peanuts) have been the dominant agricultural export crop. Currently, groundnut output levels are on the decline and no clear reason for the downward trend has been found. Privatization efforts are underway as the government explores ways to breathe some life into the ailing sector, particularly as it relates to groundnut production. The 50 percent currency devaluation of 1994 constituted a major exogenous shock to the sector.Much research has bee...

Accounting

<p>The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate auditors judgments and decisions in the presence of an explicitly stated client preference. This investigation considers two factors. First, the temporal placement (i.e., timing) of the client preference is varied to allow for an examination of differential effects associated with the receipt of an early client preference and a late client preference. Second, client trustworthiness is varied so that participants may have a basis...

Teaching and Learning

<P>Welfare Reform: Employers Perceptionsof Factors Associated with Virginia s Initiative forEmployment Not WelfarebyBernice B. WilsonDaisy L. Stewart, ChairVocational and Technical Education(ABSTRACT)</P><P>Welfare reform has been an issue in America for many years. The need to makepositive changes to the welfare system escalated to the point that federal legislationwas passed in 1996. This legislation mandated that each state establish welfare-to-workpr...

Human Resources and Education

The Canfield Instructional Styles Inventory and theCanfield Learning Styles Inventory were used to identifythe teaching styles of business instructors and thelearning styles of their students. The study purposesincluded determining if a match existed between students learning styles and instructors teaching styles anddetermining if relationships existed between style matchand student success as indicated by course grades andfinal exam scores and between style match and studentevaluations of inst...

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

The effect of a principal s leadership on school climate and instructional organization seems apparent to parents and teachers. However, there is little evidence that a principal s leadership has a direct measurable effect on student achievement. Maehr s (1990) causal model, that ties school culture to student motivation and student motivation to student achievement, and Heck s (1990) structural equation model, that relates instructional leadership to student achievement, were the basis for posi...

Electrical Engineering

The problem of rough surface scattering and propagation over rough terrain inducting environments has been receiving considerable attention in the literature. Onepopular method of modeling this problem is the parabolic wave equation (PWE) method.In this method, the Helmholtz wave equation is replaced by a PWE under the assumptionof predominant forward propagation and scattering. The resulting PWE subjected to theappropriate boundary condition(s) is then solved, given an initial field distributio...

Teaching and Learning

The Effects of Speech Compression on Recall in a Multimedia EnvironmentMarcelite E. Dingle Johnson(ABSTRACT)Typically, instructional designers introduce audio in multimedia environments when a) it appears to be necessary -- for example, to provide feedback; or b) accessibility, availability, and/or hardware issues are insignificant -- in other words, It s there -- -- It sounds good -- It should work -- Why not use it? However, rarely is a decision to use audio based upon a thorough understanding...

Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences

The design of wetlands to replace those lost to development requires quantitative understanding of the wetland water budget in order to estimate the amount of water available to the wetland over time. Many methods exist to estimate each component of the wetland water budget. In this study, monthly values of the water budget components namely, precipitation, runoff, evapotranspiration, and groundwater seepage were calculated using a water budget model and compared to on-site field measurements fo...

Biology

Evaluation of a Monoclonal-based EIA for the Detection of Giardia lamblia and the Identification of the AntigenJames Hunter Boone(STATEMENT OF THE OBJECTIVES)<p>I. A number of commercial enzyme immunoassay (EIA) tests are available for the diagnosis of giardiasis. In a time of rising health-care costs, there is a need for diagnostic tests that are rapid, specific, sensitive and inexpensive. In the first phase of this study, I developed a monoclonal-based EIA, the GIARDIA TEST, with...

Philosophy

Both intensional and extensional explanations of linguistic meaning involve notions -- linguistic roles and referential relations, respectively -- which are not perspicuous and seem to evade satisfactory explanations themselves. Following Sellars, I make a move away from semantic explanation of the designation relation and of linguistic roles toward an explanation which relates to the use of linguistic and perceptual signs (i.e., pragmatics). In doing so, concerns are raised that seem to be more...

Adult and Continuing Education

Researchers know much about the use of contract (or adjunct) instructor faculty inacademe, but little about contract instructors in civilian federal training agencies. No one has determined the effective administrative support of instructional delivery or the professional development needs of these federal agency contractors.The National Fire Academy s mission is to promote the professional development of those fire personnel engaged in fire suppression, fire prevention, and allied functions. Ea...

Counselor Education

<p>Cooperative education research suggests that co-op participation results in enhanced career maturity, yet little is known about the vocational behavior constructs that may produce these results. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between co-op work experience and career decision-making self-efficacy, an individual s confidence to successfully perform various career decision-making tasks. Another purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that only th...

Housing, Interior Design, and Resource Management

Housing researchers are aware of the lower homeownershiprates and other housing problems of single women but thereis very little research focusing on single womenhomeowners or the characteristics of the housing they buy.Also, since a wide body of research can be found thatexamines determinants of homeownership for variouspopulation groups, the importance of this study was in itsfocus on single women homeowners and the characteristics oftheir housing rather than the determinants of ownership fort...

Chemistry

Bioassay directed fractionation of the methyl ethyl ketone extract of Chiloscyphus rivularis yielded eight sesquiterpenoids, and detailed spectroscopic interpretation led to the assignment of their structures as 12-hydroxychiloscyphone, chiloscypha-2,7-dione, 12-hydroxychiloscypha-2,7-dione, chiloscypha-2,7,9-trione, rivulalactone, 4-hydroxy oppositant-7-one, chiloscyphone, and intermedeol. The structure and stereochemistry of rivulalactone, a novel trinorsesquiterpenoid, was confirmed by its sy...

Animal Science (Dairy)

ABSTRACT<BR><B>Activity and mRNA abundance of enzymes for fatty acid synthesis and desaturation in mammary cell cultures</B><BR><BR><B>Geetha C. Jayan, </B><A HREF = "mailto: gjayan@vt.edu"> gjayan@vt.edu</A><BR>Department of Dairy ScienceVirginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA<BR><BR><B>Dr. Joseph H. Herb...

Psychology

This research program investigated the reasonablepossibility that differential information processingstrategies can be manifestations of racist prejudgments.Our research design applies a technique often used insocial cognition studies. This technique capturesevidence of a rather habit-driven (though notinstantaneous) decision made by subjects rapidly presentedwith information about (typically fictional) characters.These target characters are associated (in the context ofthe experiment) with some...

Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences

Little research has been done in the humid mid-Atlantic region to develop full-season N fertilizer recommendations for dryland no-tillage grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) production. The objectives of this study were: (i) to determine the optimum rate of band-placed starter N fertilizer needed in combination with side-dress N applications to achieve economic grain yields, (ii) to investigate if pre-plant broadcast N applications are as efficient as band-placed plus side-dress N applicat...

Architecture

Everything is related. Some of the relations we see, some of them we dont. Architecture is a synthesis of elements, relating to itself and to the outside. A challenge in this project lies in the recognition of the relationships which occur within the context and their translation into a form of architecture. I would like to see what we can do with architecture; connection, enclosure, depth of the space...Architecture can be considered as relations in which we live.