The education of students with special needs is an area which continues to evolve as teachers and administrators strive to provide the most appropriate learning environment for children. A paucity of information exists regarding the needs of female students in special education. This study compared female students with special needs at two…

This qualitative research study used narrative inquiry to explore the assistant principal experiences that contribute to transformational leadership practices in new principals. Eight administrators, who were in their first or second year as a principal, participated in the study. The findings suggested that principals play an important role in…

The objective of this research was to determine areas of improvement to bacon production. The first trial was conducted to determine differences in belly and bacon quality traits in pigs fed ractopamine (RAC) for various durations during finishing. A 2x3x2 factorial arrangement was used with barrows and gilts, fed RAC levels of 0.0, 5.0, or 7.4…

Recent laboratory and field experiments have shown the inability of existing oscillatory flow ripple predictors to accurately predict both ripple size and planform geometry. However, at this time, only partial adaptations of these predictors have been proposed in the literature to account for the observed discrepancies with experimental data…

This dissertation is situated in the current scholarly reflection on the problems of Chinese modernity, especially its "initial phase," the Chinese Enlightenment (1910s-1920s). It examines the thought of the highly controversial thinker and writer Zhou Zuoren (1885-1967), whose work had been profoundly influential during the Enlightenment, but was…

The purpose of this thesis is to introduce a new idea: using biological mimics in the detection of toxic compounds. Biological mimics imitate the active site of a given enzyme or have catalytic chemistry similar to enzymes and can be used in place of biological molecules to provide longer stability and simpler operation. In the following text the…

RNA hypermodifications near the anticodon of tRNA are fundamental for the efficiency and fidelity of protein synthesis. Dimethylallyltransferase (DMATase) catalyzes transfer of a dimethylallyl moiety from dimethylallyl pyrophosphate to N6 of A37 in certain tRNAs. We first determined the crystal structures of "Pseudomonas aeruginosa" DMATase.…

The Divertor Erosion and Vapor Shielding Experiment (DEVEX) has been constructed in the Center for Plasma-Material Interactions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It consists of a conical theta-pinch connected to a 60 kV, 36 [mu]F capacitor bank which is switched with a rise time of 3.5 [mu]s. This results in a peak current of 300…

Lantibiotics are bacterial-derived polycyclic antimicrobial peptides. They are genetically encoded and ribosomally synthesized as precursor peptides containing a structural region that undergoes post-translational modification and a leader sequence that is not modified. Specific serine and threonine residues in the pre-lantibiotic structural…

This project examines the impact that internet-based distribution technologies, in particular webcasting and podcasting, are having on the community radio sector in the United States. Through interviews with sector participants, the impact of this changing technological environment on the role of community radio is identified. Internet-based…

This research sterns from twelve months of ethnographic research with Haitian migrant women who reside in "Batey Sol", a former sugar-company labor camp located along the "Linea Noroeste" (northwest line) linking the Dominican Rebulic's border town of Dajabon with the urban center of Santiago. The multi-sited study considers the larger network of…

Understanding the functioning of the brain is hindered by a lack of knowledge of the full complement of neurotransmitters and neuromodulatory compounds. Single cell measurements aid in the discovery of neurotransmitters used by small subsets of neurons that would be diluted below detection limits or masked by ubiquitous compounds when working with…

This dissertation studies information extraction (IE), the problem of extracting structured information from unstructured data. Example IE tasks include extracting person names from news articles, product information from e-commerce Web pages, street addresses from emails, and names of emerging music bands from blogs. IE is all increasingly…

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine long term changes in the overnight backcountry hiker population at Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) between 1984 and 2004. Longitudinal studies of visitor behavior in wildland recreation settings have been relatively rare but offer great potential for the improvement of management, clarification of…

Salmon are rich sources of omega-3 fatty acids. These are important in the human diet and especially for young children in the first two years of life. Wild Alaskan salmon was utilized in a novel way by development and investigation of basic baby food product formulations from sockeye and pink salmon. Thus, physical and sensory properties of baby…