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In light of its (post)colonial history and unique geographical features, the Caribbean is primed for a multidisciplinary approach that considers ecology alongside economics, and culture alongside history and politics. This dissertation thus argues that both the climate crisis and the Caribbean demand an intersectional approach to gain a deeper understanding of our fraught relationship with the environment and its flora and fauna. In the process, I develop the neologism “eco-epistemology” as a term that insists on the fundamental linkage between knowledge and environment. Moreover, the concept helps elaborate the underpinnings of a Caribbean literary corpus that frequently foregrounds other-than-human nature as an essential component of understanding a self often envisioned as multiple and mosaic. The Caribbean eco-epistemology I tease out from a reading of diverse writers and theorists recognizes that understanding the human and other-than-human relation also means understanding how capital and empire have conceived it and transformed it, with accumulation and exploitation envisioned as inexhaustible processes. As such, the postcolonial-ecocritical (PCE) approach is well-positioned to approach Caribbean literature and theory and sketch the eco-epistemology underpinning its various texts. Via what might be termed the “tropical sublime” of the writers and artists that I examine, Caribbean literature and theory articulates a less hierarchical and anthropocentric vision of the world. Challenging the supposed singularity of Western civilization are texts as dense and intransigent as the thickest mangrove forests—in their rigorous interrogation of identity, they privilege interconnectedness as the primary means of understanding humanity and its relation to other-than-human nature. Rather than taking up an exceptional position somehow outside of nature, and/or at the unequivocal summit of a “great chain of being,” Caribbean writers frequently locate the human within nature

Due to advancements in supercomputing and algorithms for finite element analysis, today's computer simulation models often contain complex calculations that can result in a wealth of knowledge. Gaussian processes (GPs) are highly desirable models for computer experiments for their predictive accuracy and uncertainty quantification. This dissertation addresses GP modeling when data abounds as well as GP adaptive design when simulator expense severely limits the amount of collected data. For data-rich problems, I introduce a localized sparse covariance GP that preserves the flexibility and predictive accuracy of a GP's predictive surface while saving computational time. This locally induced Gaussian process (LIGP) incorporates latent design points, inducing points, with a local Gaussian process built from a subset of the data. Various methods are introduced for the design of the inducing points. LIGP is then extended to adapt to stochastic data with replicates, estimating noise while relying upon the unique design locations for computation. I also address the goal of identifying a contour when data collection resources are limited through entropy-based adaptive design. Unlike existing methods, the entropy-based contour locator (ECL) adaptive design promotes exploration in the design space, performing well in higher dimensions and when the contour corresponds to a high/low quantile. ECL adaptive design can join with importance sampling for the purpose of reducing uncertainty in reliability estimation.

This essay explores the aesthetic and theoretical implications of canonical urban writing in French literature from roughly 1830 to 1930. Beginning with Balzac and the popular works of his time such as the tableau, I trace the rise of the flâneur as the quintessential embodiment of new modes of reading and writing the city. I then turn to Baudelaire’s poetry and aesthetic theory, which reveals the conception of the city as materials awaiting metamorphosis through symbolism and allegory. In the fiction of Zola, I analyze the eponymous grand magasin of Au Bonheur des Dames as a paradigmatic site of phantasmagoria that produces the counter-force of the conte within Zola’s realist representation. I then read two essential Surrealist novels as reflective of these issues of representation that continued to vex the twentieth century. The Surrealist appropriation of flânerie, their preoccupation with chance and with le merveilleux, their insistence upon the visual and its power of enchantment—these concerns ground them firmly within the French literary tradition at the same time as they seek to break with it. In these works, are utopian spaces realized, or do such efforts end in disenchantment? does the flâneur reach new heights in literature or simply reenact ad infinitum Icarus’s ill-fated flight? With such questions in mind, I explore the ambivalence that prevailed in the urban literary aesthetics of nineteenth-century writers, and which continued well into the twentieth century through the works of the Surrealists and the criticism of Walter Benjamin.

Foodborne bacterial pathogens like Salmonella genera remain of interest to regulatory agencieslike the FDA and CDC. As a foodborne pathogen, capable of causing serious illness in bothhuman and non-human animals, the CDC has listed Salmonella spp. as potential bioterrorismagents. From a forensic perspective, accurate and rapid identification of Salmonella subspecies isessential for successful investigation of foodborne outbreaks or suspected biocrimes. Massivelyparallel sequencing (MPS) provides investigators with a streamlined, cost-effective method torapidly sequence the whole bacterial genome. To study the genetic variation of naturallyoccurring Salmonella spp., environmental samples were collected from areas around freshwaterlakes, rivers and ponds in the Piedmont and mountains of western North Carolina. NineteenSalmonella isolates were sequenced using the Illumina MiSeq producing high quality sequencedata that were submitted to NCBI in an effort to build a comprehensive database containingwhole genome sequences of bacterial pathogens. Distance–based phylogenetic trees were createdusing the sequence information. This method was shown to be susceptible to the quality of thegiven sequence data. kSNP, a SNP analysis program to create phylogenetic trees, was shown toproduce trees of similar quality without the influences of sequence quality as found in distance-based trees. Ultimately, the databases generated from MPS data can serve as a repository of phylogenetic information and population data to most effectively answer questions germane tobacterial forensics, such as identifying the source of a foodborne outbreak

A quantitative experimental study of the dipole Tonks-Dattner resonance oscillations of a cylindrical plasma column has been made for neon, argon and xenon plasma columns. Discharges were operated in the range of a few mTorr and resonances have been observed in the UHF and microwave frequency range. The resonances have been studied using strip-line and waveguide techniques and diagnostic studies have been made employing Langmuir probes and microwave cavity methods. For xenon, good agreement has been found with the theory of Parker, Nickel and Gould but for neon and argon definite discrepancies exist. This departure has been attributed to ion mean free paths which are not long compared to the tube radius. The effect of ion collisions seems to be to raise the electron density near the wall of the tube causing the resonances to occur at higher frequencies than are predicted by theory for the case of long ion mean free paths. The appearance of fewer and broader resonances than are observed in mercury columns is attributed primarily to the occurrence of moving striations which produce variations of electron density of about t 50% of the average., http://archive.org/details/anexperimentalst109459512, Lieutenant, United States Navy, Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Chemical Engineering. Thesis. 1965. Mat.Eng., Mat.Eng.

Trumpets: Kenneth Austin, Larry McWilliams, Harry Rich, Stephen Keene, James Kuster, and Cheri Cole.; Assisted by Michael Phelps, piano and harpsichord, Robert Galombeck, bass, William Vits, percussion, and Larry Sauer, percussion., Series XXXI, Number 125., This archival material has been provided for educational purposes. Ball State University Libraries recognizes that some historic items may include offensive content. Our statement regarding objectionable content is available at: https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/about

A quantitative experimental study of the dipole Tonks-Dattner resonance oscillations of a cylindrical plasma column has been made for neon, argon and xenon plasma columns. Discharges were operated in the range of a few mTorr and resonances have been observed in the UHF and microwave frequency range. The resonances have been studied using strip-line and waveguide techniques and diagnostic studies have been made employing Langmuir probes and microwave cavity methods. For xenon, good agreement has been found with the theory of Parker, Nickel and Gould but for neon and argon definite discrepancies exist. This departure has been attributed to ion mean free paths which are not long compared to the tube radius. The effect of ion collisions seems to be to raise the electron density near the wall of the tube causing the resonances to occur at higher frequencies than are predicted by theory for the case of long ion mean free paths. The appearance of fewer and broader resonances than are observed in mercury columns is attributed primarily to the occurrence of moving striations which produce variations of electron density of about plus or minus 50% of the average. (Author)

A quantitative experimental study of the dipole Tonks-Dattner resonance oscillations of a cylindrical plasma column has been made for neon, argon and xenon plasma columns. Discharges were operated in the range of a few mTorr and resonances have been observed in the UHF and microwave frequency range. The resonances have been studied using strip-line and waveguide techniques and diagnostic studies have been made employing Langmuir probes and microwave cavity methods. For xenon, good agreement has been found with the theory of Parker, Nickel and Gould but for neon and argon definite discrepancies exist. This departure has been attributed to ion mean free paths which are not long compared to the tube radius. The effect of ion collisions seems to be to raise the electron density near the wall of the tube causing the resonances to occur at higher frequencies than are predicted by theory for the case of long ion mean free paths. The appearance of fewer and broader resonances than are observed in mercury columns is attributed primarily to the occurrence of moving striations which produce variations of electron density of about t 50% of the average.