On a global scale, illicit economies have dramatic impacts on the physical environment. Cocaine trafficking has been recognized as a major driver of deforestation inside Central American protected areas. A key problem in studying and managing the environmental impacts of illicit economic activity is the difficulty in obtaining reliable data....
The counseling profession has historically adopted a one-size-fits-all approach toward addressing bereavement. However, there is an emerging paradigm-shift in grief therapy that has been enabled by recent research that differentiates, for example, between types of grief and styles of grieving. This research project contributes to this nuanced approach to grief...
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has reached a level of authority and ubiquity within the mental health field. It is the guidance force in insurance reimbursement or coverage for mental health treatment, determinations of disability related to mental health and in determinations of competence to stand...
The purpose of this research is to provide a simple fabrication method for zinc oxide and antimony sulfide based thin film solar cells. Both a ZnO nanorod electron conducting structure and a stibnite absorber show promise in a solar cell. Initial attempts at using only ZnO and Sb2S3, however, resulted...
Various ecological and hydrological models require estimates of the amount and spatial distribution of monthly and annual precipitation. PRISM is an analytical model that distributes point measurements of monthly, seasonal and annual precipitation to a geographic grid. In order to use this model effectively, good graphical user interfaces were needed....
The task of designing and building the user interface portion of a Macintosh application is radically different than the same task on a more conventional computer with a conventional operating system. Just the fact that it is radically different makes it very time consuming to learn how to program this...
Today, there are six extant species of sea lion around the world, with the seventh (the Japanese sea lion) already having gone extinct due to a lack of proper conservation management. Because each of the surviving 6 sea lion species differ slightly in their anatomy, behavior, reproduction, and local habitats,...
The purpose of this research was to develop methods for using geographic information system (GIS) analysis and unsupervised classification of Global Vegetation Index (GVI) images to improve carbon budget estimates of the former Soviet Union (FSU). A GIS was used to locate the geographic distribution and estimate the area of...
Considerable progress ha been made in Computer-Aided Design (CAD) techniques to assist Mechanical Engineers in the detail design stages and adaptive redesign tasks. Currently, CAD tools support the designer in system layouts, sizing of components, drafting, analytical calculations, generating NC machining data and even motion or energy simulations. However, the...
Groundwater overdraft in the Wilcox Groundwater Basin, as a consequence of increasing rates of agricultural groundwater withdrawal, has led to significant regional groundwater level decline and threatens to undermine the basin’s long-term water resource security. Updated characterization of the basin’s water resource conditions and agricultural water demand is critically important...