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Title: “IN A NEW NORMAL SITUATION, A NEW APPROACH” : MID-PANDEMIC EFL TEACHER PERSPECTIVES ON IMPLEMENTING TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING IN EAP COURSES
Creator: Siddiqui, Tamoha Binte
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Scarce research exists with regards to TBLT implementation in EAP courses, especially those courses held in EFL settings. Hence, this study explores the extent to which EAP teachers from an EFL country, Bangladesh, hold beliefs that align with core TBLT principles, as well as their levels of receptiveness to using tasks in the classroom. In this mixed methods study, data was collected from 30 tertiary-level EAP teachers in Bangladesh using a questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews. A...
Show moreScarce research exists with regards to TBLT implementation in EAP courses, especially those courses held in EFL settings. Hence, this study explores the extent to which EAP teachers from an EFL country, Bangladesh, hold beliefs that align with core TBLT principles, as well as their levels of receptiveness to using tasks in the classroom. In this mixed methods study, data was collected from 30 tertiary-level EAP teachers in Bangladesh using a questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews. A convergent mixed methods analysis was used to triangulate the data and verify the findings. Results showed that participants agreed with core TBLT principles from a moderate to high level, and consistently favored use of tasks over traditional activities. Moreover, teacher beliefs and practices seem to have become further aligned with core TBLT tenets in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shift to online teaching. I conclude the study by highlighting a number of implications for EFL teaching contexts. Additionally, I suggest that teacher and student autonomy need to be nurtured not only during curriculum development and implementation, but also in theoretical and research design.
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Title: Write before you speak : the impact of writing on L2 oral narratives
Creator: Bulow, Alyssa
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Current literature suggests that writing may better facilitate language learning than speaking practice alone, but direct empirical research demonstrating this is limited. Evidence is also limited as to whether grammar and vocabulary learned while writing can transfer to speaking. This study investigates the prediction that written planning, even more so than oral planning, leads to improved oral narratives. Thirty-four Spanish-speaking learners of English were randomly assigned to one of two...
Show moreCurrent literature suggests that writing may better facilitate language learning than speaking practice alone, but direct empirical research demonstrating this is limited. Evidence is also limited as to whether grammar and vocabulary learned while writing can transfer to speaking. This study investigates the prediction that written planning, even more so than oral planning, leads to improved oral narratives. Thirty-four Spanish-speaking learners of English were randomly assigned to one of two groups: writing rehearsal or oral rehearsal; rehearsal being individual practice before the final task. The writing group composed a story ending in the written modality while the oral group rehearsed by narrating theirs out loud. Both groups recorded their oral story continuation task as the final product. In order to compare the impact of writing versus oral rehearsal on learners' subsequent oral performance, final narratives were examined using complexity, accuracy, and fluency measures. Results showed that the writing group produced more fluent and lexically diverse narratives than the speaking group but there was no effect on accuracy, and limited effects on grammatical complexity. The study concludes with pedagogical implications for using writing tasks to prepare students for oral tasks.Keywords: L2 writing, complexity, fluency, story continuation task (SCT), EFL, benefits of writing for speaking, pre-task planning, rehearsal.
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Title: Whole tree renewal regenerates fruiting structures quickly in mature orchards
Creator: Larson, James Edward
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Renewal of fruiting wood to maintain young reproductive meristems with optimal canopy light interception and distribution is key for high productivity and fruit quality throughout the life of a sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) orchard. Typical renewal involves replacement of 10 to 20% of the tree canopy annually by removing one to several of the largest branches. In a mature orchard, this renewal process is subject to competition between sun-exposed fruiting sites and interior canopy renewal...
Show moreRenewal of fruiting wood to maintain young reproductive meristems with optimal canopy light interception and distribution is key for high productivity and fruit quality throughout the life of a sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) orchard. Typical renewal involves replacement of 10 to 20% of the tree canopy annually by removing one to several of the largest branches. In a mature orchard, this renewal process is subject to competition between sun-exposed fruiting sites and interior canopy renewal sites that intercept less light and compete poorly for translocated photoassimilates, often resulting in poor renewal growth. This is particularly problematic for high density orchards that utilize rootstocks selected for reduced vigor and high productivity. Renewal of canopy fruiting sites on a whole tree basis is an alternative renewal method that eliminates the competitive inhibition of shoot regrowth. This study explores the initial response of sweet cherry trees on various training systems and size-controlling rootstocks to whole tree renewal. Four training systems were studied: Tall Spindle Axe, Super Slender Axe, Upright Fruiting Offshoots, and Kym Green Bush. In 2016, whole tree renewal of the four systems was studied with ‘Benton’ cultivar on three rootstocks of varying vigor: Gisela 3, Gisela 5, and Gisela 6. During bloom, all fruit-bearing components of the canopy were pruned back to stubs close to the permanent structure. TSA resulted in the higher number of shoots, while KGB and UFO had the longest average shoot length. The results indicate that each canopy system-rootstock combination refilled canopy space, except for KGB on each rootstock, to quickly regenerate fruiting sites.
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Title: Webbed space : online feminist discourse in the fourth wave
Creator: Sweo, Naomi
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "This thesis examines the feminist online discourse community 'A Practical Wedding' and identifies four characteristics that make it a model for feminist online interaction: 1. the connection of users' online identities with their real-life selves; 2. the non-hierarchical structure of the community; 3. the productive exchanges between members; and 4. the site- and Internet-wide intertextuality. Technofeminist threads in rhetoric and composition in the late 1990's and early 2000's were mostly...
Show more"This thesis examines the feminist online discourse community 'A Practical Wedding' and identifies four characteristics that make it a model for feminist online interaction: 1. the connection of users' online identities with their real-life selves; 2. the non-hierarchical structure of the community; 3. the productive exchanges between members; and 4. the site- and Internet-wide intertextuality. Technofeminist threads in rhetoric and composition in the late 1990's and early 2000's were mostly abandoned. They deserve renewed attention, with updating based on the existence and necessity of fourth-wave feminism today. The author first describes her own origin story that led to her interest in this research. She then applies a system of virtual critical discourse analysis and resultant coding schema to four representative posts and their comment sections. This thesis concludes with a call for the creation of more communitarian, feminist spaces on the Internet with similar models of engagement to those used in 'A Practical Wedding.'"--Page ii.
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Title: Water content effect on nutrient removal in stormwater bioretention systems
Creator: Bender, Rebecca Marian
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "Bioretention cells and constructed wetlands are both established best management practices (BMPs) for stormwater quality improvement. These systems vary in terms of hydraulic loading where processes such as retention, sedimentation, absorption, infiltration, filtration, phytoremediation, nitrification and denitrification remove waterborne pollutants. However, the boundary between bioretention and wetlands can be blurred when it comes to design and operational parameters, and it is therefore...
Show more"Bioretention cells and constructed wetlands are both established best management practices (BMPs) for stormwater quality improvement. These systems vary in terms of hydraulic loading where processes such as retention, sedimentation, absorption, infiltration, filtration, phytoremediation, nitrification and denitrification remove waterborne pollutants. However, the boundary between bioretention and wetlands can be blurred when it comes to design and operational parameters, and it is therefore important to explore the causes and consequences of performance variability in these systems. In an experiment to observe optimum water content for treatment pathways for ecological pollutants, five bioretention bays (2-22% water content) and fifteen bioretention columns (7-47% water content, as much as complete pore space saturation) were used to run parallel tests. Pollutant concentrations were reduced in field bays for COD, TN, and total solids (TS), although there was no difference between treatment groups in terms of any pollutant concentrations. Asclepias incarnata, Carex vulpinoidea, Scirpus validus, and Juncus effusus grew slightly taller in wetter bays, although survival of Sagittaria latifolia was uniformly poor in all treatment groups. No net pollutant removal occurred in columns, although effluent concentrations and mass export were significantly lower for near-saturation treatment groups for chemical oxygen demand (COD), nitrate, and total nitrogen (TN). There was no soil moisture level in which COD, nitrate, TN, phosphate, and TS were simultaneously improved."--Page ii.
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Title: WE DON’T NEED TO KNOW WHAT WE SEE : MODEST MEDIATION OF BISTABLE PERCEPTION BY KNOWLEDGE
Creator: Zhang, Bobicheng
Date: 2022
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: When faced with ambiguous visual input, an observer may have various perceptual interpre- tations even when the input remains unchanged. Indeed, such ambiguous displays can cause the observer to experience distinct perceptual interpretations in turn, unpredictably switching between them over time. Theories of such so-called multistable perception broadly fall into two categories: top-down theories that hold that perception in these cases depends strongly on higher-level cogni- tive factors...
Show moreWhen faced with ambiguous visual input, an observer may have various perceptual interpre- tations even when the input remains unchanged. Indeed, such ambiguous displays can cause the observer to experience distinct perceptual interpretations in turn, unpredictably switching between them over time. Theories of such so-called multistable perception broadly fall into two categories: top-down theories that hold that perception in these cases depends strongly on higher-level cogni- tive factors such as knowledge, and bottom-up theories which suggests more vital involvement of aspects of lower-order information processing such as local adaptation in the visual system. We evaluated whether the occurrence of perceptual reversals in the face of ambiguous input is related to the observer’s knowledge that the input is, indeed, ambiguous. We used an ambiguous animation that was designed such that subjects could report perceptual reversals without realizing the ambigu- ity. Subjects observed the animation, reported their perception, and filled out a questionnaire that assessed their knowledge of the animation’s ambiguity. We found that informed subjects reported slightly more perceptual switches than the other subjects, but that this between-group difference was very small compared to the lack of variability within each group between subjects who were aware of the ambiguity and those who were not. These findings suggests that knowledge of ambiguity can influence perception of ambiguous stimuli, but that this influence is relatively minor. This discrepancy between current findings and past work is discussed.
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Title: VALIDATION OF A FELINE FEMORAL BONE SURROGATE WITH MECHANICAL AND CLINICAL EVALUATION OF FELINE ORTHOPEDIC IMPLANTS
Creator: Marturello, Danielle Marie
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: A bone surrogate was developed and subsequently used to evaluate the mechanical behavior of two novel feline interlocking nails against plate controls in vitro, in an attempt to evaluate their safety and efficacy. Following testing in both torsion and 4-point bending, the I-Loc nail was evaluated in 30 clinical feline trauma cases.Fracture gap constructs were implanted with an I-Loc (3 or 4 mm), Targon (2.5 or 3.0 mm) or LCP (2.0 or 2.4 mm) and mechanically compared. Additionally, explanted...
Show moreA bone surrogate was developed and subsequently used to evaluate the mechanical behavior of two novel feline interlocking nails against plate controls in vitro, in an attempt to evaluate their safety and efficacy. Following testing in both torsion and 4-point bending, the I-Loc nail was evaluated in 30 clinical feline trauma cases.Fracture gap constructs were implanted with an I-Loc (3 or 4 mm), Targon (2.5 or 3.0 mm) or LCP (2.0 or 2.4 mm) and mechanically compared. Additionally, explanted surrogates with implant specific pilot holes were failed to assess the effect of implant removal on bone surrogate strength. Finally, a prospective clinical case series of 30 feline fractures were evaluated for time to clinical union, return to function and complications following repair using the I-Loc nail. The I-Loc 3 and 4 mm nails overall were mechanically stronger than either the Targon nails or locking plates, including explanted specimens. All cats in the clinical study were weight bearing within 2 days of surgery and reached clinical union in a mean time of 7.2 weeks. All returned to full limb function. No major complications were encountered. These studies suggest that the I-Loc may represent a safe and effective alternative to other available feline osteosynthesis options
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Title: Using cover crops in wheat-corn rotations to provide forage while improving soil
Creator: Gerdes, Sabra Lynn
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "The time window after wheat harvest in a wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)- corn (Zea mays L.) rotation could be used to grow cover crops (CC) to provide forage while protecting soil from erosion. Field experiments were initiated in East Lansing, MI to determine the consequences of partial removal of CC biomass on soil improvement and crop yield and quality. Soft red winter wheat ('Hopewell' 03360336and 03360336'Red 03360336Dragon') was planted in October of 2013 and 2014 and harvested in July...
Show more"The time window after wheat harvest in a wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)- corn (Zea mays L.) rotation could be used to grow cover crops (CC) to provide forage while protecting soil from erosion. Field experiments were initiated in East Lansing, MI to determine the consequences of partial removal of CC biomass on soil improvement and crop yield and quality. Soft red winter wheat ('Hopewell' 03360336and 03360336'Red 03360336Dragon') was planted in October of 2013 and 2014 and harvested in July 2014 and 2015. Cover crops included: frost-seeded red clover, and summer-seeded alfalfa, cowpea, sunn hemp, radish, oat/field pea mixture, sudangrass, sorghum x sudangrass, and teffgrass. Half of each CC plot was mechanically harvested eight weeks after planting. Harvested forage dry matter yield was greatest for red clover (4.3 Mg ha-1 ); oat-pea mix (2.5 Mg ha-1 ), sudangrass/sudex (1.8 Mg ha-1 ) and radish (1.2 Mg ha-1 ) (P < 0.01) yielded less. Corn grain yield harvested in October averaged 13.7 Mg ha-1 and did not differ across CC species or forage harvest treatment (P > 0.05). Harvesting forage reduced total N removal (TNR) in subsequent corn for red clover only; harvesting forage did not affect TNR after any other CC (CC x harvest interaction, P < 0.05). In the harvested system, TNR did not differ (P > 0.05) between for any CC, but unharvested RCL (374 kg N ha-1 ) had greater (P < 0.01) TNR than oat-pea mix (338 kg N ha-1 ). There were no differences among treatments for soil permanganate oxidizable carbon POXC (P > 0.05). Harvesting cover crops for forage after winter wheat harvest in Michigan can give harvestable forage and acceptable nutritive value."--Page ii.
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Title: Use of Recycled Aggregate Materials Characteristics in Pavement Design Analyses
Creator: Gheibi, Ida
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Use of recycled materials promotes sustainability in roadway construction by reducing consumption of energy and emission of greenhouse gases associated with mining and the production of natural aggregates. Recycled asphalt pavements (RAP) and recycled concrete aggregates (RCA) have comparable characteristics to natural aggregates that are currently used in roadway base course applications. This study has developed a database for RAP and RCA materials’ characteristics including resilient...
Show moreUse of recycled materials promotes sustainability in roadway construction by reducing consumption of energy and emission of greenhouse gases associated with mining and the production of natural aggregates. Recycled asphalt pavements (RAP) and recycled concrete aggregates (RCA) have comparable characteristics to natural aggregates that are currently used in roadway base course applications. This study has developed a database for RAP and RCA materials’ characteristics including resilient modulus (Mr), California bearing ratio (CBR), gradations along with construction specifications. RAP and RCA relationships with different engineering and index properties were investigated and some trends were proposed such as higher RAP content reveals higher summary of resilient modulus (SMr), higher RCA content causes higher optimum moisture content (OMC) and lower maximum dry unit (MDU).In addition, pavement mechanistic-empirical (ME) analyses have been conducted with the material inputs collected for the database to determine whether different values of different characteristics of RCA and RAP can be used in flexible or rigid pavement designs. Results showed that Mr parameter had the highest impact on pavement distress predictions among gradations and hydraulic conductivity.
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Title: Urban expansion and urban environmental evaluation in Chengdu, China
Creator: Tao, Shiqi
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Environmental consequences resulting from urbanization jeopardize the life quality and social welfare of urban residents. To date, studies have focused on the urban environment by using integrated assessment methods and providing one evaluation result for the whole geographic area within an administrative boundary. These studies lack consideration of spatial heterogeneity, failing to fully understand the urban environmental statuses and dynamics at the pixel scale. Therefore, this research...
Show moreEnvironmental consequences resulting from urbanization jeopardize the life quality and social welfare of urban residents. To date, studies have focused on the urban environment by using integrated assessment methods and providing one evaluation result for the whole geographic area within an administrative boundary. These studies lack consideration of spatial heterogeneity, failing to fully understand the urban environmental statuses and dynamics at the pixel scale. Therefore, this research aims to fill this gap by systematically evaluating the urban environment at every single spatial unit of urban land against the background of urban expansion in Chengdu, a megacity in western China. Guided by a proposed three-dimensional (self, neighborhood and accessibility) theoretical framework, this study uses remote sensing and GIS data and adapts the catastrophe theory to evaluate Chengdu's urban environment in a spatially explicit manner. Results from change detection of the urban area in Chengdu show a high-speed expansion from the urban center towards all directions, especially southwest during 2000-2015. Environmental assessment analysis reveals an improved urban center but degraded outskirts regarding environmental conditions. The regression analysis suggests a negative effect of rapid urban expansion on the environment, while this effect can be alleviated through better planning strategies. Therefore, it is suggested that policy makers should balance the speed of urban expansion and urban environmental planning to provide a better living environment for urban residents in Chengdu. The integration of remote sensing and urban environmental assessment can be applied to other cities in China and elsewhere around the world.
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Title: UNDERSTANDING THE ROLES OF INTERKINGDOM MICROBIAL INTERACTIONS, MICROBIAL TRAITS, AND HOST FACTORS IN THE ASSEMBLY OF PLANT MICROBIOMES
Creator: Liber, Julian Aaron
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The community of organisms that associate with plants are vital to both the survival of the host plant but also the diseases which may kill it. The processes by which this community, called the microbiome, assemble and function can contribute to the traits of the host, including plants that humans rely on for food, resources, and ecosystems services. This thesis focuses on understanding the assembly of microbiomes at the scale of microbe-microbe interactions and traits of individual microbes,...
Show moreThe community of organisms that associate with plants are vital to both the survival of the host plant but also the diseases which may kill it. The processes by which this community, called the microbiome, assemble and function can contribute to the traits of the host, including plants that humans rely on for food, resources, and ecosystems services. This thesis focuses on understanding the assembly of microbiomes at the scale of microbe-microbe interactions and traits of individual microbes, as well as how characters of the host may change this process. I first address this by examining the in vitro and in planta interactions within small synthetic communities of root-inhabiting bacteria and fungi and with the plant host and viral disease of the host. While intermicrobial interactions in vitro were not predictive of in planta interactions, adding host disease or additional organisms to the system altered the assembly process. I then show the development and applications of the CONSTAX2 classifier, a taxonomic assignment tool for metabarcoding studies, which offers improved accuracy and ease of use for conducting metabarcoding studies exploring the diversity and structure of microbial communities. Last, I present a study testing which factors affected the composition of forest fungal communities to understand the ecology of litter-inhabiting fungi and improve methodologies for sampling leaf-associated fungal communities. The factors affecting the assembly of plant microbiomes are complex and varied but connecting individual interactions to community composition and ultimately function may improve our abilities to predict and manage microbiome processes.
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Title: Two years' results on production of early spring lambs
Creator: Willson, Charles Albert
Date: 1922
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Two sides on "normal" : a comparison of eight views on U.S. rapprochement with Vietnam, 1989-1995
Creator: Clason, Nathan Robert
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: ABSTRACTTWO SIDES ON "NORMAL:" A COMPARISON OF EIGHT VIEWS ON U.S. RAPPROCHEMENT WITH VIETNAM, 1989-1995ByNathan Robert Clason This thesis is a comparative study of the views of eight entities regarding the prospect of normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam from 1989-1995. It first describes the views and actions of five entities in favor of normalization. These include the four US presidential administrations from Carter to...
Show moreABSTRACTTWO SIDES ON "NORMAL:" A COMPARISON OF EIGHT VIEWS ON U.S. RAPPROCHEMENT WITH VIETNAM, 1989-1995ByNathan Robert Clason This thesis is a comparative study of the views of eight entities regarding the prospect of normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam from 1989-1995. It first describes the views and actions of five entities in favor of normalization. These include the four US presidential administrations from Carter to Clinton, the Vietnamese Communist Party, the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs (1991-1993), US Senators John McCain and John Kerry, and US businesses. It then examines the views and actions of three entities opposed to normalization. These include Ann Mills Griffiths, the Executive Director of the National League of POW/MIA Families; Texas billionaire Ross Perot; and politicians such as Robert Dornan and Vietnamese Americans from Orange County, California. By using a comparative approach, this thesis identifies several strange political alliances and enmities that would not have been clear in a more linear history. It includes a review of Vietnamese Communist Party documents that challenges some of the conclusions of the earliest diplomatic histories about normalization. It uses primary sources from key Senate Hearings to challenge elements of cultural histories about the myth of live US prisoners of war abandoned in Southeast Asia, and it personalizes the views of Ann Mills Griffiths and some Vietnamese Americans to give better context to their ardent opposition to normalization.
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Title: Transplanting as a factor in growing plants
Creator: Boyle, Jesse G.
Date: 1914
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Transmissibility and localization of tetrodotoxin in the rough-skinned newt, Taricha granulosa
Creator: Wegener, Sarah (Graduate of Michigan State University)
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a powerful neurotoxin that prevents the propagation of action potentials, leading to paralysis and sometimes death in nearly all animals. However, a diverse group of marine and freshwater animals possess TTX, which they use for offense, defense, and communication. One of most studied TTX-mediated interactions is the predator-prey arms race between the rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa) and common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis). Variation in toxicity among...
Show more"Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a powerful neurotoxin that prevents the propagation of action potentials, leading to paralysis and sometimes death in nearly all animals. However, a diverse group of marine and freshwater animals possess TTX, which they use for offense, defense, and communication. One of most studied TTX-mediated interactions is the predator-prey arms race between the rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa) and common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis). Variation in toxicity among populations of newts matched by TTX-resistance in predatory snakes has captured the focus of much research centered on the hypothesis that the arms race is the sole driver of variation. Nevertheless, recent studies suggest a more complex dynamic. Explanations of the dramatic variation in TTX among different populations of newts can only be constructed once fundamental questions about the origin, function, and transmission of TTX in newts have been more thoroughly explored. In this study, I took two approaches to address the origin, function, and transmission of TTX: 1) a cohabitation experiment in which I paired toxic and non-toxic newts to test whether toxicity can be acquired through contact, and 2) an experiment to determine the distribution and concentration of TTX in different tissues. The cohabitation experiment revealed no detectable change in the toxicity of non-toxic male newts, suggesting that a physical or physiological impediment prevents non-toxic newts from becoming toxic. The tissue toxicity experiment demonstrated that TTX is present throughout the body in structurally and functionally diverse tissues, which has many implications for the involvement of TTX in communication and reproduction in addition to defense."--Page ii.
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Title: Towards interpretable face recognition
Creator: Yin, Bangjie
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Deep CNNs have been pushing the frontier of visual recognition over past years. Besides recognition accuracy, strong demands in understanding deep CNNs in the research community motivate developments of tools to dissect pre-trained models to visualize how they make predictions. Recent works further push the interpretability in the network learning stage to learn more meaningful representations. In this work, focusing on a specific area of visual recognition, we report our efforts towards...
Show moreDeep CNNs have been pushing the frontier of visual recognition over past years. Besides recognition accuracy, strong demands in understanding deep CNNs in the research community motivate developments of tools to dissect pre-trained models to visualize how they make predictions. Recent works further push the interpretability in the network learning stage to learn more meaningful representations. In this work, focusing on a specific area of visual recognition, we report our efforts towards interpretable face recognition. We propose a spatial activation diversity loss to learn more structured face representations. By leveraging the structure, we further design a feature activation diversity loss to push the interpretable representations to be discriminative and robust to occlusions. We demonstrate on three face recognition benchmarks that our proposed method is able to achieve the state-of-art face recognition accuracy with easily interpretable face representations.
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Title: To translate a life : understanding the holocaust through autobiographical stories
Creator: Stieren, Amelia Naomi
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This thesis seeks to understand some of the aspects and events of the Holocaust through autobiographical stories, with a particular focus on what it means to translate one's life. As there are many different ways one can learn about the Holocaust, this thesis takes a comparative approach of the works of two authors with very different life circumstances: Ruth Kluger's autobiographical works weiter leben: Eine Jugend, and Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, and Nora Krug's graphic...
Show moreThis thesis seeks to understand some of the aspects and events of the Holocaust through autobiographical stories, with a particular focus on what it means to translate one's life. As there are many different ways one can learn about the Holocaust, this thesis takes a comparative approach of the works of two authors with very different life circumstances: Ruth Kluger's autobiographical works weiter leben: Eine Jugend, and Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, and Nora Krug's graphic memoirs Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, and Heimat: Ein deutsches Familienalbum. While both authors have in common that they have written their works in both English and German, the lives of these authors are remarkably different: Ruth Kluger is a Jewish survivor of the genocide from Austria, living in the United States, and Nora Krug is neither a survivor nor Jewish, but rather, a German living in the United States with familial ties to Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, in the translation of their lives into their works, both authors raise many questions and concerns about their identity, displacement (forced for Kluger, chosen for Krug), their sense or lack of belonging, and how different aesthetic forms are necessary for them in the constructing of their life narratives, and in tandem with each other, they offer a way to further understand the events of the Holocaust.
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Title: Timber residue supply for bioenergy in the northern tier of the Great Lakes : determinants and availability
Creator: Dulys-Nusbaum, Elena
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "Timber residues, a timber byproduct, are a low-cost source of biomass that avoids the environmental and food market consequences of other energy feedstocks. We studied the effect that price, forest species mix, bio-energy attitudes, environmental amenities, and environmental disamenities have on the decision to harvest for non-industrial private forest owners (NIPFs) in northern Michigan and Wisconsin."--from abstract.

Title: Thermal Characterization and Crystal Growth of the Germanium Telluride-Tin Telluride System
Creator: Levental, Gill
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Thermoelectric materials, which can create an electrical current from a temperature gradient within the material, are an important means of generating electrical power in very remote and harsh environments. However, their deployment in terrestrial environments has been limited, due to two primary factors: the high cost of thermoelectric materials and their low energy conversion efficiency- too low for economic use in almost all applications. One method by which thermoelectric material energy...
Show moreThermoelectric materials, which can create an electrical current from a temperature gradient within the material, are an important means of generating electrical power in very remote and harsh environments. However, their deployment in terrestrial environments has been limited, due to two primary factors: the high cost of thermoelectric materials and their low energy conversion efficiency- too low for economic use in almost all applications. One method by which thermoelectric material energy conversion efficiency may be increased is by reducing material lattice thermal conductivity, or a material’s ability to conduct heat through the vibrations of its crystalline atomic lattice, which are called phonons. In support of that objective, this work presents a characterization of fundamental material properties that influence the lattice thermal conductivity of the germanium telluride-tin telluride (Ge1-xSnxTe) system, a promising thermoelectric material. The properties characterized include composition-dependent coefficients of thermal expansion, speeds of sound within the material, and elastic moduli. These were characterized using high-temperature X-ray diffraction, resonant ultrasound spectroscopy, and high-pressure X-ray diffraction, respectively. This work also presents an account of the synthesis of bulk single-crystal ingots of several compositions within the Ge1-xSnxTe system, which will be used for an in-depth investigation of Ge1-xSnxTe phonon characteristics by collaborators using inelastic neutron scattering.
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Title: The visible quality of market milk as affected by clarification & pasteurization
Creator: Ogiwara, Hisata
Date: 1915
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

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