Institutional Repository

The University of Houston Institutional Repository (UHIR) collects, preserves and distributes scholarly output and creative works produced by the University of Houston community. UHIR provides free and open online access to the university’s research and scholarship, including electronic theses and dissertations.

 

Recent Submissions

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Computer aided chromatography and an equilibrium model for buffer effects in reversed-phase liquid chromatography
(1984) Nickel, John H.; Deming, Stanley N.; Kadish, Karl M.; Wendlandt, Wesley W.; Dyckes, Douglas F.; Cowles, Joe R.
A set of four programs is described for data collection, retention time calculation, spectral subtraction, and stack plots. The programs are written in BASIC on the HP-85 microcomputer. An automated liquid chromatograph is used to demonstrate a window diagrams program. The separation of a series of substituted benzoic acids is optimized. The sequential simplex technique is programmed into the automated liquid chromatograph. The program is demonstrated by optimizing the separation of 19 phenylthiohydantoin amino acids. An equilibrium based 8-parameter model is derived to describe observed buffer effects in a reversed-phase liquid chromatographic system. The model assumes adsorption of both the conjugate acid and conjugate base forms of the buffer.
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Henry Fielding : Perception in the drama and the novel
(1984) Birchak, Beatrice Christiana; Rothman, Irving N.; Southwell, Samuel B.; Gingiss, Peter J.; Brown, Rosellen; Berger, Sidney L.
Dramatist, novelist, and judge, Henry Fielding seeks to understand and eradicate the dangers that threaten his eighteenth century society. I investigate his understanding of his culture as revealed by those paradigms he incorporates into his works and shifts to encompass new significance. I classify the paradigms as legal, theatrical, psychological, social, and feminist. After I establish the presence of the specific paradigms in his plays and novels and survey critical attitudes about these patterns, I assess Fielding's paradigmatic transformations in the following chapters: Lawyers and Rapists; Fielding, an Eighteenth Century Pirandello; Mediated Desire; The Innocence of Doves and the Wisdom of Serpents; Perceptive Heroines. This dissertation demonstrates the psychological complexity of Fielding's characters, a depth that enables his audience members to assimilate more effectively and to apply more adroitly the skills of perception he advocates.
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An acoustic technique to measure the body volume of newborns
(1984) Deskins, William Gregory; Winter, Dean C.; Koopmann, Gary H.; Ktonas, Periklis Y.; Nerem, Robert M.
A non-invasive technique to estimate the body volume of infants has been developed using the principle of the Helmholtz Resonator. The resonance frequency of a small cavity is known to directly correspond to the volume of resonating space inside the cavity. The change in the resonance frequency of such a cavity before and after an infant is placed inside can be used to determine the body volume of the infant. A prototype system, termed an acoustic plethysmograph, was built and used to measure the volume of inanimate objects and newborn miniature pigs. Results for inanimate objects agree within 2% with comparable measurement by dimensional analysis and water displacement. Results of the animal body volume measurements compare favorably (within 5%) with those obtained using the invasive techniques of hydrostatic weighing and water displacement.
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Sara Estela Ramirez : the early twentieth century Texas-Mexican poet
(1984) Tovar, Inés Hernández; Wright, William C.; Kanellos, Nicolás; Dixon, Terrell F.; Saldí­var, José David
This study introduces the life and work of the early twentieth century Texas-Mexican poet Sara Estela Ramirez and places her within the context of Texas-Mexican history and literature and acknowledges her as one of the precursors of contemporary Chicana feminism and the Chicana literary tradition. A teacher, a journalist, a labor organizer a political activist, and a feminist, the poet Sara Estela Ramirez participated in the ground-laying for the Mexican Revolution of 1910 as a member of the Partido Liberal Mexicano [Mexican Liberal Party], and she was an intimate and respected colleague of Ricardo Flores Magon Her role as a Magonista, as a feminist, and as a member of the alternative press movement in Texas and Mexico is examined in light of the intellectual currents of the day and the historical conditions of the Mexican community on both sides of the border. All of her known recovered writings, her letters to Ricardo Flores Magón and her poetry and essays are translated into English here for the first time. Her writing is analyzed in the context of the collective, public voice of which her private, poetic voice was a part in the years leading up to the Mexican Revolution, and as such is seen as articulate testimony to the personal and social struggles and triumphs Mexican people were and are involved in, and as testimony to their artistic response to social, historical circumstance.
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Dialect in the fiction of Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, and Eudora Welty
(1983) Kinnebrew, Mary Jane; Wood, Barry A.; Gingiss, Peter J.; Zivley, Sherry A.; Dixon, Terrell F.; Reinhardt, Karl J.
The importance of dialect as a literary technique is nowhere more obvious than in the fiction of three twentieth-century Southern writers: Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, and Eudora Welty. Study of their use of dialect provides insight into their fiction and also meaningful information about Southern English. The letters and essays the three authors have written about the art of fiction show their conscious awareness of the richness of Southern English and its importance for Southern writers. Each one has used dialect differently to define character and reinforce key themes and symbols. At the same time, their representations of Southern speech suggest a great deal about the structures, sounds, and vocabularies of Southern dialects. Finally, the works of McCullers, O'Connor, and Welty provide concrete materials through which it is possible to study the broader subject of how dialect functions in literature as a whole--what the options are for the writer and what his limitations must be.