The sequential probability ratio test is an efficient test procedure compared to the fixed sample size test procedure in the sense that it minimizes the average sample size needed for terminating the experiment at the two specified hypotheses, i.e., at H₀: θ = θ₀ and H₁: θ = θ₁. However, this optimum property does not hold for the values of the testing parameter other than these two hypotheses, especially for those with values between these two. Also the estimation following a sequential test is considered to be difficult, and the usual maximum likelihood estimate is in general biased. The sequential test plans given in MIL-STD-781 do not meet their nominal test risk requirements and the truncation of these test plans is determined by the theory for a fixed sample size test. The contributions of this dissertation are: (1) The distribution of the successive sums of samples from a generalized sequential probability ratio test in the exponential case has been obtained. An exact analysis method for the generalized sequential probability ratio test has been developed as well as its FORTRAN programs based on this distribution. (2) A set of improved sequential probability ratio test plans for testing the mean for the exponential distribution has been established. The improved test plan can meet the test risk requirements exactly and can approximately minimize the maximum average waiting time. (3) The properties of the estimates after a sequential test have been investigated and a bias reduced estimate has been recommended. The general method for constructing the confidence interval after a sequential test has been studied and its existence and uniqueness have been proved in the exponential case. (4) Two modification to the Wald's sequential probability ratio test, the triangular test and the repeated significance test, in the exponential case have been also studied. The results show that the triangular test is very close to the optimal test in terms of minimizing the maximum average sample size, and a method for constructing the triangular test plan has been developed.

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the theories that classroom interactions are organized and shaped by the subtle intersecting and overlapping phenomena of race, culture, and gender, and that teachers and their inner-city middle-grade African American male students may make sense, i.e., interpret meaning, very differently in routine, day-to-day classroom interactions. The investigation was informed by Frederick Erickson's (1986) claim that the risk of school failure for students of color may be increased by incongruities between mainstream classroom interaction patterns and the predominant patterns/ways of interacting in the students' home culture. The study was conducted in three fourth-grade classrooms in inner-city schools. Data collected from classroom observations and semi-structured interviews were used to develop sensitizing and definitive typologies, construct individual teacher profiles, and categorize transcribed "talk" into primary and connective themes. Predominant characteristics of teacher-Black male student verbal interactions were identified inductively and presented as assertions (Erickson, 1986) in the findings. Based on the content, structure, and function of each, the selected interactions were characterized as completed continuous, discontinuous, or diminutive. As posited theoretically, the findings revealed differential participation, i.e., interaction peculiarities, specific to many verbal exchanges between each teacher and her/his African American male students. Discontinuities emerged from the different ways language was used by teachers and students. Negative vectors produced in sustained discontinuous interactions resulted in maladaptive meanings for both the teacher and the African American students. A second purpose of the study was to develop a staff development component specifically designed to address teacher-student classroom interactions from cultural perspective and to engender reflective critical inquiry by teachers into their own classroom practices (theories-in-use) and pedagogical principles (espoused theories) as they relate to interactions with their African American male students. Selected segments of analyzed interaction events were used to construct authentic teaching cases which contained embedded dimensions of the theoretical issues examined and the empirical assertions derived from the research. The cases were used as the major instructional tool in the professional development model. This study points toward the need for teachers to be aware of the relationships between language-use, culture, and gender, and the importance of understanding how these factors may play a role in facilitating or constraining equitable educational opportunities for some academically marginalized student groups, particularly pre-adolescent inner-city African American male children.

This dissertation presents an analysis of woman's situation and viewpoint as revealed in the plays El arbol and Los perros and the novels Los recuerdos del porvenir, Testimonios sobre Mariana, and La casa junto al rio by the Mexican Elena Garro. The basis of the analysis is a study of the cultural context, the personal relationships and human interaction, and the atmosphere in the texts under consideration. The female characters function as human beings who are easily recognizable in any Latin American society. By studying Garro's women characters we can also assess the racial and socio-economic atmosphere of the setting. In El arbol this is made clear by the confessional element contained in the drama. In Los perros, and also in La casa junto al rio, we see a fruitless search for paradise lost, for the "good house" of medieval belief. In Garro's texts the feminine characters inhabit a mythic space created by themselves as a means of avoiding the violence of the empiric reality in which they live. In Los recuerdos del porvenir this violence is the direct product of military abuse. Masculine discourse is demythified through witness borne by Vicente, Andre, and Gabrielle in Testimonios sobre Mariana as they prove that Augusto's version of the story lacks credibility and lend verisimilitude to that told by the main character. In La casa junto al rio emphasis is placed on the creative importance of both nostalgia and violence as incentives to make the main character, Consuelo, undertake the adventure of seeking her roots under the pretext of finding herself. By examining the way in which female characters are presented in Garro's works, we are better able to ascertain the viewpoint of this controversial writer and experience the political and social dimensions of Latin America as witnessed by women engaged in the important effort of changing their environment into one that is more sympathetic and understandingly human to the woman.

The purpose of this study was to examine the discourse of six selected Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) session transcripts for effective and promising procedures, questions and discussion strategies. Data sources consisted of session transcripts and interviews to determine how the RMA team's discourse accomplished their intended purposes across six RMA sessions with a fourth grade reader. Phases of the analysis included (1) verifying the existing data sets, (2) selecting six RMA sessions from the set of eleven, (3) conducting and analyzing interviews with the RMA team, (4) structural analysis of sessions, (5) speech act analysis of discourse moves, (6) sequential analysis of question cycles, (7) categorization of patterns that emerged in the data. Three broad discourse themes, based on the RMA team's stated purposes for the RMA sessions, guided the categorization of team members' talk: (1) discourse moves providing revaluing, (2) discourse moves providing instruction, and (3) discourse moves encouraging the reader's strategy use. The structural analysis of the RMA sessions generated elements of the instructional sequences and phases that made up each session, and a profile of RMA session procedures. Findings revealed: the RMA team used a wide range of question types to analyze miscues; discourse patterns involved in instruction and revaluing involved a variety of question cycles, position statement and 'you-statements' about the readers' reading strategies; problematic discourse sequences stemmed from problematic questions, responses and belief structures involved in interactions; by analyzing other readers in comparison with his own reading the reader's self-concept increased.

Described since the beginning of medicine and considered to be the oldest mental illness, depression is understood as a mood, symptom, syndrome and mental disease. It affects a large number of individuals, mainly women during their productive period, in different cultural environments. World Health officials suggest that over 200 million individuals worldwide are affected by one of the forms of depression. Epidemiological and biological studies have revealed the close relationship between depression and several factors, including sex, age, social environment, personality, and genetics. They utilize a single causal model of illness, and neglect the role played by culture in the expression and experience of depressive disorders. As a mood variation, depression is a panhuman phenomenon, but not all cultures recognize depressive disorders as a categorized ailment. Indeed, some cultures (Buddhist) give positive values for depressive complaints and even encourage them; other cultures (Western), however, tolerate depressive symptoms only as acute phenomena. Cross-cultural researchers have discussed the importance of culture for modeling the experience and effects of depression. It is culture which gives positive or negative meaning to depressive phenomena. In this way, anthropologists have questioned the universality of depressive disorders and suggested that depression is a cultural, Western construction. In the second half of the twentieth century, research studies have described the high prevalence rates of depression across cultures. Probably because of emotional and socioeconomic pressures, modern industrialized life exposes individuals to a high risk of depression. Indeed, Western researchers have demonstrated that in each new generation, a greater number of individuals have experienced depression. Contrary to the belief of Brazilian health professionals, lower class African Brazilians are at an increased risk for depressive disorders. The research study for this dissertation was realized in public health services in greater Sao Paulo, Brazil. I interviewed 565 patients and included 105 in the study. All patients presented clinical depression and the majority of them were considered to be chronically impaired. Psychosocial factors such as: gender, age, socioeconomic background, race, migration, marital status, educational background and religious preference were positively associated with the occurrence of depression.

In 1968, Samuel Huntington hypothesized in his well- known book, Political Order in Changing Societies, that stability of the state in monarchical regimes of the developing countries depends on the balance between the necessity to centralize power in order to modernize, and the necessity to decentralize it in order to assimilate into the system the new groups that have been produced by the modernization process. After examining all the possible choices available to the state, Huntington concluded that violence and change of the state were inevitable outcomes. Comparative tests of several variables with respect to five stable and five unstable monarchical states showed no support for Huntington's hypothesis, but did show some support for the role of high violence, low government coerciveness, high land and income inequality, and involvement in external conflict in the instability of the state in monarchical regimes. It was found that monarchical states that experienced three or more destabilizing factors all at the same time were very likely to be unstable (Iran, Cambodia, Ethiopia), whereas those that experienced two destabilizing factors or less, were more likely to be stable (Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Nepal) unless there was a family coup (Afghanistan), or the monarch had expressed his desire to abdicate (Libya). However, in the case when a stable monarchical state experiences more than two destabilizing factors (Jordan), leadership characteristics play a big role in stability of the state, such as the skill to expand political participation and still be able to maintain legitimacy, and the skill to balance reform with government coercion.

Three tests are proposed for determining the hydraulic properties of in-situ borehole seals. Two consist of monitoring the rate of injection of water at constant pressure into an injection zone at one end of a seal and monitoring the collection rate or rate of flow out of a free-draining collection zone at the other end. The third test is performed by shutting in the collection zone and monitoring the buildup in hydraulic head. One-dimensional and axisymmetric three-dimensional flow models are presented for analyzing test results. In the one-dimensional models, the seal is assumed to be a homogeneous and isotropic porous medium. In the axisymmetric models, the seal and surrounding rock mass are taken as homogeneous and isotropic porous media. The equation for saturated, confined ground-water flow is assumed to apply. The hydraulic properties of the seal are expressed by its hydraulic conductivity and specific storage. In the axisymmetric models, the conductivity and specific storage of the rock mass are included in the formulation. Closed-form solutions are presented for the analysis of tests using the one-dimensional models. Analysis with the axisymmetric models is numerical using an available computer code for ground-water flow. The code is used to examine the effects of variations in hydraulic parameters on the measured quantities in the tests (i.e. flow rates or head) and to compare the one-dimensional and axisymmetric models. Methods are presented for obtaining the hydraulic properties of the seal and/or rock mass by analysis of test results. A fourth test, a tracer travel-time test, is presented as a means for detecting the existence of a high-velocity flow path through or around the seal. The test methods are applied to cement grout borehole seals from 10 to 36 cm in length and 10 cm in diameter in two rock types, a recrystallized limestone and a dense basalt.

What is the behavioral evidence of ritual prehistory? How can the development of new archaeological method and theory enable prehistorians to identify ritual deposits and reconstruct the ritual past? This dissertation addresses these questions in a case study of puebloan sites in the U.S. Southwest. Rather than attempting to identify prehistoric belief systems, it uses an artifact life-history approach to create expectations about how certain artifacts were made, used and especially disposed of in ritual contexts. Fill and floor deposits from ceremonial structures (kivas) at the ancestral Hopi pueblo of Homol'ovi II are interpreted using this approach. These deposits are then linked to a greater ritual disposal tradition whose roots extend into Basketmaker times. These findings are also applied to fragmentary skeletal remains that have previously been attributed to cannibalism and warfare. An alternative explanation, witchcraft persecution is offered.

Metal containing molecules were studied in the gas phase. These compounds were synthesized in a Broida-type oven by the high temperature reaction between metal atoms and appropriate oxidants. The laser-induced fluorescence technique was employed to detect the products from these reactions. These inorganic molecules, consisting of a metal atom bonded to a single ligand, are ionic and can be represented by the structure M⁺L⁻(M = Ca, Sr, Ba and Cu). The BaOH and BaOD molecules were studied at low resolution. The band origins were found and the vibrational assignments were carried out for the òΠ-X²Σ⁺ transition, which has been previously seen. The nominally forbidden Ã' ²Δ-X² Σ⁺ transition was observed for the first time for alkaline earth polyatomics. Three electronic transitions were detected for the metal monohydrosulphides and metal monothiolates. The spectra are consistent with a bent Ca-S-R structure. Some Ca-S and Sr-S stretching frequencies were determined from the spectra. The B¹A"-X¹A' transition of CuOD molecule was rotationally analyzed at high resolution using the filtered laser excitation technique. Rotational lines up to K', K" = 7 sub bands have been measured. Molecular constants were obtained for the ground and excited states by fitting these lines to a asymmetric rotor Hamiltonian. These constants will be helpful for assigning the red systems of CuOH and CuOD. The emission spectra of boron containing compounds, BC, BH and BD, were recorded using a high resolution Fourier transform spectrometer. These compounds were made in a B₄C/Cu composite-wall hollow cathode lamp. The B⁴Σ⁻-X⁴Σ⁻ transition of BC was observed near 17900 cm⁻¹. The ground state internuclear separation was found to be 1.488A. The rotational constants for different vibrational levels were obtained from fitting the rotational lines. The A¹Π-X¹Σ transition was analyzed for BH and BD in order to find accurate rotational line positions and precise molecular constants. The rotational lines of BH were fit to a Dunham-type expression and equilibrium molecular constants were obtained. The vibrational levels of the A¹Π state are very anharmonic. During the course of the study of BD, the A¹Σ⁺-X¹Σ⁺ transition of CuD was also observed. This spectrum contained rotational lines from both ⁶³CuD and ⁶⁵CuD isotopomers and improved molecular constants were obtained by the analysis of the data.

Some space-constraining amino acid-containing oxytocin analogues were synthesized, of which the biological activities were found to be remarkably consistent with the predictions based on molecular mechanics calculations using the CHARMM program. Correlations of the biological activities and computer modeling studies of the conformational properties of Tyr², Phe², eBmp² (agonists), Pen¹, and Tic² (antagonists) oxytocin analogs revealed that a g+ conformation for the aromatic ring in the 2-position is important for the oxytocin-uterus receptor transduction. Examination of the topographical features of the energy minimized conformations of these analogs shows that a parallel aromatic surface over the top of the 20-membered disulfide containing ring of the molecule is equally important for the transduction. Though the Tic compound may exclusively exist as the g+ conformation for the aromatic ring in the 2-position, possible backbone changes and particularly the perpendicularly located aromatic ring on the top of the 20-membered ring may be the reason for its antagonism. Calculations shows that (erythro(2S, 3S)-β-methyltyrosine²) OXT has all the requirements for being an highly active compound, while the isomer (threo-L-(2S, 3R)-β-methyltyrosine²) OXT, which differs only in the configuration of the β carbon, is unlikely to be an agonist according to our calculations. Both compounds were synthesized together with other analogs by the solid-phase peptide synthesis techniques on p-methyl-benzhydrylamine resin. The biological activities of these two compounds were consistent with the predictions.