University of Kansas

Presso la Kenneth Spencer Library di Lawrence (KS) si conserva un faldone di documenti relativi alla storia di Sabbioneta tra i secoli XVI e XVIII, raccolti da Carlo Morbio nel 1870. Tra le altre carte spicca la lista dei pagamenti del ferrame e della chioderia forniti ai cantieri della costruenda città di Sabbioneta negli anni ottanta del Cinquecento. Tali notizie sono fondamentali per capire l'andamento dei cantieri nel momento di edificazione della città di Vespasiano Gonzaga.

In​ this in​terview for the Montenegrin national newspaper Pobjeda, published 8 July 2018, ​Marc L. Greenberg (Mark Grinberg) discusses ​the Memorandum of Agreement between the Fakultet za crnogorski jezik i književnost and the University of Kansas, the ​Montenegrin national ​​"​July 23​"​ Award to Dr. Adnan Čirgić​ for his work on the dialectology of Montenegrin​, ​his editorship of ​the Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics​ for Brill (Netherlands)​, the state of Slavic linguistic studies​ in Europe and the US,​ and interest in the languages of the former Yugoslavia​ outside of the region.​

HERGUEDAS VELA, Miguel, “El traslado de obras de arte para su conservación: La Portada de Nuestra Señora de la Armedilla”, ZALAMA, Miguel Ángel, MARTÍNEZ RUIZ, María José, PASCUAL MOLINA, Jesús F. (Coords.), El legado de las obras de arte: tapices, pinturas, esculturas… sus viajes a través de la Historia, Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, 2017, pp. 191-202, ISBN 978-84-8448-919-1.

De la necesidad de ahondar en el estudio de las vicisitudes de las obras de arte a lo largo de su historia surge esta publicación, en la que participan profesores e investigadores de diferentes universidades, museos y otras instituciones. El libro, trata de llamar la atención sobre el devenir de las obras de arte; sobre las causas que llevaron a su separación del lugar para el que se realizaron; sobre la apreciación de los que permitieron su salida (generalmente por intereses particulares), o sobre aquellos que pugnaron por hacerse con ellas. Desde planteamientos teóricos generales en torno a la valoración de los objetos artísticos, que ha cambiado notablemente con el paso del tiempo, hasta estudios pormenorizados de piezas, se presenta un panorama inquietante sobre qué es arte hoy y qué fue en épocas pasadas y la consideración que se ha tenido hacia obras que si hoy se consideran quasi sagradas no hace mucho se despreciaron.

Susanne Rice. My deep gratitude goes to my chair, Dr. James Daugherty, whose wisdom, direction, and encouragement provided me this opportunity to complete doctoral studies and write this dissertation. I appreciate the countless hours he spent talking with me about concepts, writing, and philosophical inquiry. Additionally, a university facility that supports creative research endeavors provides the groundwork for a dissertation such as this one that combines multiple disciplines. Thank you to the Division of Music Education and Music Therapy, the Department of Music and Dance, and the School of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas for offering this Ph.D. program that allows the student to explore research interests of his or her choice and supports the student by providing a means to participate in numerous conferences. Thank you to Professor Christopher Small who corresponded via telephone and numerous e-mail messages. His patient, consistent, and helpful communication facilitated a most enjoyable data collection process. I truly admire his thinking and am indebted to his scholarship and wisdom. vi Thank you also to Ms. Elvera Voth who initiated a joint inmate-volunteer prison choir and allowed me to assist with rehearsals and observe her work. Her dedication to choral singing in prisons provided numerous opportunities for me to examine the experiences of singing in prison and observe inmates' personal and social development. I am grateful for the opportunities to learn from her, from the inmates who participated in her choir, from the experience of conducting a prison choir, and from the volunteer singers. Many scholars were helpful in answering my various questions. Thank you to

As the number of available Web pages grows, users experience increasing difficulty finding documents relevant to their interests. One of the underlying reasons for this is that most search engines find matches based on keywords, regardless of their meanings. To provide the user with more useful information, we need a system that includes information about the conceptual frame of the queries as well as its keywords. This is the goal of KeyConcept, a search engine that retrieves documents based on a combination of keyword and conceptual matching. Documents are automatically classified to determine the concepts to which they belong. Query concepts are determined automatically from a small description of the query or explicitly entered by the user. This paper describes the system architecture, the training of the classifier, and the results of our experiments evaluating system performance. KeyConcept is shown to significantly improve search result precision through its use of conceptual retrieval.

Understanding the factors that most constrain the expression of soil structure may aid in the pedogenic interpretation of a soil and provide a clearer picture of how soils develop. In this study, quantified metrics of soil structure using multistripe laser triangulation (MLT) threedimensional scanning were compared against physical properties of particle size, soil organic carbon, and shrink swell capacity to examine how these properties constrain the expression of soil structure. Soils from the University of Kansas Field Station were sampled in this work and provided a range in soil texture, soil structure, soil organic carbon, coefficient of linear extensibility, and parent materials. Bivariate box-and-whisker bagplots were used to understand general trends in how physical factors affected soil structure. Soil structure metrics were divided into four categories based on the properties of the interpedal macropores: size, abundance, orientation, and structural surface fracturing. Si...

This dissertation problematizes the definition of autobiography by considering the Bruce McKinney Collection, an archive at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas, a communal autobiography of the lesbian and gay community of Kansas. While generally used as a research tool, I argue that the archive can also be a form of life writing, consisting of a narrative that moves between documents and items found within the collection. Collected by numerous people over the course of forty years, I present the Bruce McKinney Collection as a communal autobiography of lesbian and gay life in Kansas. The archive demonstrates the lesbian and gay community's desire to acquire queer space and establish queer visibility in towns across Kansas. Through acts of resistance, whether taking legal action against a major university, proposing social changes through a city council, or by having sex in public spaces, the lesbian and gay community has reconfigured social space to accommodate their own community. In turn, the queer archive reflects the history of this change. Itself a queer space, the archive grants legitimacy to the lesbian and gay community simply by existing. It acts as a form of resistance as people have gathered and preserved the different documents that reflect lesbian and gay history. Through the resistant act of collecting lesbian and gay history, the lesbian and gay community of Kansas has created its own communal autobiography, specifically The Bruce McKinney Collection. iv To Michelle and J, for the never ending support And, of course, to Bruce, who saved everything. Thank you for trusting me. v Acknowledgements There are a number of people who have stood behind this project and me from the very beginning. I would like to thank Dr. Maryemma Graham and Dr. Katie Conrad for their commitment. They have both pushed me to reach deep within myself, and never stopped believing that I would finally get there. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Dr. Giselle Anatol, Dr. Betsy Birmingham, and Dr. Hannah Britton. Thank you for your support, and for asking me the difficult questions.

Susanne Rice. My deep gratitude goes to my chair, Dr. James Daugherty, whose wisdom, direction, and encouragement provided me this opportunity to complete doctoral studies and write this dissertation. I appreciate the countless hours he spent talking with me about concepts, writing, and philosophical inquiry. Additionally, a university facility that supports creative research endeavors provides the groundwork for a dissertation such as this one that combines multiple disciplines. Thank you to the Division of Music Education and Music Therapy, the Department of Music and Dance, and the School of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas for offering this Ph.D. program that allows the student to explore research interests of his or her choice and supports the student by providing a means to participate in numerous conferences. Thank you to Professor Christopher Small who corresponded via telephone and numerous e-mail messages. His patient, consistent, and helpful communication facilitated a most enjoyable data collection process. I truly admire his thinking and am indebted to his scholarship and wisdom. vi Thank you also to Ms. Elvera Voth who initiated a joint inmate-volunteer prison choir and allowed me to assist with rehearsals and observe her work. Her dedication to choral singing in prisons provided numerous opportunities for me to examine the experiences of singing in prison and observe inmates' personal and social development. I am grateful for the opportunities to learn from her, from the inmates who participated in her choir, from the experience of conducting a prison choir, and from the volunteer singers. Many scholars were helpful in answering my various questions. Thank you to

A central challenge in sedimentary geology is understanding three-dimensional architectural variability, and how it might be predicted. Ooid sand shoals, present in the stratigraphic record from Archean to recent, represent an economically important, but heterogeneous type of carbonate deposit. Whereas the processes influencing the deposition of ooid shoals are well examined and understood, the means by which distinct processes are recorded in the rock record are less constrained. The purpose of this thesis is to understand the relationship among processes, plan-view morphology and stratigraphic variability by examining Lily Bank, a modern tidally dominated Bahamian ooid shoal. Research focuses on two bar form end-members of Lily Bank: transverse shoulder bars oriented normal to flow and floodand ebb-tide oriented parabolic bars. Results from integrating remote sensing imagery, high frequency seismic (Chirp) data and core characterization (sedimentary structures and granulometric analyses) reveal the stratigraphic record of geomorphic change. An irregular, but gently dipping surface acts as the base of the Holocene sequence. This lowest horizon (Z) is interpreted as the Top Pleistocene and shallows onto the platform. A lower unit (Unit A), up to 6 m thick, overlies this basal surface and is characterized as a poorly sorted gravelly muddy sand with abundant Halimeda, and almost no ooids. Unit A is capped by a transitional unit (Unit B) which shows an increase in ooids, better sorting, and larger grain sizes upwards. The uppermost unit (Unit B"), present only under the present-day bar forms, is a well-sorted ooid sand. Quantitative analysis reveals quantitative relations among units, geomorphic position, and granulometry. Sediments of Unit A are finer and less well sorted than those from Unit B. Likewise, the fraction of grains larger than 500 µm and sorting of sediments from crests of bar forms are clearly differentiated from those on the bar flanks. Collectively, these results provide more robust threedimensional conceptual models of heterogeneity in ooid shoals. v

Energy harvesting from solar sources in an attempt to increase efficiency has sparked interest in many communities to develop more energy harvesting applications for renewable energy topics. Advanced technical methods are required to ensure the maximum available power is harnessed from the photovoltaic (PV) system. This dissertation proposed a new discrete-in-time extremumseeking (ES) based technique for tracking the maximum power point of a photovoltaic array. The proposed method is a true maximum power point tracker that can be implemented with reasonable processing effort on an expensive digital controller. The dissertation presented a stability analysis of the proposed method to guarantee the convergence of the algorithm. Two-types of PV systems were designed and comprehensive framework of control design was considered for a stand-alone and a three-phase grid connected system. Grid-tied systems commonly have a two-stage power electronics interface, which is necessary due to the ...

The purpose of this study was to answer the question: Are principals good at identifying effective teachers? Some studies have suggested they are not, but the evidence is not consistent. It is troubling that research results are inconsistent regarding principals' abilities to identify effective teachers. Why is there a disconnect between principals' evaluations of teachers and student gain scores-the operational definition of effective teachers? One would think principals would be good at identifying effective teachers, given that the expectation for hiring, developing, and evaluating teachers is a major facet of their responsibilities. This inconsistency suggests there could be a methodological issue. In other words, the method used for determining a principal's ability to identify effective teachers may be leading to these mixed findings. Perhaps the metric commonly used to measure teacher effectiveness is incompatible with identifying effective teachers. Could using a newer type of standardized test as the metric along with a more focused method of data analysis lead to consistent positive correlations between principal ratings and teacher effectiveness? This study examined the relation between principals' identification of effective teachers and the student gain scores from Fall and Spring Measures of Academic Progress (MAP)-computer-adaptive tests for reading, mathematics, and language usage developed by Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA, 2006). This study fitted individual level data to a value-added model to estimate teacher effects on students' 06-07 MAP gain scores and then ran subsequent regression analyses to estimate principals' ranking effects on teachers' average Spring 07 MAP scores, on teachers' average 06-07 MAP gain scores, and on teachers' value-added effects on students' 06-07 MAP gain scores. The findings showed that principals can identify their effective math teachers but they can't identify their effective communications and English teachers. Principals' rankings of teachers tend to correlate more with math teachers than communications and English teachers regarding student gain scores and teachers' value-added to student gain score vi Acknowledgements I have read that digital records are the nearest thing to eternity we have on earth. It is fitting that the support I have received from others would be immortalized. Thank you Dr. Argun Saatcioglu for being my advisor and guiding me through these last two years of my ten-year journey. I could not have completed my dissertation without your help. Thank you Dr.

This study of early modern governing practices analyzes the rule of Philip V of Spain (17001724, 1724-1746) in relation to his predecessor, the Habsburg Charles II (1665-1700) and his grandfather, Louis XIV of France (1643-1715). Philip creatively engaged the legacy of both monarchs to create a unique set of governing practices that centralized his authority while also maintaining a significant degree of variation in how he related to his subjects based on their social and political standing. Philip followed a particularist model that allowed him to give specific concessions and privileges only to the subjects who requested them. This approach to governing resulted in an ad-hoc administrative and legal patchwork rife with irregularities, but it circumvented the unavoidable problems of replacing multiple complex systems throughout his kingdoms with a uniform legal system. While Philip’s reforms left some subjects dissatisfied with his reign, it enabled him to cultivate support among ...