pendulum as a classical model for the dynamics of the spin 1/2 system. We showed

that this mechanical system contains the dynamics of the spin state of the electron

under a uniform magnetic field as it is given by the Schrodinger-Pauli-Equation

(SPE). We closed with a characterization of the dynamics of this generalized

classical system by showing that it is equivalent with the dynamics of the

Schrodinger Pauli Equation as long as the solutions to the generalized classical

system are roots of the Lagrangian, that is the condition L = 0 holds.

Experiments were performed using two representative mixed bacterial communities at different nutrient concentrations. Results from the experiments substantiated the case for biological crack dating by establishing the applicability of these methods for mixed bacterial communities. Future work involves verifying the applicability of these methods for more diverse microbial colonies, varying temperature conditions, and varying nutrient contents in order to develop these methods for non-optimal oligotrophic field conditions.

thirty years. Susan Pearce, Mieke Bal, Bruce Althuser and other scholars have written

theoretical perspectives illuminating the ways in which the collecting of art influences the identity of a particular collector and in turn the ways in which the process of collecting art itself attaches meanings to objects.

In the last twenty years, there has been a surge in the collecting of Mexican

photography dating from the 1920s to the contemporary period. Mexican photography

has a long history of being at once an art form and documentation meant to bring social

change to the people of Mexico. Tina Modotti was among the first to create photographs

of this type in Mexico beginning in the 1920s. Graciela Iturbide is a contemporary

photographer who continues to work in a similar manner.

This thesis examines specific collections of photographs taken in Mexico. Daniel

Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser, a Los Angeles couple collects many art objects

including Graciela Iturbide photographs. Susie Tompkins Buell, a social activist living in

San Francisco also collects objects of art including Tina Modotti photographs.

Greenberg, Steinhauser, and Buell use their collections to underscore their own

Identities as socially conscious people. The collectors’ identities have come to enhance and perhaps supplant the original meanings gleaned from the objects they collect.

A large sample of adult Internet users (N = 1,034) living in the U.S. completed a series of online questionnaires that assessed pet preference and ownership as well as gender, empathy, loneliness, depression, and the Big 5 personality traits. We found that a pet preference that included dogs or cats was linked to higher empathy for females, especially for those who owned pets. Pet preferences of "Other" for males and "None" for females were associated with higher levels of conscientiousness. A cat-inclusive preference was consistently related to higher levels of empathy, openness, and agreeableness for both men and women. These findings suggest that programs and organizations seeking to improve human well-being through the facilitation of human-animal interaction may be more successful if they account for related differences based on pet preference and gender.

Using previous soil and vegetation characterizations across the ecotone of the pygmy forest, this study focused on the structural characteristics of Sequoia sempervirens in a stunted stand of old-growth coast redwood in Mendocino County, California. Stepwise linear regression analysis showed total tree height and size to be correlated with soil nutrient levels as expected, but the number of epiphytes in the canopy of pygmy coast redwoods was not correlated with canopy complexity as expected. Instead, epiphyte abundance was significantly correlated with fire hollow volumes, suggesting fire to be a factor in canopy plant communities.