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Description
Simultaneously culture heroes and stumbling buffoons, Tricksters bring cultural tools to the people and make the world more habitable. There are common themes in these figures that remain fruitful for the advancement of culture, theory, and critical praxis. This dissertation develops a method for opening a dialogue with Trickster figures.

Simultaneously culture heroes and stumbling buffoons, Tricksters bring cultural tools to the people and make the world more habitable. There are common themes in these figures that remain fruitful for the advancement of culture, theory, and critical praxis. This dissertation develops a method for opening a dialogue with Trickster figures. It draws from established literature to present a newly conceived and more flexible Trickster archetype. This archetype is more than a collection of traits; it builds on itself processually to form a method for analysis. The critical Trickster archetype includes the fundamental act of crossing borders; the twin ontologies of ambiguity and liminality; the particular tactics of humor, duplicity, and shape shifting; and the overarching cultural roles of culture hero and stumbling buffoon. Running parallel to each archetypal element, though, are Trickster's overarching critical spirit of Quixotic utopianism and underlying telos of manipulating human relationships. The character 'Q' from Star Trek: The Next Generation is used to demonstrate the critical Trickster archetype. To be more useful for critical cultural studies, Trickster figures must also be connected to their socio-cultural and historical contexts. Thus, this dissertation offers a second set of analytics, a dialogical method that connects Tricksters to the worlds they make more habitable. This dialogical method, developed from the work of M. M. Bakhtin and others, consists of three analytical tools: utterance, intertextuality, and chronotope. Utterance bounds the text for analysis. Intertextuality connects the utterance, the text, to its context. Chronotope suggests particular spatio-temporal relationships that help reveal the cultural significance of a dialogical performance. Performance artists Andre Stitt, Ann Liv Young, and Steven Leyba are used to demonstrate the method of Trickster dialogics. A concluding discussion of Trickster's unique chronotope reveals its contributions to conceptions of utopia and futurity. This dissertation offers theoretical advancements about the significance and tactics of subversive communication practices. It offers a new and unique method for cultural and performative analyses that can be expanded into different kinds of dialogics. Trickster dialogics can also be used generatively to direct and guide the further development of performative praxis.
ContributorsSalinas, Chema (Author) / de la Garza, Amira (Thesis advisor) / Carlson, Cheree (Committee member) / Olson, Clark (Committee member) / Ellsworth, Angela (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Buddhism is thriving in US-America, attracting many converts with college and post-graduate degrees as well as selling all forms of popular culture. Yet little is known about the communication dynamics behind the diffusion of Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions into the United States. Religion is an underexplored area of intercultural communication studies

Buddhism is thriving in US-America, attracting many converts with college and post-graduate degrees as well as selling all forms of popular culture. Yet little is known about the communication dynamics behind the diffusion of Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions into the United States. Religion is an underexplored area of intercultural communication studies (Nakayama & Halualani, 2010) and this study meets the lacuna in critical intercultural communication scholarship by investigating the communication practices of US-Americans adopting Asian Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions. Ethnographic observations were conducted at events where US-Americans gathered to learn about and practice Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions. In addition, interviews were conducted with US-Americans who were both learning and teaching Buddhism. The grounded theory method was used for data analysis. The findings of this study describe an emerging theory of the paracultural imaginary -- the space of imagining that one could be better than who one was today by taking on the cultural vestments of (an)Other. The embodied communication dynamics of intercultural exchange that take place when individuals adopt the rituals and philosophies of a foreign culture are described. In addition, a self-reflexive narrative of my struggle with the silence of witnessing the paracultural imaginary is weaved into the analysis. The findings from this study extend critical theorizing on cultural identity, performativity, and cultural appropriation in the diffusion of traditions between cultural groups. In addition, the study addresses the complexity of speaking out against the subtle prejudices in encountered in intercultural communication.
ContributorsWong, Terrie Siang-Ting (Author) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Thesis advisor) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Budruk, Megha (Committee member) / Chen, Vivian Hsueh-Hua (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
The academic literature on science communication widely acknowledges a problem: science communication between experts and lay audiences is important, but it is not done well. General audience popular science books, however, carry a reputation for clear science communication and are understudied in the academic literature. For this doctoral dissertation, I

The academic literature on science communication widely acknowledges a problem: science communication between experts and lay audiences is important, but it is not done well. General audience popular science books, however, carry a reputation for clear science communication and are understudied in the academic literature. For this doctoral dissertation, I utilize Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape, a general audience science book on the particularly thorny topic of neuroscientific approaches to morality, as a case-study to explore the possibility of using general audience science books as models for science communication more broadly. I conduct a literary analysis of the text that delimits the scope of its project, its intended audience, and the domains of science to be communicated. I also identify seven literary aspects of the text: three positive aspects that facilitate clarity and four negative aspects that interfere with lay public engagement. I conclude that The Moral Landscape relies on an assumed knowledge base and intuitions of its audience that cannot reasonably be expected of lay audiences; therefore, it cannot properly be construed as popular science communication. It nevertheless contains normative lessons for the broader science project, both in literary aspects to be salvaged and literary aspects and concepts to consciously be avoided and combated. I note that The Moral Landscape's failings can also be taken as an indication that typical descriptions of science communication offer under-detailed taxonomies of both audiences for science communication and the varieties of science communication aimed at those audiences. Future directions of study include rethinking appropriate target audiences for science literacy projects and developing a more discriminating taxonomy of both science communication and lay publics.
ContributorsJohnson, Nathan W (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Creath, Richard (Committee member) / Martinez, Jacqueline (Committee member) / Sylvester, Edward (Committee member) / Lynch, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
After a decade of efforts, accurate and affordable DNA sequencing continues to remain an important goal in current research landscape. This thesis starts with a brief overview of the recent updates in the field of DNA sequencing technologies followed by description of the nanofluidics route to single molecule DNA detection.

After a decade of efforts, accurate and affordable DNA sequencing continues to remain an important goal in current research landscape. This thesis starts with a brief overview of the recent updates in the field of DNA sequencing technologies followed by description of the nanofluidics route to single molecule DNA detection. Chapter 2 presents discusses carbon nanotube(CNT) based nanofluidics. The fabrication and DNA sensing measurements of CNT forest membrane devices are presented. Chapter 3 gives the background for functionalization and recognition aspects of reader molecules. Chapter 4 marks the transition to solid state nanopore nanofluidics. The fabrication of Imidazole functionalized nanopores is discussed. The Single Molecule detection results of DNA from Palladium nanopore devices are presented next. Combining chemical recognition to nanopore technology, it has been possible to prolong the duration of single molecule events from the order of a few micro seconds to upto a few milliseconds. Overall, the work presented in this thesis promises longer single molecule detection time in a nanofludic set up and paves way for novel nanopore- tunnel junction devices that combine recognition chemistry, tunneling device and nanopore approach.
ContributorsKrishnakumar, Padmini (Author) / Lindsay, Stuart (Thesis advisor) / He, Jin (Committee member) / Vaiana, Sara (Committee member) / Schmidt, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
The rapid advancement of wireless technology has instigated the broad deployment of wireless networks. Different types of networks have been developed, including wireless sensor networks, mobile ad hoc networks, wireless local area networks, and cellular networks. These networks have different structures and applications, and require different control algorithms. The focus

The rapid advancement of wireless technology has instigated the broad deployment of wireless networks. Different types of networks have been developed, including wireless sensor networks, mobile ad hoc networks, wireless local area networks, and cellular networks. These networks have different structures and applications, and require different control algorithms. The focus of this thesis is to design scheduling and power control algorithms in wireless networks, and analyze their performances. In this thesis, we first study the multicast capacity of wireless ad hoc networks. Gupta and Kumar studied the scaling law of the unicast capacity of wireless ad hoc networks. They derived the order of the unicast throughput, as the number of nodes in the network goes to infinity. In our work, we characterize the scaling of the multicast capacity of large-scale MANETs under a delay constraint D. We first derive an upper bound on the multicast throughput, and then propose a lower bound on the multicast capacity by proposing a joint coding-scheduling algorithm that achieves a throughput within logarithmic factor of the upper bound. We then study the power control problem in ad-hoc wireless networks. We propose a distributed power control algorithm based on the Gibbs sampler, and prove that the algorithm is throughput optimal. Finally, we consider the scheduling algorithm in collocated wireless networks with flow-level dynamics. Specifically, we study the delay performance of workload-based scheduling algorithm with SRPT as a tie-breaking rule. We demonstrate the superior flow-level delay performance of the proposed algorithm using simulations.
ContributorsZhou, Shan (Author) / Ying, Lei (Thesis advisor) / Zhang, Yanchao (Committee member) / Zhang, Junshan (Committee member) / Xue, Guoliang (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
The thesis studies new methods to fabricate optoelectronic Ge1-ySny/Si(100) alloys and investigate their photoluminescence (PL) properties for possible applications in Si-based photonics including IR lasers. The work initially investigated the origin of the difference between the PL spectrum of bulk Ge, dominated by indirect gap emission, and the PL spectrum

The thesis studies new methods to fabricate optoelectronic Ge1-ySny/Si(100) alloys and investigate their photoluminescence (PL) properties for possible applications in Si-based photonics including IR lasers. The work initially investigated the origin of the difference between the PL spectrum of bulk Ge, dominated by indirect gap emission, and the PL spectrum of Ge-on-Si films, dominated by direct gap emission. It was found that the difference is due to the supression of self-absorption effects in Ge films, combined with a deviation from quasi-equilibrium conditions in the conduction band of undoped films. The latter is confirmed by a model suggesting that the deviation is caused by the shorter recombination lifetime in the films relative to bulk Ge. The knowledge acquired from this work was then utilized to study the PL properties of n-type Ge1-ySny/Si (y=0.004-0.04) samples grown via chemical vapor deposition of Ge2H6/SnD4/P(GeH3)3. It was found that the emission intensity (I) of these samples is at least 10x stronger than observed in un-doped counterparts and that the Idir/Iind ratio of direct over indirect gap emission increases for high-Sn contents due to the reduced gamma-L valley separation, as expected. Next the PL investigation was expanded to samples with y=0.05-0.09 grown via a new method using the more reactive Ge3H8 in place of Ge2H6. Optical quality, 1-um thick Ge1-ySny/Si(100) layers were produced using Ge3H10/SnD4 and found to exhibit strong, tunable PL near the threshold of the direct-indirect bandgap crossover. A byproduct of this study was the development of an enhanced process to produce Ge3H8, Ge4H10, and Ge5H12 analogs for application in ultra-low temperature deposition of Group-IV semiconductors. The thesis also studies synthesis routes of an entirely new class of semiconductor compounds and alloys described by Si5-2y(III-V)y (III=Al, V= As, P) comprising of specifically designed diamond-like structures based on a Si parent lattice incorporating isolated III-V units. The common theme of the two thesis topics is the development of new mono-crystalline materials on ubiquitous silicon platforms with the objective of enhancing the optoelectronic performance of Si and Ge semiconductors, potentially leading to the design of next generation optical devices including lasers, detectors and solar cells.
ContributorsGrzybowski, Gordon (Author) / Kouvetakis, John (Thesis advisor) / Chizmeshya, Andrew (Committee member) / Menéndez, Jose (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), airport security has become an increasingly invasive, cumbersome, and expensive process. Fraught with tension and discomfort, "airport security" is a dirty phrase in the popular imagination, synonymous with long lines, unimpressive employees, and indignity.

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), airport security has become an increasingly invasive, cumbersome, and expensive process. Fraught with tension and discomfort, "airport security" is a dirty phrase in the popular imagination, synonymous with long lines, unimpressive employees, and indignity. In fact, the TSA and its employees have featured as topic and punch line of news and popular culture stories. This image complicates the TSA's mission to ensure the nation's air travel safety and the ways that its officers interact with passengers. Every day, nearly two million people fly domestically in the United States. Each passenger must interact with many of the approximately 50,000 agents in airports. How employees and travelers make sense of interactions in airport security contexts can have significant implications for individual wellbeing, personal and professional relationships, and organizational policies and practices. Furthermore, the meaning making of travelers and employees is complexly connected to broad social discourses and issues of identity. In this study, I focus on the communication implications of identity and emotional performances in airport security in light of discourses at macro, meso, and micro levels. Using discourse tracing (LeGreco & Tracy, 2009), I construct the historical and discursive landscape of airport security, and via participant observation and various types of interviews, demonstrate how officers and passengers develop and perform identity, and the resulting interactional consequences. My analysis suggests that passengers and Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) perform three main types of identities in airport security contexts--what I call Stereotypical, Ideal, and Mindful--which reflect different types and levels of discourse. Identity performances are intricately related to emotional processes and occur dynamically, in relation to the identity and emotional performances of others. Theoretical implications direct attention to the ways that identity and emotional performances structure interactions, cause burdensome emotion management, and present organizational actors with tension, contradiction, and paradox to manage. Practical implications suggest consideration of passenger and TSO emotional wellbeing, policy framing, passenger agency, and preferred identities. Methodologically, this dissertation offers insight into discourse tracing and challenges of embodied "undercover" research in public spaces.
ContributorsRedden, Shawna Malvini (Author) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Thesis advisor) / Corley, Kevin (Committee member) / Alberts, Janet (Committee member) / Trethewey, Angela (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
The work contained in this dissertation is focused on the optical properties of direct band gap semiconductors which crystallize in a wurtzite structure: more specifically, the III-nitrides and ZnO. By using cathodoluminescence spectroscopy, many of their properties have been investigated, including band gaps, defect energy levels, carrier lifetimes, strain states,

The work contained in this dissertation is focused on the optical properties of direct band gap semiconductors which crystallize in a wurtzite structure: more specifically, the III-nitrides and ZnO. By using cathodoluminescence spectroscopy, many of their properties have been investigated, including band gaps, defect energy levels, carrier lifetimes, strain states, exciton binding energies, and effects of electron irradiation on luminescence. Part of this work is focused on p-type Mg-doped GaN and InGaN. These materials are extremely important for the fabrication of visible light emitting diodes and diode lasers and their complex nature is currently not entirely understood. The luminescence of Mg-doped GaN films has been correlated with electrical and structural measurements in order to understand the behavior of hydrogen in the material. Deeply-bound excitons emitting near 3.37 and 3.42 eV are observed in films with a significant hydrogen concentration during cathodoluminescence at liquid helium temperatures. These radiative transitions are unstable during electron irradiation. Our observations suggest a hydrogen-related nature, as opposed to a previous assignment of stacking fault luminescence. The intensity of the 3.37 eV transition can be correlated with the electrical activation of the Mg acceptors. Next, the acceptor energy level of Mg in InGaN is shown to decrease significantly with an increase in the indium composition. This also corresponds to a decrease in the resistivity of these films. In addition, the hole concentration in multiple quantum well light emitting diode structures is much more uniform in the active region when Mg-doped InGaN (instead of Mg-doped GaN) is used. These results will help improve the efficiency of light emitting diodes, especially in the green/yellow color range. Also, the improved hole transport may prove to be important for the development of photovoltaic devices. Cathodoluminescence studies have also been performed on nanoindented ZnO crystals. Bulk, single crystal ZnO was indented using a sub-micron spherical diamond tip on various surface orientations. The resistance to deformation (the "hardness") of each surface orientation was measured, with the c-plane being the most resistive. This is due to the orientation of the easy glide planes, the c-planes, being positioned perpendicularly to the applied load. The a-plane oriented crystal is the least resistive to deformation. Cathodoluminescence imaging allows for the correlation of the luminescence with the regions located near the indentation. Sub-nanometer shifts in the band edge emission have been assigned to residual strain the crystals. The a- and m-plane oriented crystals show two-fold symmetry with regions of compressive and tensile strain located parallel and perpendicular to the ±c-directions, respectively. The c-plane oriented crystal shows six-fold symmetry with regions of tensile strain extending along the six equivalent a-directions.
ContributorsJuday, Reid (Author) / Ponce, Fernando A. (Thesis advisor) / Drucker, Jeff (Committee member) / Mccartney, Martha R (Committee member) / Menéndez, Jose (Committee member) / Shumway, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
In an effort to understand and improve interactions between homeless young adults and the nonprofit organizations that serve them, I engaged in a long-term, qualitative, participatory action project. My project involved input from homeless young adults, nonprofit organizations, volunteers/staff, and communication scholarship. While taking a community-engaged, participatory, and qualitative approach,

In an effort to understand and improve interactions between homeless young adults and the nonprofit organizations that serve them, I engaged in a long-term, qualitative, participatory action project. My project involved input from homeless young adults, nonprofit organizations, volunteers/staff, and communication scholarship. While taking a community-engaged, participatory, and qualitative approach, I focused on the interactions between youth and the organizations. Particularly, I drew on homeless young adult experiences to inform services and illuminate compassion within the context of the nonprofit organizations. In the end, this project extends the individual model of compassion to include presence, identifies potential ruptures in the process of compassion, and models compassionate dynamics in organizations. It also articulates a method I call pragmatic fieldwork, a qualitative and pragmatic approach to participatory action research. Each of these outcomes speaks to varied community interests, from theoretically nuancing scholarly models of compassion to informing policy in the interest of more effectively and compassionately serving homeless youth.
ContributorsHuffman, Timothy (Author) / Trethewey, Angela (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Committee member) / Hagar, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
This dissertation is focused on material property exploration and analysis using computational quantum mechanics methods. Theoretical calculations were performed on the recently discovered hexahydride materials A2SiH6 (A=Rb, K) to calculate the lattice dynamics of the systems in order to check for structural stability, verify the experimental Raman and infrared spectrospcopy

This dissertation is focused on material property exploration and analysis using computational quantum mechanics methods. Theoretical calculations were performed on the recently discovered hexahydride materials A2SiH6 (A=Rb, K) to calculate the lattice dynamics of the systems in order to check for structural stability, verify the experimental Raman and infrared spectrospcopy results, and obtain the theoretical free energies of formation. The electronic structure of the systems was calculated and the bonding and ionic properties of the systems were analyzed. The novel hexahydrides were compared to the important hydrogen storage material KSiH3. This showed that the hypervalent nature of the SiH62- ions reduced the Si-H bonding strength considerably. These hydrogen rich compounds could have promising energy applications as they link to alternative hydrogen fuel technology. The carbide systems Li-C (A=Li,Ca,Mg) were studied using \emph{ab initio} and evolutionary algorithms at high pressures. At ambient pressure Li2C2 and CaC2 are known to contain C22- dumbbell anions and CaC2 is polymorphic. At elevated pressure both CaC2 and Li2C2 display polymorphism. At ambient pressure the Mg-C system contains several experimentally known phases, however, all known phases are shown to be metastable with respect to the pure elements Mg and C. First principle investigation of the configurational space of these compounds via evolutionary algorithms results in a variety of metastable and unique structures. The binary compounds ZnSb and ZnAs are II-V electron-poor semiconductors with interesting thermoelectric properties. They contain rhomboid rings composed of Zn2Sb2 (Zn2As2) with multi-centered covalent bonds which are in turn covalently bonded to other rings via two-centered, two-electron bonds. Ionicity was explored via Bader charge analysis and it appears that the low ionicity that these materials display is a necessary condition of their multicentered bonding. Both compounds were found to have narrow, indirect band gaps with multi-valley valence and conduction bands; which are important characteristics for high thermopower in thermoelectric materials. Future work is needed to analyze the lattice properties of the II-V CdSb-type systems, especially in order to find the origin of the extremely low thermal conductivity that these systems display.
ContributorsBenson, Daryn Eugene (Author) / Häussermann, Ulrich (Thesis advisor) / Shumway, John (Thesis advisor) / Chamberlin, Ralph (Committee member) / Sankey, Otto (Committee member) / Treacy, Mike (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013