Forgotten landmark: the Municipal Auditorium of Kansas City, Missouri

Title from PDF of title page, viewed on March 26, 2014Thesis advisor: Rochelle ZiskinVitaIncludes bibliographic references (pages 107-114)Thesis (M. A.)--Dept. of Art and Art History. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2013The Municipal Auditorium is a grand civic building in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, which encompasses venues for theater, music and athletics. Designed by Gentry, Voskamp, and Neville, and associated architects, Hoit, Price, and Barnes, and built between 1933-1936 during the Depression, the structure is a Streamline Moderne relic that has been underappreciated in recent times. More than thirty years ago, Cydney Millstein created the only dedicated study of the building, but her research dealt primarily with the history of its creation. In my research, I examine its place in the political climate and infamous boss system of Kansas City. I also underscore the city's need for a new auditorium by illustrating the outdated previous convention halls in Kansas City. Additionally, I site the Municipal Auditorium within the architects' oeuvre and examine how auditoriums from other cities influenced their designs. Two of the most inspirational auditoriums were the Radio City Music Hall and the RKO-Roxy Theater in New York City, which have never before been compared to Kansas City's auditorium in such detail. And yet, the Municipal Auditorium retains its own impressive brand of Midwestern restraint and stateliness. As a grand civic building, many city officials, architects, and artists worked together to create the Municipal Auditorium, but some of their contributions have been forgotten over the years. By using personal scrapbooks and a diary from architect Alfred Barnes, interviews with architect Homer Neville and with architect Alonzo Gentry's niece, newspaper articles from the 1930s, and original sketches and architectural plans, my research uncovers these significant contributions. Together they make up the streamlined shell and the opulent interior of the Municipal AuditoriumCollege of Arts and SciencesAbstract -- List of illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- A monument of stone and concrete: Kansas City politics and the Municipal Auditorium -- The Kansas City spirit reignited: Conrad Mann and the ten-year plan -- Scandal and sketches: how a small firm won a big commission -- The Municipal Auditorium and Music Hall: the "Radio City" of the Midwest -- Conclusion -- Bibliographymonographi

VT on DVD

Purpose: VT on D VD provides optometric interns and vision therapy (VT) patients with video demonstrations of five VT techniques on Digital Video Disc (DVD). It provides the opportunity for interns to use correct instructional and observational tools when demonstrating VT activities. In addition, VT on D VD provides patients with a simple clarification of vision therapy exercises. Interns and patients will find VT on D VD to be a useful tool in addition to office-based VT activities. Methods: The online version of the BABO manual found on the OEPF Clinical Curriculum website was used for written instructions of each exercise. Rob Lewis, O.D., FCOVD, was consulted extensively and is involved in the instruction of some video footage along with the authors as the patients. Each VT activity was storyboarded, videotaped, and edited onto a final DVD. Two video cameras, a microphone for narration, and video editing software were used to complete the DVD. Results: These procedural videos have been compiled into a set of two DVD collections, one for intern use and one for patient use. These videos are for educational use and will be included in the fee package of a VT program. Discussion: Coin Circles, Lens Feeling, and See 3 Coins are used for various ocular dysfunctions and at different stages during therapy. Future improvements should include follow-up with patients using the DVD, increasing the VT exercises, eliminating background distractions in the video, and improving video quality

Akin House Curriculum Development and Living History Programming

This unit plan is comprised of a variety of inquiry-based lessons that explore the culture and way of life of the Native Americans who occupied New England. After studying the Akin house documents, materials, and narratives, I chose to focus my unit on the land and the people who came before the Akin family so that students will learn the long-view of our rich New England history

Surviving to thriving terminology and family reactions to disability a literature review

This literature review examined the theories and models surrounding the topic of family reaction to disability. Five models were assessed in terms of their structure and their terminology. An historical review has been provided to give context for the models under examination. Concerns with terminology used include the application of the words adjustment and coping within Patterson’s (1988) Family Adjustment and Adaptation Response model (FAAR), as well as the applicability of the construct of resilience to the FAAR (Patterson, 2002). The relationship between theories was also discussed with the FAAR and Scorgie, Wilgosh and Sobsey’s (2004) Transformational Outcomes model found to be the most complementary.Master of Interdisciplinary Health (M.A.

Ram pressure and dusty red galaxies - key factors in the evolution of the multiple cluster system Abell 901/902

We present spectroscopic observations of 182 disk galaxies (96 in the cluster and 86 in the field environment) in the region of the Abell 901/902 multiple cluster system, which is located at a redshift of $z\sim 0.165$. The presence of substructures and non-Gaussian redshift distributions indicate that the cluster system is dynamically young and not in a virialized state. We find evidence for two important galaxy populations. \textit{Morphologically distorted galaxies} are probably subject to increased tidal interactions. They show pronounced rotation curve asymmetries at intermediate cluster-centric radii and low rest-frame peculiar velocities. \textit{Morphologically undistorted galaxies} show the strongest rotation curve asymmetries at high rest-frame velocities and low cluster-centric radii. Supposedly, this group is strongly affected by ram-pressure stripping due to interaction with the intra-cluster medium. Among the morphologically undistorted galaxies, dusty red galaxies have particularly strong rotation curve asymmetries, suggesting ram pressure is an important factor in these galaxies. Furthermore, dusty red galaxies on average have a bulge-to-total ratio higher by a factor of two than cluster blue cloud and field galaxies. The fraction of kinematically distorted galaxies is 75% higher in the cluster than in the field environment. This difference mainly stems from morphological undistorted galaxies, indicating a cluster-specific interaction process that only affects the gas kinematics but not the stellar morphology. Also the ratio between gas and stellar scale length is reduced for cluster galaxies compared to the field sample. Both findings could be best explained by ram-pressure effects.Comment: Electronic version published in Astronomy and Astrophysics Volume 549, Page 0; 19 pages, 21 figure

Tully-Fisher analysis of the multiple cluster system Abell 901/902

We derive rotation curves from optical emission lines of 182 disk galaxies (96 in the cluster and 86 in the field) in the region of Abell 901/902 located at $z\sim 0.165$. We focus on the analysis of B-band and stellar-mass Tully-Fisher relations. We examine possible environmental dependencies and differences between normal spirals and "dusty red" galaxies, i.e. disk galaxies that have red colors due to relatively low star formation rates. We find no significant differences between the best-fit TF slope of cluster and field galaxies. At fixed slope, the field population with high-quality rotation curves (57 objects) is brighter by \Delta M_{B}=-0\fm42\pm0\fm15 than the cluster population (55 objects). We show that this slight difference is at least in part an environmental effect. The scatter of the cluster TFR increases for galaxies closer to the core region, also indicating an environmental effect. Interestingly, dusty red galaxies become fainter towards the core at given rotation velocity (i.e. total mass). This indicates that the star formation in these galaxies is in the process of being quenched. The luminosities of normal spiral galaxies are slightly higher at fixed rotation velocity for smaller cluster-centric radii. Probably these galaxies are gas-rich (compared to the dusty red population) and the onset of ram-pressure stripping increases their star-formation rates. The results from the TF analysis are consistent with and complement our previous findings. Dusty red galaxies might be an intermediate stage in the transformation of infalling field spiral galaxies into cluster S0s, and this might explain the well-known increase of the S0 fraction in galaxy clusters with cosmic time.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics; 16 pages, 14 figure

The environmental dependence of the stellar mass-size relation in STAGES galaxies

We present the stellar mass-size relations for elliptical, lenticular, and spiral galaxies in the field and cluster environments using HST/ACS imaging and data from the Space Telescope A901/2 Galaxy Evolution Survey (STAGES). We use a large sample of ~1200 field and cluster galaxies, and a sub-sample of cluster core galaxies, and quantify the significance of any putative environmental dependence on the stellar mass-size relation. For elliptical, lenticular, and high-mass (log M*/M_sun > 10) spiral galaxies we find no evidence to suggest any such environmental dependence, implying that internal drivers are governing their size evolution. For intermediate/low-mass spirals (log M*/M_sun < 10) we find evidence, significant at the 2-sigma level, for a possible environmental dependence on galaxy sizes: the mean effective radius a_e for lower-mass spirals is ~15-20 per cent larger in the field than in the cluster. This is due to a population of low-mass large-a_e field spirals that are largely absent from the cluster environments. These large-a_e field spirals contain extended stellar discs not present in their cluster counterparts. This suggests the fragile extended stellar discs of these spiral galaxies may not survive the environmental conditions in the cluster. Our results suggest that internal physical processes are the main drivers governing the size evolution of galaxies, with the environment possibly playing a role affecting only the discs of intermediate/low-mass spirals.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, accepted to MNRA

Anti-truncated stellar light profiles in the outer regions of STAGES spiral galaxies: bulge or disc related?

We present a comparison of azimuthally averaged radial surface brightness mu(r) profiles and analytical bulge-disc decompositions (de Vaucouleurs, r^(1/4) bulge plus exponential disc) for spiral galaxies using Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys V-band imaging from the Space Telescope A901/2 Galaxy Evolution Survey (STAGES). In the established classification scheme, antitruncated mu(r) profiles (Type III) have a broken exponential disc with a shallower region beyond the break radius r_brk. The excess light at large radii (r > r_brk) can either be caused by an outer exponential disc (Type III-d) or an extended spheroidal component (Type III-s). Using our comparisons, we determine the contribution of bulge light at r > r_brk for a large sample of 78 (barred/unbarred, Sa-Sd) spiral galaxies with outer disc antitruncations (mu_brk > 24 mag arcsec^-2). In the majority of cases (~85 per cent), evidence indicates that excess light at r > r_brk is related to an outer shallow disc (Type III-d). Here, the contribution of bulge light at r > r_brk is either negligible (~70 per cent) or too little to explain the antitruncation (~15 per cent). However in the latter cases, bulge light can affect the measured disc properties (e.g. mu_brk, outer scalelength). In the remaining cases (~15 per cent), light at r > r_brk is dominated by the bulge (Type III-s). Here, for most cases the bulge profile dominates at all radii and only occasionally (3 galaxies, ~5 per cent) extends beyond that of a dominant disc and explains the excess light at r > r_brk. We thus conclude that in the vast majority of cases antitruncated outer discs cannot be explained by bulge light and thus remain a pure disc phenomenon.Comment: Accepted to MNRA

Infrared constraints on the dark mass concentration observed in the cluster Abell 1942

We present a deep H-band image of the region in the vicinity of the cluster Abell 1942 containing the puzzling dark matter concentration detected in an optical weak lensing study by Erben et al. (2000). We demonstrate that our limiting magnitude, H=22, would be sufficient to detect clusters of appropriate mass out to redshifts comparable with the mean redshift of the background sources. Despite this, our infrared image reveals no obvious overdensity of sources at the location of the lensing mass peak, nor an excess of sources in the I-H vs. H colour-magnitude diagram. We use this to further constrain the luminosity and mass-to-light ratio of the putative dark clump as a function of its redshift. We find that for spatially-flat cosmologies, background lensing clusters with reasonable mass-to-light ratios lying in the redshift range 0<z<1 are strongly excluded, leaving open the possibility that the mass concentration is a new type of truly dark object.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. MNRAS submitted (after referee revision