Redefining Landscape Norms: Exploring the Influence of Normative Landscaping Patterns in Washington County, Utah

As water supplies in the American West become increasingly strained by growing populations and threats of drought and climate change, water managers and governments are working to maximize water-use efficiency. With well over half of municipal water being used on outdoor irrigation, improved landscape water efficiency has been a clear candidate for conservation messaging. Because social norms play a significant role in what conservation behaviors individuals adopt voluntarily, conservation messaging strategies often try to influence and shift norms in favor of improved behaviors. A clear understanding of the existing norms, demographics, and cultural values of an area is essential to tailoring relevant and effective conservation messages. The purpose of this research was to identify landscape norms in Washington County, Utah and whether residents had perceived a shift in norms over time toward desert-adapted landscapes. We also researched whether social norms played a significant role in the types of landscapes residents preferred. To answer these questions, we surveyed three populations: visitors to a popular, local conservation garden, participants in conservation programs and workshops, and members of a homeowner association. Based on their responses, we found that residents did perceive a shift in landscape norms toward desert landscapes. The vast majority of respondents also indicated approval of homeowners using desert landscaping in their neighborhoods, regardless of their own landscaping decisions. However, little social pressure exists to motivate homeowners to adapt to a specific neighborhood norm. As such, conservation strategies in Washington County should emphasize the approval and growing use of appropriate water-conserving landscape norms. To increase effectiveness, conservation messaging should address the needs of specific demographics. For example, because we found that homeowners with children tend to prefer larger amounts of lawn, conservation messaging needs to demonstrate how child-friendly alternatives to lawn-dominant landscapes can meet the needs of children. In addition to suggestions for improving voluntary behavior changes, we discuss how policies can help to accelerate changes in landscape norms

Organizational Impact of a Toxic Personality

In order to truly calculate the cost of allowing toxic personalities to operate within an organization, leaders must recognize the second and third-order effects that result when these people are left unchecked. This research explored how a toxic personality impacts an organization and focused on the effects of these personalities from two different aspects: the organizational and the individual. The goal was to draw attention to the extent of the impact these personalities can have on an organization\u27s culture, climate, personnel, and overall performance. The repercussions resulting extend far beyond just fiscal aspects; they spread into the psychological and sociological realms, where the price paid by those personnel exposed to the toxic personalities is beyond measure

Theory and experiments on flows containing surfactant-laden drops using experimentally determined surfactant transport parameters

When two fluids come into contact an interface is formed between them. The surface tension of this interface plays an important role in determining the shape of the surface and can be lowered by the presence of surfactants. In dynamic interfacial fluid problems surface tension gradients due to surface convection of the surfactant can develop. These gradients result in Marangoni stress on the surface which affects surface velocities and thus bulk fluid velocities. These flows are relevant in enhanced oil recovery; dip and spin coating technologies; condensate formation on heat exchangers; emulsions in polymerization, biofuels, pharmaceuticals and food processing; and any number of microfluidics technologies, to name a few examples. The vast applications make the understanding of surface tension effects on interfacial flows important. A theoretical understanding exists for how surface tension gradients and Marangoni stress affect interfacial fluid flows, but direct comparisons between experiments and theory is less common in the literature. In this thesis two fluid dynamics problems involving drops are studied. In the first an aqueous drop containing surfactant is placed in a horizontal rotating cylindrical tank half-filled with oil. A film of oil forms between the drop and wall, and the addition of surfactant affects the film thickness, drop shape, and onset of drop breakup. The second problem involves an aqueous drop containing surfactant settling in oil under gravity where surface tension gradients affect the terminal velocity or drag of the drop. Using in-house surface tension measurements, surfactant adsorption and desorption models are developed. These models are then used in analytical and numerical analyses of the aforementioned fluid dynamics problems and compared to experiments. The results demonstrate the potential to use experimentally determined surfactant transport parameters to explain and in some cases predict experimental observations