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

The constant-pressure gas-driven radial displacement and viscous fingering instability in a finite liquid drop in a Hele-Shaw cell

The displacement of a liquid by a less viscous fluid in a porous medium or other small geometry often results in an interfacial instability that takes the form of \u27\u27fingers\u27\u27 or \u27\u27tongues.\u27\u27 Typically referred to as viscous fingering or the Saffman-Taylor instability, this instability has direct relevance to many industries. For example in oil recovery nearby water can enter the oil reservoir and hinder yields, while some enhanced oil recovery techniques use fluids to displace oil and become less effective as the instability appears. This instability is also detrimental to gas-assisted injection molding and some embossing processes, while it could produce desirable effects in some industries such as patterning thin polymer films. Unfortunately the majority of studies of the two-phase displacement problem introduce the displacing fluid at a constant flow rate as opposed to a constant pressure. In this thesis a finite liquid drop is displaced radially by a gas at constant pressure in a Hele-Shaw cell. A Hele-Shaw cell consists of two parallel plates with a gap spacing much smaller than the length and width, effectively producing a two-dimensional flow. The problem is investigated in three separate studies: the displacement of glycerol-water mixtures by air, the displacement of aqueous calcium hydroxide by carbon dioxide, and the displacement of mineral oil with dissolved polyisobutylene, a shear-thinning liquid, by air. Experimental videos are analyzed to track the expansion of the gas phase and the development of the instability, and a simple conservation of volume approach is used to estimate the residual film produced by the displacement. Finally a novel quantity is defined to justly compare very different instability regimes such as smooth pedal-like fingers (primarily a Newtonian effect) and fractal dendritic fingers (primarily a shear-thinning effect) in order to quantify the instability and its growth