http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu:80 The University of Texas Digital Repository system captures, stores, indexes, preserves, and distributes digital research material. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/6688 Vexations, volumes, and volunteers: institutionalization and the veneration of information at a small international NGO The author performed action research over the two years between March 2006 and February 2008 with the Instituto Dois Irmãos (i2i), a non-governmental organization (NGO) in a low-income area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil consisting of a group of approximately 3-5 locals and 2-30 foreigners at any one time that in March 2006 offered few services and lacked the expertise or confidence to offer more. Together, participants and the author improved and increased the NGO’s services and implemented a reading room – a place of information and literacy – for Portuguese-speaking students of English. This dissertation describes participants’, the organization’s, and the author’s journey to transform the i2i into a better functioning organization and to create the NGO’s reading room. The analysis focuses on the practical learning that took place within the i2i. Throughout the research process, the author both made use of and questioned the concepts of participation and development. In the text, she also draws on the experiences of the i2i’s leaders and volunteers to question the prevailing notion of information as a social good. A critical understanding of these three notions is essential for the work of librarians, development professionals, and policymakers alike. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/6687 Development of alternative cathodes for intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cells Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) offer the advantage of using less expensive oxide catalysts and directly using hydrocarbon fuels without requiring external fuel reforming due to the higher operating temperatures of > 500°C compared to the proton exchange membrane fuel cells. However, the conventional operating temperature of ~ 1000℃ leads to undesired side reactions and thermal expansion mismatch among the cell components. These difficulties have generated considerable interest in intermediate temperature (500 - 800 ℃) SOFC, but the lower operating temperature leads to poor oxygen reduction reaction kinetics with the conventional cathode material, La1-xSrxMnO3. In this regard, the cobalt-containing perovskite cathodes such as La1−xSrxCoO3−δ are appealing, but it suffers huge thermal expansion mismatch with the conventional electrolytes. To address this issue, this dissertation focuses on two series of new cathode materials. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/6686 Incidental exposure to news: limiting fragmentation in the new media environment Recent changes in the media environment have generated serious debates about whether these changes will foster or hamper the proper functioning of democracy. Along this line, the tendency toward audience fragmentation has arisen as one of the main concerns that might undermine a healthy democracy. People are not likely to discuss common social problems and understand each other in fragmented society, much less agree on methods to solve them. This dissertation investigates whether the environmental changes result in the audience fragmentation. This study first clarifies conceptual and operational definition of fragmentation. It is conceptualized as division of the general public into small groups not communicating with each other, and operationalized as existence of a common agenda by means of incidental news exposure facilitated by structural factors of online communication, an exemplar of the new information environment. Data from several different methods are employed to investigate effects of new media on fragmentation: a content analysis, a survey, and a laboratory experiment. The results provide evidence supporting that the public still can share experiences by learning a common agenda from the media on the Internet, the medium considered an icon of the new media environment. Findings of the content analysis found significant positive correlations between news agenda of different media outlets, indicating that there is a common agenda in the media. Environmental factors of the media environment rather than individual differences in political predispositions have strong influence on people’s incidental news exposure, a key route to acquire a common agenda. A series of analyses based on the survey found that overall frequency of Internet use significantly predicted individuals’ reports of incidental news exposure online, whereas there was no significant relationship between political predispositions and incidental exposure. It also appears that certain online activities such as getting entertainment/sports information significantly predicted the incidental news exposure. The incidental news exposure was found to have actual effects on people’s learning of a common agenda and recognition/recall of information carried by stimulus messages in the experiment. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of communication research and media/democracy. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/6685 Attentional biases in social anxiety: an investigation using the inattentional blindness paradigm Social anxiety disorder is the third most common mental disorder with the lifetime prevalence rate of 13.3% in the US population. Typically, it causes significant impairment in a wide range of functioning and follows a chronic, unremitting course if untreated. Over the past two decades, there has been a dramatic increase in clinical research aimed at examining underlying mechanisms maintaining social anxiety. One line of research has investigated attentional biases in social anxiety, using various cognitive experiment paradigms, including the emotional Stroop and the modified dotprobe tasks. However, overall findings are equivocal about the nature of attentional biases in social anxiety and several methodological problems limit the interpretability of the data. The present study examined attentional biases associated with social anxiety using a new research paradigm in the field of anxiety disorders: the inattentional blindness paradigm. This paradigm presents a social cue in the absence of the subjects’ expectation while they are engaged in a cognitively demanding task, thereby enabling the more purely attentional aspect of information processing to be examined reducing the influence of potential response biases or effortful strategies. Two independent experiments were conducted using nonclinical student samples consisting of individuals high in social anxiety (HSAs) versus individuals low in social anxiety (LSAs) based on the static and sustained inattentional blindness tasks. Overall, results revealed that HSAs were more likely to detect or identify a socially-threatening cue, relative to LSAs; whereas LSAs were more likely to detect or identify a non-threatening social cue, relative to HSAs. These findings were observed only in the presence of a bogus-speech manipulation. These data suggest the promising utility of the inattentional blindness paradigm in investigating attentional biases in social anxiety and perhaps other psychopathological conditions. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.