Verbal abuse occurs in college relationships, but this form of abuse lacks a clear definition and definitive characteristics. I studied the dialogue that surrounds verbal abuse. I was interested in how verbal abuse was discussed instead of the specific details of the experiences. Verbal abuse was purposely studied separately from physical abuse. Prior research and legal statutes were reviewed before conducting this study. Through the use of focus groups, one-on-one interviews and key informant interviews a broader perspective of verbal abuse was gained.

This thesis studies the rhetoric of U.S. immigration policy, specifically as related to Mexican immigration to the United States. Using Kent Ono and John Sloop's theory of discourse, it examines the rhetoric employed in the Secure Fence Act (SFA) of 2006 and its turns towards wartime rhetoric, immigrant dehumanization, and immigrant deviance. It then contradicts these turns to those seen in the rhetoric of Hometown Associations (HTAs), "outlaw" discourses that operate by systems of logic different from the dominant logic of the SFA.

This work was sponsored by the University of Richmond, School of Arts & Sciences, Department of English.

Every year the National Football League has a draft selection process to recruit new talent. Despite the overwhelming amount of analysis performed on players, bad draft picks happen every year. Little research has previously been done to determine whether player performance is predictable at the time ofthe NFL Draft. Rafferty and Johnson chartered new territory in 2008 with their study entitled Is the NFL Draft a Crap Shoot? The Case of Wide Receivers.

Data mining is the process of extracting useful information or patterns from large raw sets of data. In recent years the amount of data being collected has increased tremendously, which has resulted in the development of new and more complex data mining algorithms to go through the vast data. However, the rate of growth of the new computer systems does not equal the growth of the datasets and the complexity of these data mining algorithms.

In monetary economics, models with multiple equilibria abound, especially in the case of models with overlapping generations such as the Cash-In-Advance model. Using inverse limits, [KS] establish a topological classification of the arising multiple equilibria and analyze the backward dynamics of the model. However, their work remains strictly theoretical and lacks any relevant examples supporting the theory. In this paper we corroborate the classification by presenting a family of examples that illustrate all possible cases from the classification.

1, Chapter 1: Introduction; 20, Chapter 2: The American Culture of Litigiousness; 34, Chapter 3: The Poor Fit Phenomenon; 54, Chapter 4: The Unpredictability of Juries; 74, Chapter 5: Conclusions; 81, Bibliography

The goal of this study was to examine right hemisphere specialization for faces at the neuronal level. Research has shown that facial recognition relies on the right anterior temporal lobe and involves integrating multiple features (Bukach, Gauthier, & Tarr, 2006). Evidence from rat studies confirms that the anterior temporal lobe is involved in integrating multiple object features (Eacott, Machin, & Gaffan, 2001). However, these studies did not examine differences between the brain's right and left hemispheres.

This work was sponsored by the University of Richmond, School of Arts & Sciences, Department of Music.

This paper builds on recent research utilizing real time datasets in order to assess the forecasting utility of consumer sentiment indexes in the United Kingdom. Academic researchers have consistently found that consumer confidence indexes accurately predict consumer spending in the near term. Few of these examinations, however, have utilized out of sample forecasting and only one has incorporated real time data.