Nanoscale Characterization and Mechanism of Electroless Deposition of Silver Metal

This dissertation is an investigation of the nanoscale characteristics and mechanism of electrolessly deposited silver metal seeded by gold nanoparticles. The process of growing seed-nanoparticles on a polymer surface was studied. Several bifunctional amines and organic reducing agents were used to explore how these chemical factors affect the size and distribution of gold nanoparticles formed at the interface. The nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM). An electroless deposition (ED) bath developed by Danscher was selected to study electroless deposition of silver in detail. The chemical species in the bath were varied to determine how concentration, nature of the carboxylate buffering species, and the presence and absence of gum arabic affect the morphology of silver metal formed by ED and the overall rate of deposition at the surface. The kinetics of deposition using the Danscher bath was studied in detail to elucidate the mechanism of ED. Knowledge generated from this investigation can be used to expand applications of silver ED where strict control over the nanoscale morphology of the deposited metal is required to obtain specific chemical and physical properties

Theological Foundation For a Reformed Doctrine of Natural Law

Although the magisterial Reformers inherited the natural-law tradition as a noncontroversial legacy of late medieval scholasticism, their twentieth-century descendents have, more often than not, assumed a critical stance toward that tradition. This antipathy has been fueled in large part, but not exclusively by Karl Barth\u27s vigorous repudiation of natural theology in the 1934 disputation with Emil Brunner. Like Herman Dooyeweerd, G.C. Berkouwer, and Cornelius Van Til, Barth identified the doctrines of natural theology/natural law as rationalistic vestiges of Thomism that Calvin and Luther had unwittingly assimilated and that, in the scholastic systems of Reformed orthodoxy, became the foundation for the anthropological turn in theology that would eventually run its course in the nineteenth century. A major obstacle for twentieth-century Protestant and Reformed theologians in assessing the significance of the natural-law tradition has been to overcome the widely misunderstood relationship between the Reformers and post-Reformation orthodoxy. Until recently, nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars tended to view Calvin as the chief codifier of Reformed doctrine and to gauge later doctrinal developments in Reformed orthodoxy as defections or distortions from the true intent of the Reformer\u27s theology. As a rhetorical strategy, these tendencies are reflected in Earth\u27s allegation that orthodoxy had fashioned Calvin into a kind of Jean-Alphonse Turrettini. Barth insisted that the Fall had so disordered natural human faculties that apart from Christ it is impossible to obtain genuine knowledge of God a doctrinal assumption, which he claimed was implicit in Calvin\u27s teaching on the noetic incapacity of the natural man. A close examination of select Reformers and representatives of early and high orthodoxy, however, shows that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformed theologians maintained quite a different understanding of natural revelation from Barth. In the theology of John Calvin, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Jerome Zanchi, Johannes Althusius, and Francis Turretin, the diminished natural human faculties still function sufficiently to reveal the general precepts of the natural moral law and to provide the anthropological starting point for a doctrine of natural law. This study develops the theological foundation for a contemporary Reformed doctrine of natural law by rehabilitating the contribution of those representatives in three interrelated areas of prolegomena natural revelation, natural theology, and natural law

A Study of a High Delinquency Area

This is a report of an ecological study of delinquency in a Chicago neighborhood having the fifth highest rate of delinquency compared with the 75 other neighborhood communities in the city. Ecology, broadly defined, is the study of the interrelationships between organism and the immediate environment in which it lives. In sociology, some ecological studies have been concerned with total urban areas. Others have investigated smaller areas such as neighborhoods or census tracts. The unit areas are compared with one another in terms of certain characteristics considered to be the independent variables such as housing, income, and mobility and certain conditions considered to be dependent variables. The prevalence of mental illness or juvenile delinquency are examples of the latter