Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Cleveland State University, 2016, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

This thesis consists of ten short stories that are structured, formatted and thematically aligned with the yamas and niyamas, the ten moral tenants of yoga philosophy. The yamas and niyamas are the first two limbs of Patinjali's eightfold path, or the path to enlightenment through yogic practices. The yamas account for five principles that guide ethical living and instruct followers on how to interact with others and the world. The yamas consist of: ahimsa (non-violence), satya (truthfulness), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (non-excess), and aparigraha (non-possessiveness). The niyamas are guidelines for personal practices that relate to, develop, and enhance one's relationship with self. The niyamas are: saucha (purity), santosha (contentment), tapas (self-discipline), svadhyaya (self-study), and ishvara prandihana (surrender). Each story in this collection loosely correlates with and comments on its assigned yama or niyama. As a collection, the stories function as glimpses of being—fractal pieces of life from inside differing existential or personal crises. The characters face moral, personal and spiritual dilemmas, often grappling with ghosts from the past, striving to make sense of what is through varying tools and coping mechanisms. The highest goal for this thesis is to act as commentary on the modern condition by using the spiritual and existential lens to diagnose and categorize modern afflictions. Some characters reach towards being—towards harmony or enlightenment—as dressing for their wounds. Others merely grapple with their conditions of dis-ease. Still others contribute to, and worsen, the disharmony. Guided by ten moral principles, these stories stand alone and work together to lead readers into the depths of varying states of being, while shedding light on modernity's inherent conflict with ancient spiritual practices.

Committee: Imad Rahman MFA (Committee Chair); Caryl Pagel MFA (Committee Member); Christopher Barzak MFA (Committee Member); David Lardner PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts; Language Arts; Literature; Modern Literature; Religion; Spirituality; Theology

Master of Science in Engineering (MSEgr), Wright State University, 2011, Mechanical Engineering

In the casting process, regions of shrinkage porosity can be reduced or eliminated through the implementation of taper, or small angled additions of mass on the boundaries of the part design, before risers are placed on the casting. Taper supplements the effect of risers so that a smaller riser volume is necessary to make a casting sound. Typically, taper is determined for a casting by using industry guidelines that were developed for simple two-dimensional simplifications of a complex casting. There is no accepted method of defining taper directly on part geometry aside from using expert opinions to make final decisions on taper locations and size. An optimization of taper geometries is performed on two-dimensional casting models to determine if a Niyama based optimization of taper directly on a part design is possible. The Niyama criterion identifies small regions of solidification shrinkage that correspond to shrinkage porosity in casting simulations. The taper optimization was performed on a plate with riser model and a spindle cross section model to determine the effectiveness of the optimization method for multiple geometries. This work concludes that taper optimization based on Niyama constraints is possible and effective, but care must be taken when determining the design space of the taper. It was found that the surface cooling rates of a casting can identify effective locations to taper so optimizations can be performed specifically on the size of the taper to eliminate porosity in a casting.

Committee: Ramana Grandhi PhD (Advisor); Raghavan Srinivasan PhD (Committee Member); Scott Thomas PhD (Committee Member); Andrew Hsu PhD (Other); George Huang PhD (Other) Subjects: Mechanical Engineering