Medicalization as a Trojan Horse: Changes in Erectile Enhancement Advertising By Robert D Wood, M.S. A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University, 2011 Major Director: Sarah Jane Brubaker, PhD, Graduate Program of Sociology This thesis investigates the medicalization of “inadequate penis size” through an analysis of online advertising of “male enhancement,” or erectile enhancement (EE) products. The process of medicalization, as defined by Peter Conrad, is the process by which non-medical problems become defined and treated as such (2007). With the advent and success of Viagra (Sildenafil) in 1998, a wave of products emerged treating erectile dysfunction and not long after followed the expansion of the market for erectile enhancement. Although several studies have been done of erectile dysfunction, there has been less research on the advertisement techniques within the erectile enhancement market. Brubaker and Johnson's article “'Pack a more powerful punch' and 'lay the pipe': erectile enhancement discourse as a body project for masculinity” dissects such advertising for overarching themes of violence, the subjugation of women, and the perpetuation of hegemonic masculinity (2008). This analysis was done in 2006, and evidence presented in this thesis suggests that the advertising techniques, particularly as they appear in erectile enhancement websites, show some dramatic differences in presentation and themes. These more recent advertisements seem to reflect a more medical approach, emphasizing an authoritative medical appearance, downplaying violent, misogynistic, or sexist undertones consistent with much of erectile enhancement advertising. This new medical approach is a metaphorical Trojan horse, sneaking in and maintaining older concepts of domination and violence. The background of hegemonic masculinity in erectile enhancement advertising is continued under the guise of medical professionalism. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of ten erectile enhancement product websites, I show how the advertising involved in this industry has attempted to medicalize the small penis in hopes of marketing an “inadequate penis” as a more legitimate, medical concern. This study thus contributes to a better understanding of the changing social concepts of manhood, how the process of medicalization works, and how it can be seen within the area of erectile enhancement.

Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / The genetic enhancement the human genome would be humanity’s most extreme attempt in the quest for hyperagency, and will have negative implications for our sense of humanity. Hyperagency is an extreme over-expression of our own human agency; everything is transparent, subject to our control and manipulation, and in accordance with our own interests. Modern era philosophical theories in subjectivity and agency have developed, evolved, and responded to advancements in science and technology over the past few centuries, and have all contributed to the current shift in understanding of our own humanity, influencing the rise of hyperagency in the postmodern world. The act of manipulating an organism’s genetic material for the purposes of changing and modifying its characteristics is referred to as genetic modification. The term genetic enhancement is more specifically indicative of the process of modifying nonpathological, or non-disease related genes. Genetic enhancement, in the form of germline engineering especially, exhibits a dangerous attitude of hyperagency that will have negative consequences for humanity as a whole. Hyperagency not only disrupts our sense of reverence before mystery and depth but also threatens our sense of morality in relating to the world. If continued, practices in hyperagency such as genetic enhancement will lead us to lose our sense of humanity altogether. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Philosophy.

The performance of membranes in various processes is largely dependent on their morphological properties. Thus, membrane structure has been continuously optimised for different applications. Anodic alumina membranes (AAMs) exhibit self-ordered pore structure and the pore size can be tuned in the sub-micrometre range. The aim of this PhD project is to propose and develop AAMs for the applications of membrane filtration and emulsification with potential for scale-up. In the project, the AAMs were initially fabricated in flat sheet form to optimise the process parameters to obtain membranes with a high quality of pore structure. The membrane pore diameter can be readily controlled by the anodization voltage. While AAMs are normally symmetric, by manipulating the anodization voltage, asymmetric AAMs consists of stem pores and active pores have been successfully made. After that, the flat AAMs with symmetric and homogeneous structure were used as a platform to study for surface modification and fluid transport in nano-channels. The surface chemistry and wettability of the membranes has been altered by grafting of silane molecules and carbon coating by chemical vapour deposition. Fluid flow measurement through pristine AAMs with pore diameter in the 20 nm to 100 nm range shows flow enhancement effect, experimentally for the first time, can occur in hydrophilic materials. Subsequently, tubular AAMs were fabricated using aluminium alloy tubes, to be assessed for ultrafiltration and membrane emulsification processes. The pore structure of the tubular AAMs was analogous to flat membranes. Despite the reduced pore circularity and hexagonal arrangement originated from the presence of impurities in the starting materials, the narrow pore size distribution was not compromised. In a selectivity-permeability analysis, the asymmetric tubular AAMs outperformed most of the commercial ceramic membranes but their flux was very low when compared to polymeric membranes. A bovine serum albumin filtration test showed that complete pore blocking-cake filtration model can be used to describe the fouling behaviour. Finally, symmetric tubular membranes were used to study dead-end and cross-flow emulsification processes. The resulting emulsions show low polydispersity. Using a membrane with 25 nm average pore diameter, the obtained average droplet size was as low as 120 nm during a cross-flow emulsification. This is by far the smallest achieved average droplet size by cross-flow membrane emulsification.

Multiword Expressions (MWEs) are crucial aspects of language use. Second language (L2) learners need to master these MWEs to be able to communicate effectively. In addition, mastering these MWEs helps L2 learners improve their cognitive processing of language input. In this study, my primary objectives were to explore the effectiveness of using Textual Enhancement (TE) to assist L2 speakers’ comprehension of MWEs, to explore whether there is a difference in comprehension between collocations and idioms, and finally, to explore how L2 speakers transact the MWEs’ meanings as presented in texts. While several researchers have explored how input enhancement in general helps L2 learners to learn collocations and idioms for productive use (e.g., Boers et al., 2017; Pam & Karimi, 2016), my focus in this study was to understand and explain in depth how the technique of TE helps L2 learners comprehend MWEs. I included in this study two types of MWEs: collocations and idioms. I also studied the differences in the comprehension between these two types to further understand the transparency factors in the comprehension process. I employed an explanatory sequential mixed methods design in which I used experimental quantitative methods and qualitative methods in one study. In phase one, I started with the experimental part and followed with the qualitative analysis to explain in depth the outcomes of the experimental part. In the qualitative section, I followed an explanatory descriptive case study approach to obtain a deeper understanding of how the participants transacted the meanings of the MWEs. A total of 26 adult Arabic-speaking students in a major Southeastern university in the United States of America volunteered to take part in this study. I collected data through: (1) a reading proficiency test, and (2) a brief survey to gather background information, self-evaluation of language proficiency, and previous experiences with MWEs. In the experimental part, I presented 20 paragraphs derived from online newspaper and magazine articles. Each paragraph contained a collocation or an idiom. Following each paragraph, I presented multiple-choice questions to measure the comprehension of the MWE in the paragraph and an open-ended question for the participants to describe how they had comprehended the MWE. I divided the participants into control and experimental groups in which the MWEs were textually enhanced in the experimental group using bolding, italicization, and highlighting. The results of the study demonstrated TE was effective in assisting the participants to comprehend idioms. In contrast, TE did not show a significant effect in leading the participants to comprehend the collocations. The qualitative data analysis showed the participants used contextual factors, guessing, constituents of the MWEs, and similarities of the MWEs with the first language (L1) as the major strategies to comprehend the MWEs meanings with different degrees between both groups.

Doctor of Clinical Psychology / Master of Science / Despite a number of different psychotherapeutic approaches having been examined for use with patients with eating disorders, there is still no established psychological treatment associated with acceptable levels of long-term recovery. These poor recovery rates are associated with the observation that eating disorder patients are often ambivalent, or even resistant, to treatment. As such, research has begun to explore the use of Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET), a treatment approach that aims to engage ambivalent and change resistant patients in the treatment process, with these individuals. Poor motivation to recover is particularly prominent within the inpatient eating disorder setting. However, no previous study has examined the use of MET to foster willingness to engage in treatment with this group of patients. The objectives of the current study were twofold. Firstly, an examination of the effectiveness of an inpatient eating disorders unit affiliated was undertaken in order to further the research base upon which future inpatient interventions can be built and compared. The second objective was to develop and evaluate a brief MET group program for inpatient eating disorder sufferers. The goal of the intervention was to enhance patients’ motivation to more effectively utilise the inpatient program and to hence positively impact upon their psychological, physical and behavioural functioning. Forty-two consecutive inpatients meeting DSM-IV criteria for an eating disorder were recruited into the current study and sequentially allocated to groups. Twenty-three inpatients completed four MET groups in addition to routine hospital care. A control group of 19 participants in the standard hospital treatment program was also employed (TAU group). The inpatient unit was associated with significant improvements on a number of physical, behavioural and emotional outcome measures. Despite no significant differences between the MET and the TAU groups being found on the overall formal outcome measures, there were nevertheless differences between the groups. Specifically, the MET groups appeared to foster longer-term motivation and engagement, and to promote treatment continuation. This study hopes to start a constructive debate on the role of MET in the inpatient eating disorders unit.

The ability to maximise learning efficiently is of concern to all who are involved in an educational environment. The process of learning that will facilitate change is well documented. This documentation suggests that: (1) the understanding of what is occurring in the process of change is essential for it to be successful, and (2) this process includes certain specific traits that will facilitate change. In this study, a design to acquire data from individuals involved in this process of change is developed. To acquire the data sought in this study, observation was made of ten trainees involved in a skills enhancement programme at Caloola Farm; a training centre sponsored by the Federal Government and operated through the Baptist Community Services (A.C.T.). The conclusion reached supported the original premise that recognisable traits exist and aid in the process of accepting change.

The emergence of heterogeneous networks and the rapid increase of Voice over IP (VoIP) applications provide important opportunities for the telecommunications market. These opportunities come at the price of increased complexity in the monitoring of the quality of service (QoS) and the need for adaptation of transmission systems to the changing environmental conditions. This thesis contains three papers concerned with quality assessment and enhancement of speech communication systems in adverse environments. In paper A, we introduce a low-complexity, non-intrusive algorithm for monitoring speech quality over the network. In the proposed algorithm, speech quality is predicted from a set of features that capture important structural information from the speech signal. Papers B and C describe improvements in the conventional pre- and post-processing speech enhancement techniques. In paper B, we demonstrate that the causal Kalman filter implementation is in conflict with the key properties in human perception and propose solutions to the problem. In paper C, we propose adaptation of the conventional postfilter parameters to changes in the noisy conditions. A perceptually motivated distortion measure is used in the optimization of postfilter parameters. Significant improvement over nonadaptive system is obtained. / QC 20100824

Applications of imaging and image processing become a part of our daily life and find their crucial way in real-world areas. Accordingly, the corresponding techniques get more and more complicated. Many tasks are recognizable for a image processing chain, such as, filtering, color balancing, enhancement, segmentation, and post processing. Generally speaking, all of the image processing techniques need a control parameter setting. The better these parameters are set the better results can be achieved. Usually, these parameters are real numbers so search space is really large and brute-force searching is impossible or at least very time consuming. Therefore, the optimal setting of the parameters is an essential requirement to obtain desirable results. Obviously, we are faced with an optimization problem, which its complexity depends on the number of the parameters to be optimized and correlation among them. By reviewing the optimization methods, it can be understood that metaheuristic algorithms are the best candidates for these kind of problems. Metaheuristic algorithms are iterative approaches which can search very complex large spaces to come up with an optimal or close to optimal solution(s). They are able to solve black-box global optimization problems which are not solvable by classic mathematical methods. The first part of this thesis optimizes the control parameters for an eye-illusion, image enhancement, and image thresholding tasks by using an interactive evolutionary optimization approach. Eye illusion and image enhancement are subjective human perception-based issues, so, there is no proposed analytical fitness function for them. Their optimization is only possible through interactive methods. The second part is about setting of active contour (snake) parameters. The performance of active contours (snakes) is sensitive to its eight correlated control parameters which makes the parameter setting problem complex to solve. In this work, wehave tried to set the parameters to their optimal values by using a sample segmented image provided by an expert. As our case studies, we have used breast ultrasound, prostate ultrasound, and lung X-ray medical images. The proposed schemes are general enough to be investigated with other optimization methods and also image processing tasks. The achieved experimental results are promising for both directions, namely, interactive-based image processing and sample-based medical image segmentation. / UOIT

A fully automatic de-weathering system to increase the visibility/stability in surveillance applications during bad weather has been developed. Rain, snow and haze during daylight are handled in real-time performance with acceleration from CUDA implemented algorithms. Video from fixed cameras is processed on a PC with no need of special hardware except an NVidia GPU. The system does not use any background model and does not require any precalibration. Increase in contrast is obtained in all haze/rain/snow-cases while the system lags the maximum of one frame during rain or snow removal. De-hazing can be obtained for any distance to simplify tracking or other operating algorithms on a surveillance system.

Självkänsla är den grund som människan bygger sin uppfattning om sig själv och hur hon ser sig själv genom andra. Teorier finns att högre självkänsla kan resultera i riskfyllt beteende och övermod. Andra teorier talar om att en högre självkänsla ger större tillfredställelse med livet och är en grund till lycka. Syftet med undersökningen är att se om och hur individen själv kan påverka och stärka sin egen självkänsla. Undersökningen utfördes genom kvalitativa intervjuer av sju stycken utbildade terapeuter, psykologer och psykoterapeuter. Resultatet visar att självkänslan går att påverka och reparera men att det är en krävande process i form av emotionellt arbete och självacceptans. Självkänsla visade sig definieras olika vilket har gett ett brett men åtskilt resultat.