Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1965. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Image of Jason Strickler's MFA exhibition at Claremont Graduate Institute's East Gallery or Peggy Phelps Gallery.

My interest in sound-centric filmmaking and the literary genre of magical realism fostered the development of my thesis film, The Oxide Incident. The film is the story of Simon, a recent divorcee and sound archivist, who discovers a mysterious reel-to-reel-audio tape that he believes may help him heal his damaged relationship with Hannah, his teenage daughter. This paper examines the influence of magical realism on the film, some of its thematic, theoretical, and conceptual ideas such as its exploration of interpersonal communication and its implications in regard to gender, as well as some of its formal strategies. It concludes with a reflection on the process, a historical note, and a glimpse at my future trajectory as a filmmaker.

This thesis investigates the changing cinematic representations of a particular figure in horror culture: the Zombie. Current critical perspectives on the figure of the Zombie have yet to establish literary and cultural antecedents to the cinematic portrayal of the Zombie, preferring to position it as a mere product of American horror films of the 1930s. This study critiques this standpoint, arguing that global uses of the Zombie in differing media indicate a symbolic figure attuned to changing cultural contexts. The thesis therefore combines cultural and historical analysis with close textual readings of visual and written sources, paying close attention to the changing contexts of global film production and distribution. In order to present the cinematic Zombie as a product of historical, geographical and cultural shifts in horror film production, the thesis begins by critiquing existing accounts of Zombie film, drawing attention to the notion of generic canons of film as determined by both popular and academic film critics and draws attention to the fractured nature of genre as a method of positioning and critiquing film texts. In this, an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on the methods of cultural-historical and psycho-analytical critiques of horror film, is appraised and then applied to the texts under discussion. The first chapter positions a working thematic and visual deconstruction of the Zombie as an embodiment of the abject, positioning it as a result of changing cultural discussions in fiction on the nature of death and burial. This establishes a thematic framework to apply throughout the following chapters, noting alterations to representations. The second chapter offers a historicised account of appearances of the fictional Zombie before American cinematic productions of the 1930s, critiquing claims that this is the only original production context for the Zombie. The third chapter charts the changing production contexts of American Zombie film until the mid 1960s, to introduce the critiques of authorial importance placed upon the works of George A. Romero, which are discussed in Chapter 4. This critique in turn questions established notions of generic canon and international influence, which are discussed in Chapters 5 and 6. These chapters question the idea of American filmic product dominance in national contexts, charting the discussions of the Zombie body found in differing national cinemas. It is shown that dialogues of representation can be both nationally specific and meant for global audiences, brought about by the changing production and exhibition markets of the 1970s onwards. This in turn challenges the idea that the American model is the dominant representation in the contemporary Zombie film, discussed in Chapter 7. The thesis therefore charts three separate areas for discussion, that of historical, cultural and production contexts that can be held accountable for changing cinematic representations. Particular attention is placed on the thematic and visual use of the Zombie within differing media and firmly position cinematic representations as indicative of wider changes in popular media and their intended audiences. The thesis therefore offers a detailed historical and cultural taxonomy of Zombie film, furthering previous studies, but also presents a more detailed exploration of cultural contexts than previous critics have attempted.

In late September of 2016, at a United Nations General Assembly, the UN concluded that the biggest threat to human health around the global today is the spread of antibiotic resistant microorganisms, also known as superbugs. The global farmed animal industry is largely responsible for this, as it misuses the antibiotics that were originally designed to save humans from infection by instead using them in vast quantities in animal feed and water. How should the global community respond to this threat?

My thesis paper will address why I act and different aspects of my work as an actor. Acting training is a constant process and it is the job of the actor to keep up a regular routine that keeps one from going out of practice. I will discuss what I personally do regularly to stay in training. I will also discuss the process I go through to prepare myself to perform in acting roles. Though my approach to developing each new character is different, there are some aspects of my approach that remain constant. This paper will also describe the kinds of stories I am interested in telling. Though actors are equipped to tell a wide variety of stories from many different perspectives, I, as a Ghanaian female artist of color, am drawn to specific kinds of projects that relate to my life experiences. These are the stories that I feel compelled to tell. I believe my work is not just an occupation but rather encompasses the way I choose to live my life. So I will also discuss the ways in which I think my acting work is relevant in the world at large. I will include the ways in which I feel my work has had an impact in my environment, as well as how I hope to use my acting a vehicle to influence change in the future.

Ultra wideband (UWB) is vastly under consideration of research industry that promises high data rata, low power consumption and economic solution. UWB was in use of military since 1950’s. In 2002 Federal communication commission (FCC) approved the use of 3.1-10.6 GHz band for unlicensed UWB applications. UWB is a suitable choice for sensing and position objects because of high bandwidth and fine time resolution. The goal of this work is to explore the UWB technology in context of distance measurement between two nodes. We have described the characterization; reliability and ranging precision of an impulse UWB based transceiver for both indoor and outdoor environments. This thesis discuss in detail about UWB technology. Chapter 1 discusses about UWB applications, regulation and bandwidth properties. Chapter 2 and 3 discuss about single band and multi band modulation and detection techniques. Chapter 4 gives a complete description how to measure position through ranging and positioning parameters. Finally, to estimate the ranging and positioning, a two way ranging algorithm based on TOA employed as part of this work is described in detail in chapter 5. A theoretical analysis of impulse UWB radio for wireless communication and ranging is provided employing the Shannon Hartley theorem and Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) method.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the telecommunication markets in India, Singapore and Thailand in order to find the potentiality of the markets which could be considered by the company to expand its business in telecommunication field and also to take a proper strategy. Michael Porter proposed a model that allows analyzing why some nations are more competitive than others are, and why some industries within nations are more competitive than others are. (Porter, 1990) Porter believed that there are four main determinants which can shape the nation‘s competitiveness. In this paper ―Diamond model‖was practiced to analyze three considerable different telecom markets: India, Singapore and Thailand. The Indian telecom industry is the world's fastest growing industry. Singapore is a miniscule nation with slight population and nature resource scarcity but Singapore has developed its national ICT industry successful ranks in 2nd place out of 138 countries in 2010-2011 . Thailand‘s mobile penetration rate has reached to 100% but its 3G service still could not move forward. The research found that Singapore‘s telecom industry is highly competitive in the global environment. India‘s telecom industry within its nation is more competitive than the other industries . On the contrary, Thailand‘s telecom industry develops not as superior as other industries such as its manufacturing or trading. At the end, predictions for the short time and suggestions of these objective markets have been commented to contribute to telecom business development in Asian region for target audience.

This work is a compilation and analysis of ultracool dwarfs (UCDs) and brown dwarfs within 25 parsecs. It supplements the work of Stauffer et al. [2010] who updated the reputable and widely relied upon Third Catalog of Nearby Stars [Gliese & Jahreiß 1991] with revised coordinates and cross-matched each object with the 2MASS point source catalog [Cutri et al. 2003]. I began by incorporating newly discovered (post 1991) cool companions to Gliese-Jahreiß stars that had been previously undetectable. I then expanded the compilation to include isolated UCDs and other nearby systems with at least one UCD component. Multiple systems are a panacea for astrophysical problems: by applying Kepler’s laws, the model-independent mass of brown dwarfs and low mass stars can be determined and hence serve to constrain theory. This work puts this data into context by exploring the history of brown dwarf theory and reviewing open questions concerning their nature.

In this work, two projects were pursued. In the first project, I investigated two different subtypes of opioid receptors, which play a key role as target for analgesia. A set of subtype specific fluorescent ligands for μ opioid receptor (MOR) and δ opioid receptor (DOR) was characterised and used to gain insights into the diffusion behaviour of those receptors. It was shown that the novel ligands hold photophysical and pharmacological properties making them suitable for single-molecule microscopy. Applying them to wild-type receptors expressed in living cells revealed that both sub-types possess a heterogeneous diffusion behaviour. Further- more, the fluorescent ligands for the MOR were used to investigate homodomerisation, a highly debated topic. The results reveal that only ≈ 5 % of the receptors are present as homodimers, and thus the majority is monomeric. G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) play a major role as drug targets. Accordingly, understanding the activation process is very important. For a long time GPCRs have been believed to be either active or inactive. In recent years several studies have shown, that the reality is more complex, involving more substates. [1, 2, 3, 4] In this work the α 2A AR was chosen to investigate the activation process on a single-molecule level, thus being able to distinguish also rare or short-lived events that are hidden in ensemble mea- surements. With this aim, the receptor was labelled intracellular with two fluorophores using supported membranes. Thus it was possible to acquire movies showing qualita- tively smFRET events. Unfortunately, the functionality of the used construct could not be demonstrated. To recover the functionality the CLIP-tag in the third intracellular loop was replaced successfully with an amber codon. This stop codon was used to insert an unnatural amino acid. Five different mutants were created and tested and the most promising candidate could be identified. First ensemble FRET measurements indicated that the functionality might be recovered but further improvements would be needed. Overall, I could show that single-molecule microscopy is a versatile tool to investigate the behaviour of typical class A GPCRs. I was able to show that MOR are mostly monomeric under physiological expression levels. Furthermore, I could establish intra- cellular labelling with supported membranes and acquire qualitative smFRET events. / In dieser Arbeit wurden zwei Projekte verfolgt. Im ersten Projekt wurden zwei Subtypen der Opioidrezeptoren untersucht, die eine wichtige Rolle für die Wirksamkeit von Analgetika spielen. Ein Set von subtypspezifischen fluoreszierenden Liganden für den MOR und den DOR wurde charakterisiert und eingesetzt, um Einblicke in das Diffuionsverhalten der Rezeptoren zu gewinnen. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass die neuartigen Liganden sowohl photophysikalische als auch pharmakologische Eigenschaften besitzen, die sie für die Einzelmolekülmikroskopie interessant machen. Versuche mit Opioidrezeptoren, die in lebenden Zellen exprimiert werden, zeigten, dass beide Subtypen heterogenes Diffuionsverhalten aufweisen. Des Weiteren wurden die fluoreszierenden Liganden für den MOR genutzt um Homodimerisierung zu untersuchen, da dies ein kontrovers diskutiertes Thema ist. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass lediglich ≈ 5% der Rezeptoren als Homodimere vorliegen und der Großteil monomerisch ist. GPCRs sind besonderem Interesse, weil sie Angriffspunkt vieler Medikamente sind. Deshalb ist es wichtig ihren Aktivierungsmechanismus besser zu verstehen. Lange Zeit wurde angenommen, dass GPCRs entweder aktiv oder inaktiv sind. Neuere Studien zeigten jedoch, dass die Realität komplexer ist und der Prozess Zwischenschritte involviert. [1, 2, 3, 4] In dieser Arbeit wurde der α 2A Adrenorezeptor als prototypischer Klasse A GPCR gewählt, um den Aktivierungsprozess auf Einzelmoleküllevel zu untersuchen. Durch die Betrachtung einzelner Rezeptoren ist es möglich auch seltene oder sehr kurzlebige Ereignisse zu unterscheiden, die in Kollektivmessungen untergehen. Um dies zu erreichen wurde der Rezeptor erfolgreich intrazellulär mit zwei Fluorophoren markiert. Dies gelang durch die Herstellung von „supported membranes", also Zellmembranen die auf einem Objektträger fixiert wurden. Dadurch war es möglich Videos aufzunehmen, die Einzelmolekül-FRET-Ereignisse zeigen. Jedoch gelang es nicht zu zeigen, dass der Rezeptor als Ganzes noch funktional war. Um einen funktionalen Rezeptor zu erhalten, wurde das CLIP-Tag in der dritten intrazellulären Schleife erfolgreich durch ein Stopcodon ersetzt, welches für eine nicht kanonische Aminosäure kodierte. Fünf verschiedene Mutanten wurden kloniert und getestet, wobei der vielversprechendste Mutant identifiziert werden konnte. Erste FRET-Kollektivmessungen deuten darauf hin, dass dieser Mutant funktional sein könnte. Jedoch sind weitere Verbesserungen nötig. Insgesamt konnte ich zeigen, dass Einzelmolekülmikroskopie vielseitige Möglichkeiten bietet um das Verhalten von GPCRs zu untersuchen. Ich konnte nachweisen, dass MOR unter physiologischen Bedingungen hauptsächlich als Monomere vorliegen. Des Weiteren konnte ich Dank supported membranes die Markierung durch Farbstoffe im Intrazellularbereich etablieren und qualitative smFRET Ereignisse aufnehmen.