My research paper discusses the explorative design process of creating a tangible sentence construction train and the implications of tangible computing in the classroom. For inspiration I looked into learning style methods and tangible computing projects for children. I aimed to follow the methods of Participatory Design and Cooperative Inquiry as part of my design process, but found reasons to explore different methods.My final prototype uses a train to provide digital support and encourage an effective way to support task interest, information retention, and sentence structure, as well as facilitate creativity and team problem solving skills for children of different learning styles and skill strengths. By allowing children to construct their own sentences with responsive train cars, I found that children were able to discuss class material and ideas in a fun way, as well as find explorative ways to bend rules and engage in play.

We consider a gas of indistinguishable bosons, confined to a ring of radius R, and interacting via a pair-wise cosine potential. This may be thought of as the quantized Hamiltonian Mean Field (HMF) model for bosons originally introduced by Chavanis as a generalization of Antoni and Ruffo’s classical model. This thesis contains three parts: In part one, the dynamics of a Bose-condensate are considered by studying a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GGPE). Quantum effects due to the quantum pressure are found to substantially alter the system’s dynamics, and can serve to inhibit a pathological instability for repulsive interactions. The non-commutativity of the large-N , long-time, and classical limits is discussed. In part two, we consider the GGPE studied above and seek static solutions. Exact solutions are identified by solving a non-linear eigenvalue problem which is closely related to the Mathieu equation. Stationary solutions are identified as solitary waves (or solitons) due to their small spatial extent and the system’s underlying Galilean invariance. Asymptotic series are developed to give an analytic solution to the non- linear eigenvalue problem, and these are then used to study the stability of the solitary wave mentioned above. In part three, the exact solutions outlined above are used to study quantum fluctuations of gapless excitations in the HMF model’s symmetry broken phase. It is found that this phase is destroyed at zero temperature by large quantum fluctuations. This demonstrates that mean-field theory is not exact, and can in fact be qualitatively wrong, for long-range interacting quantum systems, in contrast to conventional wisdom. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The Hamiltonian Mean Field (HMF) model was initially proposed as a simplified description of self-gravitating systems. Its simplicity shortens calculations and makes the underlying physics more transparent. This has made the HMF model a key tool in the study of systems with long-range interactions. In this thesis we study a quantum extension of the HMF model. The goal is to understand how quantum effects can modify the behaviour of a system with long-range interactions. We focus on how the model relaxes to equilibrium, the existence of special “solitary waves”, and whether quantum fluctuations can prevent a second order (quantum) phase transition from occurring at zero temperature.

[pt] Este trabalho observa as relações sociais entre crianças de cinco e seis anos com seus brinquedos e brincadeiras a partir de um trabalho de campo etnográfico em um Espaço de Desenvolvimento Infantil na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Desta forma, investiga-se como as mesmas compreendem, contribuem e constroem suas noções de masculino e feminino com base na percepção de que as crianças se constroem junto de suas coisas. Recorrendo às contribuições de Butler (2019; 2003) de que através de práticas altamente reguladas o sexo vai sendo materializado, reiterado e reforçado, abre-se possibilidades de se transcender tais normas regulatórias. As crianças, por sua vez, sendo atores sociais que se relacionam com todas essas dimensões da sociedade, também se apropriam e performatizam o gênero, oferecendo, inclusive, formas outras de ser e estar no mundo. Apoiando-se nas elaborações de Miller (2013) e Mizrahi (2007) de que, para tornar possível a constituição de nosso próprio self necessitamos lançar mão de artefatos e objetos materiais, e de que o uso dos artefatos permitem tornar o gênero performativo, busca-se demonstrar de que maneira as crianças concebem o que é ser menino e o que é ser menina, considerando que as relações das crianças com seus brinquedos auxiliam na formação de suas noções de gênero. A partir disso, o trabalho elabora a respeito de gênero com e a partir das crianças e suas relações entre si e com seus objetos. / [en] This work observes the social relationships among five and six year-old children with their toys and games based on an ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a Child Development Space in Rio de Janeiro city. Thus, it investigates how they understand, contribute to, and construct their notions of masculinity and femininity based on the perception that children construct themselves alongside their things. Drawing on Butler s contributions (2019; 2003) that through highly regulated practices, sex is materialized, reiterated, and reinforced, possibilities are opened to transcend such regulatory norms. Children, in turn, being social actors who relate to all these dimensions of society, also appropriate and perform gender, offering alternative ways of being and existing in the world. Building on Miller s (2013) and Mizrahi s (2007) elaborations that to make possible the constitution of our own selves we need to make use of artifacts and material objects, and that the use of artifacts allows gender to be performative, the aim is to demonstrate how children conceive what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl, considering that children s relationships with their toys assist in the formation of their gender notions. From this perspective, the work elaborates on gender with and from the perspective of children and their relationships with each other and with their objects.

This human factors research demonstrated the importance of instruction design on assembly performance and self-efficacy in young children. The mixed-method usability study evaluated the effect of gender, age, toy, and experience on assembly performance, frequency and duration of instruction looks, subjective evaluations, and usability problems. A total of twenty-four boys and girls, six- and nine-year-olds, assembled K'NEX, LEGO, BIONICLE, and Lincoln Log toys using the accompanying pictorial assembly instructions. Other research objectives included recommending key usability measures for instruction designers, developing a model of assembly self-efficacy, and evaluating traditional usability methods for use with children. Not surprisingly, quantitative results revealed that the older children assembled the toys more quickly and accurately with fewer usability problems. Six-year-old girls had the highest rate of mistakes. The nine-year-olds required fewer instruction looks of shorter duration than the six-year-olds. With few exceptions, toy comparisons were similar across subjective and objective measures. Thirty-two instruction design usability problems were described and illustrated and resulted in twenty-seven design recommendations. For example, more than half of the children omitted components added to the main assembly in the presence of a subassembly construction suggesting that the subassembly should be in a separate frame. Principal components analysis of all quantitative measures revealed four key components for the usability testing of pictorial assembly instructions: performance, satisfaction, difficulty, and previous experience. A qualitative analysis of the think-aloud data and observations, using Grounded Theory, produced a model of assembly self-efficacy from child users’ psychosocial and cognitive perspectives that affirmed the importance of user-centered instruction design. Girls exhibited lower self-efficacy and a greater tendency toward internal attributions, which was exacerbated by assembly of a boy-oriented toy. Six-year-old children were more affected by excess extraneous cognitive load and inaccurate information, such as color mismatches between the instructions and object. Adaptations of traditional usability methods and instruments were effective with children. They included video training for thinking aloud, visual-analog rating scales, and pictorial ranking instruments. A small head-mounted camera provided an economic means for gathering gross instruction encoding times and for better understanding the user's perspective. / Ph. D.

In late December 2000 the Ministry of Justice and Security of the Argentine province of Mendoza completed the first phase of the programme Canje de Armas por Mejores Condiciones de Vida, hereafter referred to as the Arms Exchange Programme, as part of a multi-faceted long-term approach to transform the public security climate. Two hundred eighty five pistols, revolvers and shotguns were voluntarily turned in by citizens for destruction in exchange for vouchers for foodstuffs and tickets to football games with values ranging from US $50 to $100. Participants were able to make contact with the programme organisers through a toll-free telephone line. Prior to the firearm turn-in component a public education effort was coordinated in the school system that culminated in a violent toy turn-in and destruction drive that brought in thousands of toy guns and video games for public destruction and incorporation into displays of art. The overwhelmingly positive response to the first phase of the programme inspired organisers to launch a second phase of weapons collection on 10 April 2001 including sectors of the province outside the Greater Mendoza area. Although the second phase was scheduled to end on 24 April 2001 it had to be extended on two separate occasions in response to enthusiastic requests from several localities that were not originally scheduled to host the Arms Exchange Programme. The second phase, which lasted six weeks, collected a total of 2,281 weapons and 6,547 rounds of ammunition, bringing in a total of 2,566 weapons and 8,262 rounds of ammunition for both phases combined. Arguably, the town of San Rafael, where 809 revolvers, pistols, shotguns and rifles were turned in over the course of four days, in the southern section of Mendoza province, saw more weapons turned in per capita than any other programme in the world to date.

Nearly 27,000 vehicle occupants are killed annually in the United States, with passenger car and light truck occupants amassing 25,000 of these. Over 50% of passenger car and light truck occupant fatalities are due to frontal crashes. Although advancements in safety technology have reduced the number of fatalities and injuries, motor vehicle collisions are still a major issue in the United States. Continued development of computational models and biofidelic anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) necessitates benchmarking of current surrogates and further analysis of an occupant's biomechanical response in automobile collisions. This thesis presents data from low-speed frontal sled tests performed with human volunteers, a Hybrid III 50th percentile male ATD, and post mortem human surrogates (PMHSs). The first study sought to investigate the effects of muscle bracing by human volunteers. The second study sought to compare the responses of the relaxed and braced volunteers in the first study to those of the Hybrid III and PMHS subjects. Overall, these two studies provide novel biomechanical data that can be used to refine and validate computational models and ATDs used to assess injury risk in automotive collisions. The third study was focused on quantifying the ability for children to swing a sword-like toy. Over 200,000 toy-related injuries occur every year in the United States. Currently, data is unavailable with regard to sword-like toys. Incorporating the knowledge gained by this study will allow manufacturers to reduce the inherent risks associated with their products as well as market them to the correct target age groups. / Master of Science

published_or_final_version / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

This thesis examines the book in the nineteenth century by way of an unusual corpus: movable and novelty books for children, drawn from the Opie Collection of Children’s Literature at the Bodleian Library. It argues that these items, which have been either ignored or actively dismissed by scholars of children’s literature, are of two-fold significance for the history of the book: they encourage a sense of the book as a constitutively (rather than an incidentally) material object, and they demand an understanding of reading as not just a mental activity, but a physical one as well. Each of the first five chapters of the thesis centres on a different format. The opening chapter discusses the Regency-era paper doll books produced by Samuel and Joseph Fuller, exposing the tension between form and content in these works. The second chapter looks at Victorian panorama books for children, showing how the panorama format affects space, time, and the structure of any text accompanying the image. The third chapter reads the pop-up book’s key tension—the tension between surface and depth in the pursuit of an illusion of three dimensions—in terms of flat, theatrical, and stereoscopic picture-making, three other nineteenth-century pictorial modes in which an illusion of three-dimensionality is important. The fourth chapter traces self-reflexive accounts of printing, publishing, and the material book in dissolving-view books produced by the German publisher and printer Ernest Nister at the end of the nineteenth century. The fifth chapter positions the late nineteenth-century mechanical books designed and illustrated by Lothar Meggendorfer in terms of two material analogies, the puppet and the mechanical toy or automaton. The final chapter synthesizes evidence as to how the movable book could and should be read from across formats, foregrounding in particular the ways in which the movable embodies reading.

Play with toy car from activity psychology approach This master thesis is aimed at play of preschool children with toy cars. A theoretical base for my research is the activity psychology perspective, which states that play is the leading activity of development in a preschool period. Following this thought, in my thesis I tried to find out, how can the preschool development be leaded by play with toy cars. My thesis contains theoretical and empirical part. In theoretical part I focus on a preschool period and the role of play in it. In this part I also distinguished the activity psychology approach and its concept of play. In empirical part I introduce my own qualitative research aimed at analysis of car toys observed in preschool facility. Based on analysis of play activities to partial units I discovered that toy car play provided motoric, cognitive and social development. What seemed to be important in all three areas was that children purposely complicated their games, which created higher demands for their skills and abilities. Children in their games impersonated various social roles, which included the whole system of activities and relations to other social roles. The rules of their games were mostly implicit and were connected to activity or role which a child impersonated.