The sociocultural economic, and political participation of girls has become a prevalent focus of policy. research, and practice. Despite their increasing visibility in the demographic composition of Canadian society. however, racialized minority girls remain largely invisible in these debates. Monolithic discourses of girl power. 'at risk' girls. youth participation and feminist activism do not account for the complex and uneven ways in which minority girls engage as knowledge producers, advocates, and community participants within cultural contexts that foster the depoliticization and social exclusion of young women of colour. Minority girls face intersecting barriers to civic participation and social inclusion `on their own terms' related to race. gender. age, citizenship. language, class and religion, among other factors. As rapid global change reconfigures girls' local realities and thus their practices of engagement, our traditional models and discourses of participation must be expanded. To problematize the relations of power under which minority girls constitute their practices of engagement and community building. I constructed a transdisciplinary conceptual framework grounded in postcolonial and transnational feminist theories. The research examined minority girls' practices of 'transformative engagement' (TE) in a collaborative, community-based, feminist Participatory Action Research project entitled "It's About Us." The study was based in Victoria. British Columbia. a predominantly Euro-Western Canadian city. "It's About Us" responded to minority girls' requests for a minority- and girl-centered epistemic space from which to explore their experiences of gendered racialization. Expressive methods including popular theatre. photography. and art served as vehicles for their engagement. The iterative feminist research design yielded data garnered from focus groups. theatre sessions. and scripts. participant-observation, journaling and photo-ethnography. This design provided the enabling conditions to deepen and sustain the girls' practices of oppositional agency and thus the emergence of transformative engagement. I developed an Interpretive Spiral Model (ISM) to extricate the difficulties of translating a feminist conceptual framework into a sustainable girl-centered project. My findings characterize transformative engagement as a multisited. precarious, generative form of praxis, rather than a formulaic process with guaranteed outcomes. I propose that the facilitation of transformative engagement entails four intersecting strategies: border crossing into exclusionary spaces. resources. and lines of power; developing safe, strategic communities of belonging: producing disruptive. critical knowledge; and engaging in public and social action. Overall. the girls' strategies of transformative engagement reveal a spectrum of subversive, deeply contextualized, multifaceted feminisms congruent with their own needs and experiences. The transformative engagement process resulted in multiple successful outcomes including theatre and conference presentations, media and website productions, and, most notably, contribution to the creation of a network of over 100 racialized girls and women called Anti-dote. The research findings illustrate how girl-centered. feminist action research can provide avenues to support minority girls' unique practices of resistance and social change. and feature their voices more prominently in community, policy, research, and practice.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第23914号 / 工博第5001号 / 新制||工||1781(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院工学研究科物質エネルギー化学専攻 / (主査)教授 阿部 竜, 教授 安部 武志, 教授 作花 哲夫 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering) / Kyoto University / DFAM

Changes have occurred within educational settings over the past 30 years, creating a more equal learning environment for women. Despite the fact that women aged 18-39 years now outnumber men within New Zealand universities, there is still evidence of inequality for pregnant university students.A qualitative case-study approach was used to explore and describe the stages and patterns of transition from being a university student to becoming a pregnant university student. Each woman demonstrated the complexity of the transitions. The pregnant body and becoming visible were factors that impacted on all five women who participated in this study. The case studies describe how pregnancy intervened in the experience of being a student.Various coping mechanisms were employed by these pregnant university students. The research suggests that they find balance through compartmentalizing aspects of their lives. They attribute educational and personal outcomes to luck. These strategies have enabled these women to aim for educational or personal success. Yet it remains clear that the university does not provide adequate support for these pregnant university students. Policies and resources need to be established to aid pregnant university students in this process of transition.

This paper addresses the aesthetic encounter from the perspective of the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the visible and the invisible. It begins with the premise that from time to time we encounter situations which precipitate a sense of slippage in our experience of the world. The paper proceeds to argue that the arts can provide a point of access to this experience, and that aesthetic theory has, for example, responded to it through the development of the notion of 'the sublime'. The writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and, in particular, aspects of his text The Visible and the invisible, are presented with a view to augmenting this aspect of aesthetic theory. Proceeding from a 'Merleau-Pontian' perspective, the paper explores how the arts can serve to disrupt our conventional sense of space and time - creating ripples in the substance Merleau-Ponty names as 'flesh' - so as to expose the chiasm or blind spot in our experience of the world. The methodology adopted is an experiential one, which draws on the writer's interaction with the selected works of various artists as well as her own practice in glass.

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, 2005. / Vita. Bibliography: 159.

People with visible facial difference often experience other people reacting negatively to their appearance. For many, this is part of everyday life. Research has identified social support as critical in adaptation processes. This is the case both for those whose facial difference was apparent at birth, and those who experienced injury or illness. There is a lack of a comprehensive theoretical construct for exploring how personal communities provide resources needed by adults to live well with visible facial difference. The combination of semi-structured interviews and creation of personal community maps provided opportunities to explore the interplay between respondent accounts and patterns of relationships people are embedded within. Seventeen adults with visible facial difference and two unaffected ‘significant others’ were interviewed. The findings provide evidence that personal communities are important social spaces for negotiation of resources that enable adults to feel connected, valued and safer within wider communities. Social support was not described as a property of the individual, but as experienced with combinations of people that change according to situation, place, or time. A diversity of personal community patterns were found, largely consistent with findings from Spencer and Pahl (2006), with one variation which increased intimate support. Some personal communities were less supportive and consequently people were at risk of isolation. Processes within personal communities were helpful both in dealing with negative social environments and in helping establish different versions of ‘normal’ life. The importance of focussing on social contexts, when seeking to understand how people live with visible facial differences, is highlighted.

Visible light communication (VLC) is an emerging form of optical wireless communication that transmits data by modulating light in the visible spectrum. To meet the growing demand for wireless communication capacity from mobile devices, we investigate multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) VLC to achieve multiplexing capacity gains and to allow multiple users to simultaneously transmit without disrupting each other. Previous approaches to receive VLC signals have either been unable to simultaneously receive multiple independent signals from multiple transmitters, unable to adapt to moving transmitters and receivers, or unable to sample the received signals fast enough for high-speed VLC. In this dissertation, we develop and evaluate two novel approaches to receive high-speed MIMO VLC signals from mobile transmitters that can be practically scaled to support additional transmitters. The first approach, Token-Based Pixel Selection (TBPS) exploits the redundancy and sparsity of high-resolution transmitter images in imaging VLC receivers to greatly increase the rate at which complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) active pixel sensor (APS) image sensors can sample VLC signals though improved signal routing to enable such high-resolution image sensors to capture high-speed VLC signals. We further model the CMOS APS pixel as a linear shift-invariant system, investigate how it scales to support additional transmitters and higher resolutions, and investigate how noise can affect its performance. The second approach, a spatial light modulator (SLM)-based VLC receiver, uses an SLM to dynamically control the resulting wireless channel matrix to enable relatively few photodetectors to reliably receive from multiple transmitters despite their movements. As part of our analysis, we develop a MIMO VLC channel capacity model that accounts for the non-negativity and peak-power constraints of VLC systems to evaluate the performance of the SLM VLC receiver and to facilitate the optimization of the channel matrix through the SLM.

In recent years, photoredox catalysis emerged as a privileged tool for small molecules activation via single-electron transfer mechanisms. Despite their ubiquity as reagents in organic synthesis, the use of boronic acid derivatives to generate carbon-centred radicals remains elusive. This dissertation explores the utilisation of photoredox catalysis to generate carbon radicals from boronic acid derivatives and subsequently engage them in C–C cross-coupling reactions. In the first chapter, an introduction to photoredox catalysis and organoboron reagents is provided, as well as a discussion on the key mechanistic aspects of photoredox catalysed C–C cross-coupling reactions. The second chapter presents our initial coupling strategy and how it evolved in understanding that pinacol boronic ester species can be used as a source of carbon radicals via single-electron oxidation from a photoredox catalyst. Coordination of the boronic esters with Lewis basic species was identified as a fundamental activating interaction. The synthetic utility of this discovery was highlighted by performing a wide range of photoredox catalysed arylations of pinacol boronic esters. The third chapter builds on our mechanistic understanding to identify a set of Lewis base catalysts that conveniently activates boronic esters and acids towards single-electron oxidation. The usefulness of this improved set of conditions was demonstrated by alkylating a wide range of boronic acid derivatives. The fourth chapter describes the application of this methodology in synthesising four active pharmaceutical ingredients from the GABA family. An emphasis was made on developing an efficient flow process and “transition metal free” conditions to survey the attractiveness of the method for the pharmaceutical industry. Finally, the fifth chapter describes the experimental procedures relevant to the results described in chapters 2 to 4.

Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第13834号 / 工博第2938号 / 新制||工||1434(附属図書館) / 26050 / UT51-2008-C750 / 京都大学大学院工学研究科物質エネルギー化学専攻 / (主査)教授 井上 正志, 教授 江口 浩一, 教授 田中 庸裕 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当

El objetivo de este trabajo de título es diseñar, construir y emplear un equipo portátil, capaz de simular exigentes condiciones de lluvia y viento, para estudiar el comportamiento de muros de albañilería frente a estas solicitaciones. El método de ensayo desarrollado consiste en someter un muro a una condición de lluvia artificial de 552 mm aproximadamente, durante 4 horas, acompañada de una velocidad de viento constante cercana a 103 km/h, durante el mismo período de tiempo. Se deben registrar: el tiempo de aparición de humedad sobre la parte de atrás de la probeta, el tiempo de aparición de la primera agua visible sobre la parte de atrás de la probeta, área de humedad sobre la parte de atrás del muro al término del ensayo y el agua total colectada durante las 4 horas de ensayo. Luego de construir el equipo de ensayo se evaluó el comportamiento de 5 muros de albañilería, lo que permitió establecer la eficacia del método de ensayo al obtener valores comparativos que permiten evaluar diseño y terminaciones impermeabilizantes en muros de albañilería. El ensayo de penetración y filtración de agua a través de la albañilería permite hacer un estudio del comportamiento global de muros de albañilería, por lo tanto, entrega información completa y decisiva del desempeño de las probetas estudiadas.