Traditional criticism of Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable has sought to establish a universal "truth" or unified consciousness behind the dispersive nature of the text, and consequently readings of the novel have been both reductive and inadequate. Because Beckett's text distorts and displaces traditional narrative tools, and the Western metaphysical tradition from which they arise, criticism concerned with the upheaval of tradition is more appropriate for reading The Unnamable. The thesis takes three different textual positions in the text--the question of beginnings and endings in the text, the problematic of the subject (the proliferation of the "I" versus a concept of the unified consciousness), and the notion of propriety in the concept of the proper name--and engages in textual play with the text. By using certain modified methods of what we might provisionally call "deconstruction," the readings open the metaphors in the text, and examine the nature of the distortion of tradition that Beckett achieves? the readings are productive rather than reductive. The thesis is more concerned with enacting the upheaval of The Unnamable, and is less concerned with describing the textual ruptures or arriving at any fixed meanings or conclusions, for that would be to remain strictly within the tradition that Beckett and the decontructors attempt to dislodge. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Orientador: Luiz Gonzaga de Mello Belluzzo / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-18T11:13:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Baer_Monica_D.pdf: 7866149 bytes, checksum: 6410e9be0069cee69676af0cca179d0d (MD5) Previous issue date: 1993 / Resumo: Não informado / Abstract: Not informed. / Doutorado / Doutor em Economia

The current mission of the U.S. Army requires the rapid worldwide deployment of troops to scenarios of critical interest to the United States within short notice. Currently, the only troops that can meet this deployment criteria are categorized as light and special operations forces. These forces do not have Armor or Armored Cavalry support because current U.S. Army Armor systems are not transportable within the deployment criteria, neither strategically nor tactically. Armor support traditionally provides combat endurance as well as increased mobility, lethal firepower, and shock effect to the enemy in a manner not attainable by dismounted troops alone. Therefore, the light forces of the U.S. Army are missing a key ingredient to land combat success and have a. requirement for a system to provide this capability_ A Light Armored Assault Vehicle (L~V) would meet this requirement. The objective of this project and report is to conduct a feasibility analysis and to establish a preliminary system baseline for a LAAV. The LAAV is designed through the system engineering process to have the necessary operational characteristics and transportability to provide the missing key combat capability. The LAAVwould use current, low development risk technologies. This project and report presents a preliminary system baseline that investigates the performance trade-offs, schedule, potential cost, and recommended configuration for the LAAVsystem. / Master of Science

The purpose of this work is to introduce the reader to people whose lives have only been of marginal interest to modern historiographers. It portrays the formation of personal stories of people who live on the edges of society. The narrators are people who were older than 18 years in 1989 and who have personally experienced homelessness after the Velvet Revolution. Homelessness is explored as a public phenomenon appearing alongside the transformation of the Czech Republic. However the work also touches on the history of homelessness in the area before 1989. The research is based primarily on the oral history method with currently homeless people. Key words homelessness, oral history, 1989

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Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Laboratory studies of the cognitive processes of performance appraisal which employ undergraduates as raters necessarily imply one of two assumptions of processing invariance: the constant category assumption or the constant familiarity assumption. The constant category assumption is implied in studies having undergraduate students rate unfamiliar occupations, and then generalizations are made to supervisors in organizational settings who are much more familiar with the job they are rating. On the other hand, the constant familiarity assumption is implied in studies in which generalizations of performance ratings are made only when raters rate an occupation with which they are familiar (i.e., when students rate teaching). The present study tested these two competing assumptions by varying job familiarity and appraisal purpose in a 2 (rater population) X 2 (target occupation) X 2 (appraisal purpose) X 3 (performance) mixed factorial design. 40 professional carpenters recruited from various contracting firms in the Southwest Virginia, and 40 undergraduate college students from Virginia Polytechnic Institute viewed videotaped performances of three carpentry students performing four different woodworking tasks, and three teaching assistants giving brief lectures. Appraisal purpose was manipulated orthogonally by telling half of the subjects to form a general impression of the ratees’ performances (impression-set) and telling the other half to remember as many of the behaviors and actions of the subjects as possible (memory-set). Job familiarity served as a repeated measure, and was manipulated by crossing rater population (student vs. carpenter) with target occupation (teaching vs. carpentry). It was predicted that subjects familiar with the occupational category they assessed would (a) vary their processing strategies according to appraisal purpose (i.e., recall more judgments under an impression-set and recall more behaviors under a memory-set); (b) better recall the order of ratee performance information; (c) better discriminate between ratee performance levels; and (d) provide more accurate ratings than unfamiliar raters. Analysis of subjects’ free recalls generally failed to support the hypotheses, partly due to the failure of the appraisal purpose manipulation. For outcome measures, results provided partial support for the hypotheses in that job familiarity led to significant differences in performance discrimination and rating accuracy only when subjects rated the carpentry occupation. No differences were seen when subjects rated teachers. While these findings tend to provide greater support for the constant category assumption than for the constant familiarity assumption, some problems with the use and development of the teaching videotapes may have exacerbated these effects. Implications for future performance appraisal research and the application of performance ratings are offered. / Ph. D.

Adopting yield pillars has been considered an effective way of alleviating ground control problems and increasing production. The purpose of this research was to study the behavior of yield pillars and to develop the design criteria. After a literature review, two 2-D finite element models were developed, each following a different non-linear approach. The first model adopted the successive iteration technique incorporated with the Mohr-Coulomb yield criterion. The second followed the elastic—plastic approach, implementing a generalized Von Mises yield criterion. Extensive underground monitoring was conducted and the finite element models were compared with the field data, both yielding promising results. Three different longwall entry layouts were investigated. The yield-stable-yield pillar system was considered to be the best design. A parametric analysis was also performed. The triaxial factor and Poisson's ratio were found to be the most important material properties affecting pillar yielding. The progressive failure hypothesis for pillar design was critically examined. The analysis suggested that the formulation defining the stress distribution in the yield zone under this hypothesis may be satisfied only in extreme cases and, therefore, the actual distribution can be different. An improved equation, describing the stress distribution in the yield zone, was derived by statistically analyzing the results of finite element simulations. The latter equation fitted the observed field data better than did the original equation, and it was further developed for estimation of yield zone width. Consideration was also given to yield pillar design. Three possible yield pillar sizes were proposed in this paper. The maximum yield pillar size was considered to be twice the width of the yield zone. Based on the pressure arch concept, the minimum yield pillar size was determined by accepting that yield pillars were only supporting the rock strata under this pressure arch. A suggested yield pillar size was obtained by selecting a size which would force the peak stress at the center of the yield pillar to equal the average tributary stress. The case studies conducted in this research indicated that the predicted yield pillar sizes were reasonably accurate. / Ph. D.

A model for optimizing the assignment of maintenance actions for a piece of equipment is developed in the thesis. The model considers the detectability and the criticality of component failure in order to assign a maintenance instruction. The thesis also develops the framework for an integrated maintenance management system. The system consists of three modules. The first module is work control. It is used to prepare, schedule, and insure the execution of maintenance instructions. The second module is the equipment condition control module which monitors maintenance effectiveness and accordingly updates the maintenance instructions. The third module is cost control. This is the tool used to monitor the economical performance of the maintenance function. An equipment information system is also presented, and two futuristic maintenance proposals are introduced. The model and the integrated maintenance management system, constitute a strong tool, that equipment managers can use to optimize the maintenance function, and improve the mechanical, operational, and economical performance of equipment. / Master of Science

Newborn infants with differential patterns of fetal growth, as determined by their weight-for-length, typically display behaviors which have been conceptualized as reflecting the integrity of the infant's behavioral organization. The newborn infant's sucking is one behavior that has been hypothesized to both reflect the effects of previous experiences on behavioral organization and affect the infant's future behavioral development. In particular, the infant's pattern of sucking activity may not only reflect the integrity of the infant's nervous system, it may also alter the temporal organization of the infant's behavioral state and motor activity by increasing behavioral quiescence. The purpose of this study was to compare the sucking activity of underweight-for-length (N = 30) and average-weight-for-length (N = 30) infants and its effects on behavioral state and motor activity. Fifteen low-PI and 15 average-PI infants were randomly assigned to each of two experimental conditions. / Master of Science