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In this series of essays about professional burnout, a veteran teacher seeks a way to continue her work and enthusiasm in it, for the sake of both her and her students. To that end, she explores her relationships with her father and mother, and how the practices of teaching and learning she brought from home have affected her present classroom experiences. A complicating factor is the presence of chronic illness and its demands both primary and secondary: her father's Alzheimer's, her mother's bi-polar disorder, and the demands of eldercare for her mother. She also explores her own habitual practice of being a student, in a reflective inquiry into the mind and situation of students from inside her own experiences. Interleaved vignettes of student interaction illustrate the kinds of difficulty that the speaker has with her teaching. They appear chronologically to suggest a developmental movement.

The nature of the human brain has preoccupied philosophers and scientists for centuries. As early as the 4th Century BCE, Greek philosophers speculated that the anatomically distinct hemispheres of the brain implied specialisation of function. It was not until the "splitbrain" operations of the 1950s, however, that the precise specialisation of each hemisphere could be demonstrated. The right hemisphere apparently assumed responsibility for spacial, holistic processes, while the left hemisphere processed analytical, sequential tasks. During that same decade, educational psychologists observed two markedly different ways in which individuals perceive and relate to the world. It was later observed that these "cognitive styles" seemed directly related to the bi-polar functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This implied a genetic basis for cognitive style. Subsequent research suggested that cognitive style is to a considerable extent a result of the environment of socialisation, and therefore, different cultures would demonstrate different cognitive styles. Such cultural differences in learning expectations might have serious implications for both teachers and learners in the field of export education. The literature review in this study identified physical, environmental, and experiential factors which appear to influence cognitive style. This information formed the basis of the biographical section of a questionnaire which elicited the learning style preferences of pre-tertiary students from Australia (native speakers), Indonesia and Japan. The study posed the negative hypothesis: There are no significant differences in patterns of cognitive styles between cultures. The results of the field study contradicted the negative hypothesis, identifying significant differences in patterns of cognitive styles between the three cultural groups.

A bi-polar world emerged at the end of World War II. The United States and the Soviet Union were the world's superpowers and tensions between them spiraled consequently bringing about the Cold War. United States foreign policy during the Cold War revolved around containment policy. The Middle East during the Cold War was a region that the bi-polar world's superpowers wanted to influence, and protect. The United States during the Cold War warned the Soviet Union through presidential doctrines that it would fight to keep the Middle East from communism, and the Soviet Union's influence. The bi-polar international power structure did not allow the United States the ability to pick its battles. The power structure that constrained the Cold War forced the United States to react to the Soviet Union, and it forced foreign policy makers to always consider the Soviet Union's response to its policies. United States foreign policy in the Middle East during the Cold War threatened wit h military methods to solve local and regional instabilities. However, the United States was constrained by the bi-polar world thus, it was cautious of committing military troops in the region permanently and upsetting the region's delicate balance of power. United States foreign policy toward the Middle East has changed between 1981 and 2006. This change is in the direction of greater use of military methods to resolve what various administrations have perceived to be local and regional instability. This change in policy is partly attributable to changes in the United States power position in the world. A United States foreign policy shift in the Middle East occurred due to a change in the distribution of political power within the interstate system. This change has had the following result: the United States is no longer constrained by the bi-polar international power structure that characterized the Cold War period. The collapse of the Soviet Union created the uni-polar internationa l power structure. United States foreign policy is now capable of deploying the military to resolve local and regional instabilities in the Middle East, and that deployment has tended to become increasingly permanent in nature.

This exegesis interrogates the mental illness Pure Erotomania, the rare delusional disorder which presents with the sufferer having the delusional (and therefore unshakeable) belief that the person they objectify is in love with them. My play Yellow Roses in Fortitude Valley is about one woman's emotional journey as she is relentlessly stalked by a Pure Erotomanic male. It is a fascinating mental illness, which includes all the 'box office type' features, which make it an exciting and frightening subject to write a dramatic work about. It is confusing, illusory, surreal and frightening, but best of all for the writer and audience it is a real human condition. Yellow Roses in Fortitude Valley is written in a style that truthfully represents and portrays the journey and struggle for both the victim and the sufferer. The research undertaken for both the play and exegesis was a hybrid of many overlapping disciplines involved in the current discourse. As a recently diagnosed and recognized disorder, it is still new territory for professionals in the field and for audience members. I believe this makes it an opportune time for an academically researched creative project to enter into current discourse. Previous creative works on this topic, some of which I have interrogated, have approached the issue of stalking as a predator/victim scenario, an unrequited love or a domestic violence situation. I wished to portray the stalking as a mental illness in the form of the psychiatric disorder Erotomania, my approach undertaking to explain victim impact and the prolonged and chronic course of Erotomanic stalking. I also wished to illustrate the underlying themes which I uncovered during my research, being; female victims of sex crimes; dominant patriarchal ideology; and the current interventions in stalking by the legal and mental health systems.

The topic of this thesis is the degradation of fuel cell electrodes in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). In particular, the degradation associated with localized fuel starvation, which is often encountered during start-ups and shut-downs (SUs/SDs) of PEMFCs. At SU/SD, O2 and H2 usually coexist in the anode compartment. This situation forces the opposite electrode, i.e. the cathode, to very high potentials, resulting in the corrosion of the carbon supporting the catalyst, referred to as carbon corrosion. The aim of this thesis has been to develop methods, materials and strategies to address the issues associated to carbon corrosion in PEMFC.The extent of catalyst degradation is commonly evaluated determining the electrochemically active surface area (ECSA) of fuel cell electrode. Therefore, it was considered important to study the effect of RH, temperature and type of accelerated degradation test (ADT) on the ECSA. Low RH decreases the ECSA of the electrode, attributed to re-structuring the ionomer and loss of contact with the catalyst.In the search for more durable supports, we evaluated different accelerated degradation tests (ADTs) for carbon corrosion. Potentiostatic holds at 1.2 V vs. RHE were found to be too mild. Potentiostatic holds at 1.4 V vs. RHE were found to induce a large degree of reversibility, also attributed to ionomer re-structuring. Triangle-wave potential cycling was found to irreversibly degrade the electrode within a reasonable amount of time, closely simulating SU/SD conditions.Corrosion of carbon-based supports not only degrades the catalyst by lowering the ECSA, but also has a profound effect on the electrode morphology. Decreased electrode porosity, increased agglomerate size and ionomer enrichment all contribute to the degradation of the mass-transport properties of the cathode. Graphitized carbon fibers were found to be 5 times more corrosion resistant than conventional carbons, primarily attributed to their lower surface area. Furthermore, fibers were found to better maintain the integrity of the electrode morphology, generally showing less degradation of the mass-transport losses. Different system strategies for shut-down were evaluated. Not doing anything to the fuel cell during shut-downs is detrimental for the fuel cell. O2 consumption with a load and H2 purge of the cathode were found to give around 100 times lower degradation rates compared to not doing anything and almost 10 times lower degradation rate than a simple air purge of the anode. Finally, in-situ measurements of contact resistance showed that the contact resistance between GDL and BPP is highly dynamic and changes with operating conditions. / Denna doktorsavhandling behandlar degraderingen av polymerelektrolytbränslecellselektroder. polymerelektrolytbränslecellselektroder. Den handlar särskilt om nedbrytningen av elektroden kopplad till en degraderingsmekanism som heter ”localized fuel starvation” oftast närvarande vid uppstart och nedstängning av bränslecellen. Vid start och stopp kan syrgas och vätgas förekomma samtidigt i anoden. Detta leder till väldigt höga elektrodpotentialer i katoden. Resultatet av detta är att kolbaserade katalysatorbärare korroderar och att bränslecellens livslängd förkortas. Målet med avhandlingen har varit att utveckla metoder, material och strategier för att både öka förståelsen av denna degraderingsmekanism och för att maximera katalysatorbärarens livslängd.Ett vanligt tillvägagångsätt för att bestämma graden av katalysatorns degradering är genom mätning av den elektrokemiskt aktiva ytan hos bränslecellselektroderna. I denna avhandling har dessutom effekten av temperatur och relativ fukthalt studerats. Låga fukthalter minskar den aktiva ytan hos elektroden, vilket sannolikt orsakas av en omstrukturering av jonomeren och av kontaktförlust mellan jonomer och katalysator.Olika accelererade degraderingstester för kolkorrosion har använts. Potentiostatiska tester vid 1.2 V mot RHE visade sig vara för milda. Potentiostatiska tester vid 1.4 V mot RHE visade sig däremot medföra en hög grad av reversibilitet, som också den tros vara orsakad av en omstrukturering av jonomeren. Cykling av elektrodpotentialen degraderade istället elektroden irreversibelt, inom rimlig tid och kunde väldigt nära simulera förhållandena vid uppstart och nedstängning.Korrosionen av katalysatorbäraren medför degradering av katalysatorn och har också en stor inverkan på elektrodens morfologi. En minskad elektrodporositet, en ökad agglomeratstorlek och en anrikning av jonomeren gör att elektrodens masstransportegenskaper försämras. Grafitiska kolfibrer visade sig vara mer resistenta mot kolkorrosion än konventionella kol, främst p.g.a. deras låga ytarea. Grafitiska kolfibrer visade också en förmåga att bättre bibehålla elektrodens morfologi efter accelererade tester, vilket resulterade i lägre masstransportförluster.Olika systemstrategier för nedstängning jämfördes. Att inte göra något under nedstängning är mycket skadligt för bränslecellen. Förbrukning av syre med en last och spolning av katoden med vätgas visade 100 gånger lägre degraderingshastighet av bränslecellsprestanda jämfört med att inte göra något alls och 10 gånger lägre degraderingshastighet jämfört med spolning av anoden med luft. In-situ kontaktresistansmätningar visade att kontaktresistansen mellan bipolära plattor och GDL är dynamisk och kan ändras beroende på driftförhållandena. / <p>QC 20131104</p>