Clothing and textiles are an important means of communication, providing nuanced signals of economic and social status, occupation, and political affiliation. Consequently the study of clothing and textiles is a valuable approach to the investigation of a past society. Building on current methodological approaches associated with clothing and textile history and the study of material culture, this thesis will investigate how the clothing and textiles of the Scottish population in the long eighteenth century can be interpreted as symbols of wider cultural, social and economic practices. Studies of tartan and Highland dress have dominated the literature on historical Scottish dress and textiles, a result of these items’ intimate connection with modern Scottish identity. This thesis seeks to redress the balance by examining clothing and textiles in both the Highland and Lowland regions, in rural and urban areas, and in the experiences of the elite and non-elite sections of the population. This will be done using multiple and varied sources, including surviving artefacts, portraits, inventories, and contemporary literature. By incorporating quantifiable analysis and qualitative interpretation, this approach complements and adds to existing knowledge of Scottish clothing and textiles. The thesis begins with an examination of the clothing culture, looking at everyday clothing and its use in national, occupational, and political identities. Examination of the textile culture scrutinizes the use of textiles in literature, the economic and ideological approaches to the textile industry, and the practical motivations behind tartan manufacture. The role of ‘fashion’ in Scottish clothing and textile cultures is studied, looking at how outside fashions were received within Scotland, and how Scotland in turn influenced wider fashions. The thesis provides an overview of Scottish dress and textiles in the long eighteenth century demonstrating the importance such investigation can have on the comprehension of the wider social and economic practices of a nation.

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published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / abstract / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Set in the context of the problems the UK has experienced in achieving effective economic policies, focusing primarily on the role of the civil service, the thesis examines the development and implementation of energy conservation policy, in the UK, from the mid-1970s until April 1992, concentrating mainly on the 1980s. Changes since April 1992 and the prospects for energy conservation in the remainder of the 1990s are considered briefly in the final chapter and conclusion. The thesis uses energy conservation as a case study to explore general theories of policy development and implementation. Comparisons are made with Japan and Denmark. In the case of Japan, the comparison is set in the context of Japanese economic success and the role of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. In the case of Denmark, the context is the planning system and the role of local government. The thesis examines the relative importance of systems of administration and other factors including: prevailing ideological orthodoxies; the roles of policy communities and networks. The title - "Procedure over purpose" - reflects several themes within the thesis including: the differences between procedure and purpose governed states; the relevance of the 1980s and 1990s civil service reforms to procedure or purpose driven policy areas. A further important theme is efficiency, both in terms of the emphasis on efficiency in civil service reforms and because of a change of terminology from energy conservation to energy efficiency during the period under study. Conclusions are drawn on the extent to which development and implementation of energy conservation policy in the UK has been governed more by procedure than a sense of purpose; how far this differs from other countries (primarily Japan and Denmark); its effect on the UK's achievement of energy savings up to the late 1980s; and the implications for policy success or failure.

This study examines the use of regional cultural icons, like hillbillies, nineteenth century pioneer caricatures, and rural/wilderness landscapes, in paintings from an Appalachian tourist center. These icons, produced by the public media’s portrayal of the Appalachian region over several generations, contribute to a sense of cultural difference associated with people of Appalachia. The research question driving this project is: would cultural distinctiveness exist if cultural stereotypes were not a part of the tourist center’s local economics, politics, and social life? Building on ideas from consumption studies, this project explores consumption practices of artists and tourists as they interact with icons in art galleries and other commercial spaces located in a popular vacation destination. Artists and tourists both play out the role of consumer because they choose and make use of icons. This project also draws on ethnographies from tourism and tourist art and from theories of ritual and performance studies. Data gathered from formal interviews, gallery surveys, content analysis of paintings, observations, and participant-observation is analyzed to describe the kinds of images consumed in an Appalachian tourist art market, as well as the marketing techniques employed by business owners to facilitate the tourist’s consumption of images, the performative qualities of consumer behavior and gallery spaces, the various meanings signified by images to consumers, and the structural ways individuals are taught to associate certain meanings with images. This project deconstructs notions of cultural distinctiveness associated with the Appalachian region, while showing some cultural icons to be personally important to artists and tourists. Showing how the tourism industry affects cultural perceptions of marginalized groups, this research also reveals the ways dominant cultural assumptions, like racial and class categories as well as experiences with the past, are communicated via art images. Recounting artists’ stories of working within a tourism context enables this research to describe how individuals and communities employ sales strategies to minimize their perceptions of economic risks. This project concludes that the perpetual use of stereotypes is motivated by the need for a tourist setting to seem different and by the values stereotypes bear for consumers’ personal identities and preferences.

I combine quantitative data on minute-resolved electricity-consumption profiles and survey data with qualitative interviews of PV adopters to create a holistic understanding of how PV adoption influences behavioral change of electricity use. In particular, I examine the information and heuristics consumers use to make energy-related choices and evaluate how consumption behavior affects the total amount and timing of electricity use. Consumption behavior post adoption can significantly alter the environmental benefits of solar PV. Post-adoption changes such as decreases in energy consumption or load shifting from times of high peak demand to times of lower peak demand increase the amount of solar PV generation that is exported to the grid. Higher outflows may reduce the need for less efficient peaking generation units during peak demand, particularly in the summer when solar PV is at its highest generation capacity and electricity demand is greatest. I find that PV adoption does trigger increases in awareness of electricity use. However, while adopters report small or insignificant decreases in household consumption post-adoption, examination of actual records shows both significant increases and decreases in consumption post-PV adoption at the household level. I explain this seeming discrepancy by noting that these households were already energy-conscious prior to PV adoption and had newer, more energy efficient homes, which could offset effects of increased awareness. Supporting this, a majority of respondents considered PV adoption as one action within a larger electricity conservation campaign initiated prior to system adoption. Because they had already implemented several energy efficiency measures, respondents could not easily identify additional ways to reduce electricity use. Most respondents have a method of monitoring consumption, but their attentiveness to monitoring declines after installation-- which could explain the awareness gap as well as the consumption increase. In addition, exogenous factors such as the purchase of an electric vehicle and changes in household size may explain increases in consumption. While I find changes in total consumption after adoption of solar PV at the individual household level, the aggregate mean consumption for all households is just 1.0% but the change in means is insignificant. / text

<p>There is seemingly a never-ending consumer demand for mobileterminals such as cellular phones and personal digitalassistants (PDAs). Each new generation of terminals comes withmore elaborate functions than in the previous generation. Thistrend results in a higher performance demand on the computerarchitecture that performs the required computations within theterminal. To satisfy the projected requirements on cominggenerations of mobile terminals, we propose an architecturethat when intelligently managed can provide the necessaryperformance at low power and energy consumption. Thisarchitecture, a chip-multiprocessor (CMP), thus amulti-processor implemented on a single chip, has incombination with adaptive scheduling strategies the potentialto efficiently fullfill future requirements.</p><p>This licentiate thesis spans over several studies done onthe effectiveness of the adaptive CMP. In our studies, we haveshown that an adaptive CMP can satisfy the same performancerequirements as a comparable uni-processor, still consumingless power and energy. Furthermore, we have made an effort toaccurately model the workload behaviour of mobile terminals,which is of paramount importance when comparing candidatearchitectures. In the future, apart from proposing moreadaptive scheduling techniques, we expect to do more thoroughstudies on workload modeling as well as on the operating systeminfluence on the overall performance and power consumption.</p>

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