L'objectif général de notre projet est d'étudier les capacités d'adolescents de 14 à 17 ans à interpréter une nouvelle littéraire difficile. Des rencontres avec 39 élèves nous ont permis de collecter nos données par l'intermédiaire de la méthode de la pensée à voix haute et de l'entretien semi-dirigé. Nous avons effectué une analyse de ces données grâce à la méthode de l'analyse de contenu. Plus précisément, nous avons d'abord regroupé les élèves dans des profils d'interprètes selon leurs interprétations du texte Dragon (Bradbury, 1986). Nous avons ensuite étudié le lien entre l'interprétation proposée par chacun d'eux et leur recours à des éléments du texte ou à des connaissances personnelles pertinentes pour interpréter. Enfin, nous avons dégagé le lien entre le degré global de compréhension et la plausibilité des interprétations avancées pour chaque profil créé. Globalement, nos résultats convergent vers les observations suivantes : 1) les élèves qui ont proposé les interprétations les plus plausibles sont ceux qui se sont le plus appuyés sur des éléments du texte et sur des connaissances personnelles pertinentes; 2) les élèves dont la compréhension des enjeux centraux de l'histoire était adéquate ont, de façon générale, formulé des interprétations pertinentes pour expliquer le non-dit; 3) les élèves qui n'ont pas cerné le genre du texte lu ont eu plus de difficulté à le comprendre et à l'interpréter. Ces résultats montrent l'importance d'enseigner aux élèves des stratégies métacognitives polyvalentes à utiliser pour la compréhension et l'interprétation de textes de tous genres, notamment le retour au texte et l'utilisation de connaissances personnelles. De plus, nos résultats suggèrent un travail en classe de français sur des textes peu communs afin d'élargir l'expérience de lecture des élèves et les préparer à surmonter les défis générés par les singularités des textes.

In waking life, in dreams. As Leonor attends the last year of catholic school in Leiria, Portugal, a new girl joins the class, and Rita is plagued by visions of a dragon following her relentlessly. The Monster in My Closet is a graphic novel about confronting one’s inner demons against the backdrop of a wider belief system. It depicts a journey of acceptance and realization of one’s queerness while living in a conservative, Catholic city; wrestling with lack of references, teenage insecurities, internalized homophobia, compulsive heterosexuality, and religious upbringing. The comics draw inspiration from medieval illuminations and marginalia, subverting Christian aesthetics by exploring the tension between the Word of God and the margins, insiders and outsiders, heteronormativity and queerness, and the process of othering. / <p>Mariana Neves</p><p>Artist Name: <strong>Mariana Sou</strong></p>

本文的主要研究目的，在於將文化因素（即龍年與虎年效果）納入生育行為的考量，以重新審視台灣生育率與婦女教育程度之間的Granger因果關係。利用台灣1952年至1994年資料進行實證的Cheng and Nwachukwu（1997）及Cheng（1999），其結論指出台灣教育程度與生育率之Granger因果關係並不顯著。本文將以該文章之實證模型為基礎，並加入代表龍年效應與虎年效應的虛擬變數以建立本文模型。 首先根據Cheng（1999）的資料與變數，利用台灣1952年至2005年之年資料，建立一個包含粗出生率、教育程度大專以上的比例、女性勞動參與率、與實質經濟成長率等四個內生變數，以及代表龍虎年效應的兩個虛擬變數之VAR模型。並以Toda and Yamamoto（1995）提出的Granger因果關係檢定，檢定台灣教育程度與生育率之間的因果關係。隨後，為增進估計的有效性，本文利用台灣地區1978年至2005年的季資料，共112個樣本進行實證研究。變數定義方面，將粗出生率替換為一般生育率，教育程度大專以上的比例替換為育齡婦女大專以上的比例。並根據上述建立之VAR模型，進行Granger因果關係檢定。 經由本文的實證研究發現，將龍年效果與虎年效果納入考量後，台灣婦女教育程度的提昇會Granger影響生育率的下降。亦即台灣婦女教育程度日益提升，是解釋生育率下降的重要因素，此結果與Cheng（1999）所提出的結果並不一致。此外，龍年與虎年對台灣的生育率分別有顯著正向與負向的影響。 / This paper tries to revisit the null hypothesis of Granger no-causality between female education and fertility rate in Taiwan, by considering the culture factors captured by Dragon and Tiger Years which might influences the fertility behavior. In addition, this study compares the primary finding with the result proposed by Cheng and Nwachukwu (1997) and Cheng (1999) which are that female education does not affect fertility rate in Taiwan. According to Cheng (1999), official time series yearly data from 1952 to 2005 provided by Taiwan government are used first, and quarterly data from 1978 to 2005 are required to improve the efficiency. This study models a 4-Variables VAR and applies Granger no-causality test proposed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995). The primary finding of this study is that there is a negative causality from female education to fertility rate in Taiwan, which is inconsistent with conclusions in Cheng (1999). In addition, culture factors do play a very important role in fertility behavior in Taiwan.

Le niveau de conversion des réacteurs CANDU et REP en cycle thorium a été étudié dans l'optique d'une utilisation en troisième et dernière strate de scénarios symbiotiques. Le plutonium du combustible REP usé serait par exemple utilisé en CANDU Th/Pu pour produire de l'233U, qui alimenterait ces réacteurs à eau et haute conversion. En cas d'augmentation importante de la production d'énergie à partir d'uranium, cette alternative basée sur des réacteurs existants pourrait suppléer une IVe génération trop tardive. Pour évaluer la compétitivité de tels scénarios, des calculs de cycles détaillés ont été effectués selon une méthodologie de simulation de coeur développée pour le CANDU-6 et adaptée au REP de type N4. Le CANDU Th/233U enrichi à 1.30 wt% est régénérateur, avec un burnup court de 7 GWj/t. Augmenter légèrement l'enrichissement allonge considérablement le cycle, au prix d'une sous-génération. Multirecycler conduit également à une perte de conversion, qui peut néanmoins être compensée par un chargement fissile hétérogène. La conversion à puissance standard est moins bonne en REP Th/233U qu'en CANDU (inventaire fissile réduit de moitié après 50 GWj/t) mais peut être améliorée par sous-modération. L'analyse neutronique montre que l'essentiel du gap de conversion entre CANDU et REP vient des conditions opératoires économes en neutrons du CANDU. Des scénarios ont été comparés du point de vue de l'économie d'uranium et de l'aval du cycle dans les deux cas, et ont confi rmé l'intérêt du CANDU. Deux pistes de recherche ont été identi fiées : l'évaluation de la sûreté des CANDUs au thorium par cinétique avec contre-réactions thermiques, et l'étude de coeurs fortement sous-modérés en cuve standard de REP.

This study highlights the stereotypical depictions of journalists in film using a narrative analysis of four major Hollywood productions, starting with All the President’s Men from 1976 through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from 2011. Its purpose is to highlight traits given to journalists in the movies and re-occuring themes in the portrayal of the media and the journalistic occupation. Differences and commonalities between the films are concluded in a discussion of ethics, personalities and the media’s self image. The paper can be seen as a contribution to the paradigm in which journalism in the movies is perceived at the moment. It offers a wide explanation to how the image of the journalist is conveyed to the public, an image that differs from how real life journalists go about in daily work life. This is essential, since most people never get to experience journalistic work in reality – but solely from popular culture – which distorts the perception of the media as the fourth estate.

The main objective of this thesis is to examine the trade-offs between security and efficiency within symmetric ciphers. This includes the influence that block ciphers have on the new generation of word-based stream ciphers. By incorporating block-cipher like components into their designs, word-based stream ciphers have experienced hundreds-fold improvement in speed over bit-based stream ciphers, without any observable security degradation. The thesis also emphasizes the importance of keying issues in block and stream ciphers, showing that by reusing components of the principal cipher algorithm in the keying algorithm, security can be enhanced without loss of key-agility or expanding footprint in software memory. Firstly, modern block ciphers from four recent cipher competitions are surveyed and categorized according to criteria that includes the high-level structure of the block cipher, the method in which non-linearity is instilled into each round, and the strength of the key schedule. In assessing the last criterion, a classification by Carter [45] is adopted and modified to improve its consistency. The classification is used to demonstrate that the key schedule of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) [62] is surprisingly flimsy for a national standard. The claim is supported with statistical evidence that shows the key schedule suffers from bit leakage and lacks sufficient diffusion. The thesis contains a replacement key schedule that reuses components from the cipher algorithm, leveraging existing analysis to improve security, and reducing the cipher's implementation footprint while maintaining key agility. The key schedule is analyzed from the perspective of an efficiency-security tradeoff, showing that the new schedule rectifies an imbalance towards e±ciency present in the original. The thesis contains a discussion of the evolution of stream ciphers, focusing on the migration from bit-based to word-based stream ciphers, from which follows a commensurate improvement in design flexibility and software performance. It examines the influence that block ciphers, and in particular the AES, have had upon the development of word-based stream ciphers. The thesis includes a concise literature review of recent styles of cryptanalytic attack upon stream ciphers. Also, claims are refuted that one prominent word-based stream cipher, RC4, suffers from a bias in the first byte of each keystream. The thesis presents a divide and conquer attack against Alpha1, an irregularly clocked bit-based stream cipher with a 128-bit state. The dominating aspect of the divide and conquer attack is a correlation attack on the longest register. The internal state of the remaining registers is determined by utilizing biases in the clocking taps and launching a guess and determine attack. The overall complexity of the attack is 261 operations with text requirements of 35,000 bits and memory requirements of 2 29.8 bits. MUGI is a 64-bit word-based cipher with a large Non-linear Feedback Shift Register (NLFSR) and an additional non-linear state. In standard benchmarks, MUGI appears to su®er from poor key agility because it is implemented on an architecture for which it is not designed, and because its NLFSR is too large relative to the size of its master key. An unusual feature of its key initialization algorithm is described. A variant of MUGI, entitled MUGI-M, is proposed to enhance key agility, ostensibly without any loss of security. The thesis presents a new word-based stream cipher called Dragon. This cipher uses a large internal NLFSR in conjunction with a non-linear filter to produce 64 bits of keystream in one round. The non-linear filter looks very much like the round function of a typical modern block cipher. Dragon has a native word size of 32 bits, and uses very simple operations, including addition, exclusive-or and s-boxes. Together these ensure high performance on modern day processors such as the Intel Pentium family. Finally, a set of guidelines is provided for designing and implementing symmetric ciphers on modern processors, using the Intel Pentium 4 as a case study. Particular attention is given to understanding the architecture of the processor, including features such as its register set and size, the throughput and latencies of its instruction set, and the memory layouts and speeds. General optimization rules are given, including how to choose fast primitives for use within the cipher. The thesis describes design decisions that were made for the Dragon cipher with respect to implementation on the Intel Pentium 4. Block Ciphers, Word-based Stream Ciphers, Cipher Design, Cipher Implementa- tion, -

This dissertation deals with the life story of the medieval nobleman Ulrich III. of Neuhaus. The goal of the dissertation is to portray his life and work and put them in a larger context of the period in which he lived, that is the first half of the fourteenth century. Despite the fact that Ulrich III. did not hold any important office but devoted his life to administering his large dominion instead, he is one of the most important persons of the Neuhaus family. He contributed significantly to the structural changes of Jindřichův Hradec, for example by issuing an order to complete the Saint John the Baptist Church and inviting the Order of Friars Minor Conventual to live there. A confirmed Catholic, he lead the first Crusade against the Waldensians, who settled on his dominion. He also had a chamber in the Jindřichův Hradec castle decorated with a wall painting based on the legend of Saint George, the patron saint of the Teutonic Order, an order that had settled in Jindřichův Hradec alongside the Knights Templar. Due to the fact that he belonged to the Neuhaus family, he acquired the Castle of Telč in Moravia. The Castle subsequently became a significant property of the Neuhaus family until the Neuhaus family became extinct in 1604. With regard to the politics, Ulrich III supported King John of...

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Approved for public release; distribution in unlimited. / In a world in which the use of violence continues to be viewed as an acceptable method to pursue political goals, the use of terrorism as a political method will also continue. And within that world, in the coming years, hostage rescues and other direct actions to combat terrorism are likely to be the most frequent type of missions conducted by state special operations forces, including those of Romania. This thesis explores the importance of integrating three types of decisions-informational, structural, and operational-for the successful outcome of special operations. The thesis analyzes four operations, conducted by American, Belgian, and Israeli forces, and the circumstances of their positive or negative outcomes. The historical cases show that, if any one of the three types of decisions was not integrated with the other two, the operation was doomed. The analysis also reveals that the integration of decision-making can best be realized by using interagency coordination mechanisms and a collocation of decision-makers, especially for situations in which command arrangements are highly complicated or unclear. In light of the findings in the four case studies, an analysis of the Romanian Special Operations Forces reveals that its overall structure does not favor either immediate-response or high-complexity missions. The thesis concludes with a number of recommendations for short- and long-term mitigation of current command and control problems faced by Romanian Special Operations Forces. / Captain, Romanian Army