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The purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which, and the ways in which, extended schools can become more community oriented in their extended provision. Within this a focus was placed on co-production and asset-based working and how they take these approaches and implement them into the delivery of the school. Whilst there are many arguments in favour of co-production and asset-based working within communities there appears to be a gap in literature relating to schools adopting these approaches. This thesis seeks to add to the limited range of these literatures by focusing on a case study school and the extent to which a group of stakeholders involved in the school are able to recognise and build upon assets within the community and the extent to which co-production plays a role in the provision made by the school. This study was qualitative and longitudinal in nature. It took the form of a case study of a school attempting to develop a community oriented approach. The main method of data collection was semi-structured interviews with a group of eight stakeholders taken from a purposive sample as they were connected to the school. The stakeholders were interviewed and additional data was collected through two further feedback and observation sessions with six of the original stakeholders over a period of twelve months. The thesis begins by introducing the topic, moving on to explore a range of literatures around extended schools, asset and deficit-based working, community organizing and co-production. Each of these approaches are explored in the way they relate to work between schools and their local communities. Methodologies are then introduced, findings presented and then discussed and conclusions offered in the following chapters. The findings highlight the difficulties faced by schools in becoming more community oriented in their extended provision. The thesis explores some of the potentials, possibilities and constraints of the extended schools agenda by examining the implications of these findings. The study concludes by arguing that schools are often professionally dominated institutions and that the balance in partnerships between schools and the local community will always be tempered and restricted by the expectations and demands placed upon schools by local and national policy.

Ecosystem engineers can govern ecosystem dynamics, yet ecosystem consequences of trait variation within engineering species are often overlooked. Combining field and greenhouse experiments with mathematical modelling, this study aimed to assess the relative importance of heritable and non-heritable trait variation within the engineer species Spartina alterniflora in controlling salt marsh erosion. In the field experiment, plots along a devegetated shoreline were restored with wild and cultivated sources to test whether populations exerted different control on erosion. The greenhouse experiment investigated whether genotypic trait differences were conserved when genotypes were exposed to elevated nutrients. A modelling approach was used to extrapolate empirical findings to temporal and spatial scales involved in landform evolution, considering spatial patterns in trait variation. The field experiment revealed that erosion rates were higher in plots planted with a wild, non-local source population as compared to plots planted with cultivars or local genotypes. Differential erosion could not be explained by differences in biomass, suggesting that other traits and resource use are stronger determinants of erosion. In the greenhouse experiment, cultivars and wild genotypes exhibited trait-specific differences in phenotypic plasticity under changing nutrient availability. Nutrient regime and heritable trait differences explained 70% of observed variation in soil shear strength. Soil shear strength increased when plants received more nutrients, but plant genotype had an equal or larger influence on soil characteristics. Model simulations suggested that older marshes (with large clones) and genetically diverse marshes (with high spatial variance in soil shear strength) may experience higher mean erosion rates. However, simulations also showed that average erosion rates are easily underestimated if the observation period is short, as variability of annual erosion rates and the probability of mass failure events were also mediated by clone size and composition. These findings illustrate that heritable and non-heritable trait variation interact with environmental conditions and landform history, together driving geomorphological processes crucial to the persistence of coastal marshes. Consideration of these interacting factors is needed when deploying ecosystem engineers for habitat restoration. / 1 / Brittany Marie Bernik

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A Discrete Extended Kalman Filter has been designed to process measurements from a magnetometer, sun sensor, IMU, and GPS receiver to provide the relative position, velocity, attitude, and gyro bias of a chaser spacecraft relative to a target spacecraft. An Extended Kalman Filter with Uncompensated Bias has also been developed for the implementation of well known biases and errors that are not directly observable. A detailed explanation of the algorithms, models, and derivations that go into both filters is presented. With this simulation and specific sensor selection the position of the chaser spacecraft relative to the target can be estimated to within about 5 m, the velocity to within .1 m/s, and the attitude to within 2 degrees for both filters. If a thrust is applied to the IMU measurements, it takes about 1.5 minutes to get a good position estimate, using the Extended Kalman Filter with Uncompensated Bias. The error settles almost immediately using the general Extended Kalman Filter. These filters have been designed for and can be implemented on almost any small, low cost, low power satellite with this inexpensive set of sensors. / text

This thesis consists of three essays that contribute to the understanding of the economic implications of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for certain durable (e.g. electronics) and consumable (e.g. pharmaceuticals) products from an operational perspective. In the first essay, we investigate the effect of EPR-based policy on a durable good producer’s secondary market strategy. Our analysis uncovers possible strategic approach of durable good producers to EPR obligations, which may result in unintended outcomes. We provide insights into how to set EPR obligations to avoid these adverse outcomes. In the second essay, we examine the operational details of market-based EPR implementation on the ground. We analyze whether the advocated premises of the marked-based approach hold by focusing on the Minnesota Electronics Recycling Act. Based on evaluation reports and stakeholder interviews, we find that the Minnesota Act achieves the premises of the market-based approach, but this occurs at the expense of several unintended outcomes, following unforeseen market dynamics and associated stakeholder interactions. In the third essay, we explore how the EPR-based policies can be effectively operationalized for managing pharmaceutical overage by analyzing the interactions between major stakeholders and moderating factors for these interactions. We demonstrate that the preferred policy depends on the healthcare and externality characteristics of the medicine together with collection-related requirements. Additionally, we investigate the perspectives of pharmaceutical stakeholders on the policy choice and identify the influential factors in this context.

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The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of a time-extended counseling group with a traditional counseling group on the three variables: self-actualization, intimacy, and members' reactions to the group experience.