A number of models of nature incorporate dimensions beyond our observed four. In this thesis we examine some examples and consequences of classical instabilities that emerge in the higher-dimensional theories of gravity which can describe their low energy phenomenology. <br /><br /> We first investigate a gravitational instability for black strings carrying momentum along an internal direction. We argue that this implies a new type of solution that is nonuniform along the extra dimension and find that there is a boost dependent critical dimension for which they are stable. Our analysis implies the existence of an analogous instability for the five-dimensional black ring. We construct a simple mode of the black ring to aid in applying these results and argue that such rings should exist in any number of space-time dimensions. <br /><br /> Next we consider a recently constructed class of nonsupersummetric solutions of type IIB supergravity which are everywhere smooth and have no horizon. We demonstrate that these solutions are all classically unstable. The instability is a generic feature of horizonless geometries with an ergoregion. We consider the endpoint of this instability and argue that the solutions decay to supersymmetric configurations. We also comment on the implications of the ergoregion instability for Mathur's 'fuzzball' proposal. <br /><br /> Finally, we consider an interesting braneworld cosmology in the Randall-Sundrum scenario constructed using a bulk space-time which corresponds to a charged AdS black hole. In particular, these solutions appear to 'bounce', making a smooth transition from a contracting to an expanding phase. By considering the space-time geometry more carefully, we demonstrate that generically in these solutions the brane will encounter a singularity in the transition region.

This study is a description of the meanings pre-service teachers and their instructor (myself) gain in the experience of learning to teach in an Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (SUNTEP). Using stories of teaching, oral and written, we searched together for the essence of teaching in a journey of selfawareness and a journey of discovering what it means to be human. We storied, restoried and reflected on our experiences as we lived our lives and made new meanings about who we are and who we want to be as teachers.<p> In this research project, I present stories given to me by my nine participants (third-year/pre-intern students) in their teaching autobiographies and and our oral storytelling sessions. To describe the knowledge I gained in receiving my students' stories, I combined their individual stories into collective narratives. I lived and relived my students' experiences, as told to me through story, and wrote their stories as collective narratives to represent the collective knowledge we gained as a community. The collective narratives are not meant to romanticize the lives of my students. Theirs are not lives without conflict. I know my students as unique individuals with many different experiences. The collective narratives are descriptions of their collective knowledge as told through story.<p> Storytelling honours the ways of Aboriginal learning. The design of this study was influenced by the belief that all learning begins and ends with the spirit. I honour this tradition by using Cajete's visioning cycle (Look to the mountain: An ecology of Indigenous education, 1994) as my pathway. Each chapter, one through nine, follows this cycle which begins and ends with a vision, the centering place where the "soul of the dream" is honoured. The visioning cycle is an inward journey and each stage is a step towards learning what it means to be human and the importance of relationship to self, others and the world. Cajete's visioning cycle allowed me to be passionate about my learning, to make meaning through my heart and my mind, to respect the spirit that moves us and to honour and respect the ways of knowing of the people I teach and learn from. In this research, I find a new value for story in teacher education. Through the telling of personal stories of experience, student teachers and their instructors negotiate for new meanings of what it means to teach and new meanings of the qualities they hope to possess as teachers. Nel Noddings, in her research, discusses the power and importance of "relationship" to self and to others. We are who we are in our relations with others. In a journey of selfawareness and in the giving and receiving of stories as pedagogy in teacher training, the importance of compassion, humility, courage, hope and love has new meaning.<p> You, the reader, will bring different experiences and new meanings as you read this research story. Like my students and me, you will create a new collective story.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 299-309). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

This dissertation examines Socrates' method of examining interlocutors, referred to as the elenchus, in Plato's definitional dialogues. It contains three parts. The first part lays out various theories of the elenchus. The first chapter examines the seminal view of Richard Robinson. The second sketches the development and aftermath of Vlastos' constructivist view. The third focuses on Socrates' own testimony about the elenchus in the Apology. These pictures of the elenchus form a selection of views against which various definitional dialogues may be compared. The second part, containing six chapters, provides a detailed commentary on the Euthyphro. Various features of that dialogue suggest that neither the prominent forms of constructivism, nor their non-constructivist alternatives presented in the first part adequately capture Socrates' procedure. The third part, consisting of one chapter, presents my view of the Socratic elenchus, which I term “technical destructivism.” I argue that this view provides a straight-forward solution to a number of problems which the alternative treatments leave unsolved. It also helps to explain some otherwise puzzling features of Socrates' procedure in the shorter definitional dialogues, including his use of the technē analogy, and his appeal to the priority of definitional knowledge. / Philosophy / text

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A new class of photographs that relies on digital processes, best exemplified by the works of Gregory Crewdson, Andreas Gursky and Jeff Wall all exhibit a ‘not quite right’ quality that calls into question some of the most closely held truisms of photographic thought. Through novel technological processes combined with the elements of the new photography—new scale, fabulist imagery, and implied narrative—these images challenge the nature of photography as a documentary process and, beyond that, the nature of what we understand to be ‘the real’ that is supposedly documented. A visual analysis of these images through the lens of Roland Barthes’ and Susan Stewart’s scholarship reveals truths about these images and about photography as a medium. What these elements, this ‘lack of rightness’, can tell us about photography and its position as documentary medium can help us better understand the nature of contemporary photography as a truly creative medium rather than a documentation of the real. These artists are engaging in a discourse of artifice, questioning the position of photographs as documents of how it was, revealing that not only is their work not a documentation of the world as it is, but that photography never was.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2009. / Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 269 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 135-142). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--Hamburg, Universiẗat, 2007, titled: Christliche Kosmologie und antike Naturphilosophie. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [547]-586) and indexes.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.