As part of the EU project Energy Efficient Demo Multiresidential highrise Building (EE-highrise), this thesis work evaluates and changes the Slovenian Eco Silver House (ESH) high rise building model in order to see if it can be classifiable as a passive house in different European regions. The purpose of this thesis work was to evaluate if the ESH could meet the European and Swedish passive house classification in Sibernik, Ljubljana, Lund, Östersund, Sundsvall and Kiruna. The purpose was also to make a sensitivity analysis of different energy efficiency measures in the energy performance of the building. This analysis was conducted to understand which of the selected energy efficiency measures made the most significant improvements in the results. The measures included in the sensitivity analysis were the building envelopes wall insulation thickness, changing the window frames, altering the ventilation air duct length and width as well as increasing the air duct insulation thickness. Finally, simulations with solar panels on the roof of the ESH were carried out. For the European passive house classification, the study involved constructing the model in the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) and simulating each region and energy efficiency measures separately. PHPP is however made specifically for verifying buildings according to the European passive house standard. So the demands for the Swedish passive house classification cannot be calculated in the PHPP simulations. Because of this, the data available through PHPP was used to manually calculate the Swedish passive house requirements. The results showed that the original ESH model, was only passive house certifiable according to the European classification in Sibernik. When including the additional energy efficiency measures it was possible for the ESH to become passive house certifiable in Lund, Ljubljana and Sibernik. The Swedish passive house classification results suggests that the ESH may be passive house certifiable in Lund. Also, with additional energy efficiency measures the ESH may meet the passive house requirements in Sundsvall and Kiruna. However, all the passive house classification parameters could not be considered in this study. Accordingly, additional analysis are required to draw final conclusions on whether the ESH building could meet the Swedish passive house certification in the different Swedish climate zones. The conclusions drawn were that all the energy efficiency measures contribute to reducing the primary energy demand, heating demand and the heating load. However, these same energy efficiency measures would at the same time increase the cooling demand. Because of this, it was discussed that specific regional models should be made. Because some regional models might benefit from not including the energy efficiency measures used in this thesis at all. They might instead benefit from finding and implementing energy efficiency measures that reduce the cooling demand.

This paper explores how Charles Dickens’s use of a female narrator in Bleak House (1853) fundamentally problematizes and undermines his use of the fairy tale’s cultural cachet, motifs, and characters to prop up and project his fantasies of the feminine ideal. More specifically, it examines the effects of the thematic presence of several tale-types and stock fairy tale figures on Dickens’s ability to prescribe ideal feminine behaviors, such as incuriosity and selfless obedience, to both his characters and his female audience. Because Esther’s ability to write and her interest in either discovering or constructing her own identity establish her as competitor to the males who attempt to script her life, Dickens tries to control and circumscribe her ability to know and act through her own and other characters’ resemblance to traditional fairy tale character types, especially Bluebeard and Griselda. Esther’s narrative, however, betrays these unnatural delimitations in telltale interruptions and denials as Dickens attempts to circumvent the constraints he has placed on her voice. Esther’s narrative therefore resists but imperfectly overcomes the Victorian male author’s scripting of femininity. / text

The impact of distributed energy resources (DERs), electric vehicles/plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs/PHEVs), and smart appliances on the distribution grid has been expected to be beneficial in terms of environment, economy, and reliability. But, it can be more beneficial by implementing smart controls. In the absence of additional controls, a negative effect was identified regarding the service lifetime of power distribution components. This research presents a new class of a smart house energy management system that can provide management and control of a residential house electric energy without inconvenience to the residents of the house and without overloading the distribution infrastructure. The implementation of these controls requires an infrastructure that continuously monitors the house power system operation, determines the real-time model of the house, computes better operating strategies over a planning period of time, and enables control of house resources. The smart house energy management system provides benefits for the good of utility and customer. In case of variable electricity rates, the management system can reduce the customer’s total energy cost. The benefits can be also extended to provide ancillary services to the utility such as control of peak load and reactive power support– assuming that this is worked out under a certain mutually beneficial arrangement between the utility and customer.

Jane Addams influenced the lives of many immigrant Chicagoans through offering a variety of community oriented services including art education programs at the Hull-House. This study examines the origins and philosophy of both the Butler Art Gallery and Labor Museum, and discusses each program’s role for residents, visitors, and guests of Hull-House. In addition to providing a historical basis for Jane Addams as an art educator, this study discusses the techniques for community organization that were utilized by Hull-House residents, including Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. / text

When the Judiciary Committee initiated its impeachment inquiry of Richard Nixon for his complicity in Watergate, it was the first time that the House of Representatives had commenced such a proceeding against a president since Andrew Johnson in 1868. Johnson’s impeachment and subsequent Senate acquittal was widely regarded as an example of Congress run amok, its partisanship so blatant and its failure so grand that many Americans assumed that presidential impeachment had become obsolete. But impeachment, by its nature, is political, and each Congress defines the bounds of high crimes and misdemeanors in light of the current political climate. For the House in October 1973, Nixon’s Watergate scandal threatened to breach those limits. From the outset, Judiciary Chairman Peter Rodino recognized that if his Committee were to recommend impeaching President Nixon without bipartisan support, the American public would interpret it as another Johnson-like fiasco, and a threat to the constitutional system of government. To thwart suspicion that the Democratic majority would impeach Nixon exclusively for its own political gain, Rodino preached fairness to the President, even as Nixon refused to comply with the Committee’s investigation. Despite Rodino’s assurances, however, his procedural proposals—designed in consultation with the Committee’s Special Counsel, John Doar—did not always seem fair enough to many Republicans. At the same time, many Democrats believed that Rodino and Doar had already accorded Nixon too many rights, which encroached upon the House’s constitutionally guaranteed “sole power of impeachment.” Ultimately, Rodino conceded that he could not marshal a bipartisan majority without making compromises with members who expected more fairness than he and Doar had initially offered. Despite pressure from their congressional leadership, constituents, and the White House, seven southern Democrats and moderate Republicans formed a “Fragile Coalition” to vote their conscience in favor of three articles of impeachment. In doing so, they convinced a fearful and cynical American public that impeachment could be just, and in the case of Richard Nixon, necessary. / text

The evolution of adaptation depends on genetic and phenotypic variation, both of which are expected to be depleted in populations as a result of selection. Thus, understanding the maintenance of variation in fitness-related traits is of central importance in evolutionary biology as such processes can mitigate the constraining effects of adaptation on evolutionary change. Secondary sexual traits involved in attracting mates offer conspicuous examples of adaptation and are suggestive of strong directional selection, yet abundant variation is commonly observed both within and among populations. One explanation posits that variation in elaborate sexual traits might be maintained by fluctuating selection, such that episodes of intense selection are interspersed by periods in which variation is shielded from elimination, yet little is known about the processes that lead to such heterogeneity. In many cases, mate choice results from highly localized social interactions such that fine scale demographic variation may contribute to variation in patterns of sexual selection, especially when individuals' attractiveness is assessed in comparison to local conspecifics. Additionally, selection on sexual traits might fluctuate when the fitness consequences of mate choice depends on the complementarity of male and female characters, such as when offspring viability is influenced by the genetic relatedness of parents. In this dissertation, I examined demographic, behavioral, and genetic causes of variation in sexually-selected male plumage ornaments in a wild population of house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus). Over a five-year field study, I found that mate choice occurred largely within small social groups, the composition of which was influenced by active social sampling by males, suggesting that variation in male sexual traits may be maintained as a result of behaviors that enable individuals to shape their environment of selection. Additionally, using a panel of neutral molecular markers, I found that parental relatedness predicted multiple metrics of offspring fitness, and also affected the ability of neonates to buffer development from environmental variation, suggesting that inbreeding is likely to have pervasive effects on the evolution of adaptation. Taken together, these studies provide evidence of distinct processes that contribute to the maintenance of quantitative variation in sexual traits in this natural population.

Whole-genome studies of rates of protein evolution show that genes underlying reproduction and immunity tend to evolve faster than other genes, consistent with the frequent action of positive selection. The evolution of immunity has been well-studied at the interspecific level, but much remains unknown about the population-level dynamics of immunity. This project described genetic variation at immunity and non-immunity loci as well as variation among levels of infection for diverse pathogens in a natural population of mice from Tucson. Analysis of autosomal and X-linked loci in the native range of Mus domesticus, the species from which Tucson mice are primarily descended, revealed low levels of variation consistent with a recent population expansion, resulting in a slight excess of rare alleles across the genome. Genetic variation among a set of classical inbred strains represented a small fraction of wild variation. An overlapping set of genes sequenced in mice from Tucson revealed that there is significant introgression from Mus castaneus. After controlling for gene flow, Tucson mice showed evidence of a mild bottleneck that produced a slight excess of intermediate frequency alleles, but did not result in a dramatic loss of genetic variability. Most of the 15 pathogens and parasites studied in Tucson were found at low to intermediate frequency, and most mice had one to three infections, suggesting that there are many opportunities for host-pathogen coevolution, and a possible role for coinfection. A study of Fv-4, which confers resistance to murine leukemia viruses, confirmed that the resistance allele originated in M. castaneus and is now found at intermediate frequency in Tucson after introduction through gene flow. Finally, a study of the recently duplicated Ceacam1 and Ceacam2 genes, previously shown to be involved in resistance to mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), revealed that a gene conversion event moved a suite of mutations from Ceacam2 to Ceacam1. An elevated rate of protein evolution showed that Ceacam2 had experienced positive selection after duplication. Interestingly, there was no association between MHV antibody presence and Ceacam1 genotype in Tucson. This project showed that gene flow and gene conversion mediated resistance to infections in wild mice.

In this essay I aim to examine how the landscape of Mönsterås might have looked like during the Bronze age in order to get a better understanding of the house urn that C J Ekerot found in a cairn in Fälle. Mönsterås is an area which has a quality of permanence, from Stone Age to Iron Age with its culmination during the Bronze Age. I will discuss the use and symbolic meaning of the house urn. The house as a symbol during the Bronze Age seemed to have had an important place in the cosmology. I will also discuss the importance of cairns, especially in the archipelago areas. The cairns have had an obvious connection to the sea throughout the Bronze age and scientist have argued that one of the reason could be that the sea was associated with the dead.

In the pursuit of originality, some interventions consciously stand in opposition to the existing. The approach I've taken is more holistic; rather than pursue the novelty of the moment, I've taken the stance that creativity in art and architecture is part of a continuum. With that in mind, I've attempted in this project to make this evolution apparent by bridging the existing to the new without reverting to historical mimicking. My design is not a heritage preservation project. I wanted to take what exists, re-think it, and build upon it. My proposal is for a downtown student residence for both individuals and families. It would take advantage of new developments in the area such as the new S.F.U. conference center, the new B.C.IT. complex, and other institutions already in place such as the S.F.U. at Harbor Center, and the Vancouver Community College. This student residence would be an inter-university residence, accepting students from all of these educational institutions as well as U.B.C. and Emily Carr. Its aim would be to establish greater social and academic links between the city's post-secondary educational institutes. This project feeds on what has already started to happen in the area and can re-introduce a residential population to the city core, generating new life and new activity which in turn will contribute significantly to the wealth of the urban fabric. In short, one can imagine the formation of a lively downtown university quarter. My proposed residence would be one seed sown in this larger vision. Besides feeling that I felt the project should be a dense urban scheme, it appeared imperative to me that my design foster a real sense of belonging, permitting the development of a small community within a community. In addition to public commercial space, the new program demanded realms of privacy, and more importantly a core, or center, around which a community could begin to form. From this organizational idea of a core the design started to take shape. The existing building opened up in the rear toward a court. A lane intersected it providing access and making it a space that could be both place and pathway for activity. The program turned towards this space marking it as the center, and animating it with the activity of daily life. The existing urban aesthetic informed my design language. Urban context is characterized by wall as a dominant element, tall vertical spaces, steel stairs and railing, hanging wires, and a strong demarcation between front, sides and rear accentuated by a change of brick at the corners. All these elements were to some degree absorbed, assimilated and reinterpreted in the work. The relationship of 'part to whole' became an important part of the process. Likewise, terminology in how I started to speak and think about the project. Words like old vs. new stopped being used as they aggravate the dichotomy between the parts. An effort was made not to mimic the existing building which would have produce a neo-historic building, this was not my goal. An effort was made not to objectify the existing building, rendering it a precious object. Nor did I deliberately attempt to contrast it, this would be counter-productive to the concept of the whole. Contrast aggravates the gap between then and now, disavowing integration and synthesis. My approach was rather one of complementing and complicity. Complicity is an interesting concept because it implies that two or more parties or parts come together toward a common goal, It also implies a dialogue. This is very different from contrast, for example, that is unidirectional. A dialogue receives and gives, and both parts form and are informed.

Increasing cultural globalisation and the assertion of cultural identities present an interesting opportunity for cities in the postmodern Western World. An increasingly multi-situated polity must better reflect and serve an increasingly self-aware and heterogeneous population in search of better planning, community and social justice. A great deal of research in diversity issues has been conducted in various disciplines, but there is little integration of this theory and even less instruction as to its application. This thesis attempts to address the deficiencies - providing some rationale and some guidance towards the diversification of civic culture as a model of incorporation. Diversification requires a significant shift in our understanding of culture, identity, community and self - an end to mainstream and its hegemony. It places the onus for change on local institutions and operates on an assumption of difference, a desire for meaningful incorporation and a commitment to equality as equity. These principles translate into the pursuit of increasingly differentiated benefits, inclusive participation, varied discourse and inclusive definitions. For the transformation to be truly meaningful and systemic, it must take place in all agencies of civic culture: government, civil society, business, the media and family. A conceptual, prescriptive and evaluative framework for cultural diversification is thus elaborated. Change will require deliberate purpose and action. This thesis attempts to provide some direction by applying the discussion to a level at which most urban leaders, planners and cultural producers work. A local organisation in Vancouver, Canada - a reputed leader in diversity - is selected as a case to illustrate application of the developed framework and to enrich it with an initial investigation of how practitioners work towards the diversification of their individual institutions and their larger socio-cultural environment. It is hoped that strategies learned here, and in future applications of this research, can provide guidance for other organisations and that numerous small efforts will be rewarded with the gradual transformation of the whole.