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This thesis aims to understand the everyday use of digital media by Chinese ordinary citizens as new forms of civic engagement under strict online censorship and CCP’s authoritarian control. With the announcement of the Third-child Policy as the analytical background, I adopted a qualitative research method and conducted digitally mediated ethnography on Sina Weibo users. Specifically, I took a close look at their strategic usage of social media practices, memes, as means to participate in the discussion of third-child policy on the platform. My theoretical framework builds off on James Scott’s (1989) theory of everyday forms of resistance and Flinders & Wood’s (2018) notions on everyday political participation, supplementing with concepts of connective action and collective identity. This paper shows how participants used low-key, tactical, and mundane memes to criticize third-child policy, the motivations, and intentions behind their acts, how meme expressions are organized, sustained, and what makes these acts politically effective. By doing this, I highlight how participants’ everyday self- determined online practices result in the formation of collective identities that eventually lead to the emergence of underground centrality among ordinary Chinese people and challenge CCP authority and legitimacy. As such, it will contribute to a deeper insight into the collective nature of and resistance power of participants' individual online actions and enrich our understanding of the active agency of Chinese actors and their civic engagement under censorship regimes.

The improvvisatore tradition in Florence Italy during the second half of the quattrocento featured poet-musicians who sang poetry for music (poesia per musica) accompanied by the lira (da braccio). This thesis researches Florentine literati and threads of humanism in relation to poetry written for music. By doing so, philosophical and literary trends are analyzed in relation to the Florentine improvvisatore style: frottola versification forms and divinus furor. Marsilio Ficino’s (1433-1499) direction at the Platonic Academy (founded c. 1463) outside Florence in the hills of Carregi influenced some of the greatest artists and musicians of his time. This thesis focuses on lyric improvisation as a means of connecting mind and body with the universe. In doing so, Ficino’s music-spirit-theory and astrological program are looked at in light of the Platonic sources. The instrument of the improvvisatore, the lira, will be analyzed in relation to affect (ethos) and wellness for mind (soul) and body

1 Company financing analysis Abstract The aim of this thesis is to analyse the forms of financing a company, describe it, not only from a theoretical economic and legal point of view but also from a practical point of view, compare the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of financing and describe the economic and legal context and consequences of using different methods of financing. To fulfil this goal, the author used methods of analysis, comparison, induction and synthesis. The first chapter deals with the various ways of dividing the forms of financing the company, where the various types of capital are defined, which are concepts that are subsequently worked with in the following chapters. The second part of the first chapter then deals with a general description of the company's capital structure and then the basis for setting the optimal capital structure so as to achieve an ideal composition of debt and equity, especially in terms of minimizing the cost of capital and minimizing the risk resulting from the use of different types of capital. The second chapter then deals with the analysis of individual methods of financing the company from the equity and focuses mainly on financing from the company's share capital, shareholders' additional payments, depreciation, retained earnings and also...

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No description available.

Serre's conjecture on the modularity of Galois representations makes a connection between two-dimensional Galois representations and modular forms. A conjecture by Ash, Doud, and Pollack generalizes Serre's to higher-dimensional Galois representations. In this paper we discuss an explicit computational example supporting the generalized claim. An ambiguity in a calculation within the example is resolved using a method of complex approximation.

Bridge engineers and managers in coastal areas and cold regions frequently specify the application of surface treatments on concrete bridge decks as barriers against chloride ingress. In consideration of concrete cover thickness and the presence of stay-in-place metal forms (SIPMFs), the objective of this research was to determine the latest timing of initial surface treatment applications on concrete bridge decks subjected to external chloride loading before chlorides accumulate in sufficient quantities to initiate corrosion during the service life of the deck. Chloride concentration data for this research were collected from 12 concrete bridge decks located within the I-215 corridor in Salt Lake City, Utah. Numerical modeling was utilized to generate a chloride loading function and to determine the diffusion coefficient of each deck. Based on average diffusion coefficients for decks with and without SIPMFs, chloride concentration profiles were computed through time for cover thicknesses of 2.0 in., 2.5 in., and 3.0 in. The results of the work show that the average diffusion coefficient for bridge decks with SIPMFs is approximately twice that of decks without SIPMFs and that, on average, each additional 0.5 in. of cover beyond 2.0 in. allows an extra 2 years for decks with SIPMFs and 5 years for decks without SIPMFs before a surface treatment must be placed to prevent excessive accumulation of chlorides. Although the data generated in this research are based on conditions typical of bridge decks in Utah, they clearly illustrate the effect of cover depth and the presence of SIPMFs. Given these research findings, engineers should carefully determine the appropriate timing for initial applications of surface treatments to concrete bridge decks in consideration of cover depth and the presence of SIPMFs. For maintenance of concrete bridge decks with properties similar to those tested in this study, engineers should follow the guidelines developed in this research to minimize the ingress of chlorides into the decks over time and therefore retard the onset of reinforcement corrosion; altogether separate guidelines may be needed for decks having substantially different properties. Surface treatments should be replaced as needed to ensure continuing protection of the concrete bridge deck against chloride ingress.

I conducted a narrative inquiry with five ninth grade boys in my English class that I identified as displaying multiple literacies. The classes I taught the boys in were two sections of honors ninth grade English. The boys came from a variety of backgrounds and lived in various neighborhoods in the approximately 20,0000-member community where we all live. The site of this research was the junior high school in Utah where the boys attend school and I had been employed for six years. After the research was collected, I conducted several negotiation sessions with the boys and their parents at the school, as well as in their homes. These negotiations facilitated a methodological concept I came to call distillation, which is an interim step for determining which narratives in an inquiry are emblematic. My research centered on how these boys storied their literate identities. A review of literature revealed several lenses for conceptualizing the stories of these boys. An analysis of the stories I collected revealed that the boys' stories moved beyond current conceptions of either identity or literacy alone and instead offered a way of looking at literate identity as simultaneously being and doing literacy. In light of this definition, the boys' stories revealed plotlines that together described literate identity as a form of capital. The question of how the boys story themselves is ultimately answered using a meta-narrative about a boon, of gift, that emerges from mythic/archetypal literary criticism. Distribution of a desirable boon that will help society is the goal of a hero story. The boys narrate the ways in which they distribute literacy as a boon. The implications for this research include a need to examine classroom space in order to facilitate the deployment of literate identity capital, as well as space for living out the meta-narratives that these boys are composing.

Duke and Jenkins defined a family of linear maps from spaces of weakly holomorphic modular forms of negative integral weight and level 1 into spaces of weakly holomorphic modular forms of half integral weight and level 4 and showed that these lifts preserve the integrality of Fourier coefficients. We show that the generalization of these lifts to modular forms of genus 0 odd prime level also preserves the integrality of Fourier coefficients.