The category of young adult (YA) fiction encompasses a wide range of genres; but despite this generic diversity, it has so far failed to represent the full range of communities that make up contemporary British society. Discussions are ongoing between professionals in the publishing industry and campaigning individuals and organisations who are aiming to redress this imbalance. Writers making new work are in a position to help effect a change, but acknowledging and responding to the call for inclusion can be far from straightforward, with questions being raised such as: ‘how far can a writer stray from their own lived experience?’ and ‘how can a writer avoid tokenism or cultural appropriation when writing for inclusion?’ This thesis consists of a new YA contemporary novel, Sea Change, and an accompanying critical essay, which reflects on the challenges I encountered while aiming to write for inclusion. Set in the Scottish Highlands, Sea Change is a contemporary YA crime novel, in which the world of the sixteen-year-old protagonist, Alex, is thrown into turmoil when he discovers a dead body next to his fishing boat. The decisions Alex makes following this discovery set in motion the plot of the story. The narrative, as it unfolds, facilitates the exploration of themes frequently associated with adolescence, such as friendship, risk-taking and the maturation into an adult identity, along with themes specifically linked to Alex’s status as a member of marginalised communities because of his sexuality and social class, such as prejudice, acute stress brought on by economic pressure, and low self-esteem. This thesis, then, reviews the opinions and recommendations being expressed by campaigners for greater diversity, and exposes the uncertainties and challenges a writer faces when aiming to write for inclusion.

A multi-disciplinary study of sediment core records from the Mingulay Reef Complex, a cold-water coral reefs system off western Scotland, highlights the potential of cold-water corals from which detailed centennial-scale palaeo-environmental reconstructions can be derived. This study provides a new insight on the mechanisms controlling Lophelia pertusa reef build-up, shifts in biodiversity, the physical/chemical/biological processes and the sedimentary regime. A detailed record of Mingulay Complex growth history shows unprecedented high average accumulation rates of 3 – 4 mm a-1. Marine radiocarbon reconstruction derived from paired 14C and U-series dated fossil corals revealed substantial abrupt oceanic shifts during the Holocene that have repetitively affected cold-water coral growth, eventually causing local disappearance. These periods of reduced accumulation rates are synchronous with other coral structures from the NE Atlantic illustrating basin wide events. Finally, trace/minor element ratios reproducibility within coral skeleton was investigated to test if palaeo-environmental reconstructions could be made from cold-water corals.

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Although scholarly interest in the field of emblematics has increased greatly over the last decade, there is still much to be done, particularly in the area of religious emblems. The emblem form has been considered from the perspective of individual author, geographical factors and theological background but there have been few comparative studies with respect to religious emblems. This study will compare Protestant and Catholic emblems produced during the Reformation and Counter- Reformation, drawing on specific examples from, in particular, France, but also Germany and England. Emblems played a huge role in early-modern life. They expressed contemporary thought and also became part of the physical environment, being etched into stone, or wood, or sewn into cloth as decoration. In a period of such political, civil, and religious unrest, it would, therefore, seem likely that the Catholic and Protestant emblem would be quite distinct types either expressing theologically opposed notions, or manipulating the text/image relationship in quite different ways. Understanding how these emblems functioned, therefore, necessitates close reading, indeed, reading in the way the emblems were intended to be read. This study, therefore, will address the question of differences through detailed analysis of specific examples. This study begins with an introduction which gives a brief history of emblem literature and a review of relevant secondary material. Key terms and definitions regarding emblems are also explained here. This chapter also introduces the authors of the emblems analysed in later chapters. The first part of this thesis examines the emblem form in the wider context of the Reformation. From an initial overview of some of the key issues of the Reformation in chapter one, chapters two and three move on to analyse closely a wide corpus of Catholic and Protestant emblems. In these chapters the emblem is broken down into its component parts of verse and picture. Chapter two examines the religious emblem from the perspective of motif while chapter three approaches the emblem from a thematic angle. The second part of this study adopts a different approach presenting case studies of three authors. Chapter four explores the importance of the visual element in the emblems of Protestant author Rollenhagen. Chapter five investigates the Jesuit influences which shape the emblems of Catholic Berthod. While chapters four and five offer an insight into the work of prototypical Protestant and Catholic authors chapter six demonstrates the successful fusion of both Protestant and Catholic influences in the emblems of Wither. Indeed, this study suggests that the differences between Protestant and Catholic at this time are largely exaggerated with respect to emblems. Protestant and Catholic emblems are not, this study maintains, in essence all that different. It argues that, in fact, Protestant and Catholic emblems were often very close in terms of content and that the real difference is in the way they manipulate the text/image relationship.

Insurance market in Lithuania is evolving yet, but this process is quite rapid. The destination of this work – analysis of non life insurance in Lithuania, which we will dispense, when we will interpret statistical information of insurance, also we will analyze paying capacity of non life insurance companies. Insurance companies calculate future’s contribution using data of past period. It would be better to correct contribution according to predictive future’s number of contracts and loss. So the number of contracts and loss, signed by Lithuanian insurance companies each quarter, are studied as time series. Several time series models were created for three principal kinds of insurance (Motor Third Party Liability Insurance, Land vehicles other than railway rolling stock Insurance, Property Insurance) and the one that meets the reality best was selected. We will analyze variation of number of non life insurance companies, number of paid losses, number of signed contributions and number of contracts. After analyses of Insurance market’s indicators, we get strong tendency that Insurance market becomes more stable. After analysis of insurance companies’ paying capacity we got, that two close private companies - “Baltic Polis” and “Industrijos garantas” – was close to bankrupt in 2004 year. After forecasting number of Motor Third Party Liability Insurance’s and Land vehicles other than railway rolling stock Insurance’s contracts we got that Autoregressive model is the best for... [to full text]

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Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-01T23:41:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_7277_Attentus-instrumento eletrônico para avaliação psicológica da atenção em crianças de 3 a 5 anos.pdf: 8081613 bytes, checksum: bf5c8e8e58a11b9af541ecc2ab46d357 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-21 / O presente trabalho utilizou-se de instrumento computadorizado para avaliar a função atencional de crianças de 03 a 05 anos, criado para este fim - Attentus, com tarefas executáveis de forma lúdica e motivacional, além da comparação de possíveis diferenças de desempenho, em função da idade, com instrumentos cognitivos e exercícios atencionais tradicionais. Compreende-se que a atenção envolve um conjunto de processos neuropsicológicos que se desenvolvem simultaneamente com a cognição, habilitando o ser humano selecionar, priorizar e organizar informações de maneira a gerar eficiência na interação com o ambiente, o que promove eficácia mental, possibilitando uma aprendizagem de qualidade. Com o amadurecimento cerebral evidencia-se controle voluntário da atenção e a capacidade de concentrar-se é notável a partir dos dois anos de idade. Apesar disso não existem instrumentos para avaliar a atenção em crianças pequenas. Portanto, a pesquisa desenvolvida foi estudo de caso descritivo, na qual participaram 38 crianças, nas faixas etárias de 3, 4 e 5 anos, sendo 10 crianças com 3 anos, 17 com 4 anos e 11 com cinco anos, das quais 18 participantes eram meninas. Esta pesquisa foi realizada em duas instituições regulares de educação infantil da grande Vitória - ES. Antes dos procedimentos, os responsáveis legais responderam algumas questões para avaliar o estado de saúde e desenvolvimento de cada participante. Depois aplicou- se a Escala de Maturidade Mental Colúmbia EMMC; exercícios atencionais de códigos, baseados na Escala de Inteligência Wechsler pré-escolar WPPSI e o instrumento computadorizado Attentus, com três tarefas atencionais: Vigilância, Sondagem e Atenção. Dividida. Além disso, após realizar atividade eletrônica, cada criança respondeu entrevista semi-estruturada para explicações das escolhas durante o Attentus através da memória de trabalho, modo de execução da tarefa e interesse. Os resultados, nas três tarefas atencionais, demostraram que houve aumento do escore obtido de maneira proporcional ao aumento da idade, bem como a frequência de acertos do código e o percentil na EMMC. Estas variáveis foram relacionadas, qualitativamente, pois contêm indicativo de desempenho evidenciando associações entre a estimativa geral de raciocínio das crianças e as respostas atencionais dos pré-escolares. Ou seja, foi possível estabelecer diferenciações entre as idades através da comparação cognitivo atencional, que ocorreu de maneira evolutiva, pois os melhores desempenhos obtidos foram para as crianças de cinco anos. Em relação às entrevistas com os responsáveis, não houveram consideráveis relatos de interferência atencional como condições caracterizadoras do desempenho das crianças. Quanto às explicações dos pré-escolares a maior parte foi assertiva, demostrando interesse e envolvimento na atividade. Assim, conclui-se que o Attentus é um instrumento possível para avaliação atencional em crianças pequenas e sugere- se futuras pesquisas para obtenção de dados e associações paramétricas que possam ser relevantes para esta avaliação atencional computadorizada.

This thesis parts from the premise that avant-garde art collectives produce discourses meant to articulate the opposition to the art/life divide as one that interrelates fields such as aesthetics, politics, philosophy, and even economics. By utilizing a comparative framework, it plays on the complementarity and differences between four 1960s groups that formed very specific organizations directed at challenging society, in one way or another related to the Situationist International: The Situationist Times (France), King Mob Echo (UK), Black Mask and its transformations (US), and S.NOB (Mexico). Through the medium of magazines, they intended to reach a mass audience that in the act of reading and looking at their images and texts would be prompted to discern organizations that undermined the world-system. Thus, the Situationist Times attempted to form a (people’s) movement that in an applied creativity that rejected the metanarrative of progress would be able to realize the malleability of history. King Mob followed a conspiratorial logic with the idea of a dis-organized mass suddenly acting in concert against states. Black Mask and its transformations played with the idea of a war for territory, the occupation of a ‘free zone’ by a community in the midst of a dominated world. Finally, S.NOB’s idiosyncratic anarchism came from an opposition to the totalizing discursive practices of the Mexican Revolution, giving primacy to fragmentation and an anti-organizational bent; while it had no direct relationship to any of the above groups, it shows how their techniques and theories develop out of an engagement with Surrealism and past avant-gardes. S.NOB provides not a counterpoint but a contextual revelation of the limits of these collectives, in the Bataillean sense that opens all of them up to a ‘contamination’ with historicity and thought that treats all of them as equal in scope and importance.

Since the 1990s, studies within the inter-disciplinary fields of crime, the media and children have been wide-ranging. In spite of this however, to date, research into the media’s reporting on the missing and murdered child has been a neglected area of study. This thesis redresses this gap by providing the first significant study into the missing and murdered child and the way in which the media interrogates this phenomenon within the mediated public sphere. Reflecting on historical and contemporary debates and ideas about the public sphere, the thesis draws on current literature and considers the way in which mediated narratives about the missing and the murdered child, reinforce particular ideological and cultural assumptions about the politics of childhood, motherhood, community and privacy. The thesis considers the way in which the media’s coverage of the missing and the murdered child has contributed to the ‘emotionalization’ of the public sphere. The study examines established viewpoints about the nature of an emotionalized public sphere and the extent to which it undermines Western values associated with liberal democracy. A qualitative textual analysis of two case studies was conducted into the media’s coverage of two high-profile incidents of child murder and abduction- the Soham murder investigation in 2002 and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, 2007. Samples for analysis were drawn from both print and broadcast media including five UK national tabloid newspapers- Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Sun, Daily Star, Daily Express together with an episode of the BBC’S Crimewatch. Findings from this study reveal that a public sphere shaped by emotion provides a vehicle whereby subaltern counter-publics, the voice of ordinary citizens takes precedence. Moreover, I argue that the distinctiveness of this research is that it highlights the way in which a mediated public sphere informed by emotion appears to promote active citizenship and engagement with matters of public concern, of which the missing and the murdered child are but two examples. Finally, I suggest that it is through participation, and perhaps social and political engagement in response to such incidents, that contributes to the reformulation of a mediated public sphere and thereby sustains the very doctrines that underpin the role of the state and civil society.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T23:01:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo8239_1.pdf: 1881814 bytes, checksum: 1b7e7861889b4bc9e1fd1f1e35758bd5 (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Durante o período entre 27/10/1997 e 19/11/2000, foram realizados 27 cruzeiros de prospecções com espinhel-de-fundo e armadilhas de profundidade na plataforma externa e talude da costa nordestina, como parte das atividades do programa REVIZEE. A abundância relativa das espécies foi analisada a partir da captura por unidade de esforço (CPUE), em termos do número de indivíduos capturados por 100 anzóis no espinhel horizontal e número de indivíduos por covo por lance, no caso das armadilhas. Os perfis verticais de temperatura e salinidade indicaram presença de uma camada de mistura com cerca de 80m nos dois primeiros cruzeiros, enquanto que no terceiro e quarto a termoclina encontrou-se bastante próxima da superfície, a aproximadamente 20m de profundidade. Na prospecção com espinhel foram analisados a distribuição e abundância relativa de oito espécies de teleósteos e duas de elasmobrânquios. A diversidade das espécies apresentou uma tendência de declínio em função do aumento da profundidade. Foi observada uma segregação batimétrica entre as espécies, tendo sido as mesmas classificadas como: águas rasas (Lutjanus purpureus, Ocyurus crhysurus e Lutjanus vivanus), águas intermediárias(Lopholatilus villarii, Epinephelus niveatus e Etelis oculatus) e águas profundas (Squalus spp., Mustelus canis e Epinephelus morio). A distribuição vertical dos peixes foi influenciada pela presença da termoclina com a ocorrência de algumas espécies só se verificando abaixo da mesma. Já as quatro espécies de crustáceos estudadas (Chaceon fenneri, Rochinia crassa, Heterocarpus ensifer e Plesionika edwarisii) capturadas com covos, apresentaram uma distribuição vertical entre 100 e 600m, com características de espécies euribáticas e euritérmicas. Tanto os peixes quanto os crustáceos apresentaram uma clara segregação batimétrica, com maior abundância a partir dos 100m. Os gêneros Squalus e Mustelus, juntamente com Chaceon e Rochinia, Plesionika e Heterocarpus, parecem mais adaptados a grandes profundidades, diferentemente da maioria dos teleósteos. A ocorrência de crustáceos e peixes de profundidades abaixo de 100m no Nordeste, indica que eles dividem o mesmo ambiente e são influenciados por fatores comuns como temperatura e profundidade