The main aims of the current doctoral thesis included: (1) comparing the impact of different embodiment (manipulation versus enactment) and (2) perspective-taking strategies on children (9 to 10-year-olds) and adults' (18 to 30-year-olds) comprehension of narrative texts. In addition, we aimed to (3) better understand children's subjective experience (e.g., “What's going in your head while reading x?”) while reading normally; e.g., at home or in the classroom. Chapter 2 investigated the benefits of storyboard construction (SB), i.e., creating a visual representation of a narrative text using plastic cut-outs, on 5 children's comprehension monitoring and story recall. We found that children who constructed a storyboard while reading remembered more of the narrative texts versus business-as-usual controls and formed more coherent narratives during recall. Contrary to previous research (Rubman & Waters, 2000), SB had no positive impact on children's comprehension monitoring ability. Chapter 3 included a subset (25 out of 35) of children from Chapter 2 and aimed to capture the nuances of children's experience while reading normally and how those experiences map onto comprehension performance. We found that children who reported taking the perspective of a story's character (either spatially, emotionally and/or cognitively), while reading normally, performed better on measures from Chapter 1 (e.g., coherence of recall) than children who did not. Chapter 3 presented a yearlong, longitudinal training study, which compared the immediate and long-term benefits of SB and Active Experiencing (AE), the act of becoming fully engrossed in communicating a text to another person, on children in Year 5's literal and inferential comprehension of emotion and spatial information in narrative texts. SB was found to improve children's story recall and performance on spatial-based questions immediately after training compared to other conditions (AE and controls). The benefits of SB training on recall continued three and six months later. In addition, AE training improved children's performance on emotion-based questions, but only immediately after training. Finally, Chapter 4 first (Experiment 1) examined the effects of encouraging young adults to imagine themselves performing the actions of a protagonist or feeling what the protagonist is feeling (to empathise) while reading excerpts from Dubliners by James Joyce on their comprehension and emotional arousal. Empathising with the protagonist was found to increase readers' arousal, an indication of emotional reactivity. To follow up, we next measured the effects of encouraging young adults (Experiment 2) and children (Experiment 3) to empathise (feel what the character is feeling) or sympathise (care about how the character is feeling) with a story's protagonist while reading on a variety of inferential and literal comprehension questions. Young adults encouraged to sympathise with a story's protagonist had a particular advantage on comprehending literal emotion information about the protagonist as well as non-emotional, non-character-focused inferential and literal information. There was no effect of perspective-taking prompt on children's comprehension.

This work is a study of the contribution which Apuleius' Metamorphoses made to the development of the Euphuistic style apparent in John Lyly's Euphuest The Anatomy of Wit. While not proving conclusively Apuleius' direct influence on Lyly's work" it does provide a sound argument that Meta- morphoses exhibits the same Euphuistic elements present in Euphues. To illustrate the similarities between these two works, a study of the authors' lives, of thematic similarities in the works, of the origin of Euphuism, and of the grammatical devices in both works has been included. The authors' lives are examined primarily in respect to their education and works, along with an analysis of probable influences on their writing styles. Furthermore, the influence of Adlington's translation of Metamorphoses and of Lyly's Euphues on the Renaissance Period in England is considered. Within this study, the two works are presented as possible autobiographies. Besides an analysis of the authors' lives, a discussion of theme and plot similarities reveals that each work deals with a protagonist's difficulties due to his reckless curiosity. Ultimately, both heroes are punished for their curiosity (Lucius in his transformation into an ass and Euphues in his loss of Lucilia), and both heroes receive some mercy (Luicus through his dedication to Isis and Euphues through his vow to forsake women and to pursue education). An analysis of Euphuism's origin begins by defining the Euphuistic style Lyly employs and by studying the Asianic influence on that style. Moreover, an examination of past theories concerning the origin of Euphuism is included as they represent conflicting opinions on that source. At this point, a discussion of Apuleius' debt to the classics illustrates that both Apuleius and Lyly draw upon the same sources in creating a Euphuistic style, though both of these authors exhibit similar stylistic traits which set them apart from these sources. Having surveyed various theories on the origin of Euphuism, an analysis of the development of style in Apuleius' Metamor-phoses and Lyly' s Euphues t The Anatomy of Wit is organized into two separate chapters; one deals with the usage of individual letters (including annomination, transverse alliteration, assonance, consonance, and rhyme), while the other concerns the usage of the word as a unit (antithesis of ideas and sounds, isocola, pleonasm, personification, puns, repetition, rhetorical questions, and classical allusions), Finally, conclusions regarding the authors' similarities in style are drawn. Here, the stylistic differences due to the two separate languages employed and common factors present in both works are examined in detail, a complete frequency chart of grammatical devices in both works is included to document clearly the evidence presented.

Spectroscopic and photometric observations of eight contact/near-contact binaries are presented and analysed. Spectroscopic observations were obtained at 4200 Å (radial velocity spectra) and 6563 Å (hydrogen-alpha line profiles). New photometric observations were obtained at visual and infrared wavelengths, and other previously published light curves are also re-analysed. Absolute dimensions have been obtained for five systems; TY Boo, VW Boo, BX And, SS Ari and AG Vir, and their evolutionary positions discussed. Four of the systems are found to be in marginal but poor thermal contact, exhibiting regions of apparent "excess luminosity" in their light curves. A qualitative analysis of these "hot spot" regions has been attempted for the first time using spot models now incorporated into a light curve synthesis programme. Substantial time for this project was awarded on telescopes funded by the United Kingdom Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), comprising 14 nights at the Issac Newton Telescope (INT) on La Palma, and 4 nights at the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) on Mauna Kea. Additional observations were made during an 8 night commissioning run on the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope (JKT) on La Palma, and extensive observations were made with the Twin Photometric Telescope (TPT) at St Andrews University Observatory between 1985 and 1989. These resulted in over 100 spectra at 4200 Å and over 50 spectra at 6563 Å (INT and JKT observations), over 300 infrared photometric observations (UKIRT), and over 3500 visual photometric observations (TPT). Of the five systems analysed in detail in this work, TY Boo appears to be a normal shallow-contact W-type system. Both VW Boo and BX And exhibit regions of "excess luminosity" around the ingress and egress of secondary minimum which are well modelled by a warm spot on the cooler component sitting symmetrically around the neck joining the pair. Such a phenomenon may be expected to arise naturally in systems which have come into contact but are not yet/currently in thermal contact, exhibiting a temperature difference between the components. BXAnd like other B-type systems seems to be reaching this contact state for the first time, but the position of VW Boo is uncertain, and whilst evidence that it could be in the "broken contact" state predicted by the TRO Theory is far from conclusive, its lower orbital angular momentum clearly marks the system as worthy of further study. SS Ari and AG Vir exhibit light curves with unequal quadrature heights. Attempts to treat the higher quadrature as a region of "excess luminosity" due to an energy transfer "warm spot" does not however provide a good model of this phenomenon. Since invoking a dark starspot model also does not provide a good explanation for such systems, it may be that this form of light curve distortion is due to an entirely different form of distorting surface phenomenon. Like BX And, AG Vir appears to be just reaching contact for the first time, but like VW Boo, the slightly lower angular momentum of SS Ari warrants further study.

The subject of this thesis is a collection of military handbooks or tactica produced in the East Roman Empire in the 6th century. Although all these texts are discussed in turn, the study naturally concentrates on the two largest works, the "Compendium" of Syrianus Magister and the Strategikon attributed to the Emperor Maurice (582-602). The approach to these tactica has been on a number of levels. The first half of the thesis is primarily a textual study, which examines the inter-relationships between the 6th century works, their probable dating and authorship and their manuscript transmission. There follows a detailed analysis of the extent to which they were influenced by earlier works within this literary genre, which dates back to the 4th Century B.C., and the manner in which this traditional material was adapted to the military circumstances of the 6th century. These classical influences, both stylistic and conceptual, are balanced by a study of the influence exerted on East Roman military theory and practice by neighbouring peoples, particularly those relatively new to the Empire's cultural sphere, notably the Avars and the Turks. This involves an examination of the processes by which military technology and techniques were diffused between pre-industrial societies, and the extent to which the Romans actively studied the military methods of their enemies. This study is set within the context of a long-standing Roman tradition of military eclecticism. Having assessed the degree of traditional and empirical content, the thesis then compares the theoretical precepts of the textbooks with the military practices described by contemporary historians and chroniclers, with a particular regard to the development of tactics – how Roman armies prepared for and engaged in combat. By such a comparison the thesis aims to establish the relationship between theory and practice, and ultimately to provide an assessment of the practical utility of this sort of technical literature in Late Antiquity.

The effect of the growth of the Walker 256 carcinoma upon various aspects of rat diaphragm protein metabolism was investigated. Microscopic examination of diaphragm muscle from tumour-bearing rats revealed that the mean muscle fibre diameter was reduced compared with the normal animal. The extracellular space of both 'cut' and 'intact' diaphragm preparations was measured, using sorbitol and inulin as extracellular markers. No differences were observed in the extracellular space of both types of diaphragm preparation from normal and tumour-bearing rats, using sorbitol as the marker. With inulin as marker, the extracellular space was much smaller in the 'cut' diaphragm preparation from the tumour-bearing animal. Quantitative analysis of diaphragm muscle showed that the muscle lost weight during the growth of the tumour and that part of the weight loss was due to the loss of protein. Further, the loss of contractile proteins appeared to be more extensive than the loss of sarcoplasmic proteins. The in vitro incorporation of H-lysine into mixed proteins of rat diaphragm was shown to be greatly reduced by the growth of the tumour. This effect seemed to be directed principally at the myofibrillar proteins. The inhibition was not alleviated by the addition of either high concentrations of lysine or a mixture of amino-acids to the incubation medium. Normal diaphragm muscles incubated in serum from a tumour-bearing rat exhibited a greatly decreased up-take of labelled lysine into the myofibrillar proteins, and this pattern was not altered by supplementation of the medium with a mixture of amino-acids. The stimulatory effect of insulin upon muscle protein synthesis was greatly reduced by the growth of the tumour. In the normal animals studied, the effect of insulin seemed to be directed principally towards the myofibrillar proteins. A toxohormone fraction was prepared from Walker tumour tissue by an acetic acid extraction method, and purified by cation-exchange chromatography and gel-filtration. The biological activity of the preparation was assayed by measurement of its effect upon the plasma iron level in mice. The effect of the purified toxohormone fraction upon muscle protein synthesis was investigated both in vivo and in vitro, and the toxohormone was observed to exert a profound inhibitory effect upon the incorporation of labelled lysine into mixed intracellular muscle proteins.

Dans le domaine de l’oncogénomique, l’un des axes actuels de recherche est l’identification de nouveaux marqueurs génétiques permettant entre autres de construire des règles prédictives visant à classer les patients selon le risque d’apparition d’un événement d’intérêt (décès ou récidive tumorale). En présence de telles données de haute dimension, une première étape de sélection parmi l’ensemble des variables candidates est généralement employée afin d’identifier les marqueurs ayant un intérêt explicatif jugé suffisant. Une question récurrente pour les biologistes est le choix de la règle de sélection. Dans le cadre de l’analyse de survie, les approches classiques consistent à ranger les marqueurs génétiques à partir du risque relatif ou de quantités issues de test statistiques (p-value, q-value). Cependant, ces méthodes ne sont pas adaptées à la combinaison de résultats provenant d’études hétérogènes dont les tailles d’échantillons sont très différentes.Utiliser un indice tenant compte à la fois de l’importance de l’effet pronostique et ne dépendant que faiblement de la taille de l’échantillon permet de répondre à cette problématique. Dans ce travail, nous proposons un nouvel indice de capacité de prédiction afin de sélectionner des marqueurs génomiques ayant un impact pronostique sur le délai de survenue d’un évènement.Cet indice étend la notion de pseudo-R2 dans le cadre de l’analyse de survie. Il présente également une interprétation originale et intuitive en terme de « séparabilité ». L’indice est tout d’abord construit dans le cadre du modèle de Cox, puis il est étendu à d’autres modèles plus complexes à risques non-proportionnels. Des simulations montrent que l’indice est peu affectée par la taille de l’échantillon et la censure. Il présente de plus une meilleure séparabilité que les indices classiques de la littérature. L’intérêt de l’indice est illustré sur deux exemples. Le premier consiste à identifier des marqueurs génomiques communs à différents types de cancers. Le deuxième, dans le cadre d’une étude sur le cancer broncho-pulmonaire, montre l’intérêt de l’indice pour sélectionner des facteurs génomiques entraînant un croisement des fonctions de risques instantanés pouvant être expliqué par un effet « modulateur » entre les marqueurs. En conclusion, l’indice proposé est un outil prometteur pouvant aider les chercheurs à identifier des listes de gènes méritant des études plus approfondies. / In oncogenomics research, one of the main objectives is to identify new genomic markers so as to construct predictive rules in order to classify patients according to time-to-event outcomes (death or tumor relapse). Most of the studies dealing with such high throughput data usually rely on a selection process in order to identify, among the candidates, the markers having a prognostic impact. A common problem among biologists is the choice of the selection rule. In survival analysis, classical procedures consist in ranking genetic markers according to either the estimated hazards ratio or quantities derived from a test statistic (p-value, q-value). However, these methods are not suitable for gene selection across multiple genomic datasets with different sample sizes.Using an index taking into account the magnitude of the prognostic impact of factors without being highly dependent on the sample size allows to address this issue. In this work, we propose a novel index of predictive ability for selecting genomic markers having a potential impact on timeto-event outcomes. This index extends the notion of "pseudo-R2" in the ramework of survival analysis. It possesses an original and straightforward interpretation in terms of "separability". The index is first derived in the framework of the Cox model and then extended to more complex non-proportional hazards models. Simulations show that our index is not substantially affected by the sample size of the study and the censoring. They also show that its separability performance is higher than indices from the literature. The interest of the index is illustrated in two examples. The first one aims at identifying genomic markers with common effects across different cancertypes. The second shows, in the framework of a lung cancer study, the interest of the index for selecting genomic factor with crossing hazards functions, which could be explained by some "modulating" effects between markers. The proposed index is a promising tool, which can help researchers to select a list of features of interest for further biological investigations.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 1998-08Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:07:03Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 azeredo_ad_me_ift.pdf: 389884 bytes, checksum: 93b71d332a5a01bd111ea739addce9d2 (MD5) / Calcula-se a seção de choque para o espalhamento de fótons pelo campo gravitacional do Sol, tratado como campo externo, no contexto da teoria de gravitação R + R2. Encontra-se um valor para o ângulo de deflexão de um fóton que passa nas vizinhanças da superfície do Sol que é exatamente o mesmo que aquele fornecido pela relatividade geral. Discute-se o porquê da coincidência desses resultados. / The cross-section for the scattering of a photon by the Sun's gravitational field, treated as an external field, is computed in the framework of R+R2 gravity. It is found a value for the deflection angle of a photon passing near to the Sun which is exactly the same as that given by general relativity. An explanation for this strange coincidence is provided.

Most linguists acknowledge, explicitly or implicitly, the relevance of epistemological questions in linguistics but relatively few have given more than a cursory, ad hoc or incomplete consideration to them. The work of one of those few, Jan Mulder, forms the starting point for much of the present discussion. Epistemological considerations arise in many contexts in linguistics and in many guises. It is an epistemological matter whenever we test the adequacy of a description or the acceptability of a theory. Epistemological considerations are latent whenever we discuss the form or the content of linguistic theories and descriptions or their interrelations. The comparison of different approaches to linguistics inevitably raises epistemological questions concerning our approach to linguistics or our presuppositions about it. These questions are of a general nature and transcend questions about particular linguistic theories and descriptions. These epistemological questions force us to consider what we take linguistics to be. In considering questions of the type mentioned we are forced, for example, to analyse what we mean by a "linguistic theory", a "linguistic description" and what phenomena we are aiming to understand. We are, furthermore, forced to analyse the constraints which a scientific attitude places upon linguistic theorising and description-building. It is these questions concerning the acceptability of linguistic theories and descriptions which we call linguistic meta-theory. This thesis falls into five main parts. Firstly, in Chapter One, we consider the nature and scope of linguistic meta-theory. Secondly, in Chapter Two, we look at a number of previous approaches to the subject. Other important contributions are discussed as they arise in the text. Thirdly, in Chapters Three and Four, we consider in detail the major meta-theoretical distinctions in linguistics and their consequences. In particular, we distinguish linguistic theories from linguistic descriptions and discuss the nature of linguistic phenomena. The view is put forward that linguistics is a scientific subject. The meaning of this assertion is analysed and the interrelations of linguistic theories, descriptions and phenomena are considered in the light of this analysis. The main epistemological requirement that is put forward and defended is that of the empiricism of linguistics. Certain changes in our view of the philosophy of science and in our view of the form of linguistic theories and descriptions follow from the conjunction of these major meta-theoretical positions. Fourthly, we consider the main meta-theoretical considerations concerning theories (Chapter Five) and reject a widespread view of linguistic theory as a non-empirical study (Chapter Six) and we consider the main meta-theoretical conditions relating to linguistic descriptions and some practical examples of description -building consonant with the general positions adopted in Chapter Seven. In Chapter Eight, we look at a concrete example of theory-building in the light of the meta-theoretical conditions of acceptability previously set up. We are especially concerned to show how a theory can meet the condition of being "applicable" or "indirectly scientific" through the establishment of acceptable empirical descriptions consonant with the meta-theoretical conditions on descriptions considered earlier. The view that linguistics is a science implies that we must be concerned with the empirical testing of descriptions and, so, the fifth part of the work is devoted to methodology. In Chapter Nine, we defend the role and necessity of methodology in linguistics and set up the logical framework of relations between the methodology and theory descriptions and phenomena. In Chapter Ten, we examine two of the known types of empirical testing and their shortcomings. Finally, in Chapter Eleven, we give an example of the successful and correct application of a methodology in order to bring out the nature of empirical testing and to demonstrate its feasibility within a scientific linguistics of the sort we imagine.

Orientador: Antonio Accioly / Resumo: Calcula-se a seção de choque para o espalhamento de fótons pelo campo gravitacional do Sol, tratado como campo externo, no contexto da teoria de gravitação R + R2. Encontra-se um valor para o ângulo de deflexão de um fóton que passa nas vizinhanças da superfície do Sol que é exatamente o mesmo que aquele fornecido pela relatividade geral. Discute-se o porquê da coincidência desses resultados. / Abstract: The cross-section for the scattering of a photon by the Sun's gravitational field, treated as an external field, is computed in the framework of R+R2 gravity. It is found a value for the deflection angle of a photon passing near to the Sun which is exactly the same as that given by general relativity. An explanation for this strange coincidence is provided. / Mestre

This study is concerned with assessing the impact of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement (CSA) on sugar production and exports in the major exporting countries of the Commonwealth by concentrating on a detailed analysis of one of the principal exporting members of the Agreement as a case study - Mauritius. Since the Agreement expired in 1974 after 24 years of operation, a detailed examination of the CSA can be expected to shed light on the general question of the usefulness and desirability of commodity agreements in general, and on the more specific question of the response of producers to given price and market incentives. The general approach adopted in this study is aimed at a comprehensive examination of the various factors relevant to the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement; apart from assessing the development of the CSA itself, it was found useful to conduct an economic analysis of the world sugar economy as a whole in order to place the CSA in a more global context. The next obvious step was to assess critically the economic theory underlying international commodity agreements in general, and to examine the justification for their application. Since commodity agreements represent, in an important sense, a man-made barrier to free international trade, we examine the implications of various agricultural policies on international trade in primary commodities as well as in sugar. In an attempt to obtain quantitative measurements of the effects of the CSA on sugar production in Mauritius, we devise a simultaneous-equation model to explain a number of important variables in the Mauritian sugar industry. Since agricultural models usually involve lagged variables being used as explanatory variables, we critically examine the literature on distributed lag models and a number of studies using such results, as well as the (usual) econometric problems that these models invariably involve. We finally present our model and the results obtained from applying the two-stage least-squares method of estimation to most of the equations of the model. The main conclusion to emerge from the study is that producers tended to respond significantly to the prices they received, which were more closely related to the stable and high prices offered by the United Kingdom under the CSA than to the volatile prices prevailing on the world free market, even when International Sugar Agreements were operative. The implications for the future concern the pricing and quota policies to be implemented under the Lomé Convention between the EEC and the 46 (now 52) AGP countries; if the objective of the Convention is to promote the sugar industry in the exporting countries, then stable prices and guaranteed markets would appear to be an effective method.