Characterization of dispersion curves in plate-like structures is possible with guided Lamb waves. In this research, experimental development of dispersion curves relies on the spectrogram, which suffers from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Reassignment is capable of localizing ill--defined dispersion curves. Unfortunately, reassignment also introduces spurious components, which reduce reassignment performance. This research develops an algorithm that provides both localization of dispersion curves and elimination of spurious components. To achieve this, an alternative formulation of reassignment called differential reassignment is modified and superimposed with nonlinear anisotropic diffusion. This study first examines reassignment and diffusion components individually. Three different versions of differential reassignment are considered, two of which are modifications explicitly derived in this research. The combined algorithm is then applied to reassign experimentally measured spectrograms, leading to a significant increase in clarity and notch detection performance.

This thesis uses a combination of vignettes and interviews to explore social approval of cosmetic and sexual reassignment surgeries as a means of studying sex and gender in contemporary society. It draws from poststructuralist, queer, symbolic interactionist and intersectionality theories. This study found that social approval was higher for normative surgeries than for non-normative surgeries. The main themes that emerged in regard to social approval were respondents‘ religious beliefs, their social distance from a person undergoing surgery, their concerns with possible risks or complications, and their views on an individual‘s right to control their own body. Underlying the vast majority of the responses was an essentialist view of sex that influenced how participants‘ viewed the various surgeries.

Degree awarded (2003): EdDHRD, Counseling, Human and Organizational Studies, George Washington University / Abstract of Dissertation<p>Re-shuffling of employees is a popular method of balancing current mission requirements in fluid organizations. Employee knowledge is a valuable resource lost to downtime as employees make sense after involuntary reassignment. This study served to address the paucity of research on the sensemaking of employees who are involuntarily reassigned within their organizations. This study used meaning making theory to explore the mental models employed by eight Department of Defense employees as they made sense of being involuntarily reassigned. It identifies and describes the content of the mental schemes used by these employees to navigate their environment after the event. The Self-Q interview methodology proposed by Bougon, Baird, Komocar, and Ross, (1990) is used to elicit the constructs of tacit mental models.<p>The major constructs of sensemaking after involuntary reassignment were Identity, Performance, Management, Others (i.e. co-workers, family, supervisors, etc.) and Emotions. Contributions to sensemaking (Weick, 1979; 1995) and adult learning theory (Mezirow, 1991; 2000) are suggested. Five implications for HRD practitioners and organizational leaders are discussed. Five recommendations for future research in theory and practice are offered. / Advisory Committee: Dr. David Schwandt, Dr. Michael Marquardt (Chair), Dr. John Ferriter, Dr. Andrea Casey, Dr. Stephen King

Most recent research on gender affirmation/reassignment surgery focuses on discrimination and health disparities faced by the transgender community, and on perspectives and identity constructions of patients transitioning from one gender presentation to another. However, few studies address perspectives and experiences of the surgeons performing these operations. This exploratory study examines narratives of some of these surgeons in order to understand how they entered this particular practice, and how they perceive and classify these procedures. This study also aims to show the affect these procedures have on these surgeons and their discipline, and how these surgeons navigate the complex relationships between patients, healthcare providers, and surgeons, in the context of social values and popular media perspectives in the United States.

Legal aspects of gender reassignment Abstract Thesis deals with legal aspects of gender reassignment, especially with legal conditions of gender reassignment witch are required by the Czech law. Furthermore, the thesis provides a general introduction to the issue of transsexuality, deals with the etiology of transsexuality, and defines its two fundamental types, namely the MtF and the FtM transsexuality. This thesis also recalls the position of transgender people in society, as transgender people continuously face various forms of discrimination. In particular, the text of the thesis is focused on the legal analysis of the issue of gender reassignment. The thesis deals with all legal regulations that contain provisions concerning gender reassignment. In this manner, it deals with all relevant legal provisions included in the Czech Civil Code, in the Act on Specific Health Services, and in the Registry Act. The thesis also deals with the possible future legal regulation of gender reassignment using the de lege ferenda considerations. This bill could adapt the Czech legal regulation of gender reassignment to the case-law of The European Court of Human Rights as well as the legal standarts in other european countries. In the thesis, there is also the whole process of gender reassignment including both the...

A presente dissertação tem o escopo analisar o transexualismo em seus aspectos históricos, culturais, científicos, médicos, jurídicos e bioéticos, em especial quanto à submissão à cirúrgica da transgenitalização, como manifestação do princípio da dignidade da pessoa humana, do direito de isonomina e do direito à saúde, garantias fundamentais previstas na Constituição Federal. O progresso da medicina permite, há décadas, a mudança de sexo, adequando a genitália do transexual ao seu sexo psicológico, inconciliáveis e antagônicos. Entretanto, o transexual se depara com a falta de dispositivo legal que regulamente o ato cirúrgico de mudança de sexo e a retificação do registro civil, adequando o nome e o sexo do transexual operado à nova situação. O percurso dos interessados na mudança de sexo é difícil, repleto de obstáculos de diversas ordens, onde muitas vezes, o judiciário representa a consolidação do sofrimento e da exclusão social. O exercício pleno da cidadania exige o reconhecimento do direito à redesignação sexual e retificação do nome e do sexo no registro civil, além do direito à família, especificamente, ao casamento e à filiação. O presente estudo tem como objetivo demonstrar que a cirurgia de transgenitalização, bem como a correspondente alteração do registro civil do transexual são formas de concretização de direitos fundamentais, do direito à saúde e meios de proteção à dignidade da pessoa humana. / This thesis has as its main objective to analyze transsexualism in its historical, cultural, scientific , medical, legal and bioethical aspect, especially regarding the performance of the Sex Reassignment Surgery (RSR) as a manifestation of the human dignity principle, the right to isonomy and the right to health, and to fundamental guarantees provided for in the Federal Constitution . Medical advances have made the Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) possible for decades, thus adapting the genitalia of the transsexual to his/her psychological gender, which is irreconcilable and antagonistic. However, the transsexual is faced with the lack of legal provisions to regulate sex change operations and to ratify civil registry records, adjusting the name and the gender of the operated transsexual to the new situation. The ones interested in sex change operations have a long way to go; they will have to overcome all sorts of obstacles, where quite often the judiciary is the consolidation of suffering and social exclusion. The full and effective exercise of citizenship requires a recognition of the right to the Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS) and to name and gender rectification in civil registries, besides the right to family, more specifically, the right to marriage and to affiliation. This study has as its main objective to demonstrate that the Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) as well as the corresponding modification of the transgender civil registry are embodiments of fundamental rights, and of health rights and they also are safeguards of human dignity.

<p>This dissertation examines the interplay between school district assignment and reassignment policies and the elementary public school parents select for their children. The sample in all chapters includes the third and fourth grade students in a subset of growing North Carolina school districts from 2003/04 to 2010/11. The data are derived from historical, longitudinal secondary data sources containing student, school, and district records. All chapters employ quantitative longitudinal data analysis methods. Chapter 1 identifies the groups of students who do not comply with their school assignments. Chapter 2 identifies the groups of students who are reassigned to different schools, and to schools of varying quality, when school districts enact reassignment plans. Chapter 3 identifies the groups of students who do not comply with school reassignments. Together, the chapters demonstrate the interplay between residential decisions, school choices, and the resulting educational opportunities of observably different students. Consistent with existing bodies of literature, the findings demonstrate unexplored processes through which advantaged families maintain the most desirable educational opportunities for their children. Policy implications of these findings are also discussed.</p> / Dissertation

The thesis presents the processes of gender role transition and sex reassignment from the perspectives of psychology, medicine, and sociology. Its main focus is on the various aspects influencing the psyche of a person undertaking transition. The thesis investigates why trans identity is commonly viewed as a pathology and the impact of pathologization on the self-perception of trans people. Furthemore, the traditional outline of the transition process in Czech sexology is compared to some current international approaches. A section of the text addresses psychotherapy as a key factor in transition. A significant component of the thesis is that it takes a sociocultural viewpoint on gender identity and gender roles. One of the goals is to understand how medical experts dealing with trans identity conceptualize transition and how trans people themselves conceptualize it. The overall aim is to investigate how both of these sides influence each other and what psychological aspects enter the processes of gender role transition and sex reassignment. Key words: transsexuality, transgender, sex reassignment, gender identity, gender role.

Few bodies consistently portray natural or unaltered forms. Instead, humans inhabit bodies imbued with sociocultural meanings about what is attractive, appropriate, functional, and presentable. As such, embodiment is always gendered. The social, extra-corporeal body is a central locus for expressing gender. Surgical body modifications represent inherently gendered technologies of the body. But psychomedical institutions subject people who seek gender-crossing surgeries to increased surveillance, managing and regulating cross-gender embodiment as disorderly. Using mixed research methods, this research systematically compared transgender and cisgender (non-transgender) people’s experiences before, during, and after surgical body modification. I conducted a content analysis of 445 threads on a message board for an online cisgender surgery community, an analysis of 15 international protocols for transgender-specific surgeries, and 40 in-depth interviews with cisgender and transgender people who had surgery. The content analysis of the online community revealed similar themes among cisgender and transgender surgery users. However, detailed protocols existed only for transgender consumers of surgery. Interview findings showed that transgender and cisgender people reported similar presurgical feelings toward their bodies, similar cosmetic and psychological motivations for surgery, and similar benefits of surgery. For both cisgender and transgender people, surgery enhanced the inner self through improving the outer gendered body. Despite these similar embodied experiences, having a cisgender gender status determined respondents’ abilities to pursue surgery autonomously and with institutional support. Ultimately, this research highlights inequalities that result from gender status and manifest in psychomedical institutions by identifying the psychosocial impacts of provider/consumer or doctor/patient interactions, relating gendered embodiment to regulatory systems of authority, and illuminating policy implications for clinical practice and legal classifications of sex and gender.

Patients suffering from transsexualism (TS) who apply for sex reassignment surgery (SRS) go through a complex evaluation process before being accepted for treatment. In general, the results from SRS are satisfying. However, further knowledge is needed to clearly delineate transsexualism from other related gender identity disorders (GID) and to improve the selection of candidates for SRS. Personality has for a long time been considered as the key concept for that purpose but systematic studies using reliable instruments are lacking. The present study aims at improving the assessment procedure, validating the concept of transsexualism and studying the outcome of SRS and important prognostic factors. Two methodological studies deal with the development and validation of two self-report instruments based on DSM-III-R: SCID screen covering Axis II personality disorders/traits and Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF-scale, Axis V). SCID screen diagnoses of personality disorders (PD) were compared with diagnoses from independent structured interviews by means of the SCID-II. The overall kappa in identifying a PD was 0.78 varying from 0.34 to 0.81 for the specific PDs when cut-off was adjusted. When applied to a group of GID-patients SCID screen diagnoses agreed well with clinical diagnoses (kappa 0.77). Self-report of the GAF also proved to be a reliable (overall Pearson r=0.62) and useful method and the study lends further support to the validity of Axis V. In three papers a group of 19 transsexuals was studied by means of a) SCID screen to examine their personality in a dimensional and traditional categorical way, b) the GAF-scale to study psychosocial functioning, c) Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) to examine self-image and d) Defense Mechanism Test (DMT) to analyze psychological defense structures from a psychodynamic perspective. Patients with atypical gender identity disorders (GIDAANT) and patients with borderline personality disorders as well as healthy subjects were used as contrast groups. Among the transsexuals 10 out of 19 had an additional axis I disorder and 37% had at least one PD, predominantly within cluster B. When analyzed dimensionally according to SCID screen, frequent subthreshold personality pathology was found and biological women fulfilled more axis II criteria than men. TS had less axis I and II pathology compared with GIDAANT and psychiatric patients. According to SASB, TS had a positive self-image with both self-control and spontaneous self and predominating self-love. They appeared significantly more healthy on self-image measures than GIDAANT patients. The DMT revealed a different pattern; TS patients were more disturbed in several areas than patients with borderline personality disorder. TS showed no ”emotional investment” and poorer reality orientation in contrast to both healthy controls and the borderline group but shared a similar pregenital pathology with the borderline patients. Finally, five-year outcome was studied among the transsexuals from a multidimensional approach (e.g. work, interpersonal relations, partnership, subjective opinion) and related to index- measurements on DSM-III-R, SCID screen, GAF, SASB and DMT. Based on combined outcome variables, 68% of the subjects were judged to have improved and 16% had an unsatisfactory outcome. One single case regretted the sex change. SCID screen pathology and SASB disturbances emerged as significant predictors for negative outcome, as well as male biological sex and lack of partnership. It was concluded, that although outcome is in general very favorable, the instruments under investigation, in particular SCID screen and SASB, revealed valuable prognostic information and they are suggested to become part of the future routine assessment of candidates for SRS. / <p>Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Umeå universitet, 1995, härtill 6 uppsatser.</p> / digitalisering@umu