Monumental Amnesia: Reading the Spatial Narratives Written by Contemporary Urban Landscapes This thesis analyses the spatial stories inscribed into urban landscapes by monuments. Differentiating between officially sanctioned, symbolic, and everyday monuments, this thesis theorises the narratological space composed by these objects: static, imagined and transitional, respectively. It argues that monumental sites are spaces of forgetting, rather than remembering, characterised through invisibility, opacity and mystification. Infused with paradox, monuments simultaneously reveal and conceal the histories and urban memories they are expected to commemorate. The discussion then turns to contemporary art, in particular memory installations, as a practice that counters the mystification inherent within urban space, actively exposing alternative pasts and memories. The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first analyses the contemporary, officially sanctioned monuments of Vilnius, Lithuania that celebrate an ancient nationalism, alongside two neighboring sculpture parks that display retired Soviet icons, with a particular focus on Gintaris Karosas?? sculpture Infotree LNK. The second chapter theorises symbolic monuments, and focuses on the Japanese theme park Tobu World Square as a curiosity cabinet where the contemporary spatial practice, identified by Anthony Giddens, of ??disembedding?? is performed in miniature. It concludes with a discussion of Susan Norrie??s DVD installation of the park ENOLA. The third chapter examines everyday monuments, focusing on the industrial ruins of Manchester to unravel the archival aspects of these monuments and their gentrification. It closes with a study of Cornelia Parker??s installation Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View. Through these urban case studies and accompanying memory installations, the thesis explores how urban monuments disguise certain histories and memories of a city, and how art can reclaim alternative stories and memories from urban amnesia.

Monumental Amnesia: Reading the Spatial Narratives Written by Contemporary Urban Landscapes This thesis analyses the spatial stories inscribed into urban landscapes by monuments. Differentiating between officially sanctioned, symbolic, and everyday monuments, this thesis theorises the narratological space composed by these objects: static, imagined and transitional, respectively. It argues that monumental sites are spaces of forgetting, rather than remembering, characterised through invisibility, opacity and mystification. Infused with paradox, monuments simultaneously reveal and conceal the histories and urban memories they are expected to commemorate. The discussion then turns to contemporary art, in particular memory installations, as a practice that counters the mystification inherent within urban space, actively exposing alternative pasts and memories. The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first analyses the contemporary, officially sanctioned monuments of Vilnius, Lithuania that celebrate an ancient nationalism, alongside two neighboring sculpture parks that display retired Soviet icons, with a particular focus on Gintaris Karosas?? sculpture Infotree LNK. The second chapter theorises symbolic monuments, and focuses on the Japanese theme park Tobu World Square as a curiosity cabinet where the contemporary spatial practice, identified by Anthony Giddens, of ??disembedding?? is performed in miniature. It concludes with a discussion of Susan Norrie??s DVD installation of the park ENOLA. The third chapter examines everyday monuments, focusing on the industrial ruins of Manchester to unravel the archival aspects of these monuments and their gentrification. It closes with a study of Cornelia Parker??s installation Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View. Through these urban case studies and accompanying memory installations, the thesis explores how urban monuments disguise certain histories and memories of a city, and how art can reclaim alternative stories and memories from urban amnesia.

Successful implementation of any technology requires acceptance by the users. Numerous studies in the area of information technology acceptance, based on wellknown theories have been conducted to examine technology acceptance models and predict user adoption/acceptance behaviour. There are several studies dealing with patients??? acceptance of different telemedicine applications, but few about the patients??? acceptance of home telecare. Most existing studies are not based on a strong theoretical framework. In this study, based on an extensive literature review and preliminary qualitative data, a theoretical model of the effect of Home Telecare Management System (HTMS) characteristics and psychological variables associated with technophobia on patients??? acceptance of HTMS is proposed. The proposed model is an augmented Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) of Davis (1986), which is called Home Telecare Management System acceptance model (HTMS-AM), in which TAM has been augmented by two constructs: HTMS anxiety and HTMS self-efficacy. The model is proposed to improve our understanding regarding patients??? acceptance of HTMS, which may lead to successful design and implementation of home telecare systems. In addition, it can be used as a theoretical basis to evaluate new generations of HTMS in terms of users acceptance in the early stage of their design and development even prior to implementation. In order to test the reliability and validity of the measures, video demonstrations of a home telecare system and demonstration of a system prototype to potential users was employed. To propose the HTMS-AM the following five stages were taken: 1. General well-known theoretical models of human behaviour from psychology and technology acceptance models from information technology were reviewed to create a basic template for the proposed model. 2. A preliminary study (focus group interviews, Chapter 5) was conducted to assess patients??? perceptions of HTMS. 3. Based on an extensive literature review and findings from preliminary qualitative studies, HTMS acceptance model was proposed, to improve our understanding about factors, which may affect patients??? intention to use HTMS. Several adaptations were applied in the model to be applicable in the HTMS context, such as augmenting the model with HTMS self-efficacy and HTMS anxiety constructs. 4. To measure the different psychological variables in the proposed model, valid and reliable measures from previous studies were used. However the preliminary study was used to develop measures, which did not exist in the literature. 5. These measures were tested in the final study. The subjects were patients who had been affected with Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) and/or Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (COPD). Given the chronic nature of these diseases, the necessity for extended monitoring and management and frequent admission to hospitals due to worsening health status, these patients were deemed the most appropriate candidates for the HTMS. Further studies with more cases need to be conducted to test the actual model in which the impact of HTMS characteristics, psychological and demographic factors associated with technophobia upon intention to use the HTMS and the correlation of these factors with each other in appropriate healthcare settings.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1976. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-75). Also issued in print.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1976. / Typescript (photocopy). eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-75).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1973. / Typescript (photocopy). eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-64).

Research Problem: The South African health system faces numerous challenges associated with its status as a middle-income developing nation. Wasteful expenditure and poor clinical outcomes arise from inefficient inter-organizational communication of patient information and the lack of a centralized health database. Research question: How does the experience of chronic disease patients with their health information inform the development of future health records in low income population groups? Proposition: Exploration of patient and health care workers experiences of medical records can inform their future development to enhance continuity of care. Objectives, methodology, procedures and outcome: Identification of an appropriate format, technological basis and functional design of a prototype medical record system by means of a phenomenological study conducted through in-depth interviews of patients and doctors in order to improve clinical care. Left and right hermeneutics were used to analyse the data and develop themes. Findings: Health records play a critical role in the clinics workflow processes, document the patients' management and clinical progress. They are an important intermediary in the relationship between the patient and the facility. Inefficiencies in the paper-based system lead to ineffective consultations, loss of continuity of care and discord between practitioners and patients. Improvement of the records format is required to provide ubiquitous access to health and improve patient health literacy.

This work discusses the field of genealogy, different types of records and data in them. The thesis describes the topic of comparison of data and record linkage. It further it also discusses the design and implementation of the resulting system. The developed system connects people from parish records to larger pedigrees. These are then stored in the form of a graph database. The success of the interconnection of records was tested on the provided data sets.

Studies in the 1970's reporting the occurrence of fossil pollen types in the Cretaceous, coupled with surveys of extant pollen morphology of primitive flowering plants, laid the foundation for proposing a Lower Cretaceous origin of angiosperms. Over the last 30 years, morphological, ultrastructural, and ontogenetic studies of both extant and fossil pollen have provided an array of new characters, as well as greater resolution in defining character polarities. Moreover, a range of fossil pollen types exhibiting angiosperm characters occur in low frequency within Triassic and Jurassic sediments. The pollen data provide evidence of a pre-Cretaceous origin of angiosperms. Speciation and extinction rates were likely equal during the Triassic and Jurassic, resulting in the paucity of angiosperm pollen types from different geographic areas in the Atlantic - South American/African rift zone. It was not until the Lower Cretaceous that origination rates exceed extinction rates, resulting in the subsequent diversification of angiosperms and the origin of the eudicots.

This research is focused on strata deposited in northern Utah during the Cryogenian Period (850 – 635 Ma) of the Neoproterozoic Era, a period that derives its name from the widespread evidence for multiple, likely global, glacial events during this time, commonly referred to as “Snowball Earth” glaciations. This dissertation includes detailed studies of two Cryogenian successions in northern Utah that bracket potential “Snowball Earth” events: the upper part of the Uinta Mountain Group (deposited prior to the glaciations) and the dolomite member of the Kelly Canyon formation (hypothesized to have formed in the aftermath of a global glaciation that terminated at either 665 or 635 Ma). Both successions contain a lithostratigraphic, geochemical, and biotic record of the Earth’s oceans before and after the largest-magnitude glaciations in the history of our planet. The pre-glacial upper part of the Uinta Mountain Group in the area mapped for this study contains evidence of several (at least three) relatively short periods of ocean anoxia in which ferruginous conditions dominated and euxinia did not occur. There is no evidence that biota (organic-walled microfossil assemblages) were influenced by these brief anoxic events, but evidence from the composite Uinta Mountain Group stratigraphic record does suggest a gradual change in biota similar to that in the Chuar group. It is likely this biotic transition is related to nearshore eutrophication in the oceans, but additional redox geochemical information is needed to fully support this conclusion. The dolomite member of the Kelley Canyon Formation on Antelope Island (post-glacial component of this study) contains idiosyncratic lithologic features thought to be characteristic of 635 Ma deglacial strata, yet its C-isotope values do not lend unequivocal support to this global correlation, and regional correlations and U-Pb zircon ages suggest it is ~30 million years older. These results challenge the popular notion that Neoproterozoic post-glacial cap carbonates can be correlated based upon their lithologic “style,” and they also lend additional support to the possibility of a “Snowball Earth” event at ~665 Ma.