Modern Land Mobile Radio has the potential for large growth in the near future. Current regulations have set the stage for a required transition to more spectrally efficient technologies. While several organizations are working to ease this transition, there still remain many details and feature sets which the end user must decide amongst and often there is no clear dividing line between these choices. This thesis provides a high-level view of the distinguishing components in modern LMR systems. Discussions related to trunked channel allocation, coverage, costs, security, and other capabilities are given. The application to and effect on everyday users is also considered. Several quantitative examples are provided to assist the end-user in determining when a solution is viable. The discussion and analysis included reaffirm that LMR design is complex and wide-ranging. Ultimately, the designer must evaluate needs and technologies to provide a course of action which is optimum and justifiable. / Master of Science

The Thermal Radiation Group, a laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is currently working to develop a new technology for thermal radiation detectors. The Group is also studying the viability of replacing current Earth Radiation Budget radiometers with this new concept. This next-generation detector consists of a thermopile linear array thermal radiation detector. The principal objective of this research is to develop an optical model for the detector and its cavity. The model based on the Monte-Carlo ray-trace (MCRT) method, permits parametric studies to optimize the design of the detector cavity and the specification of surface optical properties. The model is realized as a FORTRAN program which permits the calculation of quantities related to the cross-talk among pixels of the detector and radiation exchange among surfaces of the cavity. An important capability of the tool is that it provides estimates of the discrete Green's function that permits partial correction for optical cross-talk among pixels of the array. / Master of Science

As global mental health initiatives continue, the need for culturally responsive approaches to research and mental health inquiry and intervention as increasingly important. However, most counseling programs and research preparation do not include indigenous approaches to address training and clinical practice. Liming and Ole Talk has emerged as a culturally responsive methodological approach with some Caribbean populations, however, at the time of this study, it had not been used with people from the Bahamas. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to continue to explore Liming and Ole Talk as a pathway to inquiry with Caribbean people leading to the research question; how do Bahamian immigrants experience liming and ole talk as a approach to mental health inquiry? For this study, 5 Bahamians signed up to lime, 4 came on the day of and 1 limer returned to process after. Utilizing a storytelling and reflective approach to analysis 5 connection points emerged: Stigma, Immigration as enlightenment, Spirituality as cause and intervention, Helplessness, and Hopefulness. The findings of the study are relevant for counselor education programs, clinical practice, and research methodological training.

Syftet med kunskapsöversikten var att ta reda på hur högläsning i skolan kan användas som en språkutvecklande aktivitet av läraren och hur det påverkar eleverna. Genom att sökningar har genomförts i olika databaser framkom ett urval av två avhandlingar och sju vetenskapliga artiklar som kunskapsöversiktens resultat grundades på. Avhandlingarna och de vetenskapliga artiklarna var både nationella och internationella. För att sortera urvalet gjordes en tematisk innehållsanalys som resulterade i tre olika teman som resultatet byggde på. Dessa teman var: boksamtal, bokval och lärarens roll i högläsning. Det som framkom i resultatet var att högläsning i sig inte ger en språkutvecklande effekt utan att mycket ligger på lärarens arbete med det. Metoder som beskrevs som användbara och gynnsamma för att högläsning ska bli språkutvecklande var boksamtal och bokval, dock framkom det att inte alla typer av boksamtal och bokval ger en språkutvecklande effekt. Även här beskrevs att läraren har en viktig roll för att det ska bli språkutvecklande genom att exempelvis använda öppna frågor i boksamtal och variera genre i bokvalet. Genomförs högläsning på ett språkutvecklande sätt kan bland annat elevernas ordförråd, läsförståelse och hörförståelse utvecklas. / The purpose of this literature review was to examine how reading aloud in school can be used as a language development activity by the teacher and how it affects students. The results of this review were based on two dissertations and seven scientific articles, selected by searching in different databases. The dissertations and scientific articles were both national and international. A thematic analysis was made to categories the samples, which resulted in three themes being identified. These themes were book talks, book choice, and the teacher’s role in reading aloud. The results showed that reading aloud in itself does not have a language development effect, but instead it depends on the teacher’s work with the material. Book talk and book choice were described as useful and beneficial methods to make reading aloud language developing. However, it became clear that not all types of book talks and book choice were beneficial. The teacher’s important role in language development was again described, for example through the use of open questions in book talks and by varying the genre of the choice of book. If reading aloud is carried out in a language-developing way, the students´ vocabulary, reading comprehension and listening comprehension can be developed, among other things.

Text in Afrikaans / During her theoretical training as an educational psychologist, the researcher became acquainted with the relations theory. The researcher became aware of the fact that persons who have experienced psychological trauma, commonly practice irrational inner dialogue/self talk. From her own experience, it also became clear that traumatized persons deal with their trauma more effectively when they have good relations with others. Due to the fact that these aspects are significant aspects of the relations theory, the researcher began to wonder whether this theory could possibly be of value in therapy with traumatized persons. On the basis of a qualitative study of limited scope, it was found that, with certain reservations, the educational psychological relations theory could be a workable theory in therapy and that relations therapy could make a valuable contribution to the success of therapy with traumatized persons. / In die loop van haar teoretiese opleiding as opvoedkundige sielkundige het die navorser kennis gemaak met die relasieteorie. Die navorser het bewus geword van die feit dat mense wat 'n sielkundige trauma in hulle lewens beleef het, oor die algemeen irrasionele selfspraak beoefen. Na aanleiding van haar eie ervaring, het dit ook duidelik geword dat getraumatiseerde persone meer effekttef deur hulle trauma kan werk indien hulle relasies toereikend is. Omdat hierdie aspekte juis baie gewig dra in die relasieteorie, het die navorser begin wonder of die relasieteorie nie moontlik van waarde kan wees in terapie met getraumatiseerdes nie. Op grond van 'n kwaiitatiewe studie van beperkte omvang is daar bevind dat, met sekere voorbehoude, die opvoedkundig-sielkundige relasieteorie wel 'n werkbare teorie in terapie kan wees en dat relasieterapie 'n waardevolle bydrae tot die sukses van terapie met getraumatiseerdes kan iewer. / Educational Studies / M.Ed. (Guidance and Counselling)

The aim of the study was to investigate classroom discourse among high school natural science students in Swaziland. The research problem was: Can student interactions tell us something about the negotiation of understanding during natural science teaching? A qualitative approach was used, specifically, the observational case study style. The population comprised three Form 4 students and their natural science teacher, purposely selected. Data was collected using the non-participant observation and the standardised open-ended interview methods. The collected data was analysed using the discourse analysis approach. The analysed data indicated that prevailing discourse patterns were teacher and student talk, as well as written work. A conclusion was that student classroom discourse in the natural sciences should be encouraged among all students for improved understanding and meaning making. / Science and Technology Education / M. Ed. (Natural Science Education)

This research project addresses the following: how topical talk operates in the organisation and management of MSE interactions; and how topical talk operates in the co-ordination of specific service requests and service provisions. It draws on a corpus of audio-recorded and transcribed interactions between general practitioners and persons seeking general medical services in suburban clinics in Brisbane, Australia. The corpus comprised a total of 67 medical service events (henceforth MSEs), audio-taped with the full informed consent of the participants. Many contemporary medical sociological accounts of the operation of topical talk in MSEs, typified by the work of Mishler (1981, 1984) and Waitzkin (1991), remain anchored to the 'professional dominance' thesis (Freidson 1970a; 1970b), arguing for the fundamental conflict between two perspectives - lay and professional. Topical talk has been formulated as one expression of this conflict in 'doctor-centred' communicative 'styles' (Byrne and Long 1976; Silverman 1987). Within such accounts, familiar interactional patterns in MSEs, including the content and structure of topics, have been theorised as instruments of power and control whereby the dominance of specialised medical knowledge and expertise are established and maintained. Mishler's (1984) characterisation of the conflict between a biomedically oriented 'voice of medicine' used by professional physicians (henceforth GPs) and a 'voice of the lifeworld' used by persons seeking medical services (henceforth Ps) is an expression of the 'professional dominance' thesis. The voices are characterised as attesting to a fundamental, theoretically problematic, asymmetry of power relations between GPs and Ps, thereby reinforcing the ideological status of professionals in general and the medical profession in particular. Further, recommendations regarding correctives to 'professional dominance' centre on advice GPs to attend to the primacy of Ps' talk on their experiences of illnesses rather than apparently 'ignoring' or transforming these topics into biomedical accounts of disease. This research project critiques this formulation of topical talk and the traditional theoretical and empirical bases on which it has drawn. This critique arises from the application of ethnomethodological approaches to the study of MSEs. Such approaches, as outlined in Chapters 2 and 3, are characterised by a number of conceptual and analytic premises: First, particular social structural features of social activities and the institutional contexts within which activities occur should not be assumed to be the primary criteria for judging the import and adequacy of situated action. Second, the parties to situated social events mutually constitute those events in the real world. Third, issues of agency are collaborative situated accomplishments such that the management of everyday social activities is accomplished by the people involved who show one another the rationalities of their actions as they assemble the familiar scenic features of those same institutional events (Garfinkel 1967; Sacks 1992a, 1992b). These assumptions have been applied in ethnomethodological analyses of social action, including the analysis of professional service encounters that have critiqued the 'professional dominance' thesis (Eglin and Wideman 1986; Sharrock 1979). The novelty of this study is the analysis of the operation of topic organisation as a phenomenon of order. This study also draws on recommendations within Ethnomethodology (Hester & Eglin 1997b; Watson 1997) that sequential and categorial organisations are mutually informative in the analysis of the rationality of situated social action. One of the particular contributions of this thesis is that it not only jointly applies both conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis but also extends this recommendation to the inclusion of topic analysis as was originally provided for by Sacks (1992a , 1992b) and Garfinkel and Sacks (1970). Within this study a model of analysis has been constructed that has enabled the analytical consideration of four dimensions of social organisation: local sequential, extended sequential, topical and categorial organisations. The theoretical and empirical concepts of ethnomethodogical analysis have thus been developed and extended within this project. The central findings of this study are that in institutional service events, the 'service topic' is both significant and consequential, and that persons constitute themselves as bona fide incumbents of the categories GP or P by attending to their actions as topically organised. The local adequacy of any particular interactional move (such as questioning-answering, greetings, the design of a topic proposal, etc) is shown to be referenced to the service topic. This study found no evidence of potential or actual "struggles" between the 'voice of the life-world and the voice of medicine'. Rather, this study finds routine recognition on the part of both Ps and GPs of the centrality of the service topic and, thereby, the service task, and no evidence of orientation to distinctive biographical contributions staged in competition with biomedically relevant service topics. It is found that Ps' biographical references were made in the context of an assembled service topic such that particular service tasks, however conventional, were constituted as both relevant and reasonable as medical goods and service for the specific service recipient and provider. At the most general level, it is concluded that the service topic operates as a phenomenon of order in MSEs where order, as defined by Garfinkel and Weider (1992: 202), refers to all of the rationalities evident in the generic features of institutional events and settings, that is, the situated logic and intelligibility as well as the procedures whereby they are constituted as recognisable social events. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the theorisation, policy-making, medical education, and practices of GPs and Ps within MSEs. Overall, the significance of this work for researchers into medical interactions is that the relevance of the service topic and its pervasive organisational consequences need to be considered analytically. A major outcome of this thesis is the establishment of a new order of interest within the study of institutional interactions. The project demonstrates the pervasive consequences of service topics and thus provides a step forward in the study of institutional service interactions and ways of theorising their rationality, a step that extends beyond social structural pre-theorisations of power and domination and also beyond interactional accounts of the primary relevance of turn taking structures.

This thesis studies how sick leave legitimacy is managed in interaction and develops an empirically driven conceptualization of ‘legitimacy work’. The thesis applies an ethnomethodological framework that draws on conversation analysis, discursive psychology, and membership categorization analysis. Naturally occurring interaction is examined in two settings: (1) multi-party meetings at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, in which participants assess and discuss the ‘status’ of the sick leave and plan for work rehabilitation; (2) peer-based online text-in-interaction in a Swedish forum thread that gathers people on sick leave. The thesis shows how mental states, activities and alternative categories function as resources for legitimacy work. However, such invocations are no straight-forward matter, but impose additional contingencies. It is thus crucial how they are invoked. By detailed analyses of the interaction, with attention to aspects such as lexicality and delivery, the thesis identifies a range of discursive features that manage sick leave legitimacy. Deployed resources are also subtle enough to be deniable as legitimacy work, that is, they also manage the risk of an utterance being seen as invested or biased. While legitimate sick leave is a core concern for Swedish policy-making, administration, and public debate on sick leave, previous research has for the most part been explanatory in orientation, minding legitimacy rather than studying it in its own right. By providing detailed knowledge about the legitimacy work that people on long-term sick leave do as part of both institutional and mundane encounters, the thesis contributes not only new empirical knowledge, but a new kind of empirical knowledge, shedding light on how the complexities of sick leave play out in real-life situations. Traditional sociological approaches have to a significant extent treated legitimacy as an entity with beginnings and ends that in more or less direct ways relate to external norms and cognitive states, or that focus on institutions, authority or government. By contrast, the herein emerging concept ‘legitimacy work’ understands legitimacy as a locally contingent practicality – a collaborative categorially oriented accomplishment that is integral to the interactional situation.

Text in Afrikaans / During her theoretical training as an educational psychologist, the researcher became acquainted with the relations theory. The researcher became aware of the fact that persons who have experienced psychological trauma, commonly practice irrational inner dialogue/self talk. From her own experience, it also became clear that traumatized persons deal with their trauma more effectively when they have good relations with others. Due to the fact that these aspects are significant aspects of the relations theory, the researcher began to wonder whether this theory could possibly be of value in therapy with traumatized persons. On the basis of a qualitative study of limited scope, it was found that, with certain reservations, the educational psychological relations theory could be a workable theory in therapy and that relations therapy could make a valuable contribution to the success of therapy with traumatized persons. / In die loop van haar teoretiese opleiding as opvoedkundige sielkundige het die navorser kennis gemaak met die relasieteorie. Die navorser het bewus geword van die feit dat mense wat 'n sielkundige trauma in hulle lewens beleef het, oor die algemeen irrasionele selfspraak beoefen. Na aanleiding van haar eie ervaring, het dit ook duidelik geword dat getraumatiseerde persone meer effekttef deur hulle trauma kan werk indien hulle relasies toereikend is. Omdat hierdie aspekte juis baie gewig dra in die relasieteorie, het die navorser begin wonder of die relasieteorie nie moontlik van waarde kan wees in terapie met getraumatiseerdes nie. Op grond van 'n kwaiitatiewe studie van beperkte omvang is daar bevind dat, met sekere voorbehoude, die opvoedkundig-sielkundige relasieteorie wel 'n werkbare teorie in terapie kan wees en dat relasieterapie 'n waardevolle bydrae tot die sukses van terapie met getraumatiseerdes kan iewer. / Educational Studies / M.Ed. (Guidance and Counselling)

Les facteurs environnementaux que sont le Bisphénol A (BPA), un perturbateur endocrinien, et le Benzo[a]pyrène (B[a]P), un agent génotoxique, représentent un véritable enjeu parmi les facteurs de risques du cancer du sein associés à l'exposition environnementale. Nos objectifs sont d'explorer l'impact d'une exposition chronique à de faibles doses (10-10 M) de BPA et/ou de B[a]P sur l'agressivité de la lignée cellulaire pré-cancéreuse mammaire MCF10AT1 (immortelle, transformée, ER-, PR-, HER2-). Les buts principaux sont : (i) d'explorer si la combinaison de deux molécules possédant deux mécanismes d'action distincts conduit à un effet potentialisé par rapport à l'exposition aux molécules seules ; (ii) d'identifier et de prévenir les mécanismes moléculaires et cellulaires associés à cette exposition multiple. Nos résultats démontrent que l'exposition chronique des MCF10AT1 à de faibles doses de BPA et/ou de B[a]P induit un phénotype cellulaire agressif de façon temps-dépendant, avec un effet potentialisé pour la combinaison BPA+B[a]P, comparée aux molécules seules. Le phénotype observé est un phénotype acquis, car toujours présent 30 jours post-exposition. Nous avons également déterminé dans les cellules MCF10AT1 la présence et la fonctionnalité de deux récepteurs : le récepteur Aryl hydrocarbon (AhR) liant le B[a]P et le récepteur couplé à la protéine G (GPER1/GPR30) liant le BPA. D'un point de vue mécanistique, ces deux récepteurs sont impliqués dans le phénotype cellulaire agressif BPA et/ou B[a]P-dépendant, et notre travail révèle un nouveau cross-talk fonctionnel entre ces deux récepteurs. L'inhibition in vitro d'AhR et de GPR30 (inhibiteurs chimiques ou siRNA) permet de bloquer les effets délétères de l'exposition chronique au BPA et/ou au B[a]P. Enfin, l'analyse rétrospective de tumeurs primitives du sein ER-négatives démontre que la signature moléculaire GPR30/AhR possède une valeur de mauvais pronostic, alors que l'expression de GPR30 ou d'AhR n'en possède pas. L'ensemble de ces résultats souligne donc le rôle particulier que joue la présence concomitante d'AhR et de GPR30 dans des cellules précancéreuses/cancéreuses mammaires. En conclusion, nos résultats permettent d'identifier des cibles potentielles pour le développement de nouvelles stratégies préventives capables de bloquer la carcinogenèse mammaire due à l'exposition chronique au BPA et/ou B[a]P, et d'envisager des nouveaux biomarqueurs de cette exposition environnementale / Environmental factors such as Bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine disruptor, and Benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P), a genotoxic agent, represent a real issue among the environmental risk factors for breast cancer. Our objectives are to investigate the impact of chronic and low doses exposure to BPA (10-10 M) and/or B[a]P on the aggressiveness of the mammary pre-cancerous cell line MCF10AT1 (immortal, transformed, ER-, PR-, HER2-). The main aims are: (i) explore whether an exposure to the combination of two molecules with two distinct mechanisms of action has a greater impact than the molecules tested alone; (ii) identify and prevent the associated molecular and cellular mechanisms. Our results demonstrate that chronic exposure of MCF10AT1 to low doses of BPA and/or B[a]P induces an aggressive cell phenotype in a time-dependent manner, with a greater effect for (BPA + B[a]P) combination compared to single molecules. The observed phenotype is an acquired phenotype, as it still persists 30 days post-exposure. We also determined the presence and functionality of two receptors in the MCF10AT1 cells: the Aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) binding B[a]P and the G binding protein receptor (GPER1 / GPR30) binding BPA. Mechanistically, these two receptors are involved in the BPA and/or B[a]P-induced aggressive phenotype, and our study reveals a new functional cross-talk/interplay between these two receptors. In vitro, the inhibition of AhR and GPR30 (chemical inhibitors or siRNA) can block the deleterious effects of chronic exposure to BPA and/or B[a]P. Finally, a retrospective analysis of primary ER-negatif subclass breast tumors demonstrates that the GPR30/AhR gene expression signature has a poor prognosis value, whereas GPR30 or AhR mRNA levels were poorly informative. All these results underline the particular role played by the concomitant presence of AhR and GPR30 in mammary precancerous/cancerous cells. In conclusion, our results allow us to identify potential targets for the development of new preventive strategies capable of blocking mammary carcinogenesis due to chronic exposure to BPA and/or B[a]P, and to consider new biomarkers for environmental exposure