M.B.A. / Everywhere in the world, an increasing number of female entrepreneurs are becoming the pillars of economic growth and development. This exploratory research sought to investigate the barriers facing female entrepreneurs and to establish whether these barriers are exacerbated for women because of their gender. It focuses on the experiences and perceptions of female entrepreneurs in the urban formal sector of the Gauteng area of South Africa. Data for the study was gathered by a survey through questionnaires administered to 93 female entrepreneurs, the majority of whom were registered with either the South African Business Women's Association or The South African Women's Network. The literature review identified differences in female and male entrepreneurship related to personal demographics, business demographics and support structures. These differences could be explained by the barriers that female entrepreneurs face in their endeavours. The barriers are discussed under five main categories: social and cultural barriers, infrastructural barriers, educational and occupational barriers, role barriers, and behavioural barriers. Upon investigating these barriers amongst female entrepreneurs, results revealed that female entrepreneurs have to contend with socio-cultural, political, structural, economics, legal and personal barriers compared to men when they contemplate entrepreneurship. Although some barriers may be the same as those experienced by male entrepreneurs, the female entrepreneurs in this study perceived that they did indeed experience barriers that were specific to female entrepreneurs and that some barriers were exacerbated for them because of their gender. Thus, even if the Constitution of South Africa states that women and men have equal rights and the same entitlements for engaging in a career in society, reality proves that the experiences of female entrepreneurs in Gauteng are contrary to this - the current situation indicates that female entrepreneurship in Gauteng serves as a 'glass ceiling' for female entrepreneurial ambitions. Understanding the barriers facing female entrepreneurs can be beneficial to: females currently engaged in entrepreneurship, aspiring and emerging female entrepreneurs, and policy makers. This understanding can lead to more supportive policies and programmes for female entrepreneurs. Society, government, policy makers and women themselves thus need to work together to bring about changes required towards female entrepreneurs.

In this study I explore narrative resistance in three Canadian novels: Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman , Adele Wiseman's Crackpot and La Rivière sans repos by Gabrielle Roy. I argue that the first two novels counter the dominant constructions of the virgin as the thin, acquiescing body and the whore as the out of bounds, devouring body respectively. I also reflect on whether these texts recognize the importance of a common narrative that speaks to the specificities of female experience, helping us move beyond the dominant constructions that continue to frame our day-to-day lives. La Rivière sans repos is a postcolonial narrative, but it is also a text about mothers. It exposes the containment Western consumerism has placed on the role of mother, the subsequent devaluing of that role and consequently a devaluing of the women who fill that role. Throughout this study I draw from recent theorists who combine feminist perspectives with theories on the body including Susan Bordo and Elizabeth Grosz along with feminist literary critics such as Linda Hutcheon and Patricia Smart. By incorporating feminist theory and theory on the body along with literary criticism I approach the texts with an interdisciplinary analysis that offers a new reading of these narratives. Feminist thought was only just emerging into our cultural consciousness, and theory on the body was little known when Wiseman, Atwood and Roy were writing these novels in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Classical texts reflect and create the construction of women as objects of beauty, who are selfless, inherently weak and needy or they condemn us as "bitchie", manipulative and threatening if expressive of our desires. I seek alternatives to such cultural constructions by exploring how the three novels present and represent the body in relation to female subjectivity and agency by writing against classical representations. In my reading of The Edible Woman I suggest that Atwood's protagonist deviates from the virgin stereotype by following the knowledge of her body rather than that of her intellect. In Crackpot I argue that the fat, sexual body of Wiseman's Hoda asks the reader to question assumptions about normative beauty, female sexuality and marginalization. In La Rivière sans repos I explore how Roy places mother at the centre of the text, which allows for an exploration of the contrast between mothering as experience and motherhood as institution. Each novel proposes a complexity to our experience that has generally been limited to virgin, whore and mother and, consequently, I argue that each offers a discourse of resistance and the possibility of social, cultural and political change.

The Arizona Child Acoustic Database consists of longitudinal audio recordings from a group of children over a critical period of growth and development (ages 2-7 years). The goal of this database is to 1) document acoustic changes in speech production that may be related to physical growth 2) inform development of a model of speech production for child talkers. This work was funded by NSF BSC-1145011 awarded to Kate Bunton, Ph.D. and Brad Story, Ph.D, Principal Investigators. This database contains longitudinal audio recordings of 55 American English speaking children between the ages of 2-7 at 3-month intervals. Since children began the study at different ages, some children have fewer recording sessions than others. The database can also be used to provide cross-sectional data for children of a specific age. Please refer to the subject data table for information on specific sessions available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. All children were recorded using the same protocol; therefore, task numbers are consistent across children and sessions. A calibration tone is included as Record 1 for all sessions. The speech protocol focused on production of English monopthong and diphthong vowels in isolation, sVd, hVd, and monosyllabic real words. In addition, the protocol includes several nonsense vowel-to-vowel transitions. Speakers were prompted either verbally by investigators or by graphical prompts. Details of the protocol with reference to task numbers can be found in the protocol spreadsheet available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. Details on data recording: All samples were recorded digitally using an AKG SE 300B microphone with a mouth to mic distance of approximately 10 inches. Signals were recorded digitally using a Marantz PMD671, 16 bit PCM (uncompressed) at 44.1KHz. Recordings are made available in .wav format. Individual zip files contain all recordings from a single session.

This study explores the concept of love in some of Browning`s poems during the Victorian era in which he tried to discuss love from his own perspective. Thus the study explains the concept of love which has been a main theme in some of Browning`s poems.  My study will illustrate using the feminist theory. This theory was founded in 1792 when the struggle for women’s equality was much in demand. Thus, I will try to explain Browning`s poems by application of this theory. Browning sees love as a basic need for the human soul; therefore, the study reveals how Browning saw love from his religious perspective through which he tried to tell his readers that love is a gift of God and that women are allowed to love and be loved despite the concept of the Victorian age that treated women as inferiors in comparison to men.

The purpose of the present study was to examine 1) the effect of achievement information on evaluations of males and females, 2) male and female expectations of discrepancies between their opposite sex and themselves in evaluating achievement.

The purpose of this research design is to explore the meaning of death for the female adolescent. A qualitative design was used as the method of research. Twelve participants were selected from a snowball sample ten females and two males. Four participants reported witnessing the death of an individual, five reported a moderated death experience in which they were not present but were told after the fact and three reported no significant experience with death. The study indicated relationships and cause of death as among the pre-conditions towards meaning development for the adolescent female. The two main themes derived from the pre-conditions are an understanding of the inevitability of death for themselves and the experience of death as qualia. Consequences to the experience of death include increased emotional tolerance under stress and a perceived increased maturity suggesting resilience in the adolescent female following a loss. Future areas of research are also addressed.

0 Abstract The use of educational interventions to increase female educational attainment in developing countries has the potential to both provide women with more advantageous economic opportunities and contribute to economic growth. Achieving gender equality in education is an important first step towards achieving gender equality in the labor market. This thesis examines educational intervention programs that promote female education in rural Cambodia, and focuses in particular on conditional cash transfers. One such conditional cash transfer program in Cambodia is examined in more detail to determine its effectiveness. A qualitative evaluation was conducted in the form of focus groups and interviews with students, parents, and community members in the villages where the program was implemented. While the results of the study confirm the effectiveness of conditional cash transfers in increasing female attendance in school, the evaluation also revealed other factors that influence girls to stay in school. The study concluded that increasing the number of university-educated females in a girl's life through a mentoring program could have a positive effect on female educational attainment. Though further quantitative study is needed to investigate the effectiveness of such an intervention, this approach...

1. The induction of CYP3A enzymes was investigated using a range of structurally unrelated drugs using in vivo and in vitro models. Hepatic microsomal testosterone 6(3-hydroxylation, anti-CYP3A immunoblot analysis, and molecular biology approaches were utilised in the investigation. 2. Using the rat as an in vivo model, potent induction of CYP3A enzymes was observed after administration of the synthetic glucocorticoid dexamethasone (at 150mg.kg.day for 4 days) and pregnenolone 16?-carbonitrile (at 150mg.kg-1.day-1 for four days). However, no induction was observed after administration of rifampicin (at 50 g.kg-1.day-1 for 4 days, a dose which causes potent induction in the rabbit). 3. Investigations into the effects of drug exposure on testosterone 6?- hydroxylation in cultured female rat hepatocytes revealed a positive in vivo/in vitro correlation. Cultured cells were treated with the same drugs (at 50 M concentration) for 72hrs. Dexamethasone was shown to be more potent than PCN, and rifampicin again had no effect. Dexamethasone-mediated induction of testosterone 6?- hydroxylation was dose-dependent and was shown to be maximal after 72hrs exposure. 4. The presence of the differentiating agent dimethylsulphoxide at 2% (v/v) in the cultiure medium enhanced CYP3A induction by the synthetic steroids by approximately 100% (p 0.05). 5. The potent glucococorticoid antagonist RU 486 induced testosterone 60- hydroxylation 5-fold when administered at 50mg.kg-1.day-1 for 4 days. Induction of the CYP3A protein was confirmed by immunoblot analysis of liver microsomes. Administration of RU 486 at 50mg.kg-1.day-1 did not antagonise the induction of testosterone 6?-hydroxylatiomn by dexamethasone at 150mg.kg-1.day-1. 6. Dexamethasone (0.1 to 10 M) -mediated induction of testosterone 6(3- hydroxylation in cultured rat hepatocytes was attenuated in the presence of RU 486. It is not known whether this was due to effects on CYP3 A gene expression or inhibition of enzyme mediated activity at the active site of the enzyme. 7. The lipid lowering drug SK F 98016 (150mg.kg-1.day-1) induced testosterone 6?-hydroxylation 10-fold when administered at 150mg.kg-1.day-1 for 4 days. This was confirmed by immunoblot analysis. Co-administration of RU 486 with SK F 98016 attenuated induction of CYP3A-mediated enzyme activity. The mechanism of induction of the CYP3A genes by SK F 98016 may therefore involve 'steroidal' compounds, the action of which is antagonised by RU 486. The dexamethasone- mediated increase in spectrally determined cytochrome P450 levels was also attenuated after co-administration with RU 486. As CYP3A induction was not affected by co-administration of dexamethasone with the anti-glucocorticoid RU 486, this result suggests that the glucocorticoid receptor may be involved in the induction of other P450 genes. 8. Treatment of rat hepatocytes with SK F 98016 (50 M) for 72 hours did not result in an increase in testosterone 6?-hydroxylation. In fact testosterone 6?-, 16?- and 17-oxidation activities were reduced to 50% of the activities measured in untreated hepatocytes. This pointed to some P450 inhibitory potential of SK F 98016. Investigation of the inhibitory potential of SK F 98016 on testosterone 60- hydroxylation in hepatic microsomes from PCN-treated rats showed an inhibitory effect with an IC50 of 50 M. The inhibitory effect seen in hepatocytes is similar to the effects of exposure to clotrimazole (50 .M) for 72 hours where testosterone metabolism at the 60 and 17 positions were inhibited by >90%. 9. To investigate whether the lack of inducing effect of SK F 98016 was due to the very high lipophilicity and extensive partitioning into the cultured hepatocyte, therefore resulting in a non-physiological state, cultured hepatocytes were exposed to the same drugs with albumin (from bovine serum, at the concentration present in human blood-36g/litre) in the medium in attempt to encourage an equilibrium of drug concentration between the medium and the inside of the hepatocyte. No significant induction of testosterone 60-hydroxylation was observed in the presence of albumin.

No description available.

Doctor of Education / Department of Educational Leadership / Trudy Salsberry / Urban school leaders, particularly superintendents are on the frontlines for raising student achievement at all levels. The work of urban superintendents is intensive given the challenges they encounter. Research has indicated that school leaders who possess and enact skills and knowledge that support change leadership. The question, then, is this: what patterns and themes exist in the use of those attributes by female urban superintendents, to support systemic changes in their school districts. This researcher chose to look at these attributes through the lens of female urban superintendents who were members of the Council of Great City Schools, who had at least three years tenure in the district, and who had realized increased student achievement during their tenure. This study identified and described through case studies the attributes that emerged from the data. Each of the five participants were interviewed twice with questions based on the leadership attributes Reeves (2007) described, the change attributes Fullan (2009) and Knoster, Villa and Thousand (2000) identified, and the superintendent challenges described by the Texas Education Agency (2007). In addition to the interviews, biographies and vitas were collected. Other artifacts such as news articles, television interviews, district newsletters, and district websites were also reviewed. The study revealed that there were patterns and themes that emerged based on the leadership and change attributes, and the challenges urban female superintendents encountered. The leadership attributes defined by Reeves (2007) were: communication, vision, relationships, building capacity in others, access the expertise of others, and decision making. The change attributes defined by Fullan (2009) and Knoster, Villa and Thousand (2000) were: vision, skills, incentives, resources, and action plan. The implications of this study revealed that below the surface of these important attributes and challenges lay social justice issues that may first need to be addressed.