Over the last several years, new transportation service business platforms like Uber and Lyft have appeared in cities across the U.S. Since these new business models do not fit into existing regulatory and policy frameworks, and their entrance into markets is typically abrupt and sometimes illegal, these companies, which have come to be known as transportation network companies (TNCs), provoke city governance actors and the public to react in many different ways. Some cities take a free market approach, while others opt toward heavy handed regulation. In addition to policy action, there is a great deal of policy narrative swirling around these services and their place in existing mobility systems. There is wide variation in the dominant stories or narratives that emerge about TNCs when they suddenly enter a metropolitan market. Said narratives about these mobility providers also evolve as the companies continually operate in different cities. Some stories are thematically tied to specific interest groups and others seem to originate as a result of specific contextual nuances or incidents that occur. Sometimes stories originate in the context of local, state or national political backdrops and discourse. This dissertation argues that stories emerge in the context of urban regime characteristics. Using urban regime theory along with Mark Bevir and R.A.W. Rhodes decentered theory of governance, I will look at TNC operation in four U.S. cities: Indianapolis, IN, Austin, TX, Portland, OR, and Washington, DC. This dissertation explores the ways in which narratives emerge and change around TNCs, how those narratives are influenced by existing urban regime dynamics, and how they influence policy making. / PHD / Over the last several years, private sector mobility companies like Uber and Lyft have started operating in cities across the U.S. Despite the fact that these companies provide services that already exist with more traditional transportation providers (such as taxi cabs) and their business models are very rote and consistent across locations, city policy actors respond to them in many different ways. There is also wide variation in the sorts of stories or narratives that develop when these companies deploy and operate in different cities. Those stories sometimes reflect local political nuances and characteristics. Using urban regime theory along with Mark Bevir and R.A.W. Rhodes decentered theory of governance, I will use this research to explore the ways in which narratives emerge and change around TNCs in four cities: Indianapolis, IN, Austin, TX, Portland, OR, and Washington, DC. I will look at how those narratives are influenced by existing local nuances, coalitions and characteristics, and how they might influence policy making and responses in those places.

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As fully online course offerings continue to grow at colleges and universities around the country, we are faced with the challenge of preserving what we value in first-year writing while making the affordances of online environments work for our students. This dissertation explores how the online writing instructor, guided by feminist pedagogy and civic rhetoric, can begin to shift the center of power within the course, allowing students to become co-teachers and promoting the social construction of knowledge central to first-year writing. Facilitated by computer-mediated communication technologies, this approach relies on online activities that invite ongoing contributions from students, promote interactivity within the course, and facilitate a collaborative learning environment that can foster student success in online distance learning. Having studied the effects of these feminist moves on two sections of online first-year research and writing courses, I examine in this text their impact on the development of community, students’ impressions of their place within the community, and the decentering of the virtual learning space. Specifically, I explore how students can write to shape and to change our online community and how students tie their work within the course to their development as writers and critical thinkers. Ultimately, in combining the goals of feminist pedagogy, first-year writing, and civic rhetoric in our design and delivery of online writing courses, we can begin to fulfill our vision for significant learning experiences for our students that will be as good as or better than their experiences in the traditional classroom.

The relationship between the therapist and the client is an important consideration for most models of therapy, with all models of therapy emphasizing the importance of establishing a positive therapeutic relationship. Quantitative and qualitative studies have shown that the relationship between the therapist and the client is a predictor of positive outcomes. However, different models define the preferred therapeutic relationship differently. This study was a qualitative exploration of a decentered and influential position of the therapist in narrative therapy. A video of a one-session narrative therapy case conducted by Michael White was analyzed using conversation analysis to answer the following research question: How, if at all, can White be seen to take a decentered and influential position in narrative therapy? The findings of this study provide more knowledge about White’s decentered and influential stance in narrative therapy. It is expected that this knowledge could be useful for education and training purposes, as well as for the improvement of clinical practice.

Studiens syfte är att undersöka min lärandeprocess när jag på det melodiska slagverksinstrumentet vibrafon studerar in tre folkmusiklåtar på gehör utifrån ljudinspelningar. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för studien är det sociokulturella perspektivet och den decentrerade mästarläran. Studiens frågeställningar berör tillvägagångssätt, vilka kulturella redskap som används samt hur lärandet visar sig. I resultatet framkommer att många olika materiella och intellektuella redskap används i inlärningsprocessen och att lärandet visar sig genom exempelvis ökat tempo och tillägnande av fler och fler detaljer i musiken. I diskussionen ställs dessa resultat i relation till presenterad litteratur och forskning och aspekter som diskuteras är bland annat hur olika kulturella redskap samspelar och tillsammans främjar lärandet, hur den musikkulturella inramningen sätts utifrån den utövandes tidigare erfarenheter och kunskaper samt hur samspel och kommunikation kan visa sig i enskild övning utan tydlig praxisgemenskap. / The purpose of this studie is to analyse my learningprocess when learning three swedish folkmusic tunes by ear on the vibraphone, with the help of audio recordings. The theoretical basis of the studie is the sociocultural theory and a decentered view of master-learning. The issues of the studie has been to examine the ways in which I structure my practice to reach my goals, the use of different cultural tools and how the development can be seen. The result reveals that a lot of different tools, both material and intellectual, are being used in the learningprocess and that the development can be seen in increasing of tempo and appropriation of more and more details in the musical perfomance. In the discussion the results are put in relation to the litterature and theory which has been presented. Some aspects that is discussed is how the use of different cultural tools together can have a positive effect, how a musicians previous experience and knowledge affects the learningprocess and how interaction and communication can be seen in individual practice without a clear social context.

La reconstruction précise d’une scène 3D à partir de plusieurs caméras offre un contenu synthétique 3D à destination de nombreuses applications telles que le divertissement, la télévision et la production cinématographique. Cette thèse propose une nouvelle approche pour la reconstruction 3D multi-vues basée sur l’enveloppe visuelle et la stéréovision multi-oculaire. Cette approche nécessite en entrée l’enveloppe visuelle et plusieurs jeux d’images rectifiées issues de différentes unités multiscopiques constituées chacune de plusieurs caméras alignées et équidistantes. Nos contributions se situent à différents niveaux. Le premier est notre méthode de stéréovision multi-oculaire qui est fondée sur un nouvel échantillonnage de l’espace scénique et fournit une carte de matérialité exprimant la probabilité pour chaque point d’échantillonnage 3D d’appartenir à la surface visible par l’unité multiscopique. Le second est l’hybridation de cette méthode avec les informations issues de l’enveloppe visuelle et le troisième est la chaîne de reconstruction basée sur la fusion des différentes enveloppes creusées tout en gérant les informations contradictoires qui peuvent exister. Les résultats confirment : i) l’efficacité de l’utilisation de la carte de matérialité pour traiter les problèmes qui se produisent souvent dans la stéréovision, en particulier pour les régions partiellementoccultées ; ii) l’avantage de la fusion des méthodes de l’enveloppe visuelle et de la stéréovision multi-oculaire pour générer un modèle 3D précis de la scène. / Accurate reconstruction of a 3D scene from multiple cameras offers 3D synthetic content tobe used in many applications such as entertainment, TV, and cinema production. This thesisis placed in the context of the RECOVER3D collaborative project, which aims is to provideefficient and quality innovative solutions to 3D acquisition of actors. The RECOVER3Dacquisition system is composed of several tens of synchronized cameras scattered aroundthe observed scene within a chromakey studio in order to build the visual hull, with severalgroups laid as multiscopic units dedicated to multi-baseline stereovision. A multiscopic unitis defined as a set of aligned and evenly distributed cameras. This thesis proposes a novelframework for multi-view 3D reconstruction relying on both multi-baseline stereovision andvisual hull. This method’s inputs are a visual hull and several sets of multi-baseline views.For each such view set, a multi-baseline stereovision method yields a surface which is usedto carve the visual hull. Carved visual hulls from different view sets are then fused iterativelyto deliver the intended 3D model. Furthermore, we propose a framework for multi-baselinestereo-vision which provides upon the Disparity Space (DS), a materiality map expressingthe probability for 3D sample points to lie on a visible surface. The results confirm i) theefficient of using the materiality map to deal with commonly occurring problems in multibaselinestereovision in particular for semi or partially occluded regions, ii) the benefit ofmerging visual hull and multi-baseline stereovision methods to produce 3D objects modelswith high precision.

Le problème du « Shape From Shading » est aujourd'hui considéré comme un problème mal posé et difficile à résoudre. Afin de bien comprendre les difficultés de ce problème et d'apporter des solutions fiables et pertinentes, nous proposons une approche rigoureuse basée sur la notion de solution de viscosité.<br />Après avoir considéré et exploité au maximum les équations (aux dérivées partielles) obtenues à partir de la modélisation classique du problème du « Shape From Shading », nous proposons et étudions de nouvelles équations provenant de modélisations plus réalistes que celles qui avaient été traitées classiquement dans la littérature. Cette démarche nous permet alors de démontrer qu'avec de telles nouvelles modélisations, le problème du « Shape From Shading » est généralement un problème complètement bien posé. En d'autres termes, nous prouvons que la version classique du problème du « Shape from Shading » est devenu mal posée à cause d'une trop grande simplification de la modélisation.<br />Dans ce travail, nous proposons aussi une extension de la notion de solutions de viscosité singulières développée récemment par Camilli et Siconolfi. Cette extension nous permet de proposer une nouvelle caractérisation des solutions de viscosité discontinues. Ce nouveau cadre théorique nous permet aussi d'unifier les différents résultats théoriques proposés dans le domaine du « Shape From Shading ».