Thesis (M. S.)--Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007. / Dr. Armin J. Ansari, Committee Member ; Dr. Farzad Rahnema, Committee Member ; Dr. Rebecca Howell, Committee Member ; Dr. Nolan E. Hertel, Committee Chair.

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The Ends of Smaller Worlds is a collection of short stories set in Indiana. The preface is about the representation of the information age using elements of dirty realism and Gothic fiction.

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Grounded theory research was conducted with twenty-four male and female emergency shelter operators (alternatively known as caseworkers) from three different shelters in a large Canadian city: The Open Arms, Good Samaritan and Rescue Mission. Drawing on the experiences of those working in non-profit ‘homeless’ shelters, and based on the sociological concept of ‘dirty work,’ this study describes why caseworkers take on this kind of work, how they make sense of it, and what they themselves get out of it. This research reveals a complex picture of frontline emergency casework that others see as objectionable, dangerous and tainted is described by informants with a sense of job satisfaction, dignity, collective esteem and pride. Moreover, it illuminates the ways in which individuals and occupational groups reframe and subjectively construct meanings about what it means to be involved in ‘dirty work’ such that it is regarded positively and as ‘good work’. Because caseworkers deal in difficult emotions, they must learn to perform a balancing act between professional decorum and expressed concern. The ways that caseworkers are supposed to perceive their roles are governed by a set of unwritten norms and rules that normalize and renarrate disruptive and abnormal situations of a caseworker being humiliated, berated, verbally and physically attacked and by which they accept this as normal and therefore morally acceptable. It was typical for frontline caseworkers, working in non-profit shelters, to emphasize the relational and affectual rewards of the job as a compensation for its low pay and dirty ‘particulars,’ which meets the expectations, self-conceptions and values they hold themselves to be as caring and compassionate workers. They accomplish this by redirecting attention to the more dignifying aspects of their jobs and by identifying strongly with both their occupations and the collective identity of their occupational culture. This research further underscores both the importance of understanding the interpretive processes of meaning-making and the social construction of ‘dirt’. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Reformerad pornografi är en receptionsstudie vilken undersöker hur tre stycken självidentifierade kvinnor upplever audiovisuell feministisk pornografi, mot bakgrund av-samt kännedom om heteronormativ mainstreampornografi. Informanterna har i förväg fått tillgång till materialet att betrakta, detta består av feministiska pornografiska kortfilmerna i filmsamlingen Dirty Diaries, för att leda in till ett givande samtal i enskilda semistrukturerade djupintervjuer. Via Laura Mulveys teori om den voyeuristiska blicken analyseras hur dessa kvinnor antog materialet. Med stöd från Petra Östergren, som även diskuterar Rubin Gayle, kommer även slutsatsen som kan låta självklar att yttras. Det vill säga att individuella preferenser styr en del av betraktarens visuella lust. Studien resulterar i att feministisk pornografi förklaras som ett utrymme där den kvinnliga sexualiteten och njutningen tillåts figurera på egna villkor.

In fields across science and engineering, we are increasingly faced with problems where the number of variables or features we need to estimate is much larger than the number of observations. Under such high-dimensional scaling, for any hope of statistically consistent estimation, it becomes vital to leverage any potential structure in the problem such as sparsity, low-rank structure or block sparsity. However, data may deviate significantly from any one such statistical model. The motivation of this thesis is: can we simultaneously leverage more than one such statistical structural model, to obtain consistency in a larger number of problems, and with fewer samples, than can be obtained by single models? Our approach involves combining via simple linear superposition, a technique we term dirty models. The idea is very simple: while any one structure might not capture the data, a superposition of structural classes might. Dirty models thus searches for a parameter that can be decomposed into a number of simpler structures such as (a) sparse plus block-sparse, (b) sparse plus low-rank and (c) low-rank plus block-sparse. In this thesis, we propose dirty model based algorithms for different problems such as multi-task learning, graph clustering and time-series analysis with latent factors. We analyze these algorithms in terms of the number of observations we need to estimate the variables. These algorithms are based on convex optimization and sometimes they are relatively slow. We provide a class of low-complexity greedy algorithms that not only can solve these optimizations faster, but also guarantee the solution. Other than theoretical results, in each case, we provide experimental results to illustrate the power of dirty models. / text

In this essay, I am analyzing how recognition occurs through humor in the two novels: Mort, by Terry Pratchett, and A Dirty Job, by Christopher Moore. This is with the intention to add more ways of using literature to speak about difficult topics such as death, in the Swedish secondary school. Throughout the analysis, I am connecting humor and recognition to each other to initiate a position where a teacher can move towards the subject through the duality of seriousness and comedy. The result has shown that an understanding of life’s duality, and human existence, plays an important role in how recognition occurs through humor. / Uppsatsens syfte har varit att analysera hur igenkänning uppstår genom humor i de två verken: Mort av Terry Pratchett och A Dirty Job av Christopher Moore. Uppsatsen har skrivits med intentionen att tillföra fler alternativ till hur lärare kan samtala om svåra ämnen så som döden genom litteraturen i klassrummet. Genomgående i analysen drar jag paralleller mellan humor och igenkänning för att visa på olika vägar kring hur man kan närma sig ämnet via den dubbelhet som finns mellan bland annat allvar och komedi. Resultatet har visat att en förståelse för livets dubbelhet och mänsklig existens spelar en viktig roll för hur igenkänning uppstår via humor.

Den 1 januari 2009 infördes en reviderad version av IASB:s redovisningsstandard IAS 1. Den nya versionen, som gäller för alla noterade bolag i EU, ställer krav på att posterna övrigt totalresultat och totalresultat ska presenteras i, eller i nära anslutning till, resultaträkningen. Innebörden av detta är att ett flertal orealiserade poster ska lyftas fram i resultatdelen. Implementeringen innebar en övergång till så kallad Clean Surplus Accounting. Anhängare till denna redovisningsutformning menar att all information som påverkat det egna kapitalet, bortsett från ägartransaktioner, är av intresse för utomstående och därmed bör påverka resultatmåttet. Att övergå till denna redovisningsmetod skulle leda till en högre värderelevans för finansiella rapporter. Syftet med följande uppsats var att utreda om posterna övrigt totalresultat och totalresultat kan konstateras vara värderelevanta och därmed även utreda om redovisning enligt Clean Surplus har ökat relevansen hos finansiella rapporter. I studien har en kvantitativ ansats tillämpats och undersökningarna har baserats på data från stora företag noterade på Stockholmsbörsen mellan åren 2009 - 2014. Förväntningarna har varit att totalresultat är ett relevant mått, men att det historiska resultatmåttet nettoresultat fortsatt är det mått som fungerar bäst som estimering av framtida ekonomisk prestation. I enlighet med förväntningarna visar studien att övergången till redovisning enligt Clean Surplus inte ökat relevansen hos svenska finansiella rapporter.