This thesis analyzes the factors and conduct of the transformation of NATO and its likely effects on the globe. The implications of politics of the US, the EU on global security as well as enlarged threat perception will be investigated as the three main drivers of NATO transformation. The way transformation carried out will be synthesized into political and military areas. Political transformation here will be studied under three fold categorization of functional, geographical and institutional areas. The thesis will conclude with future tendencies of and within NATO.

The main objective of this dissertation is to analyze Turkish-American relationship from critical perspective. In this study critical geopolitics is used to examine the US policymakers&lsquo / discourses over representations of Turkey. Drawing on the theoretical literature, this dissertation took geopolitics as a deeply ideological concept and analyzed the ways in which US geopolitical discourse has shaped the Turkish-American relationship over time. The study outlined the historical evolution of the concept of the geopolitics since the end of the 19th century in order to reveal the limits of the classical geopolitical understanding, and to provide a theoretical framework against which the modern geopolitical imagination of the US has been formulated. Second, it revealed the ideological roots and the main characteristics of American geopolitical discourse. And third, the study applied critical geopolitics to the case of Turkish-American relations with respect to how the imagined geography of Turkey and the alliance have been shaped by the foreign and security policies of the US. Cold War, post-Cold War and post-September 11 periods are analyzed in separate chapters of this study. It is also argued in this dissertation that Turkey generally fits the geopolitical design of the United States and that these two countries have cooperated on numerous efforts in different parts of the world both during and after the Cold War. However, in this period the two allies also experienced several problems that display the limits of US geopolitical discourse.

This thesis compares German transit systems to the transit system of Atlanta, Georgia. Different performance measures are used to assess the difference in the respective rail and bus systems. The results show that the German transit systems are overall more successful and efficient than the system in Atlanta.

900 archived FRM filters from 15 sites over the southeast during 2007 were analyzed for PM2.5 chemical composition and physical properties. Secondary components (i.e. sulfate aerosol and SOA) were the major contributors to the PM2.5 mass over the southeast, whereas the contribution from biomass burning varied with season and was negligible (2%) during summer. Excluding biomass burning influence, FRM WSOC was spatially homogeneous throughout the region, similar to sulfate, yet WSOC was moderately enhanced in locations of greater predicted isoprene emissions in summer. On smaller spatial scale, a substantial urban/rural gradient of WSOC was found through comparisons of online WSOC measurements at one urban/rural pair (Atlanta/Yorkville) in August 2008, indicating important contribution from anthropogenic emissions. A comparative study between Atlanta and LA reveals a number of contrasting features between two cities. WSOC gas-particle partitioning, investigated through the fraction of total WSOC in the particle phase, Fp, exhibited differing relationships with ambient RH and organic aerosols. In Atlanta, both particle water and organic aerosol (OA) can serve as an absorbing phase. In contrast, in LA the aerosol water was not an important absorbing phase, instead, Fp was correlated with OA mass. Fresh LA WSOC had a consistent brown color and a bulk absorption per soluble carbon mass at 365 nm that was 4 to 6 times higher than freshly-formed Atlanta soluble organic carbon. Interpreting soluble brown carbon as a property of freshly-formed anthropogenic SOA, the difference in absorption per carbon mass between the two cities suggests most WSOC formed within Atlanta is not from an anthropogenic process similar to LA.

<p>I uppsatsen undersöks designerrollen så som den ser ut idag utifrån teorin om att designerrollen liksom konstnärsrollen har tagit sig nya uttrycksformer.</p><p>I uppsatsen undersöks designgrupperna Front och Form us with love i syfte att söka svar på huruvida fenomenet designgrupper är något nytt. Men också för att ta reda på varför man väljer att arbeta som grupp och hur man framställs/framställer sig som grupp. Här hävdas att fenomenet designgrupper i sig inte är något nytt. Författaren framhåller dock att designerrollen har förändrats.</p>

<p>The thesis investigates how two of the world’s most powerful international actors, the US and the EU want to promote democracy and human rights. The aim is to compare how the US and the EU work in order to support a democratic development in the world. In order to fulfill the purpose of the thesis a qualitative text analysis was used. Since the aim is to compare the US and the EU I believe this method is beneficial. The questions that are being investigated are about the contributions the US and the EU give to e.g. Saudi Arabia and Russia and if the contributions are mainly characterized by `hard or soft power´. The result showed that in general no conclusion can be drawn when it comes to the characteristics of the contributions. However, in the examples taken from the EU- Russian and the US- Saudi Arabian relationships the contributions are characterized by `soft power´. The other relationships the thesis discusses are instead characterized by `hard power´.</p>

Emergency wood shoring towers are utilized by Urban Search & Rescue (US&R) specialists to temporarily stabilize a damaged structure. Standardized designs for wood shoring towers have been developed and are published in manuals for use in US&R operations. These designs have been validated largely through past testing under simplified vertical loading. Research was conducted to provide additional insight into the performance of two common types of shores, the laced post (LP) shore and the plywood laced post (PLP) shore, under non-ideal (other than vertical) loading scenarios. Shores were tested under vertical load only, under lateral load only, and under combined vertical and lateral load. For lateral loading, some shores were tested under monotonic lateral load (lateral load applied in one direction only) and some were tested under cyclic lateral loading. Each specimen was tested to failure, and the documented capacity compared to the FEMA specified shore design capacity. Early warning signs of shore distress known as "fuses" characterized by audible cracking sounds, cupping of the wedges, or cracking of members were also evaluated during testing for their effectiveness and consistency. The performances of the laced post and plywood laced post shores were compared and recommendations made. / text

We live in a scientific society. Science is all around us. We take scientific principles for granted every time we use technology, such as a car, a computer, or a cell phone. Paradoxically, the scientific literacy of the population is minimal at best. Having a basic knowledge of scientific principles is no longer a luxury but, in today's complex world, a necessity. To increase the scientific literacy of non-science majors, an astrobiology course was developed at the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at The University of Texas at Austin. The course subscribes to an educational philosophy that promotes the significance of teaching science to non-science majors, endorses the importance of multidisciplinary content knowledge, supports the teaching of the nature of science in an implicitly mode, advances the discussion of socio-scientific issues, and includes competent thinking-based teaching strategies using the dynamic discipline of astrobiology. The thesis reviews the problems in scientific literacy, outlines the characteristics of this innovative course, proposes a novel standard - competent thinking - to evaluate scientific literacy and analyzes the results of this course in terms of competent thinking. Data collected provided evidence of an increase of competent thinking skills among the students, especially in terms of self-reflection. Both the first and the second pilot study showed strong evidence that students transitioned from naive to competent thinking arguments. The main study demonstrated that students greatly improve their self-reflecting skills. The final study confirmed improvement in terms of self-reflecting skills, and showed that students gradually improve their arguments based on logic, reason, sophistication, and evidences. Therefore, the results show that this innovative astrobiology course is an effective tool for enhancing competent thinking skills among non-science major students. / text

This report explores the role of documentary art in the constitution of collective memory in Greensboro, North Carolina, between the years 1999 and 2004. In that city on November 3, 1979, Ku Klux Klan and Nazis killed five labor organizers in broad daylight. Television news crews, on site to cover the anti-Klan march scheduled for that day, captured the killings on film. In spite of this evidence, all-white juries twice acquitted the Klan/Nazis of any wrongdoing. In the weeks and months that followed the massacre, city officials and mainstream media sought to disassociate Greensboro from the event, generating a master narrative that portrayed both the Klan/Nazis and labor organizers as outsiders, and the city as an innocent bystander. This narrative covered up the fact that the Greensboro police had extensive prior knowledge about the potential for violence, and yet were mysteriously absent when the Klan/Nazis arrived on the scene. In a third trial—a civil suit brought against the city by survivors of the shooting—Klan and police were found jointly liable for wrongful death. Twenty-five years later, the massacre and its aftermath served as the impetus for the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States. In the years leading up to the Commission, six artists—including the author—made or presented artwork in Greensboro about the killings. Importantly, none of the artists were from Greensboro or had any direct connection to the massacre. However, through their creative processes and final artworks, they made an implicit claim about the political relevance of remembering and engaging with the full history of November 3, 1979. Collectively, the art spanned a variety of mediums, including theater, paintings, music, and dance. Through interviews with the artists, archival research, and qualitative analysis, this report argues that the artists helped to generate the potential for an expanded, poly-vocal collective memory of the massacre. They did this through practices of citation and translation—converting the archive of factual history into aesthetic and material forms—that made the events of November 3, 1979 available to community members for encounter and interpretation in the present. / text

This dissertation examines the role of affect and emotion in contemporary citizenship practices along the US-Mexico border. Drawing from mixed qualitative methods, this dissertation employs inter-subjective research practice to understand the entanglement between the state, objects, citizen, and non-citizen along the border. This study presents two interrelated findings: 1) state security objects "impress" and mediate citizen movements, and 2) a dual masculinity of offensive and defensive emerges around compassionate actions toward or distancing actions from migrants in need of aid or assistance. Drawing on Slavoj Žižek, this dissertation explores the border-as-parallax-object to reveal the ways that the border is inscribed beyond the material fence. In this way, this dissertation connects disparate literature within human geography concerning materiality and psychoanalytic theory. By psychoanalytically reading and coding research interviews, this dissertation also develops the concepts of the face-of-the-state and ambivalent citizenship to elucidate the impact of security objects on citizen practices. The findings build toward a new subfield in political geography: emotional border studies.