In La Communauté desoeuvrée (1983) French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy describes how a community is creating by bringing its members together under a collective identity. The invention of myths, such as the myth of racial superiority and the mythic revolutionary community, functions to sustain the hegemonic dominance wielded in Haiti by the United States and later by François Duvalier, the Porfiriato and its aftermath in Mexico, and white society in the United States Deep South. These myths often engender policies founded in the inhospitable treatment of those who are deemed lesser or other. Nancys conception of being singular plural posits that our exposure to the other remedies the mythic community, because such a configuration requires the perpetual exposure of the self to others, which maintains the fluidity of interpersonal relations and in turn keeps the community future-oriented. Jacques Derridas De la grammatologie (1967), Force de loi (1990), and Politiques de lamitié (1994) offer a reconceptualization of the political implications of subjectivity, community, and responsibility allows us to identify individual behaviors that can foster the development of a democracy to come and which also align with Nancys re-inscription of community. This project examines how the mythic community is portrayed in René Depestres Le Mât de cocagne and Un arc-en-ciel pour lOccident chrétien, Mariano Azuelas Los de abajo, Carlos Fuentess La región más transparente del aire and Gringo viejo, and Ernest Gainess A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying. The authors representations of racial disharmony, marginalization, and violence function as a critique of colonialism, the mythic multicultural American community, and of imperialist capitalist hegemonic patriarchy to paraphrase bell hookss term. This project explores how the reverence for certain myths is linked to a rigid conception of hegemonic masculinity in which manhood is synonymous with domination. Thus, it is necessary to identify the conditions that marginalized men cultivate to achieve masculine subjectivity, and how patriarchal hegemonic masculinity may be challenged by new formulations of masculinities, which may allow such marginalized men to resist totalitarian powers and foster the sort of communal existence founded upon peace and tolerance of the Other.

This dissertation analyzes the role that female ghosts play in recuperating memory and filling the gaps of official history in the following four contemporary novels: Erna Brodbers Louisiana (1994), Zoé Valdéss Te di la vida entera (1996), Sandra Cisneross Caramelo: or, Puro Cuento (2002), and Maryse Condés Victoire, les saveurs et les mots: récit (2006). The ghosts in these novels disrupt a linear temporality and present a matriarchal mode of remembering, leading readers to reconsider the past outside of the dominant historical discourse. In this way, the novels become alternative histories that oppose the monologic historical paradigm and recuperate marginalized voices silenced by History with a capital H. The novels trouble the boundary between truth and fiction, asking the reader to consider the moral value of art. The reader is obliged to relinquish certain assumptions about history and its creation and processes in order to understand how fiction can be an alternative history. My introduction explores the historical paradigm that these novels destabilize, including a Hegelian concept of history that is based on reason. The introduction also sets up the feminist methodology that drives my analysis and presents the geographic scope of my dissertation. Chapter One explores the tradition of the ghost in the literature of the Americas, especially how ghosts confront traumatic pasts and destabilize a linear temporality. In Chapter Two I analyze Brodbers Louisiana, which employs two female ghosts to resist hegemonic historical discourse via spirit possession. In the third chapter I discuss ghosts affective nature in Valdéss Te di la vida entera and Cisneross Caramelo. The spirit narrators in these novels recreate memory via nostalgia and the affective nature of music. Chapter Four explores imaginations role in filling the gaps of history through an analysis of Condés Victoire, whose narrator is haunted by the ghost of her grandmother and compelled to reconstruct her history. My conclusion draws out the specific similarities between the four novels and further explores the way in which these novels not only use the ghost figure to comment on the past, but also employ it to initiate healing within individual relationships between women.

Love, lust, and power are themes that fill the pages of literature, are enacted upon the silver screen, and presented on stage. Such themes evoke courtship and the places where courtship occurs, such as the garden, balcony, and tower. Each of these settings has unique spatial dynamics, as well as distinctive representational and symbolic significance. A woman, while present in such places, uses both physical and metaphorical spatial dynamics to create a source of power and control over a man who courts her. By regulating the amount of space between them, she rules her body; in ruling her body, she determines her own fate. As the amount of vertical space between a woman and her suitor increases, so too does her control over her own body and destiny. When the authors presented in this study create a space in which a woman can make her own choices, such creators transgress societal norms, but, in order to escape censorship, they must provide a punishment for such a womans behavior, and that punitive measure often involves either actual or metaphorical death. These authors are, in fact, writing subversive material without the appearance of doing so. By combining theoretical elements from sociology, psychoanalysis, and feminist studies, I analyze the ways in which women use spatial dynamics to transgress societal mores and carve out areas of power for themselves. Although such transgressive women are found in patriarchal societies all over the world, I chose works from Europe, America, and Latin America that were both representative of the motifs explored in this study and well-known within their respective national traditions. I begin each chapter with a parent text from which later works borrowed, and in order to demonstrate the prevalence of these places in texts, the works chosen derive from different genres written over the last five and a half centuries.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Interdisciplinary Science, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 362-403). / by William J. Hartnett. / Ph.D.

The development of porous materials useful as scaffolds for the sustained three-dimensional (3D) growth of human adipose-derived stem cells (hASC) is of particular interest to facilitate healing after musculoskeletal injuries. In this study, a composite porous material obtained by blending akermanite with poly-e-caprolactone (PCL) is proposed as novel alternative to bone tissue regeneration. The objectives of this study are (1) to characterize the akermanite:PCL scaffold properties; (2) to investigate the in vitro osteogenic potential of hASC loaded to optimal akermanite:PCL scaffolds; (3) to assess the metabolic activity and osteogenesis of hASC loaded to optimal akermanite:PCL scaffolds post-thawing using optimal cryopreservation protocol; and (4) to evaluate the behavior of optimal akermanite:PCL scaffolds in vivo using an immunodeficient murine model for ectopic bone formation. We hypothesized that (1) optimal akermanite:PCL blend has mechanical properties and biocompatibility suitable for tissue engineering applications; (2) hASC loaded to optimal akermanite:PCL scaffolds has higher expression of mature osteogenic marker in scaffolds cultured in osteogenic medium for 21 days; (3) PVP-serum free medium can be used to cryopreserve hASC loaded to optimal akermanite:PCL scaffolds; and (4) hASC preloaded to optimal akermanite:PCL scaffolds would produce meaningful bone-like tissue 8 weeks post-implantation. According to the results, 75:25 akermanite:PCL composite scaffolds displayed increased mechanical (1), biological and osteogenic properties (1-3). Moreover, hASC loaded to 75:25 akermanite:PCL scaffolds and frozen at 40ᵒC/min displayed metabolic activity and osteogenesis comparable to fresh control scaffolds (3). However, in vivo implantation of akermanite-base scaffolds (akermanite and akermanite:PCL) in nude mice, sudden death within the first 48 hours of this study (4). The acute toxicity observed in all animals assigned to the akermanite scaffolds was associated to a disturbance of the phosphorus homeostasis in vivo. Specifically, akermanite and akermanite:PCL scaffolds harvested 48 hours post-implantation had comparable levels of phosphorous in the composition, indicating acute phosphorous depletion from the serum. Accumulative evidences have suggested that akermanite is biocompatible and can enhance adhesion, proliferation and osteogenic phenotype maintenance of adult/osteoprogenitor stem cells both in vitro and in vivo. As a conclusion, further studies are needed to address the akermanite dose-dependent toxicity in murine models for akermanite-assisted bone regeneration.

This dissertation deals with an important problem in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (DM & KD), and Information Technology (IT) in general. It addresses the problem of efficiently learning monotone Boolean functions via membership queries to oracles. The monotone Boolean function can be thought of as a phenomenon, such as breast cancer or a computer crash, together with a set of predictor variables. The oracle can be thought of as an entity that knows the underlying monotone Boolean function, and provides a Boolean response to each query. In practice, it may take the shape of a human expert, or it may be the outcome of performing tasks such as running experiments or searching large databases. Monotone Boolean functions have a general knowledge representation power and are inherently frequent in applications. A key goal of this dissertation is to demonstrate the wide spectrum of important real-life applications that can be analyzed by using the new proposed computational approaches. The applications of breast cancer diagnosis, computer crashing, college acceptance policies, and record linkage in databases are here used to demonstrate this point and illustrate the algorithmic details. Monotone Boolean functions have the added benefit of being intuitive. This property is perhaps the most important in learning environments, especially when human interaction is involved, since people tend to make better use of knowledge they can easily interpret, understand, validate, and remember. The main goal of this dissertation is to design new algorithms that can minimize the average number of queries used to completely reconstruct monotone Boolean functions defined on a finite set of vectors V = {0,1}^n. The optimal query selections are found via a recursive algorithm in exponential time (in the size of V). The optimality conditions are then summarized in the simple form of evaluative criteria, which are near optimal and only take polynomial time to compute. Extensive unbiased empirical results show that the evaluative criterion approach is far superior to any of the existing methods. In fact, the reduction in average number of queries increases exponentially with the number of variables n, and faster than exponentially with the oracle's error rate.

The institutions that comprise the United States intelligence community have organizational cultures that are unique from other government agencies. These cultures encourage the development and retention of traits that are necessary to mission accomplishment, yet these exclusivities also hamstring organizations and may contribute to significant security failures. This thesis isolates elements of organizational culture that are specific to the United States intelligence community and explores the extent to which the culture is responsible for security and/or counterintelligence shortcomings. The author selected three governmental organizations with intelligence collection and analysis functions; they include the Naval Investigative Service (NIS), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). These agencies demonstrate the intelligence community includes military (NIS), intelligence (CIA) and law enforcement (FBI) components with shared organizational traits. The author subsequently identified a significant security failure case encountered by each agency and employed a case study approach to determine the extent to which the agencies organizational cultures contributed to the security failures. Internal agency investigations and external assessments of espionage activities reveal cultural factors impede the early detection of security compromises and thwart law enforcement efforts to investigate suspicious behavior. Despite the deleterious effects of national security collapses, the intelligence communitys personnel increasingly recognize the complicity of organizational culture in such security failures. The intelligence community increasingly analyzes the negative aspects of its organizational traits, and there have been substantive strides within the intelligence establishment to minimize the security obstacles that organizational culture imposes on its constituent adherents. The intelligence apparatus must maintain an organizational culture that distinguishes it from other government agencies. Unfortunately, the communitys cultural characteristics also convey increased risks of security compromises. It is possible, however, for the United States intelligence community to maintain its unique organizational culture and simultaneously minimize the possibility of operational or security failure.

On June 6, 1944, Allied soldiers assaulted the beaches of Normandy in France. In preparation for that one day, the Allies assembled millions of tons of supplies, hundreds of thousands of men, and thousands of ships in Great Britain. Allied leaders spent three years preparing plans and training troops. American and British intelligence agencies scoured Europe for information about German troops and fortifications and launched massive deception campaigns designed to keep their German counterparts in the dark about where and when the blow would fall. In the air, bombers rained destruction upon German factories and French railways while their escorts engaged the German defenders. By the end of May 1944, the Allies were ready to invade. Beginning in 1942, the Germans prepared defenses to stop the invasion. The fortifications, named the Atlantic Wall, consisted of massive amounts of concrete, steel and barbed wire and contained millions of mines. The strategy that German leaders pursued to defeat the invasion, a product of rival views within the German High Command, resulted in chaos and ultimately defeat for their armed forces. The commander of Army Group B, defending the likeliest invasion sites, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, planned to meet the invasion at the water line and defeat the Allies before they could gain a foothold. Rommel's immediate superior and commander in the West, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, wanted to defeat the invasion further inland; outside of the range of Allied naval guns. Adolf Hitler compromised between the two commanders and created a plan that depended upon his own appreciation of the battle for the release of critical reserves. Added to the problems of strategy were German manpower shortages caused by years of fighting a multi-front war and equipment and supply shortages due to bombing and attrition. By May 1944, the Germans knew the invasion was coming but could not foresee when or where. On D-Day, the Allies dropped three airborne and landed six divisions in the initial assault on the Atlantic Wall. By the end of the day, they had carved a narrow beachhead and were in France to stay.

In order to determine how learner background and learner attitudes affected English as a Second Language students verb production, eleven ESL learners participated in both oral and written tasks. They were given written surveys to determine what was emphasized more in learning English in their home countries: speaking or writing. Another survey was administered to determine which of these activities that they liked best. Next, the subjects watched a movie clip, wrote about it, and then spoke about it. Their written and spoken total amount of verbs produced and total amount of verbs used correctly were compared and analyzed to see if there was a relationship between their learning background and production in speaking and writing and activity preference and production in speaking and writing. While the sample size was too small to obtain reliable correlations, so several subjects samples were studied in order to determine the effects of preference on production. In the end, individual differences played the largest role in verb production and there was a slight but noticeable relationship between a preference for speaking and amount of verbs produced.

I like simple things. More precisely I like taking complex things and distilling them to their simplest elements, those things that define their nature. Art and technology are two very different subjects. Simple and complex. Intuitive and analytical. Combining art and technology to deliver educational material with simple navigation, a child-friendly environment and playful, imaginative sounds that enhance rather than complicate the learning process, is the objective of my project. An interactive, educational CD for young children is the product of this thesis. Art has always been used to communicate ideas, thoughts and emotions; it expedites the delivery of the message. The visual language is a universal one. Seeing is believing. Believing is understanding. Understanding is learning. Blending art and technology for a practical purpose intrigues me. I enjoy childrens books and have collected them for many years. Childrens picture books rely heavily on images to support the story and ultimately to teach. Because a child uses all of the senses to learn, interactive multimedia is the perfect vehicle to deliver educational content to young children. Technology allows us to depart from traditional methods of delivering educational content, like books, and produce materials enriched with images, sounds and interactivity. The possibilities for creating unique educational experiences have greatly increased. The goal of this project is to create a fun, learning environment, encouraging interactivity by the target audience, young children ages three to six. The product of this thesis, the Character Critters Storytime CD, includes three animated stories about Cindy the Citizen Crab, Fran the Fair Frog and Roy the Responsible Rabbit, written by LSU AgCenter Family and Consumer Sciences specialists Dr. Rebecca White and Leslie Cooper Parsons. The copyrighted stories are used with permission from the LSU AgCenter. Through sight, sound and touch, with parent/teacher participation, children are invited to hear stories and play games that teach positive character traits. Each story includes an interactive game that reinforces the character concepts taught in the stories. Macromedia Flash, an interactive multimedia software, is used to develop the CD.