What does mutuality mean in a pedagogical relation? This study seeks to explore one of the essential parts in a pedagogical relation, mutuality. From a relational perspective, that lifts the existential element in pedagogics, the study want to contribute with a possible understanding of the concept in order to strengthen the importance of this existential element. Through concept analysis, interpretations of Martin Buber´s relational philosophy and the relational perspective, the aim of the study has been to explore and to understand mutuality and its meaning in and for the pedagogical relation regarding the question of mutuality´s substance, in the sense of the substantial that lies in it. The results of the study shows: Mutuality as a substantive is scarcely described in dictionaries. It usually appears as equivalent to, and explained as, reciprocity. It was though possible to trace differences between the two terms. Mutuality denotes two parts who are involved in the same phenomenon, here and now, while reciprocity includes actions that can have a delay in time. Within the observed fields, the concept has been studied as a human attribute and mainly for its role for humans and society. It is usually used with a preconception where the involved parts, with the mutual action, give each other something they can benefit from. When studied closer, special characteristics were identified. Mainly depending on its context, variations were conditioned to: the origins/initiators of the actions – equally or unequally between parts. Advantage/influence between parts – direct or indirect. The reason for the action – as an obligation, an ideal or a common exchange of benefits. Time aspect – the actions could either keep a certain model or facilitate a sustainable change. The involved parts – either humans or non-human in co-actions. The concept´s essential characteristic, its own substance, could first be seen with help of the relational perspective and Martin Buber´s relational philosophy. By looking in between the parts of a relation and using Buber´s notion of a two folded way to relate to the world (as I to Thou and as I to It) mutuality could be interpreted and understood as a pre-condition, something that is there a priori. A constant abstract ground where the parts can meet each other. A substantial component of the gap in-between the parts, a pre-condition for the relation to be fulfilled. In this way, it is possible to understand mutuality in a pedagogical relation as symmetric, where parts relate to each other equally regardless of their differences, here and now. For mutuality’s manifestation is immediate. It affects and mutates – transforms us, forever. Without this existential, relational understanding of mutuality, it will be, in a pedagogical relation, at risk to be left just as an exchange between parts with an instrumental purpose, where the parts pass by each other and stay unaffected. The person may turn to be an object, pedagogics’ relational ground may be lost and the balance in education may remain deranged.

With more opportunities available to men and women to interact, both professionally and personally (i.e., the workplace, educational setting, community), friendships with members of the opposite sex are becoming more common. Increasingly, researchers have noted that one facet that makes cross-sex friendships unique compared to other types of relationships (i.e. romantic love, same-sex friendships, familial relationships), is that there is the possibility and opportunity for a romantic or sexual relationship to manifest. Communication research has yet to investigate how one decides whether to begin a romantic or sexual relationship or choose to remain platonic with their cross-sex friend. Given that cross-sex friendships deal with a lot of ambiguity regarding the nature of the friendship, this researcher sought to uncover what factors determine whether parties reciprocate romantic or sexual interest or opt to remain platonic through the theoretical lens of interaction adaptation theory. Specifically, the researcher sought to determine what expectations and desires predict compensation or reciprocity of romantic or sexual desires. At a large Southeastern university, quantitative data were collected from 307 participants. The results indicated that of the variables, Not Attracted, Incompatibility, and closeness were significant predictors of romantic reciprocation. In the case of 'friends with benefit' relationships, the results indicated that of the variables, Not Attracted, Sexual/Romantic Potential, sex, and sexual attitudes were significant predictors of sexual reciprocity. Further explanations of results, limitations, and future directions for research are discussed.

Motivated by previous relevant research on phononics including both active and passive phononics, the interest of faster turnability and more functions of the active phononics of further study led to this proposing research topic: magnetic field tunable active functional phononics. The first design of magnetic field tunable reciprocal--non-reciprocal transmission acoustic device was established, material was characterized, and numerical simulation has been performed. The simulation results show clear T-symmetric breaking non-reciprocity due to energy level splitting effect with Doppler effect – an acoustic Zeeman effect. Inspired by this preliminary work, further experiments were planned to demonstrate this effective Zeeman effect in phononics and effectively charged phonons in water based ferro-fluid. The objectives of this work as the next series of tasks were to illustrate acoustic Zeeman effect and acoustic Landau levels in various strength of magnetic field to investigate a design non-reciprocal sound device with magnetic field switching, which could be controlled on the amount of non-reciprocity with the strength of magnetic field. Once this new field first discovered by the proposed study tasks, more active tunable magnetic field phononics devices could be designed and exemplified in terms of both simulations and experiments. Faster and more controllable active phononic devices could be designed and made based on this study. The experimental maximum non-reciprocity was measured as 22 dB difference and the amount of the non-reciprocity can be further controlled by adjusting the strength of the external magnetic field. The remote pumping system in the device worked as expected and did not introduce any impact of the cavity properties.

Peer-to-peer swarming, as used by BitTorrent, is one of the de facto solutions for content dissemination in today’s Internet. By leveraging resources provided by users, peer-to-peer swarming is a simple, scalable and efficient mechanism for content distribution. Although peer-to-peer swarming has been widely studied for a decade, prior work has focused on the dissemination of one commodity (a single file). This thesis focuses on the multi-commodity case. We have discovered through measurements that a vast number of publishers currently disseminate multiple files in a single swarm (bundle). The first contribution of this thesis is a model for content availability. We use the model to show that, when publishers are intermittent, bundling K files increases content availability exponentially as function of K. When there is a stable publisher, we consider content availability among peers (excluding the publisher). Our second contribution is the estimate of the dependency of peers on the stable publisher, which is useful for provisioning purposes as well as in deciding how to bundle. To this goal, we propose a new metric, swarm self-sustainability, and present a model that yields swarm self-sustainability as a function of the file size, popularity and service capacity of peers. Then, we investigate reciprocity and the use of barter that occurs among peers. As our third contribution, we prove that the loss of efficiency due to the download of unrequested content to enforce direct reciprocity, as opposed to indirect reciprocity, is at most two in a class of networks without relays. Finally, we study algorithmic and economic problems faced by enterprises who leverage swarming systems and who control prices and bundling strategies. As our fourth contribution, we present two formulations of the optimal bundling problem, and prove that one is NP hard whereas the other is solvable by a greedy strategy. From an economic standpoint, we present conditions for the existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium between publishers and peers.

This work explores three phenomenological views of subjectivity in light of methodological transitions within phenomenology since its inception. Jean-Luc Marion offers a critique of Husserl 's transcendental ego in Cartesian Questions. This critique characterizes Husserl's transcendental ego as a 'schizophrenic ego'. This criticism is aimed at phenomenology's intentionality thesis as well as the method of reduction(s). Marion is influenced by Emmanuel Levinas' ethics and takes issue with a 'theoretical bias' within Husserl 's thought, a bias that characterizes subjectivity in the same terms as objectivity. I frame Marion's and Levinas' views of subjectivity in terms of two seemingly opposed 'origins' of subjectivity: Marion's notion of subjectivity embraces a notion of an originally auto-affected subject, while Levinas' position privileges an originally hetero-affected subject. I argue that both these views of subjectivity remain within dualist perspectives. Both thinkers try to overturn a hierarchy of reason over sensation/ emotion/ feeling by calling for a radically passive institution of subjectivity through either a givenness prior to subjectivity (Marion) or the face to face encounter with an Other (Levinas). However, both positions end up instituting a new hierarchy, one where reason is subjugated to feeling. Rather than dismantling dualism both thinkers end up defending a revised hierarchical thinking. I argue that Husserl's transcendental ego is indeed a 'schizophrenic ego' (i.e., a split ego) in Marion's sense but that this is not a problem for classical phenomenology but an alternative to either an auto-affected subject or a hetero-affected subject. Husserl's works on internal time-consciousness and passive and active synthesis illustrate a necessary correlation between passivity/ activity, matter/ form, reason/ emotion, ego/ world and self/ other which moves beyond the hierarchical thinking associated with traditional dualist thought. Husserl's notions of correlation and synthesis actually suggest a subject that is always intentionally related to the world and others and is also intentionally self-related. The implicit aim of this work is to suggest an alternative to an ethics of irreducibility endorsed by both Marion and Levinas. Husserlian phenomenology offers the possibility of an ethics of reciprocity, which paradoxically does not undermine the irreducibility of the subject, others or the world. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This Thesis is devoted to the study of topological phases of matter in optical platforms, focusing on non-Hermitian systems with gain and losses involving nonreciprocal elements, and fractional quantum Hall liquids where strong interactions play a central role.In the first part we investigated nonlinear Taiji micro-ring resonators in passive and active silicon photonics setups. Such resonators establish a unidirectional coupling between the two whispering-gallery modes circulating in their perimeter. We started by demonstrating that a single nonlinear Taiji resonator coupled to a bus waveguide breaks Lorentz reciprocity. When a saturable gain is added to a single Taiji resonator, a sufficiently strong unidirectional coupling rules out the possibility of lasing in one of the whispering-gallery modes with independence of the type of optical nonlinearity and gain saturation displayed by the material. This can be regarded as a dynamical time-reversal symmetry breaking. This effect is further enhanced by an optical Kerr nonlinearity. We showed that both ring and Taiji resonators can work as optical isolators over a broad frequency band in realistic operating conditions. Our proposal relies on the presence of a strong pump in a single direction: as a consequence four-wave mixing can only couple the pump with small intensity signals propagating in the same direction. The resulting nonreciprocal devices circumvent the restrictions imposed by dynamic reciprocity. We then studied two-dimensional arrays of ring and Taiji resonators realizing quantum spin-Hall topological insulator lasers. The strong unidirectional coupling present in Taiji resonator lattices promotes lasing with a well-defined chirality while considerably improving the slope efficiency and reducing the lasing threshold. Finally, we demonstrated that lasing in a single helical mode can be obtained in quantum spin-Hall lasers of Taiji resonators by exploiting the optical nonlinearity of the material. In the second part of this Thesis we dived into more speculative waters and explored fractional quantum Hall liquids of cold atoms and photons. We proposed strategies to experimentally access the fractional charge and anyonic statistics of the quasihole excitations arising in the bulk of such systems. Heavy impurities introduced inside a fractional quantum Hall droplet will bind quasiholes, forming composite objects that we label as anyonic molecules. Restricting ourselves to molecules formed by one quasihole and a single impurity, we find that the bound quasihole gives a finite contribution to the impurity mass, that we are able to ascertain by considering the first-order correction to the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. The effective charge and statistical parameter of the molecule are given by the sum of those of the impurity and the quasihole, respectively. While the mass and charge of such objects can be directly assessed by imaging the cyclotron orbit described by a single molecule, the anyonic statistics manifest as a rigid shift of the interference fringes in the differential scattering cross section describing a collision between two molecules.

This dissertation contains three essays on the impact of other-regarding behavior on human decision-making. Chapter II uses experimental methods to analyze the relative performance of a variety of compensation contracts. This study creates an environment in which individuals are paid via common payment mechanisms employed in the dual-principal agent relationships (Piece Rate, Flat Rate, Salary, Bonus and Socialization) and examines the effect that different incentive structures have on agent behavior. In Chapter III I explore the potential outcomes of blended payment structures in a dual-principal agent environment. I draw from the previously conducted experimental study in Chapter II and simulate agent behavior induced by blended payment mechanisms. In Chapter IV, I move away from studying payment mechanisms to investigate the impact of intentionality and responsibility on an individual's decision-making process. I explore the effects of direct and indirect responsibility as well as selfish and kind intentions using experimental methodology. Each of these essays provides further evidence that other-regarding behavior has a significant impact on the outcome of an economic situation; therefore, emphasizing the need to address such behavior in theoretical designs. / Ph. D.

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