This work offers a sustained critical reflection an original practice-based exploration of the vinyl record called ‘You Sound Like a Broken Record'. It takes up the following research questions: What can personal narratives associated with vinyl records provide in terms of rethinking this icon of the music industry? It asks where the vinyl record may fit into the fluid and fragmentary narratives of musical listening? How does it interface with the other strands of narrative formation over the time of personal ownership, and can a creative intervention help to unpack this complexity? In doing so it interrogates the role of material props of aiding and managing personal identification through music. The research is located with the field of Sound Studies, and explores these questions in dialogue with the theoretical work of Adorno, Attali, (musical commodification), Barthes (authorship), Dillon (palimpsests), De Certeau, Levi-Strauss (resistance and bricolage), Kelly (cracked media), Deleuze (rhizomatic ontology) and Schloss (the art of sampling). The research is based upon ethnographic interviews with fourteen respondents who each donated one of their most treasured vinyl records. Their stories were next carved onto the surface of each record, creating a palimpsest, thereby producing fourteen unique sonic sculptural works. The final outcome is one vinyl record containing sound pieces that use the 'broken records' and the respondents' narratives as their sonic material. Through the use of this methodology and its resulting practice, the thesis discusses the fragmentary voices that make up the narratives of their musical memories. In doing so, the thesis demonstrates that the vinyl record is a multivalent, interwoven, productive and fluid object. It critically sheds light on the record as a flexible partner to musical identification. The thesis together with the ‘recordworks' provides valuable insight into the record as a cultural ‘hobo' that holds a dialectical position as a symbol of cultural subversion, as a product of the music industry, and as a repository for both music and deeply held personal memory and emotions. In doing so, the work also highlights in an original way, how the record provides an opportunity for everyday resistance to canonical narratives and linear formations of musical listening and making practices.

This study was designed to investigate changes, if any, in the curriculum design of reading and/or language arts and arithmetic, student scheduling, student attendance, staffing patterns, expenditure patterns, reporting procedures and attitudes of parents, students and teachers for three years prior to and one year following implementation of 45-15 year-round programming. A review of the current literature, at that time, revealed that four school districts met the above time criteria. The four school districts were as follows: Francis Howell School District, St. Charles County, Missouri; Mora Public Schools, Mora, Minnesota; Valley View School District, Romeoville, Illinois and the Prince William County Public Schools, Manassas, Virginia. Representatives of the four school districts were then contacted by telephone and by written correspondence as to their (1) willingness to participate and (2) the amount of data available. Only two school districts, Francis Howell and the Mora Public Schools, had sufficient data available to participate. Each school district had one elementary school (grades 1-6) which was operating on a 45-15 year-round schedule. They were the Becky David Elementary School from the Francis Howell School District and Fairview Elementary School from the Mora Public Schools. A Data Collection Instrument was developed and mailed to the two selected school districts. In addition to the Data Collection Instrument, telephone conversations end written communication, district evaluation reports were reviewed and curriculum guides for language arts and/or reading and arithmetic were reviewed. Curriculum guide(s) were developed by both elementary schools. A change in curriculum design occurred when the two schools developed curriculum guide(s) and moved to 45-15 year-round scheduling. The curriculum guide for Becky David Elementary School was designed around a continuous progress concept. Fourteen levels of work for language arts and arithmetic replaced the traditional graded classroom situation. The curriculum guides for reading and arithmetic for Fairview Elementary School were developed around a self contained graded classroom situation. The curriculum guides for reading and arithmetic in each grade did utilize sessions, levels and units. Reporting procedures to parents were modified for the above curriculum areas after 45-15 year-round scheduling was begun. The pupil/teacher ratio for Becky David Elementary School decreased while the pupil/teacher ratio for Fairview Elementary School increased after 45-15 year-round progranuning. Both school districts' budgets increased each year after year-round school operations were begun. District expenditures for curriculum development, in-service education for teachers, instructional materials and instructional equipment were not available for Becky David Elementary School. District expenditures for Fairview Elementary School for instructional equipment and materials and curriculum development were available. The expenditures for instructional. materials and equipment and curriculum development increased with 45-15 year-round programming. A majority of teachers, students and parents of Fairview Elementary School and Becky David Elementary School expressed a favorable attitude toward 45-15 year-round scheduling as determined by appropriate questionnaires. Student attendance remained stable over the five year period of this study. / Ed. D.

We consider naturally occurring, uncountable transformation semigroups S and investigate the following three questions. (i) Is every countable subset F of S also a subset of a finitely generated subsemigroup of S? If so, what is the least number n such that for every countable subset F of S there exist n elements of S that generate a subsemigroup of S containing F as a subset. (ii) Given a subset U of S, what is the least cardinality of a subset A of S such that the union of A and U is a generating set for S? (iii) Define a preorder relation ≤ on the subsets of S as follows. For subsets V and W of S write V ≤ W if there exists a countable subset C of S such that V is contained in the semigroup generated by the union of W and C. Given a subset U of S, where does U lie in the preorder ≤ on subsets of S? Semigroups S for which we answer question (i) include: the semigroups of the injec- tive functions and the surjective functions on a countably infinite set; the semigroups of the increasing functions, the Lebesgue measurable functions, and the differentiable functions on the closed unit interval [0, 1]; and the endomorphism semigroup of the random graph. We investigate questions (ii) and (iii) in the case where S is the semigroup Ω[superscript Ω] of all functions on a countably infinite set Ω. Subsets U of Ω[superscript Ω] under consideration are semigroups of Lipschitz functions on Ω with respect to discrete metrics on Ω and semigroups of endomorphisms of binary relations on Ω such as graphs or preorders.

The question of sexual difference is missing from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology and from Jacques Derrida's theory of hospitality. I address these gaps by using a feminist phenomenological perspective to read modernist representations of the “hostess”. I argue for a broadened understanding of “hosting” that encompasses how women use their lived bodies to tend to the social and physical needs of other lived bodies. In chapter one, I use Virginia Woolf's work to discover the “perfect” party‐giving hostess. I suggest that the heroic hosting of party‐giving is predicated on a more habitual, daily form of hosting. In the subsequent chapters, I explore the developmental stages in the life of the hostess. In chapter two, I read Woolf and Merleau--‐Ponty in tandem to witness the initiation of the hosting mentality in the childhood home. In chapter three, I close read descriptions of adolescent girls dancing in Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, and Katherine Mansfield alongside the work of Iris Marion Young, to reveal the objectification of young female bodies as “future hostesses”. My fourth chapter focuses on maternal hospitality. Inspired by Luce Irigaray, I argue that D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Merleau‐Ponty problematically appropriate maternal hospitality. Mina Loy contributes a female modernist perspective of the lived bodily experience of childbirth. In my final chapter, I discuss hospitality and death. With James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf, I explore the “funeral‐giving hostess”. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of “hosting‐after‐death” as a way to describe the bodily and social care that women perform, or fail to perform, for what I term “lived dead bodies” in Lawrence's work. Throughout, I contend that failing to adequately recognise women's habitual and heroic hospitality devalues the important work that women perform for other bodies throughout their lives. In doing this, I carve a space for the hostess within traditional discourses of hospitality, and I develop the discussion of female‐bodies‐in‐situation that Merleau‐Pontian phenomenology lacks.

A case study of innovation in local government within the context of planning and land use control was performed. Political and administrative aspects of the management of growth in Fairfax County, Virginia, were analyzed. Recent trends that influence local leadership in development regulation were explored. A survey of suburbanization in Fairfax County, governmental measures in planning and land use control, and the county's legacy of legislation, administration, and development regulation was conducted. The record of the present Board of Supervisors and county government in general administration and growth management was reviewed. Board interaction with administrative staff, advisory bodies, and citizens was assessed. An appraisal of the Board's initial steps to regulate development was made. / Master of Arts

No description available.

This article investigates the determinants of subsidiaries' profitability using a unique dataset of more than 23,000 listed and unlisted subsidiaries worldwide over the period 1994-2005. We find that profitable parent companies are able to transfer some of the intangible assets that make them profitable to their subsidiaries. Our results indicate that good institutions (measured by the Worldwide Governance Indicators) are associated with better performance for companies' subsidiaries. When we categorize countries in terms of the origins of their legal systems, we also find that this dimension of institutional quality is generally associated with better performance. Controlling for both legal origins and country governance institutions, we find that both sets of institutions are significantly related to subsidiaries' performance, and that there is an overlap in their explanatory power. (authors' abstract)

This thesis provides estimates of the market potential for farm-reared channel catfish in Virginia and Washington, D. C., the production costs and estimated returns of two small catfish farm enterprises, the present fisheries industry structure in Virginia, and the present channel catfish products and their feasibility for Virginia. The market potential for farm-reared channel catfish for Washington, D.C. and Virginia combined is estimated to be around 4,244,000 pounds (dressed weight) annually. The net returns generated by the two fish farm enterprises studied ranged from -$63.49/1.5 acre to $189.53/1.5 acre and the rates of return ranged from -8.9% to 27.4% at a $.30 per pound (live weight) price level. The present fish industry in Virginia is composed of a large number of wholesalers of various sizes who supply most of the retailers in the state. Most of the small wholesalers would not be receptive toward catfish products. However, some of the larger wholesalers may be willing to deal in catfish. In conclusion the food fish market seems to be the most feasible for absorbing farm-record channel catfish products and for providing an opportunity for an expanding farm-reared channel catfish industry in Virginia. / M.S.

A pesar de la abundancia de estudios realizados sobre el papel de las células acinares en las patologías exocrinas del páncreas (i.e. pancreatitis y cáncer), el estudio de las modificaciones producidas durante la diferenciación acinar en dichas patologías, se ha visto limitado por la escasez de modelos celulares no tumorales. Resultados previos de nuestro laboratorio, muestran que las células mES (células madre embrionarias de ratón )- pluripotentes y con la capacidad para generar tipos celulares especializados- pueden desarrollar un fenotipo acinar in vitro. Los objetivos de esta tesis han sido aumentar el contenido de enzimas digestivos así como las propiedades funcionales de las células generadas. Para ello se sobreexpresaron de forma estable p48, RBPJL y Mist1en células madre por transducción lentiviral de estos genes. Obtuvimos, gracias a una estrategia de infección en múltiples etapas, líneas celulares transgénicas mES que expresaban de forma constitutiva RBPJL y/o Mist1. La superimposición de la expresión de p48 por infección lentiviral en células en proceso de diferenciación dio lugar a una fuerte expresión de enzimas digestivos, con un patrón de regulación similar al que acontece in vivo durante el desarrollo pancreático. En esta inducción, tanto p48 como RPBJL son indispensables. Por otro lado, hemos mostrado un aumento elevado en la producción de varios componentes de la maquinaria secretota dependiente de Mist1. Además, hay que hacer notar ,que las células p48/RBPJL/Mist1 exhiben una regulada-secreción en respuesta a los secretagogos acinares y una mejor actividad de que la línea celular acinar 266-6. La expresión combinada de genes clave implicados en el desarrollo pancreático en células ES es un prometedor abordaje que nos llevará a una comprensión de los sutiles procesos del desarrollo exocrino pancreático. / Despite known involvement of acinar cells in pancreatic exocrine pathologies (i.e pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer), the lack of normal cell-based models has limited the study of the alterations that occur in the acinar differentiation program. Our previous data showed that mES (murine embryonic stem) cells, which are pluripotent and have the ability to generate specialized cell types, can acquire an acinar phenotype in vitro. The aim of this work was to increase the digestive enzyme content of the generated cells as well as their functional properties based on stable overexpression of p48, RBPJL and Mist1 by lentiviral gene transduction. Thus, we engineered transgenic mES cell lines constitutively expressing RBPJL and/or Mist1 using a multi-step infection strategy. The superimposition of p48 expression by lentiviral infection of differentiating cells resulted in a strong expression of digestive enzymes, with a pattern of regulation similar to what occurs in vivo during pancreatic development. In this induction, both p48 and RPBJL are indispensable. On the other hand, we showed a high increase in the production of several components of the secretory machinery which was dependent of Mist1. Importantly, p48/RBPJL/Mist1 cells exhibited a regulated-secretory in response to acinar secretagogues and a better secretion activity than the 266-6 acinar cell line. Combined expression of key genes involved in pancreatic development in ES cells may be a promising approach to better understand subtle steps of pancreatic exocrine development.

Ptf1a/p48 is a pancreas specific bHLH transcription factor that is required at early stages of embryonic development for pancreas formation and, during adulthood, for the proper exocrine pancreatic function. P48 also exerts an antiproliferative effect, which may exert a tumor suppressor activity. In this study, based on a yeast two-hybrid approach, we have identified new p48 partners that modulate the activity of p48. Among the newly identified putative interactors we found p/CAF, which is a coactivator that potentiates its transcriptional activity, and ICAT, an inhibitor of the β-catenin/TCF signaling pathway. ICAT binds to p48 and is coexpressed with it in the pancreas during development and postnatally. Using different cellular models, ICAT overexpression in acinar tumor cells resulted in changes of the pancreatic specific gene expression pattern. Furthermore, high levels of ICAT inhibited the interaction between p48 and p/CAF. While this hetero-oligomeric complex is required for the acinar gene expression, ICAT itself is shown to be present in a reconstituted PTF1 complex in vivo. Importantly, altered ICAT expression is demonstrated in several histological types of pancreatic tumors, possibly contributing to their differentiation phenotype and neoplastic properties. / Ptf1a/p48 es un factor de transcripción bHLH específico del páncreas necesario durante los estadios tempranos del desarrollo embrionario para la formación del mismo, y para el correcto funcionamiento del páncreas exocrino en el adulto. P48 desempeña también una función antiproliferativa, la cual puede resultar en una actividad de supresión tumoral. En el presente estudio, basado en una estrategia de cribado de doble-híbrido en levadura, han sido identificadas nuevas proteínas que interaccionan y que modulan la actividad específica de p48. Entre las posibles proteínas que interaccionan y han sido identificadas de novo se encuentra p/CAF, un co-activador que potencia la actividad transcripcional de p48, y ICAT, un inhibidor de la vía de señalización de la β-catenina. Se ha demostrado que ICAT se une a p48 y ambos son co-expresados en el páncreas durante el desarrollo y en el adulto. Utilizando diferentes modelos celulares, la sobreexpresión de ICAT en células tumorales acinares resultó en un cambio en el patrón de expresión de genes específicos del páncreas. Al mismo tiempo, se observó que niveles elevados de ICAT inhiben la interacción entre p48 y su co-activador p/CAF. Mientras que este complejo hetero-oligomérico es necesario para la expresión de los genes acinares, se demostró que ICAT está presente en un complejo PTF1 reconstituido in vivo. Finalmente, se observaron alteraciones en la expresión de ICAT en varios tipos histológicos de tumores pancreáticos, que posiblemente contribuyen a su fenotipo de diferenciación y propiedades neoplásicas.