The present study examines predictors and consequences of self-handicapping and defensive pessimism (comprising defensive expectations and reflectivity) from a self-worth motivation perspective. Consistent with self-worth motivation theory, self-handicapping and defensive expectations are proposed as two strategies students use to protect their self-worth in the event of potential failure, and in some cases to enhance their worth in the event of success. Using longitudinal data derived from undergraduate students from three institutions in their first and second years at university, quantitative analyses, involving confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling, tested models in which a set of affective and motivational factors was proposed to predict self-handicapping, defensive expectations, and reflectivity. These three strategies were in turn proposed to predict a variety of academic outcomes including self-regulation, persistence, future academic plans, and grades. Both quantitative and qualitative data hold implications not only for current understanding and existing theory regarding self-handicapping and defensive pessimism, but also for educational practice and research dealing with these phenomena. On a more general level, data derived from the various studies provide new perspectives on defensive manoeuvring and the lengths to which students will go to protect their self-worth, the many reasons they pursue their studies in such a fashion and the diversity (and complexity) of consequences that follow from such behaviour / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>A common way to measure height in aerial vehicles is to use a radar height altimeter (RHM). Since the RHM transmits radar pulses that can be detected, a passive alternative would be desirable in military applications. The idea to use reflected signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS) as a bistatic radar, has been established over the last years. The GPS signals are already present and would not reveal aeroplanes in covert operations. </p><p>In this thesis, the use of reflected GPS signals as a bistatic, passive altimeter is examined. A simulation model has been developed and implemented, and simulations using the model have been done. Different types of ground cover have been investigated, both water and land types, with varying reflectivity and scattering behaviour. For larger terrain variations, e.g. mountains and valleys, a ground elevation database has been used. Furthermore, several parameters, like the antenna coverage and the satellite elevation angle, have been varied and the result of this examined. </p><p>The results of these simulations show that measuring height is possible for bothsea and land surfaces. The accuracy depends on several error factors, like a bias originating from surface roughness and measurement errors due to noise in the receiver. The simulations also show that the most important design parameter is the antenna, which must be designed to give a sufficiently large SNR, capture the specular reflection and avoid unwanted reflections.</p>

Relying mainly on R. B. Pippin’s and D. Moggach’s interpretative works on Kant and Hegel, the thesis tackles the problem of the reception of Kant by Hegel. It does so by looking into the impact of Kant’s first critique on the Preface, the Introduction and the first part of the section Self-consciousness of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Three Kantian conditions for there to be freedom are identified and shown to be reinterpreted by Hegel in a continuist perspective. These three conditions are spontaneity, reflectivity and negativity which propels and retains the free Kantian subject in the Hegelian becoming of reality.

Relying mainly on R. B. Pippin’s and D. Moggach’s interpretative works on Kant and Hegel, the thesis tackles the problem of the reception of Kant by Hegel. It does so by looking into the impact of Kant’s first critique on the Preface, the Introduction and the first part of the section Self-consciousness of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Three Kantian conditions for there to be freedom are identified and shown to be reinterpreted by Hegel in a continuist perspective. These three conditions are spontaneity, reflectivity and negativity which propels and retains the free Kantian subject in the Hegelian becoming of reality.

In this thesis, I examine the relationship between activism and the two introductory-level Women's Studies classes, Introduction to Women's Studies and Issues in Feminism, and the social justice mission of the Women's Studies department. These two classes are the pillars for the program and are often the first classes that draw students into the program. I propose that the Women's Studies department does promote social justice through the curriculum and there are ways that the department could do more to facilitate activism in the classroom and beyond the classroom. The Women's Studies department at the University of South Florida is one of the longest freestanding Women's Studies departments. The department was established in 1970 and as an academic field is a child of the idealism and activism of the feminist movement. I believe that Women's Studies as an academic discipline has a responsibility to promote social justice because of its parentage. A case study approach enables me to see how activism manifests in a very specific location and provides real-life examples that can then be applied and adapted to other programs. I conducted two different analyses of the department: a syllabus review and in-depth interviews with instructors. The intention of the syllabus review was to see how the classes present on paper. The interviews allowed me to examine what actually occurred in the classroom. I was able to provide a snapshot of the call to activism, the manifestations of activism, and the facilitation of activism, which enabled me to theorize new ways to incorporate activism into not only introductory-level classes, but to all Women's Studies classes.

A non-linear edge-preserving solution to the least-squares migration problem with sparseness & illumination constraints is proposed. The applied formalism explores Curvelets as basis functions. By virtue of their sparseness and locality, Curvelets not only reduce the dimensionality of the imaging problem but they also naturally lead to a dense preconditioning that almost diagonalizes the normal/Hessian operator. This almost diagonalization allows us to recast the imaging problem into a ’simple’ denoising problem. As such, we are in the position to use non-linear estimators based on thresholding. These estimators exploit the sparseness and locality of Curvelets and allow us to compute a first estimate for the reflectivity, which approximates the least-squares solution of the seismic inverse scattering problem. Given this estimate, we impose sparseness and additional amplitude corrections by solving a constrained optimization problem. This optimization problem is initialized and constrained by the thresholded image and is designed to remove remaining imaging artifacts and imperfections in the estimation and reconstruction.

Two complementary solution strategies to the least-squares migration problem with sparseness- & continuity constraints are proposed. The applied formalism explores the sparseness of curvelets on the reflectivity and their invariance under the demigration migration operator. Sparseness is enhanced by (approximately) minimizing a (weighted) l1-norm on the curvelet coefficients. Continuity along imaged reflectors is brought out by minimizing the anisotropic difussion or total variation norm which penalizes variations along and in between reflectors. A brief sketch of the theory is provided as well as a number of synthetic examples. Technical details on the implementation of the optimization strategies are deferred to an accompanying paper: implementation.

Relying mainly on R. B. Pippin’s and D. Moggach’s interpretative works on Kant and Hegel, the thesis tackles the problem of the reception of Kant by Hegel. It does so by looking into the impact of Kant’s first critique on the Preface, the Introduction and the first part of the section Self-consciousness of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Three Kantian conditions for there to be freedom are identified and shown to be reinterpreted by Hegel in a continuist perspective. These three conditions are spontaneity, reflectivity and negativity which propels and retains the free Kantian subject in the Hegelian becoming of reality.

Μελέτη με μετρήσεις ανακλαστικότητας ακτίνων-Χ προσρόφησης μορίων μικρού σχετικά μήκους (~ 2 nm) εντός πορώδους υμενίου αλουμίνας. Σκοπός της εργασίας είναι να διερευνηθεί καταρχήν η δυνατότητα της τεχνικής της ανακλαστικότητας να δώσει πληροφορίες για πορώδη υμένια, υμένια δηλαδή που η επιφάνειά τους παρουσιάζει μεγάλη τραχύτητα και κατόπιν να μελετηθεί η διείσδυση εντός των πόρων μορίων μικρού σχετικά μήκους. / Study with measurements of X-ray reflectivity, small molecules adsorption on length (~ 2 nm) in porous alumina film. The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of the reflectivity technique to provide information for porous films, films that the surface roughness is highly and then studied the penetration of molecules within the resources of a relatively small length.

Submitted by Renato da Anunciação Filho (renatoanunciacao@yahoo.com.br) on 2015-01-06T15:15:12Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE RENATO ANUNCIAÇÃO PUBLICAÇÃO (1).pdf: 2301973 bytes, checksum: 05da1dcf8506ee9518160e0acc31b351 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Auxiliadora da Silva Lopes (silopes@ufba.br) on 2015-01-08T14:54:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE RENATO ANUNCIAÇÃO PUBLICAÇÃO (1).pdf: 2301973 bytes, checksum: 05da1dcf8506ee9518160e0acc31b351 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-01-08T14:54:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE RENATO ANUNCIAÇÃO PUBLICAÇÃO (1).pdf: 2301973 bytes, checksum: 05da1dcf8506ee9518160e0acc31b351 (MD5) / O presente estudo apresenta os resultados da pesquisa realizada no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação da Faculdade de Educação, da Universidade Federal da Bahia, sob a orientação da Professora Doutora Vera Lúcia Bueno Fartes, para a obtenção do título de doutor. Tem como objeto da pesquisa o conhecimento e saberes profissionais dos técnicos industriais de nível médio das áreas de eletrotécnica e mecânica e tem como sujeitos da pesquisa 56 trabalhadores técnicos industriais de nível médio, tendo como campo de pesquisa uma indústria de cerâmicas localizada no Polo Petroquímico de Camaçari e uma empresa multinacional fornecedora de energia elétrica, cuja sede se localiza na cidade do Salvador. Procura entender e explicar, a partir da fundamentação teórica dos conceitos de trabalho profissional e cultura profissional, desenvolvida por Telmo Caria, modernidade e identidade, por A. Gidden, C. Dubar e Z. Bauman, dentre outros conceitos. Como e quando ocorrem os processos de mobilização dos conhecimentos e saberes dos profissionais técnicos industriais de nível médio, em situação de trabalho. Para alcançar este objetivo a pesquisa utilizou métodos quantitativos e qualitativos para coleta e análise dos dados levantados junto aos técnicos. Foi realizada pesquisa bibliográfica e pesquisa de campo com aplicação de questionários e entrevistas e utilizou também a análise estatística para a interpretação dos resultados obtidos. Através de uma pesquisa quali-quantitativa de natureza empírica, bibliográfica e documental, analisou-se os processo de mobilização dos conhecimentos e saberes dos profissionais tendo como cenário os fenômenos de mudanças da sociedade atual. Os resultados da pesquisa indicam que o processo de mobilização dos conhecimentos e saberes dos profissionais estudados, ocorrem fundamentalmente, na realização dos trabalhos em equipe. Que os saberes técnicos profissionais mobilizados equivalem em parte, aos adquiridos na formação acadêmica e outra parcela são decorrentes dos adquiridos nos processos de formação informal na interação com colegas profissionais e ou nos treinamentos no chão de fábrica, ou ainda em outros espaços formativos. / ABSTRACT This study presents the results of research conducted in the Post -Graduate Education, Faculty of Education, Universidade Federal da Bahia, under the guidance of Professor Vera Lúcia Bueno Fartes, to obtain the title of PhD. Its field of research knowledge and professional knowledge of the industrial middle level technicians in the fields of electrical engineering and mechanics. The survey was conducted with 56 workers at a ceramic Petrochemical located in the polo Petroquímico de Camaçari and professionals with a multinational company that supplies electricity, whose headquarters is located in the city of Salvador. Seeks to understand and explain, from the theoretical foundations of the concepts of professional work and professional culture, developed by Telmo H. Caria, modernity and identity, developed by Gidden, Dubar and Bauman, among other concepts, as and when they occur the processes of mobilization of knowledge and knowledge of industrial technical mid-level professionals in the work situation. To achieve this goal the research used quantitative and qualitative methods for data collection and analysis of data collected from the technicians. Conducted literature research and field research with questionnaires and interviews and we also used statistical analysis to interpret the results. Through a qualitative and quantitative empirical research, bibliographic and documentary nature, we analyzed the process of mobilization of expertise and knowledge of professionals in the scenery of the phenomena of change of current society. The survey results indicate that the process of mobilization of knowledge and expertise of industry professionals occur primarily in the work team. That professional technical knowledge equivalent mobilized in part, acquired in academic and other portion are due to acquired in informal processes in training and interaction with professionals in training or on the factory floor or in other formative spaces colleagues.