Clathrates are a class of new materials that have an open-framework structure that allows guest atoms or molecules to be enclosed inside of their polyhedral framework. Varying the number, weight, and size of the guest species in a particular framework allows one to alter the physical properties of the clathrate. This relationship enables one to further the fundamental understanding of the physics and chemistry of the clathrate structure and use this knowledge to "tune" certain properties. This "tunability" of inorganic clathrates is of great interest as it allows one to optimize their physical properties; making them promising candidates for a range of applications such as thermoelectric, optoelectronic, and superconductivity. In this study, new synthesis methods of type I and II clathrates of group 14 are introduced, along with two new compositions of type I clathrates. A new synthesis method used to produce single crystal and microcrystalline Na8Si46 and Na24Si136 clathrates by the spark plasma sintering technique is introduced. Microcrystalline type I Na8Si46 and type II Na24Si136 are also selectively synthesized with no phase impurity of the other type using the low temperature ionic liquid method. In addition, the synthesis of microcrystalline Na8Ge3Si38 and single crystal Ba2Cs6Ga8Sn38 type I clathrates are presented for the first time.

This dissertation examines Jack London’s The Call of the Wild (1903) from a business organization perspective. The novel has long been read as a Naturalistic work with primitiveness and virility at its core. However, this study focuses on London’s presentation of the environment of dog-sledding in the Klondike, into which the dog Buck, his main character, is thrown, as not only primitive but also distinguished by complex organizational characteristics. The novel traces Buck's experiences with several groups of masters, each exhibiting a different leadership style. Buck begins as a mere “hand” in his organization, but he fights for leadership and eventually proves his excellence by rising to the leader position among the team. Although Jack London was never an organization man, his experience as a literary businessman and his previous experience as a manual laborer helped him capture the zeitgeist of a time when Americans experienced the peak of industrialization and, as a result, the ever increasing influence of business and business organizations in American society. London is one of the originators of a genre that might be referred to as business fiction. Two theories of Organizational Behavior, which is a field in the academic discipline of Management, were used for this study: David C. McClelland’s Achievement Motivation Theory and Robert J. House’s Path-Goal Leader Effectiveness Theory. Using McClelland’s theory, this study found that Buck has a high need for Achievement, and his high achievement motivation is contrasted with that of the other characters—both human and canine. Buck’s character in the novel is close to that of an entrepreneur as defined by McClelland, and thus the novel can be read as a story of a businessman who rises to become CEO owing to exceptional abilities as a business leader. In addition, this study applies House’s theory in evaluating the impact of the various leadership styles of human masters on the behavior and performance of subordinate members of their dog teams. The results of this case study of The Call of the Wild suggest the possibility of applying Organizational Behavior theories to interpreting other late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fictions. / text

"Icon," "representation," and "virtuality," are key elements to consider when reading multi-modal narratives, including graphic narratives. By considering in detail how these elements are realized in various examples, the author shows how the study of the comics can lay groundwork for critical reading across the technological continuum of storytelling.The author looks at how icon, representation, and virtuality interact in a reading of William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress. He then examines each term in more detail through readings of a variety of graphic narratives including Max Ernst's, Une Semaine de Bonte, Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, Craig Thompson's Blankets, Phoebe Gloeckner's Diary of a Teenage Girl, and Posy Simmonds's Gemma Bovery. The author distinguishes between two types of virtuality, internal and external, and ties the construction of virtuality to reader response theory. In exploring issues related to the icon, the author builds on Scott McCloud's conjecture that the iconic character is the means through which the reader inhabits the virtual space of the graphic story. The author advances the proposition that icons are metonymies and that graphic narratives are centered in metonymic, not metaphoric devices. He also undertakes a discussion of how icon operates within the expanding tradition of the "illustrated novel." Throughout the dissertation an attempt is made to express observation and analysis through continuous instead of binary descriptors in order to emphasize the cooperative rather than oppositional arrangements of word and image within the graphic narrative.The dissertation concludes with an extended examination of Will Eisner's contention that the use of stereotype is a necessity in graphic storytelling. Examples from Frederik Strömberg's Black Images in the Comics are used to test this theory and illustrate its consequences. The treatise finishes with an analysis of approaches to representation that avoid stereotypical treatment, are inclusive but sufficiently flexible to operate through caricature..These observations are applied to issues of characterization and representation in electronic gaming narrative. The author concludes that ethics, effectiveness, reputation and empathy are all compromised when artists resort to stereotypes.

Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, has been noted as an unconventional eighteenth-century novel and it has long been considered unadaptable and unfilmable. In the last decade, however, two popular adaptations of Tristram Shandy have appeared in new media forms: Martin Rowson’s 1996 graphic novel and Michael Winterbottom’s 2005 film. Since Sterne’s text denies the kind of transfer typical of literary adaptations, Rowson and Winterbottom adapt the conceptual elements. Through adaptation and media theory, this thesis defines the Shandean elements of Sterne’s novel and locates the qualities of the text retained in adaptation. Rowson and Winterbottom adapt the conceptual properties of Tristram Shandy, ‘the spirit of the text,’ into two distinct mediums. In an exploration of the conventions of each medium, this thesis argues that the adaptations of Tristram Shandy are true to its spirit, and both successfully adapt the unadaptable novel.

My study examines contemporary Asian American narratives of subject formation through the theoretical lens of the Bildungsroman. A European genre originating in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteen-century Germany, the conventional Bildungsroman is a literary tool whose main objective is to depict an idealized subject's modern socialization. As Franco Moretti nicely captures in his study of the Bildungsroman, The Way of the World, the genre's significance is, above all, its successful representation of a reconciliation of an individual's revolting desires and society's regulatory demands. While highlighting a harmonious convergence of an individual and society, Moretti points to a white European subject's becoming a normative citizen in the rise of bourgeois capitalism. American writers of Asian descent have both utilized and transformed the conventional Bildungsroman form to describe their particular subject formation in the United States. The Asian American Bildungsroman differs from the white American as well as the European Bildungsroman, both formally and thematically, mainly because the racial group's social, political, and economic conditions have been marked by the U.S. exclusion of Asians. Asian American writers' generic interventions of the Bildungsroman thus exhibit their distinctive formal interventions and textual strategies to respond to legal and social exclusions of Asians in this country. In reading four Asian American narratives of subject formation, either novelistic or (auto)biographical in form, I argue the writers invented new versions of the genre, including the communal, the assimilative, the deconstructive, and the competitive Bildungsromane. This dissertation examines how conditions of textual expressions of the contemporary Asian American Bildungsroman have been not only predominantly marked by race but also further affected by class. The significance of the Asian American Bildungsroman is at once its interrogation of the contradiction within the American ideals and its construction of Asian American subjecthood.

The subject of this work is analyses and interpretation of David Lodge´s campus novels. In the concrete, the diploma paper is focused on sources and elements of comicality, especially humour, satire and parody, in Lodge´s free trilogy Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work. The starting point of this diploma paper is characterisation of the genre of the campus novel, with the inclusion of the social situation in the period of the genesis of this genre, and the short outline of its representatives, with emphasis on the novel of Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim. In the following the work considers the ways of the realisation of comicality in the text and from this basis the practical part derives. The main aim is to point out the ways of usage of comic in Lodge´s campus novels and this purpose is achieved in the analysis of the particular texts.

Submitted by JÚLIO HEBER SILVA (julioheber@yahoo.com.br) on 2018-07-10T12:11:26Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Camila Santin Calçada Silva - 2018.pdf: 16713737 bytes, checksum: 29ba6c90635d7281096c48b3e54fe4cc (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2018-07-11T10:37:23Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Camila Santin Calçada Silva - 2018.pdf: 16713737 bytes, checksum: 29ba6c90635d7281096c48b3e54fe4cc (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-11T10:37:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Camila Santin Calçada Silva - 2018.pdf: 16713737 bytes, checksum: 29ba6c90635d7281096c48b3e54fe4cc (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-06-21 / Con base en la importancia de la literatura para la construcción del ser humano pleno y la importancia de los cómics para la formación del lector, en el presente estudio se abordó el análisis de obras denominadas clásicas transpuestas para el género graphic novel, término acuñado por el cuadrinista y la importancia de los cómics para la formación del lector, los estudiosos de las artes gráficas, Will Eisner. Así se seleccionaron cinco obras del Programa Nacional Biblioteca Escolar PNBE entre los años 2006 a 2014, período en que obras en este género fueron incluidas en los edictos de compra gubernamental. En la constitución del presente corpus, elegimos el análisis de las transposiciones de O Guarani (2010) por Luiz Gê e Ivan Jaf, Frankenstein (2012) transpuesta por Taísa Borges, Leonardinho - memorias del primer malandro brasileño (2011) de Walter Pax y Vicente Castro, Don Quijote (2005) de Caco Galhardo. Nos interesó comprender el recorrido y la consolidación de las transposiciones y su importancia en la constitución del alumno-lector. En concreto, cuáles los procesos y caminos fueron tomados por los cuadrinistas al transponer obras literarias al género cuadrinizado. La presente investigación se basó en el análisis de pensadores de las áreas de las Artes Gráficas, así como pensadores ligados a los Estudios Literarios tales como Eisner (1989); McCloud (2005); Barbieri (2017); Vergueiro (2007), Ramos (2014); Hutcheon (2013); Andraus (2006); Paiva (2012); Cosson (2014); (Cagnin (1975), Santaella (2012), Bahía (2012); entre otros . / Tendo como base a importância da literatura para a construção do ser humano pleno e a importância dos quadrinhos para a formação do leitor, a presente pesquisa debruçou-se sobre a análise de obras ditas clássicas transpostas para o gênero graphic novel, termo cunhado pelo quadrinista e estudioso das artes gráficas, Will Eisner. Assim foram selecionadas cinco obras do Programa Nacional Biblioteca Escolar PNBE entre os anos de 2006 a 2014, período em que obras neste gênero foram inclusas nos editais de compra governamental. Na constituição do presente corpus, elegemos a análise das transposições de O Guarani (2010) por Luiz Gê e Ivan Jaf, Frankenstein (2012) transposta por Taísa Borges, Leonardinho – memórias do primeiro malandro brasileiro (2011) de Walter Pax e Vicente Castro, Dom Quixote (2005) por Caco Galhardo. Interessou-nos compreender o percurso e consolidação das transposições e sua importância na constituição do aluno-leitor. Em específico, quais os processos e caminhos foram tomados pelos quadrinistas ao transporem obras literárias para o gênero quadrinizado. A presente pesquisa se pautou na análise de pensadores das áreas das Artes Gráficas, bem como pensadores ligados aos Estudos Literários tais como Eisner (1989); McCloud (2005); Barbieri (2017); Vergueiro (2007), Ramos (2014); Hutcheon (2013); Andraus (2006); Paiva (2012); Cosson (2014); Cagnin (1975), Santaella (2012); Bahia (2012); entre outros.

Orientador: Eric Mitchell Sabinson / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-21T13:58:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Salmistraro_Renan_M.pdf: 708758 bytes, checksum: 70105929fb47a6129b578e18b85a13d9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: Malone meurt joga com a tradição realista do romance. Esse jogo reflete na criação do enredo, dos personagens e do estilo da narrativa e reflete como Beckett interpreta o que comumente é encarado como a realidade / Abstract: Malone meurt is a joke of the realistic narrative. The novel's structure - the characters, the events, and the style of the narrative - is an example of how Beckett interprets what is considered as the real world / Mestrado / Teoria e Critica Literaria / Mestre em Teoria e História Literária

Nombre de lectures concernant la fiction d’espionnage de John le Carré s’accordent sur la place particulière que celle-ci occupe au sein du genre. Pourtant, aucune ne met en regard la spécificité des romans et de l’écriture le carréenne, avec ses emprunts au roman de détection ou au roman américain hard-boiled, et le contexte politique, philosophique et épistémologique. Lorsque les premiers romans de le Carré sont publiés, dans les années 1960, le monde connaît d’importants bouleversements sociaux et politiques. Si de nouveaux enjeux naissent alors dans le roman d’espionnage, et si la fiction de John le Carré fait partie de celles qui incarnent ces changements, on retrouve plus particulièrement chez l’auteur les marques de la rupture épistémologique des années 1960 : flexibilité des valeurs morales au sein des services de renseignements, vide dogmatique, et parfois idéologique, chez l’agent professionnel, ou encore remise en cause de l’Histoire, qui est perçue chez le Carré comme le résultat d’actes de manipulation. Ainsi, en entrant dans l’ère du soupçon, telle qu’elle est dépeinte et magnifiée dans le monde secret de le Carré, son oeuvre offre un reflet des inquiétudes qui marquent la postmodernité de la fin du XXe siècle. Pourtant, l’oeuvre s’en éloigne d’un autre côté en ce qu’il ne renvoie pas à un vertige sans fin du sens ou une absence totale de vérité. Il laisse la possibilité au héros d’évoluer et d’apprendre. D’un point de vue littéraire, bien que le Carré suive le modèle d’écriture du roman d’espionnage, il l’a aussi en partie refaçonné de l’intérieur en le tirant du côté du roman policier et de la quête de vérité mais aussi en l’enrichissant des questions postmodernes. L’oeuvre de l’auteur se retrouve donc à une position médiane : il est entré dans la postmodernité sans toutefois céder à l’excès de la multiplicité ou du chaos et il continue d’utiliser les conventions d’un genre qu’il maniepour les faire évoluer vers une réflexion sur la place de l’être humain / Many readings of John le Carré’s spy fiction agree on its particular position within the genre. However, none link the specificity of the le carrean novels and writings, borrowing from the detective novel and the American hard-boiled novel, to the political, philosophical and epistemological context. When the first novels by John le Carré were published, in the 1960s, the world was facing great political and social upheavals. If new elements are then apparent in the spy novel, and if le Carré’s fiction is one of those which embodies these changes, traces of the epistemological break of the 1960s is clear in the author’s works: the flexibility of the moral values within the secret services, the dogmatic, and sometimes ideological, void in the professional agent, or again the reassessment of History, perceived as the result of acts of manipulation in le carrean fiction. Therefore, while his work enters the era of suspicion, as described and magnified in the covert world of John le Carré, it is a reflection of the anxieties specific to postmodernity at the end of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, on the other hand, the novels drift away from this as they do not convey an endless multiplication of meanings or a total absence of truth. The hero has the possibility of evolving and learning in his novels. From a literary standpoint, although le Carré follows the writing pattern of the spy novel, he has also partly reshaped it from the inside when he brought it towards the detective novel and the quest for truth and when he enriched it with postmodern questions. His work therefore occupies an in-between position: it has entered postmodernity without giving way to the excess of multiplicity or chaos, and it has continued to use the genre conventions to make them evolve towards a reflection on the place of the human being

In this dissertation, we describe a new approach for gene finding that can utilize proteomics information in addition to DNA and RNA to identify new genes in prokaryote genomes. Proteomics processing pipelines require identification of small pieces of proteins called peptides. Peptide identification is a very error-prone process and we have developed a new algorithm for validating peptide identifications using a distance-based outlier detection method. We demonstrate that our method identifies more peptides than other popular methods using standard mixtures of known proteins. In addition, our algorithm provides a much more accurate estimate of the false discovery rate than other methods. Once peptides have been identified and validated, we use a second algorithm, proteogenomic mapping (PGM) to map these peptides to the genome to find the genetic signals that allow us to identify potential novel protein coding genes called expressed Protein Sequence Tags (ePSTs). We then collect and combine evidence for ePSTs we generated, and evaluate the likelihood that each ePST represents a true new protein coding gene using supervised machine learning techniques. We use machine learning approaches to evaluate the likelihood that the ePSTs represent new genes. Finally, we have developed new approaches to Bayesian learning that allow us to model the knowledge domain from sparse biological datasets. We have developed two new bootstrap approaches that utilize resampling to build networks with the most robust features that reoccur in many networks. These bootstrap methods yield improved prediction accuracy. We have also developed an unsupervised Bayesian network structure learning method that can be used when training data is not available or when labels may not be reliable.