Cognitive impairment, “Chemofog”, has been well established as a negative outcome of otherwise successful medical radiation treatments. Mitigation of this negative feature would dramatically increase quality of life for those recovering from cancer treatment. There is currently no known intervention to protect or restore cognitive function of patients undergoing radiation treatments. Development of a multiple ingredient dietary supplement (MDS) is meant to offer a non-invasive therapy to help mitigate risk and decrease damage to individuals. The MDS was originally designed to off-set 5 key mechanisms associated with aging including oxidative damage, inflammation, impaired glucose metabolism, mitochondrial dysfunction and membrane deterioration. Radiation damage shares many of the same deficiencies that develop with age and supplementation with MDS would impact many of the same pathways. Changes in cytokine profile (inflammation markers), and biomarkers of behavioural functions, sensory functions, and oxidative damage provide preliminary evidence of MDS impacts. / Thesis / Bachelor of Science (BSc) / Cognitive impairment, “Chemofog”, has been well established as a negative outcome of otherwise successful medical radiation treatments. Mitigation of this negative feature would dramatically increase quality of life for those recovering from cancer treatment. There is currently no known intervention to protect or restore cognitive function of patients undergoing radiation treatments. Development of a multiple ingredient dietary supplement (MDS) is meant to offer a non-invasive therapy to help mitigate risk and decrease damage to individuals. The MDS was originally designed to off-set 5 key mechanisms associated with aging including oxidative damage, inflammation, impaired glucose metabolism, mitochondrial dysfunction and membrane deterioration. Radiation damage shares many of the same deficiencies that develop with age and supplementation with MDS would impact many of the same pathways.

В данной работе мы рассматриваем различный характер критики гендерных стереотипов в женской викторианской литературе на материале романов «Мельница на Флоссе» Джордж Элиот и «Жены и дочери» Элизабет Гаскелл. В первой части работы мы рассматриваем жанр романа воспитания, вопросы его генезиса и эволюции, а также подробно описываем женский роман воспитания как одну из его разновидностей. Кроме того, в теоретической главе мы также выявляем особенности репрезентации гендера в литературе (в частности, мы обращаем особое внимание на феномены женского письма и женского чтения) и рассматриваем гендер как социокультурное явление в викторианском обществе. Заключительные параграфы первой части освещают историко-культурный и социальный контекст творчества Дж. Элиот и Э. Гаскелл. Вторая часть нашей работы посвящена непосредственному анализу романов «Жены и дочери» и «Мельница на Флоссе». В ней последовательно рассматриваются такие аспекты текстов, как объектная и субъектная организация, нарративная структура и стилевые особенности. Большое внимание уделяется выделению собственно женской парадигмы становления в романах. Жанровый анализ произведений включает также выявление черт «двойного» романа воспитания в данных текстах. Две параллельные линии становления героя и героини составляют структурную основу данной разновидности жанра и играют важную роль в определении специфики критики гендерных стереотипов, так как в «двойных» романах воспитания можно увидеть четкое сопоставление мужской и женской парадигм становления и выявить различия между ними. Сравнительный анализ двух романов с привлечением изученного теоретического материала позволяет заключить, что ключом к пониманию специфики критики гендерных стереотипов в данных произведениях является роль общества как неотъемлемлемого фактора формирования личности и как контролирующей инстанции, которая предписывает нормы поведения для мужчин и женщин. / In this paper, we examine the different approaches to gender stereotypes criticism in Victorian novel on “The Mill on the Floss” by George Eliot and “Wives and Daughters” by Elizabeth Gaskell. The first part of the work is devoted to the genre of formation novel, the problems of its genesis and evolution, and also describe the female educational novel as one of its varieties. Additionally, the theoretical chapter also covers gender representation in literature (namely, we pay special attention to the phenomena of women’s writing and women’s reading) and consider gender as a sociocultural phenomenon in Victorian society. The concluding paragraphs of the first part cover the historical, cultural and social context of J. Eliot’s and E. Gaskell’s novel. The second part of our work provides an analysis of the novels "”Wives and Daughters"” and “Mill on the Floss”. It consistently deals with such aspects of a literary work as image and narrative structure, and features of style. Much attention is paid to the female characters development in the given novels. Genre analysis of works also includes revealing the features of the “double” educational novel in these texts. Two parallel lines of the male and female characters development form the structural basis of this genre and play an important role in rendering gender stereotypes criticism, as in the “double” educational novels one can see a clear juxtaposition of the male and female paradigms of self-fulfillment and reveal the differences between them. A comparative analysis of the two novels with the use of the studied theoretical material allows us to conclude that the key to understanding the nature of gender stereotypes in these works is the role of society as an integral factor in the formation of personality and as a controlling authority that prescribes norms of behavior for men and women.

The first-principles density functional theory (DFT) was implemented to investigate the structural, electronic and magnetic properties of vanadium (V) substituted and chalcogen (Se) vacancies in tungsten diselenide (WSe 2 ) monolayer, novel two dimensional (2D) monolayer (ML) structures in binary compounds ZnX (X= As, Sb, and Bi), and novel 2D electrides on transition metal-rich mono-oxide or chalcogenides, based on Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) exchange functional employed in Vienna Ab-Initio Simulation Packages (VASP). The inherent defect in 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) contains unavoidable substitutional defects and a certain amount of chalcogen vacancies. This type of defect affects the electronic and magnetic properties of 2D-TMDCs. To account for this fact, we demonstrated using DFT that the V-doped WSe 2 monolayer exhibits long-range ferromagnetic order. Further, the chalcogenide (Se) vacancies clustered around V-atom enhance the ferromagnetic properties of the system consistent with experimental findings. This dissertation explores the important role of Se-vacancies in the magnetic properties of the V-doped WSe 2 monolayer and proposes a method to enhance the magnetic properties of such 2D non-magnetic van der Waal (vdW) materials. In the second study, we have attempted theoretically to engineer the monolayer structure in II-V binary compounds ZnX with orthorhombic symmetry. We proved the dynamical stability of the bulk and ML structures manifested by the absence of imaginary frequencies in phonon dispersion curves. Our calculations on the density of states (DOS), and band structures using GGA indicate the increasing value of bandgap as well as the transition from indirect to direct bandgap while going from bulk to monolayer structure of ZnX. Our theoretical calculations will represent an archetype of novel 2D semiconductors on ZnX. Next, we have tailored using DFT, the structural and electronic properties of the 2D electrides that belong to transition metal-rich mono-oxide and chalcogenides with hexagonal (Hf 2 X; X = O, S, Se, Te), and orthorhombic (Ti2S and Zr2S) symmetry thereby introducing novel electrides to the electride family. The Bader charge analysis, electron localization function (ELF), projected DOS, and the calculated value of low work functions provides sufficient theoretical shreds of evidence to prove these materials as electrides.

No description available.

Master of Arts / Department of English / Dean G. Hall / Salman Rushdie's 1999 novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet is ostensibly a rock 'n' roll novel, largely set in the 1960s, that traces the commercial rise of Indian rock star protagonists Vina Apsara and Ormus Cama. As their fame and wealth rise to global status and their stage show comes to entail a logistical complexity of military proportions, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern the couple's earlier countercultural ideals within their new established culture status. I argue that despite the change from countercultural to establishment-based values in the novel's protagonists, Rushdie does make a case in The Ground Beneath Her Feet for the possibility of countercultural efficacy against the commodifying culture of global capitalism (which I refer to as the "Frame"). His recipe for combating the exclusive hierarchies produced by the Frame is a combination of the non-totalizing politics of postmodernism and the subversive potential of uncommodified rock music. I pay close attention to establishing the historical templates--John Lennon of the Beatles and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys--of the novel's protagonists in an effort to understand the sort of countercultural alternative Rushdie is proposing. I likewise focus on the novel's depiction of the Beach Boys' Smile album, which as a still commercially unreleased record, reinforces Rushdie's imperative in The Ground Beneath Her Feet for an uncommodifying counterculture and works in tandem with his portrayals of the artistic plights of several minor characters in the novel as well.

This dissertation focuses on the interdependency between causality, context and history in selected novels by E.L. Doctorow: The Book of Daniel (1971), Ragtime (1974), Loon Lake (1980), World's Fair (1985) and The Waterworks (1995). Doctorow' s fiction is marked by an apparent paradox: while it underscores fictionalization and sometimes distorts late nineteenth and twentieth century American history, it simultaneously purports to be a valid representation of the past. The novelist's implementation of causality which is a significant component of "the power of freedom", constitutes fiction's ability to convey truth without relying on factuality or "the power of the regime". According to Doctorow, the documented fact is already an interpretation which induces the perception that all documentation is subjective. The author composes fictional contexts that disregard the pretence of reliability in non-fictional texts. Doctorow focuses on how contexts are formed: the contexts are usually defined through the experience of characters who have been exposed to an event or events that were generated by motivations, for example, emotions of fear, racism, conviction, desire and greed, i.e., the catalysts that form history. Each of the novels discussed focuses on various aspects of society and the fate of specific individuals. The Book of Daniel proposes that a human being can only survive physically and spiritually by remaining a social entity. Ragtime focuses on the persistent illusion in history that society is fragmented. The various "faces" of society encountered by the main character in Loon Lake, mirror one another and reflect spiritual poverty. Consequently, Loon Lake demonstrates that the search for personal fulfilment does not require a physical journey, but an inner or spiritual exploration. World's Fair postulates that reality is never exclusively defined by either fortune or misfortune alone. The Waterworks offers perhaps one of the most significant evaluations of history as it perceives that the world in which we live is essentially unknown to us. We have neither the practical means to obtain a total perspective of what occurs in society (especially among politicians and the financially powerful) nor do we have sufficient skills to distinguish what the motivations of individuals' actions really entail. / Thesis (M.A.) Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2000.

This dissertation focuses on the interdependency between causality, context and history in selected novels by E.L. Doctorow: The Book of Daniel (1971), Ragtime (1974), Loon Lake (1980), World's Fair (1985) and The Waterworks (1995). Doctorow' s fiction is marked by an apparent paradox: while it underscores fictionalization and sometimes distorts late nineteenth and twentieth century American history, it simultaneously purports to be a valid representation of the past. The novelist's implementation of causality which is a significant component of "the power of freedom", constitutes fiction's ability to convey truth without relying on factuality or "the power of the regime". According to Doctorow, the documented fact is already an interpretation which induces the perception that all documentation is subjective. The author composes fictional contexts that disregard the pretence of reliability in non-fictional texts. Doctorow focuses on how contexts are formed: the contexts are usually defined through the experience of characters who have been exposed to an event or events that were generated by motivations, for example, emotions of fear, racism, conviction, desire and greed, i.e., the catalysts that form history. Each of the novels discussed focuses on various aspects of society and the fate of specific individuals. The Book of Daniel proposes that a human being can only survive physically and spiritually by remaining a social entity. Ragtime focuses on the persistent illusion in history that society is fragmented. The various "faces" of society encountered by the main character in Loon Lake, mirror one another and reflect spiritual poverty. Consequently, Loon Lake demonstrates that the search for personal fulfilment does not require a physical journey, but an inner or spiritual exploration. World's Fair postulates that reality is never exclusively defined by either fortune or misfortune alone. The Waterworks offers perhaps one of the most significant evaluations of history as it perceives that the world in which we live is essentially unknown to us. We have neither the practical means to obtain a total perspective of what occurs in society (especially among politicians and the financially powerful) nor do we have sufficient skills to distinguish what the motivations of individuals' actions really entail. / Thesis (M.A.) Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2000.

Master of Arts / Department of English / Timothy A. Dayton / This thesis project seeks to reconcile the literary criticism of Marxist critic and advocate of literary realism Georg Lukács with the writing of postmodern author Thomas Pynchon in order to validate the continued relevance of Lukácsian aesthetics. Chapter 1 argues that Lukács’ The Historical Novel is not only a valid lens with which to analyze Pynchon’s own historical novel, Mason & Dixon, but that such analysis will yield valuable insight. Chapter 2 illustrates the aesthetic transition from the historical drama to the historical novel by using Lukács’ ideas to explicate The Courier’s Tragedy, a historical drama found within the pages of Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. Chapter 3 applies Lukács’ ideas on the “world-historical” figure and the “mediocre” hero of the classic historical novel to Mason & Dixon. Chapter 4 asserts that Mason & Dixon enables contemporary readers to experience the novel as what Lukács calls a “prehistory” to the present. This chapter also illustrates how the prehistory of Mason & Dixon anticipates Pynchon’s nonfiction essay “A Journey into the Mind of Watts.” Finally, this chapter demonstrates how Pynchon avoids the pitfall of modernization in Mason & Dixon, which Lukács defines as the dressing up of contemporary crises and psychology in a historical setting. Chapter 5 ties together the work of the previous four chapters and offers conclusions on both what Pynchon teaches us about Lukács, as well as what Lukács helps us to learn about Pynchon.

This dissertation investigates the extent and type of influence the Shona folktale has had on the writing of the Shona novel. Of particular interest is how much influence the folktale has had on the early writers of Shona novels as compared to the modern writers. The study investigates folktale influence on the development of plot, setting and characterisation in targeted novels. With regard to the development of plot, the study focuses on folktale influence on the following aspects; the exposition, complication, climax and resolution. Looking at setting, the study investigates folktale influence on setting as place, time or social circumstances in which the stories happen. The study also investigates the type of characters the novelists portray and seek to detect any folktale influence on characterisation. / African Languages and Literature / Thesis (M.A.)

Scholars have long since identified a quixotic mode in fiction, acknowledging the widespread influence of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605-15) on subsequent texts. In most cases, “quixotic” signifies a preponderance of allusions to Don Quixote in a given text, such that most studies of “quixotic fictions” or “quixotic influence” are primarily taxonomic in purpose and in outcome: they name and catalogue a text or group of texts as “quixotic,” then argue that, by virtue of the vast and protean influence of Don Quixote, the quixotic mode in fiction is always divided, lacking any semblance of ideological consistency. I argue, however, that the very characteristics of Don Quixote that make him such an attractive literary model for such a broad range of narratives—his bookish idealism, his fixation on the upper-classed grandiosity of the lives of noble knights—also form the consistent, ideological groundwork of quixotism: the exceptionalist substitution of fictive idealism for material reality. By tracing the ways in which quixotes become mouthpieces for various exceptionalist arguments in eighteenth-century British and American texts, like Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1742), Tobias Smollett's Launcelot Greaves (1760), Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote (1752), Hugh Henry Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry (1792-1815), and Royall Tyler's The Algerine Captive (1797), among others, I demonstrate the link between quixotism and exceptionalism, or between fictive idealism and the belief that one (or one's worldview) is an exception to the scrutiny of the surrounding world.