Through a combination of personal interviews and participant-observation in three field sites ? the Tim Miller workshop and performance of October 2010 and the student organizations Cepheid Variable and the GLBT Aggies ? I argue that manifestations of utopian desire and performance circulate within and among marginalized groups on the Texas A&M University campus, undermining the heteronormative and monolithic utopia the university attempts to present. I participated in each night of rehearsal during the Tim Miller workshop, as well as the creation and performance of my own solo autobiographical monologue as a part of the ensemble. My participant-observation in Cepheid Variable and the GLBT Aggies was concurrent, consisting of attendance at both weekly organizational meetings and outside events sponsored by the organizations over two years. I argue that the Tim Miller workshop and performance is best understood by examining the intersection of queer intimacy, utopia, and performance. I argue that processes of connection, sharing, and mutual transformation allowed it to function as an example of queer utopian performance qua performance at Texas A&M. I explore the links between the ?nerd,? ?queer,? and ?family? identities of Cepheid Variable, arguing that the intersection of these identity-markers and the performance practices which reinforce them enable Cepheid Variable to create a utopian space on the Texas A&M campus for those students who do not fit traditional notions of Aggie identity. I explore two Cepheid performance practices: noise-making and storytelling, arguing that they construct, support, and interweave each element of Cepheid identity, allowing the organization to perpetuate and reaffirm its utopian and counterpublic statuses at Texas A&M. I explore what the GLBT Aggies claims to provide in theory, juxtaposed with what it actually accomplishes in practice. I examine a moment of crisis the LGBTQ community at Texas A&M faced in spring 2011. I argue that the utopia the GLBTA promises remains unfulfilled because the marginalization of the LGBTQ community at large leaves diversity within that community unaddressed. I conclude that utopian communities persist if able to adapt, and that the strength of the intimacy built into queer utopias in particular sustains them through time.

Background: Vietnam, like other low-income countries, is facing an epidemic burden of cardiovascular disease risk factors (CVDRFs). The magnitude and directions of CVDRF progression are matters of uncertainty. Objectives: To describe the epidemiological progression of CVDRFs and the preventive effects of community lifestyle interventions, with reference to the differences in progression of CVDRF patterns between men and women. Methods: The study was conducted during 2001-2009 in nationally representative samples and in a local setting of rural areas of Ba-Vi district, Ha-Tay province. Both epidemiological and interventional approaches were applied: (i) a population-based cross-sectional survey of 2,130 people aged ≥25 years in Thai-Binh and Hanoi; (ii) an individual participant-level meta analysis of 23,563 people aged 24-74 years from multiple similar surveys in 9 provinces around Vietnam; (iii) a 17-month cohort study of 497 patients in a hypertension management programme; (iv) a quasi-experimental trial on community lifestyle promotion integrated with a hypertension management programme, evaluated by surveys of 4,645 people in both intervention and reference communes before and after a 3-year intervention. Main findings: (i) in the general adult population ≥25 years, CVDRFs were common, often clustered within individuals, and increased with age; (ii) the Vietnamese population is facing a growing epidemic of CVDRFs, which are generally not well managed; (iii) it is possible to launch a community intervention in low-resource settings within the scope of a commune-based patient-targeted programme on hypertension management; (iv) community health intervention with comprehensive healthy lifestyle promotion improves blood pressure and some behavioural CVDRFs. Conclusion: Alarming increases in CVDRFs in the general population need comprehensive multi-level prevention strategies, which combine both individual high-risk and population health approaches. The commune-based hypertension-centred management programmes integrated with community health promotion are the initial but essential steps towards comprehensive and effective management of CVDRFs and should be part of an integrated and co-ordinated national program on the prevention and control of chronic diseases in low-resource settings like Vietnam.

This thesis is an analytical exploration of the influence of medieval theology on contemporary scholastic traditionalist polemics within Sunni Islam. Intra-Sunni sectarian polemics as an emerging area of study is relatively untouched as opposed to sectarian violence. A detailed mapping of the theological terrain from the genesis of Sunni ‘orthodoxy’ and the perennial tensions within the classical theological tradition and how they have manifested parochially into the contemporary scholastic traditionalist trends of the Barelwi, Deobandi, Ahl-i-Ḥadīth and Wahhābī within the backdrop of the Sufi-Salafi contestation of Sunni authenticity is timely. Concern regarding growing extremism prompted Muslim Ulama, academics and political leaders to create unity initiatives such as the Amman Message and the Sunni Pledge in dealing with this problem and also delineating ‘orthodoxy’. The theological basis for these neo-credos can be explained as doctrinal ‘minimalism’. Minimalism is a growing social construction of scholastic traditionalists through which the warring factions are attempting to salvage the historical continuity with ‘orthodoxy’ and placate Sunni infighting. The thesis aims to examine the theological veracity of the minimalism project and explore its doctrinal, methodological and ethical facets. Polemicism and excommunication is the current state of affairs within Sunni theological discourse. Minimalism is deemed as the antidote to this problem.

Référentiel, réflexif, métaphorique constituent un échantillon des expressions et concepts employés pour qualifier les films de Tim Burton, attestant du lien qui unit ce corpus à l'histoire de son art et à son époque. Partant de ce constat, l'hypothèse proposée ici affirme que cette filmographie constitue un cinéma de la ré-imagination. Le cinéaste emploie lui même ce terme pour définir l'approche conceptuelle de son cinéma. Cette thèse explique d'abord le choix de ce mot par rapport aux concepts pré existants pour ensuite analyser ce qu'il englobe et implique dans la filmographie de Tim Burton. Ses films sont conçus comme des boîtes à jouets rassemblant souvenirs, imagination et pièces intactes. Ces éléments constituent la base formelle des ré imaginations burtoniennes. Ils s'entremêlent au sein d'une même image, tout au long d'un fil narratif parfois ténu. En adoptant des procédés cinématographiques et filmiques ramenant vers des âges antérieurs du septième art et rattachant les intrigues au domaine de l'imaginaire par l'intermédiaire de manifestations mentales, Tim Burton construit un cinéma ancré dans le passé, essayant de reconstituer le royaume de l'enfance en le reconstituant avec ce qu'il en reste. / Referential, reflexive, metaphorical – these are a few recurrent terms and concepts used to describe the films of Tim Burton, which attest to the links between this corpus and the history of his art and his era. Based on this observation, the present hypothesis argues that Burton’s filmography is a cinema of re imagination. The filmmaker himself uses this term to describe the conceptual approach to his films. This dissertation explains the choice of re imagination in regard to other pre existing concepts before analyzing the implications of re imagination in Tim Burton's filmography. His films are designed like toy chests in which memories, imagination, and intact pieces are collected. These elements establish the formal base of Tim Burton's re imaginings. They come together to form a single image by means an often tenuous narrative thread. By adopting cinematographic and filmic processes which look back to prior eras of the seventh art, and by bringing stories into the domain of the imagination through the intermediary of mental manifestations, Tim Burton builds a cinema that is anchored in the past, all while trying to restore the kingdom of childhood with what is left behind.

Si la présence d’une activité verrière ne semble être connue qu’à partir du XIVème siècle dans le quart sud ouest de la France, c’est véritablement au XVIème siècle qu’elle prend toute son ampleur et atteint son apogée, au vu des nombreux ateliers établis à cette période. En confrontant les archives écrites et les « archives du sol », cette étude vise à apporter un éclairage sur l’évolution de la production du verre entre la période médiévale et la période moderne, et sur les relations qui régissent les maitres verriers, les marchands et les producteurs de matières premières entrant dans la composition du verre. Les flux d’échanges issus de cette activité verrière mettent en relief l’activité économique importante générée au départ d’installations ancrées localement à proximité des ressources forestières indispensables au fonctionnement des fours des verriers, et qui pourtant irriguent l’économie régionale en favorisant les échanges commerciaux et en développant un écosystème autour du transport, de l’activité bancaire, et du troc de marchandises. L’une des caractéristiques fortes de ces échanges commerciaux est qu’ils allient deux espaces maritimes, mer méditerranée et océan atlantique, sur un axe reliant La Rochelle à Narbonne. L’étude des objets en verre fabriqués dans cette zone géographique tend plutôt à montrer que la fabrication est diversifiée, tant vis-à-vis des types d’objets que dans les formes réalisées. Seules quelques productions locales particulières semblent s’adresser à un marché local ou régional. / If the presence of a glass activity seems known only from the 14th century on in the South-West of France, it's truly in the 16th century that it spread and reached its peak, given the numerous workshops established at this time. Comparing the written archives and « ground archives », this study aims to shed light on the evolution of glass production between medieval times and modern times, and on the connections between glass-blowers, merchants and producers of raw materials necessary to the production of glass. The trade flows springing from this glass activity highlight the significant economic activity generated from local plants near forest ressources necessary for the working of glass ovens. These local plants supply regional economy favouring trade and developing an ecosystem based around transport, banking and bartering. One of the main characteristics of this trade is that it linked up two maritime areas, the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic Ocean, on an axis from La Rochelle to Narbonne. The study of the glass objects made in this geographical area tends to show that the production is varied, both in terms of the types of objects and of the shapes created. Only a few particular local productions seem to be destined to a local or regional market.

In 2018 the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) funded a study in which data were collected to evaluate performance measures for UDOT's Incident Management Team (IMT) program. After that study was completed, UDOT received funding to expand the size of its IMT program. Additionally, TransSuite, a data source used by the UDOT Traffic Operations Center to log incident-related data, was reconfigured to provide a higher quantity of performance measure data. This study made use of the new data source, in addition to Computer Aided Dispatch logs provided by the Utah Highway Patrol that were used in the first study, to collect performance measure data of the expanded program and measure the impacts of the IMT program expansion. Using these two datasets, a reanalyzed 2018 dataset and a new 2020 dataset, a comparison of performance measures was made. Performance measures studied included those defined as important by the Federal Highway Administration's Focus States Initiative in 2009, namely Roadway Clearance Time, Incident Clearance Time, and Response Time. These performance measures were calculated for IMT responders at 320 incidents in 2018 and 289 incidents in 2020. In addition, data regarding the affected volume associated with incidents, the excess travel time accumulated due to incidents, and the excess user cost associated with incident congestion were gathered. In 2018, 188 incidents were analyzed for these user impacts, and in 2020 144 incidents were analyzed. Statistical analyses were conducted to compare IMT performance between the two years and to determine relationships between performance measures and user impacts. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic affected traffic volumes during this study, and statistical analyses were adjusted to account for volume differences between the two years. Results indicated that the expansion of the IMT program has allowed UDOT to respond faster to incidents, and respond to a larger quantity of incidents over a larger coverage area and in extended operating hours. Performance of the expanded IMT program has had significant effects in reducing incident-related congestion and its costs.

Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the world, and the number of people with the disease increases each year. The therapy of the disease currently stands on four pillars; surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy. Through the past few years, immunotherapy has become the fastest developing treatment modality. However, despite its unprecedented efficacy in some patients, the majority of patients still does not respond to the therapy. Therefore, there is a need to investigate the mechanisms that make immunotherapy inefficient. Cell-based cancer immunotherapy is the treatment modality which uses live ex vivo-produced tumor-targeting immune cells to treat cancer. One of the mechanisms that may compromise its therapeutic efficacy is the expression of inhibitory molecules on the surface of the produced immune cells. Tim-3 is the inhibitory molecule which attracts attention in recent years. Tim-3 expression in the tumor cells and the tumor-infiltrating immune cells is often associated with worse prognosis and more aggressive forms of the disease. However, its role in the in vitro or ex vivo-produced immune cells is difficult to predict. In this work, an in vitro study model which is based on in vitro-produced antigen-specific CD8+ T cells with high expression of Tim-3 has been...

In 2009 the Federal Highway Administration published a report regarding a Focus States Initiative that had been conducted with 11 states to discuss the development of national Traffic Incident Management (TIM) standards. Performance measures were defined, and a national TIM dashboard created, but very little data has been added to the dashboard since. In this research study, performance measures of the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) TIM program were analyzed. Data availability was first assessed to determine whether these performance measures could be calculated. It was determined that crash response data available from the Utah Highway Patrol (UHP) could be used to calculate the performance measures of Incident Management Teams (IMT) and UHP units; however, roadway clearance data were missing. UHP personnel agreed to collect additional data regarding crash roadway clearance for six months of the study. Performance measures of response time (RT), roadway clearance time (RCT), and incident clearance time (ICT) were calculated for responding units at 168 crashes. Using the crash response data from UHP and traffic speed, travel time, and volume data from UDOT databases, 83 of the 163 crashes that met additional criteria were evaluated to determine the volume of traffic affected (AV) by each incident and the associated user cost (EUC). Statistical analyses to determine relationships between different measures such as RT, RCT, ICT, AV, and EUC were conducted to assist UDOT in optimizing the allocation of their IMT resources.

Recent work in the geohumanities has renewed a call for the inclusion of creative work within the discipline of geography. This dissertation works both creatively and critically to answer that call, and to contribute to the geohumanities generally and the subfield of geopoetics particularly. In the theoretical portion of this work, I draw from and dialogue with creative geographies, emotional geographies, nonrepresentational theory, and post-human geographies, arguing that geopoetics is both theory and practice-based and focuses on how to apprehend the world, how to acknowledge and practice the act of perceiving, and the relationship that grows through the act of perceiving and being perceived. This attendance is an ethical act; it helps to enrich understandings of place and of human relationships to the world. I use this understanding of geopoetics to rethink relationships to place through the embrace of poetic technique, an ethics of care, and an acceptance of situated, autobiographical emotion in practice. I use the work of three philosopher-poets (McKay, Zwicky, Lilburn) to argue that geopoetics is a relational ontology that helps contribute culturally to embodied understandings of ethics, landscape, and environment through its practice of attendance and perception. Separately, all three writers contribute variously to conceptualizations of wilderness, home and place; together, I propose that their work serves to further define geopoetics through the manner by which one attends to the world. I also specifically use Zwicky’s work on lyric to intervene in non-representational theory, clarifying ideas on a body-in-the-world. Attendance, for me, involves emotional, sensory, and philosophical engagement but is focused on the world, not on the perceiver. The creative portion of this dissertation puts the theoretical work into practice, adding to understandings of what geopoetics might do. This creative work is an act of attendance, which has as its root a geography of love and an emphasis on how to perceive. Its inclusion further validates creative practice and the inclusion of creative professionals within the discipline of geography. / Graduate / 2022-08-25

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