Thesis advisor: Robert C. Bartlett / This dissertation is an attempt to understand and assess the presuppositions and methods of classical political science. In the first of its two parts, the dissertation examines the meaning of the traditional view, held by authorities as far removed from one another as Cicero and Hobbes, that Socrates was the founder of political philosophy. It does so by considering the intellectual autobiography that Socrates famously delivers in Plato's Phaedo. Socrates turned to the study of pre-scientific, common-sense moral and political opinions only after he had rejected, as a very young man, both the materialist and the teleological natural science of his philosophic predecessors. It is the task of the dissertation's first part to show how the general revolution in scientific thought presented in the Phaedo, a revolution known as "the Socratic turn," laid the theoretical groundwork for classical political philosophy's characteristic focus on pre-scientific, common-sense moral distinctions. After examining "the Socratic turn," the dissertation then outlines in its second part the approach to the study of politics that Aristotle advanced on the basis of it. In particular, Aristotle's statements on the method of political science in book I of the Ethics are shown to rely on the basic insights obtained through "the turn." / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Disagreements regarding to what degree right-turn lanes improve or worsen the safety of intersections and driveways provided the motivation and the need for this study. The objectives of this study were to: a) carry out an in-depth study to determine the safety impacts of right-turn movements in different contexts, and b) develop safety-based volume warrants for right-turn lanes if safety indeed improves. Lack of adequate study on the applicability of past warrants and guidelines for the specific context of right-turn movements made from major uncontrolled approaches at unsignalized intersections, and particularly driveways, on two-lane roadways provided the scope for this study. Five-year historical data of statewide traffic crashes reported on Minnesota's twolane trunk highways were analyzed using binary/multinomial logistic regressions. Conflicts due to right turns were analyzed by fitting least squares conflict prediction models based on the data obtained from field surveys and traffic simulations. The safety impacts of rightturn lanes were determined through crash-conflict relationships, crash injury severity, and crash and construction costs. The study found that the probabilities of right-turn movement related crash ranged from 1.6 to 17.2% at intersections and from 7.8 to 38.7% at driveways. Rear-end, samedirection- sideswipe, right-angle and right-turn crash types constituted 96% of right-turn movement related crashes. Rear-end crash probabilities varied from 13.7 to 46.4% at approaches with right-turn lanes and from 37.9 to 76.9% otherwise. The ratios of rearend/ same-direction-sideswipe crashes to conflicts were 0.759 x 10-6 at approaches with right-turn lanes and 1.547 x 10-6 otherwise. iv Overall, right-turn lanes reduced right-turn movement related crash occurrences and conflicts by 85% and 80%, respectively. Right-turn lanes also reduced crash injury severity, hence, reducing the economic cost by 26%. Safety benefits, in dollars, realized with the use of right-turn lanes at driveways were 29% and 7% higher compared to those at intersections at low and high speed conditions respectively for similar traffic conditions. Depending on roadway conditions, interest rate and construction costs, the safety-based volume thresholds ranged from 3 to 200 right turns per hour during the design hour at intersection approaches, and from 2 to 175 right turns at driveway approaches. / Civil and Environmental Engineering / College of Engineering

<p>The purpose of this essay is to explore how different means are used to create indeterminate meaning in Henry James’s novella<em> The Turn of the Screw</em>. It suggests that the indeterminacy creates gaps in the text which the reader is required to fill in during the reading process, and that this indeterminacy is achieved chiefly through the use of an unreliable narrator and of ambiguity in the way the narrator relates the events that take place. The reliability of the narrator is called into question by her personal qualities as well as by narrative factors. Personal qualities that undermine the narrator’s reliability are youth, inexperience, nervousness, excitability and vanity. Narrative factors that damage the narrator’s reliability concern the story as manuscript, the narrator’s role in the story she narrates, and her line of argumentation. The ambiguity in the way events are reported is produced by ambiguous words, dismissed propositions and omissions. The essay demonstrates how the unreliable narrator and the ambiguity combine to make the reader question the narrator’s account and supply his or her own interpretation of key elements in the story, that is, how they invite the reader to “co-author” the text.</p>

The City of Fredericton is the capital of New Brunswick, located in eastern Canada. Right-turn-on-red (RTOR) is a general practice at any traffic intersection in this maritime province. Many collisions between pedestrians and vehicles have been recorded at signalized intersections in the downtown area of the city. Due to the number of collisions, the City of Fredericton was interested in investigating how a restriction against RTOR could affect vehicular traffic. The purpose and goal of this project was to develop a calibrated traffic model of the downtown area of Fredericton that could be used for simulation studies. Two main changes were investigated: 1) a restriction against RTOR for each of eleven key intersections in the downtown area, and 2) a restriction against left-turns at one selected intersection. The traffic simulation model was also used for analyzing how factors such as pedestrian volumes, lane channelization, and turning proportions affect the changes in traffic conditions due to permitting, or prohibiting, right-turn-on-red. The traffic simulation model was created in the TSIS/CORSIM software. Several different scenarios were generated for analysis. The results of the simulation show that the traffic conditions in the whole downtown area will be affected when introducing a restriction against RTOR. Certain intersections show a relatively high change while others show no significant change at all. Several different factors were seen to affect the number of RTOR that could be performed at an intersection. One main factor was lane channelization. With a shared lane, the proportion of right-turning vehicles at the intersection was found to highly affect how many RTOR can be performed. Pedestrian volumes prove to be a third factor affecting the number of RTOR at an intersection. Overall results demonstrate that there are only a few intersections where it is suitable for the City of Fredericton to implement a restriction against RTOR.

Graphene – a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice of sp2-bonded carbon atoms – possesses unusual zero-gap band structure with linear band dispersions, accommodating photon-like, massless electrons that have exhibited a variety of surprising phenomena, primarily in DC transport, in the last several years. In this thesis dissertation, we investigate graphene’s AC or infrared properties in the presence of an ultrahigh magnetic field, produced by a destructive pulsed method. The linear dispersions of graphene lead to unequally spaced Landau levels in a magnetic field, which we probe through cyclotron resonance (CR) spectroscopy in the magnetic quantum limit. Specifically, using magnetic fields up to 170 T and polarized midinfrared radiation with tunable wavelengths from 9.22 to 10.67 μm, we experimentally investigated CR in large-area graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition. Circular-polarization-dependent studies revealed strong p-type doping for as-grown graphene, and the dependence of the CR fields on the radiation wavelength allowed for an accurate determination of the Fermi energy. Upon annealing the sample to remove physisorbed molecules, which shifts the Fermi energy closer to the Dirac point, we made the unusual observation that hole and electron CR emerges in the magnetic quantum limit, even though the sample is still p-type. We theoretically show that this non-intuitive phenomenon is a direct consequence of the unusual Landau level structure of graphene. Namely, if the Fermi energy lies in the n = 0 Landau level, then CR is present for both electron-active and hole-active circular polarizations. Furthermore, if the Fermi level lies in the n = 0 Landau level, the ratio of CR absorption between the electron-active and hole-active peaks allows one to accurately determine the Fermi level and carrier density. Hence, high-field CR studies allow not only for fundamental studies but also for characterization of large-area, low-mobility graphene samples.

Collaboration technologies are difficult to design due to the complex myr-iad of social, cognitive, and communicative aspects of group interactions. New interaction technologies like multitouch sharable interfaces, such asdigital tabletops, have lead to a renewed interest in designing collaborativetechnologies. This thesis focuses on turn-taking protocols as a coordinat-ing mechanism during collaborative work with digital tabletops. The goalwas to develop new conceptual designs and interactive mechanisms to sup-port face-to-face collaborations of small groups. Inspired by ethnographicalstudies of collaborative work and theories in distributed cognition and re-lated theories of language and action a model of collaborative turn-takingwas developed. Moreover, the thesis presents five design concepts and in-teraction components for the digital tabletop that exemplifies the differentproperties of the model.

This research is motivated by the proposition of the legitimacy of applying ¡§little theatre¡¨ as the mode of theatre management. The core context and the judgment of value of theater management today are founded basically on a ¡§large-scare theatre¡¨ paradigm; this causes, for most of the time, prejudice and insufficient result in managing theatrical affairs. To analyze the details of this problem, I started from rediscovering the ideological conflicts between Modernity and Post-Modernity, and tried to solve this dualistic misunderstanding by using ¡§Post-Modern Turn¡¨ as the mode of transcending. Since the term ¡§Post-Modern¡¨ is generally associated with social aspects as post-industry society, information society, organizational behaviors and consumption theory, etc. it is necessary to redefine theatre management as the issue of discussion in the realm of sociology. In order to approach my ideal strategy for today¡¦s theatre management, I developed three major parts as the frameworks of study: 1. the Post-Modern Turn of sociology of art, 2. five faces of modernization of Taiwan¡¦s modern theatre, 3. the Post-Modern Turn of organizational management and Taiwan modern theatre. I believe the difficulty of theatre management today lies not in the issue itself, but in the way we look at it. By relocating this problem in a social context, we can have a rethinking of how art management is possible, of exploring the updated and proper solutions for today¡¦s theatre management.

Hand raising is a common method in schools and a way for students to engage in the classrooms turn-allocation (Andersson &amp; Haglund 2006, p 35), but not all benefit from it. According to Dylan Wiliam (2011) hand raising divides the students by putting the students that participate in hand raising at an advantage versus the students that do not. This study aims to examine hand raising as a phenomenon and the students and teachers thoughts about hand raising. The main research questions were: How do the students perceive hand raising? How do the teachers reflect upon hand raising? How is hand raising usedas a tool by the students? The main reference to this study has been senior lecture Fritjof Sahlströms (1999) thesis Up the Hill Backwards. On International Constraints and Affordances for Equity-Constitution in the Classrooms of the Swedish Comprehensive School, were he debates around hand raising as a method for interaction with teachers and students. This study has also raised issues from social psychology such as norm and that humans are affected by the mere presence of other humans. The study has come about using both observations and group-intervjues with students from the range of six to eleven and a singel group-intervju with teachers. Results from the study shows that students consider hand raising as a method for keeping the classrooms atmosphere composed and that they raised their hands if they know the answer. The teachers discussed the difficulties concerning turn-allocations.

Double-nut anchor bolt systems are used in the erection of traffic signal poles, high-mast luminaries, and other highway appurtenances. An absence of a tightening standard for such systems decreases the confidence in their performance under fatigue loading. Past research has shown that a tightening standard should include the development of preload in the anchor bolt sufficient to provide adequate resistance to fatigue failure. Preload should be measured by a turn-of-the-nut method. Laboratory progressive tightening tests were performed in order to monitor the stress ranges occurring in the bolt at various locations of interest at various degrees of turn-of-the-nut tightness. Tests were performed on six diameters of anchor bolt ranging from 1 to 2-1/4 inches in diameter and two different categories of thread pitch: UNC and 8UN. Plots of stress range versus degree of tightness were developed for each test and evaluated to find the minimum degree of turn-of-the-nut at which stress range inside the nuts dropped below that outside the nuts. This shift was considered to be the principle theoretical indication of adequate performance. A fatigue test which saw failure outside the double-nut connection was set down as the practical indicator of adequate fatigue performance. The 2 inch 8UN bolt was chosen as the critical specimen due to its overall low generation of preload during tightening tests. Theoretical testing showed that 1/24 turn-of-the-nut would guarantee sufficient fatigue performance. Two practical fatigue tests of the bolt at that tightness saw one positive and one negative failure. After actual lab tests, finite element modeling was used to investigate the behavior of the bolt. It was found that performance did not see improvement until 1/12 turn-of-the-nut. After all results were considered, a standard of 1/6 turn-of-the-nut or refusal of tightening by specified methods was recommended, provided a minimum of 1/12 turn-of-the-nut was achieved. This value allows for ease of measurement, sufficient tightness, degree of safety, and has been shown in past testing not to cause failure through over-tightening. However, tightening to only 1/12 turn-of-the-nut still provided adequate performance.

The purpose of this essay is to explore how different means are used to create indeterminate meaning in Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw. It suggests that the indeterminacy creates gaps in the text which the reader is required to fill in during the reading process, and that this indeterminacy is achieved chiefly through the use of an unreliable narrator and of ambiguity in the way the narrator relates the events that take place. The reliability of the narrator is called into question by her personal qualities as well as by narrative factors. Personal qualities that undermine the narrator’s reliability are youth, inexperience, nervousness, excitability and vanity. Narrative factors that damage the narrator’s reliability concern the story as manuscript, the narrator’s role in the story she narrates, and her line of argumentation. The ambiguity in the way events are reported is produced by ambiguous words, dismissed propositions and omissions. The essay demonstrates how the unreliable narrator and the ambiguity combine to make the reader question the narrator’s account and supply his or her own interpretation of key elements in the story, that is, how they invite the reader to “co-author” the text.