Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references and abstract.

The majority of research on academic procrastination has been conducted among undergraduate students, and there is relatively little research investigating procrastination among doctoral students. PhD students are different from undergraduates: they might need a higher level of self-regulatory ability to conduct research. The aim of this thesis was to fill the research gap in the investigation of academic procrastination among PhD students in the UK. More specifically, the current investigation combined different perspectives to examine the extent to which PhD students procrastinate, explores the relationships between a variety of psychological variables, doctoral satisfaction and academic procrastination, and identifies the antecedents and influence of procrastination in relation to PhD students’ own experience. This thesis comprises three studies. Firstly, a cross-sectional study (N=285) was conducted in order to assess the relationship between doctoral satisfaction, Big Five personality traits, self-efficacy, self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and academic procrastination. In Study 2, a longitudinal research design was employed to examine the stability of the identified relationships over a 12-month period (N=79). The results indicated that doctoral satisfaction and depression had long-term influence on PhD students’ procrastinatory behaviour. In addition, conscientiousness was found to have an effect on academic procrastination only in the cross-sectional study, while openness was found to predict procrastination longitudinally. Moreover, doctoral satisfaction also had meditional effect on the relationship between personality traits, self-efficacy, anxiety, and procrastination. In Study 3, the antecedents and consequences of academic procrastination in terms of UK PhD students’ own perspectives were explored in twenty-one in-depth interviews. Data were thematically analysed and a description of the themes concerning antecedents, positive and negative consequences of procrastination, and coping strategies used to help reduce procrastination, is provided. The findings indicates that PhD students’ procrastination is a multifaceted phenomenon with cognitive, affective, and behavioul factors influencing its likelihood. Causes and effects of academic procrastination among PhD students are discussed on the basis of findings from the quantitative and qualitative studies, by considering individual differences, psychological state, and contextual factors in a new conceptual model of academic procrastination. The findings point to a range of possible procrastination-reduction interventions focused on doctoral satisfaction and psychological wellbeing. The strengths and limitations of this work are discussed.

This thesis breaks new ground in Poor Law Studies. It isolates for detailed scrutiny the treatment of a particular social group, the aged poor. Traditional sources have been approached for new answers to new questions, and in so doing, new methods of source exploitation have been evolved and utilised. The sources have been asked to provide information about dependent old age; the relationship between poverty and the length of the working life; sex differences; the proportion of the population which ended life as parish paupers. Key research has centred around the parish pension, its function, size and real value; crucially, the ability or otherwise of the pensioner to subsist on it. Consideration has also been given to the other components of the network of relief measures adopted by the parishes; relief in kind; housing and the standard of living; medical and nursing care; the role of the workhouse. The investigation has been carried beyond the limits of relief provided by the mechanisms of the Old Poor Law alone, to include external supportive agencies, such as the support of family and charity, which includes both charitable trusts and indiscriminate giving. Some light is thrown on ways the aged contributed to their own maintenance. The thesis tests the general hypothesis that all these various supportive systems produced an interlocking apparatus which involved the whole community in the support of the old, while to discuss their treatment within the limits of the poor law only, results in a narrow, incomplete and distorted narrative, serving only to perpetuate the traditional historical view of a harsh, punitive treatment, needing reassessment in the light of recent historical developments.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-29T11:11:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_6784_RANIELY DO NASCIMENTO KIIHL.pdf: 720532 bytes, checksum: ced1099838a2592adff5527f62dfc162 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-03-28 / A intenção principal desta pesquisa foi extrair elementos e inspiração do conceito de experiência estética presente na filosofia adorniana com o intuito de contribuir para o fortalecimento da teorização educacional crítica. Procuramos com isso pensar a escola enquanto lugar de experiência. Optamos por realizar uma pesquisa teórica na tentativa de ir a contrapelo aos aspectos pragmáticos do conhecimento. Dessa forma, não pretendemos dar respostas prontas à práxis educacional, mas sim refletir sobre o que compõe o trabalho educativo. Utilizamos como principal referencial teórico o filósofo Theodor W. Adorno, um dos teóricos mais eminentes da Escola de Frankfurt. Adorno considera que os produtos da indústria cultural operam no processo de regressão dos sentidos humanos e tem a semiformação como aliada e consequência direta da sua ação. A reflexão sobre a experiência com a arte se faz necessária diante deste contexto em que a arte se transforma em mercadoria e perde autenticidade e autonomia, ao mesmo tempo em que a sensibilidade é danificada frente à relação de troca estimulada pela sociedade do consumo. Ao final do estudo, foi possível concluir que, para Adorno, a experiência estética não é apenas emoção, mas também um processo de reflexão, de conhecimento e de formação. Dessa forma, o conceito pode servir de inspiração para se pensar o trabalho educativo no âmbito das teorias educacionais críticas, pois possui a responsabilidade de enriquecer o repertório cultural dos alunos e permite que tenham condições objetivas para se apropriarem do legado material e não material historicamente produzido.

Programa de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia. Departamento de Filosofia, Instituto de Filosofia, Artes e Cultura, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto. / Submitted by Maurílio Figueiredo (maurilioafigueiredo@yahoo.com.br) on 2014-08-06T18:42:04Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 22190 bytes, checksum: 19e8a2b57ef43c09f4d7071d2153c97d (MD5) DISSERTAÇÃO_ExperiênciaPensamentoTheodor.pdf: 1086108 bytes, checksum: e30ca3a83b43ef3aa4eac4957822a303 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Gracilene Carvalho (gracilene@sisbin.ufop.br) on 2014-08-29T16:48:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 22190 bytes, checksum: 19e8a2b57ef43c09f4d7071d2153c97d (MD5) DISSERTAÇÃO_ExperiênciaPensamentoTheodor.pdf: 1086108 bytes, checksum: e30ca3a83b43ef3aa4eac4957822a303 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-08-29T16:48:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 22190 bytes, checksum: 19e8a2b57ef43c09f4d7071d2153c97d (MD5) DISSERTAÇÃO_ExperiênciaPensamentoTheodor.pdf: 1086108 bytes, checksum: e30ca3a83b43ef3aa4eac4957822a303 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / O presente trabalho procura desenvolver as teses adornianas relativas à relação entre experiência e pensamento em três escritos da fase das décadas de 30 e 40 do pensamento do filósofo frankfurtiano Theodor W. Adorno, a saber: Ideia de História Natural, Dialética do Esclarecimento – esta em companhia de Max Horkheimer – e Minima Moralia. Trata-se de investigar nestas teses a relação que se encontra na base dos processos de formação e, em última instância, de administração da sociedade. Parte-se da hipótese de que o processo que leva o homem da experiência do mito à cultura e técnica atuais, arrasta consigo outro processo, a saber, que o progresso que aí é vislumbrado é também regressão: o empobrecimento da experiência e do pensamento. Para apresentar tal hipótese, o trabalho se divide em três etapas distintas. Em primeiro lugar, trata-se de desdobrar as faces natural e histórica do processo, uma estrutura que descortina os determinantes da experiência e do pensamento distintos que tendem, por sua vez, a justificar seja a regressão ou o empobrecimento culturais, seja o progresso humano através do aperfeiçoamento das técnicas à disposição. Em seguida, passando por leituras provenientes da antropologia (Marcel Mauss) e da sociologia (Émile Durkheim), procura-se evidenciar, através de uma leitura históricofilosófica, o processo de depauperamento do sujeito em vista da autoconservação, extraindo dele suas potencialidades subjetivas que nele interditam o caminho a um conhecimento mais objetivo. O processo dialético entre a restrição do indivíduo em suas potencialidades e o empobrecimento histórico da experiência e do pensamento conduz ao enclausuramento do sujeito dentro do mundo administrado, incapaz que se torna de pensar um mundo diferente deste. Ao final, a dissertação procura demonstrar a danificação da vida vivida como resultado de todo o processo em três vias: em primeiro lugar, o grau de alienação atingido nos mais recônditos espaços da vida através dos aforismos de Minima Moralia; segundo, a exploração econômico-cultural através dos mecanismos de entretenimento da indústria cultural; terceiro e último, o cenário político, a práxis alienada de toda teoria, a experiência separada do pensamento e seus resultados funestos para a sociedade na forma dos elementos de antissemitismo. __________________________________________________________________________________________ / ABSTRACT: This work develops the adornian theses relating to the connection between experience and thought in three writings of the frankfurtian philosopher Theodor W. Adorno of 30 and 40 decades, namely: The Idea of Natural-history, Dialectic of Enlightenment – this at Max Horkheimer’s company – and Minima Moralia. It’s about to investigate in theses the connection that is at the basis of the processes of society’s formation and, ultimately, of administration. This work starts from the hypothesis that the process that leads man from the myth experience to the current culture and technique, drags another process, namely, that there is progress is also glimpsed regression: the impoverishment of experience and thought. To show such hypothesis, the work divides into three different stages. First of all, it’s about to unfold the natural and historical faces of the process, a structure that unveils the different experience and thought determinants that tends to, on the other hand, to justify, whether the cultural regression or the impoverishment, whether the human progress through of improvement of the available techniques. Next, passing by readings from anthropology (Marcel Mauss) and sociology (Émile Durkheim), this work tries to show, through a historical-philosophical reading, the impoverishment process of the subject in view of selfpreservation, extracting from it the subjective potentialities that close the way to a more objective knowledge. The dialectical process between the individual’s restriction on its potentialities and the historical impoverishment of the experience and thought leads to subject’s enclosure inside of the administrated world, incapable of thinking a different world from this. At the end, this paper tries to demonstrate the damaged of lived life as a result of all the process at three ways: first, the level of alienation achieved in the more remote places of life through of Minima Moralia’s aphorisms; second, the economic and cultural exploration through the cultural industry’s entertainment mechanisms; third and last, the political setting, the alienated praxis of all the theory, the experience separated from the thought and its fatal results for the society in the anti-Semitism elements form.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Tozer’s ministry is the extent to which he drew from the writings of medieval Catholic mystics. In fact, twenty-eight of the thirty-five books on his recommended reading list were written by Catholics who lived either during or soon after medieval times. Needless to say, this is not something people would normally expect from a pastor in the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Nevertheless, Tozer appears to have been profoundly influenced by these writers and developed a deep appreciation for them. This dissertation argues that while A. W. Tozer had a number of notable mystical tendencies, his spiritual insights are demonstrably within confessional evangelical boundaries. In other words, he drew deeply from the well of medieval Catholic mysticism but was, in the end, successful in maintaining his confessional evangelical identity and values. He was nourished by what he viewed as true and carefully discarded the rest. Furthermore, in demonstrating Tozer’s confessional evangelical identity, this dissertation also describes the distinct contours of his thoughts about various matters central to evangelicalism. And to conclude, the dissertation considers how Tozer is a model of how Christians can be uncompromising in their doctrinal convictions and yet benefit from a wide variety of spiritual writers, even those of other traditions.

Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-01T23:39:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_8245_194-Vinícius de Souza Baptista.pdf: 1751010 bytes, checksum: 8aafd936086e86b51dcf1cfef3770f0b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-05-19 / Ao se estudar História do Pensamento Econômico (HPE) nos livros-textos de graduação, percebe-se que o tratamento dado ao triunvirato formado por William Stanley Jevons, Léon Walras e Carl Menger mostra que suas ideias eram homogêneas. Entretanto, na leitura dos principais livros de Jevons, percebe-se que há um distanciamento de ideias e de definições bastante grande entre ele e, por exemplo, Walras, tal como ambos também concluíram em suas correspondências. A intenção desse trabalho é de revisitar as obras de William Stanley Jevons a fim de desomogeneizá-lo dos outros dois marginalistas. Para isso, na primeira parte desse trabalho, serão analisadas as principais obras de lógica de Jevons e de sua obra em metodologia The Principles of Science, uma vez que, segundo Mosselmans (1998), Stanley Jevons tentou aplicar seu conhecimento em lógica na Economia. No segundo capítulo, de posse dos argumentos lógicos e metodológicos de Jevons, será feita uma análise histórica e econômica da obra The Coal Question e suas consequências na vida acadêmica de Jevons. Neste mesmo capítulo serão analisadas as Teorias da Utilidade, da Troca e do Trabalho de modo que se evidenciem os principais conceitos e métodos matemáticos utilizados pro Jevons no livro The Theory of Political Economy. Também será analisada a Teoria do Sun-spot considerada o primeiro passo na Manchester Statistical Society em analisar os ciclos econômicos. Por fim, no último capítulo, será exposta a tese de William Jaffé sobre a desomogeneização do triunvirato marginalista e, nas seções subsequentes, haverá a tese levantada por Sandra Peart sobre a re-homogeneizaçao de Jevons e Menger.

Os carrapatos são artrópodes hematófagos, vetores de doenças. Vacinas são uma alternativa para o seu controle, já que esses parasitas durante a infestação, estimulam as respostas imunes do hospedeiro, as quais são implicadas em sua rejeição. As glândulas salivares do parasita são importantes para permitir a alimentação e para mediar os mecanismos de escape às defesas do hospedeiro. Diversas evidências indicam que ocorre reatividade cruzada entre espécies de carrapatos e que reações de hipersensibilidade cutânea tardia (DTH) são correlacionadas com resistência ao carrapato. A possibilidade de vacinar cachorros que são parasitados pelo R. sanguineus com antígenos do carrapato do boi, o R microplus, foi investigada por meio da análise in silico de 45 GIs de R microplus clonados em vetor plasmidial (TOPO VR2001), dentre os quais 14 Gls de R microplus se revelaram mais similares a sequências do R sanguineus, e foram empregados para avaliar: 1) A capacidade em elicitar reações cutâneas tardias em cobaias imunes a carrapatos por meio de infestações prévias com R sanguineus. 2) A capacidade de vacinas contendo GIs individuais em afetar infestações de camundongos com adultos de R sanguineus. 3) a capacidade do GI induzir anticorpos específicos após vacinação em camundongos. Dos 14 GIs testados, apenas dois não induziram reações cutâneas, quatro não afetaram nenhum parâmetro parasitológico da infestação, e três não induziram a produção de anticorpos nesses animais. Dentre os GIs, sete foram escolhidos para compor uma vacina multigênica contra o carrapato do cão R sanguineus. A vacina foi capaz de induzir resistência á infestação por R sanguineus em camundongos e em cachorros vacinados evidenciadoa pela diminuição do número de fêmeas que conseguiram colocar ovos, do peso médio da massa de ovos produzidos por essas fêmeas, do índice reprodutivo dessas fêmeas, e da taxa de eclosão das larvas, demonstrando que GIs de R microplus podem ser alvos para formulação de uma vacina contra o carrapato R sanguineus. / Ticks are arthropod vectors of disease. Vaccines are an alternative to chemicals for controlling ticks because during infestations these parasites stimulate host immune responses such as delayed hypersensitivity skin reactions (DTH), which are involved in their rejection and are correlated with resistance to ticks. Tick salivary glands are important for the parasite to acquire blood meals because their products mediate escape mechanisms from host defenses. The possibility of vaccinating dogs against infestations with the brown dog tick, Rhipicephalus sanguineus, with antigens derived from salivary glands of the cattle tick, R. microplus, was investigated by in silica analysis of 45 genes from R. microplus. These genes were targeted because of their putative biological function and had been cloned into the plasmid vector TOPO VR2001. Of them, 14 were chosen to be evaluated in a vaccine because their sequences were the most similar to several genes expressed in salivary glands of R. sanguineus. The plasmids containing the genes of interest (GIs) were used to assess: 1) The ability of the product of the genes to elicit delayed skin reactions in guinea pigs immune to ticks by previous infestations with R sanguineus. 2) The ability of individual GIs delivered as DNA vaccines to affect infestations of mice with adult R sanguineus. 3) The ability of the genes to induce specific antibodies after vaccination in mice. Only two of the 14 genes delivered to guinea pigs via intradermal injection of DNA did not elicit delayed skin reaction, four used in a vaccine did not affect any parameter of tick infestations, and three did not induce production of antibodies in these animals after DNA vaccination. Of the 14 genes, seven were chosen to formulate a multigene vaccine against the dog tick R. sanguineus. The vaccine was able to significantly affect several parameters of infestations by R sanguineus in vaccinated dogs and mice. This was reflected in the reduction of the number of females that were able to lay eggs, of the average weight of the egg mass produced by these females, of the reproductive rate of these females, and of hatching rate of larvae, demonstrating that GIs from R microplus may be targets for development of a vaccine against the tick R sanguineus.

Inspiration as embodied in the mythical figure of the Muse is an insistent theme in Yeats' poetry. His particular concept of the Muse is drawn from Celtic mythology, and in its principal aspects is synonymous with Robert Graves' sinister White Goddess, which derives from similar or cognate sources in Celtic lore. The White Goddess is described in terms of a triad of mother, beloved and slayer, and may be considered the prototype for the Gaelic Muse, celebrated by poets as the Leanhaun Sidhe. Originally, the Leanhaun Sidhe was a goddess of the Tuatha De Danaan; the Danaans were the divinities of ancient Eire who finally "dwindled in the popular imagination" to become the fairy folk, or Sidhe. Fractions of Yeats' prose and his collections of Celtic stories portray the Sidhe's activities and the Muse's gift of deathly inspiration. The Leanhaun Sidhe and her fairy denizens predominate in Yeats' first major poem "The Wanderings of Oisin" and in his first three volumes of poetry. The Celtic theme of the seduction of a mortal by a fairy enchantress provides the controlling structure of "The Wanderings of Oisin." The ornately beautiful and sinister Niamh entices Oisin away from his cherished Fenian companions and from all human experience; however, after three hundred years in the immortal realm, Oisin longs to return to the insufficiencies of mortality. "The Wanderings of Oisin" establishes the equivocal dialectic of the fairy and human orders, of seductive vision and inescapable fact, which underlies much of Yeats' later work. The attributes of the Leanhaun Sidhe are also seminal. As White Goddess, she represents the beloved in whom the dualities of creation and destruction coincide; in addition she possesses individual qualities, notably, her sadness. Niamh is comparable to the fairy beguilers of Crossways and particularly to the Muse figures of The Rose. In this second volume, Yeats supplicates the Rose (the Celtic Muse) for the facility to sing Danaan songs. Her inspiration allows him to perceive the essence underlying the phenomenal world, but again the transcendent cannot deny the finite and the immortal Rose remains transfixed upon the Rood of Time ("To the Rose upon the Rood of Time"). Her role as White Goddess is emphatic: she prompts God to create the world, but conversely her beauty effects its destruction. The Wind among the Reeds embodies a climactic treatment of the flight into fairyland. The poet meditates upon the apocalyptic Sidhe with unceasing desire; there is no counterweight to alluring vision. In the poetry of 1904-10, the Muse retains her role of White Goddess, but becomes a creature of mortality. Since she is both changeful and subject to change, the poet laments her cruel fickleness and her transiency. Although mortal, she is the human original for the heroic archetype, and Yeats endows her with the epic savagery and recklessness of the Celtic warrior queens. The Morrigu becomes the source of inspiration. After The Green Helmet and Other Poems the Muse no longer serves as a major structural theme. Yeats becomes preoccupied with the finished work of art, the highly-wrought artefact, rather than with the inspiration for that work. The Muse is the legendary destructive beloved, Mary Hynes or Helen, but the poet creates her, she does not create him. The Muse as artefact proves the invention of the aged poet who cannot render an impassioned dedication to female beauty. "The Tower" is the most prominent poem to treat this change, yet even here Yeats reaffirms his dual allegiance to art and life, the resolution echoing the pattern established in "The Wanderings of Oisin." In the late poetry, the White Goddess as Muse is totally disavowed and Yeats turns to the persona of the fleshly Crazy Jane; interestingly, the aged poet celebrates the pleasures of the body and of the physical universe. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Os W-operadores são operadores invariantes por translação e localmente definidos dentro de uma janela W. Devido a sua grande utilidade em análise de imagens, estes operadores foram extensamente pesquisados, sendo que uma abordagem para o seu estudo é a partir da Morfologia Matemática. Uma propriedade interessante de W-operadores é que eles possuem uma sup-decomposição, ou seja, um W-operador pode ser decomposto em termos de uma família de operadores sup-geradores que, por sua vez, são parametrizados por elementos da base desse $W$-operador. No entanto, a sup-decomposição tem uma estrutura intrinsecamente paralela que não permite uma implementação eficiente em máquinas de processamento sequencial. Em um trabalho publicado em 2001, Hashimoto e Barrera formalizaram o problema de transformar a sup-decomposição em decomposições puramente sequenciais como um problema de encontrar soluções discretas de uma equação. Neste texto, estendemos o trabalho desenvolvido por eles. Estudamos e exploramos as propriedades matemáticas do problema, e desenvolvemos estratégias heurísticas para encontrar uma decomposição sequencial de um $W$-operador a partir de sua base que seja eficiente ao ser executado. / W-operators are defined as operators which are translation invariant and locally defined within a finite window W. Due to their great contribution to image processing, these operators have been widely researched and used, specially in Mathematical Morphology. An interesting property of W-operators is that they have a sup-decomposition in terms of a family of sup-generating operators, that are parameterized by their basis. However, the sup-decomposition has a parallel structure that is not efficient in sequential machines. In a paper published in 2001, Hashimoto and Barrera formalized the problem of transforming sup-decompositions into purely sequential decompositions as a problem of finding discrete solutions of an equation. In this work, we extend Hashimoto and Barrera\'s approach. We study and explore mathematical properties of this problem and we elaborate heuristic strategies to find a sequential decomposition of a $W$-operator from its basis that can be executed efficiently.