This thesis deals with oportunity of ROC curve usage in the description of methods that work with sound signals. Specifically, it focuses on ways of detecting of stress in speech signals. The detection itselfs is done in a range of frequencies of the sound signal. There is also a classifier designed using ROC curves that decides whether the input signal is stressed or not. The output of this thesis are findings gathered from analyses and also some recommendation based on those analyses.

In this dissertation, I show how 20th century African-American women writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison utilize animals-as-trope in order to illustrate the writers' humanity and literary vision. In the texts that I have selected, I have found that animals-as-trope functions in two important ways: the first function of animal as trope is a pragmatic one, which serves to express the humanity of African Americans; and the second function of animal tropes in African-American women's fiction is relational and expresses these writers' "ethic of caring" that stems from their folk and womanist world view. Found primarily in slave narratives and in domestic fiction of the 19th and early 20th centuries, pragmatic animal metaphors and/or similes provide direct analogies between the treatment of African-Americans and animals. Here, these writers often engage in rhetoric that challenges pro-slavery apologists, who attempted to disprove the humanity of African-Americans by portraying them as animals fit to be enslaved. Animals, therefore, become the metaphor of both the abolitionist and the slavery apologist for all that is not human. The second function of animals-as-trope in the fiction of African-American women writers goes beyond the pragmatic goal of proving African-Americans's common humanity, even though one could argue that this goal is still present in contemporary African-American fiction. Animals-as-trope also functions to express the African-American woman writer's understanding that 1) all oppressions stem from the same source; 2) that the division between nature/culture is a false onethat a universal connection exists between all living creatures; and 3) that an ethic of caring, or relational epistemology, can be extended to include non-human animals. Twentieth-century African-American writers such as Hurston, Walker, and Morrison participate in what anthropologists term, "neototemism," which is the contemporary view that humankind is part of nature, or a vision that Morrison would most likely attribute to the "folk." This perspective places their celebration of the continuous relations between humans and animals within a spiritual, indeed, tribal, cosmological construction. What makes these particular writers primarily different from their literary mothers, however, is a stronger sense that they are reclaiming the past, both an African and African-American history. What I hope to contribute with this dissertation is a new perspective of African-American women writers' literary tradition via their usage of animals as an expression of their "ethic of caring" and their awareness that all oppression stems from a single source.

This thesis investigates the prevalence of religious themes in the work of several prominent contemporary women writers—Margaret Atwood, Michèle Roberts, Alice Walker and A.L. Kennedy. Relying on Luce Irigaray’s recent theorisations of the religious and its relationship to feminine subjectivity, this research considers the subversive potential of engaging with religious discourse through literature, and contributes to burgeoning criticism of feminist revisionary writing. The novels analysed in this thesis show, often in violent detail, that the way the religious dimension has been conceptualised and articulated enforces negative views of female sexuality, justifies violence against the body, alienates women from autonomous creative expression and paralyses the development of a subjectivity in the feminine. Rather than looking at women’s religious revision primarily as a means of asserting female authority, as previous studies have done, I argue that these writers, in addition to critiquing patriarchal religion, articulate ways of being and knowing that subvert the binary logic that dominates Western religious discourse. Chapter I contextualises this research in Luce Irigaray’s theories and outlines existing work on feminist revisionist literature. The remaining chapters offer close readings of key novels in light of these theories: Chapter II examines Atwood’s interrogation of oppositional logic in religious discourse through her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Chapter III explores two novels by Roberts that expose the violence inherent in religious discourse and deconstruct the subjection of the (female) body to the (masculine) Word. Chapters IV and V analyse the fiction of Kennedy and Walker respectively, revealing how their novels confront the religious denigration of feminine sexuality and refigure the connection between eroticism and divinity. Evident in each of these fictional accounts is a forceful critique of religious discourse, as well as an attempt to more closely reconcile foundational religious oppositions between divinity and humanity, flesh and spirit, and body and Word.

The proposed study intended to identify the public education agenda and the success of implementation of this agenda of four Presidents: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, William Clinton, and George W. Bush. In addition, the study aimed to indentify if any of the above listed Presidents can be categorized as charismatic leaders as defined by Charismatic Leadership Theory and if this categorization can be linked to the determined success or failure of the agenda implementation. This was done using two research methods, document and content analysis, on such documents as presidential speeches and writings, speeches and writings of the Secretary of Education, biographies and autobiographies, editorials from three major newspapers, writings from people working closely with the Presidents, writing of political analysts, and writing of Senate and House majority leadership. The study found the education agendas of the four presidents, and those education items that were passed by Congress. The study also found that Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton were found to be Charismatic Leaders, while George W. Bush was not. A conclusion was made with this data that there were no connection between Charismatic Leadership Theory and the passage of presidential education agendas. / by Randye Shanfeld. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:14:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1577961 bytes, checksum: c71d976d783495df566e0fa6baadf8ca (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-08-06 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / We start this work studying the appearance of geometric quantum phases as in the relativistic as in the non-relativistic quantum dynamics of a neutral particle with permanent magnetic and electric dipole moment which interacts with external electric and magnetic fields in the presence of linear topological defects. We describe the linear topological defects using the approach proposed by Katanaev and Volovich, where the topological defects in solids are described by line elements which are solutions of the Einstein's equations in the context of general relativity. We also analyze the in uence of non-inertial effects in the quantum dynamics of a neutral particle using two distinct reference frames for the observers: one is the Fermi-Walker reference frame and another is a rotating frame. As a result, we shall see that the difference between these two reference frames is in the presence/absence of dragging effects of the spacetime which makes its in uence on the phase shift of the wave function of the neutral particle. In the following, we shall use our study of geometric quantum phases to make an application on the Holonomic Quantum Computation, where we shall show a new approach to implement the Holonomic Quantum Computation via the interaction between the dipole moments of the neutral particle and external fields and the presence of linear topological defects. Another applications for the Holonomic Quantum Computation is based in the structure of the topological defects in graphene layers. In the presence of topological defects, a graphene layer shows two distinct phase shifts: one comes from the mix of Fermi points while the other phase shift comes from the topology of the defect. To provide a geometric description for each phase shift in the graphene layer, we use the Kaluza-Klein theory where we establish that the extra dimension describes the Fermi points in the graphene layer. Hence, we can implement the Holonomic Quantum Computation through the possibility to build cones and anticones of graphite in such way we can control the quantum uxes in graphene layers. In the last part of this work, we study the Landau quantization for neutral particles as in the relativistic dynamics and non-relativistic dynamics. In the non-relativistic dynamics, we study the Landau quantization in the presence of topological defects as in an inertial as in a non-inertial reference frame. In the relativistic quantum dynamics, we start our study with the Landau quantization in the Minkowisky considering two different gauge fields. At the end, we study the relativistic Landau quantization for neutral particles in the Cosmic Dislocation spacetime. / Neste trabalho estudamos inicialmente o surgimento de fases geometricas nas dinâmicas quânticas relativística e não-relativística de uma partícula neutra que possui momento de dipolo magnético e elétrico permanente interagindo com campos elétricos e magnéticos externos na presença de defeitos topológicos lineares. Para descrevermos defeitos topológicos lineares usamos a aproximação proposta por Katanaev e Volovich, onde defeitos lineares em sólidos são descritos por elementos de linha que são soluções das equações de Einstein no contexto da relatividade geral. Analisamos também a inuência de efeitos não-inerciais na dinâmica quântica de uma partícula neutra em dois tipos distintos de referenciais para os observadores: um é o referencial de Fermi-Walker e outro é um referencial girante. Vemos que a diferença entre dois referenciais está na presença/ausência de efeitos de arrasto do espaço-tempo que irá influenciar diretamente na mudança de fase na funçãao de onda da partícula neutra. Em seguida, usamos nosso estudo de fases geométricas para fazer aplicações na Computação Quântica Holonômica onde mostramos uma nova maneira de implementar a Computação Quântica Holonômica através da interação entre momentos de dipolo e campos externos e pela presença de defeitos topológicos lineares. Outra aplicação para a Computação Quântica Holonômica está baseada na estrutura de defeitos topológicos em um material chamado grafeno. Na presença de defeitos topológicos lineares, esse material apresenta duas fases quânticas de origens distintas: uma da mistura dos pontos de Fermi e outra da topologia do defeito. Para dar uma descrição geométrica para a origem de cada fase no grafeno usamos a Teoria de Kaluza-Klein, onde a dimensão extra sugerida por esta teoria descreve os pontos de Fermi no grafeno. Portanto, a implementação da Computação Quântica Holonômica no grafeno está baseada na possibilidade de construir cones e anticones de grafite de tal maneira que se possa controlar os fluxos quânticos no grafeno. Na última parte deste trabalho estudamos a quantização de Landau para partículas neutras tanto na dinâmica não-relativística quanto na dinâmica relativística. Na dinâmica não-relativítica, estudamos a quantização de Landau na presença de defeitos em um referecial inercial e, em seguida, em um referencial nãoo-inercial. Na dinâmica relativística, estudamos inicialmente a quantização de Landau no espaço-tempo plano em duas configurações de campos diferentes. Por fim, estudamos a quantização de Landau relativística para partículas neutras no espaço-tempo da deslocação cósmica.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The Iraq War and the War on Terror were pivotal issues in the presidential race for the White House in 2004. Competing frames about the meaning of September 11, 2001, terrorism, and American power were constructed by the rival candidates and established a limited debate that marginalized alternative interpretations of war and peace. It is likely that the dilemma over U.S. forces in Iraq and the War on Terror will continue to be a major issue in the upcoming 2008 Presidential Election. Therefore, the campaign speeches of the presidential candidates, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, during the 2004 Election regarding terrorism were important to understanding the themes that initiated public debate in the U.S. about the conflict in Iraq and the War on Terror. In this document analysis, these candidates’ public addresses illustrated how the role of the U.S. power to combat terrorism shaped a particular perspective about the post-9/11 world. Ideas that challenged “official” debate about war and national security were excluded from mainstream media coverage of the campaign. In order to examine the narrow debate over terrorism and how alternative “ways of seeing” war have been and continue to be marginalized, this study compared how the candidates framed the war in contrast to anti-war voices. Cindy Sheehan, who is an emergent leader in the peace and social justice movement, and more “official” voices of dissent like Representative Dennis Kucinich, have criticized “official” framing of the war. Dissenting perspectives about the Iraq War and the War on Terror invite a different understanding about U.S. hegemony, terrorism, and the consequences of the War on Terror for foreign and domestic policies. The impact of the war upon domestic policy and national crises, such as the widely televised and heavily criticized federal response to Hurricane Katrina Summer 2005, were examined to explore how domestic crises undermine “official” framing of the Iraq War and the War on Terror and empower alternative understandings of war and peace.

For over two hundred years, historians have debated the historical importance of early Tennessee migrants in shaping the state’s history. These discussions center around North Carolina's impact compared to Virginia's. By shifting discourse to the retention of migrant mentalities, the overwhelming influence of Virginia emerges through the continuity of privilege and commodification schemata. This study employs an interdisciplinary methodological approach combining schema theory, memory studies, and material culture analysis to outline the retention of mentalities from Tidewater, Virginia, to East Tennessee during the early settlement period. By utilizing the case study of John Carter of Watauga (1728-1781), the research illustrates how Virginian origins shaped settlers’ perceptions of privilege through inheritance, ordered society, and models of success, as well as commodification through ownership, resource extraction, and speculation. Findings reveal that Virginian mental frameworks were foundational paradigms, guiding settlers’ actions and perpetuating hierarchical structures within Tennessee society. Despite the opportunity for deviation that migration and community establishment provided, elite settlers chose to assimilate and reestablish the dominant position of Virginian schemata within their new environment. The persistence of Virginian schemata in Tennessee informs broader questions of identity formation, migrant nostalgia, and the enduring legacy of colonial mentalities in shaping American history.

This thesis focuses on the significance of blood and the perception of the body in both learned and popular culture in order to investigate problems of identity and social exclusion in early modern Europe. Starting from the view of blood as a liminal matter, manifesting fertile, positive aspects in conjunction with dangerous, negative ones, I show how it was believed to attract supernatural forces within the natural world. It could empower or pollute, restore health or waste corporeal and spiritual existence. While this theme has been studied in a medieval religious context and by anthropologists, its relevance during the early modern period has not been explored. I argue that, considering the impact of the Reformation on people’s mentalities, studying the way in which ideas regarding blood and the body changed from late medieval times to the eighteenth century can provide new insights about patterns of social and religious tensions, such as the witch-trials and persecutions. In this regard the thesis engages with anthropological theories, comparing the dialectic between blood and body with that between identity and society, demonstrating that they both spread from the conflict of life with death, leading to the social embodiment or to the rejection of an individual. A comparative approach is also employed to analyze blood symbolism in Protestant and Catholic countries, and to discuss how beliefs were influenced by both cultural similarities and religious differences. Combining historical sources, such as witches’ confessions, with appropriate examples from anthropology I also examine a corpus of popular ideas, which resisted to theological and learned notions or slowly merged with them. Blood had different meanings for different sections of society, embodying both the physical struggle for life and the spiritual value of the Christian soul. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 develop the dualism of the fluid in late medieval and early modern ritual murder accusations against Jews, European witchcraft and supernatural beliefs and in the medical and philosophical knowledge, while chapters 5 and 6 focus on blood themes in Protestant England and in Counter-Reformation Italy. Through the examination of blood in these contexts I hope to demonstrate that contrasting feelings, fears and beliefs related to dangerous or extraordinary individuals, such as Jews, witches, and Catholic saints, but also superhuman beings such as fairies, vampires and werewolves, were rooted in the perception of the body as an unstable substance, that was at the base of ethnic, religious and gender stereotypes.

In this thesis I outline the contribution Community-based theatre has made to New Zealand theatre. This involves a defining of theatre production as a material practice. Community-based theatre was a tendency from the 1930s, a promise of the left theatre movement and, I argue, was being searched for as a form of practice by the avant-garde, experimental practitioners of the 1970s. At the same time, early Māori theatre began as a Community-based practice before moving into the mainstream. With the arrival of neo-liberalism to Aotearoa in 1984, community groups and Community-based theatre could become official providers within the political system. This led to a flowering of practices, which I describe, together with the tensions that arise from being a part of that system. However, neo-liberalism introduced managerial practices into state contracting and patronage policy, which effectively denied this flowering the sustenance deserved. At the same time, these policies commodified mainstream theatre production. In conclusion, I argue that in the current situation of global crisis, Community-based theatre practice has a continuing role to play in giving voice to the multitude and by being a practice of the Common.

Aiming to make an intervention in both emerging Slow Cinema and classical Trauma Cinema scholarship, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which the post-trauma cinema of Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz merges aesthetics of cinematic slowness with narratives of post-trauma in his films Melancholia (2008), Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) and Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012). Diaz has been repeatedly considered as representative of what Jonathan Romney termed in 2004 “Slow Cinema”. The director uses cinematic slowness for an alternative approach to an on-screen representation of post-trauma. Contrary to popular trauma cinema, Diaz’s portrait of individual and collective trauma focuses not on the instantenaeity but on the duration of trauma. In considering trauma as a condition and not as an event, Diaz challenges the standard aesthetical techniques used in contemporary Trauma Cinema, as highlighted by Janet Walker (2001, 2005), Susannah Radstone (2001), Roger Luckhurst (2008) and others. Diaz’s films focus instead on trauma’s latency period, the depletion of a survivor’s resources, and a character’s slow psychological breakdown. Slow Cinema scholarship has so far focused largely on the films’ aesthetics and their alleged opposition to mainstream cinema. Little work has been done in connecting the films’ form to their content. Furthermore, Trauma Cinema scholarship, as trauma films themselves, has been based on the immediate and most radical signs of post-trauma, which are characterised by instantaneity; flashbacks, sudden fears of death and sensorial overstimulation. Following Lutz Koepnick’s argument that slowness offers “intriguing perspectives” (Koepnick, 2014: 191) on how trauma can be represented in art, this thesis seeks to consider the equally important aspects of trauma duration, trauma’s latency period and the slow development of characteristic symptoms. With the present work, I expand on current notions of Trauma Cinema, which places emphasis on speed and the unpredictability of intrusive memories. Furthermore, I aim to broaden the area of Slow Cinema studies, which has so far been largely focused on the films’ respective aesthetics, by bridging form and content of the films under investigation. Rather than seeing Diaz’s slow films in isolation as a phenomenon of Slow Cinema, I seek to connect them to the existing scholarship of Trauma Cinema studies, thereby opening up a reading of his films.