This dissertation identifies and explores the composers’ practices through five aspects of composing practices: technology, affect, prior practice, environment, and sociality. Taken together, these five dimensions describe a concept of composing practices as being shaped by composers’ past experiences, uses of technologies, interactions with environments, interactions with others, and affective states like preferences and beliefs. This exploration of composing practices brings together and elaborates existing Writing Studies research like Kevin Roozen's which traces composing practices writers develop over time and across contexts and Stacey Pigg's which examines how writers' interactions with physical and virtual environments support their writing and learning. The research questions focusing this study ask (1.) if and what role these five dimensions play in the emergence of practices in composers; (2.) if any of these dimensions play a more significant role than the others; (3.) and if one or more dimension plays a greater role in the emergence of practice, why? To answer the research questions focusing this study, I use a three-part methodology: a retrospective interview, a recorded observation, and a culminating interview. First, through the retrospective interview, I develop an account of what material environments and writing technologies participants have used over time and across contexts. Such contexts include different courses or subjects at moments in their schooling and different contexts outside of school like home. Second, through the observation and final interview, I developed an account of what writing technologies and environments participants currently use and why those are the technologies and environments composers prefer. Having synthesized and interpreted these three datasets, I constructed a case study of each composer’s current practices. Through these case studies of composers’ practices, this research resulted in the following five claims: (1.) composers employ a consistent set of practices when producing texts for school and outside of school, and these practices are not included in traditional models of process; (2.) The composing practices composers develop, adapt, and employ are informed by their experiences composing in-school and out-of-school; (3.) composers have developed the practices they employ over the course of their lives, and composers’ past composing experiences figure prominently in the composing practices they currently employ. This is particularly the case for practices and aspects of practices that were part of their development as composers; (4.) composers attend to their composing environments—dwell—by making choices about where to compose as part of the composing process, and in many cases, their attention to environment is informed by a past environment—an originating writing sanctuary—where they reached an important point in their development; and (5.) belief-formation plays a significant role in the composing practices composers adapt and employ because the beliefs that composers develop about their practices and the efficacy of their practices organize and emphasize specific practices in their composing process. As a result, this dissertation shows what practices composers are employing to adapt to the effects of mobile networked technologies and what is involved in the emergence of composers’ practices. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2016. / June 20, 2016. / Composing, Mobile, Place, Rhetoric, Technology, Writing / Includes bibliographical references. / Kathleen Blake Yancey, Professor Directing Dissertation; Paul Marty, University Representative; David Gants, Committee Member; Michael Neal, Committee Member.

The commercialization of wide band-gap devices such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride transistors has made it possible for power electronics applications to achieve unprecedented performance in terms of efficiency and power density. However, the device characteristics which make this performance possible also create secondary consequences in these high-performance applications. One such consequence which is particularly difficult to manage in the context of power electronics applications is the occurrence of self-sustained oscillation. This problem has been recognized in the power electronics literature, but heretofore has not received an extensive analytical treatment. This dissertation provides a comprehensive analytical treatment of the self-sustained oscillation phenomenon, logically separated into two components: an initial forced cycle and the subsequent oscillatory behavior. A large-signal model has been developed in order to predict the occurrence of the initial forced cycle based on a set of estimated initial conditions derived from a user-specified operating point. The establishment of the initial forced cycle as predicted by the large-signal model creates the bias conditions necessary for the analytical treatment of the subsequent oscillatory behavior. For this purpose, a small-signal model is presented which describes this phenomenon on the basis of recognizing the wide band-gap device and a minimal set of parasitic components associated with the gate and drain circuits as an unintended negative conductance oscillator. In the context of established oscillator design theory it has been shown both analytically and with simulation that negative differential conductance exhibited by the parasitic model explains the conditions under which self-sustained oscillation is likely to occur. Both the large-signal and small-signal models are shown to demonstrate good agreement with empirical results from pulsed switching experiments obtained over a wide range of operating conditions. In addition, a catalog of known solutions to the problem of self-sustained oscillation is presented, along with a discussion of a method by which the current work can be used by application designers to preclude the occurrence of this phenomenon in practical systems by design.

The increasing demand for efficient cancer treatment inspired the researchers for new investigations about an alternative treatment of cancer. Microwave ablation is the newest ablation technique to cure cancer. This method is minimally noninvasive and inexpensive compared to the other methods. However, current microwave ablation systems suffer due to narrowband nature of the antenna (dipole or slot) placed at the tip of the probe. Therefore, this study developed an ultra-wideband ablation probe that operates from 300MHz to 10 GHz. For this purpose, a small wideband antenna is designed to place at the tip of the probe and fabricated. These probes are tested at ISM frequencies (2.4 GHz and 5.8GHz) in skin mimicking gels and pig liver. Microwave ablation probe design, simulation results, and experiment results are provided in this thesis.

Obesity is a major risk factor for multiple common chronic diseases. The prevalence in European countries is high and a significant public health concern. This thesis aims to explore the obesity landscape in the Cooperative Health Research in South Tyrol (CHRIS) study. The first step was to characterise the obese CHRIS population, taking into account the established body mass index (BMI) classification from the World Health Organization (WHO) and looking at metabolically healthy and unhealthy obesity. We investigated the familial aggregation of these traits. We identified several families with significant familial aggregation and observed varying degrees of overlap for these traits in different families. The focus was then on implementing and applying a Genome-Wide Polygenic Score for obese participants. These scores were computed for individuals based on the presence of different genetic variants weighted according to their measured effects in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). We then paid attention to the targeted metabolomics data of the CHRIS study, to identify different serum metabolites associated with metabolically healthy/unhealthy obesity, using logistic regression and random forest methods to explore metabolic signatures to distinguish obesity into metabolically healthy and metabolically unhealthy obesity. Several biomarkers were shown to be related to obesity, many of which confirmed by existing evidence (such as BCAAs, tyrosine, and lysophosphatidylcholines).

Balancing selection refers to the maintenance of multiple phenotypic variants within a population. There are a number of proposed mechanisms explaining the origin and persistence of the evolution and genetics of polymorphisms, but they largely remain unresolved in the specific instances in which they occur. This study aims to identify the genetic basis of a polymorphism in the butterfly, Heliconius doris, which displays four distinct color patterns on the dorsal hindwings of individuals. While Mullerian mimetic theory proposes that phenotypes will converge on a common, aposematic phenotype, this is not the case in Heliconius doris. We identify an interval perfectly associated with the presence/absence of the red ray phenotype, and propose potential mechanisms and genetic architecture through which this polymorphism has been allowed to persist.

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Approaches to projects and development have undergone considerable change in the last decade with significant policy shifts on governance, gender, poverty eradication, and environmental issues. Most recently this has led to the adoption and promotion of the sustainable livelihood (SL) approach. The adoption of the SL approach presents challenges to development interventions including: the future of projects and programmes, and sector wide approaches (SWAPs) and direct budgetary support. This paper `A Review of Approaches to Development Interventions in Tanzania: From Projects to Livelihood Approaches¿ is the third in the series of the project working papers. This is the output of a literature review and semi-structured interviewing in Tanzania. / Department for International Development

Approaches to projects and development have undergone considerable change in the last decade with significant policy shifts on governance, gender, poverty eradication, and environmental issues. Most recently this has led to the adoption and promotion of the sustainable livelihood (SL) approach. The adoption of the SL approach presents challenges to development interventions including: the future of projects and programmes, and sector wide approaches (SWAPs) and direct budgetary support. This paper `Review of development interventions and livelihood approaches in Uganda¿ is the fourth in the series of the project working papers. This is the output of a literature review and series of interviews on development interventions in Uganda. / Department for International Development

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