The World in Singing Made: David Markson's "Wittgenstein's Mistress"

In line with Wittgenstein's axiom that "what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest," this thesis aims to demonstrate how the gulf between analytic and continental philosophy can best be bridged through the mediation of art. The present thesis brings attention to Markson's work, lauded in the tradition of Faulkner, Joyce, and Lowry, as exemplary of the shift from modernity to postmodernity, wherein the human heart is not only in conflict with itself, but with the language out of which it is necessarily constituted. Markson limns the paradoxical condition of the subject severed from intersubjectivity, and affected not only by the grief of bereavement, which can be defined in Heideggarian terms as anxiety for the ontic negation of a being (i.e., death), but by loss, which I assert is the ontological ground for how Dasein encounters the nothing in anxiety proper.

THE DESIGN AND SYNTHESIS OF SILOXANE PRECURSORS FOR CHIRAL PERIODIC MESOPOROUS ORGANOSILICA MATERIALS

The development of cost-effective and reliable methods for the synthesis and separation of asymmetric compounds is paramount in helping to meet society’s ever-growing demand for chiral small molecules. Of these methods, chiral heterogeneous supports are particularly appealing as they allow for the reuse of the chiral source. One such support, based on the synergy between chiral organic units and structurally stable inorganic silicon scaffolds are periodic mesoporous organosilicas (PMOs). In the work described herein, I examine some of the factors governing the transmission of chirality between chiral dopants and prochiral bulk phases in chiral PMO materials. In particular, the exploration of 1,1’-binaphthalene-bridged chiral dopants with a focus on the point of attachment into the materials. Moreover, the effects of ordering in the materials are examined and reveal that chirality transfer is more facile in materials with molecular-scale order then those containing amorphous walls. Secondly, the issues surrounding the synthesis and purification of aryl-triethoxysilanes as siloxane precursors are addressed. Both the introduction of a two-carbon linker and the direct attachment of allyl and mixed allyldiethoxysilane species are explored. This work demonstrates that allyldiethoxysilanes are ideal, in that they are stable enough to permit facile synthesis, while still being able to hydrolyze completely to produce well-ordered materials. Lastly, the production of new bulk phases for chiral PMO materials is examined by introducing new prochiral nitrogen-containing siloxane precursors. Biphenyldiamine and bipyridine-bridged siloxane precursors are readily synthesized on reasonable scales. Their use as the bulk siloxane precursor in the production of PMO materials however, is precluded by insufficient gelation and additional siloxane precursors are necessary for the production of ordered materials. In addition to the research detailed above that forms the body of this thesis, two short works are appended. The first details the production of polythiophene assemblies mediated through coordination nanospaces, while the second explores the production of N-heterocyclic carbene functionalized gold nanoparticles through ligand exchange.

Fixation du prix de vente des exploitations agricoles québécoises: comparaison entre fermes laitières et autres types de production

L’écart croissant entre les valeurs marchande et économique des exploitations agricoles québécoises complexifie le processus de transfert des fermes à la prochaine génération. La capacité de payer limitée des repreneurs et les besoins de retraite des cédants restreignent la marge de manoeuvre nécessaire afin de déterminer un prix de vente de l’entreprise adéquat. La présente étude vise à analyser les déterminants du prix de vente des fermes et montre que dans notre échantillon, le prix est significativement corrélé avec les besoins de retraite nets des cédants et de façon moins significative, avec la valeur économique des fonds propres de l’entreprise. Les considérations financières semblent éclipser les aspects humains et d’importants compromis sont réalisés des deux côtés de la transaction en vue d’assurer la continuité de l’entreprise. L’influence d’intervenants externes à l’entreprise entre également en ligne de compte dans la fixation du prix, ce qui implique que la décision ne découle pas uniquement d’une négociation entre cédants et repreneurs. De façon générale, les fermes laitières semblent confrontées aux mêmes défis que les autres types de production quant à la fixation de leur prix de vente, ce qui suggère que la problématique soit davantage une question de gestion plutôt qu’une question spécifique au secteur. À moins d’un rétrécissement de l’écart entre la valeur marchande des actifs et leurs capacités à générer des revenus, la fixation du prix de vente de plusieurs fermes du Québec risque d’être encore plus contraignante à l’avenir.

Refletir sobre a língua através do jogo – um estudo com alunos do 2.º ano do ensino básico

Relatório de estágio apresentado à Escola Superior de Educação para obtenção de grau de mestre em Ensino do 1.º e do 2.º Ciclo do Ensino Básico

Usefulness of social tagging in organizing and providing access to the web: An analysis of indexing consistency and quality

This dissertation research points out major challenging problems with current Knowledge Organization (KO) systems, such as subject gateways or web directories: (1) the current systems use traditional knowledge organization systems based on controlled vocabulary which is not very well suited to web resources, and (2) information is organized by professionals not by users, which means it does not reflect intuitively and instantaneously expressed users’ current needs. In order to explore users’ needs, I examined social tags which are user-generated uncontrolled vocabulary. As investment in professionally-developed subject gateways and web directories diminishes (support for both BUBL and Intute, examined in this study, is being discontinued), understanding characteristics of social tagging becomes even more critical. Several researchers have discussed social tagging behavior and its usefulness for classification or retrieval; however, further research is needed to qualitatively and quantitatively investigate social tagging in order to verify its quality and benefit. This research particularly examined the indexing consistency of social tagging in comparison to professional indexing to examine the quality and efficacy of tagging. The data analysis was divided into three phases: analysis of indexing consistency, analysis of tagging effectiveness, and analysis of tag attributes. Most indexing consistency studies have been conducted with a small number of professional indexers, and they tended to exclude users. Furthermore, the studies mainly have focused on physical library collections. This dissertation research bridged these gaps by (1) extending the scope of resources to various web documents indexed by users and (2) employing the Information Retrieval (IR) Vector Space Model (VSM) - based indexing consistency method since it is suitable for dealing with a large number of indexers. As a second phase, an analysis of tagging effectiveness with tagging exhaustivity and tag specificity was conducted to ameliorate the drawbacks of consistency analysis based on only the quantitative measures of vocabulary matching. Finally, to investigate tagging pattern and behaviors, a content analysis on tag attributes was conducted based on the FRBR model. The findings revealed that there was greater consistency over all subjects among taggers compared to that for two groups of professionals. The analysis of tagging exhaustivity and tag specificity in relation to tagging effectiveness was conducted to ameliorate difficulties associated with limitations in the analysis of indexing consistency based on only the quantitative measures of vocabulary matching. Examination of exhaustivity and specificity of social tags provided insights into particular characteristics of tagging behavior and its variation across subjects. To further investigate the quality of tags, a Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) was conducted to determine to what extent tags are conceptually related to professionals’ keywords and it was found that tags of higher specificity tended to have a higher semantic relatedness to professionals’ keywords. This leads to the conclusion that the term’s power as a differentiator is related to its semantic relatedness to documents. The findings on tag attributes identified the important bibliographic attributes of tags beyond describing subjects or topics of a document. The findings also showed that tags have essential attributes matching those defined in FRBR. Furthermore, in terms of specific subject areas, the findings originally identified that taggers exhibited different tagging behaviors representing distinctive features and tendencies on web documents characterizing digital heterogeneous media resources. These results have led to the conclusion that there should be an increased awareness of diverse user needs by subject in order to improve metadata in practical applications. This dissertation research is the first necessary step to utilize social tagging in digital information organization by verifying the quality and efficacy of social tagging. This dissertation research combined both quantitative (statistics) and qualitative (content analysis using FRBR) approaches to vocabulary analysis of tags which provided a more complete examination of the quality of tags. Through the detailed analysis of tag properties undertaken in this dissertation, we have a clearer understanding of the extent to which social tagging can be used to replace (and in some cases to improve upon) professional indexing.

Exploring coordination-driven self-assembly with autonomous chemical robots

The work presented herein focused on the automation of coordination-driven self assembly, exploring methods that allow syntheses to be followed more closely while forming new ligands, as part of the fundamental study of the digitization of chemical synthesis and discovery. Whilst the control and understanding of the principle of pre-organization and self-sorting under non-equilibrium conditions remains a key goal, a clear gap has been identified in the absence of approaches that can permit fast screening and real-time observation of the reaction process under different conditions. A firm emphasis was thus placed on the realization of an autonomous chemical robot, which can not only monitor and manipulate coordination chemistry in real-time, but can also allow the exploration of a large chemical parameter space defined by the ligand building blocks and the metal to coordinate. The self-assembly of imine ligands with copper and nickel cations has been studied in a multi-step approach using a self-built flow system capable of automatically controlling the liquid-handling and collecting data in real-time using a benchtop MS and NMR spectrometer. This study led to the identification of a transient Cu(I) species in situ which allows for the formation of dimeric and trimeric carbonato bridged Cu(II) assemblies. Furthermore, new Ni(II) complexes and more remarkably also a new binuclear Cu(I) complex, which usually requires long and laborious inert conditions, could be isolated. The study was then expanded to the autonomous optimization of the ligand synthesis by enabling feedback control on the chemical system via benchtop NMR. The synthesis of new polydentate ligands has emerged as a result of the study aiming to enhance the complexity of the chemical system to accelerate the discovery of new complexes. This type of ligand consists of 1-pyridinyl-4-imino-1,2,3-triazole units, which can coordinate with different metal salts. The studies to test for the CuAAC synthesis via microwave lead to the discovery of four new Cu complexes, one of them being a coordination polymer obtained from a solvent dependent crystallization technique. With the goal of easier integration into an automated system, copper tubing has been exploited as the chemical reactor for the synthesis of this ligand, as it efficiently enhances the rate of the triazole formation and consequently promotes the formation of the full ligand in high yields within two hours. Lastly, the digitization of coordination-driven self-assembly has been realized for the first time using an in-house autonomous chemical robot, herein named the ‘Finder’. The chemical parameter space to explore was defined by the selection of six variables, which consist of the ligand precursors necessary to form complex ligands (aldehydes, alkineamines and azides), of the metal salt solutions and of other reaction parameters – duration, temperature and reagent volumes. The platform was assembled using rounded bottom flasks, flow syringe pumps, copper tubing, as an active reactor, and in-line analytics – a pH meter probe, a UV-vis flow cell and a benchtop MS. The control over the system was then obtained with an algorithm capable of autonomously focusing the experiments on the most reactive region (by avoiding areas of low interest) of the chemical parameter space to explore. This study led to interesting observations, such as metal exchange phenomena, and also to the autonomous discovery of self assembled structures in solution and solid state – such as 1-pyridinyl-4-imino-1,2,3-triazole based Fe complexes and two helicates based on the same ligand coordination motif.

O romance histórico da colonização : a figuração artística transgressiva do passado em O tetraneto del-rei, de Haroldo Maranhão, A gloriosa família, de Pepetela, e As naus, de António Lobo Antunes

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Letras, Instituto de Letras, Departamento de Teoria Literária e Literaturas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Literatura, 2016.

Relatório de estágio de intervenção comunitária

O desenvolvimento da sociedade nos últimos anos contribuiu para um desenvolvimento das condições de vida e dos cuidados de saúde, levando a um aumento da esperança média de vida, e permitindo assim alterações demográficas de entre as quais se destacam o envelhecimento. Este facto provoca alterações profundas a vários níveis, entre os quais económicos, sociais, familiares e de saúde. Numa época em que o progresso científico e o desenvolvimento tecnológico têm proporcionado importantes avanços a todos os níveis, paralelamente têm emergido novas ameaças à saúde de todos nós. O cenário atual em que vivemos não é fácil, os recursos são cada vez mais escassos e as disparidades socioeconómicas começam a acentuar-se. O envelhecimento é um tema que tem suscitado interesse no meio político, social, económico e académico, e há um reconhecimento de que o seu processo pode ser mais ou menos complexo, com mais ou menos pesar para os que o experienciam na primeira pessoa, mas também para aqueles que de perto vivem este fenómeno. Apesar de estar disponível muita informação sobre este assunto, acreditamos que nunca é demais abordar e estudar esta problemática. A sua persistência e aumento significativo, previsivelmente duradouro, merecem todas as soluções, propostas e intervenções que possam ir ao encontro destas necessidades, para que assim, possam ser colmatadas ou minimizadas. Tendo em conta estas premissas, o estágio de intervenção comunitária decorreu no período de 16 de Setembro de 2013 a 31 de Janeiro de 2014, na Freguesia de Tramaga, sendo a população alvo os idosos com 65 ou mais anos. A intervenção comunitária foi desenvolvida com base no planeamento em saúde, mas no âmbito da promoção da saúde todas as atividades foram baseadas na Teoria de Organização Comunitária, uma vez que no decurso das atividades desenvolvidas, o principal objetivo passou pela capacitação dos idosos, incentivando ao empowerment. Enquanto profissionais de saúde, o propósito da intervenção comunitária passou pela transmissão de conhecimentos e sensibilização aos idosos, para que estes possam participar de maneira informada e consciente na tomada de decisão relativamente à sua saúde. O objetivo final será a sensibilização positiva para a mudança de comportamentos, traduzindo ganhos em saúde, ainda que a longo prazo. Este estágio de intervenção comunitária permitiu-nos adquirir a maioria das competências gerais do Enfermeiro Especialista, bem como as competências específicas do Enfermeiro Especialista em Enfermagem Comunitária e de Saúde Pública definidas pela Ordem dos Enfermeiros.

Quality improvement within nonprofit social service providers

As a relatively new phenomenon in 2009, Swedish nonprofit social service providers proposed quality improvement as a way to reduce mistakes, use resources more effectively and meet the needs and expectations of clients in a better way. Although similar experiences have been studied in health care, the transfer of quality improvement to nonprofit social services gives a possibility for more knowledge on what enables, and constrains, systematic quality improvement in this specific context. This thesis is based on five years of supporting quality improvement in the Swedish nonprofit welfare sector. Specifically, it builds knowledge on which active mechanisms and enabling or constraining structures exist for nonprofit social service quality improvement. By studying quality improvement projects that have been conducted in the development program Forum for Values, critical cases and broad overviews are found valuable. These cases have resulted in four papers on quality improvement in nonprofit social services. The papers include: critical cases from a nursing home for elderly and a daycare for disabled children (Paper I); a critical case from a sheltered housing (Paper II); an overview of performance measurements in 127 quality improvement projects (Paper III); and an analytical model of how improvement policy and practice are bridged by intermediaries (Paper IV). In this thesis, enabled or constrained events and activities related to Deming's system of profound knowledge are identified from the papers and elaborated upon. As a basis for transforming practice into continuous improvement, profound knowledge includes the four knowledge domains: appreciation of a system, theory of knowledge, understanding of variation and psychology of change. From a realist perspective, the identified events are seen as enabled or constrained by mechanisms and underlying regularities, or structures, in the context of nonprofit social services. The emerging mechanisms found in this thesis are: describing and reflecting upon project relations; forming and testing a theory of action; collecting and displaying measurable results over time; and engaging and participating in a development program. The structures that enable these mechanisms are: connecting projects to shared values such as client needs; local ownership of what should be measured; and translating quality improvement into a single practice. Constraining structures identified are: a lack of generalizable scientific knowledge and inappropriate or missing infrastructure for measurements. Reflecting upon the emergent structures of nonprofit social services, the role of political macro structures, reflective practice, competence in statistical methods and areas of expertise becomes important. From this discussion and the findings some hypotheses for future work can be formulated. First, the identified mechanisms and structures form a framework that helps explain why intended actions of quality improvement occur or not. This frameworkcan be part of formulating a program theory of quality improvement in nonprofit social services. With this theory, quality improvement can be evaluated, reflected upon and further developed in future interventions. Second,new quality improvement interventions can be reproduced more regularly by active work with known enablers and constraints from this program theory. This means that long-lasting interventions can be performed and studied in a second generation of improvement efforts. Third, if organizations integrate quality improvement as a part of their everyday practice they also develop context-specific knowledge about their services. This context-specific knowledge can be adopted and further developed through dedicated management and understanding of variation. Thus, if enabling structures are invoked and constraining structures handled, systematic quality improvement could be one way to integrate generalizable scientific knowledge as part of an evidence-creating practice.

The Architecture of the Persian Period in the Levant

The earliest scholars were not concerned about preparing extensive investigations linking the Persian-period building remains excavated in the entire Levant together. Moreover, the research interests of scholars caused some impediments to the study of this period viz in the last decades; the Achaemenid period has been neglected by the scholars who -in turn- focused on the earlier and later periods for religious reasons. Too, while some regions have been studied abundantly, but it was not the case in other areas, which makes our knowledge is incomplete. From the explanation side, some scholars try to interpret the architectural remains from an ethnic perspective or unsubstantiated personal fancies, so their arguments were utterly lacking any objectivity. This thesis explores what are the Persian architectural and ornamental impacts on the Levantine architecture and the relations between Persian-period sites in Syria-Palestine region. Too, the architectural remains and their contents benefited us to clarify the settlement patterns in the regions being discussed. The author analyzed the ground plans of the buildings and their architectural features and ornamental motifs by conducting a descriptive, analytical, and interpretative study. He also conducted comparisons with similar buildings outside the Levant, especially in Fars to obtain a more comprehensive and systematic study, and then extracting any direct or indirect Persian influences. This has given us a better understanding of the nature of the social, political, and religious life in the entire Levant and the knowledge gap has been bridged to a satisfying extent. This study has demonstrated a few of the Achaemenid impacts, especially on the northern coastline of the Levant.