The Perceived Benefits of an Arts Project for Health and Wellbeing of Older Offenders

Background: The increasing ageing prison population is becoming a pressing issue throughout the criminal justice system. Alongside the rising population, are a host of health and wellbeing issues that contribute to older offenders needs whilst in prison. It has been recommended that meaningful activities can have positive effects on this population and therefore this paper uniquely reviews older offenders accounts of taking part in an arts based project, Good Vibrations, whilst imprisoned. Objective and design: The Good Vibrations project engages individuals in Gamelan music making with an end of project performance. This study used independent in-depth interviews to capture the voices of older offenders who took part in an art based prison project. Analysis and Results: The interview data was analysed using thematic analysis, which highlighted themes that were consistent with other populations who have taken part in a Good Vibrations project, along with specific age relating issues of mobility, motivation, identity and wellbeing.

The Role of Perceived Social Support, Resilience, and Depression on Communicative Participation in Head and Neck Cancer Survivors

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Peer Relationships in School-Age Children with Autism: Concurrent and Longitudinal Predictors

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

& she was like "O_O" : Animation of reported speech on Twitter

This study relates discourse-pragmatic aspects of the use of the quotatives say, be like, be all, and go to the question of the supposed or actual spoken-likeness of written computer-mediated communication (CMC). 1,800 tokens of reported speech, collected from Twitter, were analyzed in a “constructed dialogue” framework (Tannen, 2007). The results show that users of Twitter employ various CMC devices to animate and modally enrich reported speech, especially in speech reports with be like, be all, and go. They perform a style of communication that is reminiscent of conversational speech, even while having qualities that seem to belong uniquely to CMC.

Role of assessment components and recent adverse outcomes in risk estimation and prediction: use of the Short Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability (START) in an adult secure inpatient mental health service

The Short Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability is a structured judgement tool used to inform risk estimation for multiple adverse outcomes. In research, risk estimates outperform the tool's strength and vulnerability scales for violence prediction. Little is known about what its’component parts contribute to the assignment of risk estimates and how those estimates fare in prediction of non-violent adverse outcomes compared with the structured components. START assessment and outcomes data from a secure mental health service (N=84) was collected. Binomial and multinomial regression analyses determined the contribution of selected elements of the START structured domain and recent adverse risk events to risk estimates and outcomes prediction for violence, self-harm/suicidality, victimisation, and self-neglect. START vulnerabilities and lifetime history of violence, predicted the violence risk estimate; self-harm and victimisation estimates were predicted only by corresponding recent adverse events. Recent adverse events uniquely predicted all corresponding outcomes, with the exception of self-neglect which was predicted by the strength scale. Only for victimisation did the risk estimate outperform prediction based on the START components and recent adverse events. In the absence of recent corresponding risk behaviour, restrictions imposed on the basis of START-informed risk estimates could be unwarranted and may be unethical.

Dialectique des regards - l’autre et la construction du récit de soi dans l’auto-filmage pathographique

Le présent mémoire entend analyser la pratique de l’auto-filmage dans deux films : La Pudeur ou l’impudeur (Hervé Guibert) et Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette). Nous regroupons ces long-métrages sous l’étiquette « auto-filmage pathographique ». Le malade, s’émancipant de l’imagerie médicale et des pratiques cinématographiques institutionnelles, reprend l’image filmique à son compte, aidé en cela par une technologie toujours plus ergonomique. Cette résurgence de l’image du corps malade dans le champ social ne se fait pas sans heurt ; l’exposition de corps décharnés et agoniques convoque un imaginaire catastrophiste et contredit les rituels d’effacement du corps auxquels procède la société occidentale. La forme que prend le récit de soi dans l’auto-filmage pathographique dépend de la maladie qui affecte chaque créateur. Nous observons une redéfinition de la sincérité, en lien avec l’exercice autobiographique. Il s’agit d’utiliser, dans l’auto-filmage pathographique, certains procédés fictionnels pour créer un discours sur soi-même dont la véracité repose sur d’autres critères que ceux communément admis. L’auto-filmage pathographique suppose en ce sens un véritable changement d’attitude et la mise en place de techniques de soi. Il induit une forme de réconciliation avec sa propre identité physique et psychique. En cela, l’écriture filmique de soi est un agent transformateur de la vie et un exercice spirituel. Les réalisateurs ne sont cependant pas uniquement tournés vers eux-mêmes. Chacun inclut quelques privilégiés au coeur de sa démarche. Le soin de soi, dans l’auto-filmage pathographique, ne se désolidarise pas du soin des autres. Auto-filmage et caméra subjective entretiennent un lien dialectique qui donne son sens à l’auto-filmage pathographique et voit leur antagonisme éclater. L’individu s’auto-filmant n’est pas seul ; sa démarche n’est pas qu’un solipsisme. Elle se voit dépassée par l’émergence de l’autre dans le champ ou parfois même, sa prise en main de la caméra.

Vain lakiko lasta suojelee?

Tiivistelmä TURUN YLIOPISTO Oikeustieteellinen tiedekunta Perhe-oikeus VALJAKKA EEVA: Vain lakiko lasta suojelee? Väitöskirja, 219 s. Kesäkuu 2016 Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan suomalaisen lastensuojelulainsäädännön pitkän ai- kavälin kehitystä 1800-luvun lopulta 2010-luvulle. Tavoitteena on selvittää, mil- lä tavoin lasten suojelun tarvetta on lastensuojelulakeja säädettäessä määritelty ja millaisin keinoin julkinen valta on suojellut lapsia. Tutkimuksessa luodaan myös yleisemmin kuvaa siitä, millaista keskustelua lastensuojelun yhteiskunnallisesta tehtävästä, yksityisen ja julkisen hyvinvointivastuun jakautumisesta sekä julkisen vallan perheen yksityisyyteen puuttuvien toimien tarpeellisuudesta ja oikeutukses- ta on eri aikoina käyty. Tutkimuksessa lastensuojelun käsitettä käytetään sekä laa- jemmassa (Child Welfare) että suppeammassa (Child Protection) merkityksessä. Tutkimus on lapsi- ja oikeuspoliittinen puheenvuoro, jossa lastensuojelun institutionaalisia kehityskulkuja tarkastellaan yhteiskunnassa sosioekonomisesti heikoimmassa asemassa olevan lapsiväestön ja lastensuojelun asiakkaiksi valikoi- tuvien lasten näkökulmasta. Tutkimusote on ongelmalähtöinen ja yhteyshakuinen siten, että tutkimuskysymyksiä tarkastellaan monitieteisesti hallinto- ja sosiaalioi- keudellisessa viitekehyksessä. Tutkimus osoittaa, että tarkasteltaessa lastensuojelua käsitteen suppeam- massa merkityksessä lastensuojeluinstituution rakenteet kuten lasten suojelutar- peen määrittely, suojelun keinot ja lastensuojelulain julkilausutut tavoitteet ovat pysyneet lähes samankaltaisina aina ensimmäisen lastensuojelulain (1936) säätä- misestä lukien. Tarkasteltaessa lastensuojelua käsitteen laajemmassa merkityksessä voidaan lastensuojelussa nähdä tapahtuneen muutoksia. Vähitellen hyvinvointivaltion laajentuessa lastensuojelua koskeva ymmärrys muuttui yhä moniulotteisemmak- si. Lastensuojelu merkitsi 1960-luvulle tultaessa laajaa lapsiväestön hyvinvointia turvaavaa yhteiskuntapoliittista ohjelmaa. Myös sosiaalipolitiikan suunnanmuutos 1990-luvulla ja sen myötä julkisen vallan vastuun kaventaminen merkitsivät muu- tosta lastensuojelussa. Monille yhteiskunnan eri osa-aluille ulottuvien perheiden ja lasten hyvinvointia tavoittelevien politiikkaohjelmien ja niiden toteuttamispyrki- mysten sijaan lastensuojelu kaventui niin käsitteenä kuin käytännön toimintanakin tarkoittamaan lähes yksinomaan sosiaalihuollon erityispalvelua eli lapsi- ja perhe- kohtaista lastensuojelua. Asiasanat: Lastensuojelu, lastensuojelulainsäädäntö, historiallinen kehitys, oikeu- dellinen sääntely, hyvinvointivaltio.

User Behavioral Modeling of Web-based Systems for Continuous User Authentication

Authentication plays an important role in how we interact with computers, mobile devices, the web, etc. The idea of authentication is to uniquely identify a user before granting access to system privileges. For example, in recent years more corporate information and applications have been accessible via the Internet and Intranet. Many employees are working from remote locations and need access to secure corporate files. During this time, it is possible for malicious or unauthorized users to gain access to the system. For this reason, it is logical to have some mechanism in place to detect whether the logged-in user is the same user in control of the user's session. Therefore, highly secure authentication methods must be used. We posit that each of us is unique in our use of computer systems. It is this uniqueness that is leveraged to "continuously authenticate users" while they use web software. To monitor user behavior, n-gram models are used to capture user interactions with web-based software. This statistical language model essentially captures sequences and sub-sequences of user actions, their orderings, and temporal relationships that make them unique by providing a model of how each user typically behaves. Users are then continuously monitored during software operations. Large deviations from "normal behavior" can possibly indicate malicious or unintended behavior. This approach is implemented in a system called Intruder Detector (ID) that models user actions as embodied in web logs generated in response to a user's actions. User identification through web logs is cost-effective and non-intrusive. We perform experiments on a large fielded system with web logs of approximately 4000 users. For these experiments, we use two classification techniques; binary and multi-class classification. We evaluate model-specific differences of user behavior based on coarse-grain (i.e., role) and fine-grain (i.e., individual) analysis. A specific set of metrics are used to provide valuable insight into how each model performs. Intruder Detector achieves accurate results when identifying legitimate users and user types. This tool is also able to detect outliers in role-based user behavior with optimal performance. In addition to web applications, this continuous monitoring technique can be used with other user-based systems such as mobile devices and the analysis of network traffic.

CHARACTERIZATION OF TOBACCO MOSAIC VIRUS DIRECTED REPROGRAMMING OF PHLOEM GENE EXPRESSION TO PROMOTE VIRAL PHLOEM LOADING AND SYSTMEIC MOVEMENT

Vascular phloem loading has long been recognized as an essential step in the establishment of a systemic virus infection. Yet little is known about this process and the mechanisms that control it. In this study, an interaction between the replication protein of Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and phloem specific auxin/indole acetic acid (Aux/IAA) transcriptional regulators was found to modulate virus phloem loading. Promoter expression studies show TMV 126/183 kDa interacting Aux/IAAs predominantly express and accumulate within the nuclei of phloem companion cells (CC). Furthermore, CC Aux/IAA nuclear localization is disrupted upon infection with an interacting virus but not during infection with a non-interacting virus. In situ analysis of virus spread shows the inability of TMV variants to disrupt Aux/IAA CC nuclear localization correlates with a reduced ability to load into the vascular tissue. Subsequent systemic movement assays also demonstrate that a virus capable of disrupting Aux/IAA localization is significantly more competitive at systemic movement than a non-interacting virus. Similarly, CC expression and over-accumulation of a degradation-resistant-interacting Aux/IAA protein was found to selectively inhibit TMV accumulation and phloem loading. Transcriptional expression studies demonstrate a role for interacting Aux/IAA proteins in the regulation of salicylic acid and jasmonic acid dependent host defense responses as well as virus specific movement factors including pectin methylesterase that are involved in regulating plasmodesmata size exclusion limits and promoting virus cell-to-cell movement. Further characterization of the phloem environment was done using two phloem specific promoters (pSUC2 and pSULTR2;2) to generate epitope-tagged polysomal-RNA complexes. Immuno-purification using the epitope tag allowed us to obtain mRNAs bound to polysomes (the translatome) specifically in phloem tissue. We found the phloem translatome is uniquely altered during TMV infection with 90% and 88% of genes down regulated in the pSUC2 and pSULTR2;2 phloem translatomes, compared to 31% of genes down regulated in the whole plant p35S translatome. Transcripts down regulated in phloem include genes involved in callose deposition at plasmodesmata, host defense responses, and RNA silencing. Combined, these findings indicate TMV reprograms gene expression within the vascular phloem as a means to enhance phloem loading and systemic spread.

Balancing Energy and Performance in Dense Linear System Solvers for Hybrid ARM+GPU platforms

The high performance computing community has traditionally focused uniquely on the reduction of execution time, though in the last years, the optimization of energy consumption has become a main issue. A reduction of energy usage without a degradation of performance requires the adoption of energy-efficient hardware platforms accompanied by the development of energy-aware algorithms and computational kernels. The solution of linear systems is a key operation for many scientific and engineering problems. Its relevance has motivated an important amount of work, and consequently, it is possible to find high performance solvers for a wide variety of hardware platforms. In this work, we aim to develop a high performance and energy-efficient linear system solver. In particular, we develop two solvers for a low-power CPU-GPU platform, the NVIDIA Jetson TK1. These solvers implement the Gauss-Huard algorithm yielding an efficient usage of the target hardware as well as an efficient memory access. The experimental evaluation shows that the novel proposal reports important savings in both time and energy-consumption when compared with the state-of-the-art solvers of the platform.

PREPARATION OF POLYELECTROLYTE MEMBRANES EMBEDDED WITH ZEOLITE NANOPARTICLES FOR ENHANCED PERFORMANCE IN FORWARD OSMOSIS

Water scarcity is a global issue that has already affected every continent. Membrane technology is considered as one of the most promising candidates for resolving this worsening issue. Among all the membrane processes, the emerging forward osmosis (FO) membrane process is osmotically-driven and has unique advantages compared with other traditional pressure-driven membrane processes. One of the major challenges to advancing the FO membrane process is the lack of a suitable membrane. Polyelectrolyte thin film prepared via layer-by-layer (LbL) technique has demonstrated its excellent performance in many applications including electronics, optics, sensors, etc. Recent studies have revealed the potential of polyelectrolyte thin films in acting as the active separation layer of FO membranes, but significant efforts are still needed to improve the membrane performance and understand the transport mechanisms. This dissertation introduces a novel approach to prepare a zeolite-embedded polyelectrolyte composite membrane for enhanced FO performance. This membrane takes advantages of the versatile LbL process to unprecedentedly incorporate high loading of zeolite nanoparticles, which are anticipated to facilitate water transport due to the uniquely interconnected structure of zeolites. Major topics discussed in this dissertation include: (1) the synthesis and evaluation of the polyelectrolyte-zeolite composite FO membrane, (2) the examination of the fouling resistance to identify its technical limitations, (3) the demonstration of the membrane regenerability as an effective strategy for membrane fouling control, and (4) the investigation of crosslinking effects on the membrane performance to elucidate the transport mechanisms involved in the zeolite-embedded polyelectrolyte membranes. Comparative studies have been made between polyelectrolyte membranes with and without zeolite incorporation. The findings suggest that the zeolite-embedded membrane, although slightly more susceptible to silica scaling, has demonstrated enhanced water flux and separation capability, good resistance to organic fouling, and complete regenerability for fouling control. Additionally, the embedded zeolite nanoparticles are proved to be able to create fast pathways for water transport. Overall, this work provides a novel strategy to create zeolite-polymer composite membranes with enhanced separation performance and unique fouling mitigation properties.

Towards structured, block-based PDF

The Portable Document Format (PDF), defined by Adobe Systems Inc. as the basis of its Acrobat product range, is discussed in some detail. Particular emphasis is given to its flexible object-oriented structure, which has yet to be fully exploited. It is currently used to represent not logical structure but simply a series of pages and associated resources. A definition of an Encapsulated PDF (EPDF) is presented, in which EPDF blocks carry with them their own resource requirements, together with geometrical and logical information. A block formatter called Juggler is described which can lay out EPDF blocks from various sources onto new pages. Future revisions of PDF supporting uniquely-named EPDF blocks tagged with semantic information would assist in composite-pagemakeup and could even lead to fully revisable PDF.

Development of gene expression-based biomarkers of exposure to metals and pesticides in the freshwater amphipod Hyalella azteca

Ecological risk assessment (ERA) is a framework for monitoring risks of exposure and adverse effects of environmental stressors to populations or communities of interest. One tool of ERA is the biomarker, which is a characteristic of an organism that reliably indicates exposure to or effects of a stressor like chemical pollution. Traditional biomarkers which rely on characteristics at the tissue level and higher often detect only acute exposures to stressors. Sensitive molecular biomarkers may detect lower stressor levels than traditional biomarkers, which helps inform risk mitigation and restoration efforts before populations and communities are irreversibly affected. In this study I developed gene expression-based molecular biomarkers of exposure to metals and insecticides in the model toxicological freshwater amphipod Hyalella azteca. My goals were to not only create sensitive molecular biomarkers for these chemicals, but also to show the utility and versatility of H. azteca in molecular studies for toxicology and risk assessment. I sequenced and assembled the H. azteca transcriptome to identify reference and stress-response gene transcripts suitable for expression monitoring. I exposed H. azteca to sub-lethal concentrations of metals (cadmium and copper) and insecticides (DDT, permethrin, and imidacloprid). Reference genes used to create normalization factors were determined for each exposure using the programs BestKeeper, GeNorm, and NormFinder. Both metals increased expression of a nuclear transcription factor (Cnc), an ABC transporter (Mrp4), and a heat shock protein (Hsp90), giving evidence of general metal exposure signature. Cadmium uniquely increased expression of a DNA repair protein (Rad51) and increased Mrp4 expression more than copper (7-fold increase compared to 2-fold increase). Together these may be unique biomarkers distinguishing cadmium and copper exposures. DDT increased expression of Hsp90, Mrp4, and the immune response gene Lgbp. Permethrin increased expression of a cytochrome P450 (Cyp2j2) and decreased expression of the immune response gene Lectin-1. Imidacloprid did not affect gene expression. Unique biomarkers were seen for DDT and permethrin, but the genes studied were not sensitive enough to detect imidacloprid at the levels used here. I demonstrated that gene expression in H. azteca detects specific chemical exposures at sub-lethal concentrations, making expression monitoring using this amphipod a useful and sensitive biomarker for risk assessment of chemical exposure.

Shape and chemically anisotropic colloidal particles: A theoretical study of their structure, phase behavior, and slow dynamics

A detailed non-equilibrium state diagram of shape-anisotropic particle fluids is constructed. The effects of particle shape are explored using Naive Mode Coupling Theory (NMCT), and a single particle Non-linear Langevin Equation (NLE) theory. The dynamical behavior of non-ergodic fluids are discussed. We employ a rotationally frozen approach to NMCT in order to determine a transition to center of mass (translational) localization. Both ideal and kinetic glass transitions are found to be highly shape dependent, and uniformly increase with particle dimensionality. The glass transition volume fraction of quasi 1- and 2- dimensional particles fall monotonically with the number of sites (aspect ratio), while 3-dimensional particles display a non-monotonic dependence of glassy vitrification on the number of sites. Introducing interparticle attractions results in a far more complex state diagram. The ideal non-ergodic boundary shows a glass-fluid-gel re-entrance previously predicted for spherical particle fluids. The non-ergodic region of the state diagram presents qualitatively different dynamics in different regimes. They are qualified by the different behaviors of the NLE dynamic free energy. The caging dominated, repulsive glass regime is characterized by long localization lengths and barrier locations, dictated by repulsive hard core interactions, while the bonding dominated gel region has short localization lengths (commensurate with the attraction range), and barrier locations. There exists a small region of the state diagram which is qualified by both glassy and gel localization lengths in the dynamic free energy. A much larger (high volume fraction, and high attraction strength) region of phase space is characterized by short gel-like localization lengths, and long barrier locations. The region is called the attractive glass and represents a 2-step relaxation process whereby a particle first breaks attractive physical bonds, and then escapes its topological cage. The dynamic fragility of fluids are highly particle shape dependent. It increases with particle dimensionality and falls with aspect ratio for quasi 1- and 2- dimentional particles. An ultralocal limit analysis of the NLE theory predicts universalities in the behavior of relaxation times, and elastic moduli. The equlibrium phase diagram of chemically anisotropic Janus spheres and Janus rods are calculated employing a mean field Random Phase Approximation. The calculations for Janus rods are corroborated by the full liquid state Reference Interaction Site Model theory. The Janus particles consist of attractive and repulsive regions. Both rods and spheres display rich phase behavior. The phase diagrams of these systems display fluid, macrophase separated, attraction driven microphase separated, repulsion driven microphase separated and crystalline regimes. Macrophase separation is predicted in highly attractive low volume fraction systems. Attraction driven microphase separation is charaterized by long length scale divergences, where the ordering length scale determines the microphase ordered structures. The ordering length scale of repulsion driven microphase separation is determined by the repulsive range. At the high volume fractions, particles forgo the enthalpic considerations of attractions and repulsions to satisfy hard core constraints and maximize vibrational entropy. This results in site length scale ordering in rods, and the sphere length scale ordering in Janus spheres, i.e., crystallization. A change in the Janus balance of both rods and spheres results in quantitative changes in spinodal temperatures and the position of phase boundaries. However, a change in the block sequence of Janus rods causes qualitative changes in the type of microphase ordered state, and induces prominent features (such as the Lifshitz point) in the phase diagrams of these systems. A detailed study of the number of nearest neighbors in Janus rod systems reflect a deep connection between this local measure of structure, and the structure factor which represents the most global measure of order.

Alternating surgeries

This thesis is concerned with the question of when the double branched cover of an alternating knot can arise by Dehn surgery on a knot in S^3. We approach this problem using a surgery obstruction, first developed by Greene, which combines Donaldson's Diagonalization Theorem with the $d$-invariants of Ozsvath and Szabo's Heegaard Floer homology. This obstruction shows that if the double branched cover of an alternating knot or link L arises by surgery on S^3, then for any alternating diagram the lattice associated to the Goeritz matrix takes the form of a changemaker lattice. By analyzing the structure of changemaker lattices, we show that the double branched cover of L arises by non-integer surgery on S^3 if and only if L has an alternating diagram which can be obtained by rational tangle replacement on an almost-alternating diagram of the unknot. When one considers half-integer surgery the resulting tangle replacement is simply a crossing change. This allows us to show that an alternating knot has unknotting number one if and only if it has an unknotting crossing in every alternating diagram. These techniques also produce several other interesting results: they have applications to characterizing slopes of torus knots; they produce a new proof for a theorem of Tsukamoto on the structure of almost-alternating diagrams of the unknot; and they provide several bounds on surgeries producing the double branched covers of alternating knots which are direct generalizations of results previously known for lens space surgeries. Here, a rational number p/q is said to be characterizing slope for K in S^3 if the oriented homeomorphism type of the manifold obtained by p/q-surgery on K determines K uniquely. The thesis begins with an exposition of the changemaker surgery obstruction, giving an amalgamation of results due to Gibbons, Greene and the author. It then gives background material on alternating knots and changemaker lattices. The latter part of the thesis is then taken up with the applications of this theory.