Thermodynamic environmental fate modelling.

Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.The labelling of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), an oxygenate additive used extensively in gasoline blending, as an environmentally harmful chemical has led to the banning and subsequent phasing-out of this additive in California (USA). In response, the global petroleum industry is currently considering replacement strategies, which include the use of tertiary amyl methyl ether (TAME) or ethanol. Subsequently, SASOL (South African Coal and Oil Limited), a local petrochemical company, in its capacity as an environmentally responsible player in the global petroleum and aligned chemical markets, has commissioned this investigation into the environmental fate of the fuel oxygenates: TAME, ethanol and MTBE. In order to evaluate the environmental fate of the oxygenates, this dissertation has formed a three-tiered approach, using MTBE as a benchmark. The first tier assessed the general fate behaviour of the oxygenates using an evaluative model. A generic evaluative model, developed by Mackay et al. (l996a), called the Equilibrium Criterion (EQc) model was used for this purpose. This fugacity based multimedia model showed MTBE and TAME to have similar affinities for the water compartment. Ethanol was demonstrated to have a pre-disposition for the air compartment. Parameterisation of the EQC model to South African conditions resulted in the development of ChemSA, which reiterated the EQC findings. The second tier quantified the persistence (P), bioaccumulation (B) and long-range transport (LRT) potential of the additives. This tier also included a brief toxicity (T) review. MTBE and ethanol were demonstrated to be persistent and non-persistent, respectively, according to three threshold limit protocols (Convention on the Long Range Trans-boundary Air Pollution Persistent Organic Chemical Protocol; the United Nations Environment Programme Global Initiative; and the Track 1 criteria as defined by the Canadian Toxic Substances Management Policy, as referred to by the Canadian Environmental Protection Act 1999). These protocols were not unanimous in the persistence classification of TAME. Further investigation of persistence was conducted using a persistence and long-range transport multimedia model, called TaPL3, developed by Webster et al. (1998) and extended by Beyer et al. (2000). TaPL3 reiterated the conclusions drawn from the threshold limit protocols, indicating that TAME's classification worsened from non-persistent to persistent on moving from an air emission to a water emission scenario. This served to emphasise the negative water compartment affinity associated with TAME. Using classification intervals defined by Beyer et al. (2000), TaPL3 demonstrated that the long-range transport potential of the oxygenates increased in the order of TAME, ethanol and MTBE; however, it was concluded that none of the oxygenates were expected to pose a serious long-range transport threat. Bioaccumulation was not expected to be a pertinent environmental hazard. As expected, the oxygenates were dismissed as potential bioaccumulators by the first level of a screening method developed by Mackay and Fraser (2000); as well as by the threshold limit protocols listed above. Simulation of biomagnification, using an equilibrium food chain model developed by Thomann (1989), demonstrated that none of the oxygenates posed a biomagnification threat. A review of toxicity data confirmed that none of the three oxygenates are considered particularly toxic. LDso values indicated the following order of increasing toxicity: ethanol, MTBE and TAME. The third tier focussed on oxygenate aqueous behaviour. A simple equilibrium groundwater model was used to analyse the mobility of the oxygenates in groundwater. TAME was found to be 21 % less mobile than MTBE. Ethanol was shown to be very mobile; however, the applicability of the equilibrium model to this biodegradable alcohol was limited. An analysis of liquid-liquid equilibria comprised of oxygenate, water and a fuel substitution chemical was performed to investigate fuel-aqueous phase partitioning and the co-solvency effects of the oxygenates. Ethanol was shown to partition appreciably into an associated water phase from a fuel-phase. Moreover, this alcohol was shown to act as a co-solvent drawing fuel chemicals into the water phase. MTBE was found to partition sparingly into the water phase from a fuel-phase, with TAME partitioning less than MTBE. Neither ether was shown to act as a co-solvent. It was concluded that TAME and ethanol pose less of a burden to the environment than MTBE. Ethanol was assessed to be environmentally benign; however, it was concluded that ethanol's air compartment affinity and the extent of its co-influence on secondary solutes justified the need for further investigation before its adoption as a fuel additive. This project showed sufficient variation in the environmental behaviour of TAME and MTBE to justify the abandonment of the axiom that MTBE and TAME behave similarly in the environment. However, as MTBE is a significant water pollutant, and TAME has been shown to share a similar water affinity, it is cautiously recommended that the assumption of environmental similarity be discarded, except for the water compartment

Performing selfhoods in U.S. rituals of private and public spheres

In this study, I explore four events to learn the embedded instructions of selfhood performatives in each case and how these performatives code public and private space and experience. The selected events offer a different and explicit example of private and public modes of authority and access – e.g., in the public museum experience of an exhibit by photographer Taryn Simon, in the gift of a ticket to Burning Man, womyn only at MichFest, and insider exclusivity at Roden Crater. While each event offered a different understanding of selfhood as it applied to the participant, each confirmed a selfhood performative in play through its structure, methodology, and dependence on participation. Calling on Louis Althusser’s theories of subjectivity and ideology to approach a definition for selfhood performative, ultimately I argue for a Bakhtinian use of the term. Bakhtin relies on an expansive definition where “selfhood is not a particular voice within, but a particular way of combining many voices within” (Morson and Emerson 221). This “particular way” can be understood as a conscious compositional approach to selfhood served by the performance research practice of mystory developed by Gregory Ulmer. The mystory attempts to record and articulate the relationships of the composer and her interdependent institutional and personal subjectivities through the application of the relay. Throughout the study, I make use of a literal and figurative relay between the events, composing, collecting, and documenting associations while conducting my research and drawing out the patterns and poetics therein. The purpose of the study is to show connections between selfhood performatives and commodification, and to find regularities, ironies, and pleasures between the revealed performatives and codes. I also examine how these events enhance, challenge, or stray from post-structural theories that support the interdependence between selfhood and prevailing concepts of public and private. The study also supports the application of mystory theory, with its resistance to the reproductive elements of a model, as performance research that offers an update to Brecht’s notion of theater “for an audience of the scientific age” (Brecht 185). I attempt to locate today’s audience as one situated in the tension of constructing selves between binary notions of private and public caused by the ramifications of scientific objectification and conceptual representation and reproduction. I argue the mystory is an approach to understanding the self constituted from within the interdependence of private and public relationships, and holds the unrepeatable self central to that approach

Eco-Narratology and Contemporary American Fiction

In this dissertation, I analyze contemporary American novels via ecocritical and narratological reading strategies to highlight how novelists approach environmental crises through various narrative strategies. The novels I analyze allow me to provide several instances where contemporary American novelists explore environmental crisis with narrative. I argue that the formal, structural choices contemporary American novelists make depend on the environmental problems they portray. Furthermore, I argue that each novel uses, to one degree or another, realist aesthetics—but makes a marked departure from realism to address environmental concerns. These novels show us how we got to where we are environmentally, but they also suggest through innovative narrative strategies how we might become more aware of our own conventions. I use narratology as a method of inquiry because the conventions of thinking are embedded in the conventions of storytelling and attending closely to the conventions of storytelling can thus open up new ways of thinking about our roles in environmental crisis. I draw on several traditions of scholars trying to rethink cultural products’ relationship to the environment and those who explore the conventions of narrative

Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing

This dissertation examines the development of guerrilla marketing strategies and techniques. At the dawn of the 21st century, as the traditional advertising model evolves thanks to changes in technology, markets, commercial clutter, and audience cynicism, marketers are increasingly exploring new and re-imagining old ways of communicating brand messages and managing consumers. By studying the practice of guerrilla marketing – the umbrella term here for an assortment of product placement, outdoor alternative-ambient, word-of-mouth, and consumer-generated approaches – we can better understand an emergent media environment where cultural producers like advertisers strategize and experiment with the dissemination of information and the application of persuasion through covert and outsourced flows. Their creative license is remarkable not only in terms of content but equally that of context: expansively reconfiguring the space typically partitioned for commercial petition. As befitting a public relations mindset, the guerrilla message they seek to seed travels bottom-up, through invisible relay, or from decentralized corners so as to subtly engage audiences in seemingly serendipitous ways. Through a close examination of emblematic campaign examples, trade press coverage, and in-depth interviews with prominent practitioners, this project peels back the curtain on a form of cultural production that reworks the conventional archetype of mass communication and rethinks how consumers might be managed. Drawing upon Foucauldian theory that conceptualizes an active subject rather than a form of domination that has often defined the use of power, I argue that this is a regime of casual, if not “invisible” consumer governance that accommodates yet structures participatory agency; self-effaces its own authority and intent through disinterested spaces and anti-establishment formats; opens up the brand-text as a more flexible form; and democratizes in favor of heterarchical collaboration. It is, in short, advertising that tries not to seem like advertising. By studying the inspirations, machinations, and designs behind these campaigns to uncover and map the institutional discourse and cultural logic at work, I identify and analyze common themes of power and practice that animate otherwise disparate advertising executions and help redefine media industries

The iconography of nationalism: icons, popular culture, and American nationalism

The Iconography of Nationalism: Icons, Popular Culture, and American Nationalism develops a model of cultural icons, defining icons as highly visible, culturally variable, and overdetermined auratic images. Situating icons within the context of mass reproduction technologies and American nationalism, this study seeks to demystify the simple images presented by infantile, national, and scapegoat icons in literature, film, and political rhetoric. This dissertation argues that icons participate in the American nationalist project by channeling citizens’ political and patriotic feelings through seemingly simple images. While acknowledging that icons are necessary to construct what Benedict Anderson calls “the imagined community” of the nation, this study complicates a quick and easy reading of an icon’s manifest content and uses narrative to reveal the latent content in images like Marilyn Monroe, Barbie, Mickey Mouse, Elvis Presley, Pocahontas, Uncle Sam, Big Brother, and Adolf Hitler

Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission

LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volum

Law in the present future : approaching the legal imaginary of smart cities with science (and) fiction

This doctoral research concerns smart cities, describing digital solutions and social issues related to their innovative technologies, adopted models, and major projects around the world. The many perspectives mentioned in it were identified by online tools used for the textual analysis of two databases that were built from relevant publications on the main subject by authors coming from media and academia. Expected legal elements emerged from the applied process, such as privacy, security, transparency, participation, accountability, and governance. A general review was produced on the information available about the public policies of Big Data in the two municipal cases of Rio de Janeiro and Montréal, and their regulation in the Brazilian and Canadian contexts. The combined approaches from science and literature were explored to reflect on the normative concerns represented by the global challenges and local risks brought by urban surveillance, climate change, and other neoliberal conditions. Cyberpunk Science Fiction reveals itself useful for engaging with the shared problems that need to be faced in the present time, all involving democracy. The results achieved reveal that this work was, in fact, about the complex network of practices and senses between (post)modern law and the imaginary of the future.Cette recherche doctorale centrée sur les villes intelligentes met en évidence les solutions numériques et les questionnements sociétaux qui ont trait aux technologies innovantes, ainsi qu’aux principaux modèles et projets développés autour d’elles à travers le monde. Des perspectives multiples en lien avec ces développements ont été identifiées à l’aide d’outils en ligne qui ont permis l’analyse textuelle de deux bases de données comprenant des publications scientifiques et des écrits médiatiques. De ce processus analytique ont émergé des éléments juridiques relatifs aux questions de vie privée, de sécurité, de transparence, de participation, d’imputabilité et de gouvernance. De plus, à partir de ces informations a été réalisée une revue des politiques publiques relatives aux mégadonnées dans les villes de Rio de Janeiro et de Montréal, ainsi que des réglementations nationales du Canada et du Brésil en lien avec ce sujet. Finalement, à travers l’exploration d’écrits scientifiques et fictionnels de la littérature, les principaux enjeux normatifs soulevés localement et mondialement par la surveillance urbaine, les changements climatiques et les politiques néolibérales ont pu être mis à jour. Le courant cyberpunk de la science-fiction s’est avéré particulièrement utile pour révéler les principaux problèmes politiques, en lien avec la préservation de la démocratie, auxquelles sont confrontées nos sociétés présentement. Les résultats de la recherche démontrent finalement la présence d’un réseau de pratiques et de significations entre le droit (post)moderne et les représentations imaginaires du futur

Digital Learning in the Wild: Re-Imagining New Ruralism, Digital Equity, and Deficit Discourses through the Thirdspace

abstract: Digital media is becoming increasingly important to learning in today’s changing times. At the same time, digital technologies and related digital skills are unevenly distributed. Further, deficit-based notions of this digital divide define the public’s educational paradigm. Against this backdrop, I forayed into the social reality of one rural Americana to examine digital learning in the wild. The larger purpose of this dissertation was to spatialize understandings of rural life and pervasive social ills therein, in order to rethink digital equity, such that we dismantle deficit thinking, problematize new ruralism, and re-imagine more just rural geographies. Under a Thirdspace understanding of space as dynamic, relational, and agentive (Soja, 1996), I examined how digital learning is caught up spatially to position the rural struggle over geography amid the ‘Right to the City’ rhetoric (Lefebvre, 1968). In response to this limiting and urban-centric rhetoric, I contest digital inequity as a spatial issue of justice in rural areas. After exploring how digital learning opportunities are distributed at state and local levels, I geo-ethnographically explored digital use to story how families across socio-economic spaces were utilizing digital tools. Last, because ineffective and deficit-based models of understanding erupt from blaming the oppressed for their own self-made oppression, or framing problems (e.g., digital inequity) as solely human-centered, I drew in posthumanist Latourian (2005) social cartographies of Thirdspace. From this, I re-imagined educational equity within rural space to recast digital equity not in terms of the “haves and have nots” but as an account of mutually transformative socio-technical agency. Last, I pay the price of criticism by suggesting possible actions and solutions to the social ills denounced throughout this dissertation.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Learning, Literacies and Technologies 201