Incorporating productive use into water systems in urban Nigeria

Recent studies have shown that millions of lowincome households use their limited water supplies for activities such as productive uses as well as domestic needs. Such productive uses of water may not really thrive or even take off unless the required quantity of water is available. Such activities often generate numerous benefits to households involved. An understanding of how productive uses of water could successfully be mainstreamed into urban water systems in Nigeria was studied. Water supplies to households by the water utilities in Nigeria have traditionally been confined within what is known as domestic water needs. The quantity of water supplied has often been meant to cover basic needs such as drinking, cooking and personal sanitation needs etc. However this has not been a true reflection of the use of this limited amount of water supplied. A social survey was made of households and institutions in Owerri, Nigeria; where productive uses of water is already real, particularly in activities such as home gardening, horticulture and livestock rearing etc. In view of the persisting problem in water supplies in Nigeria, where water utilities such as the Imo State Water Corporation (ISWC) is still enmeshed in intermittent supplies; the paper explores the implications for households, especially the productive water users; alternative water suppliers and the government. The aim is to identify how supply sustainability for these activities could be maximized as a veritable tool vital in the fight against poverty. Given the importance of the urban water system to low income productive water users, a functional and efficient utility as well as an appropriate policy framework has been identified as being imperative in order to maximize income and employment benefits for urban productive water users

Distributed Symmetry Breaking in Hypergraphs

Fundamental local symmetry breaking problems such as Maximal Independent Set (MIS) and coloring have been recognized as important by the community, and studied extensively in (standard) graphs. In particular, fast (i.e., logarithmic run time) randomized algorithms are well-established for MIS and $\Delta +1$-coloring in both the LOCAL and CONGEST distributed computing models. On the other hand, comparatively much less is known on the complexity of distributed symmetry breaking in {\em hypergraphs}. In particular, a key question is whether a fast (randomized) algorithm for MIS exists for hypergraphs. In this paper, we study the distributed complexity of symmetry breaking in hypergraphs by presenting distributed randomized algorithms for a variety of fundamental problems under a natural distributed computing model for hypergraphs. We first show that MIS in hypergraphs (of arbitrary dimension) can be solved in $O(\log^2 n)$ rounds ($n$ is the number of nodes of the hypergraph) in the LOCAL model. We then present a key result of this paper --- an $O(\Delta^{\epsilon}\text{polylog}(n))$-round hypergraph MIS algorithm in the CONGEST model where $\Delta$ is the maximum node degree of the hypergraph and $\epsilon > 0$ is any arbitrarily small constant. To demonstrate the usefulness of hypergraph MIS, we present applications of our hypergraph algorithm to solving problems in (standard) graphs. In particular, the hypergraph MIS yields fast distributed algorithms for the {\em balanced minimal dominating set} problem (left open in Harris et al. [ICALP 2013]) and the {\em minimal connected dominating set problem}. We also present distributed algorithms for coloring, maximal matching, and maximal clique in hypergraphs.Comment: Changes from the previous version: More references adde

The laws of verse : the poetry of Alice Meynell and its literary contexts, 1875-1923

Like other poets who came to prominence in the nineteenth century but continued to publish well into the twentieth, Alice Meynell’s work has come gradually to be occluded by the work of her younger contemporaries, among them T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. The available scholarship records this process of occlusion in the form of an almost complete absence of serious discourse on Meynell’s work following her death in 1922 until the beginnings of a modest revival of interest in her writing beginning in the 1980s. This study aims to address that gap by giving a more complete account of Meynell’s stylistic development and technical procedures in the field of poetry than has heretofore been available. Examining select specimens of Meynell’s verse in the light of prosodic theories current at the time both she and her Modernist contemporaries were writing further allows us to see, in place of the familiar narrative of Modernism’s revolutionary break with its immediate literary past, continuities between nineteenth- and twentieth-century understandings of what meter is and how it works. Rather than attempting to catalogue the work of writers producing metrical poetry in the early twentieth century, this project looks to the work of one poet and relies on intensive analysis of only a few of her poems to trace out a literary genealogy between figures who all but never meet in critical discourse. This approach demonstrates how Meynell’s poetry, especially in its engagement with prosodic convention, provides a bridge which can link the work, on the one hand, of Victorians like Coventry Patmore and Mary Elizabeth Coleridge to, on the other hand, major architects of Modernism like Pound and Eliot, generating, ultimately, a new and alternative perspective for interpreting poetry as a cultural practice in one of its most contested historical phases

Colonizing Cyberspace: The Formation of Virtual Communities

The topic of this thesis is the electronic bulletin board systems that existed in Memphis, TN from the early 1980s until around 1999. Although initially a fringe hobby limited to computer enthusiasts, the declining cost of computers, and their subsequent proliferation, allowed those without technical proficiency to dial in. Over time, those who connected to the BBSes developed into a close-knit, emotionally involved community. The dynamics of the communities that arose on BBSes differed based on numerous factors, particularly age. This thesis attempts to examine those interactions, as well as challenge the notion that community is wedded to geography, an idea prevalent among historians. In order to accomplish this goal, I have relied on interviews with those who participated in the Memphis BBS scene, as well as a survey questionnaire for those unable to schedule meetings. In addition, many users retained log files, message base archives, and a host of other relevant materials which were also utilized as primary sources. A great wealth of data was also found on the World Wide Web, particularly among sites devoted to the BBSes. Computer-mediated communication is rapidly changing how individuals interact. Email, chat rooms, and instant messaging have already impacted how people build and maintain social networks. These changes are not as new as many thing, however. Well before the Internet, the BBSes altered those who participated in similar ways. Thus, this thesis examines the BBS community in order to broaden understanding of computer-mediated interaction in general

Queering the City of God: W. H. Auden’s Later Poetry and the Ethics of Friendship.

Scholars have for the most part kept quiet about the intersection of queerness and Christianity in the poetry of W. H. Auden, a gay British modernist poet who immigrated to America just before the outbreak of World War II and converted to Christianity shortly thereafter. Queering the City of God brings to light the queer commitments of Auden’s Christian poetry. His post-conversion oeuvre, which spans the early 1940s to the early 1970s, unfolded in the midst of two international crises: World War II and the Cold War. Fittingly, questions like, “What would a just society really look like?” and, “What role should art play in resisting a destructive political regime?” dominate his later work. He gives decidedly queer theo-ethical answers, interpreting his own participation in queer networks of friends through the lens of the Christian faith to construct gay subjectivity as an anti-imperialist prophetic vocation. These theo-ethical apologies for friendship give us purchase on several current issues in queer theory. Queering the City of God argues that (1) the pre-Stonewall perspective of Auden’s oeuvre provides a resource for thinking politically and ethically outside the strictures of gay pride. (2) Since Auden’s relationship with psychoanalysis cooled after he converted, his later poetry provides a resource for talking about gay subjectivity without using the pathologizing concepts of psychology. (3) And Auden’s later poetry, the labor of a gay Christian polymath, has much to offer current debates in academic theology about nature, grace, religious epistemology, and how to do ethics.PHDEnglish Language & LiteratureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96141/1/obustion_1.pd

« Writing into a Void » : Charles Bukowski and the Little Magazines

The little magazines were instrumental in turning Charles Bukowski into a hugely popular figure in American letters and, yet, their significance in Bukowski’s early career has been largely overlooked. For Bukowski, the little magazines were the ideal outlet for his prolific output, and their editors, who saw him as a spiritual leader, championed his work so vehemently that he eventually became the most published author of the 1960s––his indisputable rise to fame in the alternative literary scene is displayed in the graphs provided. Bukowski’s position was ambiguous: he needed those periodicals to satisfy his hunger for exposure and recognition and, yet, he attacked their editors for their allegedly unskillful productions, especially in the case of the mimeographs. This previously uncharted territory is illustrated by means of a critical and historical journey through the main magazines of the period, stressing how zealously they published Bukowski’s work and helped him become an international icon