Performing weight change : a performative reading of reality-making through a relationship of meaning and doing : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in English at Massey University

Reading the reality-making processes that create bodies in weight change performances challenges us to understand the relationships between meanings and actions, or between discourses and materiality. This study uses a performative model to elaborate how discourses and materiality can be read in texts in such a way to bring transparency to the process of materiality-making, agency and causality. The texts used in this study are transcribed interviews of participants who identified themselves as undergoing weight change. Reading weight and body-making as a discursive-material relationship enriches a shared understanding in the interdisciplinary space of psychology and English. The performative model chosen for this study offers sufficient structure to read both the generic features of reality-making and individually-nuanced reality-making practices, presenting psychologists with a sophisticated understanding of change processes. To read reality-making with detailed transparency, we require tools of analysis that can directly read discourses and actions as shared spaces of relationship, through which material entities can emerge. For such tools of analysis, this study utilizes and extends the model of performativity offered by Dr Karen Barad (2007). In using this model to read text performatively, the unique features that are creating performances of weight change are accessed through a reading of boundary-making practices, through the relationship between meaning and doing that establishes what matters in accessing possibilities for meaning and possibilities for doing, and through the elaboration of subject-object relationships into a sequenced performance

Blocked drains and open minds : multiple accountability relationships and improved service delivery performance in an Indian city

How can public sector service providers deliver improved services to citizens within environments where inefficient and often corrupt service delivery is the norm? The following paper provides some answers to this question through examining the impact of a series of customer-focused service delivery reforms undertaken at the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (Metro Water) in Hyderabad City, Andhra Pradesh state, Southern India at the end of the 1990s. The Metro Water case is interesting, as it shows how a semi-autonomous service provider can undertake organisational change and realise sustained improvements in service delivery performance. If this process is deepened over time there is a greater opportunity to attract, and provide security for, larger state or private sector investments that can impact water supply and sewerage service delivery over the long-term. This is the scenario that emerges in the following case. A key finding in this research is that multiple accountability relationships, operating between external actors and Metro Water staff, have collectively contributed to sustained organisational change and improved service delivery performance. The most critical of these relationships are those that triangulate between citizens, senior managers, and front-line workers. In the Metro Water case active citizen engagement through formal accountability mechanisms has been the key to the organisation s overall success in delivering improved services to citizens (both middle class and urban poor) throughout Hyderabad City

Private Universities and Building a World Class University in Africa

In the past decade the term world-class university WCU - also called globally competitive universities world-class elite or flagship universities- has become a catch phrase not simply for improving the quality of learning and research in higher education but also more important for developing the capacity to compete in the global higher education marketplace through the acquisition and creation of advanced knowledge This paper will provide a description of the attributes of world-class universities the steps in building and sustaining world-class universities in Africa and will propose methodologies by which private universities in Africa can attain world-class status sharing the experiences in Nigeria The paper will be concluded to offer a few tips to private Universities to guide their earnest quest to attain world-class statu

Corruption and Governance: A Bad Ginger for Development in Nigeria

Public service is a service where federal state or local government has an interest or where its presence is felt It is a very wide organ encompassing the civil service the school system the judicially the local government system the security agents government companies and public service is of great importance to any given state The role of the public service in achieving good governance cannot be underestimated The purpose of the state is to maximize the potentials of its citizens by providing basic rights liberty security and welfare which can be gathered from the central role in the formulation and implementation of policies designed for the development of the society Development is critical and essential to the sustenance and growth of any nation A country is classified as developed when can provide qualitative life for her citizenry Nigeria in the last fifty years has been battling with the problems of development despite huge human material and natural resources in her possession In Nigeria the roles of government has come under severe critiques within the framework of the gap that exists between the anticipated roles and the actual output in guiding the society along the course of development as a result of corruptio

'Everything Tutta Gloria'

A book review of Oblivion Banjo. The Poetry of Charles Wright, Charles Wright (hbck, 756pp, $50, Farrar Strauss & Giroux)in the form of a dialogue

Safety Engineering with COTS components

Safety-critical systems are becoming more widespread, complex and reliant on software. Increasingly they are engineered through Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) (Commercial Off The Shelf) components to alleviate the spiralling costs and development time, often in the context of complex supply chains. A parallel increased concern for safety has resulted in a variety of safety standards, with a growing consensus that a safety life cycle is needed which is fully integrated with the design and development life cycle, to ensure that safety has appropriate influence on the design decisions as system development progresses. In this article we explore the application of an integrated approach to safety engineering in which assurance drives the engineering process. The paper re- ports on the outcome of a case study on a live industrial project with a view to evaluate: its suitability for application in a real-world safety engineering setting; its benefits and limitations in counteracting some of the difficulties of safety en- gineering with COTS components across supply chains; and, its effectiveness in generating evidence which can contribute directly to the construction of safety cases

Biological Impact of Silicon Nitride for Orthopaedic Applications: Role of Particle Size, Surface Composition and Donor Variation

The adverse biological impact of orthopaedic wear debris currently limits the long-term safety of human joint replacement devices. We investigated the role of particle size, surface composition and donor variation in influencing the biological impact of silicon nitride as a bioceramic for orthopaedic applications. Silicon nitride particles were compared to the other commonly used orthopaedic biomaterials (e.g. cobalt-chromium and Ti-6Al-4V alloys). A novel biological evaluation platform was developed to simultaneously evaluate cytotoxicity, inflammatory cytokine release, oxidative stress, and genotoxicity potential of particles using peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMNCs) from individual human donors. Irrespective of the particle size, silicon nitride did not cause any adverse responses whereas cobalt-chromium wear particles caused donor-dependent cytotoxicity, TNF-α cytokine release, oxidative stress, and DNA damage in PBMNCs after 24 h. Despite being similar in size and morphology, silicon dioxide nanoparticles caused the release of significantly higher levels of TNF-α compared to silicon nitride nanoparticles, suggesting that surface composition influences the inflammatory response in PBMNCs. Ti-6Al-4V wear particles also released significantly elevated levels of TNF-α cytokine in one of the donors. This study demonstrated that silicon nitride is an attractive orthopaedic biomaterial due to its minimal biological impact on human PBMNCs

Fluorescence spectroscopy analysis of the bacteria-mineral interface: adsorption of lipopolysaccharides to silica and alumina

YesWe present here a quantification of the sorption process and molecular conformation involved in the attachment of bacterial cell wall lipopolysaccharides (LPSs), extracted from Escherichia coli, to silica (SiO2) and alumina (Al2O3) particles. We propose that interfacial forces govern the physicochemical interactions of the bacterial cell wall with minerals in the natural environment, and the molecular conformation of LPS cell wall components depends on both the local charge at the point of binding and hydrogen bonding potential. This has an effect on bacterial adaptation to the host environment through adhesion, growth, function, and ability to form biofilms. Photophysical techniques were used to investigate adsorption of fluorescently labeled LPS onto mineral surfaces as model systems for bacterial attachment. Adsorption of macromolecules in dilute solutions was studied as a function of pH and ionic strength in the presence of alumina and silica via fluorescence, potentiometric, and mass spectrometry techniques. The effect of silica and alumina particles on bacterial growth as a function of pH was also investigated using spectrophotometry. The alumina and silica particles were used to mimic active sites on the surface of clay and soil particles, which serve as a point of attachment of bacteria in natural systems. It was found that LPS had a high adsorption affinity for Al2O3 while adsorbing weakly to SiO2 surfaces. Strong adsorption was observed at low pH for both minerals and varied with both pH and mineral concentration, likely in part due to conformational rearrangement of the LPS macromolecules. Bacterial growth was also enhanced in the presence of the particles at low pH values. This demonstrates that at a molecular level, bacterial cell wall components are able to adapt their conformation, depending on the solution pH, in order to maximize attachment to substrates and guarantee community survival.The authors thank the Libyan Ministry of Education for financial support during the experimental study. We thank the EPSRC funded consortium “Hard-soft matter interfaces: from understanding to engineering” (EP/I001514/1) for financial support. Emily Caseley, who assisted in the preparation and characterization of AmNS-LPS particles as an MRC Confidence in Concept funded postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bradford, (MC_PC_16038)

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) and the Teaching of Science: Determiners for Professional Development

The study investigates how Science teachers articulate their self-confidence in teaching Science with technology. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is used as the primary tool to describe their practice. Using a quantitative approach, with an initial survey of 408 science teachers from 59 secondary schools in a state in East Malaysia, descriptive and inferential statistics were conducted to assess science teachers’ level of TPACK and discriminate differences between perceptions on TPACK related to their teaching experience. Findings revealed that the level of Content Knowledge (CK), Pedagogical Knowledge (PK), Technological Knowledge (TK) and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) are high, in comparison to their Technological Content Knowledge (TCK), Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) and Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) which were recorded at a moderate level. The study also found how teachers with more extensive experience teaching reported higher confidence with their CK, PK and PCK. Novice teachers indicated slightly higher confidence in their TK. The study provides a set of determiners for professional development opportunities for Sarawak Science teachers to upskill their knowledge to integrate science content, pedagogy, and technology