Master Planned Communities and Governance

In the last three decades, a number of master planned communities (MPCs) have been developed in South East Queensland (SEQ) as part of the response to the housing demands of rapid population growth. Developers, state government, local councils and communities play key roles in the production and management of infrastructure and community services in these Masterplanned communities. Alongside rising community expectations regarding quality of services, there is an increasing trend for developers to be involved in either the direct provision of infrastructure, or its funding, with local councils and the state government playing a facilitating role in provision of services alongside their more traditional role of direct provision. It is imperative to understand the governance structures as well as governance challenges of master planned communities at different stages of development. The objectives of this paper are to review governance frameworks and challenges for master planned communities at three critical stages of development: the visioning and planning stage, the implementation stage, and the completion stage. The paper has identified three distinct governance structures of master planned communities – single developer model, principal developer model and government led model. Three case studies from South East Queensland, each being representative of a particular governance structure, are used to evaluate each of the three stages of development with respect to the challenges involved in the provision of infrastructure and services. The paper provides a framework for analysing the relationship between governance structures and the development of master planned communities, focusing on the relationships that exist between institutional stakeholders, and on the potential impacts of the transfer of infrastructure and service provision from private management to community and local control

Shipping Governance in the Polar Regions: the Interaction of Global, Regional and National Regimes

The primary question of the thesis is: What are the constraints and opportunities of shipping regulation at the regional and national level in the polar regions in light of overarching regulatory regimes? The framework instrument of maritime law is the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC). Global shipping governance is regulated by the polar shipping standards of the IMO, including the Polar Code. International shipping law interacts with the unique regional and national regulations of the Arctic and Antarctic

Vocal communication, nesting, and territoriality in the California scrub jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens)

This report evaluates vocal communication, nesting, territoriality, and other social behaviors of the California Scrub Jay

Facilitating desire through education in protracted urban displacement: a collaborative approach to spontaneous teachers' language teacher identity formation

There are currently over 15 million refugees and asylum seekers living in urban sites of protracted transitory displacement throughout the world. People in this situation, including children, are often denied access to formal education, which has led to the establishment of informal Alternative Learning Centres (ALCs) by refugees themselves. English is commonly adopted as the medium of instruction at ALCs, with teachers drawn from the refugee community based on their relative levels of English proficiency. How these spontaneous teachers negotiate their language teacher identities (LTIs) given their lack of teacher education and precarious social positioning is yet to be considered by applied linguistics and refugee education scholars despite the educational ramifications teachers’ LTIs have on the provision of quality education for countless refugee students. Through a critical identity theoretical and pedagogic frame, this study attends to this voluminous gap in the literature by reporting on a 12 month participatory action research (PAR) inquiry aimed at facilitating the desired LTIs of thirteen spontaneous English language teachers practicing at an ALC in Indonesia. The research reports that the transitory displacement context gives rise to theoretical and practical deviations from identity studies situated in formal non-displacement education contexts. Drawing on key constructs from Darvin and Norton’s (2015) critical identities framework, the participants’ LTI negotiations, although situated and temporary, are shown to be structured across time and space through the ongoing interplay between primary and secondary habitus values, beliefs, feelings, and attitudes; their own and their students’ English-related future desires; and their present micro, meso and macro-fields of practice. For the participants, these multidimensional negotiations enabled them to move from inhabiting tentative language teacher identities to inhabiting and being ascribed their desired LTIs. The lessons learned from our PAR collaboration extends the scope of LTI and critical identity studies into the extreme anti-belonging context of transitory displacement. Further, as English-medium ALCs provide the sole source of education for tens of thousands of refugees around the world, this first study on spontaneous teacher development from an LTI perspective serves to shine the spotlight on spontaneous English teachers’ knowledge bases, desires, teaching strengths, and teaching challenges and, in doing so, informs the growing need for language teacher development in displacement contexts. Lastly, as a longitudinal PAR inquiry with refugee participants, our collaboration has substantive methodological implications for researchers wishing to engage with, and in the service of, marginalised communities

Plasmon-Enhanced Fluorescent Protein Emission: A New Paradigm for Improved Single-Molecule Bio-Imaging.

Single-molecule fluorescence (SMF) microscopy is a powerful technique that provides high sensitivity and nanometer-scale resolution for biological imaging. The emission profile of an isolated fluorescent molecule allows the emitter position to be determined on a scale far smaller than the standard diffraction limit of light with a precision that improves with the number of detected photons. While in vitro implementations of SMF have achieved 1.5-nm localization precisions, an outstanding problem in the field is to improve the resolution of SMF imaging in live cells; this has been generally limited to 10 – 40 nm. The main problem is technological: fluorescent proteins (FPs), the genetically encodable labels widely used for biological imaging, are dimmer and shorter lived than the organic dyes employed in vitro. Increasing FP brightness and photostability will significantly improve the precision with which these fluorescent probes are localized in vivo down to a few nanometers, as well as increase average trajectory length for single-particle tracking, and these advances will enable studies of intracellular processes on the molecular scale. In this Thesis, we use SMF microscopy to characterize fluorescence and attain super-resolution images, and we demonstrate that nanoparticle plasmonics can improve both the brightness and photostability of FPs. The localized surface plasmon mode, or collective oscillation of free electrons, produces a highly enhanced field in the near field of a metal nanostructure. Here, by positioning FPs in the near field of gold nanorods via adsorption or immobilization, we use this coupling to more than double the emission rate of the red FP mCherry, and determine that coupled molecules of the photo-activatable FP PAmCherry emit three times more photons prior to photobleaching. We then extend our methods to in vivo experiments, in which gold nanotriangle arrays serve as extracellular imaging substrates to enhance the emission from membrane-bound proteins in live bacterial cells. Finally, we demonstrate selective excitation of the longitudinal mode of gold nanorods using polarization, and consequently tune the amount of plasmon-enhanced emission observed. The work in this Thesis demonstrates the power of plasmon-enhanced single-molecule fluorescence to strongly impact the bio-imaging field, with implications for human health and disease.PHDChemistryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110406/1/donehue_1.pd

Excited State Dynamics of 1,4-diphenyl-1,3-butadiene and 1,1,4,4-tetraphenyl-1,3-butadiene Probed by Time-Resolved Electronic Spectroscopy

The visual pigment 11-cis-retinal is covalently bonded to Lys-296 of the heptahelical membrane protein rhodopsin through a protonated Schiff base linkage. Photoisomerization of this chromophore induces a structural change in the protein that initiates the vision process. Studies have found this isomerization process occurs inside the protein in about 200 femtoseconds. Considering the relative size of the chromophore, its constrained environment, and the way in which a molecule is traditionally considered to rotate during the isomerization process, this time constant is surprisingly fast. Even more intriguing is that in solution, where the chromophore is free from the constraints of the protein, the time constant for the rate of isomerization increases dramatically to 3 picoseconds. Though it is generally accepted the surrounding protein catalyzes the rapid rate of isomerization, the mechanism by which this occurs is not well understood. Volume-conserving mechanisms of photoisomerization, such as the bicycle pedal (BP) and the Hula-twist (HT) have been proposed to explain this enhanced rate. However, little experimental data is available to support this claim. This project proposes to unveil the mechanisms of isomerization in constrained environments. A sterically hindered derivative of 1,4-diphenyl-1,3-butadiene (DPB), 1,1,4,4-tetraphenyl-1,3-butadiene (TPB) will be employed to understand the mechanism of photoisomerization in constrained environments. Through the use of femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy and picosecond spectroscopy, we will investigate the excited state dynamics of TPB and compare the results to previously studied DPB. From this, we hope to gain new information about the influence of structural details and solvent environment on the isomerization process.The Battelle/Bertram D. Thomas Scholarship FundNo embarg

Los actores influyentes y las personas que pueden abrir puertas como aliados: un modelo de alianza

A partir de su experiencia de trabajo conjunto en la educación de las personas refugiadas en Indonesia, los autores identifican cuatro modos en que son incluidos y excluidos en los procesos de toma de decisiones y debaten acerca de los papeles y responsabilidades de los aliados para superar el silenciamiento de sus voces

Vernier-templated synthesis, crystal structure, and supramolecular chemistry of a 12-Porphyrin nanoring

Vernier templating exploits a mismatch between the number of binding sites in a template and a reactant to direct the formation of a product that is large enough to bind several template units. Here, we present a detailed study of the Vernier-templated synthesis of a 12-porphyrin nanoring. NMR and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) analyses show that Vernier complexes are formed as intermediates in the cyclo-oligomerization reaction. UV/Vis/NIR titrations show that the three-component assembly of the 12-porphyrin nanoring figure-of-eight template complex displays high allosteric cooperativity and chelate cooperativity. This nanoring–template 1:2 complex is among the largest synthetic molecules to have been characterized by single-crystal analysis. It crystallizes as a racemate, with an angle of 27° between the planes of the two template units. The crystal structure reveals many unexpected intramolecular C[BOND]H⋅⋅⋅N contacts involving the tert-butyl side chains. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiments show that molecules of the 12-porphyrin template complex can remain intact on the gold surface, although the majority of the material unfolds into the free nanoring during electrospray deposition