Early Social Interaction: A Case Comparison of Developmental Pragmatics and Psychoanalytic Theory

This book brings together various threads of the research work I have been involved with over a number of years. This research is based on a longitudinal video recorded study of one ofmydaughters as shewas learning howto talk. The impetus for engaging in this work arose from a sense that within developmental psychology and child language, when people are interested in understanding howchildren use language, they seem over-focused or concerned with questions of formal grammar and semantics. My interest is on understanding how a child learns to talk and through this process is then understood as being or becoming a member of a culture. When a young child is learning how to engage in everyday interaction she has to acquire those competencies that allow her to be simultaneously oriented to the conventions that inform talk-ininteraction and at the same time deal with the emotional or affective dimensions of her experience. It turns out that in developmental psychology these domains are traditionally studied separately or at least by researchers whose interests rarely overlap. In order to understand better early social relations (parent–child interaction), I want to pursue the idea that we will benefit by studying both early pragmatic development and emotional development. Not surprisingly, the theoretical positions underlying the study of these domains provide very different accounts of human development and this book illuminates why this might be the case. What follows will I hope serve as a case-study on the interdependence between the analysis of social interaction and subsequent interpretation

Hinkle v. Sam Blanken & Co.: Dismissals for Discovery Abuse – Toward a New Standard in the District of Columbia

These notes are part of the District of Columbia Survey

Hinkle v. Sam Blanken & Co.: Dismissals for Discovery Abuse – Toward a New Standard in the District of Columbia

These notes are part of the District of Columbia Survey

Glycerol-based polymers and their pathway to industrial relevance

The work disclosed in this thesis is a discussion of the properties and implementation of glycerol-based materials with an emphasis on poly(acrylated glycerol). The first work discussed is the production and characterization of acrylated glycerol polymers. Because of the current abundance of glycerol, there is a large potential for materials and chemicals derived from glycerine. In this work we look at making and studying thermoplastic poly (glycerol-acrylate). In order to prevent these materials from rapidly producing thermosets, a type of polymerization chemistry known as reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer, or RAFT, is utilized. RAFT polymerization is a type of controlled radical polymerization that uses a small molecule called a chain transfer agent (CTA) to control the polymerization and to limit termination. As the CTA may not always be located at the end of the polymer chain it is of importance to know the stability of this molecule, especially when scale up is being considered. This leads us to the second work in this thesis which is the study of the thermal stability of the CTA. This is important as many industrial processes use elevated temperatures in the processing of their materials. If these glycerine polymers are to be of industrial relevance the should ideally be compatible with existing polymer processing methods. The third chapter of this thesis is the study of converting a living anionic polymer into a macro-chain transfer agent through a method known as atom transfer radical addition fragmentation reaction (ATRAF). The development of this method would open the door to efficiently producing glycerol, or other acrylics, that are block copolymers with styrenic or diene blocks. This work would give glycerol-acrylic polymers a strong competitive advantage against traditional petrochemical materials as it has properties that are difficult, or impossible, to obtain through petrochemical monomers, are abundant, and cost effective. Finally I will detail two ongoing projects. The first ongoing work is the development of a more scalable way of converting living anionic polymers into macro-chain transfer agents. This is done first by converting the anion into a macro-monomer and then doing a single insertion RAFT step to yield the macro-cta. I will detail what synthesis and characterization has been completed and what work is yet to be done. The second is the production of glycerol-acetal/acetate-acrylate polymers. These materials have glass transitions that are higher than that of glycerol-acrylate polymers. In this work I detail the initial synthesis and characterization that has been completed and the work that we are intending to complete

Rapid reproduction of complex images in graphite by laser etching and exfoliation

We describe a means to produce thin layers of carbon, graphene multilayers, using laser etching followed by exfoliation. Complex macroscopic images can be produced in minutes. The laser need only mark the top-most layers of graphene for the image to become permanent down to the glass substrate. We use the technique to produce artwork for proof of principle results. With refinement the methodology should also enable patterning of novel graphene electronic and optoelectronic devices