The Lost Girls of Dark Fantasy Cinema (1982 - 2006)

The thesis will research girlhood and lostness in the young main characters of ten fantasy films directed by Del Toro, Jackson, Gilliam, Henson, McKean, Singh, Jordan, Selick, and Miyazaki in the period 1984-2009. The research will focus on adolescent traumas relating to girlhood and specifically identity and society, sexuality and repression, abandonment / isolation and fantasizing. The research will investigate the filmmakers’ paralleling of those issues with archetypes and tropes originating from myth and fairy-tale traditions as nostalgic and/or subversive representations of girlhood. The research will investigate the journeys of ten ‘lost girls’ in ten films which epitomise the cycle of the ‘lost girls’ genre. Each of these films focuses extensively on the figure of the lost girl and the implications lostness and girlhood, investigating issues of isolation, suppression, sexuality and coming of age. Each of these issues are confronted through imagination and through a clash between fantasy and reality. The chapters are each focused on a pair of two films, in which the lost girls are both at a similar age and they explore the type of imaginations and worlds that the writers and filmmakers envisage girls at that age would generate and inhabit. Investigating the similarities and shared tropes in each pair of films, the chapters explore the filmmakers’ take on what imagination and fantasy can accomplish as a genre and as a coming-of-age engine for different age groups and in different cultures

Essays on the Empirics of Transition

After a long downturn, the economies of transition countries have bounced back with strong output growth and stable fiscal and monetary policies. The group ranges from large countries like Russia, with extensive resources to much smaller countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The change of their planned economic systems to market economies can be regarded, as one of the biggest socioeconomic transformations in the human history. This dissertation studies the dynamic transition process equipped with sophisticated econometric techniques to improve on the current empirical literature. In the first part I employ the structural VAR model of Clarida and Gali (1998) to a sample of transition countries in order to assess the importance of different types of externalities. In particular, I am interested in how much of the variances of output, real effective exchange rate and prices are explained by the three types of shocks before the Euro adoption. In the second part I use a regime switching autoregressive model to determine, whether CEE countries have put emphasis on stabilizing inflation or on output during the last decade of transition. I find that the monetary policy depended on the country specific structure and therefore monetary policy in transition countries before joining the euro had focused more on the output stabilization. This is of particular relevance for their prospective participation in a monetary union, where in contrast, the main focus will be on the union-level price stability. Finally, we estimate error correction model determining the long-run exchange rate elasticity in Russia and summarize my main theoretical and empirical findings

Functional Transfer Theorems for Maxima of Stationary Processes

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 60G70, 60F12, 60G10.In this paper we discuss the problem of finding the limit process of sequences of continuous time random processes, which are constructed as properly affine transformed maxima of random number identically distributed random variables. The max-increments of these processes are dependent. First we work under the well known conditions D (un) and D' (un) of Leadbetter, Lindgren and Rootzen, (1983). Further we investigate the case of moving average sequence. The distribution function of the noise components is assumed to have regularly varying tails or is subexponential and belongs to the max-domain of attraction of Gumbel distribution or belongs to the max-domain of attraction of Weibull distribution. We work with random time-components which are a.s. strictly increasing to infinity. In particular their counting process is a mixed Poisson process or a renewal process with regularly varying tails with parameter β ∈ (0, 1). Here is proved that such sequences of random processes converges weakly to a compound extremal process.This research is partially supported by the NFSI, Grant VU-MI-105/2005 of the Ministry of Science and Education, Bulgaria

Enhancing quality of life in residential high-rises by sustainable design responses

After the end of World War II, in England was observed a proliferation of high-rises, replacing the destroyed buildings by the bombing and the existing slums. However, their popularity variated with time, at first being seen as a great improvement of the living condition, but later the authorities faced many complain that these buildings were unfit for normal living and especially for families and children. Nowadays England has to cope with a great heritage of towers from the 60s’ and the 70s’, as well as an increase in the construction of new high-rise buildings especially in the capital London. This research recognises the need to improve the design of the existing and future high-rises so they are in the same time sustainable and provide a better quality of life for the occupiers. Therefor an overall aim of the study was formulated: to investigate strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the impact of high-rise buildings on quality of life through four objectives. The first one is to evaluate the connection between sustainability and quality of life indicators in high-rise buildings. The second one it to analyse liveability of high-rise buildings for better quality of life. The third one is to analyse energy-efficient solutions and their impact on enhancing quality of life. The final objective is to produce a conceptual framework for designing sustainable high-rise residential buildings enhancing quality of life. The methodology adopts an interpretive and realist paradigm and the data for this research was gathered from primary and secondary sources: interviews, observations and archival data. After searching SkyscraperPage database, it was found that two types of high-rise persist around UK and are numerous in London and Manchester: 12-16 storey buildings with brick cladding and 22-30 storey buildings with concrete cladding, so a limited number of buildings with these characteristics were selected for the case study. Actually, an effort to interview 3 to 5 residents in the same building at low, middle and high floors was made, instead of interviewing single residents from numerous different high-rises, in order to evaluate the significance of the height. The preferred method was interviews, as questionnaires were found to provide superficial data, open to misinterpretation from the researcher. Interviews, on the other hand, provided in-depth information about the social phenomenon: high-rise living, many surprising answers and most importantly, attitudes and preferences that were not influenced by the formulation of the questions but were formulated by the interviewees themselves. Seventeen interviews with residents were conducted in two old high-rises in Manchester and four in London to include the users ‘needs into the research process. Twelve interviews with residents in new high-rises illustrated the existing variations for the design issues. Additionally, twelve architects shared their proven experience designing residential high-rises, offering invaluable expertise for the design of sustainable residential high-rises providing better quality of life. The data generated then were analysed by content analysis and dynamic simulations with DesignBuilder of an approximated model of one of the studied high-rise complemented the interviews, investigating different building envelops and HVAC scenarios. This quantitative method supported the somewhat subjective findings regarding thermal comfort and cost-efficiency from the interviews. The main findings showed that specific sustainable design solutions are adequate for enhancing the quality of life in residential high-rise buildings. Some alerting data from the interviews with the residents reveals difficulties imposed by the design on the social interactions, more common in the old high-rises lacking any amenities. Other important findings inform that both existing and contemporary designs are not orientated towards the needs of the families with children, a major weakness stated by both the architects and the residents. The observations provided support for a view that both modern and old high-rises often fail to enhance and improve the built environment by both appearance and mix of functions, a valuable facet of the high-rises’ social impact. The analysis led to the elaboration of a theoretical framework that can be used by professionals and academics to guide their design process and constitutes the major contribution to knowledge

Essays on the Empirics of Transition

After a long downturn, the economies of transition countries have bounced back with strong output growth and stable fiscal and monetary policies. The group ranges from large countries like Russia, with extensive resources to much smaller countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The change of their planned economic systems to market economies can be regarded, as one of the biggest socioeconomic transformations in the human history. This dissertation studies the dynamic transition process equipped with sophisticated econometric techniques to improve on the current empirical literature. In the first part I employ the structural VAR model of Clarida and Gali (1998) to a sample of transition countries in order to assess the importance of different types of externalities. In particular, I am interested in how much of the variances of output, real effective exchange rate and prices are explained by the three types of shocks before the Euro adoption. In the second part I use a regime switching autoregressive model to determine, whether CEE countries have put emphasis on stabilizing inflation or on output during the last decade of transition. I find that the monetary policy depended on the country specific structure and therefore monetary policy in transition countries before joining the euro had focused more on the output stabilization. This is of particular relevance for their prospective participation in a monetary union, where in contrast, the main focus will be on the union-level price stability. Finally, we estimate error correction model determining the long-run exchange rate elasticity in Russia and summarize my main theoretical and empirical findings.macroeconomics; econometrics; transition; euro adoption; credibility; real appreciation

(G, λ)-Extremal Processes and Their Relationship with Max-Stable Processes

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 60G70, 60G18.The study of G-extremal processes was initiated by S. Resnick and M. Rubinovich (1973). Here we transform these processes by a non-decreasing and right-continuous function λ : [0, ∞) → [0, ∞) and investigate relationship between (G; λ)-extremal processes and max-stable processes. We prove that for the processes with independent max-increments if one of the following three statements is given, the other two are equivalent: a) Y is a max-stable process; b) Y is a (G; λ)-extremal process; c) Y is a self-similar extremal process.This paper is partially supported by NFSI-Bulgaria, Grant No VU-MI-105/2005

Empirical Methods for Development and Expanding of the Bulgarian WordNet

Some basic points from the automated creation of a Bulgarian WordNet – an analogue of the Princeton WordNet, are treated. The used computer tools, the received results and their estimation are discussed. A side effect from the proposed approach is the receiving of patterns for the Bulgarian syntactic analyzer

E-GAMES IN ACADEMIC TEACHING ON BULGARIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE FOR MEDICAL PURPOSES

The study presents new ideas for using e-games in programmed teaching of Bulgarian as a foreign language at a medical university. The working hypothesis proves the possibility of developing scientific competence through language teaching by e-games focused on medical terminology, anatomy and some of the main clinical disciplines. The authors have classified the types of e-games from a didactical point of view and have given some examples of successful tasks from their teaching practice

Genotoxicity of Agricultural Soils after one year of Conversion Period and under Conventional Agriculture

Agricultural soils are often contaminated with genotoxic chemicals. Hence, transition to sustainable agriculture requires a conversion period. We performed a comparative evaluation of the soilgenotoxicity in a field after one year of conversion and in a field under conventional agriculture, not located close to sources of pollution. Soil samples were taken from 0-20 cm and 20-40 cm depth. Allium cepa-test system was used for the cytogenetic analysis. The higher mitotic index and lower frequency of chromosome aberrations in the samples from the field in conversion period compared with the field under conventional agriculture are indicative of a decrease of the soil genotoxicity. A slight increase in the frequency of aberrantcells and a substantial decrease in the mitotic index in 20-40 cm soil layer from both fields were observed. Regarding the field in conversion this might be due to the presence of agrochemicals used in the previous years, and indicates the necessity of longer conversion period. The results showed that Allium cepa-test might be wasused for monitoring of genotoxic pollution of the soils without preliminary extraction of the chemicals they contain