Writing, Illustrating, and Publishing a Children’s Book

My book is entitled Delilah Discovers Degas, about a girl named Delilah who is very passionate about ballet dancing. When Delilah discovers the impressionist painter, Degas, his paintings serve to fuel her imagination as she goes about her daily activities before ballet class. The paintings of adult ballerinas, which I’ve incorporated into the book, represent her dream of one day becoming a professional ballerina. My target audience is 4-6 year old children. I am studying both English and Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Rhode Island. My academic efforts culminated in creating a children’s book as my senior honors project for several reasons. First, I am well practiced in academic writing, but until this project had never written a work of fiction. The project has allowed me to write creatively in a genre that I could only study in the form of an honors project. Second, I chose to include illustration as part of my project because I’ve always been interested in analyzing and producing visual rhetoric in my Writing classes. I dedicated more time to cartooning and drawing when I was younger, so illustrating has been one of the more challenging, but rewarding, aspects of the project. The process of making a children’s book required that I consider rhetorical concepts. I learned to balance different elements that are in conversation with one another, including my writing, my illustrations, and Degas’ paintings. The placement of words and images on each page was carefully thought out in regards to arrangement, style, and genre. Each page is considered in terms of the style of the book as a whole and as a logical connection between proceeding pages. One of my main goals is to have a concrete and professional product by the end of the semester. As a result, I will be donating several copies of my book to various public libraries throughout Rhode Island

People's perceptions and classifications of sounds heard in urban parks : semantics, affect and restoration

Sounds have been broadly categorized by researchers into ‘human’, ‘nature’ and ‘mechanical’. It is less clear if the general public define and classify sounds in the same way and which factors influence their classification process. Establishing people’s classification and impression of urban park sounds helps identify their perception and experience of urban parks. This in turn aides the process of defining parks with reference to soundscapes, to produce an appreciated and potentially restorative place. This study involved urban park sounds, identified by park users, being presented in card sorts and survey items. Participants sorted the sounds into similar groups, in reference to a visited park. The terminology, factors involved and classification of the sounds was assessed using multidimensional scaling. Triangulation of the results suggests affect is a key factor in people’s classification process. Participants’ grouped sounds were labelled by affective terms more often than their perceived physical properties. Affective evaluations of each sound produced a similar classification structure as the card sort results. People’s classification structure also varied depending on how restorative they found their urban park. Furthermore schematic recollections played a part with many sounds being ‘expected’. Overall similarities and differences with ‘human’, ‘nature’ and ‘mechanical’ classifications were observed

Shelf-to-slope sedimentation on the north Kaipara continental margin, northwestern North Island, New Zealand

Temperate mixed carbonate-siliciclastic sediments and authigenic minerals are the current surficial deposits at shelf and slope depths (30-1015 m water depth) on the north Kaipara continental margin (NKCM) in northern New Zealand. This is the first detailed study of these NKCM deposits which are described and mapped from the analysis of 54 surficial sediment samples collected along seven shorenormal transects and from three short piston cores. Five surficial sediment facies are defined from the textural and compositional characteristics of this sediment involving relict, modern or mixed relict-modern components. Facies 1 (siliciclastic sand) forms a modern sand prism that extends out to outer shelf depths and contains three subfacies. Subfacies 1a (quartzofeldspathic sand) is an extensive North Island volcanic and basement rock derived sand deposit that occurs at less than 100-200 m water depth across the entire NKCM. Subfacies 1b (heavy mineral sand) occurs at less than 50 m water depth along only two transects and consists of predominantly local basaltic to basaltic andesite derived heavy mineral rich (gt30%) deposits. Subfacies 1c (mica rich sand) occurs at one sample site at 300 m water depth and contains 20-30% mica grains, probably sourced from South Island schists and granites. Facies 2 (glauconitic sand) comprises medium to fine sand with over 30% and up to 95% authigenic glauconite grains occurring in areas of low sedimentation on the outer shelf and upper slope (150-400 m water depth) in central NKCM. Facies 3 (mixed bryozoan-siliciclastic sand) consists of greater than 40% bryozoan skeletal material and occurs only in the northern half of the NKCM. Facies 4 (pelletal mud) occurs on the mid shelf (100-150 m water depth) in northern NKCM and comprises muddy sediment dominated by greater than c. 30% mixed carbonatesiliciclastic pellets. Facies 5 (foraminiferal mud and sand) contains at least 30% foraminifera tests and comprises two subfacies. Subfacies 5a consists of at least 50% mud sized sediment and occurs at gt400 m water depth in southern NKCM while subfacies 5b comprises gt70% sand sized sediment and occurs at mid to outer shelf and slope depths in the northern NKCM. vi A number of environmental controls affect the composition and distribution of NKCM sediments and these include: (1) variable sediment inputs to the NKCM dominated by inshore bedload sources from the south; (2) northerly directed nearshore littoral and combined storm-current sediment transport on the beach and shelf, respectively; (3) offshore suspended sediment bypassing allowing deposition of authigenic minerals and skeletal grains; (4) exchange between the beach and shelf producing similar compositions and grain sizes at less than 150 m water depth; and (5) the episodic rise of sea level since the Last Glaciation maximum approximately 20 000 years ago which has resulted in much sediment being left stranded at greater depths than would otherwise be anticipated. Sedimentation models developed from other wave-dominated shelves generally do not appear to apply to the NKCM sediments due to their overall relative coarseness and their mosaic textural characteristics. In particular, the NKCM sediments do not show the expected fining offshore trends of most wavedominated shelf models. Consequently, sandy sediments (both siliciclastic and authigenic) are most typical with mud becoming a dominant component in southern NKCM sediments only at greater than 400 m water depth, over 350 m deeper than most models suggest, a situation accentuated by the very low mud sediment supply to the NKCM from the bordering Northland landmass

The institutional capacity of the UK speculative housebuilding industry – responding to the brownfield development policy agenda

The UK speculative housebuilding industry has grown and prospered primarily through the conversion of greenfield land into mass, standardised housing estates. As such, the UK Government’s commitment to restricting the development of housing primarily to brownfield sites presents a significant challenge to the current skills base of many speculative housebuilders. Whilst the housebuilding industry has demonstrated in recent years a commitment to brownfield development through the steady increase in the numbers of dwellings built on previously developed land, concerns exists over whether the industry has developed the requisite core competencies necessary to secure a long-term commitment to brownfield development. In response to such concerns, this research assesses the attitudes, behaviours and corporate strategies of a select number of speculative housebuilders towards brownfield development in the English and Scottish contexts. Through this, the research presents a timely and important evaluation of the strategic decision making of UK speculative housebuilders and explores the concept of institutional capacity through an investigation into the private sectors response to public policy change

Cleaning Up After Sex: An Environmental History of Contraceptives in the United States, 1873—2010

I argue in my dissertation, \u27Cleaning Up After Sex: An Environmental History of Contraceptives in the United States, 1873—2010,\u27 that through the processes of contraceptive production, consumption, and disposal, over time, the role of contraceptives in human/nature interactions has become more significant and the impact more direct. I examine the production, consumption, and disposal histories of condoms, diaphragms and cervical caps, intrauterine devices, and hormonal birth control. Production, consumption, and disposal of the birth control methods I study have determined physical experiences with both our bodies and with the non-human natural world, but those three processes have also shaped discourse about nature and bodies. Likewise, discourse about nature and bodies helped to determine which contraceptives were made, how they were made, who had access to them, the manners in which they could be used, and what happened to them when humans were done with them. This environmental history of contraceptives in the United States illustrates the interwoven, contingent, and reciprocal relationships among device production, consumption, and disposal; contraceptive discourse; and human bodies

Detection and emotional evaluation of an electric vehicle’s exterior sound in a simulated environment

Electric vehicles are quiet at low speeds and thus potentially pose a threat to pedestrians’ safety. Laws are formulating worldwide that mandate these vehicles emit sounds to alert the pedestrians of the vehicles’ approach. It is necessary that these sounds promote a positive perception of the vehicle brand, and understanding their impact on soundscapes is also important. Detection time of the vehicle sounds is an important measure to assess pedestrians’ safety. Emotional evaluation of these sounds influences assessment of the vehicle brand. Laboratory simulation is a new approach for evaluating exterior automotive sounds. This study describes the implementation of laboratory simulation to compare the detection time and emotional evaluation of artificial sounds for an electric vehicle. An Exterior Sound Simulator simulated audio-visual stimuli of an electric car passing a crossroad of a virtual town at 4.47 ms-1 (10 mph), from the perspective of a pedestrian standing at the crossroad. In this environment, 15 sounds were tested using experiments where participants detected the car and evaluated its sound using perceptual dimensions. Results show that these sounds vary significantly in their detection times and emotional evaluations, but crucially that traditional metrics like dB(A) do not always relate to the detection of these sounds. Detection time and emotional evaluation do not have significant correlation. Hence, sounds of a vehicle could be detected quickly, but may portray negative perceptions of the vehicle. Simulation provides a means to more fully evaluate potential electric vehicle sounds against the competing criteria