Raman spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction studies of zinc oxide grown by pulsed laser deposition

This work reports on the results of a spectroscopic study of Zinc Oxide (ZnO) and manganese doped Zinc Oxide (Zno87Mno.nO). The samples were grown using Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) and were analysed as a function of their anneal conditions. As a wide band gap semiconductor, ZnO, when grown to high quality, has the potential to be used in the fabrication o f short wavelength devices i.e. LED ’s, laser diodes and lasers. In order to investigate the quality o f the samples X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectroscopy were employed. These tools gave insight into the crystal structure quality, including the grain size, the lattice parameters and the presence o f surface electric fields. The two probing techniques, Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction, complemented each other well and there was a good correlation between the results they produced. A preliminary study o f Zno.g7Mno.13O was also carried out using Raman and XRD. The material grown was shown to be of reasonable quality. Since Mn doping increases the bandgap of ZnO, Zn(i_x)MnxO, has the potential to emit even shorter wavelength radiation. Transition metal doped semiconductors are also being investigated for use in the area of Spintronics. Zn(i.x>MnxO is not yet widely studied so there is scope for further fundamental Raman spectroscopy studies. A paper containing the non-resonant Raman and XRD results of the zinc oxide samples has been submitted to the journal Thin Solid Films

The ‘Marae on Paper’: The Meeting House in the Anglophone Fiction of the Maori Renaissance

The Maori literary renaissance was period of intense literary and cultural activity that coincided with a protest movement surrounding Maori rights in New Zealand during the 1970s and 80s. The Anglophone Maori fiction that flourished during this period raised important social questions about contemporary Maori identity, the historical and continuing decline of Maori ownership of their ancestral lands, and the social, cultural and political relationship between the Maori and Pakeha [New Zealanders of European descent] communities. This dissertation considers the work of four Maori writers who address these themes: Witi Ihimaera, Patricia Grace, Keri Hulme and Alan Duff. More specifically, it explores the role of the Maori meeting house – and the material arts it houses – as both a formal and thematic influence in their fiction. The meeting house is a wooden apex structure that traditionally symbolises the collective body of a Maori community and narrates their history through the imagery that is carved into its internal walls and supporting structures. It is strongly associated with storytelling and historical record keeping, while also acting as a meeting place for both formal and informal gatherings within the community. For each of these four writers it is subject to numerous and varying interpretations and although it features as a physical structure and site of the action in their fiction, it also shapes each author’s approach to narrative strategy. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s account of the relationships between aesthetic regimes and sensory perception, I emphasise the importance of perspective and the relationship of perception to the sensible world in the fiction. I show how some Maori authors deployed the Maori meeting house to disrupt the aesthetic protocols and mimetic practices shaping bourgeois national culture, while others inadvertently promoted assimilation instead

A comparison of self- and other-attributions in paranoid, depressed and non-patient individuals

A "self-serving" attributional bias (attributing positive events to something about oneself, and negative events to external factors) commonly found in non-patients has been found to be exaggerated in patients with persecutory delusions. Moreover, research using a newly developed attribution measure, the Internal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire (IPSAQ; 1996), found that paranoid patients tended to exhibit a "personalizing bias" for negative events, choosing external attributions that located blame in others. Such attributional biases have been found in relation to self-referent events but it is unclear whether they are also found in relation to other-referent events. The present study investigated whether participants made differential attributions, depending on whether hypothetical events were happening to themselves or to another person. The IPSAQ was modified to incorporate another dimension: self- versus other-referent events. The modification was piloted on 21 non-patients and some additional alterations made. There is also debate about the relationship between self-esteem and depression in people with persecutory delusions. Consequently, this was also explored in the study. In the main study, there were 62 participants (20 patients with persecutory delusions, 21 depressed patients, 21 non-patients). Findings indicated acceptable test-retest and internal reliability for the IPSAQ-M. For self-referent events, paranoid participants made more external-personal attributions for negative events than depressed participants (but not non-patients). Depressed participants exhibited an abnormal attributional style. Paranoid participants did not exhibit an exaggerated self-serving bias or a personalizing bias. For other referent events, depressed patients made causal attributions similar to nonpatients. A difference in attributions, between self- and other-referent events, was less clear for paranoid participants. In addition, significant negative correlations were found between self-esteem and depression for all three groups, supporting a "normal emotional processes' account of persecutory delusions. Implications for psychological treatment and possible avenues for future research were discussed, as well as methodological and theoretical limitations of this study

Effects of Ultrasound on Amyloid Beta 42 (Aβ42) Mediated Neurodegeneration

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an age related progressive neurodegenerative disease. The exact mechanisms that lead to cell death are not entirely understood. It has been shown that accumulation of amyloid-beta-42 (Aβ42) plaques generated by mis-cleavage of amyloid-precursor-protein is the cause of neurodegeneration seen in AD. This is due to the hydrophobic nature of Aβ42 due to extra two amino acids added to the typical and naturally occurring Aβ40 in the body. These Aβ42 plaques trigger neuronal death because of the toxic nature and stress they exert on the neurons. In this study, Drosophila melanogaster transgenic model where human Aβ42 coding cDNA is ectopically expressed in the developing fly retina comprising of retinal neurons to study the effect of ultrasound waves. Our hypothesis is to employ ultrasound wave exposure as a possible treatment to Alzheimer’s Disease. Ultrasound is a high frequency and lower energy sound wave, which may have less deleterious effect on cells in the tissue. In theory, using energy emitted from these waves would break down the plaques limiting damage due to degeneration. The wild type will be used as a control to see any side effects of the ultrasound treatment, while an AD affected fly will be used to determine effectiveness of the treatments. The goal of this project is to standardize the optimum ultrasound treatment, to observe the effects on survival rates, prevent neurodegeneration by removing or decreasing plaque damage. By varying the height, medium, time, and number of treatments, the survival rate and rescue can be tracked. Further studies using larval imaging approach can be used to see early stage effects of the ultrasound. These studies will allow testing the efficacy of commonly used treatment in sports related tissue injuries to cure inflammation and also to dislodge protein aggregations in Alzheimer’s disease where accumulation of Aβ42 plaques is the hallmark

Livecasting without the live: The multiple temporalities of National Theatre At Home

Sin dal lancio nel 2009 di NT Live, il National Theatre è stato protagonista nel livecasting nel Regno Unito; non sorprende quindi l’aspettativa di una risposta dell’istituzione teatrale a seguito del lockdown di marzo 2020. Il presente articolo cerca di analizzare questa risposta pandemica da parte dell’NT Live abbia utilizzato molteplici temporalità per ricreare un senso dell’evento teatrale nelle case degli spettatori. Nonostante l’utilizzo di materiale d’archivio, l’iniziativa NT At Home ha costituito una risposta a uno specifico evento storico strutturata attorno un “ora ontologico” che modellato la ricezione di questo materiale: NT Live capitalizzava sulla liveness e sull’esclusività della trasmissione, con performance mostrate a un orario specifico e trasmesse simultaneamente al cinema; NT At Home rielabora invece questo sistema di liveness, creando il proprio sento di una temporalità fluida e contraddittoria. L’articolo attinge quindi ad approcci sulla liveness provenienti da molteplici discipline per esaminare tre aspetti in particolare di questa nuova temporalità e un caso di studio specifico di “pratica di liveness”.Since the 2009 launch of NT Live, the National Theatre has been at the forefront of UK livecasting so the calls to respond to the complete lockdown of the UK in March 2020 weren’t surprising. This paper will analyse how this pandemic response utilised the multiple temporalities of NT Live to create a theatrical event in viewers’ homes. Despite using past recordings, the NT At Home programme was a response to a specific historical event and was structured around an “ontological now” that in return shaped the reception of those recordings. NT Live capitalised on the liveness and the exclusivity of their broadcasts.  Performances were shown at a set time, streamed simultaneously into cinemas. NT At Home challenged every part of this system of liveness and in doing so created its own contradictory and fluid temporal identity. In this paper I will draw on liveness studies from multiple disciplines to cover three aspects of these new temporalities and present a case study of liveness practice. NT Live capitalised on the liveness and the exclusivity of their broadcasts. Performances were shown at a set time, streamed simultaneously into cinemas. NT At Home challenged every part of this system of liveness and in doing so created its own contradictory and fluid temporal identity. In this paper I will draw on liveness studies from multiple disciplines to cover three aspects of these new temporalities and present a case study of liveness practice

Woma(e)n incarcerated: freedom through expression

Architecture possesses the ability to perform a transformative role in society. The opportunity to explore this ability exists in the prison/ incarceration arena as the problems posed by crime and punishment are part of a larger societal debate, and as such there is the need for a new architectural response. This thesis seeks to propose a new incarceration-hybrid as a means of rehabilitation to alleviate a certain section of the female prisoner demographic, through the medium of art expression and performance as a means to allow prisoners a freedom and exploration of their identities. The thesis will explore the various social factors and structural inequalities that have led women to transgress the law in South Africa, taking into account the oppression of women through, or because of their bodies and loss of identity. Once the subject group has been explained, understood and placed into context, the thesis will move on to examine the notions of space within the existing penal reform system, with a specifi c focus on how the body-mind space is acted on in space and time as a means of institutional control. Once an understanding of how a process of institutional identity is established and how this affects individual identity and the process of rehabilitation, the new hybrid will be theorized in terms of how the facility can counteract the process of identity moulding (or stripping) to replace the process with one of expression and identity exploration underpinned by the rehabilitative theory. An analysis of the potential spaces in the hybrid will also be theorized in terms of how the body-mind space will potentially be acted on in space and time, to show how self expression can be used as a counterpoint to the process of mortifi - cation. This thesis will draw on various theorists and frameworks to discuss notions of body, mind, space and time from diverging angles and how these are used institutionally to control and punish as well as how this is currently expressed architecturally, inhibiting the process of rehabilitation

From refugee to good citizen: A discourse analysis of volunteering

This paper is concerned with how refugees who work as volunteers with a refugee organization talk about themselves and their work. A Foucauldian Discourse Analytic approach is employed in order to explore how participants construct themselves as both refugees and volunteers, the discourses they draw on, and how this impacts on the possible ways-of-being open to refugees. The findings indicate a meta discourse of good citizen; volunteering was constructed as a technology of self, a way of transforming the refugee into a ‘good citizen’. Volunteering was also seen as a way of preparing for entry into the labour market and a means of self-improvement

Sustainable energy for whom? Governing pro-poor, low-carbon pathways to development: lessons from solar PV in Kenya

Using a combination of insights from innovation studies, sociotechnical transitions theory and the STEPS pathways approach, this paper analyses the evolution of the Kenyan photovoltaics (PV) market. Considered by many to be an exemplar of private sector led development, the Kenyan PV market has witnessed the adoption of more than 300,000 solar home systems and over 100,000 solar portable lights. The notion of an entrepreneurially driven unsubsidised solar market has proved to be a powerful narrative amongst development actors who, paradoxically, have provided millions of dollars of funding to encourage the market’s development. We argue that this donor support has been critical to the success of the market, but not simply by helping to create an enabling environment in which entrepreneurs can flourish. Donor assistance has been critical in supporting a range of actors to build the elements of a PV innovation system by providing active protection for experimentation, network-building, and the construction of shared visions amongst actors throughout supply chains and amongst users.This analysis gives important clues for designing climate and development policies, with implications for the governance of energy access pathways that are inclusive of poor and marginalised groups in low income countries