Coming to voice : identity and change in the teaching of writing to women

As a teacher of creative writing, the researcher is interested in the most effective and appropriate approach to the teaching of writing to women. This study considers two approaches to the teaching of writing - writing as self expression, and writing as social practice. It outlines the theoretical framework of these two approaches, in terms of three key concepts - self, language and change. It looks at the implications of these approaches in terms of their approach to autobiography and in terms of 'the writing scene' - the context for women writers - and in particular, it looks at how women are affected by the approaches. The study then explores the implications of a feminist poststructuralist approach to the teaching of writing. The theoretical framework of this approach is discussed, again in terms of the three key concepts of self, language and change; and the approach is then 'translated' into the practical research of the study. Positioning itself as feminist advocacy research, it takes the form of an action research study where a series of writing workshops is designed and then facilitated in a selected group of women participants. The study analyses the process, the writing produced in the workshops, and the interviews with the participants after the workshops, in terms of how they reflect the central concepts, self, language and change of the feminist poststructuralist approach. The study concludes with a summary of the essential ingredients of a poststructuralist approach, it comments on the generalisability of the research to other groups, and comments on the research process in terms of the researcher's intentions as a piece of feminist advocacy research. In line with feminist research, the researcher is concerned that this dissertation is written in such a way as to be of practical use to a teacher of writing who might like to adopt a feminist poststructuralist approach. With this in mind, a complete set of workshop outlines is given in Appendix A, a complete set of handouts in Appendix B, and some resource material for teachers in Appendix C. Bibliography: pages 121-129

Care Work in Massachusetts: A Call for Racial and Economic Justice for a Neglected Sector

Care work has forever been critical to the health and basic functioning of our society. With the steady aging of our population, care jobs are also among the fastest growing in our economy. These jobs are staffed predominantly by immigrant women and women of color, so despite their societal importance, racial prejudice and gender discrimination have led to a systematic devaluation of this sort of labor. In this paper, Boston Indicators and SkillWorks provide a demographic profile of care workers in Massachusetts and pairs that with a job quality analysis for a few key subsectors

Factors controlling 234Th scavenging and the application of 234Th as particle tracer

To gain insight into the factors that control 234Th scavenging onto particles, in this study, both, laboratory experiments and field measurements were conducted. It could be observed that the particle quality and especially, the particle surface area plays a crucial role in 234Th adsorption process. In addition, the results support the assumption that colloidal material influence 234Th scavenging and acts as intermediate in 234Th uptake onto particles. The results of this study can be helpful for the interpretation of 234Th bases data and the application of 234Th as particle tracer

Vetusta Monumenta [Ancient Monuments]

Project Leaders: Noah Heringman (English), Anne Myers (English), Kristen Schuster (SISLT)Final report for the 2013/2014 IIF project, "Vetusta Monumenta: A Digital Edition Project." From the original description: "... we are creating a digital edition of a rare and valuable eighteenth-century print series held in Ellis Library, Vetusta Monumenta (vol. 1-3). The edition will feature a state-of-the-art online user interface that combines interactive, high-quality scans of the pages with searchable scholarly commentary to accompany each plate, translations, and more."MU Interdisciplinary Innovations Fun

Learned Anomaly Detection with Terahertz Radiation in Inline Process Monitoring

Terahertz tomographic imaging as well as machine learning tasks represent two emerging felds in the area of nondestructive testing. Detecting outliers in measurements that are caused by defects is the main challenge in inline process monitoring. An efcient inline control enables to intervene directly during the manufacturing process and, consequently, to reduce product discard. We focus on plastics and ceramics, for which terahertz radiation is perfectly suited because of its characteristics, and propose a density based technique to automatically detect anomalies in the measured radiation data. The algorithm relies on a classifcation method based on machine learning. For a verifcation, supervised data are generated by a measuring system that approximates an inline process. The experimental results show that the use of terahertz radiation, combined with the classifcation algorithm, has great potential for a real inline manufacturing process. In a further investigation additional data are simulated to enlarge the data set, especially the variety of defects. We model the propagation of terahertz radiation by means of the Eikonal equation

Ill-posedness of time-dependent inverse problems in Lebesgue-Bochner spaces

We consider time-dependent inverse problems in a mathematical setting using Lebesgue-Bochner spaces. Such problems arise when one aims to recover parameters from given observations where the parameters or the data depend on time. There are various important applications being subject of current research that belong to this class of problems. Typically inverse problems are ill-posed in the sense that already small noise in the data causes tremendous errors in the solution. In this article we present two different concepts of ill-posedness: temporally (pointwise) ill-posedness and uniform ill-posedness with respect to the Lebesgue-Bochner setting. We investigate the two concepts by means of a typical setting consisting of a time-depending observation operator composed by a compact operator. Furthermore we develop regularization methods that are adapted to the respective class of ill-posedness.Comment: 21 pages, no figure

Comprehensive study on gluten composition and baking quality of winter wheat

Background and Objectives Protein and gluten content and composition are important for the baking quality of wheat flours. Our aim was to provide a comprehensive characterization of 82 wheat flours to analyze the influence of protein composition on rheological and baking quality parameters. Findings Protein composition, starch gelatinization behavior, as well as rheological (microfarinograph, gluten aggregation, extensibility), and baking parameters were determined. The correlation matrix showed no significant correlations between gluten composition and loaf volume. Parameters of the gluten aggregation test allowed a prediction of gluten, gliadin, and glutenin content with an absolute root mean square error of cross validation of 7.5, 6.0, and 3.2 mg/g, respectively, using partial least squares regression. Starch gelatinization temperature had an effect on gluten aggregation. Conclusions The gluten aggregation test was suitable to predict gluten, gliadin, and glutenin content. The lack of correlations between protein composition and loaf volume indicates that baking quality is the result of a complex combination of different parameters. Significance and Novelty Our study is the first to comprehensively analyze 82 wheat flours, especially in terms of gluten composition. We show that flour blends can reach excellent baking quality even if quality indicators like crude protein or extensibility are comparatively low