Monstrous Mobility in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula

This thesis explores Late Victorian Gothic texts that are central to theories on monstrosity in terms of mobility by examining Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula. The goal of this project is to survey the ways in which two exemplary monsters, Mr. Hyde and Count Dracula, promote mobility for others and themselves as an inherent part of their monstrosity. The variety of this mobility is demonstrated by examples showing how monsters move and encourage movement in ways that are social and transformative as well as physical. Because social mobility is essential to these movements, this study also considers the societies these monsters enter and interrupt. The gentleman bachelors of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula\u27s Crew of Light and the women they seek to protect are presented as monolithic groups that the monster joins, transforms, and spurs into movement. By identifying mobility as one of the main attributes of monstrosity, this argument seeks to not only add to the copious amount of scholarship already done on these works but also to reconcile some of them since many of the most critically controversial aspects of these texts are rooted in the monster\u27s mobility. A study focused on movement not only adds something that is missing from the existing discussion on these seminal monsters but also provides a new framework through which to discuss constantly evolving theories of monstrosity

Parkes radio science system design and testing for Voyager Neptune encounter

The Radio Science System installed at Parkes, Australia for the Voyager Neptune encounter was specified to meet the same stringent requirements that were imposed upon the Deep Space Network Radio Science System. The system design and test methodology employed to meet these requirements at Parkes are described, and data showing the measured performance of the system are presented. The results indicate that the system operates with a comfortable margin on the requirements. There was a minor problem with frequency-dependent spurious signals which could not be fixed before the encounter. Test results characterizing these spurious signals are included

Can we forgive Andrea Yates?

A common assumption in the philosophical literature on forgiveness is that one can only forgive culpable moral agents. In this paper, I will argue against this assumption. Using the notorious case of Andrea Yates, I will show one can forgive non-culpable wrongdoers. I will argue that forgiveness involves letting go of negative reactive attitudes and those attitudes arise in a wide variety of cases including accidental wrongdoing and wrongs committed by those who are mentally incompetent or insane. Responding to such wrongdoings with forgiveness is not only possible, but also often advisable

Indices and Applications in High-Throughput Sequencing

Recent advances in sequencing technology allow to produce billions of base pairs per day in the form of reads of length 100 bp an longer and current developments promise the personal $1,000 genome in a couple of years. The analysis of these unprecedented amounts of data demands for efficient data structures and algorithms. One such data structures is the substring index, that represents all substrings or substrings up to a certain length contained in a given text. In this thesis we propose 3 substring indices, which we extend to be applicable to millions of sequences. We devise internal and external memory construction algorithms and a uniform framework for accessing the generalized suffix tree. Additionally we propose different index-based applications, e.g. exact and approximate pattern matching and different repeat search algorithms. Second, we present the read mapping tool RazerS, which aligns millions of single or paired-end reads of arbitrary lengths to their potential genomic origin using either Hamming or edit distance. Our tool can work either lossless or with a user-defined loss rate at higher speeds. Given the loss rate, we present a novel approach that guarantees not to lose more reads than specified. This enables the user to adapt to the problem at hand and provides a seamless tradeoff between sensitivity and running time. We compare RazerS with other state-of-the-art read mappers and show that it has the highest sensitivity and a comparable performance on various real-world datasets. At last, we propose a general approach for frequency based string mining, which has many applications, e.g. in contrast data mining. Our contribution is a novel and lightweight algorithm that is faster and uses less memory than the best available algorithms. We show its applicability for mining multiple databases with a variety of frequency constraints. As such, we use the notion of entropy from information theory to generalize the emerging substring mining problem to multiple databases. To demonstrate the improvement of our algorithm we compared to recent approaches on real-world experiments of various string domains, e.g. natural language, DNA, or protein sequences

Teacher Perceptions of Behavioral Programs Serving Emotionally Disabled Students

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has undergone numerous revisions since 1965 when the first federal statute dealing with the education of students with disabilities was implemented. A revision completed in 1975 instituted the concept of least restrictive environment (LRE), which demands that all students with disabilities be exposed to the maximum amount possible with their regular education peers, regardless of disability. Full inclusion is the primary mode schools use to meet this requirement. Research has illustrated the positive effects of inclusion-style classrooms and LRE, both for regular and special education peers. However, contemporary research has begun to show that in the case of students with severe behavioral disabilities, negative results in the area of student performance begin to show. The purpose of this dissertation was to analyze a North Carolina district’s schools, particularly staff member efficacy in dealing and working with students with severe behavioral disabilities, in order to determine the fidelity of its existing programs. Such programs include but are not limited to Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), Crisis Prevention Intervention (CPI), and Positive Behavior Intervention Support (PBIS). Data were collected in the form of interviews and focus groups. The fidelity of these programs, based on teacher perceptions, was important in recommending changes, of which there were six, with the hope that potential negative side effects on regular education peers can be minimized

A New Screening Methodology for Mixture Experiments

Many materials we use in daily life are comprised of a mixture; plastics, gasoline, food, medicine, etc. Mixture experiments, where factors are proportions of components and the response depends only on the relative proportions of the components, are an integral part of product development and improvement. However, when the number of components is large and there are complex constraints, experimentation can be a daunting task. We study screening methods in a mixture setting using the framework of the Cox mixture model [1]. We exploit the easy interpretation of the parameters in the Cox mixture model and develop methods for screening in a mixture setting. We present specific methods for adding a component, removing a component and a general method for screening a subset of components in mixtures with complex constraints. The variances of our parameter estimates are comparable with the typically used Scheff ́e model variances and our methods provide a reduced run size for screening experiments with mixtures containing a large number of components. We then further extend the new screening methods by using Evolutionary Operation (EVOP) developed by Box and Draper [2]. EVOP methods use small movement in a subset of process parameters and replication to reveal effects out of the process noise. Mixture experiments inherently have small movements (since the proportions can only range from zero to unity) and the effects have large variances. We update the EVOP methods by using sequential testing of effects opposed to the confidence interval method originally proposed by Box and Draper. We show that the sequential testing approach as compared with a fixed sample size reduced the required sample size as much as 50 percent with all other testing parameters held constant. We present two methods for adding a component and a general screening method using a graphical sequential t-test and provide R-code to reproduce the limits for the test

Political Mergers as Coalition Formation: An Analysis of the Heisei Municipal Amalgamations

Due to moral hazard problems, municipal mergers in Japan did not result in as many amalgamations as a central planner would have chosen. The inefficiency of the decentralized mergers is calculated using structural parameter estimates based on observed mergers and actual national government policies. Estimation requires neither an equilibrium selection assumption nor the enumeration of all possible mergers

Character In Leadership: Perceptions Of Canadian Intercollegiate Athletics Administrators

Despite the importance of administrative leadership in high performance sport, minimal attention has been given to the area of leader character by sport management researchers. The current study examined the prevalence, perceived importance, and value of leader character within Canadian interuniversity athletics programs. Leader character was quantitatively measured using the Leader Character Insight Assessment (LCIA) instrument (Crossan et al., 2013a). Differences between sex, position, and experience were also examined. Overall, Accountability and Integrity were the most prevalent leader character dimensions. Sex of administrators did not yield any significant differences between dimensions. Athletic Directors perceived Transcendence to be more important to program effectiveness than Associate Athletic Directors. More experienced administrators placed a higher premium on Integrity than less experienced ones. Administrators and their perceptions of Universities valued leader character similarly. The current study addresses a void present within sport management/leadership literature, and advances the understanding of leader character within Canadian athletics administration

Natural Selection and Its Interactions with Migration and Population Demography: Experiments in Wild Guppy Populations

In this dissertation I quantify spatial and temporal variation in the pattern and strength of natural selection in wild populations of Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata), and assess the demographic costs of ongoing contemporary evolution in the form of selection against migrants. First, I describe the results often mark-recapture experiments to test hypotheses concerning the role of natural selection in geographic patterns of trait variation. Previous work has reported that guppies inhabiting high- and low-predation sites differ in both body shape and color. These patterns of phenotypic variation have been theorized to reflect differences in the balance between functional trade-offs among various aspects of performance. For example, natural selection is hypothesized to disfavor bright male color (owing to predation) and sexual selection is hypothesized to favor bright color (owing to female choice). My results support some of the predictions generated from considering these functional trade-offs. However, for many color and shape traits, my results do not support the prediction that viability selection is weaker in low-predation experiments. Instead, some of the most intense bouts of selection occurred in low-predation experiments. My results illustrate considerable spatiotemporal variation in selection among experiments. It seems more complex selective interactions, possibly including the indirect effects of predators on variation in mating behavior, as well as other environmental factors, might be required to more fully explain patterns of color and shape variation in this system. Second, I quantify the demographic costs of ongoing contemporary evolution. Fine-scale genetic diversity and contemporary evolution can theoretically influence ecological dynamics in the wild. Such eco-evolutionary effects may be particularly relevant to the persistence of species facing acute or chronic environmental change. One way that ongoing evolution may influence the dynamics of threatened populations is through the role that selection plays in mediating the rescue effect , the ability of migrants to contribute to the recovery of populations facing local disturbance and decline. I combined field experiments with natural catastrophic events to show that ongoing evolution is a major determinant of migrant contributions to population recovery in Trinidadian guppies