Brokering Governance? A Political Ethnography of the UN Tenure Guidelines in Struggles for Access to Land, Fisheries and Forests in Nepal

This thesis examines the brokerage of rights-based governance, and the role of intermediary organisations therein; a key yet neglected issue in the global food and agricultural governance literature. Governance brokerage encompasses overlapping forms of mediation: brokers translate rights and development projects, across a continuum of state-society and global-local relations. The thesis assesses how civil society actors employ the Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (2012) in their struggles in Nepal. The context is Nepal's 2015 Constitution, and the newly enshrined rights to food and to food sovereignty.Through a multi-sited political ethnography, I interrogate how the Tenure Guidelines were introduced into Nepal, and I observe how these spaces of policy dialogue are adapted and operationalised by three organisations, affiliated to different transnational advocacy networks. I locate state and non-state actors' uneven mediation practices at the interstices of national efforts toward inclusive deliberative spaces. I assess the extent to which they employ the Tenure Guidelines to amend and draft laws with participation of affected peoples. I analyse how the focus on law reform and multi-stakeholderism condition this process of adaptation. Based on empirically grounded research, substantiated by historical and sociopolitical analysis, I show that governance brokers play critical functions in connecting grassroots struggles to decision-makers. Yet their role as well-placed connectors isreinforced by the project-based approach to governance, in an unstable grey area of statecivil society and global-local intermediation. Beyond policy dialogue, I conclude that to bring social forces together to use human rights-based instruments as a tool in grassroots struggles, deliberative spaces need to equally be created or adapted by local activist networks, closer to the conflicts themselves

On and Off the Stage: A Look at Working with the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival

Festivals like the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival allow students an intensive hands-on experience with theatrical principles seen in the professional theatrical world. There are many aspects of professional theatre, and at times, colleges that offer theatrical degrees cannot offer the full scale of practical experience needed to succeed in theatre as a profession. After outlining and analyzing three years of festival experience, it can be seen that festivals help to create a greater understanding of what is needed to work in theatre professionally. One must understand organization and management structure, as well as the fundamentals of acting, directing, and other basic theatrical principles. Theatre students should be required to attend a professional theatrical festival, to help further education and preparation for theatre as a profession

INSTAFRENCH: INVESTIGATING THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND STUDENT-SELECTED IMAGES TO SUPPORT L2 WRITING

Social media has quickly become an integral part of day-to-day interaction for many university students. By infusing usage of the popular social networking site Instagram into the curriculum of three French 1002 classes, this exploratory study aimed to investigate the role of image as a tool to support learning writing in the L2 in a lower division French class. Data showed that student perception on the effect of images on their comprehension of their classmate’s writing as well as their classmate’s understanding of their own writing were positive

Application of Laser-based Diagnostics to a Prototype Gas Turbine Burner at Selected Pressures

The matured laser-diagnostic techniques of planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) and particle image velocimetry (PIV) were applied to a prototype gas turbine burner operating on various fuels. The work was performed to provide verification of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models of the combustion of atypical fuels in a gas turbine combustor. The burner was operated using methane and three synthesized fuels of interest- one with hydrogen as the principle component and two with a low heating value (15 MJ/m3). Experiments were performed at pressures from 1 to 9 bar, with the fuel/air mixture at both ambient (~ 300 K) and elevated temperature. The burner, which was supplied by Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery, is a down-scaled prototype of that used in the SGT-750 gas turbine. It is composed of three individual sectors that are arranged concentrically, a centermost pilot sector, intermediate sector and main sector. Each sector contributes a premixed fuel/air flow, while swirl elements in each sector promote flame stabilization and recirculation in the combustion region. There are dedicated fuel feeds allowing for localized setting of fuel/air mixture at each of the sectors. The central pilot sector of the burner was separable from the full burner assembly and was examined in detail. Information was generated regarding the use of syngas to fuel the burner. This information is intended to be used for the validation of CFD models of the experiments, including optimization of reduced chemical kinetic mechanisms for the specific fuels. Laminar flame speed measurements were made for several syngas fuel candidates from which the high-hydrogen syngas fuel was selected. Burner performance at the lean stability limit was examined using the fuels of interest. It was found that increasing the fuel/air ratio in the central pilot sector improved the lean limit onset of flame extinction up to the point that the central pilot extinguished. Optimization of the burner nitrogen oxides (NOx) emission by fuel partitioning among the three sectors was performed. The response in emission level with fuel/air ratio was not universal among the fuels tested. The largest portion of work in this thesis is the visualization of the burner combustion field by laser diagnostic methods. The flame shape was imaged by the PLIF of the OH radical distribution. PLIF imaging of the central pilot sector was recorded for atmospheric and elevated pressure for iterations of inlet air temperature, fuel type and equivalence ratio. When comparing the OH-LIF distribution for various fuels and pressures it was found that equivalence ratio had the greatest effect on the distribution of OH signal from the exit of the central pilot sector. Lean equivalence ratios showed a diffuse signal typical of the post combustion region. Near stoichiometric equivalence ratios yielded a distribution having a clearly defined inner edge indicating combustion occurring outside of the pilot sector. At rich equivalence ratios the OH signal was lifted away from the pilot burner exit. Comparison of OH-PLIF and chemiluminescence signal for methane combustion supported the characterization that the pilot sector efflux varied from post combustion to attached and then lifted flame in conjunction with the increase in equivalence ratio from lean to rich. OH-PLIF imaging was collected for staging of fuel to all three sectors of the burner at atmospheric pressure. The flow field in the combustion region produced by the full burner was visualized using PIV for each of fuels of interest, illustrating the recirculation zone. Finally the OH-LIF distribution was imaged for the combustion region of the entire burner at elevated pressure during operation at a single equivalence ratio with various dilutions of natural gas. There was little discernible change in flame shape as the pressure was changed from 3, 4.5 and 6 bar and energy content was changed from 30, 40 and 45 MJ/m^3 Wobbe index

An investigation into structural plasticity in peripheral taste neurons associated with taste cell turnover.

The continual replacement of taste cells creates interesting questions regarding how the innervating neurons are impacted during this process. Here we ask how innervation within taste buds is affected when taste cell entry is inhibited and reestablished. Inhibition of sonic hedgehog signaling (Shh) is thought to inhibit taste cell turnover. Consistently, fewer new cells were added to individual taste buds after treatment with a Shh-inhibitor compared to vehicle treatment, and taste bud volume decreased after 16 days of treatment. We next examined how taste nerve fiber extension into the gustatory epithelium is affected by preventing taste cell turnover. Ten days of Shh inhibitor caused a loss of innervation in the epithelium of fungiform papillae. Seven days of recovery does not restore fibers within the epithelium, suggesting that recovery of normal branch morphology requires more than 7 days of cell turnover. These results provide evidence for the hypothesis that normal branch morphology within the taste bud is supported by taste cell turnover and provide a pharmacologic manipulation for controlling taste cell entry into taste buds. The perception of taste relies on new taste bud cells integrating with existing neural circuitry, yet how these new cells connect with a taste ganglion neuron is unknown. Do taste ganglion neurons remodel to accommodate taste bud cell renewal? If so, how much of the taste axon structure is fixed and how much remodels? Here we measured the motility and branching of individual taste arbors (the portion of the axon innervating taste buds) over time with two-photon in vivo microscopy. Terminal branches of taste arbors continuously and rapidly remodel within the taste bud. This remodeling is faster than predicted by taste bud cell renewal, with terminal branches added and lost concurrently. Surprisingly, ablating new taste cells with chemotherapeutic agents revealed that remodeling of the terminal branches of taste arbors does not rely of the renewal of taste bud cells. Although the arbor structure remodeling was fast and intrinsically controlled, no new arbors were added, and few were lost over 100 days. Taste ganglion neurons maintain a stable number of nerve arbors that are each capable of high-speed remodeling. Arbor structural plasticity would permit arbors to locate new taste bud cells, while stability of arbor number could support constancy in the degree of connectivity and function for each neuron over time

Sodium-Ion Concentration Flow Cell Stacks For Salinity Gradient Energy Recovery: Power Generation Of Series And Parallel Configurations

Salinity gradient (SG) energy is a renewable and clean energy resource that exists worldwide from the change in Gibbs free energy when two solutions with different salinities are mixed. More recently, concentration flow cells (CFCs) have been introduced as a new technology for SG energy recovery with the highest reported power density output to date, as a result of the utilization of both the electrode potential and Donnan potential. In this study, multiple CFCs were connected to form a consecutive number of stacks, and systematic analysis was conducted to investigate the influence of both parallel and series electrical wire connections on the overall performance. For both wire connections, an effective increase in the overall power output with an increase in stack size was observed. The power densities normalized to the membrane area were however lower (3.7 W m-2 in series and 5.8 W m-2 in parallel, for 5- stacks) than the individual cell unit (8.9 W m-2) because of the cumulative mixing towards the back of the stack. Additionally, as a result of an ionic cross-conduction causing a parasitic current in the series cell, the parallel wire configuration was demonstrated to be more successful in the CFC stack than the series

To Live Outside the Law, You Must Be Honest -- Words, Walls, and the Rhetorical Practices of the Angolite

“To Live Outside the Law, You Must Be Honest”: Words, Walls, and the Rhetorical Practices of The Angolite examines the 50 year history of The Angolite, a news magazine published and edited by inmates at Louisiana State Penitentiary. While The Angolite and the efforts of former editor Wilbert Rideau have been discussed in the public media, especially here in Louisiana, my dissertation is the first extended scholarly account of this prison publication. Specifically, I examine how inmate writers held in one of the most historically violent penitentiaries in the United States choose to represent themselves, their multiple literacies, and their own understanding of such issues as inmate educational opportunities and prison rape. Such literacy practices are framed by the fact that the majority of inmates at Angola read below fifth-grade level and that educational opportunities behind bars are few. Via rhetorical analysis and ethnographic accounts, I show how these writers attempt to engage in public sphere discussions of human rights, literacy, ethics, and the history of incarceration. As a whole, these writings create a counter-identity that challenges the dominant conception of prisoners in the United States. In short, Angolite staff members write to become something other than other