The Drawing Book. A survey of drawing: the primary means of expression

‘The Drawing Book’ was conceived and edited by Kovats. Other invited authors included Kate Macfarlane and Katherine Stout (The Drawing Room, London), and Charles Darwent (art historian and writer). The publication sought to survey drawing as the primary means of expression. The book explored whether it was possible to employ a renaissance model, the commonplace book, which is primarily a text-based model, visually. Drawings were gathered together to explore certain themes that then form a visual narrative rather than a text-based one. The book was also an exploration of the subjective nature of visual memory, a journey into the imagination of an individual, in itself a model of the form of drawing, as a personal and subjective cosmology of drawing. The vast collection of drawings span the history of art and design, including the rich dynamic state of contemporary drawing today. This book examines the relationship between drawing and thinking, and looks at what drawings do, as well as how they look. It is organized into thematic chapters based on the form of a commonplace book. The selected drawings trace the continuous line flowing through detailing how artists, scientists, architects, designers, philosophers understand our world and our experience in it. Originally printed as a hardback copy (January 2006), the book has subsequently been reprinted in paperback (June 2007). The book has been reviewed in Blueprint (Andrew Ross, No. 242, May 2006) and Varoom Magazine - The Journal of Illustration and Made Images (Ian Massey, Issue 2, November 2006)

The Experience of Being the First to Breastfeed in a Family: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

The benefits of breastfeeding for mother and baby are well established; however, only 37.5% of Scottish women are currently breastfeeding at six to eight weeks with less than 1% breastfeeding exclusively for six months, as recommended by UK and international health policy. Family influence is amongst the socio-demographic factors which affect breastfeeding initiation and duration and women who were not breastfed themselves are 25% less likely to initiate breastfeeding. While there is a growing body of literature which seeks to understand breastfeeding by exploring the perspectives of breastfeeding mothers, no studies can be found describing the experience of making a different feeding choice from that of one’s family-of-origin, nor of the potential impact of this decision on relationships with them. As such, this study exploring the experience of being the first in your family to breastfeed is novel. The aim of the study was to investigate the experience and meaning of being the first person to breastfeed in a family. Consequently, areas explored included women’s experience of initiating and sustaining breastfeeding when they have no immediate family history of breastfeeding, how women make sense of their decision to breastfeed and their understanding of how their decision has affected their relationships. A methodological development in the form of an Infant Feeding Genogram was used to record relevant demographic and family information and semi-structured interviews with fourteen women obtained in-depth narratives. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used as an approach and to analyse the data. Following the completion of idiographic analysis, cross participant analysis was undertaken and four superordinate themes emerged: Breaching Family and Social Norms; Volitions and Imperatives; Unprepared for the Challenge; and A Sacrifice but Worth It. Within these superordinate themes, 13 themes were identified and articulated. Findings from this research were synthesised to provide an account of how women experience being the first to breastfeeding in a family, make sense of their decisions and the impact this has on their relationships with their family. This provides an understanding of women’s experience in an original context, and the contextualising within the existing literature generates commonalities and highlights differences between the experience of this group of breastfeeding women and the wider cohort. The findings of this research inform recommendations for practice at both an individual and public health levels, and have implications for policy makers, health professionals and breastfeeding support organisations. It is asserted that policy makers and the health service need to acknowledge the unanticipated consequences of some current breastfeeding discourses associated with health promotion practices, and take a mother and family focussed approach to breastfeeding that acknowledges women’s embodied experience, which often includes breastfeeding difficulties. A mother and family centred approach can identify and adapt to women’s support needs in their own particular context, which may include very limited community and family support for their decision

'That blasted Facebook page': supporting trainee-teachers' professional learning through social media

The creation and use of a Facebook group amongst trainee-teachers in post-16 and further education on a PGCE course at a large university in the North of England was studied. The Facebook group was self-initiated and self-managed by the trainee-teachers as a means of socialisation and peer-support amongst themselves. Data was gathered through parallel interviews with a PGCE trainee and a course tutor. Interviews were semi-structured using Tuckman's stages of group development (forming, storming, norming, performing) to explore the functioning of the Facebook group throughout the duration of the PGCE course. The role of teacher-trainers in influencing professional learning within the Facebook group initiated and owned by the trainee-teachers themselves was explored using the didactical triangle as a theoretical framework. It was found that the Facebook group was highly-valued both for supporting socialisation amongst trainee-teachers and as an additional means of mediating the course content of the PGCE. Lessons can be learnt both by trainee-teachers using social media for socialisation and peer-support and by course-tutors in designing teacher-training courses that may better ameliorate the pressures and sense of alienation trainee-teachers experience during initial teacher training

Measuring the beginning: a quantitative study of the transition to higher education

This quantitative study measures change in certain factors known to influence success of first-year students during the transition to higher education: self-efficacy, autonomous learning and social integration. A social integration scale was developed with three subscales: ‘sense of belonging’, ‘relationship with staff’ and ‘old friends’. Students responded to this and existing scales measuring self-efficacy and autonomous learning, before and after participating in transition activities including a group-work poster project. The authors discuss positive outcomes regarding a sense of belonging and how the authors' expectations in other areas such as self-efficacy were not met. The importance of early contact with academic staff and small-group work is confirmed. Tinto's assertions on pre-existing relationships are challenged. The authors suggest that further investigation might prevent a ‘scattergun’ approach to transition based upon superficial understanding of outcomes. They discuss potential models for transition design and support a ‘longer’ process with several opportunities for student engagement in success factor development

Fluid flow in complex porous media: a study of spatial correlation, disorder and deformation

Fluid flow through porous media is studied for its importance to natural and industrial systems, such as oil recovery and CO2 sequestration. In these scenarios, a fluid invades a porous medium and displaces or mixes with fluid that already exists there. This thesis focuses on how complexities arise in such processes when the connectivity of the pores is considered. In addition to the overall disorder in a system, the ways in which pores connect with each other have a significant effect on fluid invasion and mixing within a porous medium. Here, I develop and employ experimental techniques for exploring this connectivity in a variety of scenarios. First, spatial correlations in the pore-scale properties are introduced in the context of fluid-fluid displacement. Increasing the correlations' range leads to increasingly large areas of similarly-sized pore throats and more asymmetric invasion patterns with lower interfacial area and a lower fraction of trapped defending fluid. This work helps to show under what conditions spatial correlations will impact mixing and reactions in a porous medium. The second project investigates transport phenomena in disordered porous media. I inject a dyed fluid phase and observe how it mixes with a miscible, undyed defending fluid. A small level of disorder promotes mixing around the porous system. However, for higher disorders mixing is then restricted, as larger patches of obstacles collectively hinder flow. This work has significance in understanding how organisms will organise themselves to efficiently transport nutrients. Finally, I investigate the effect of a deformable porous medium. For elastic obstacles, the pressure drop of an interface trapped in a pore throat causes that throat to deform. I investigate this regime and explore how disorder restricts the appearance of fracture-like patterns. A group relating the change in pore shape due to elastic effects, relative to natural size variations, is shown to control the pattern selection. Fracture-like invasion patterns are found to be more strongly favoured when fluid is injected at a constant flow rate, as opposed to constant pressure

The application of a PCR based species identification method to African wildlife

Molecular based species identification is a useful tool in forensic investigations as well as routine work. The ability to cheaply and quickly determine the species of origin of a sample has become increasingly necessary as incidents of wildlife poaching, illegal meat trade and the trade of wildlife products has increased. The current methods of species identification tend to be expensive, time consuming and unreliable. The use of species-specific primers designed to bind to specific areas in the mitochondrial DNA, has been published. This application has been developed for a small number of domestic animals, however the application of these primers to African wildlife species has yet to be done. This method is relatively simple and is based on specific fragment size amplification using polymerase chain reaction and genotyping. A total of thirty seven different species were analyzed with this method and 30 of these species were found to have species-specific fragment sizes. A number of different sample types and conditions were tested including uncommon diagnostic samples such as rhinoceros horn, teeth and claws. In addition, the sensitivity of the method was investigated and determined to be very high, detecting species at a DNA concentration of just 0.1 pg/μl. This method was found to be a highly sensitive, efficient and a fast way to determine species in a number of different sample types and would therefore be of great value in the wildlife trade as these samples can often be of a lower quality or only available in small amounts. The use of this method in forensic science must be done with care due to the problem of cross species amplification. In addition not all of the African Wildlife mammals were available to test, limiting the detection power and specificity of the test. CopyrightDissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2012.Production Animal Studiesunrestricte

Living on the Edge: Inughuit Women and Geography of Contact

The women of northwestern Greenland experienced contact with Euro-American men in multiple ways and in a variety of geographical contexts. Together the archaeological record and unpublished historical documents reveal the complexities of these situations and women’s responses to them. Archaeological and documentary data from two early 20th-century contact situations at Iita in northwestern Greenland and Floeberg Beach on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, highlight the varied nature of women’s responses to contact and the ways in which interaction with newcomers affected them individually and collectively. The women’s responses varied over time and across space. They responded to both the stresses and the opportunities of contact with resilience and resistance, acceptance and rejection, depending on circumstances.Les femmes du nord-ouest du Groenland sont entrées en contact avec les hommes euroaméricains de plusieurs manières et dans divers contextes géographiques. Ensemble, des dossiers archéologiques et des documents historiques inédits révèlent les complexités de ces situations et la réaction des femmes vis-à-vis de celles-ci. Les données archéologiques et documentaires de deux situations de contact datant du début du XXe siècle à Iita, dans le nord-ouest du Groenland et à Floeberg Beach sur l’île d’Ellesmere, au Nunavut jettent la lumière sur la nature variée des réactions des femmes face au contact et sur la façon dont l’interaction avec les nouveaux venus les ont touchées, individuellement et collectivement. La réaction des femmes variait en fonction du temps et de l’espace. Elles ont réagi au stress et aux opportunités avec résilience et résistance, acceptation et rejet, selon les circonstances