Design for Relationship Break Ups:Curation of Digital Possessions

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Individuals in a romantic relationship will typically have a substantial number of digital possessions associated with that relationship; sometimes even creating digital possessions connected to their relationship before meeting in real life. These digital possessions connect partners by contributing to their digital identities as ‘individuals in a relationship’; they are an important part of a digital connection between partners, and actively contribute to the maintenance of that connection. If a romantic relationship ends in a break up, separation, or divorce, the digital possessions that once connected partners in a positive way become responsible for maintaining a connection that no longer accurately reflects the ex-partners’ relationship status. The persistence of digital possessions means that until they are managed or curated in some way, those digital possessions will continue to connect ex-partners in a digital context. The tools and options available to ex-partners when it comes to managing and curating their digital possessions in the context of a relationship break up are limited, and often do not support the specific intent of the individual. In this doctoral thesis, I investigated the ways in which technology could support individuals in managing and curating their digital possessions associated with a past relationship, after that relationship has ended. Through four qualitative studies, this research (1) introduced and evaluated eight prototype grammars of action aimed at supporting individuals to manage and curate their digital possessions in the context of a break up; (2) presented a reproducible method for identifying design dimensions to guide the development of those grammars of action across different life transitions; (3) demonstrated an understanding of the ways in which individuals’ attitudes towards digital possessions may be ‘tainted’ after a break up; and (4) demonstrated the current technical limitations individuals are confronted with when curating and managing digital possessions post-break up

The Power of the Christian: Discerning an Improvisatory Ethic of Power from the Gospel of Mark

The presence of power, operating in both obvious and subtle ways in public life, necessitates the development of a Christian ethic of power with which to guide the church and her members in all relational discourse—both with those inside and outside of Christian communities. The core question to be considered in this study is: how are Christians to hold and exercise power? In order to gain an understanding of Jesus’ own conception and use of power, this study focuses on a narrative analysis of the Gospel of Mark, emphasizing the pericope of 10:42-45. Here we find the self-subordinating, atoning action of Jesus in the cross as the primary Scriptural image of a Christian’s own expression of power. In order to address the process of forming a normative ethic from our exegesis, this survey will make use of a critical integration of the ethical methodologies of Richard Hays and Samuel Wells, making use of the narrative’s own imagery of Servant, Sacrifice, Shalom as the Bible’s own formational pattern for Christian ethical formation

Quantifying lake system dynamics

Analysis of thickness time series, generated from varved sediments originating from lakes in the Arctic, USA, Finland, Germany and Poland, and intermittently spanning the last ca. 15,000 cal yrs BP, reveals a range of system dynamics. Lake sedimentation leading to varve formation can be considered in terms of the quantity and stratigraphic position of the sedimentary deposit. The amount of sediment deposited is statistically represented by gamma and log-normal distributions. This suggests sedimentation is characterised by a series of random depositional events that are added and multiplied over time, respectively. Phase portraits qualitatively indicate scale invariance. Power spectra, autocorrelation functions and fluctuation analysis quantitatively confirm scale invariance over all resolvable orders of magnitude, with exponents in the range ca. H = 0.6 to 0.9. Crossovers occur in the power spectra on ca. 100 yrs timescales for some lakes, indicating the possible presence of changes in dominant timescales of large scale climatic processes. Deviations from established relations between scaling exponents, and differences from the AR(1) null hypothesis, both based on random walk processes, indicate the role of other underlying scaling mechanisms, such as (self-organised) critical phenomena and/or multiscaling. E-folding times calculated from waiting time analysis indicates lake systems are characterised by two states, characterising the ''main" dynamics on decadal timescales, and the ''extreme" dynamics up to centennial timescales. The e-folding times for the main system processes compare well with some of those calculated from the autocorrelation function and AR(1) process, again indicating the presence of other complex dynamics. Effectively, lakes are threshold systems with random forcing on different timescales. No relations were isolated for correlations between basic physical parameters and statistical exponents, indicating the individualistic nature of lake systems. This is confirmed by the lack of spatial correlation between averaged, but unshifted lake systems. This is attributed to insufficient atmospheric spatiotemporal smoothing, the thermal regime of lakes displaying a greater response to slower long term processes, rather than faster shorter term processes, and to the occurrence of extreme events, which ultimately control the emergence of correlation, up to and beyond centennial timescales

Quasicircles and Bounded Turning Circles Modulo bi-Lipschitz Maps

We construct a catalog, of snowflake type metric circles, that describes all metric quasicircles up to \bl\ equivalence. This is a metric space analog of a result due to Rohde. Our construction also works for all bounded turning metric circles; these need not be doubling. As a byproduct, we show that a metric quasicircle with Assouad dimension strictly less than two is bi-Lipschitz equivalent to a planar quasicircle

Quasicircles and bounded turning circles modulo bi-Lipschitz maps

30 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Rev. Mat. IberoamericanaWe construct a catalog, of snowflake type metric circles, that describes allmetric quasicircles up to \bl\ equivalence. This is a metric space analog of aresult due to Rohde. Our construction also works for all bounded turning metriccircles; these need not be doubling. As a byproduct, we show that a metricquasicircle with Assouad dimension strictly less than two is bi-Lipschitzequivalent to a planar quasicircle.Peer reviewe

Race, Shelby County, and the Voter Information Verification Act in North Carolina

Shortly after the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder struck down section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the State of North Carolina enacted an omnibus piece of election- reform legislation known as the Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA). Prior to Shelby, portions of North Carolina were covered jurisdictions per the VRA’s sections 4 and 5—meaning that they had to seek federal preclearance for changes to their election procedures— and this motivates our assessment of whether VIVA’s many alterations to North Carolina’s election procedures are race-neutral. We show that in presidential elections in North Carolina black early voters have cast their ballots disproportionately in the first week of early voting, which was eliminated by VIVA; that blacks disproportionately have registered to vote during early voting and in the immediate run-up to Election Day, something VIVA now prohibits; that registered voters in the state who lack two VIVA-acceptable forms of voter identification, driver’s licenses and non-operator identification cards, are disproportionately black; that VIVA’s identification dispensation for voters at least seventy years old disproportionately benefits white registered voters; and, that preregistered sixteen and seventeen year old voters in North Carolina, a category of registrants that VIVA prohibits, are disproportionately black. These results illustrate how VIVA will have a disparate effect on black voters in North Carolina