It\u27s Always Somebody\u27s Paris: An Examination of Place in Nonfiction Writing

IT’S ALWAYS SOMEBODY’S PARIS: AN EXAMINATION OF PLACE IN NONFICTION WRITING By Jessica E. Sculthorpe This thesis examines the importance of place in nonfiction writing, using both the author’s personal experience as a student in Paris and the writings of other Americans in Paris, including members of the Lost Generation. The first two chapters examine the author’s experience as a young student in Paris. The third and fourth chapters contain the author’s reflection on the process of writing the thesis and an examination of the ways in which other writers have written about Paris in their own nonfiction writing

A study of environmental factors significant in the readmission to mental hospitals of schizophrenic veterans receiving trial visit supervision from the Veterans Administration Hospital mental hygiene clinic, Providence, Rhode Island, from January 1, 1951 to December 31, 1951

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston UniversityThis thesis will be an attempt to study long-standing frustrations of this nature with regard to their effect on the veteran's adjustment, and the methods and techniques employed by the social worker in seeking to alleviate or modify the emotional environment of the trial visit patient. The adjustment of the patients studied in the thesis will be evaluated from the standpoint of ability to function in the areas of family, employment, and community relationships. In the mental hygiene clinic the social worker functions within the discipline of the team approach by psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker. The role of the psychiatric social worker will be considered within this context throughout the thesis

Work it, wrap it, fix it, fold it

The worker/wrapper transformation is a general-purpose technique for refactoring recursive programs to improve their performance. The two previous approaches to formalising the technique were based upon different recursion operators and different correctness conditions. In this paper we show how these two approaches can be generalised in a uniform manner by combining their correctness conditions, extend the theory with new conditions that are both necessary and sufficient to ensure the correctness of the worker/wrapper technique, and explore the benefits that result. All the proofs have been mechanically verified using the Agda system

Optimisation of dynamic, hybrid signal function networks

Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) is an approach to reactive programming where systems are structured as networks of functions operating on signals. FRP is based on the synchronous data-flow paradigm and supports both continuous-time and discrete-time signals (hybrid systems). What sets FRP apart from most other languages for similar applications is its support for systems with dynamic structure and for higher-order data-flow constructs. This raises a range of implementation challenges. This paper contributes towards advancing the state of the art of FRP implementation by studying the notion of signal change and change propagation in a setting of hybrid signal function networks with dynamic structure. To sidestep some problems of certain previous FRP implementations that are structured using arrows, we suggest working with a notion of composable, multi-input and multi-output signal functions. A clear conceptual distinction is also made between continuous-time and discrete-time signals. We then show how establishing change-related properties of the signal functions in a network allows such networks to be simplified (static optimisation) and can help reducing the amount of computation needed for executing the networks (dynamic optimisation). Interestingly, distinguishing between continuous-time and discrete-time signals allows us to characterise the change-related properties of signal functions more precisely than what we otherwise would have been able to, which is helpful for optimisation

Early Modified Gravity: Implications for Cosmology

We study the effects of modifications of gravity after Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) which would manifest themselves mainly before recombination. We consider their effects on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation and on the formation of large scale structure. The models that we introduce here represent all screened modifications of General Relativity (GR) which evade the local tests of gravity such as the violation of the strong equivalence principle as constrained by the Lunar Ranging experiment. We use the tomographic description of modified gravity which defines models with screening mechanisms of the chameleon or Damour-Polyakov types and allows one to relate the temporal evolution of the mass and the coupling to matter of a scalar field to its Lagrangian and also to cosmological perturbations. The models with early modifications of gravity all involve a coupling to matter which is stronger in the past leading to effects on perturbations before recombination while minimising deviations from Lambda-CDM structure formation at late times. We find that a new family of early transition models lead to discrepancies in the CMB spectrum which could reach a few percent and appear as both enhancements and reductions of power for different scales.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

The Kansas University rewrite engine: a Haskell-embedded strategic programming language with custom closed universes

When writing transformation systems, a significant amount of engineering effort goes into setting up the infrastructure needed to direct individual transformations to specific targets in the data being transformed. Strategic programming languages provide general-purpose infrastructure for this task, which the author of a transformation system can use for any algebraic data structure. The Kansas University Rewrite Engine (KURE) is a typed strategic programming language, implemented as a Haskell-embedded domain-specific language. KURE is designed to support typed transformations over typed data, and the main challenge is how to make such transformations compatible with generic traversal strategies that should operate over any type. Strategic programming in a typed setting has much in common with datatype-generic programming. Compared to other approaches to datatype-generic programming, the distinguishing feature of KURE’s solution is that the user can configure the behaviour of traversals based on the location of each datum in the tree, beyond their behaviour being determined by the type of each datum. This article describes KURE’s approach to assigning types to generic traversals, and the implementation of that approach. We also compare KURE, its design choices, and their consequences, with other approaches to strategic and datatype-generic programming

Executable component-based semantics

The potential benefits of formal semantics are well known. However, a substantial amount of work is required to produce a complete and accurate formal semantics for a major language; and when the language evolves, large-scale revision of the semantics may be needed to reflect the changes. The investment of effort needed to produce an initial definition, and subsequently to revise it, has discouraged language developers from using formal semantics. Consequently, many major programming languages (and most domain-specific languages) do not yet have formal semantic definitions.To improve the practicality of formal semantic definitions, the PLanCompS project has developed a component-based approach. In this approach, the semantics of a language is defined by translating its constructs (compositionally) to combinations of so-called fundamental constructs, or ‘funcons’. Each funcon is defined using a modular variant of Structural Operational Semantics, and forms a language-independent component that can be reused in definitions of different languages. A substantial library of funcons has been developed and tested in several case studies. Crucially, the definition of each funcon is fixed, and does not need changing when new funcons are added to the library.For specifying component-based semantics, we have designed and implemented a meta-language called CBS. It includes specification of abstract syntax, of its translation to funcons, and of the funcons themselves. Development of CBS specifications is supported by an integrated development environment. The accuracy of a language definition can be tested by executing the specified translation on programs written in the defined language, and then executing the resulting funcon terms using an interpreter generated from the CBS definitions of the funcons. This paper gives an introduction to CBS, illustrates its use, and presents the various tools involved in our implementation of CBS

Scalar-Tensor Theories for Dark Energy and their Cosmological Consequences

One of the major outstanding questions in cosmology today is the nature of dark energy, the cause of the observed recent accelerated expansion of the universe. This thesis considers scalar-tensor theories as a possible candidate for dark energy and explores their observational consequences. The evolution equations for perturbation equations of a fluid, either relativistic or non-relativistic, disformally coupled to the scalar field are derived for the first time. A new observational probe for such theories, CMB μ-distortion, is then investigated. The effects of screened models of modified gravity on the CMB angular power spectrum are considered, looking at the potential for these to provide constraints on the models, even after imposing constraints coming from local tests and BBN. Finally, in the context of coupled quintessence, the initial conditions for general perturbation modes are derived with a view to determining whether the constraint on the coupling strength may be relaxed when the assumption of adiabatic initial conditions is lifted