Applied aspirations : design and applied art at the Ballarat Technical Art School during the early twentieth century

Applied art and design schools operate at the nexus of art, industry, and education. During the early decades of the twentieth century, the regionally located Ballarat Technical Art School (BTAS) was the leading institution of its kind in Victoria, Australia, amid shifting economic, cultural, and pedagogical conditions. Emerging from a 1907 amalgamation of institutions, and subsequently administrated by the School of Mines Ballarat (SMB), BTAS was equipped with the assets, experience, and historic reputation necessary to surpass its provincial and metropolitan rivals. This micro-historical case-study employs qualitative analysis of primary sources to investigate the aims, outputs, and importance of BTAS, contextualised by the expectations and influences it operated under during the inaugural principalship of artist and educator, Herbert Henry Smith. Smith oversaw the training of designers, craftspeople, artists, and teachers from 1907 until his retirement in early 1940—a period of tumultuous events, fiscal obstacles, and social and cultural debate. The institution was accountable to diverse stakeholders and arbiters of taste, and successive cohorts learned in a contested space between tradition, origination, and modernisation. Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural theory serves to navigate this web of hierarchies, assumptions, and tensions, while secondary sources help contextualise findings. This thesis also discusses the suite of drawing, design and material-based disciplines delivered at BTAS as single subjects, full courses, and supplementary art-trade training. Throughout, featured students provide examples of regionally trained, Australian designer-maker and artist-teacher experiences. BTAS students learned from ambitious and skilled men and women, benefited from strong professional networks, and fostered a notable esprit-de-corps. The school was significant for its contribution to female technical training. The school’s pre-eminent position was modified during the late 1920s, when much art and art-teacher training was re-centred in Melbourne. Yet, the valuable, compelling, and widespread influence of Ballarat Technical Art School graduates resonated for decades.Doctor of Philosoph

Generic Juxtapositioning in Malory's Morte D'Arthur

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN032962 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Sound Over Troubled Waters: Noise Pollution in Prek Toal, Cambodia

Environmental noise pollution, or excessive noise related to machinery operation and vehicular transportation, is a common problem in urban environments. Less understood is the effect that chronic environmental noise can have in rural environments, where there is greater potential for disruption of native ecosystems and the quality of life in small villages. Chronic exposure to noises above 85 decibels causes noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) in humans, which has irreversible effects. But even less understood is the effect that chronic noise can have on animals that thrive in less urbanized environments. Here, I examine the effect of noise pollution caused by motor boats in the floating village of Prek Toal, Cambodia. I identify the types of motorboats used along the Sangker river, the river that runs through the village, and experimentally measure their maximum sound intensities across a various distances from 0-100m from the motor. The effect of the noise on the boat is examined to address the occupational hazard to the driver. The observational data is also used to derive an empirical equation for sound decay that is specific to this rural environment. This equation is used to map the spatial distribution of environmental noise pollution within the village and identify zones of noise induced hearing loss along the Sangker river. A total of sixty villagers were surveyed to identify the types of motors present in Prek Toal. The two major motor companies, Yokohama and Hinota, offer motors with a wide range of horsepower. Sound intensity measurements revealed the mean range of sound that drivers are exposed to is 93 dB(A) to 112 dB(A), with the majority of motors above 100 dB(A)s. This exceeds the minimum for NIHL, demonstrating that drivers in Prek Toal are exposed to hearing-related occupational hazards while driving. The empirically derived sound decay equation reveals an exponential relationship between sound and distance in Prek Toal. This relationship matches what has been found in other studies. A spatial analysis of the observational data reveal that each boat has a minimum NIHL radius of 45 meters

In the Hilt is Fame : Resonances of Medieval Swords and Sword-lore in J.R.R. Tolkien\u27s \u3ci\u3eThe Hobbit\u3c/i\u3e and \u3ci\u3eThe Lord of the Rings\u3c/i\u3e

Examines legends and lore of famous swords in medieval Germanic, Norse, Celtic and English literature, and how Tolkien adapted and added them to his rich history in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ring

Addressing gaps in physician knowledge regarding transgender health and healthcare through medical education

Background: Transgender people (those people whose sex at birth does not “match” their felt gender identity) are a priority group for healthcare as they experience high rates of discrimination and related illnesses. Despite this, there is a trend of poor healthcare access for trans people due, in large part, to the denial of care on the part of physicians. A small body of literature is beginning to suggest that this denial of care may be due to a lack of physician knowledge as well as, in some cases, to transphobia. There is a dearth of research in Canada, however, exploring whether and/or how knowledge gaps create barriers to quality care, and whether medical education can attend to these gaps while and through addressing gender normativity.Methods: To fill these gaps in the literature, we undertook a qualitative study with 30 trans identified people and 11 physicians (N=41) in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Methods included semi-structured individual interviews and focus groups. Data were transcribed and analyzed with NVivo qualitative data software using iterative methods.Results: An overwhelming finding of this study was a lack of physician knowledge, as reported both by trans people and by physicians, that resulted in a denial of trans-specific care and also impacted general care. Transphobia was also identified as a barrier to quality care by both trans people and physicians. Physicians were open to learning more about trans health and healthcare.Conclusions: The findings suggest a pressing need for better medical education that exposes students to basic skills in trans health so that they can become competent in providing care to trans people. This learning must take place alongside anti-transphobia education. Based on these findings, we suggest key recommendations at the close of the paper for providing quality trans health curriculum in medical education

Competitive Tiling

Competitive tiling consists of two players, a tile set, a region, and a non-negative integer d. Alice and Bob, our two players, alternate placing tiles on the untiled squares of the region. They play until no more tiles can be placed. Alice wins if at most d squares are untiled at the end of the game, and Bob wins if more than d squares are untiled. For given regions and tile sets we are interested in the smallest value of d such that Alice has a winning strategy. We call this the game tiling number. In this project, we focus on finding the game tiling number for the game played with dominoes on 2 x n rectangles, modified 2 x n rectangles, and rectangular annular regions

Tilings of Annular Region

We present our summer research on mathematical tiling. We classified which rectangular annular regions are tileable by the set of T and skew tretrominoes. We present a partial proof of this result, and discuss some of the context for this problem

Fine-Tuning Translation Kinetics Selection as the Driving Force of Codon Usage Bias in the Hepatitis A Virus Capsid

Hepatitis A virus (HAV), the prototype of genus Hepatovirus, has several unique biological characteristics that distinguish it from other members of the Picornaviridae family. Among these, the need for an intact eIF4G factor for the initiation of translation results in an inability to shut down host protein synthesis by a mechanism similar to that of other picornaviruses. Consequently, HAV must inefficiently compete for the cellular translational machinery and this may explain its poor growth in cell culture. In this context of virus/cell competition, HAV has strategically adopted a naturally highly deoptimized codon usage with respect to that of its cellular host. With the aim to optimize its codon usage the virus was adapted to propagate in cells with impaired protein synthesis, in order to make tRNA pools more available for the virus. A significant loss of fitness was the immediate response to the adaptation process that was, however, later on recovered and more associated to a re-deoptimization rather than to an optimization of the codon usage specifically in the capsid coding region. These results exclude translation selection and instead suggest fine-tuning translation kinetics selection as the underlying mechanism of the codon usage bias in this specific genome region. Additionally, the results provide clear evidence of the Red Queen dynamics of evolution since the virus has very much evolved to re-adapt its codon usage to the environmental cellular changing conditions in order to recover the original fitness