An Examination of Narrative and Thematic Devices in Virginia Woolf\u27s To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to examine the narrative and thematic devices Virginia Woolf employs in her two novels, To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway and how her techniques impact the way in which the readers view the characters and their relationships. Her use of narrator and themes in both novels helps develop more complex characters, making them more relatable and their situations examples that readers can use in life outside the novels. This thesis looks directly at her use of language and character development in order to examine how she achieves success in her novels. The first chapter of this thesis focuses on To the Lighthouse and the ways in which Woolf uses the narrative as a sort of laboratory for experimenting with her early family life. In doing this, she uses narrative techniques that serve not only her purposes as author, but she in turn writes a tale that is a model of family life and relationships that work for a population of readers in general. The tale is a simple exploration of family life, but one that creates a sort of “how-to” for readers. These ideas are explored through the narrator and thematic structure that occur throughout the novel. The second chapter of this thesis focuses on Mrs. Dalloway and how Woolf uses this narrative to create a set of characters who, when all woven together, create a model of human experience at its most powerful. Woolf dramatizes situations in this novel, through her narrative devices and thematic structure, which show the depth to which human beings experience life and the impact that major life events can have on the human psyche. The characters experience and feel life altering events all in a single day, emphasizing how “regular” they are, and Woolf exemplifies that power through her narrator and the way in which she finally brings the characters to one another. Through the narrative and thematic devices Woolf employs in this novel, she creates a model for readers to live by, showing what works and what does not, sharing the intimate details these characters experience in their dramatic situations

Analysis of Minor League Rule Changes Effect on Stolen Bases

This study uses various statistical analyses to evaluate the justification of rule changes for Major League Baseball that were implemented within the Minor Leagues during the 2021 minor league season. The primary focus of the study is predicting how some of these Minor League rule changes could affect the stolen base success rate and the number of attempts per game within the Major Leagues. A survey was conducted to evaluate how fans feel about stolen bases within the current game and if rules should be altered to increase the number of stolen bases that occur. Additionally, recorded Major and Minor League data was compared between 2019 and 2021 with the Major Leagues and the Double-A level being considered as control groups since no rule changes were implemented that would affect stolen base rates but each of the other leagues brought in an experimental rule change. This is an exploratory study that sets the table for other studies to follow

Anna Safley Houston and Early Twentieth Century Collectors

Anna Safley Houston was an eccentric woman from Chattanooga who had a compulsive desire to collect antiques. Houston’s glass collection is one of if not the finest glass collections in the world. Houston had much in common with other great collectors from the early twentieth century such as William Randolph Hearst, Armand Hammer, Bella King and others. Houston did a large amount of traveling, visiting every state along with Canada and Cuba. Houston also established a social and professional network of friend and family who helped her overcome certain difficulties of collecting. In addition, Houston wanted her work to be admired, refusing to sell many pieces of glassware because she was saving them for a museum. Houston differed from other collectors in the barriers she overcame in gathering her collection. Most great collectors from the early twentieth century attended prestigious universities and had made significant achievements in academics. Houston was forced to drop out of middle school to assume family responsibilities when her mother died. Also, collectors often were very wealthy as collecting tended to be quite costly. While Houston was a successful business woman, she was not wealthy. When the Great Depression came, Houston would chose to sell her house instead of selling part of her precious collection. Houston would go on to construct a barn to live in with all of her antiques. The fact that Houston was able to amass one of the greatest collections in the world without being wealthy or highly educated is truly remarkable

Towards a Traceable Enterprise Architecture for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises

The practice of Enterprise Architecture (EA) continues to develop. Many large organizations are using EA processes and practices to help manage their complex set of integrated processes and applications. The set of integrated processes and applications required to meet their unique business requirements. Large organizations inherently recognize that an effective EA assists the enterprise to determine its desired direction. The resulting EA is then used to help manage the changes required to achieve the enterprises chosen destination. In a similar manner, Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) can benefit from EA practices. Achieving these benefits requires EA practices and tools be appropriately scaled to the size of the enterprise. My objective is to address the EA needs of SMEs by researching appropriate EA best practices, building artifacts that embrace these practices, and then evaluating these artifacts to determine how well they meet the need

Female Adolescent Offender\u27s Experience with Restorative Justice Practice

This hermeneutic study examines the lived experience of one female juvenile offender as she went through the restorative justice practice of either victim-offender mediation (VOM) or group conferencing. Hermeneutics is an interpretive approach to looking at everyday experiences and uncovering what is usually hidden from us. When asked about her experience, one theme stood out as essential for the participant: becoming trustworthy. Several aspects including being listened to, re-developing relationships, and making amends with those who were harmed by the crime marked the participant\u27s transformation. These findings correspond with Erikson\u27s psychosocial stages of adolescence and young adulthood, as well as the work of developmental theorist, Carol Gilligan. Implications for social work practice include gaining a better understanding of the unique experiences of female adolescent offenders and aiding in the development of gender-specific programming in the field of juvenile corrections

Label-Free Characterization of Single Proteins Using Synthetic Nanopores

Molecular diagnosis has proven to be a powerful tool for early detection of neurodegenerative disease, but research in this field is still relatively nascent. In Alzheimer's Disease specifically, levels of microtubule associated protein tau and amyloid beta in cerebrospinal fluid are becoming reliable pathological indicators. The current gold standard for detecting these biomarkers is an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and while this method has a limit of detection on the order of picograms per mL, it lacks the ability to provide information about aggregation extent and structure on a per-protein basis. From a disease standpoint, neurological pathologies are often extremely complex in their biological manifestation, and precise mechanisms for many of these diseases are still being discovered and revised. A thorough understanding of in situ structure and properties of neurological disease-related proteins would likely help clarify some of these complicated mechanisms. Resistive-pulse methods may be useful in this effort, as they can determine specific biomarker concentrations and can also unveil multiple physical qualities of single proteins or protein aggregates in an aqueous sample. The latter capability is critical, and could allow for both earlier diagnoses and a stronger mechanistic understanding of neurological disease progression. The work presented in this dissertation, therefore, represents broad efforts toward developing a nanopore-based system able to characterize amyloids and protein complexes related to neurodegenerative disease. These efforts range from upstream fabrication and characterization of nanopores in synthetic substrates to downstream techniques for optimizing the accuracy and efficiency of analyses on resistive pulses. Single proteins rotating and translating while tethered to the surface of a nanopore provide rich information during transit through the pore that makes it possible to determine their ellipsoidal shape, volume, dipole moment, charge, and rotational diffusion coefficient in a time frame of just a few hundred microseconds. This five-dimensional protein fingerprint, however, requires chemical modification of each protein and is thus not ideal for studying protein dynamics or transient protein complexes, both of which are relevant when characterizing amyloids. Transitioning to low-noise nanopore substrates and high-bandwidth recordings enables label-free identification and quantification of unperturbed, natively-folded proteins and protein complexes in solution -- no chemical tags, tethers, or fluorescent labels are needed. Such a transition is nontrivial; proteins passing uninhibited through the strong electric field inside of a nanopore rotate and translocate rapidly, posing a challenge to time-resolve their various orientations adequately while circumventing adhesion to nanopore walls. Furthermore, during their translocation through the nanopore, untethered, native proteins diffuse laterally, generating asymmetric disturbances of the electric field and larger-than-expected resistive pulse magnitudes. Known as off-axis effects, these latter phenomena add a noise-like element to the electrical recordings. We evaluate, both computationally and experimentally, the influence of such label-free complications on resulting parameter estimates, and place these results in the context of developing future iterations of nanopore-based protein sensors. In light of the spectacular recent success of nanopore-based nucleic acid sequencing, it is likely that the next frontier for nanopore-based analysis is the characterization of single proteins and, in particular, the characterization of protein aggregates such as amyloids. The experiments and results presented here enable future particle-by-particle analysis of amyloids with nanopores to rapidly reconstruct their heterogeneity in size and shape, both of which are correlated with the neurotoxicity of amyloid samples and are being investigated as biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases.PHDBiomedical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151730/1/jaredsh_1.pdfDescription of jaredsh_1.pdf : Restricted to UM users only

Evaluating Fidelity to the National Extension Dining with Diabetes Program: Challenges and Opportunities

The objective of this study was to evaluate fidelity to the Dining with Diabetes (DWD) program. Data were gathered cross-sectionally in 2019 using class profile forms (i.e., checklists) containing items reflecting the core components of DWD: delivery personnel, curriculum, hands-on cooking, and goal setting. Fidelity was calculated as the proportion of core components completed as intended. Educators (N = 9) completed class profile forms for 10 complete DWD programs (i.e., all four classes). Fidelity to components of completed DWD programs and individual DWD classes was high (over 70% in each category). Overall, fidelity was high, and adaptations reported likely did not detract from effectiveness (e.g., a 2-hour class lasted 2.5 hours). However, the response rate was low and may not reflect those who deliver with lower fidelity. Assessing fidelity should be incorporated as a standard part of community-based diabetes management program evaluation; these data can inform changes to programs to make them more effective in the “real world.