Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Sience news'

This thesis treats the interrelation between gender and technology at the Victorian fin de siècle, focusing on the figure of the New Woman. It aims to offer a reexamination of this figure of early feminism in relation to the technologies and techniques of the time, suggesting the simultaneously abstract and material concept of technology as a way to more fully understand the ‘semi-fictionality’ of the New Woman; her emergence as both a discursive figure in literature and as a set of social practices. Major authors include Grant Allen, Tom Gallon, and H. G. Wells, examined in the larger context of late-Victorian and fin de siècle popular and New Woman fiction. Chapter 1 outlines the theoretical and methodological premises of the thesis. Locating a specific problematic in the ‘semi-fictionality’ of the New Woman, it draws upon wider discussions within gender and feminist theory to consider this central concern in New Woman criticism. Criticising gynocritical assumptions, the chapter offers a way of reading New Woman literature without relying on the gender of the author – taking Grant Allen’s (in)famous New Woman novel The Woman Who Did as a case in point. It concludes by suggesting technology as a way of examining the figure of the New Woman in its historiospecific and material context. Chapter 2 establishes the typewriter as a case in point for examining the interrelation between gender and technology at the fin de siècle. Through reading Grant Allen’s The Type-Writer Girl and Tom Gallon’s The Girl Behind the Keys, it examines the semantic ambiguity of the term ‘typewriter’ to demonstrate the sexual ambiguity of the New Woman and also the mutual interaction between individual agency and technology. Chapter 3 examines the technology most associated with the New Woman: the safety bicycle. Through reading H. G. Wells’s The Wheels of Chance and Grant Allen’s Miss Cayley’s Adventures, it considers how the social practice of bicycling comes to be associated with concepts of female freedom, problematising the notion of the bicycle as a technology of democratisation. Chapter 4 discusses the figure of the New Woman nurse as a fin de siècle figuration of the Nightingale New Style nurse. Examining the emergence of the clinical hospital, it places the New Woman nurse in a context of medical modernity. Reading Grant Allen’s Hilda Wade as an intervention in a debate on hospital hierarchies, it explores the institutional technology of the hospital in the formation of notions of gender.

This thesis considers three British novels of the 1880s that imagined a range of middle-class domestic configurations that deviated in new ways from the long-contested fiction of the British household as a patriarchal stronghold. Although mid-Victorian novels very often featured narratives of domestic upheaval, they did so in a way that sensationalized and emphasized the rarity of middle-class familial deviance. In contrast, the fin-de-siècle domestic novel brought a greater range of idiosyncratic families and households under a newly sociological lens and explored them as part of the reality of modern British family life. The persistent attention to alternative domesticities by novelists writing in the fin-de-siècle period suggests that the social problems of the day required new novelistic genres and formal strategies beyond those favoured by writers of sensation fiction and sentimental domestic novels in the earlier part of the century. Through readings of late-career novels by the popular Victorian sensationalist Wilkie Collins and a New Woman novel by the anti-feminist editorialist Eliza Lynn Linton, this thesis argues that the generic hybridity of such fin-de-siècle British novels resulted in a capacious domestic narrative that often looked beyond the fraught unit of the biological family to posit an unprecedented range of new family configurations.

The Victorian need to compartmentalise and define women’s sexuality in terms of opposing binaries was paralleled by the vague idea that the period’s French and British literatures were at odds with one another. Elucidating the deep connections between, and common concerns shared by, French Naturalist and Realist and British New Woman authors, this thesis shatters the dichotomies that attempted to structure and define women’s sexuality in the mid- to late- nineteenth century. The thesis focusses on novels and short stories by French authors Émile Zola and Guy de Maupassant, and New Woman authors Sarah Grand, Ménie Muriel Dowie and Vernon Lee. In a time during which the feminist movement was gaining momentum, and female sexuality was placed at the heart of a range of discourses, and scrutinised from a number of different angles – not only in literature, but in medicine, psychology, sexology, criminology – the consideration of the female sexual self and her subjectivity brings together the work of authors whose oeuvres have been largely considered as antithetical. Previous work has indeed shown the centrality of female sexuality to both literatures, yet never compared them. This thesis rediscovers the significance of both literatures’ investment in a discourse revolving around female sexuality by contrasting the French male authors with the British female writers, and uncovering unexpected parallels in their claims about the contemporary situation of women. Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe’s feminist philosophy frames the thesis’s comparative analysis, questioning and re-examining these authors’ representations of female sexuality. The ideas of sensuality and rationality, motherhood, reproduction, marriage, and prostitution thus become recurring concerns throughout it. The thesis’s first chapter considers the female as sexual subject and/or object of the male gaze, in a range of New Woman and French literature. The second and third chapters are organised around the themes of marriage and prostitution, and the final chapter considers issues of female sexuality within the fantastic short story.

La reconnaissance est essentiellement théorisée par Aristote à propos de la tragédie. Dans la comédie, la reconnaissance n’assume qu’un rôle accessoire. Dans ces deux genres, elle est essentiellement tributaire du dénouement. Au XVIIIe siècle, les auteurs se sont intéressés de près à ce principe dramatique auquel ils ont eu recours de manière massive dans les nouveaux genres dramatiques que le siècle a vu naître. Marivaux, Destouches, Nivelle de La Chaussée, Diderot, Mercier et Beaumarchais ont tous transposé la notion aristotélicienne de l’anagnorisis dans leurs pièces. Les écarts avec l’assise théorique qu’offre la Poétique et avec la place qu’occupe la reconnaissance dans le théâtre classique se font évidents. N’étant plus nécessairement liée au dénouement, la reconnaissance concerne, dans les comédies nouvelles, toutes les étapes de l’action. Les auteurs revendiquent le recours à ce principe dramatique, en dépit des lourds préjugés qui pèsent sur lui, et revendiquent également le pathétique en tant que nouvelle voie à explorer au théâtre. Les scènes de reconnaissance sont symptomatiques de cette volonté de dépasser la division rigoureuse des genres ; elles traduisent les nouvelles aspirations et les nouvelles voies empruntées par l’art dramatique. Elles renseignent sur le renouvellement des formes et des enjeux des nouveaux genres et incarnent le projet dramatique des Lumières qui consiste, avant tout, à créer un rapport à la fois intime et solide avec le spectateur. Désormais, c’est de l’efficacité de l’effet dramatique que dépendent le succès des nouveaux genres et la transmission efficace du message moral, philosophique et politique que les reconnaissances tentent de véhiculer
Recognition is essentially theorized by Aristotle about the tragedy. In comedy, recognition assumes only a secondary role. In both genres, it is essentially dependent on the final dénouement. In the eighteenth century, the authors have been interested in this dramatic principle which they have used massively in the new dramatic genres born in that century. Marivaux, Destouches, Nivelle de La Chaussée, Diderot, Mercier and Beaumarchais have all transposed the Aristotelian notion of anagnorisis in their plays. The differences with the theoretical basis enabled by Poetics and the place of recognition in classical theater are obvious. Being no longer necessarily linked to dénouement, recognition in the new comedies is concerned with all stages of the action. The authors claim the use of this dramatic principle despite the heavy bias against it, as well as they claim the use of the pathetic as a new way to explore drama. Recognition scenes are symptomatic of this desire to go beyond the strict division of gender, as they reflect new aspirations and new pathways for drama to explore. They provide information on the renewal of forms and new kinds of challenges facing the new genres, while embodying the Enlightenment project aiming, above all, to create a relationship that is both intimate and solid with the viewer. Now it is the efficiency of the dramatic effect that conditions the success of new genres and the efficient transmission of the moral, philosophical and political messages which recognition that tries to convey

La question relative à la propriété de la terre, de son usage et de son transfert entre les Indiens du sud de la Nouvelle Angleterre et les colons puritains venus s’installer parmi eux a non seulement été le sujet d’un bon nombre d’études et a toujours été un sujet de forte controverse. Cependant rares sont les études qui ont tenté de remettre en question ou de revoir la thèse qui décrète que les Indiens ont été dépossédés de leur terre par les colons anglais. C’est pourquoi il nous a paru intéressant d’aller au-delà de cette perspective traditionnelle de dépossession. Dans ce sens, l’objet de cette thèse est de démontrer que ce transfert de terre pourrait être considéré comme une transaction foncière réglementaire donnant suite à un échange équitable entre deux parties mutuellement consentantes. Nous visons à présenter une image différente de l’Indien de celle de la victime de la colonisation puritaine qui le présente comme un Indien passif, soumis et à qui on inflige une condition.Pour ce faire, nous nous baserons sur l’analyse des actes de vente de terres intervenus entre les tribus indiennes du sud de la Nouvelle Angleterre et les colons anglais, et ce dans la période comprise entre 1620 et 1676. Notre analyse de ces documents se fera selon une perspective ethno-historique
The question of land property, use and transfer between the Indians of southern New England and the Puritans who settled among them has been the subject of a large literature and has always been a highly controversial issue. Giving the fact that this issue has always been referred to as a dispossession, we thought it interesting to go beyond this traditional perspective. Indeed, we propose to show that this movement of land transfer can be considered as a legal and just land transaction and that it was equitable to both parties. We also aim at presenting another image of the Indian; an image different from the one depicting him as a submitted Indian and a victim of colonial invasion and cultural assault. Our study is based on an ethnohistorical analysis of the land deeds that took place between the Indians and the English colonists in southern New England between 1620 and 1676

This paper introduces an efficient numerical algorithm for transient analysis of deterministic and stochastic Petri nets (DSPNs) and other discrete-event stochastic systems with exponential and deterministic events. The proposed approach is based on the analysis of a general state space Markov chain (GSSMC) whose state equations constitute a system of multidimensional Fredholm integral equations. Key contributions of this paper constitute the observations that the transition kernel of this system of Fredholm equations is piece-wise continuous and separable. Due to the exploitation of these properties, the GSSMC approach shows great promise for being effectively applicable for the transient analysis of large DSPNs with concurrent deterministic transitions. Moreover, for DSPNs without concurrent deterministic transitions the proposed GSSMC approach requires three orders of magnitude less computational effort than the previously known approach based on the method of supplementary variables.

This paper introduces an efficient numerical algorithm for the steady-state analysis of deterministic and stochastic Petri nets (DSPNs) without structural restrictions on the enabling of deterministic transitions. The method rests on observation, at equidistant time points, of the continuous-time Markov process that records tangible markings of the DSPN and remaining firing times associated with deterministic transitions. This approach results in the analysis of a general state space Markov chain whose system of stationary equations can be transformed into a system of Volterra equations. The techniques of this paper are also applicable to queueing networks, stochastic process algebras, and other discrete-event stochastic systems with an underlying stochastic process which can be represented as a generalized semi-Markov process with exponential and deterministic events.

Scottish artists Margaret and Frances Macdonald produced their most innovative art during the last decade of the nineteenth century. They received their training at the Glasgow School of Art and became known for their contribution to "the Glasgow Style," Scotland's answer to Continental Art nouveau and Symbolism. Although they inherited their visual vocabulary from the male-dominated language of the fin-de-siècle, they produced representations of women that differed from those made by their male colleagues. I suggest that these representations were informed by the female experience and that they must be understood as such if we, as historians, are to discuss their art. Like many other women artists from this period, the Macdonalds relied heavily upon so-called feminine imagery. This could be flower painting, "dainty" landscapes, pictures of children or pictures of "lovely" women. The Macdonalds strayed from conventional meaning, however, and made pictures of women that, while retaining the mystery of symbolism, presented the viewer with contextually accurate representations of women who were bound and restricted by a society that had not yet allowed women the vote. I suggest that these representations be considered in the light of recent theoretical developments in feminist literary criticism and feminist film theory which give credence to women as producers of culture while remaining aware that culture is a patriarchal construction. My contention is that if we can comprehend the patriarchal construct of woman during the fin-de-siècle then we may be able to understand how the Macdonalds (and other women like them) strayed from this representation and made their own images (perhaps in their own likeness or at least in the likeness of their situation). Knowledge about how women's experience was integrated into the visual language may lead us to a greater understanding of that experience and its subsequent production as art and, in addition, may bring about a greater valuation of women's experience and its representation.
Graduate

The separation performance of MFI type of zeolite membranes for gas and vapor permeation has been improved in this dissertation in several ways. In the h0h-oriented membranes, defects were sealed by a sol-gel technique, while in the c-oriented MFI membranes, defects could be sealed in situ by introducing a third strongly adsorbing species in the feed stream. In both cases, the selectivity for separation of xylene isomers was greatly improved. However, the concomitant decrease in permeance indicated that the membrane performance was only partially improved by these methods. A novel seeded growth method was proposed which allowed us to fabricate the first functional b-oriented ZSM-5 membranes with quality good enough to demonstrate separation of mixtures mainly based on molecular sieving effects. Membrane microstructure was optimized in this seeded growth process to be thin, less defective and b-oriented by strategies such as the use of asymmetric supports, oriented seed monolayers and appropriate structure directing agents. Although the process was proposed mainly for MFI type of membranes, it is anticipated that those idea can be extended to the preparation of other types of zeolite membranes. The microstructurally optimized b-oriented ZSM-5 membrane was applied for the separation of several close-boiling hydrocarbon mixtures, such as xylene isomers, benzene/cyclohexane, and benzene/2,2-dimethylbutane. Significant improvement in both permeance and separation factor was achieved compared to the results reported in the literature.

Alpacas were first introduced into South Africa during the year 2000. They are valuable because of the fine quality wool they produce which has much better insulation properties than that of merino wool fibres. Alpacas are also used to act as guards of sheep herds against predators. During 2008, blood samples from an alpaca that died acutely with severe lung oedema, respiratory distress and froth exuding from the nose were received at Elsenburg Veterinary Laboratory. The alpaca was from a herd of 23 alpacas of a British veterinarian in the Montagu district in the western Cape. Virus isolation attempts on the blood produced infrequent embryo mortalities. Embryonated chicken egg (ECE) material was send to the Virology Department at the Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute (OVI). A bluetongue virus (BTV) PCR performed at the diagnostic PCR laboratory at OVI on the ECE material was positive. Further intra-venous (IV) inoculations in ECE produced embryo mortalities on two consecutive days, the 8th and 9th November. The dead embryos were harvested separately and named and treated as two separate virus samples, Alp8 and Alp9 which were further passaged on baby hamster kidney (BHK) cells. The BTV virus neutralisation tests (VNT) performed at the Office International des Epizooties (OIE) Laboratory on both Alp8 and Alp9 were negative. Because of the close serological relationship between BTV and epizootic haemorrhagic disease virus (EHDV), an EHDV VNT was also performed and was also negative. In the light of the negative VNT and the positive BTV PCR results, more in-depth molecular analyses were performed. RNA was purified from tissue culture material and agarose gel electrophoresis (AGE) performed. Both Alp8 and Alp9 had a typical orbiviral electrophoretic profile, but their respective profiles were different. A sequence-independent reverse transcriptase PCR amplification method generated ample complementary DNA (cDNA) of both samples for sequencing. Sanger sequencing was used to partially sequence genome segments 5 (NS1) and 2 (VP2). BLAST analysis of the partial information of the genome segments 5 (NS1) of Alp8 confirmed it as being a BTV and Alp9 as being an EHDV. BLAST analysis of the deduced amino acid sequence generated of VP2 of both Alp8 and Alp9 established that these samples were possibly new serotypes of BTV and EHDV respectively. The complete genome of both Alp8 and Alp9 was sequenced with next generation 454 Pyrosequencing. This confirmed the partial sequencing results. BLAST analysis of the complete sequence of S2 (VP2) of Alp8 showed that it has 73 % nucleotide and 77 % deduced amino acid identity to BTV15. In contrast the nucleic acid sequence of genome segment S2 (VP2) of Alp9 had no nucleotide sequence identity to any virus, but its deduced amino acid sequence had 71 % amino acid identity to EHDV2. Hyper immune guinea pig (GP) serum prepared against the putative new BT (Alp8) and EHD (Alp9) virus serotypes were tested for serological cross-reactivity against the 24 OIE reference antigen strains of BTV and the 8 OIE reference antigen strains of EHDV. Alp8 had a neutralising antibody (NAb) titre of > 32 against BTV15. Alp9 did not cross react with any of the OIE BTV and EHDV strains. Six out of the remaining 22 alpacas on the farm had NAbs to a greater or lesser extend against Alp8 (BTV) and Alp9 (EHDV) viruses, which confirmed that the viruses were also present in other alpacas in the herd. Very few cases of EHDV in alpacas have ever been reported in literature. A small scale pilot vector susceptibility study showed that vector competence of C. imicola for both Alp8 and Alp9 was low, below 2 %. The fact that neutralising antibodies to Alp8 and Alp9 were detected in other alpacas in the herd raises the question as to whether there are other Culicoides species circulating in the area that could vector the viruses. In conclusion, the results from the serological and virological analyses as well as the nucleic acid sequence data of the genomes of two virus samples, Alp8 and Alp9, from an alpaca that died in the Montagu district in the western Cape identified Alp9 as a definite new serotype of EHDV and Alp8 as a possible new serotype of BTV most closely related to BTV15.
MSc (Biochemistry), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

This submitted paper aims to give a communicative image of the conflicts of the Czech Estates Uprising in the south of Bohemia. The focal point of the research has been three clashes of Protestant and Catholic armies. The first was the Battle of Lomnice, which took place on November 11, 1618, between the allied estates troops of Jindřich Matyáš Thurn and Jiří Fridrich Hohenlohe and the catholic military assembly of Karel Bonaventura Buquoy. After the battle that was victorious for the generals of the estates, the military actions moved to the area around České Budějovice, which was besieged by the army of the estates, as the catholic troops withdrew here. Ending the siege of the South Bohemian metropolis caused the third conflict, which has become part of this work. The battle at Záblatí took place on June 10, 1619, by the troops of Petr Arnošt of Mansfeld, the general of the rebellious Czech estates, and the military corps of imperial mercenaries commanded by Karel Bonaventura Buquoy. The aim of the author was to capture the fullest range of information framework, which was completed by reports of these military clashes of the Czech Estates Uprising. As part of research activities, attention was paid first to the works which explored the battle of Záblatí from political and military point of view. This view became a basic framework in which the research was conducted. However, the work should not only to recapitulate the conclusions already drawn, but the aim was to look at the examined issue with a new look. Such a view was based in the research of either new or to-nowoverlooked sources, such as the period news that historical science began to discover in recent years. A relatively large part of the historical community took the argument in saying that under the tide of propaganda and perspice it is not possible to find the truth about individual events of the Czech Estates Uprising. It would certainly be possible to claim that credible authentic information was scarce in the leaflets of the Czech Estates Uprising. These who contracted the prints, however, attempted to influence the readers of contemporary journalism and help them orientate in their intellectual worlds that were in this way uncovering to us. Another possibility for viewing the conflicts of the Czech Estates Uprising was offered through the view of the ordinary villages and towns inhabitants that were coming into contacts or were just observers of the South Bohemian battlefield. Although the preservation of the sources of the early 17th century from the environment of towns and villages was far from abundant, we managed to find some authentic testimonies that evaluated the battles of the Czech Estates Uprising from the very distinctive angles of view. The author interpreted sources of song lyrics reporting to the rural environment and sources of interurban correspondence, through which he tried to uncover at least part of the mental world of ordinary residents of South Bohemia affected by war in the first third of the 17th century and their view on the South Bohemian battlegrounds. Similarly, he also proceeded in the interpretation of the noble correspondence, whether it were warriors or the aristocrats affected by war misfortunes.