University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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Pulchritude
No full textAbstract<</The main focus of this thesis is to explore the nature of beauty and sexuality in relation to a heterosexual woman's drive to attract a man. I examine the purpose of changing oneself into a normative version of what is attractive, as well as what results when transformation becomes ritual and is then taken to the extreme. To place these arguments within a larger context, I review literature focusing on historical and contemporary theories of femininity, attraction, and transformation, including John Stuart Mill's premise that women's survival is tied to attracting a mate, Freud's theory of transformation as a form of fetishism, and Naomi Wolf's notion that advertising influences women's obsessive transformation of themselves. Building upon these theories, I explore the experience of transformation, attraction, and beauty within my own artwork. Pulchritude uses photography and video in combination with cosmetic products and performance to reveal how rituals change when repeated to excess. I then examine where this work fits within an art historical framework that includes artists such as Cindy Sherman as well as fashion photography. Finally, I consider three conclusions reached through the thesis process: (1) Being unconsciously influenced by what I look at causes a latent feeling of self-doubt and induced a desire to look and act a certain way; (2) Transformation and appearance are used in my work to manipulate the viewer as a form of power; and (3) This project lends itself to being expanded to include a wider variety of feminine rituals
This Whole Language Variation Journey: Examining Teachers' Changing Beliefs about Langauge and Linguistically Aware Pedagogical Applications
No full textThis study examines how professional development conditions, events, and activities relate to the process of teachers becoming linguistically aware. Through an analysis of 18 transcribed individual and group interviews, I show how changes in beliefs about language, as well as the application of these changes to teachers' pedagogies take place among a sample of 14 teachers. I analyze these findings as an outcome of these teachers' professional development and in relation to models of effective professional development derived from the fields of Multicultural Education, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), Intercultural Communication, and Sociolinguistics. I also propose a new model, the Process of Linguistic Awareness and Application Model (PLAA Model, Strickling, 2012), that more accurately evaluates how changes take place as the teachers in this study become more linguistically aware. Changes in beliefs about language involve a cycle of five phases: confronting new linguistic information, questioning linguistic information and previously held beliefs, integrating new linguistic information within contexts of social engagement, evaluating the relational, emotional, and cognitive aspects of the experience, and modifying beliefs about language within the specific context of the experience. The PLAA Model also shows how a nuanced secondary cycle can occur where the process of questioning, integrating, and evaluating inform each other in a repeating cycle of increasing linguistic awareness before the final phase of modifying beliefs takes place. The cycle results in experiential linguistic knowledge and becomes the paradigm for new questioning. Within the secondary cycle, the teachers in this study show that they either gain a more linguistically aware knowledge from their integrating experience or within some contexts, reinscribe an aspect of their previously held standard language beliefs and gain a linguistic awareness during the same experience. This contrary movement likely indicates a flux in beliefs about language
DEVELOPMENT AND ANALYSIS OF A VARIABLE ELECTROMOTIVE FORCE GENERATOR FOR USE IN WIND TURBINE APPLICATIONS
No full textThe development of a Variable Electromotive Force Generator (VEMFG) is explored from design conception to physical testing. The concept revolves around a deconstructed generator, where the stator is allowed to move over the fixed location rotor. This design allows for a relatively large generator to perform similarly to a small generator when input power is low. This results in a decrease in the effective minimum speed, as well as an elevation of the maximum operating speed that results in power generation. This stretching of the operating envelope allows for greater efficiency of a wind turbine, by increasing the effective range of power generating wind speeds. A brief theoretical review of the new generator concept, followed by mechanical design, and finally experimental concept validation will illustrate the advantages of VEMFG. These experimental results will demonstrate the decrease of the so called cut-in speed, as well as the elevation of the cut-out speed. Also to be discussed, is an Infinitely Variable Speed Converter (IVSC) and it's application and design implications when used in conjunction with a VEMFG. Finally, a design review will discuss issues of durability, scalability, maintenance, and future applications. In addition, future areas of research interest will be presented and reviewed
Situation Aware Intrusion Detection Model
No full textToday, information technology and cyber-services have become the foundation pillars of every business and manufacturing industry. The importance of cyber-services and their extensive use by every section of the society has paved the way for cyber-crimes like espionage, politically motivated attacks, credit card frauds, unauthorized infrastructure access, denial-of-service attacks, and stealing of valuable data. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are applications which monitor cyber-systems to identify any malicious activities, generate an alert when such an activity is detected, and redress the problem if possible. Most of the intrusion detection/prevention systems available today are based on rule-based or signature based activity monitoring which detect threats and vulnerabilities by cross-referencing the threat or vulnerability signatures in their databases. These Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) face limitations in detecting newly published attacks or variants of existing attacks. They are also point solutions that focus on a single system/component. We argue that integrating information coming from multiple data channels can lead to a better threat detection model. Data source of web including blogs, chat-rooms, forums etc. can be a good source of information for upcoming attacks or attacks whose signatures have not yet been tracked for the intrusion detection systems to catch. Semantic integration of the data sources from web, information from IDS/IPS modules at the network and host level, and the expert knowledge can be used to create a `Situation Aware Intrusion Detection Model' which can lead to better intrusion detection and prevention results. In this work, we present such a system which makes use of semantic web technologies to find relationships between the information gathered from the web, sensor data coming from IDS/IPS modules and network activity monitors, and reasons over this data and expert provided rules in-order to detect possibility of a cyber attack
Real Versus Real: How the Concept of Authenticity Influenced Hip Hop, 1979-2011
No full textAlthough hip hop is a popular and profitable genre in American society, it has received major criticism. Proponents of hip hop defended the genre, yet, critics within the hip hop community, scholars, as well as the media blame the down fall of the genre on the lack of creativity and originality of current artists in the twenty-first century. This thesis, examines how the concept of authenticity in hip hop changed from the year 1979 to 2011. What standards were used to measure the credibility of an artist? What made certain artists credible in one decade and not true hip hop artists in the following decade? Through analysis of song lyrics, music videos, newspaper and magazine articles, it is clear that what was considered the downfall of hip hop in 2006 was in fact a part of the normal transitions in the genre. What was different however, was the twenty-first century generation experienced popular culture differently than before. What drove the desire for authenticity were the familial ties in hip hop created through mentor-mentee or parent-child relationships. Mentoring relationships molded the next generation of successful hip hop artists and dictated what was considered authentic in the genre, yet they were influenced by the presence of record companies and the mainstream success of the genre. What began as apprenticeships are now manufactured business alliances marketed as family relationships that continue to dictate authenticity
Structural basis for the regulation of endothelin-1 mRNA stability by glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase
No full textGlyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) plays a key role in vascular homeostasis by modulating expression levels of the vasoconstrictor endothelin-1 (ET-1). Elevated ET-1 levels are associated with vascular diseases, and ET-1 expression is tightly regulated via GAPDH-mediated destabilization of its mRNA. Recent studies suggest GAPDH binding of adenine-uridine rich elements (AREs) in the 3'-untranslated region (3'-UTR) of the ET-1 gene leads to decreased mRNA stability. However, structural and mechanistic details underlying the GAPDH-mediated control of ET-1 expression are lacking. We sought to elucidate the structural and mechanistic details for the GAPDH-induced destabilization of ET-1 mRNA via electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA), isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC), and x-ray crystallography. To identify specific GAPDH binding sequences, we constructed short RNA transcripts of the putative mRNA binding region. Utilizing ITC and EMSA, we obtained dissociation constants. We attempted crystallization of GAPDH bound to various oligonucleotides. Ultimately, we aim to solve the co-crystal structures for these ET-1 mRNA constructs with GAPDH. These studies provide the first molecular basis for structure-based drug design, leading to the development of novel molecules that specifically target ET-1 mRNA
