Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Primary space'

This thesis uses a multimodal approach to explore how three lower primary teachers manage dialogic space in their respective classrooms during the Shared Book Approach (SBA) lessons, where they read big books to their students while holding whole class discussions. Against the backdrop of recent policies and initiatives by Ministry of Education, Singapore and the aims of the 2010 English Language Syllabus, interactions between teacher and students have received much attention. The body of work on classroom discourse in Singapore mostly focuses on speech, to the exclusion of other semiotic resources that make meaning in the classroom. This study finds that during SBA lessons in the lower primary, teachers use a variety of other semiotic resources such as gestures, space, written words and images. Through a detailed consideration of these semiotic resources, the aims of this research are to investigate how three teachers manage dialogic space during whole class discussions in SBA lessons, the issues arising from their practice and insights specifically given by the use of the Systemic Functional - Multimodal Discourse Analysis or SF-MDA (O’Halloran, 2007, 2011) adopted in this study. The employment of the SF-MDA has proven to be productive in establishing the way the teachers combine the different semiotic resources of speech and gesture to expand dialogic space by asking open-ended questions while gesturing with the supine hand position; and contracting dialogic space by, for example, asking seemingly open-ended questions while pointing to the answers in the big books. This could be seen as a scaffolding technique in reducing the options available to students. Teachers are found to be less reliant on the prone hand gesture in contracting dialogic space.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2010.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 135-139).
Heritage space telescope mirror technology-i.e. large, monolithic glass primary mirrors-has reached an upper limit on allowable aperture diameter given launch vehicle volume and mass constraints. The next generation of space telescopes will feature lightweight, actively controlled, segmented primary mirrors in order to achieve the advances in angular resolution and sensitivity that larger aperture diameters permit. Active control via embedded surface-parallel electrostrictive actuators provides the capability to change a mirror segment's optical prescription on orbit, to correct either quasi-static disturbances or manufacturing errors. Commanding low-order prescription changes (e.g. radius of curvature) using discretely-placed actuators, however, induces high spatial frequency residual error in the mirror surface figure, resulting in wavefront error (WFE) that degrades optical performance. A key challenge is reducing this actuator-induced high frequency WFE to below acceptable levels while simultaneously commanding a particular change in global shape. This thesis considers a new set of geometric design variables that affect high-spatial frequency residual error in an effort to mitigate actuator-induced WFE. Specifically, less conventional variations in rib height, actuator geometry, and rib-to-facesheet intersection geometry are exploited to achieve improved performance in silicon carbide (SiC) mirrors. A parametric finite element model is used to explore the trade space among these new parameters and to predict performance improvements. Simulation results show that these additional geometric considerations reduce actuator-induced WFE while keeping mirror mass and complexity constant.
by Matthew William Smith.
S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2009.
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 80-81).
Teleoperated manipulators have been invaluable tools during space missions. Arm operators work in pairs, with the primary operator controlling the arm and the secondary operator assisting by monitoring arm clearance and helping to avoid singularities. Individual ability to manipulate the arm and integrate camera views is believed to correlate with 3 subcomponents of spatial intelligence: spatial visualization (SV), mental rotation (MR) and perspective taking (PT). In particular, PT (the ability to imagine an object from another viewpoint) is thought to be important for integrating camera views. Two experiments were performed; one on primary operator performance, and one on secondary operator performance. In Experiment 1, 19 naive subjects were trained to manipulate a 6 degree of freedom (DOF) simulated arm using a pair of hand-controllers. Over 18 trials, the disparity between the arm's control frame and the cameras was varied between low (< 90 degrees) and high (> 90 degrees) conditions. We used the Cube Comparisons (CC) test to assess SV, the Vandenberg Mental Rotations Test (MRT) to assess MR, and the Purdue Spatial Visualization of Views Test (PSVT) and a Perspective Taking Ability (PTA) test to assess PT. Subjects with high PSVT scores moved the arm more directly to the target and were better at maintaining the required clearance between the arm and obstacles, even without a direct camera view. The subjects' performance degraded under the high disparity condition. In Experiment 2, 11 naive and 9 returning subjects were trained to manipulate the same simulated arm during 6 trials and then acted as a secondary operator observing an additional 32 trials.
(cont.) The MRT, PSVT, and PTA were used to assess spatial abilities. Though the primary operator task was slightly different, we confirmed many results of Experiment 1. Subjects with high PTA scores took less time, moved the arm more directly to the target, and moved the arm more fluidly, especially under the high disparity condition. High scorers on the PSVT and PTA were better at maintaining required clearance. Low PTA scorers looked from monitor to map more often. Prior experience with the arm didn't significantly improve task performance, and performance as primary operator didn't reliably predict performance as a secondary operator. However, subjects with high PSVT scores had better overall secondary operator performance and high PTA scorers were better at detecting problems before they occurred. The results of these studies could be used to customize initial training for astronauts. This research is supported by NSBRI through NASA Cooperative Agreement NCC 9-58.
by Zakiya Alexandra Tomlinson.
S.M.

Humans’ perceptual experience of color is very different from what one might expect, given the light reaching the eye. Identical patterns of light are often perceived as different colors, and different patterns of light are often perceived as the same color. Even more strikingly, our perceptual experience is that hues are arranged circularly (with red similar to violet), even though single-wavelength lights giving rise to perceptions of red and violet are at opposite ends of the wavelength spectrum. The goal of this thesis is to understand how perceptual color space arises in the brain, focusing on the arrangement of hue. To do this, we use computational modeling to integrate findings about light, physiology of the visual system, and color representation in the brain. Recent experimental work shows that alongside spatially contiguous orientation preference maps, macaque primary visual cortex (V1) represents color in isolated patches, and within those patches hue appears to be spatially organized according to perceptual color space. We construct a model of the early visual system that develops based on natural input, and we demonstrate that several factors interact to prevent this first model from developing a realistic representation of hue. We show these factors as independent dimensions and relate them to problems the brain must be overcoming in building a representation of perceptual color space: physiological and environmental variabilities to which the brain is relatively insensitive (surprisingly, given the importance of input in driving development). We subsequently show that a model with a certain position on each dimension develops a hue representation matching the range and spatial organization found in macaque V1—the first time a model has done so. We also show that the realistic results are part of a spectrum of possible results, indicating other organizations of color and orientation that could be found in animals, depending on physiological and environmental factors. Finally, by analyzing how the models work, we hypothesize that well-accepted biological mechanisms such as adaptation, typically omitted from models of both luminance and color processing, can allow the models to overcome these variabilities, as the brain does. These results help understand how V1 can develop a stable, consistent representation of color despite variabilities in the underlying physiology and input statistics. This in turn suggests how the brain can build useful, stable representations in general based on visual experience, despite irrelevant variabilities in input and physiology. The resulting models form a platform to investigate various adult color visual phenomena, as well as to predict results of rearing experiments.

This thesis explores children's and teachers' perspectives on creativity, and its implementation, within one primary school classroom in Scotland. The data collection phase of the research employed an ethnographic approach, involving four and a half months of fieldwork in the primary school classroom. Data were generated from participant observation/informal conversations with children and teachers and one round of semi-structured interviews with twenty-five children (aged eleven to twelve) and two teachers. Creativity within primary education has been mainly studied through psychological research, which is mainly based on theories of developmental psychology. Such theories view creativity solely as an individual trait. Despite recognition of the importance of sociocultural issues to the flourishing of children's creativity, the study of their collaborative creativity has been neglected - particularly in relation to socio-cultural power dynamics. This thesis specifically analyses the balance between individual and collective creativity in the primary classroom, examines how collaborative creativity can acknowledge childhood diversity, and poses questions about how we include children with differing and complex identities in creative processes. Furthermore, this research has been carried out in Scotland, within the context of a fairly new curriculum, the Curriculum for Excellence. This curriculum has been viewed by some as a progressive, modern and motivating curriculum that enables children's autonomy, and by others as one that has been highly influenced by accountability and performativity regimes, which leave limited space for children's and teachers' autonomy. This thesis examines how the Curriculum for Excellence is interpreted in everyday practice and the extent to which it enables the cultivation of children's creativity. The thesis does so by shedding light on the practical interconnections between children's and teachers' agency, structural enablers/barriers, and cultural processes. The findings of this study show that children perceive, perform and embody creativity not only as an individual trait, but also as a collaborative process. However, the findings also show that collaborative creativity entails many complexities and that cultural barriers to creativity may emerge when power among people (children and teachers) operates in ways that create cultures of exclusion. The thesis concludes that the multiple identities of the Curriculum for Excellence, its multiple interpretations, and lack of coherence regarding what is expected of teachers, leads to a blurred landscape of implementation. The thesis argues that lack of a clear plan, strategy and framework for enabling creativity inhibits the founding principles of the Curriculum for Excellence from being achieved. The thesis also argues that environmental and structural barriers within the research setting inhibit the flourishing of children's creativity, but that the structural barriers can sometimes be overcome through the construction of enabling cultures. The thesis is able to define enabling cultures as cultures that value diversity, promote inclusion, and view space not as static, but as a dynamic process. In so doing, the findings of this study emphasise the interconnected importance of: viewing creativity as an individual trait; perceiving creativity as a collaborative process; and thinking in spatial terms, for example, in ways that create the space for children to perceive, perform and embody creativity in their diverse, but equally valuable ways. This finding enables this study to argue that there is a need for future policies and curricula which promote and encourage greater flexibility in teaching and learning practices, in order to enhance children's and teachers' agency and thus allow them to collaboratively create the types of enabling environments, originally envisaged by the Curriculum for Excellence, that will allow children's creativity to flourish.

In this abstract, we present a nonlinear curvelet-based sparsitypromoting formulation for the primary-multiple separation problem. We show that these coherent signal components can be separated robustly by explicitly exploting the locality of curvelets in phase space (space-spatial frequency plane) and their ability to compress data volumes that contain wavefronts. This work is an extension of earlier results and the presented algorithms are shown to be stable under noise and moderately erroneous multiple predictions.

This study is an examination of the ways in which primary aged refugee and migrant children use television and TV talk with their friends and family in processing and building their social worlds and in the formation of their identities. The study focuses on a small number of children from diverse backgrounds who are part of the same friendship groups. The ethnographically styled fieldwork (including visual ethnography) was carried out in a Primary school in North London. The data includes observations in the playground, the classrooms, in the children's homes and out and about in the neighbourhood. Interviews were conducted with children, teachers and parents and media activities and video productions formed an important part of the data collection and analysis. This is, therefore, an in depth study of particular children in a particular time aimed at gaining a detailed understanding of the workings of television in their lives. The data and analysis show that television acted as an important shared space where little else beyond school was shared and where continuity of place and relationships was fragmented or fragile. Television knowledge served as a symbolic resource that these children learned to negotiate, helping them to make sense of the world and their place in it. However, at the same time TV talk was also a place in which these children learned what was not acceptable with their peers and the wider society. They often censored the most important aspects of their home lives from everyday social interactions outside the home. Thus, while acting to facilitate inclusion it was also a powerful force for conformity and for excluding what was different. The families in my study used satellite and cable television to maintain contact with their countries of origin and to build new relationships within the diasporic community internationally. The children, therefore, had to negotiate not only the formation of new identities but, in a way not envisaged before global media, simultaneous multiple affiliations and identities. News media also had a particular importance for the refugee and migrant families in my study. For those children who had experienced conflict it triggered strong feelings of insecurity. Talking with their peers allowed them to relate their experiences to those of others and for them to understand that they were not alone. While children living with two or more cultures are often seen as disadvantaged this study presents a different picture. In contemporary society where economics, communication and everyday life require the ability to move across cultural bound.aries it raises the question as to how we are supporting children in maintaining and developing intercultural communication and skills that will equip them to participate fully in society. This has implications for research, curriculum and the training of teachers and school support staff.

La thèse présente les résultats expérimentaux obtenus au cours du développement et des essais au sol du modèle de vol de l'horloge à atomes froids PHARAO. PHARAO est le premier étalon primaire de fréquence dédié à des applications spatiales. Il est développé par l'agence spatiale française CNES. PHARAO est un des principaux instruments de la mission spatiale de l'ESA: ACES (Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space). Le lancement est prévu en 2016. La mission est basée sur des comparaisons de très hautes performances en temps et en fréquence, entre PHARAO et un ensemble d’horloges basées au sol, pour effectuer des tests en physique fondamentale. La charge utile sera installée sur une palette extérieure de la Station spatiale internationale. Après une introduction sur les horloges atomiques et un résumé de la mission ACES, l'architecture de PHARAO optimisée pour la microgravité et son fonctionnement sont décrits. Ensuite nous présentons les mesures et l'analyse de la stabilité de fréquence. Au sol la stabilité de fréquence est mesurée à un niveau de 3,1x10-13 t-1/2. Cette valeur est en accord avec les différentes sources de bruit. En microgravité la stabilité atteindra 10-13 t-1/2. Pour terminer les principaux déplacements de fréquence sont analysés. Une étude détaillée est donnée sur les propriétés des blindages magnétiques, leurs hystérésis et la conception d’une compensation magnétique active. L'objectif est de réduire l'incertitude sur l’effet Zeeman du second ordre au niveau de quelques 10-17. La détermination de la température de l’environnement des atomes est également analysée avec l'objectif d'atteindre une incertitude sur le déplacement de fréquence par le rayonnement du corps noir dans la gamme de 10-17. Un budget préliminaire sur l’incertitude de fréquence de l’horloge au sol s’établit à 1,1x 10-15. Ce budget est compatible avec un objectif de 3x10-16 en microgravité. La prochaine étape verra l’assemblage tous les autres instruments ACES pour un lancement prévu en 2016
This thesis presents the experimental results obtained during the development and the ground tests of the flight model of the cold atoms space clock PHARAO. PHARAO, the first Primary Frequency Standard (PFS) for space applications, is developed by the French space agency CNES. It is a main instrument of the ESA space mission ACES: Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space with a launch scheduled on 2016. The mission is based on high performances time and frequency comparisons between a payload including PHARAO and ground based clocks to perform tests in fundamental physics. The payload will be installed on an external pallet of the International Space Station. After an introduction on atomic clocks and a summary on the ACES mission, the PHARAO architecture, optimized for microgravity environment, and its operation is described. It is followed by the measurements and the analysis of the frequency stability. On ground the frequency stability is measured at a level of 3.1 10-13 t-1/2. This value is in agreement with the different sources of noise. In space the frequency stability will reach 10-13 t-1/2. Finally the main frequency shifts are analyzed. A detailed study is given on magnetic shield properties, hysteresis and the design of the active magnetic compensation. The objective is to reduce the uncertainty of the second order Zeeman effect within few 10-17. The temperature determination of the atomic environment is also detailed and the goal is to reach an uncertainty on the blackbody frequency shift in the 10-17 range. A preliminary budget on the frequency accuracy of PHARAO on ground is evaluated at 1.1 10-15. This value is compatible with the expected accuracy budget of 3x10-16 when the clock will operate in microgravity. In the next step all the ACES instruments will be assembled for a launch scheduled on 2016

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2010.
Pages 129-130 blank. Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 115-119).
The greatest discoveries in astronomy have come with advancements in ground-based observatories and space telescopes. Latest trends in ground-based observatories have been ever increasing size of the primary mirror, providing much higher apertures for more powerful image captures. The same trend can be envisioned for space telescopes. In fact, concepts for ultra-large space telescopes (ULST) on the order of hundreds of meters in size have been emerging since the late 1990's and early 2000's. Currently, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) scheduled to be launched in 2014 only has primary mirror diameter of 6.5 m. An important issue in the ULST is correcting for optical errors caused by large thermal deformations expected due to exposure to radiation in orbit. As of now, there are no methods for solving technical complexities involved in correcting for such deformations. Furthermore, the costs associated with weight, deployability, and maintenance hinder advancements in large space telescopes. This thesis explores the idea of using binary actuators coupled with elastic elements to offer solutions to these problems. The feasibility of using binary actuators with elastic elements for correcting the focus of the deformed structure is investigated. The investigation begins with simple representations of the primary mirror structure in one-dimensional study, then in two-dimensional study for planar analysis. The analysis includes exploration of the workspace, demonstration of deterioration of superposition, and performance measured in precision of focus correction. In general, the number of actuators required for an acceptable level of correction is about three times the number of degrees-of-freedom in the system. Ultimately, it is concluded that in the planar domain it is feasible to use binary actuators in the control of primary mirror structure for large space telescopes.
by Seung Jae Lee.
S.M.

Maps, while often regarded as accurate representations of places and spaces unseen in lived experience, are created with specific purposes that reflect and perpetuate particular epistemological and ontological conceptions about space and place. Using Foucault's conception of power-knowledge relations, Deweyian notions of meaning-making, and complexity theory's idea of interobjectivity; these theoretical works inform the map as a constructed reality. While maps have been well-articulated as socio-political constructions imbued with power-knowledge relations within the critical spaces of cartography and geography, this scholarship has made very few inroads into history education. In order to develop curriculum using maps to develop critical geo-literacy, I draw on a twin lens of critical carto-geography. In advocating for a more critical literacies approach, I assert that maps ought to be incorporated in the history curriculum as primary source documents where students have the opportunity to analyze and interpret maps as political acts. Through analyzing descriptions of practice, I explore possibilities to fully engage students in thinking critically about the construction and interpretation of historical maps. I also discuss the role of geographic information systems (GIS) as a potentially transformative curriculum that advocates inquiry-based learning through GIS maps and mapping. Engaging students in meaningful curriculum that promotes critical geo-literacy not only enriches their learning experience, it broadens the potential for greater democratic practices in educational settings.

The main aim of this thesis is to further understanding of primary science teaching through the analysis of a constructivist research project and its evolution into curriculum materia's. My analysis is underpinned with views on the nature of constructivism, the nature of primary science and research into effective teaching. In particular, I seek to locate the Primary SPACE (Science Processes and Concept Exploration) Project within the paradigm of constructivism; to explore notions of children's ideas as either theories or everyday ways of knowing; to chart the influence of constructivism in the Nuffield Primaa'y Science (NPS) curriculum materials and to observe case studies of classroom practice linked to both SPACE and NPS. My analysis locates SPACE in a form of constructivism particular to primary science (Harlen and Osborne, 1985) which has more in common with "good primary practice" than with other approaches to constructivism. The messages from the NPS Science Co-ordinator's Handbook are very similar to this, while the practice modelled in the Teachers' Guides relates more closely to "guided discovery". Observation of a teacher using NPS for the first time reveals practice very similar to that modelled in the Teachers' Guides in which the teacher is in control of the right answer. This is more successful than a SPACE teacher who tries to change the social dimension of classroom teaching and learning to give the children more ownership, according to constructivist principles. "Guided discovery" is acknowledged to be unprofitable for learning (Hodson, 1993) yet the children being taught using NPS had learning outcomes exceeding the teacher's expectations. I suggest reasons for the success of NPS based on research into effective teaching: that repetition of clearly stated key ideas leads to focused teaching in which learning activities are matched to intended learning outcomes. This approach does not view children's ideas as theories to be developed and is therefore not related to constructivism. I suggest that the way forward for primary science teaching is to embrace socio-cultural approaches so that the teacher's role corresponds more closely to society's norms for education in science, that children learn the accepted science view through supported negotiation, with their ideas viewed only as everyday ways of knowing.

The primary auditory cortex (area AI) plays an important role in the localization of static sound sources. However, little is known concerning how it processes information about sound source motion. This study was undertaken to investigate the responses of single neurons in the primary auditory cortex of the cat to correlates of auditory motion in space. Diotic and dichotic changes in sound intensity presented through earphones simulated auditory motion in four directions: toward and away from the receiver along the midline, into the ipsilateral hemifield and into the contralateral hemifield. Different rates of intensity change simulated sound source velocity. Results indicate that AI neurons can be highly selective to intensity correlates of auditory motion. Three major classes of neurons were encountered: neurons sensitive to motion toward or away from the receiver, neurons sensitive to ipsilateral- or contralateral-directed motion, and monaural-like neurons. The different classes of direction-selective neurons were spatially segregated from each other and appeared to occur in clusters or columns in the cortex. In addition to their selectivity for different directions of simulated sound source motion, AI neurons also responded selectively to the rate and excursion of intensity changes, a correlate of sound source velocity. The major determinants of direction and velocity selectivity were interactions between the following response properties of AI neurons: binaural interaction type, ear dominance, on/off responses, and monotonicity of rate/intensity function. These findings suggest that neural processing of auditory motion may involve neural mechanisms distinct from those involved in static sound localization, and indicate that some neurons in the primary auditory cortex may be part of a specialized motion-detecting mechanism in the auditory system.
Arts, Faculty of
Psychology, Department of
Graduate

This dissertation considers gray-space primary-secondary spectrum sharing, in which secondary devices are allowed to transmit when primary transmissions are strong enough that additional interference would be tolerable, rather than when the primary transmissions are weak or absent so the spectrum is considered unused, as occurs in white-space sharing. To avoid causing harmful interference (i.e., interference causing disruptions in services), transmit power of a secondary device is dynamically adjusted. Various novel sharing mechanisms are proposed for two different types of primary system: cellular systems, and rotating radars. Both cases when primary and secondary systems cooperate (cooperative sharing), and when they do not (coexistent sharing) are considered. Based on analyses and extensive Monte Carlo simulations, this dissertation shows that useful secondary transmissions are possible even when the shared spectrum is considered 100% utilized by the primary system under conventional approaches to spectrum management. For example, in spectrum sharing with cellular systems, even when the primary system is 100% utilized, a modest extent of transmissions of around 0.01–0.03 bps/Hz is achievable for secondary transmitter and receiver that are 400 m apart. In spectrum sharing with radars, even in the scenario where radars are the most densely packed, a secondary transmitter can get almost 1.2 bps/Hz on average, when 5% of the transmitters are competing for the shared spectrum. This dissertation also shows the potential of sharing models in which a secondary system has information about a primary system, but does not cooperate in real time; such arrangements are not typically considered today. For sharing with radars, the case in which an OFDMA-based cellular system operates as the secondary spectrum-user in non-contiguous cells is considered, as might occur with a broadband hotspot service, or a cellular system using shared spectrum to supplement its dedicated spectrum. It is found that even with fluctuations and interruptions in secondary transmissions while radars rotate, the shared spectrum could be used efficiently for applications that generate much of the traffic on mobile Internet, including non-interactive video on demand, peer-to-peer file sharing, large file transfers, and web browsing, but not for applications such as real-time transfers of small files, and VoIP. For sharing with cellular systems, the efficiency of cooperative and coexistent sharing is compared based on performance of the secondary system measured as achievable transmissions, and performance of the cellular system measured as power consumption of a mobile device, which may be increased to compensate for additional interference from secondary transmissions. When both achievable secondary transmissions and primary power consumption are of concern, coexistent sharing is found to be as effective as cooperative sharing.

This thesis entails a detailed microstructure analysis of directionally solidified (DS) Al-7Si alloys processed in microgravity aboard the International Space Station and similar duplicate ground based experiments at Cleveland State University. In recent years, the European Space Agency (ESA) has conducted experiments on alloy solidification in microgravity. NASA and ESA have collaborated for three DS experiments with Al- 7 wt. % Si alloy, aboard the International Space Station (ISS) denoted as MICAST6, MICAST7 and MICAST12. The first two experiments were processed on the ISS in 2009 and 2010. MICAST12 was processed aboard the ISS in the spring of 2014; the resulting experimental results of MICAST12 are not discussed in this thesis. The primary goal of the thesis was to understand the effect of convection in primary dendrite arm spacings (PDAS) and radial macrosegregation within DS aluminum alloys. The MICAST experiments were processed with various solidification speeds and thermal gradients to produce alloy with differences in microstructure features. PDAS and radial macrosegregation were measured in the solidified ingot that developed during the transition from one solidification speed to another. To represent PDAS in DS alloy in the presence of no convection, the Hunt-Lu model was used to represent diffusion-controlled growth. By sectioning cross-sections throughout the entire length of solidified samples, PDAS was measured and calculated. The ground-based (1-g) experiments done at Cleveland State University CSU were also analyzed for comparison to the ISS experiments (0-g). During steady state in the microgravity environment, there was a reasonable agreement between the measured and calculated PDAS. In ground-based experiments, transverse sections exhibited obvious radial macrosegregation caused by thermosolutal convection resulting in a non-agreement with the Hunt- Lu model. Using a combination of image processing techniques and Electron Microprobe Analysis, the extent of radial macrosegregation was found to be a function of processing conditions and PDAS.

Introduction: COPD is a progressive disease, characterised by symptoms of dyspnoea, fatigue, exercise intolerance and reduced physical activity, resulting in impaired quality of life. Furthermore, the disease poses a significant burden on healthcare systems around the world. SPACE FOR COPD is a new self-management programme which aims to support individuals in acquiring the knowledge and skills required to optimise their emotional and medical well-being. Methods: This thesis describes a randomised controlled trial which aims to establish the effectiveness of a SPACE FOR COPD compared with usual care alone. 184 people with COPD were recruited from primary care. Individuals were randomly allocated to receive either the SPACE FOR COPD intervention or to continue with their usual care. The primary outcome was a measure of health-related quality of life (HRQoL), the Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire – Self Report (CRQ-SR) dyspnoea domain. Secondary measures included exercise performance, anxiety, depression, knowledge, self-efficacy and physical activity. Outcome measures were recorded at baseline, six weeks and six months. Results: There was no significant between-group difference in the change in dyspnoea at six months, therefore our hypothesis was rejected. In secondary outcomes, there were significant gains in HRQoL, exercise, performance, anxiety, knowledge and steps at six weeks, and at six months changes in exercise performance and anxiety remained statistically significant. Correction for multiple comparisons, however, had not been made. Conclusions: SPACE FOR COPD did not result in improved dyspnoea, over and above usual care at six months. The programme may confer significant benefits in HRQoL, exercise performance, anxiety, knowledge and physical activity over and above usual care in the short-term, and gains in anxiety and exercise performance maintained at six months. Although these patients were relatively early within the course of their disease, physical activity was low, highlighting the need for a lifestyle intervention in this group of patients. Exploration of the potential benefit of additional on-going support, and delivery within group settings may of value in order to support the maintenance of these benefits in the medium- and longer-term.

Keen efforts have been put by Taiwanese government into creative education projects; however, possible paradoxes resulting from adopting the ethos behind the Western theories and practices have not been considered. Questions of how creativity and creative education should be defined in the Taiwanese educational context, how compatible the Taiwanese school cultures are with the objective of enhancing creativity, or how teachers and pupils cherish creativity, have not been asked. Within the reformed curriculum and creative education projects, there is no clear picture of what kind of creative capacity should be developed through education, nor guidelines of what pedagogical strategies to adopt for promoting creativity. In this research the responses of pupils and teachers are investigated through designing and teaching a series of drama lessons based on the school curricula in the two cases under study. The approaches to teaching drama are linked with a framework of creative pedagogy informed by theories of fostering creativity in educational settings. A descriptive case study approach was employed to capture the dynamics, modes of involvements, and subtle relationships of the participants, whose accounts were collected concerning their views of the lessons, the evaluation of the ways of teaching and learning, and the ethos behind the pedagogy. Key issues in adopting creative pedagogy in Taiwan context are discussed, and implications for contextualizing creative pedagogy are proposed. Suggestions for future research in creative pedagogy are also provided.

This thesis aims to explore the ways in which space patterns regimes of language use and language attitudes among Cameroonian immigrant children in a primary school in Cape Town. The presence of migrants in any classroom represents a significant challenge from the theoretical as well as practical point of view, given that schools are responsible for both socialization and learning (Gajo &
Mondada 1996). Most African countries are going through large-scale migration from rural to urban areas as well as increasing transnational migration due to recent socio-economic and socio-political trends. These flows affect the sociolinguistic economy of the places concerned, not only the individuals within them. Thus immigrants&rsquo
movement into an urban area not only affects their repertoires, as they find themselves confronted with the task of acquiring the communicative resources of the autochthonous population, but also those of the autochthonous population who find themselves confronted with linguistic communicative processes and resources &lsquo
alien&rsquo
to their environment. Similar effects are felt by local educational and other institutions, now faced with learners with widely varying degrees of competence in the required communicative skills. The participants in this study are a group of young migrants from Cameroon where English and French are the two official languages. These learners already have some languages in their repertoire, which may include their mother tongue or either of the two official languages. My focus will be on the multilingual resources of these learners and how they make use of these in the daily life of their new spaces, the school, the homes and community spaces, to construct new social identities.

An in depth investigation of the socio-ecology of the vervet monkey species complex (Cercopithecus aethiops subspp.) is presented. Herein, particular emphasis has been placed on evaluating the information content of remotely sensed primary productivity with respect to inquiries into the causal network underlying the behavioural ecology of the species. The principal aim was to construct an inter-populational model of group size and range of distribution for vervet monkeys over the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Data were collected on a habituated group of vervet monkeys over a 12 months observation period at the Lajuma Research Centre, South Africa. In addition, behavioural information from other populations was gathered in an extensive literature review. Environmental data were accrued on both a global (inter-populational) and local (intra- populational) level using a combination of remotely sensed data and more traditional field-observation based techniques. Where appropriate, variables were integrated into the powerful modelling environment of a Geographical Information System (GIS).Biologically intuitive associations between a remotely sensed index of primary productivity (the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI) and climatic conditions were established on the long-term global (annual average values over sub- Saharan Africa) and short-term local level (monthly values over the home range area of the study group). Local NDVI values, moreover, were strong correlates and predictors of field estimates on local phenology and food availability as well as of temporal and spatial variation in parameters of range use and time allocation by the study group. Global NDVI values proved pivotal to the eventual inter-populational time budget model of vervet monkey group size and potential range of distribution. Current results are taken to suggest that several areas of research within primatology may stand a lot to gain from a more widespread and systematic application of the powerful methodological synergism offered by remote sensing and geographical information systems.

The centralised control over curriculum framing and pedagogy, the generally poor quality of teaching with little sensitivity to children’s sociocultural environment; and very high drop out rates, even at the primary school level, are some of the challenges facing school education in many of the regions of India. However, one of the successful approaches to these challenges has been the Digantar school system, working in rural communities. The study is based in one Digantar School in Rajasthan and employs concepts derived from the Vygotskian tradition to interrogate the methods employed in Digantar school system. The study took Edwards’ (2010a, 2011, 2012) idea of common knowledge and Hedegaard’s (2008, 2012, 2013) idea of institutional demand in practices as conceptual lenses through which to investigate the components of the pedagogical practices that help Digantar teachers to align the motives of the school with those of the child in classroom activities. In doing so it analyses the institutional practices that lead to the development of common knowledge that in turn facilitates how teachers engage pupils as learners. Data were gathered over six months and comprised around 120 hours of school-based video data together with interviews and detailed observations with teachers and community members. Data were gathered in classrooms, teacher meetings, meetings between parents and teachers and at school-community meetings. Analyses focused on the construction of common knowledge and the use made of it by the school to achieve a mutual alignment of motives between the practices of the school with the community and the families. The study has revealed that teachers’ engagement with the knowledge and motives of other teachers and community members helped to create common knowledge, i.e. an understanding of what mattered for each participating group, which facilitated teaching-learning in the school. The analysis also points towards a form of democracy, which enhances children’s participation in their learning. It was found that building and sharing of common knowledge and creating a socially articulated ‘space of reasons’ (Derry 2008) produced a pedagogical model that engaged children in creating their social situation of development, seeking and recognising the curriculum demands being placed on them.

En aquesta tesi doctoral es dóna compte de la investigació respecte del procés d'adquisició de la noció de VOLUM, una recerca basada en la pràctica sobre les capacitats espacials i el pensament tridimensional, tenint per objectiu el desenvolupament de la Intel·ligència Múltiple Espacial a l'Educació Primària. La pràctica docent i la teoria acadèmica s'interrelacionen per investigar participativament amb els nens i les nenes de 6 i 7 anys. Mitjançant exercicis proposats en relació als seus dibuixos i les seves construccions, hem construït noves interpretacions d'aquests fenòmens. Aquest treball conclou amb recomanacions didàctiques i pedagògiques, recolzades en l'oferiment d'una teoria fonamentada, i en la seva inserció en relació a interpretacions prèvies: artístiques, psicològiques, neurocientífiques i matemàtiques.
This doctoral thesis gives an account of the investigation about the process of acquiring the notion of VOLUME, a practice-based research on spatial capacities and three-dimensional thinking, aiming the development of Spatial Multiple Intelligence in Primary Education. Teaching practice and academic theory engage to investigate collaborativelly with 6 to 7 years old's students. Thanks to proposed exercises in relation with their drawings and constructions, we have constructed new interpretations of these phenomena. This work concludes with didactic and pedagogical recommendations, supported by a grounded theory and its insertion in relation to previous interpretations: artistic, psychological, neuroscientific and mathematical.
En esta tesis doctoral se da cuenta de la indagación respecto al proceso de adquisición de la noción de VOLUMEN, una investigación basada en la práctica sobre las capacidades espaciales y el pensamiento tridimensional, teniendo como objetivo el desarrollo de la Inteligencia Múltiple Espacial en la Educación Primaria. La práctica docente y la teoría académica se interrelacionan para investigar participativamente con los niños y niñas de 6 a 7 años. Mediante ejercicios propuestos en relación a sus dibujos y a sus construcciones, hemos construido nuevas interpretaciones de estos fenómenos. Este trabajo concluye con recomendaciones didácticas y pedagógicas apoyadas en el ofrecimiento de una teoría fundamentada, y en su inserción en relación a interpretaciones previas: artísticas, psicológicas, neurocientíficas y matemáticas.

Diploma project solves renovation of campus SOU Rousínov. Campus is situated in wide city centre of Rousínov. Campus is composed of five connected buildings. Project brings new functions such as primary school, library, old people´s home and coffee-house. One aim of project is urban revitalization and creation of area for leisure time activities. Architectural aim is to create campus with uniform character. Buildings are specific in shape simplicity. Connecting element is also colour unity of main volumes with coloured emphasizing of details and structures.

Magister Educationis - MEd
The study's main starting premises is that there is a disjuncture between the rich educational engagements of these students in their environmental space and how their learning practices are framed, informed and positioned in the institutional space. My study is underpinned by an interpretivist paradigm in terms of which I set out to describe and understand the meanings that the student respondents assign to their learning practices when they are involved in discursive practices of speaking, knowing, doing, reading and writing. Qualitative research instruments: field notes, participant and non-participant observations and formal and informal interviews were used in order to answer my research question and achieve the desired research aims of this thesis. The findings are presented in a narrative format after deriving at categories and themes using narrative analysis. Finally, my research shows how these students are positioned in and by their lived spaces (whether environmental or institutional) in specific ways, and they, based on their own resources, networks and interactions, and by exercising their agency, actively construct their own spaces of learning. I describe these active constructions by these students as their 'conceptual space of learning' to highlight the complex ways in which they go about to establish their learning practices in their lived spaces. The study provides an analysis of the basis upon which each of these four students go about constructing their learning practices.
South Africa

This thesis examines how children are discursively (re)constructed as (dis)abled through mundane practices within mainstream primary schools, drawing upon in-depth qualitative research. Schools are conceptualised as porous local expressions of the education institution which comprise functionally specific micro-spaces (e.g. classrooms and playgrounds). Schools are viewed as a site of cultural conflict and contestation, between children and adults, who are unequally positioned in terms of power. It is revealed that within school (micro-)spaces varying expectations are placed upon children and adults which encourage particular practices. Actors within the school can contest, resist and potentially transform these 'rules', which are inherently unstable. Due to unequal relationships between children and adults within schools, it is also demonstrated that children are perceived as adults' 'becomings', with childhood viewed as a series of fixed stages of development. The organisation of children in schools reflects this discourse. However, it is also shown that conceptualisations of the 'normally developing child' are socio-spatially shifting, hence there is a variance of the 'norm' by which schools and school micro-spaces are designed. It is argued that the idea of a 'norm' of childhood development is a problematic social construct, given it is shown to conceal the diversity of children's capacities. Consequently, the education institution can be seen to be divided into general and special components, with the Special Educational Needs (SEN) institution diagnosing and treating children who fall outside of (and typically below) 'norms' of development, through an educational medical model of disability. This model is a subset of the individual tragedy model of disability (cf. Oliver, 1993a), representing disability as an 'individual pathology' and emphasising educational or medical intervention and cure. The SEN institution operates heterogeneously through porous school spaces, emphasising that (dis )ability is a sociospatially shifting construct, and this disrupts conceptualisations of disability as an essential, fixed identity positioning.

Background Nuclear reactors utilizing molten fuels rather than solid fuels show a massive advantage in energy yield, waste handling and safety features. The only successful reactor utilizing a molten fuel was called the ‘Molten Salt Reactor Experiment’ (MSRE), built and operated in the Oak Ridge national laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, U.S.A. during the 1960s. The molten salts in question are fluoride compounds under the name of “FLiBe”. In this thesis, the heat exchangers of the MSRE are modelled and simulated, with the aim to test whether current computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software and mathematical models can accurately predict molten salt heat transfer behaviour.  Methods All programs used are open-source and/or free-access to facilitate open collaboration between researchers in this growing field. All models and findings produced in this thesis are free to use for future research. The program Onshape was used to draw CAD-models based on hand-drawn technical documents released by ORNL. Several programs, e.g., Simscale and Salome, were used to create high detailed meshes of the heat exchangers. The CFD software Simscale and OpenFOAM have been used to simulate the heat exchangers, using the 𝑘 − 𝜔 𝑆𝑆𝑇 Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence model to perform a multiregion conjugate heat transfer (CHT) analysis. The program Paraview has been used for all post-processing on the large datasets.  Results A working toolchain with open-source programs for CFD has been identified. Highly detailed, full-scale and accurate CAD-drawings of the two heat exchangers have been produced. Models have been finely meshed, containing tens of millions of cells, with good quality measures. The simulations produced physically sound and valuable data: Great heat transfer predictive capability with high accuracy to the data presented by ORNL. Pressure data showed a consistent over-prediction with a factor of ~2. Possibility of error within the MSRE measurement.  Conclusions CHT using modern turbulence methods work well for the intended purpose and can be used by industry to simulate molten salt heat transfer. Open-source programs perform well and can be used by researchers to share ideas and progress. Doubts around certain measurements from the MSRE, showing large uncertainties. Future projects have been outlined to continue the work performed in this thesis. Molten salt reactors show fantastic promise as an energy generation method and should be seriously considered for the future of clean, reliable energy.

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The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of type I, II and mixed arches and primate spaces in children that attended Health Centers in Ponta Grossa, Brazil. The sample consisted of 219 children of both genders between 24 and 50 months old. The inclusion selection criteria used was: presence of 20 deciduous teeth with no visible interproximal caries lesions, no open nor crossbite and with no previous arch treatment. Primate spaces were present on the four hemiarchs in 65% of the sample; also, the prevalence of primate spaces on the upper arch was higher (16%) than the lower (3%). Differences in the frequency of the arch types were minor, with discrete predominance of the type I arch and equal prevalence of type II arch and mixed. The distribution of the arch types and primate space in both groups (24 to 36 months and 37 to 50 months) was homogeneous. Concerning gender, there was no statistical significant difference between male and females. It is suggested that service given by Public Health centers to preschoolers should encourage education and parent orientation on the preventive attention to this children, with trained and specialized personal. These measures could contribute to the improvement of the oral health quality significantly, reducing future malocclusion incidence.
RESUMO Esta pesquisa objetivou avaliar a prevalência dos arcos tipos I, II e misto e de espaços primatas em crianças que freqüentavam algumas Unidades de Saúde e creches da cidade de Ponta Grossa. Foram incluídas no estudo 219 crianças de ambos os sexos na faixa etária de 24 a 50 meses. Os critérios de inclusão consideraram a presença de vinte dentes decíduos em oclusão, sem lesões cariosas interproximais visíveis, ausência de mordida aberta ou cruzada e sem relato de tratamento ortodôntico prévio. Os resultados mostraram a prevalência de 39%, 32% e 29% para os arcos do tipo I, II e misto, respectivamente. Os espaços primatas estavam presentes com maior freqüência nos quatro hemi-arcos (65%) e foi maior a ocorrência bilateral para o arco superior (16%) do que para o inferior (3%). Concluiuse que as diferenças entre os arcos do tipo I, II e misto foram pequenas, com discreto predomínio do arco do tipo I e equivalência entre os arcos do tipo II e misto, nas crianças examinadas. A distribuição dos tipos de arcos e de espaços primatas em duas faixas etárias (24 a 36 meses e 37 a 50 meses) foi homogênea. Quanto ao gênero, verificou-se também uma distribuição uniforme dos tipos de arcos e de espaços primatas, pois não houve diferença estatisticamente significante entre meninos e meninas. A atenção especial dos serviços públicos e particulares aos préescolares, promovendo educação e orientação aos pais, no que tange à assiduidade nas unidades de saúde, levando as crianças para atendimento clínico preventivo, com pessoal treinado e especializado, são medidas que podem contribuir para a melhoria da qualidade de saúde bucal dessas crianças, reduzindo assim, os índices de más oclusões futuras.

This thesis investigates workplace learning for new and established leaders in an English primary school. The study uses an ethnographic linguistic approach to explore the workplace learning environment and develops a conceptual framework that examines boundary construction, performance spaces and genres of organizational talk. This framework draws on Hernes (2003) to assess organizational boundaries, sociological and psychological concepts which take account of space and a Bakhtinian theory of language to understand genres. Using this framework the study investigates the way that the five formal leaders of a 350 pupil semi-rural primary school are able to learn to lead as part of their working lives. The methods used included interviews, participant observation, concept mapping,group discussions and attendance at the INSET training days and management team meetings taking place within the school. The study took place over one school year (September to July). The study illuminates the ways in which learning to lead was dominated by the local environment. Planned learning within the school was related to the organizational concerns of the headteacher and her perceptions of vulnerability and risk associated with opening the boundaries around and within the school. The school was assessed as having a restrictive learning environment, using Fuller and Unwin’s (2003) expansive – restrictive continuum, but this planned strategy by the headteacher aimed to ensure that fast, immersive learning could take place. Use of a limited range of genres of organizational talk also shaped the way in which learning took place, privileging process knowledge (Eraut 2004). The thesis proposes that boundaries, spaces and genres need to be considered together when considering the workplace as a learning environment.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008.
Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 31, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 48-53).

This postmodern feminist ethnographies research aimed to explore the everyday meanings of primary health care (PHC) held by rural community nurses. Secondly, the research aimed to explore the everyday meanings of care held by the clients of the rural community nurses who participated in the study. The representation of this research is written in four voices which converse with each other to varying degrees in each chapter. This writing strategy is a deliberate one aimed at destabilising the usual approach to representation of research. It is also a strategy which seeks methodological coherence. The third aim therefore is to deliberately trouble the acceptable grounds concerning how nursing research is represented. The research utilised dialogical (conversational)and participant observation methods concerning the everyday meanings of nurses and their clients.The meanings I made of the information were created from a deconstruction of the texts. These texts included fieldnotes of participant observations and transcripts of conversations with nurses and their clients. The form of deconstruction utilised was informed from multiple sources and involved three levels of analysis. A realist interpretation was followed by an oppositional interpretation and then a reconstructive movement. The results revealed that rural community nurses practice is both spatio-temporally contextualised and metaphorically situated in an in-between space. This in-between space is situated between margin and the centre. Rural community nurses working on the margins traverse this space in order to overcome further marginalisation whilst working with Indigenous Australians and the aged. Moreover, the in-between space encompasses and creates opportunities to mutually exchange the gift of desire that being - empowering and compassionate relationships with clients and colleagues. Futhermore, whilst rural community nurses are strongly committed to the philosophy of PHC, their evryday working life is discursively constructed by powerful discourses which result in oppositional tensions. The tensions and the 'in-between' space allow the rhetoric of PHC to be resisted and reframed. Consequently, the oppositional constructs of their practice were displaced. Moreover, this necessitated the negotiation of space and place, and required the reconstruction of subjectivity, intersubjectivity and becoming
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis explores the issue of religion and spirituality in the spaces of the primary school through the employment of a mixed-method, qualitative approach. It includes a comparison between two case study schools - a Community primary and a Roman Catholic primary - both in multi-faith areas of an urban location in the North of England. By using a spatial and child-centred focus, the research investigates the social and political role and significance of religion, and spirituality for children, parents and teaching staff in the study schools .This is achieved through attention to four different spaces and their interconnections with institutional space. The first is the nation, where the thesis explores how the two different schools advocated distinct types of religious citizenship and approaches to accommodating religious minorities on an everyday basis. The second space is the community, and the various ways in which the schools promoted social cohesion through the encouragement of positive encounters between children from different religious backgrounds, and the development of a sense of embodied togetherness. The third spatial focus concerns the extent to which religion inhabits public or private space in school ethos. The caring nature of school ethos in the two different contexts is also explored and the consequences for child participation in school life. The fourth and final space is that of the body within informal school spaces, where the focus is on the role of children's embodied religious and spiritual practices for re-envisaging understandings of school ethos and practice. The thesis makes original contributions to theoretical, methodological and empirical knowledge, including the significance of emotions and spirituality, understandings of children's agency, the use of child-centred methods as part of a mixed-method approach, and the role of religion in secular space, education and wider society.

O presente relatório de estágio desenvolveu-se no âmbito da unidade curricular da prática de ensino supervisionada nos contextos de Creche e Jardim de Infância, abrangendo crianças com idades compreendidas entre os 15 meses e os 6 anos de idade. A sua elaboração teve como base a metodologia de investigação-ação tendo como principal objetivo refletir sobre a importância da Educação Motora no desenvolvimento integral da criança, dando ênfase à organização do espaço e à exploração dos diversos materiais. Esta compreensão foi sendo articulada com todo o trabalho de planeamento da ação pedagógica e consequente reflexão e análise crítica. Concluímos que o/a educador/a deve procurar estratégias para valorizar a exploração dos materiais e para promover a qualidade do espaço de modo a potenciar o desenvolvimento da criança; Report on the Supervised Teaching Practice in Preschool Education: The quality of the space and the exploitation of the materials in Motor Education Summary: This internship report was developed within the curricular unit of supervised teaching practice in the context of Kindergarten and Preschool, comprising children between the ages of 15 months and 6 years. It was produced using the methodology of research-action and its primary goal is to reflect on the importance of Motor Education on the integral development of children, emphasizing the organization of the space and the exploitation of the various materials. This understanding was combined with the planning work on pedagogical action and the resulting reflection and critical assessment. We have concluded that the educator must look for strategies to promote the exploitation of the materials and to boost the quality of the space in order to enhance the development of the child.

This thesis, within the subfield of computer science known as computer vision, deals with the use of scale-space analysis in early low-level processing of visual information. The main contributions comprise the following five subjects: The formulation of a scale-space theory for discrete signals. Previously, the scale-space concept has been expressed for continuous signals only. We propose that the canonical way to construct a scale-space for discrete signals is by convolution with a kernel called the discrete analogue of the Gaussian kernel, or equivalently by solving a semi-discretized version of the diffusion equation. Both the one-dimensional and two-dimensional cases are covered. An extensive analysis of discrete smoothing kernels is carried out for one-dimensional signals and the discrete scale-space properties of the most common discretizations to the continuous theory are analysed. A representation, called the scale-space primal sketch, which gives a formal description of the hierarchical relations between structures at different levels of scale. It is aimed at making information in the scale-space representation explicit. We give a theory for its construction and an algorithm for computing it. A theory for extracting significant image structures and determining the scales of these structures from this representation in a solely bottom-up data-driven way. Examples demonstrating how such qualitative information extracted from the scale-space primal sketch can be used for guiding and simplifying other early visual processes. Applications are given to edge detection, histogram analysis and classification based on local features. Among other possible applications one can mention perceptual grouping, texture analysis, stereo matching, model matching and motion. A detailed theoretical analysis of the evolution properties of critical points and blobs in scale-space, comprising drift velocity estimates under scale-space smoothing, a classification of the possible types of generic events at bifurcation situations and estimates of how the number of local extrema in a signal can be expected to decrease as function of the scale parameter. For two-dimensional signals the generic bifurcation events are annihilations and creations of extremum-saddle point pairs. Interpreted in terms of blobs, these transitions correspond to annihilations, merges, splits and creations. Experiments on different types of real imagery demonstrate that the proposed theory gives perceptually intuitive results.

QC 20120119

The visual world consists of objects. Planning or performing actions requires some form of engagement with an object. This requirement has shaped our perceptual systems to be highly tuned to ‘objecthood’ and construct objects from minimal available information. This project aimed to explore to what extent the importance of objects influences visual selection: the mechanism that prioritises the necessary information subsets in order to perform an action, and investigate on what basis this information is prioritised. Current visual selection theories argue prioritisation is accomplished as a combination between space-based and object-based mechanisms, with space having a prime role in how information is selected from the environment. This project proposes an alternative view, suggesting selection is a fully object-oriented mechanism and space-based effects are a consequence of object-based selection. This possibility was tested in three empirical chapters with the use of cueing paradigms, in the context of immediate perceptual decisions (luminance change identification), and colour change detection involving visuo-spatial short term memory. The key premise is that there is an intrinsic link between the spatial separation of any two points and the likelihood they belong to the same object. If these points are perceived to be within the same object, visual selection is not affected by the distance between them and they are equally prioritised for action. Prioritisation level decreases with increasing distance only when this likelihood of object- belongingness is low, because points closer together have a higher probability to originate from the same object. The current work tested this premise by varying independently object-belongingness and spatial proximity of cue-target stimuli pairs. Results indicated that visual selection is fully object-oriented and can be distance-independent. It is proposed that the perceptual system assesses the probability that information is integrated into potential objects, and then prioritises selection based on this object-belongingness probability.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD
This thesis traces the trajectories of a group of young Cameroonian learners as they engage in new social and educational spaces in two South African primary schools. Designed as a Linguistic Ethnography and using data from observations, interviews and more than 50 hours of recorded interaction, it illustrates the ways in which these learners position themselves and are differentially positioned within evolving discourses of inclusion and exclusion. As a current study in a multilingual African context, it joins a growing body of literature in Europe which points to the ways in which young people’s language choices and practices are socially and politically embedded in their histories of migration and implicated in relations of power, social difference and social inequality. The study is a Linguistic Ethnography of young school learners’ language experience, which falls outside the scope of much mainstream research. It is one of very few studies to focus on migrant children in contexts of the South where multilingualism is the reality yet where language-in-education policies tend to follow monoglossic norms. The focus is on how a group of 10-16 year old Cameroonian children use their multilingual repertoires to construct and negotiate identities both inside and outside the classroom. It also investigates in more detail the acts of identity of two individuals entering the same school with different linguistic profiles, who are positioned in differentiated ways in relation to transnational and local flows and interconnections. The context is a low socio-economic suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, where Cameroonian practices of language, class, and ethnicity become entangled with local economies of meaning. The study also contributes to an emerging body of qualitative research that seeks to develop greater understanding of the relationships between language learners, their socio-cultural worlds and processes of identity construction (Cummins, 1996; Gee, 2001; Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). ; Rampton, 1995, 2006). Recent international and South African studies tend to focus on secondary school learners, showing how they are struggling to negotiate the currents of a complex society (Adebanji, 2010; Sayed, 2002; Sookrajh, Gopal & Maharaj, 2005), although there is a recent and rapidly growing body of Scandinavian research on primary school children (for example, Cekaite & Evaldsson, 2008; Madsen, 2008; Møller, 2009; Møller, Holmen & Jørgensen, 2012). In contrast, the children in this study are negotiating the transition between childhood and adolescence, faced with issues of race, linguistic competence and discrimination at a time when moving from one age group to the next should have been relatively unproblematic. They are thus entangled in different levels of transition: emotional, physical and spatial. These issues of transition and negotiation will be highlighted through the lens of positioning. The concepts of ‘position’ and ‘positioning’ (Davis & Harré, 1990) appear to have origins in marketing, where position refers to the communication strategies that allow certain products to be placed in a market among their competitors (Tirado & Gálvez, 2007, p. 20). Holloway (1984) first used the concept of positioning in the social sciences to analyse the construction of subjectivity in the area of heterosexual relationships (Tirado & Gálvez, 2007). Positioning here was explained as relational processes that constitute interaction with other individuals. The present study focuses on how ‘interactants’ position themselves vis-à-vis their words and texts, their audiences and the contexts they both "respond to and construct linguistically" (Jaffe, 2009, p.3). As they make use of lexical and grammatical tools available to them in interaction, it becomes apparent that the process of identity construction through positioning does not "reside within the individual but in intersubjective relations of sameness and difference, […] power and disempowerment" (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 607). Thus to interpret multilingual children’s positioning requires a recursive process, using a double perspective: it means looking at the day-to-day moments of interactional and other practices, and also the wider political discourses in which these practices may be embedded and historically rooted (Maguire, 2005) and which they index in different ways. These day-to-day moments of practice thus involve different “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985) which can also be described as acts of stance-taking (Jaffe, 2009). A stance may index multiple selves and social identities. However, not all stances are open to everyone: those whose who have their social, cultural or linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1991, 1997) recognized in a particular space will be able to position themselves more strongly there than those who do not. Moreover, stances are not successful unless 'taken up' by interactants (Jaffe, 2009): this uptake may take the form of interlocutors’ stances of alignment, realignment, or misalignment (C. Goodwin, 2007; Matoesian, 2005). Uptake in multilingual contexts is influenced by the prevailing "linguistic market" (Bourdieu, 1991, pp.55-67): day to-day acts of positioning take place in inequitable markets. These ‘markets’ are fertile grounds for social stratification where speech acts and the languages in which they are realized are assigned different symbolic values (Bourdieu, 1991, 1997). Mastery of the 'legitimate' language or languages is then often a pre-condition for claiming symbolic and material resources. New institutional spaces in South Africa become interesting here, because they are characterized by new formations of class, changes in gender roles and relations and other instances of macro-structural shifts. In such spaces, linguistic hierarchies and patterns of distribution of linguistic resources are rapidly changing (Kerfoot & Bello-Nonjengele, 2014). The school as a key institution in the distribution of social, cultural and linguistic capital is thus an important site for exploring the role of language and multilingualism in social and educational change. This thesis sets out to answer the following research questions: a) How do immigrant learners use their linguistic repertoires to construct, negotiate or contest identities in new school spaces? b) How do different spaces enable or constrain the new identities negotiated? c) What are the implications for language learning policy and practice? Data collection took place over two years between February 2010 and June 2013, and followed participants from grades 5 to 7 in the English medium and Afrikaans language classrooms. Participants were 10-16 year old Cameroonian children in two Cape Town schools, ten in each. The study contains nine chapters, with chapter 1 providing an overview of the background, rationale, and conceptual and methodological framework. Chapter 2 traces the shift towards the social in language studies, considering frameworks for understanding the differential values placed on linguistic resources as actors move across social spaces, both local and transnational. Here interaction is viewed as a crucial site for identity construction, generating a social stage through which reality is constructed, shared, and made meaningful. Chapter 3 reviews studies of interactional positioning amongst multilingual learners in social and educational contexts in South Africa and more globally. Chapter 4 focuses on the methodology used in the study, discussing the research design based on Linguistic Ethnography, a qualitative approach which is based on the two broad planks of ethnography and Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS) and which enables an analytical framework combining Conversation Analysis (CA), Discourse Analysis (DA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Together, these analytical tools enable a multifaceted illumination of the construction of identity in discourse. The various tools used in data collection are discussed in depth followed by comment on reflexivity, challenges in the field and limitations of the study. Chapter 5 delineates the researcher’s trajectory in the field. This comprises profiles of the study schools (including the schools’ socio-economic, ethnic and linguistic make-up in relation to teachers and learners), perspectives on why the schools were chosen, the differing receptions to a research presence there, and some reflections on the researcher’s identity construction. The chapter further explores different techniques of data collection within this context: field notes and thick description, interviews, and audio recordings of interactions in and out of schools. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 present and analyse findings from classroom observation and interview data, together with audio-recordings of a group of Cameroonian learners interacting with each other and with children of other nationalities in classrooms, community and home spaces. These chapters aim to illustrate how these learners used linguistic resources to position themselves and others, to build, maintain and negotiate identities, and to assert or negate identifications. Chapters 7 and 8 build on the analysis presented in chapter 6 by focusing respectively on two key emergent themes: owning participatory spaces and defying positioning in multilingual spaces. Chapter 7 centres on the interactional and other means by which a 12 year old Anglophone learner, James, navigated his way increasingly successfully through new social and educational spaces, expanding his linguistic repertoire. Chapter 8 focuses on a 12 year old Francophone learner, Aline, and the ways in which she tried to convert her linguistic capital on new linguistic markets. Her efforts were more often than not met with negative evaluation, leading to a loss of both social and academic identities. The analysis of data thus serves as a rich point of entry for understanding the connections between linguistic repertoires, relations between ethnic groups, youth culture, and the experience of social change. Through their discursive production of selves, these adolescent learners supposed to be negotiating only the normal transition from one age group to the next) are here negotiating the currents of a complex society and dealing with issues of race, language and segregation. Findings suggest that participants had multiple identity options that were negotiated through different practices, from food choices to language and interactional norms. These different identity options were however constrained by existing norms and linguistic hierarchies in each space, allowing some to accommodate new linguistic practices and ways of doing things, while others experienced more ambivalent and contradictory processes of adaptation. In informal settings there was evidence of a third space characterized by a mélange of languages in which both formal and informal versions of English and French, along with Cameroonian Pidgin English (CPE) and other Cameroonian languages, were used. However, even in these settings there was a gradual shift to English, indicating the penetration of macrosocial and institutional discourses into private spaces. The thesis concludes with a set of recommendations for caregivers, teachers and policymakers seeking to create schools more welcoming of diversity. It is hoped, then, that this study will help families and schools to realize the variety of ways in which linguistic repertoires influence school success, both social and educational, and to find ways of using these repertoires for development and learning. In this way, they might contribute to immigrant youngsters’ ability to construct strong identities as learners and valued social beings.

Este proyecto tiene como objetivo principal cambiar el concepto actual de Colegio Público y convertirlo en un edificio que, además de relacionarse mejor con el entorno donde se encuentra, funcione como un foco cultural que permita mayor interacción entre las personas de su comunidad. Esto será posible fomentando actividades mediante los ambientes compartidos que ofrece el colegio a la comunidad fuera del horario escolar, como por ejemplo: talleres de arte, talleres de música, biblioteca, cafetería, auditorio y sala de usos múltiples. El proyecto se ubicará en el Barrio de Monserrate, una zona que ha perdido mucho valor con el paso del tiempo debido a la falta de actividades estructurantes que generen mayor movimiento en la zona a parte de la gente que ya reside ahí. Actualmente el barrio se encuentra en deterioro, por lo tanto, el colegio será aprovechado como un potenciador de vida urbana que permita regenerar el barrio a partir de actividades sociales.
The main objective of this project is changing the current concept of Public School and turn it into a building that, in adittion to having a better relationship with the street where it is located, it works as a cultural point that allows much interaction between the people of its community. This will be possible by promoting activities through the shared spaces offered by the school to the community outside of school hours, such as: art workshops, music workshops, library, cafeteria, auditorium and multipurpose room. The project will be located in Monserrate Neighborhood, a place that has suffered an incredible loss of value due to a lack of structuring activities that generate more people movement in the area than people who already reside there. Nowadays, this neighborhood is in decay, therefore the local school will repurposed as an urban cultural center that aims to improve the social activities in the área between the population.
Tesis

This research project investigates images from the contemporary Australian mid-life psyche, exploring the contribution to individual transformation made through the creation of, and reflective engagement with, personal imagery. Asking the question: 'What do contemporary Australian mid-life males consider to be a rich and sustaining inner life?' This project documents the visual images, descriptions, and reflections of a group of five participants, discussing the individuals' experiences of aesthetic self-inquiry with reference to divergent theories of psychology, art therapy and philosophy of aesthetics.

The location of Černá louka is situated between the city-centre of Moravská Ostrava and an area of Slezská Ostrava next to the confluence of two rivers – Ostravice and Lučina. The development at the building site of Černá louka is a result from an international competition 2010, which winner was the project Culture Meadow from studio Maxwan. The main idea of the project is to concentrate cultural and educational buildings around a culture meadow. This design has been used as a default situation for the master´s thesis. The complex of schools is situated at the parcel of existing Miniuni-site between cultural cluster Černá louka and the residential quarter Nová Karolina. The volume of the school with its front-spaces reacts to the surrounding structures. In the middle of the complex arises a half-public open space, where are located the internal entrances. Because of the placing of the school next to the city-centre the multifunctional pitch is situated on the roof of the gym. The design of the school respects principles of the age differentiation just as the horizontal integration. That´s why the substance makes up a symbiosis of 5 parts - common space, gym, first and second level, gymnasium. These parts are connected together and at the same time enable to use individual parts separately. The building of kindergarten with its garden is separated from the school because of differential needs of the smallest children.

This qualitative study draws on the results from a participatory ethnography carried out with a 6 secondary students in their last year of compulsory education, during the academic year 2012-2013. The impetus for this research was the national study “Living and learning with new literacies in and outside secondary school: contributions to reducing dropout, exclusion and disaffection among youth” (MINECO, EDU2011-24122). Working with young people in weekly sessions, our going project explored the notion of learning and its meaning in their lives, both in and outside school, a process which is framed as contributing to the social imaginary of learning. Resulting from the study of hoy learning was discussed and practiced in the group project is the development of a theoretical framework that questions the assumptions implicit in the binary phrase “in and outside school”. Theory from Lefebvre, de Certeau, Deleuze and Guattari, as well as input from the emerging mobilities paradigm, frames learning as contributing to the production of (social) space. This conceptual shifts asks not with learning occurs, but how it emerges, not what learning is, but how it takes place. Unfolding around and within this study is an interrogation of the representational strategies made available within post-structural ethnography. Nomadic thought is embraced as a both a concept and a method in an effort to mobilize ethnographic research into acting as an eventful space of learning in its own right. This dissertation addresses a blindness in the field of education that renders some learning practices invisible. By problematizing how learning is both thought and reported on, this attempts to engage with those pedagogical experiences that fall outside the realm of assessment.
Esta investigación cualitativa se basa en los resultados de una etnografía participativa que se llevó a cabo con seis alumnos de 4º de ESO durante el año académico 2012-13. La investigación contribuye al proyecto nacional “Vivir y aprender con nuevos alfabetismos dentro y fuera de la escuela secundaria: aportaciones para reducir el abandono, la exclusión y la desafección escolar de los jóvenes” (MINECO, EDU2011-24122). En una serie de sesiones semanales de trabajo con los jóvenes, indagamos sobre la noción del aprender y el significado en sus vidas, tanto dentro como fuera de la escuela, un proceso que interviene en nuestro imaginario social del aprendizaje. A raíz de cómo se representaba y hablaba del aprender en este proyecto se construye un marco teórico que cuestiona la geografía imaginaria implícita en la frase “dentro y fuera de la escuela”. Se introducen autores como Lefebvre, de Certeau y Deleuze y Guattari, además de aportaciones desde la perspectiva de las movilidades, para estudiar el aprender como una práctica que produce el espacio social. Este giro conceptual se aleja de preguntas sobre el qué se ha aprendido, para pensar en cómo el aprendizaje emerge o bien, cómo tiene lugar. Alrededor de esta argumentación se despliega una reflexión sobre las estrategias representacionales posibilitadas por la etnografía postestructurales. Se adopta el pensamiento nómada como concepto y método para movilizar la investigación etnográfica, convirtiendo la tesis en su propio espacio-acontecimiento. Al final, la tesis aborda una ceguera existente en el campo de la educación, la cual hace que ciertos aprendizajes sean invisibles. Con la intención de problematizar modos de reconocer el aprendizaje que se adscriben a una lógica representacional, este estudio investiga aquellas experiencias pedagógicas intangibles que se encuentran más allá de las prácticas educativas tradicionales.

Cette recherche comparative – terrains français et polonais – a été menée à Lyon et à Cracovie. L’objet du travail concerne le tourisme social destiné aux enfants, et ce dans le cadre des classes de découvertes en France et écoles vertes en Pologne, ces voyages scolaires constituant à la fois un temps de vie collective et un temps d’éducation. Le cadre scolaire de la recherche concerne l’école primaire. Le travail s’inscrit dans la vaste problématique de l’acquisition de savoirs géographiques. Le sujet de la recherche mobilise le champ du tourisme dans la mesure où les pratiques qui en relèvent constituent des moyens et modalités d’appropriation de l’espace que les individus mettent en œuvre dans l’élaboration de leurs représentations spatiales. A travers ses expériences, l’individu construit un modèle intériorisé de son environnement. Cette recherche questionne les modalités de l’apprentissage spatial chez les jeunes enfants, questionnement dont l’objectif essentiel est de valider l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’expérience du voyage scolaire est susceptible de modifier leurs représentations spatiales. Pour vérifier si tous les enfants ont des chances égales pour se construire leur propre capital spatial, la recherche examine aussi l’influence sur leurs représentations de la mobilité spatiale antérieure. Afin d’approcher les représentations spatiales des écoliers, sont mobilisés à la fois les données discursives (questionnaires) et graphiques (cartes mentales). L’enquête, menée auprès de 192 élèves de Lyon et de Cracovie, explore donc finalement l’interface entre deux champs scientifiques, ceux de la géographie et ceux de la psychologie, en s’appuyant sur le postulat de représentations spatiales intrinsèques au paradigme qui conçoit l’espace comme un construit. Le travail s’inscrit dans l’approche d’une géographie mettant l’espace vécu au centre de ses préoccupations
This comparative research - in France and Poland - was conducted in Lyon and Cracow. The purpose of the work is social tourism for children, more specifically the “discovery classes” in France and the “green schools” in Poland, the school trips constituting both a life experience and a time of collective education. The object of the research is primary schools.The work is part of a broader problem of the acquisition of geographical knowledge. The subject of the research mobilizes the field of tourism since the practices that stem from it are ways and means of appropriation of space that individuals implement in the construction of representations of space. Through experience, the individual constructs an interior model of his or her environment. This research project studies the modalities of spatial learning. The objective is to understand if the experience of school trips modifies children’s spatial representations. To ensure that all children have an equal opportunity to build their own spatial capital, research also examines the influence on their representations of previous spatial mobility. In order to examine the children’s spatial representations, both discursive (questionnaires) and graphics data (mental maps) are mobilized. The research, carried out with 192 pupils in Lyon and Cracow, is related to two disciplines, geography and psychology. It is supported by the postulate of spatial representations within the framework of the paradigm of spatial production. The work is part of an approach to geography, in which the “espace vécu” is the central preoccupation

La recherche des variations anatomiques du cortex, complémentaire des investigations fonctionnelles, a été fortement stimulée ces dernières années par le développement des méthodes d'analyse des images cérébrales. Ces nouvelles possibilités ont conduit à la création de vastes projets de cartographie anatomo-fonctionnelle du cerveau humain, comparables par l'ampleur qu'ils pourraient prendre aux projets de cartographie du génome. Durant les années 90, la communauté de la neuroimagerie a choisi d'appréhender ce problème en développant une technique appelée la normalisation spatiale. Il s'agit de doter chaque cerveau d'un système de coordonnées (surfaciques ou volumiques) qui indiquent une localisation dans un cerveau de référence. Ce système s'obtient en déformant chaque nouveau cerveau de manière à l'ajuster autant que possible au cerveau de référence. Cependant, cette morphométrie fond ée sur la technique de normalisation spatiale a des limites. En effet, il est largement admis qu'elle ne permet pas de gérer précisément la très grande variabilité des plissements corticaux et ne donne accès qu'aux différences anatomiques les plus marquées. Ces considérations ont motivé le développement de nouveaux outils de morphométrie, permettant l'analyse ne des structures corticales. Jusqu'à ces dernières années, une telle morphométrie structurelle, prenant en compte les particularités anatomiques individuelles de chaque cortex, était limitée par la difculté et la lourdeur du travail «manuel» à réaliser. Le développement récent de nouveaux outils d'analyse d'images, permettant d'extraire et de reconnaître automatiquement les sillons corticaux des images IRM anatomiques, a modié cet état de fait et a ouvert la voie aux études à grandes échelles de morphométrie structurelle. Cependant, d'un point de vue anatomo-fonctionnel, la structure de base du cortex est le gyrus et non pas le sillon. Or, si la littérature propose maintenant de nombreuses méthodes dédiées aux sillons corticaux, il n'en existe aucune spécifique aux gyri, essentiellement à cause de leur très grande variabilité morphologique. Le premier axe de travail de cette thèse est le développement d'une méthode entièrement automatique pour les segmenter, prenant en compte leur anatomie individuelle. Cette méthode propose un formalisme générique pour définir chaque gyrus à partir d'un ensemble de sillons-frontières le délimitant; un critère de distance, sous-jacent au diagramme de Voronoï utilisé pour parcelliser la surface corticale, permet d'extrapoler cette définition dans les zones où les sillons sont interrompus. L'étude des mécanismes mis en jeu lors du plissement du cortex durant son développement, ante- et post-natal, est un point clé pour analyser et comprendre les variations de l'anatomie corticale, normale ou non, et caractériser ses liens avec le fonctionnement du cerveau. Des travaux récents suggèrent qu'il existerait une proto-organisation sulcale stable, visible sur le cerveau du foeœtus, et qui laisserait une empreinte dans le relief cortical adulte. Pour le deuxième axe de travail de cette thèse, nous avons essayé de recouvrer les traces de ces structures enfouies, les racines sulcales, inscrites dans les plissements corticaux. Nous avons pour cela développé un modèle original du cortex, le primal sketch des courbures, permettant une description multi-échelles et structurelle de la courbure corticale. Cette description est issue d'un lissage surfacique de la carte (2D) de la courbure, obtenu par l'implantation de l'équation de la chaleur, calculée géodésiquement au maillage de la surface corticale. Cette description nous a permis de recouvrer les deux racines sulcales putatives enfouies dans le sillon central, et les quatre racines du sillon temporal supérieur. En parallèle, nous avons initié une étude directe des premiers plis sulcaux à travers la reconstruction tridimensionnel du cerveau foeœtal in utero.

La construction de la représentation de soi est basée sur l'intégration des informations que l'on reçoit des différentes modalités sensorielles telles que les informations visuelles, auditives, tactiles ou proprioceptives. L'interaction entre les actions et les mouvements, et plus récemment les interactions sociales et l'espace ont été étudiées essentiellement au niveau comportemental, moins au niveau fonctionnel et beaucoup reste encore à élucider. En particulier, il est important et essentiel de comprendre exactement quels processus sont impliqués dans la construction d'une représentation spatiale et comment ces processus sont mis en oeuvre, non seulement au niveau local par l'activité de neurones spécifiques, dans une zone corticale spécifique, mais aussi à l'échelle du réseau dans son ensemble ainsi qu'à l'échelle du cerveau entier. Le premier axe de ma thèse s'intéresse à l'espace peripersonnel, qui est l'espace le plus proche de nous et qui représente l'un des sous-espaces fonctionnels de la représentation spatiale. Nous faisons l'hypothèse que ce sont les mêmes régions qui contribuent à la convergence multisensorielle, à la prédiction des conséquences sur le traitement tactile d'une stimulation visuelle approchant le corps et à la construction de l'espace peripersonnel. Pour tester cette hypothèse, nous avons étudié l'effet des aspects prédictifs temporels et spatiaux d'un stimulus visuel dynamique sur la détection du stimulus tactile chez l'Homme (étude comportementale) et le primate non humain (étude en IRM fonctionnelle) ainsi que les bases neuronales de la représentation de l'espace proche et de la représentation de l'espace lointain, chez le primate non humain (étude en IRM fonctionnelle). Nous mettons en évidence l'implication d'un réseau parieto-frontal, essentiellement composé par l'aire intrapariétale ventrale VIP et l'aire prémotrice F4 qui sont activées par ces trois mécanismes différents. Nous proposons que ce réseau traite non seulement la trajectoire de l'objet approchant vis-à-vis du corps, mais qu'il anticipe également ses conséquences sur le corps et prépare des actions de protection en réponse à ce stimulus approchant. Le deuxième axe de ma thèse porte sur la caractérisation de l'étendue de la plasticité dans la représentation visuelle dans le cerveau adulte (par opposition aux premiers stades de plasticité observées autour des périodes critiques du développement) et en particulier, sur des développements méthodologiques permettant de mesurer les changements fins dans le cortex visuel induits par une telle plasticité. Plus précisément, nous avons développé un ensemble de méthodes d'IRM à haute résolution : imagerie fonctionnelle (cartographie visuelle à haute résolution, IRM au repos), pharmacologique (imagerie spectroscopique du GABA) et structurelle (IRM anatomique, DTI basée sur la diffusion des molécules d'eau), afin de définir des mesures de référence pour évaluer les changements induits par la plasticité à différents moments après son induction, à travers une étude longitudinale réalisée chez les mêmes animaux. Certaines de ces méthodes nécessitent encore quelques raffinements et ajustements mais, dans l'ensemble, elles montrent leur potentiel prometteur pour étudier la plasticité chez les primates non humains. Dans l'ensemble, ce travail de thèse a permis de créer un lien fonctionnel entre les études d'IRMf effectuées chez l'Homme et les études d'enregistrement d'électrophysiologies chez le primate non humain. De plus, il entraine de nouvelles stratégies et pistes d'explorations à étudier dans le domaine de la représentation spatiale, à la fois chez l'Homme et le primate non humain
The construction of the representation of self is based on the integration of information received by our different sensory modalities such as visual, auditory, tactile or proprioceptive information. The interaction between actions and movements and more recently social interactions and space are being explored at the behavioral level, but less so at the functional level and much more remains to be elucidated. In particular, it is important and fundamental to understand exactly which processes are involved in space representation and how, not only from a partial view focusing on specific cortical areas and single neuron processes but at the scale of the whole brain and the functional networks. The first axis of my thesis focuses on peripersonal space, that is the space that is closest to us, and represents one of the functional subspaces of spatial representation. We assume that it is the same regions that contribute to multisensory convergence, to the prediction of the consequences of a looming visual stimulus onto tactile processing and to the construction of peripersonal space. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the effect of the temporal and spatial predictive aspects of a dynamical looming visual stimulus onto tactile stimulus detection in humans (behavioral study) and non-human primates (fMRI study); the neural bases of near space and far space representations, in non-human primate (fMRI study). We highlight the involvement of a parieto-frontal network, essentially composed by the ventral intraparietal area VIP, the premotor area F4 as well as striate and extra-striate cortical regions, which are activated by these three different mechanisms. We propose that this network not only processes the trajectory of the looming object with respect to the body, but also anticipates its consequences onto the body and prepares protective actions in response to the looming stimulus. The second axis of my thesis focuses on characterizing the extent of plasticity in the visual representation of the adult brain (as opposed to the early stages around the critical developmental periods) and in particular, how the associated fine-grained changes in the visual cortex can be precisely quantified along multiple dimensions (anatomical, functional, pharmacological). Specifically, we have developed a set of high-resolution MRI methods to assess functional (high-resolution visual mapping fMRI, rs-MRI), pharmacological (GABA spectroscopy imaging) and structural (anatomical MRI, DTI) imaging to define reference measures against which to evaluate the changes induced by plasticity at different times after its induction, through a longitudinal study performed in the same animals. Some of these methods need to be more refined but they show that they are really promising to study plasticity in nonhuman primate. On the whole, this present doctoral research allows to make a functional link between human fMRI studies and monkey single cell recording studies and provides new strategies and explorations to perform on the spatial representation field both in humans and non-human primates

Le post-partum immédiat recèle les fondamentaux de la situation anthropologique, tant pour le bébé que pour la mère et le père et pour le socius. La première matrice de la vie psychique subordonnée à « l’espace dyadique fondamental » procède de la complexe alchimie entre la tessiture de l’investissement maternel et le tempérament et les capacités de régulation du bébé, sans négliger la structure en abyme qui encadre le maternage. A partir d’une clinique étendue dans le champ de la périnatalité cette recherche s’intéresse avec une double méthodologie qualitative clinique (Chapitre 1) et quantitative « outillée » (Chapitre 2 et 3), à la construction d’un espace dyadique, indispensable à la croissance du bébé et à l’investissement maternel, aux vicissitudes de cette construction, à la fonction régulatrice des rituels (relayés par les dispositifs de soins périnataux actuels) qui offrent une scansion au travail de l’enfantement. La communication dyadique entre mère est bébé, dont nous repérons le point d’orgue précoce vers deux mois avec les premières protoconversations, est étudié comme une co-génése transmodale et asymétrique complexe, tant par la psychanalyse que par la théorie de l’attachement, l’approche développementale et les neurosciences. Cet espace unique et original, renouvelé à chaque nouvelle naissance se trame à partir des « les formants de l’investissement maternel », constituée par les vecteurs de la vie psychique et leur combinatoire qui fournissent l’économie nécessaire à la situation maternante. A partir des trois grands courants de pensée conceptuelle et de traitement thérapeutique des troubles du lien précoce nous recensons le formant « en transformation » celui de « la transmission » le formant « en séduction ». Ces avancées théorico-cliniques ont un triple objectif, construire une lecture nouvelle de l’intersubjectivité primaire, de l’édification de la conscience de soi chez le bébé, des mécanisme normaux et pathologiques des identifications et de l’empathie, soutenir le principe des soins, l’édification d’une sémiologie dyadique de la psychopathologie précoce et ouvrir sur un modèle incluant la dimension du précoce et de ses formes de symbolisation dans les cures d’adultes et la prise en charge institutionnelle des populations précaires ou limites
The immediate postpartum period contains the basics of the anthropological situation, for the baby as well as for the mother and the father and the socius. Psychic life first matrix subject to “the basic dyadic space” comes from the complex alchemy between the range of maternal investment and disposition and the baby’s original control abilities, without ignoring the play within a play which surrounds mothering. From an extended study in the perinatal field, this research takes an interest, with a double methodology of qualitative study (chapter 1) and quantitative “equipped” one (chapter 2 and 3), in the construction of a dyadic space, essential for the baby’s development and for the maternal investment, to this construction ups and downs, for regulatory functions of these rituals (relayed by current perinatal cares) which gives a scansion to childbirth work. Dyadic communication between mother and baby, with a climax around two months old with the first protoconversations, is studied as an asymmetrical transmodal complex co-genesis by both psychoanalysis and attachment theory, by developmental approaches and neurosciences. This unique and original space, which is renewed after every birth, is woven from “the forming of maternal investment” composed from psychic life vectors and their combination which provides enough energy for the mothering situation. From the three major schools of conceptual thoughts and from therapeutic treatments of early relationship disorder, we identify the forming “in transformation”, the “transmission” one and the forming “in seduction”. These breakthroughs have a triple purpose: to built a new reading of primary intersubjectivity, the building of baby’s self-awareness, normal and pathological mechanism of identification and empathy, to support the principle of cares and the edification of a dyadic semiology of the early psychopathology and to lead to a model that will include the aspect of the “early” and its symbolism form in adult therapy and the institutional support of fragile or borderline population